What Would Jesus Buy? (W.W.J.B.)

Everybody is out buying this and that for their kids, aunts, uncles, parents and other loved ones in preparation for the big event, Christmas.
Christmas in America has become a time of greed, and the ever inevitable arrogant assumption that all should celebrate by buying gifts. If you tell someone that you do not participate in gift exchanging at Christmas, they attempt to label you as cheapskate or an interplanetary alien. Read more

Ode to Christian Joe

Where do you stand on life? When will it begin? When will what begin?” you may ask.

When will peace begin? When will love outweigh the hatred of different faiths, but yet that person and you believe in the same god.? Read more

How Dare You!!!

I’ve been an atheist my whole life.  Even though I was raised that atheism is “akin to Satanism”, I always felt that I was not an evil person.  However, toleration for beliefs other than mine these days, is at times, very trying. Read more

Realistic Caption

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Blind Faith

We humans are born without a religious belief. It is learned from society and in many cases indoctrinated into our minds and thoughts, leaving one vulnerable to a lifetime of fear.

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In Search of the Historical Jesus

Jesus’s egalitarian social philosophy has special relevance for us now, living as we do in one of the most polarised and stratified societies in history. Indeed, today’s multinational corporate-dominated industrial system owes much to institutions and practices pioneered by the Roman empire. Like twentieth-century America and Europe, first-century Rome was at a pinnacle of economic and technological “progress.” It was a colonial power, the centre of a far-flung trade network. It was also an urban centre in which extremes of wealth and poverty coexisted. Like the European colonists of the past five centuries, the Romans were destroyers of indigenous cultures and voracious consumers of natural “raw materials” (such as forests); and like us, they relied upon unsustainable, soil-killing farming practices. While the earliest reconstructed collection of Jesus’s sayings does not mention Satan, it does suggest the idea that the pursuit of power and glory is at the heart of social evils. And in later additions to the sayings gospel, in which the devil (literally, “the accuser”) makes his first appearance, he clearly serves as the personification of institutionalised social dominance.

The new scholarship portrays the historical Jesus as an anti-authoritarian, a primitivist, and an anarchist. According to Crossan, the earliest Jesus people were the equivalent of “hippies among the Augustinian yuppies.” Jesus’s message was a challenge to social power in all its manifestations. Yet within only a few generations that message had been twisted and co-opted almost beyond recognition. Through a gradual process of subversion, Christian teachings were first mythologised and then appropriated by the ruling elite of the Empire. As a result, Christianity has become a kind of time capsule in which are preserved fragments of Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern myths and philosophies, the theologies of Paul, Constantine, and Augustine, and the imperialist social program of ancient Rome. It is surely fair to say that most of this is virtually the opposite of what Jesus originally had in mind.

Of course, through it all the words of the Galilean sage have continued to shine: “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” And, where individuals or groups have drawn inspiration from this earliest layer of teachings, a St. Francis or a St. Clair has come forward to propose the sort of “liberation” or “creation” theology that Jesus himself might have embraced. But as an institution, Christianity eventually became the handmaiden of the capitalist industrial state, supplying the theological justification for colonialism and a work ethic for the factory system. Today, “fundamentalists” claiming to represent the true teachings of the Galilean promote an anti-environmental, anti-feminist, anti-gay, pro-corporate, pro-technology agenda utterly opposed to the message of modern-day prophets of social justice and voluntary simplicity. Surely this constitutes one of the bitterest ironies in all of history.

Original Text By Richard Heinberg

Let’s Pretend! (another rant about the US)

Just to ease the pain of most Americans let’s pretend that George W. Bush is a peacemaker. Most other countries fear him more than Ahmadinejad. Why is that? Are all of these opinions wrong? Can we proceed with impeachment hearings…just for fun?

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There is Nothing I Dislike Worse Than…

There is nothing I dislike worse than:

• Knowing that Osama bin Laden has not been captured, due to apathy of the Bush Administration and Congress. There is no excuse for this lack of action. We can find Saddam Hussein in a little hole in Iraq, but yet Osama bin Laden cannot be found?

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The Homophobic Right In America

Homophobia is still considered an acceptable prejudice in many parts of this country. Our kids use terms like “fag” and “homo” to put down people they dislike or consider odd or weird. Winking jokes about being gay are still regular elements of mainstream television and movies. Homophobia is a “family values” prejudice.

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One Nation Under God???

The First Amendment reads as such:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

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