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The first great form of violence is war, and the second is ecomincs . One is like putting a bullet through the brain and the other turns  life into a hopeless drug addict.
I believe in free thinking, even if it may be more likely to lead humanity to its own destruction than our ideologies and religions - a proposition that defies both belief and history - because everything else is a form of bondage based on a lie.
I was in a discussion over the weekend with some people about whether Artificial Intelligence would usher in the renaissance or ruin of human evolution. But AI - if it were truly an "intelligence" and not a robotic machine - would not only be simply the echo chamber of our collective ignorance and fear, paradoxes and contradictions, but one amplified beyond our ability to ever understand - especially when we are clearly so incapable of having any serious  understanding of our own, and general consensus has historically always demonstrated a strong preference for believing easy lies to a hard truths. And more importantly, it would also have to have free will. And how can you create that, when our own intelligence is so incapable of determining once and for all whether we have one or the other, or the degrees to which we operate with both.       
Only a human being who thinks of himself as a "god" would want their name and their story praised by all other human beings for the rest of history, whether that person is Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ, or Adolf Hitler. A god caring about whether people worship him or call him by the right name is like a person obsessing about whether ants in his backyard do the same thing, and threatening to open up the hose on them if they don't.
The theist is incapable of distinguishing the difference between their love for a deity and their fear of that same deity, or between whether their beliefs are motivated more by their hope for heaven or fear of hell, but they are quite confident that having both makes them wiser and more moral than the atheist who eschews the need for either one.

Secret to a Healthy Relationship

Be who you are, and accept people for who they are, and don't expect that someone will change. Or that, if they do, that it is more likely to be into something different from what you hoped for or even expected. And expect that if they do, and they think they did it for you, they'll eventually come to resent you for it. Even if you had nothing to do with it.

Four Thoughts in Conversation & a Smartass

It is incredible to see how much we seek approval the most from those we tend to respect the least, and with equally good reasons for knowingly doing both. To have faith in an idea you have of God, is to believe that "God" believes all of the same things that you do. Maybe that's why people who have "faith in God" tend to see all those who disagree with their "beliefs" as thinking like the devil. Religion teaches you it is both a virtue and a moral necessity to believe that "true freedom" comes only by loving and being overly concerned with what a deity thinks of you; a deity, mind you, who has locked all of life in a mental asylum where all the different races of inmates - what humans call "species of life" - are forced to survive by either eating or exploiting each other.   Reading a book is to enjoy the thought of danger without serious risk,  but writing a book means risking everything as if there were no danger at all.
God can be a fact without being necessarily true, in the very same way that just because a dream is a fact does not make it "true."
Hell is conforming to the dictates of someone else's dogmatic beliefs. Religion defines this as the only way to find freedom on the road to heaven.
What we sacrifice in the beginning we only regret in the end. And the distance between these two points is how long it takes for us to learn this.
I do not care if theists cling to their "beliefs" about "God," the same way Linus clings to his blanket or Calvin to his stuffed tiger Hobbes. But I do care when theists start using that blanket to hang people who refuse to believe that Hobbes is not simply a stuffed tiger that they cling to with childlike affection, but is as alive as we are, and must be obeyed by all - Or else...
Christianity claims to speak for God and that the Bible is his only word, even though books are written by power hungry, fallen, fallible, men, while insisting that whatever testimony God may give for himself through all of nature itself - from genes to galaxies - is inadmissible as hearsay.
 Theists “believe” they understand “God” better than atheists. But they can’t understand why atheists refuse to “believe” the same thing.
marriage is often a relationship where one person promises to love the one who will torment them the most, and another person promises to faithfully do so, so long as they both shall live.
The opposite of empathy is pyscopathy. And religion, by threatening eternal torture to all those  who empathize with other human beings (inspite of their differences) more than they love a pysopathic “god” - who not only murders humanity with plagues, famine, and a “great flood,” but also threatens each of us with eternal torments for daring to love human diversity more than an immaterial god who acts like a spoiled rotten adolescent when he doesn’t get enough attention and worship - only works to turn the water of the former into the wine of the latter.
A vow of celibacy is practiced in religion by people who's desire to be right is even stronger than their desire for sex, and martyrdom is an act of suicide by a person who's desire to be right is even stronger than their desire to stay alive.
A vow of celibacy is a verbal act of castration, where men pretend to be eunuchs, and women revert to the  naivete of their prepubescence, by living like they were ever virgins.
The desire for ever  more of everything is not evidence that God exists, but the spark of all human creativity love, passion, and intellectual pursuit. And those who pursue such things for their own sake, float like angels, while those who pursue those things for the sake of god or manna, walk like the devil himself.
You can’t talk a person into seeing the world for what it really is, especially when they have a religious devotion to seeing it how it isn’t.
The greatest demons in the world are those who demonize others.                                                 And they do so, always in self defense.
The people are the body of Christ, and the cross they have always been crucified on is power. That is our only original sin; one for which we would rather murder the whole world, than suffer the stripes of redeeming ourselves by coming down from it.

