I'm beginning to think that theism is a type of delusion of grandeur and egomania

Believers think they are so important, so special, that there is some omnipotent omnipresent being that gives a sh*t about them and listens to their inane rants and pleas !

I talked to a guy yesterday who is convinced that god is favoring him and helping him be successful in business ... even though this same god is torturing his mother with repeated aneurysms to the point where the doctors predict she has only one or two more years left to live. There is no logic or reason when a person is convinced that he/she is a chosen one.

the military's motto should be

If it ain't broke, we fix it until it is

In the name of God, Amen

Saw an awesome bumper sticker the other day:

"Government, Big Business, The Military, and The Church. Perfect."

I wrote a letter to the local paper when I learned there was a woman running for state school superintendant who didn't believe in evolution and who was all for teaching creationism in school. In that letter I stated I thought it was fine for people to go to their church, sunday school, synagogue, mosque, or the beach, for that matter, if they want to learn about religion, but to keep it out of the public schools. (I have since changed my thoughts, since it seems organized religion is getting more and more hysterical and dangerous.) I said religion should not be taught in public schools for many reasons, not least of which would be the insistence that only Christianity would be taught. The backlash I got was unbelievable and downright scary. It shut me up on that subject. And there's your religion, your "christianity" for the new age, folks.

I fear that the military flirtation with the Christian religion will offend the one true omnipotent being and result in an unending shower of rancid meatballs upon the unbelievers.

The military is not making 'Mincemeat of Church-State Separation", they are grating it like a fine aged parmesan. If they are allowed to continue there will be nothing left except cuts, scrapes and a bit of old rind.

What sauce could cover this vile perfidy? Neither tomato, alfredo nor a nice pesto could hide the stinking mess they have concocted.

Repent now. Abandon this recipe for disaster while there is still time.

gde May 5th, 2008 7:43 pm~~People yearning for the Apocalypse possess nuclear weapons. If that scares you, you have good reason.~~

Indeed. So far, every single culture that has lived by an "end of the world" system of beliefs has been wrong. 100% of the time. And their wrongness extends well beyond that one basic misconception. The misconception itself has driven vast wrongness in every aspect of their lives.

I have to wonder how much "rapturism" has lubricated so many people's slide into unfathomable debt. No one has done a study on this, as far as I know.

But most scarily, as gde points out, is that there currently exists a nation saturated with a culture of end-timers who have the technological capacity to "bring it on". Giddy excitement is no way to react to the president's order to launch.

Ravenclaw, you've stated an assumption many people hold. As if there was no reward of heaven, why would people be decent. I just had this discussion on May first. There had been an ad in local paper saying, "Come join us to pray for America and its leadership in the seven centers of power, Government, Military, Media, Business, Education, Church and Family. I went to check this out at the flag pole outside city hall. Being a small community here I recognized that this was a Baptist gathering. In this circle the people were allowed to pray whatever they wanted out loud to the group. Of course the elder had his bible and started the prayer meet.

Well, I said a few things myself. One, was I prayed people would have tolerance for those of other religions as well as those who practice no religion at all. I've got to add that there were 25 people there, Wow. I had attended the 5th anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq in the the closest big city 50 miles away. At that gathering in the street there were 22 people.

It's beyond discouraging to me just how many Americans I know think that it serves him right, and that he should be eternally grateful to God (the Christian God, of course) that he wasn't fragged as he so richly deserved. It seems we've developed our own centrifugal force; every day as I read the news it seems to me that we're circling the toilet bowl faster and faster.

Many years ago, in a religious discussion, I commented that I wasn't sure if I believed in God. A women spoke up and exclaimed "Oh NO!, If you don't believe in God that means you could do anything you want no matter how evil. You wouldn't be afraid of going to hell."

Think about it!!

My tolerance for Christianity ends three feet from my nose. If a thumper comes any closer uninvited, hell is visited upon him.

It's richly ironic that an American soldier ostensibly in Iraq to curb sectarian violence requires a bodyguard and repatriation to protect against sectarian violence by US military officials. Although much of Islam is bigoted and violent, the same is true of fundamentalist Christianity, which has about as much in common with Jesus as Paris, Texas does with Paris, France.

(oops... should be Deity)

Once any religion turns people on people or uses the concept of God/Deith as an EXCUSE to kill others, it ceases to own any spiritual mandate that approaches legitimacy.

Religious extremists with nuclear weapons.

Not in IRAN.

In the very 'homeland' of Western Democracy, the good old US of A.

Bush, Cheney, and now McCain are followers of a publicly unashamed cult of Armagedonists, who WANT a global war to take place so their mythical 'savior' will return to lift them bodily into the heavens.

John Haggee is just the latest in a LOOOOOONG line of American Evangelists who propagate hatred and death cloaked in self aggrandizing religiosity, all in the name of a 'messiah' who's very existence is coming under increasingly doubt-filled scrutiny. All the while quoting from a collection of debased mythology of dubious provenance and deliberate mistranslation.

If I was FORCED to listen and choose between 'Pastor' Haggee and Reverend Wright, I wold choose the one who dared speak truth to power...

I served in the Coast Guard in the late 70's. As a person raise in rural Maryland I attended a protestant church with my family over the years. When I went in the CG, In Basic Training I attended the Base Services at the Chapel. Later I attended Radioman School in California. Again I started attending Protestant Services on base on Sunday and then headed out to enjoy the rest of Sunday. It seemed normal until members of the Congregation started inviting me to all these other services that I should be attending and telling me such stories that I would not be a good Christian if I only attended Sunday Services and not evening services, Fellowships, Christian Bible Studies. With that, it turned me off but I still tried to find comfort in Church Services. Over the years and finally when GWB Came to power I have stayed away from any kind of Church Services. A people wonder why?

Killers for Christ, not followers of Jesus.

The US Air Force is the worst of the bunch. People yearning for the Apocalypse possess nuclear weapons. If that scares you, you have good reason.

So, if this is Jesus' army of choice, I think the following simple step should be taken.

Soldiers who wish to be Christians in that army must learn, memorize, and be able to recite each and every thing that The Lord Jesus Christ is quoted as saying, in the Bible. It's not really an onerous amount of material. They should be quoted and repeated like a mantra or a pledge of allegiance each morning as the flag goes up. These words should resound in each soldier's head, drowning out the clutter of Rush and Left Behind and all that stuff that'd shock Jesus himself.

You ever read that actual Jesus stuff? Could you even give someone a decent hazing if those were the words you lived by? Could you possibly graduate to the hard stuff? Seriously?

YIKES! pardon my redundancy!

alaskamaid: Thank you for the reference to the Mark Twain "The War Prayer" essay. Interesting and sad that we still face the same crap from some of our religious leaders and their political followers (and vice versa). Here's where I found it:

http://www.ntua.gr/lurk/making/warprayer.html

Unfortunately, this type (and more personal types) of hyporcrisy have turned me away from denominational christianity. I try to follow the NEW Testament and the TRUE words of Jesus and his followers, especially the women, to the best of my ability. (And mix it a little with Goddess religions.) I'd really blow their minds if they had to deal with me!!! But then, I'd refuse to join the military in the first place.

Now are you convinced that America has a screw loose?

More people have been killed over the years in the name of Jesus or God than any disease that ever plagued ever mankind.

Sounds like a good way to get out of Iraq to me. Reject Christ and be saved!

Military officers, office managers, administrators in education, law enforcement, governmental bureaucracies, religious institutions, with one exception that I have seen, are ignorant, stupid, rigid about trivialities, careless about essentials, and no matter how limited their authority, consider themselves royalty. One John Bolton springs to mind.

These people have little in common with Jesus; much in common with the priests of Jesus day who had been appointed by and owed their ultimate allegiance to the Roman occupiers.

They owe their positions not to competence, but to years of habitual ass-kissing of superiors and denigrating if not actually lying about peers and subordinates.

Organized religion is a form of mental illness. Marx hit it right on the head when he called it the opiate of the masses -- a drug, a way of thinking that made it possible to live without thinking. This is not the same thing as saying that one cannot have a personal relationship with a Deity or Deities as one understands him/her/them. Authentic relationships with That-Which-Transcends are the polar opposite to what one is fed in an organized church.

Freud likewise regarded the beliefs of good, church-going bourgeoisie as a form of pure neurosis, a way of avoiding the difficult questions of life and even worse, a way of avoiding self-examination as a way of discovering who and what one really was.

As a student of Religious Studies, in Sociology of Religion, I have attended the services of just about every faith imaginable and some so weird you'd never guess they were even "churches". And the basic pattern was all the same. A set of beliefs all had to accept. By accepting the beliefs, you were saved and others were not. Saved was the whole point. Sunday church was a reinforcement to remind everyone that they had to keep believing the same things, and then they were saved. And the cherry on the cake: they were saved and every one else was going to hell.

The services differed, from the serene dignity of the Catholic Mass to the foaming-mouth-speaking-in -tongues of the Pentecostals, to the hollerin' 'n Bible-thumpin' of the Baptists (4 hideous hours) but the underlying structure was the same. Stick with us, we got the answer, we can save you, no one else can.

And the poor people in all these congregations were like unto sheep, who raised their heads to let the words fall upon them like water in a desert.

When you're observing as an outsider, rather than participating, you see many things you'd never catch if you were there as a believer yourself.

The congregants get what we students in the Sociology class used to call The Look. Totally tuned into the Message. But if you're not tuned in yourself you really can see the reality of Marx's definition: opiate. It helps if you've done opium yourself, or maybe just some vicodin or oxy somewhere along the way. That's exactly how they look. Stoned on endorphins.

And when you think how massively America goes to church on Sunday, tunes into the message, it's terrifying.

Mentally ill people everywhere, making decisions based on irrational belief in bizarre myths thousands of years old. Hell, believing they must be true myths BECAUSE they're thousands of years old, which makes no rational sense whatsoever.

It is easy to see why the military is using these ancient myths of death on its soldiers. The U.S. Empire isn't the first to use religion to keep its troops in order. Atheism is a threat. It isn't just that the atheist soldier was different and didn't fit in, he represents a real threat if he can sway others to his way of thinking. The last thing those in power want is for the clear-thinking that comes along with atheism to take root in a group of men whose entire life duty is based on lies and deceit. No wonder they reacted so harshly.

Atheism is clean, and sanity-protecting.
Agnosticism is wryly honest, and the best some of us can manage.

With thuh crawss of Jeeezzus goin' on beefore. Amen.

RuthK - thanks for the heartfelt post. Would that others who follow their faith could be as open-minded. I think it is easier for us who have made a clean break from (organized) religion to criticize and see the hypocracy in so much of what passes for peaceful religion today.

I have often said that organized religion is the root of all evil. Not all followers of organized religions are fools, however. My family are devout Catholics and thus don't believe in abortion. When I questioned my mother if they voted for Bush because of that she almost choked. They'd never think of voting for Bush, basically saying "it's his stupidity, stupid". They can put aside what they consider personal tenets of their faith when choosing their secular leaders. I think they feel their faith is in their own hands, and is not dependent on their elected leaders.

You don't need organized religion to maintain your personal faith. Best of luck to you.

This is nothing new. It's just that we have a more religiously diverse population than in the past,
so it's become more obvious. My mom used to sometimes sing that popular little WW!! ditty,

"Praise God, and pass the ammunition . . . "

'God' would of course be the psychotic Old Testament deity . . . Nothing new here, be sure to pray for
God to ensure your safety while He helps you decimate your (His) enemies.

As Mark Twain said when he was not allowed to publish his essay The War Prayer (you can find it online)
"Only dead men are allowed to tell the truth in this world."

The War Prayer (written while the US was invading the Philippines) was not published until after his death.

I believe in a God and in the continuation of the spirit and that, at some point, all of us will have to account for ourselves. The church that I attended as a child emphasized the individual's responsibility to seek a moral way of life. The only politics I ever heard were prayers that our leaders would be guided. We were never told how to vote. We were not taught that everyone who disagreed with us was wrong. Rather, we were to look for the beam in our one eye before complaining about the mote in our brother's eye.

Religion has changed dramatically. It has now become incorporated and infused with politics. It seems to have deserted God in favor of attaining political power. It seems to vicious attack anyone who does not agree with all of its ideas.

Here are some things that bother me.

Do you remember "Justice Sunday"? At that time, a US Senator made the statement "Democrats are against people of faith.". I was dismayed by this and even more so by the fact that the statement was applauded when it should have been criticized. At that time, I was still sort of attending church. When I mentioned it to someone there, I was told that most Democrats were atheists.

I studied math and physics. I still read science books and watch programs on science. Some fundamentalists want to pass science through of sieve of religious dogma. This does not enhance religion and is destructive of science. Climate change, I believe, is real. Yet, some fundamentalists have argued that God's promise after Noah's flood was that he would not send another flood should be taken into consideration when discussing global warming. Some fundamentalists have said that 9/11 and hurricane Katrina occurred because of feminists, homosexuals, and the like. I cannot accept any of these comments. It reminds me of the middle ages when the plague was blamed on God's wrath or the Jews.

Morality, according to some religious people, consists of being against abortion and homosexuality. It is as if these were the only topics. There are many other issues; poverty, child abuse, the destruction of our planet, hypocrisy, and so on. I cannot narrow my views to the extent that they demand.

At the insistence of an acquaintance, I read one of the books in the "left behind" series. When I said that I did not believe in the "rapture", I was accused of being a closet "atheist". It ended a friendship.

In the last several weeks, I have received E-mail messages from "Christian" groups. One discussed the movie "Expelled". At one point, it said that those who didn't agree were atheists. The word atheists was in boldface and underlined. Only today, I had another message which was touted as a comparison between creationism and evolution. It wasn't. I keep trying to "unsubscribe" to these groups and they keep coming back.

When I quite going to church, I still had respect for religion. I simply believed that it had changed to much to be the religion that I was taught. As time passes, I have become afraid of it. "Religious" people seem to be increasingly nasty. The only way I can preserve my own faith is to avoid them.

Think of how many more followers Jesus would have had if he had only intimidated and threatened them . . . !!!

What's wrong with these people --- ???????

OOPs " You may not agree..."

The best and sometimes the most effective responce to militant intolerance is humour : I have a bumper sticker ( and I would guess that many others do ) that reads , " You may agree with my bumper sticker but I hope you agree with my right to stick it."

XIG XAG said, "There are few ironies more delicious than being called a devil-worshipper for expressing a lack of belief in the devil." I know JUST what you mean. Living in the Bible belt, IF I mention that I am an astrologer, I hear the taunts of devil worship... a concept ALIEN to the premise of the ancient meta science of astrology. Unfortunately a populace of ignorance hardly makes for global bliss!

KENT SHAW: You beat me to the punch! Amen to, ""godly military" gets my nomination for oxymoron of the year." And as might befit my own version (on CD) of a Greek Chorus... more proof and homage to "MARS RULES!"

"There is something deeply amiss when we send soldiers on a mission to engender peaceful coexistence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, yet our military doesn't seem able to offer religious tolerance to its own."

Yet another new reason as to why the US invaded Eye-Raq. C'mon - give this Brit a break! 99% of Americans in 2003 thought Sunni and Shia were a popular singing duo of the 1960s.

Dubya was nearer the mark when he used the word "crusade" to describe his misbegotten adventure.

curmudgeon99, in my experience, Christian fundamentalists find atheism extremely threatening. Members of other religions (apart from Muslims, of course) are seen by fundies as simply misguided, but atheists are "enemies of God."

There are few ironies more delicious than being called a devil-worshipper for expressing a lack of belief in the devil.

OCF is not only anti-Constitutional, they are Anti-Christian. They only read the Old Testament. Quick, somebody get them a RED-LETTER Bible.

If neutral atheists are treated like this, what about practicing Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, and other brands of worshippers?

"On its Web site, the OCF makes no secret of its mission, which is to "raise up a godly military" by enlisting "ambassadors for Christ in uniform."

So now its "Kill a Muslim for Christ". What happened to "thou shalt not kill".

"godly military" gets my nomination for oxymoron of the year.

Ambassadors for Christ, the Muslim Killer?

My God can kick your God's ass.

Stupid, ignorant bastards.

-- kent shaw --

Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war.

~~On its Web site, the OCF makes no secret of its mission, which is to "raise up a godly military" by enlisting "ambassadors for Christ in uniform."~~

I can see them not being able to grasp the definition of a complicated word like "ambassador", but I'm not going to cut them any slack for having clearly either not read or simply dismissed the words of Christ. But, as we all know, too much reading can make you a Liberal.

Nice job on this piece. It's an extremely serious issue,far bigger and far worse than most realize, and story that needs more telling.