univers of ignorance

In the same way the universe is comprised of a disproportionately larger amount of antimatter to matter, so the human mind is comprised of a disproportionately larger amount of ignorance to intelligence; and that’s because intelligence knows that maintaining a self-awareness of its own ignorance is the most important strength, for it is the sine qua non of all learning, while ignorance is full of “passionate intensity” for its “convictions,” as Yeats put it, and sees any admission of ignorance as its greatest weakness, and simply proof of a lack of faith in God.
Anyone who brags all the time about how good they are, is clearly hiding something, in the same way that any religion that spends all of its time talking about "truth" is clearly lying.
Human consciousness is a form of collective insanity that dupes us into believing we are more like God than any other living thing. But if god is infinite, then saying humans are more like god than, say, aardvarks or amoebas, is like saying the number ten is more like infinity than the number two.

facegod

If we are all made in the image and likeness of God, then the face of humanity as a whole, with all its diversity, is the face of God itself, with each of us representing but a single pixel in that image. Yet some of us actually believe that they are a better image of that God than others, by how they look, behave, or think; and more often than not, by all three together. And in the very same way no single atom, nor group of atoms in the universe - no matter how similar they may be in size, shape, and color, or even sexual orientation - knows anything more about the universe than any other,  so no single individual, nor group of individuals in a society, knows anything more about "God" than any other. Many theistic religions want us to think otherwise, of course, and simply because they decided to give their "God" a particular name, and devoted themselves to believing He thinks exactly like they do.  
An argument based on the fact that most people believe the same thing as you, is called a fallacy. A religion based on the same thing, is called faith.
I actually told my Mom, who was studying to be a nun and is as Catholic as can be, that I “could not find the truth by clinging to a belief, and simply because that “belief” tells me it’s hopeless to believe in anything else. And as I understand your “Jesus” story, that’s exactly what he did.” She’s wasn’t pleased, but she got it.
ideas were mankind's first toys. we just forgot it was all a game. And that’s why we kill each other over who’s is better.
Sometimes I really hate myself. And sometimes I couldn't be more impressed. I know all of us have some mixture of these two forces within us, but we tend to feel the one or the other almost always more than we really deserve to. Sometimes I'm really impressed with this idea. And sometimes I really hate it.  
Religion hypnotizes us to worship a homogeneity of thought and fear the ambiguity of reality. It also teaches us to think of ourselves as hostages to a demon infested world, like prisoners of war who had betrayed their God, which is why we must have "faith" that we will one day be saved, and return "home" to heaven, to be with the very God who drafted us into this spiritual Vietnam War in the first place.  
To an infant, baptism is indistinguishable from water boarding. And circumcision is indistinguishable from castration. So much for do unto other as you would have them do unto you. (And don't try to tell me that any infant anywhere would ever volunteer for either one.)
The Moral Compass of Religion is this: I go to heaven for killing you for disobeying my God (i.e., disobeying me) while YOU go to hell for killing me for trying to kill you for disobeying me. In other words, nothing is ever a sin if you do it in the name of God, and everything is a sin if you do it for any other reason.
Understanding is the most fundamental requirement for all love, science, and art, while the most fundamental requirement for all religion, politics, and business, is misunderstanding. The former require truth while the latter depend almost entirely on lies. What's that tell you? 

Are Women Smarter Then Men?

I often wonder if, generally speaking, women are smarter than men, and for any number of reasons. But I don't actually think that "intelligence" can be measured, as if it were grains of sand that can be counted or quantified by weight. In the same way that not all calories are made or used the same way, with those from fat operating differently from those from protein or carbohydrates, so not all knowledge is the same either. In fact, most of what we tend to define as knowledge - like scientific racism, for example - is actually elaborately designed systems of profound ignorance. To believe we can actually measure intelligence, then, simply assumes both that all knowledge is equal, and that knowledge itself only accrues in one direction, like time. It also assumes that intelligence  only ever accrues in a way that we can accurately quantify and reduce to a mere number, using a system of measurement.  And we assume all of this, even though: 1) today we know that the
The Christian believes in the invisible for which there is no evidence just as much as they doubt something as visible as the nose on their face.
Religion turns people into robots. Their only directive thereafter is to seek God, even if that means acting like the Terminator seeking Sarah Conor.
When the Christian asks, "What if you're wrong, and there's a God, and you have to spend eternity in hell because you didn't believe?" An atheist replies, "What if you're wrong, and there's a God, and you have to spend eternity in hell because you did?"
God, who makes us just broken and ignorant enough to be dependent upon a highly flawed power-seeking church of men for our salvation, no matter how many inquisitions or pedophiles it employs, is angered enough to throw us into hell for all eternity for having the courage to go it alone.
The Conservative Christian accuses the Liberal of being dependent upon government while at the same time boasting about how humble they are for being wholly dependent upon an imaginary God, which basically means they are dependent mostly upon an institutional Church to explain everything for them. 
It takes far more energy to run from a fear than to face it. And by running we surrender our future to the clutches of the past, while by facing our fears we claim the future for our own. We are the only one who can save us.
A mustard seed of faith might move mountains, but no mountain of evidence can move a mind trapped in the mustard seed of religion.

Dead Letter: On The Founding Father's Original Intent

Ironically enough, it turns out that the Founding Father's did NOT want the U.S. Constitution interpreted with the kind of "Original Intent" that Conservatives want. According to the book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong is a 1995 book by James W. Loewen, a sociologist: "The most notes we have from the Philadelphia convention that eventually framed the Constitution, comes from Jame  Madison. But Madison did not want his notes published in his lifetime (he died in 1836) specifically because he did not want people to pivot off of what they thought the people in Philadelphia were doing."  In other words, the "original intent" of James Madison - the only 'founding father' who's mind we know anything about at all, thanks to his notes - wanted the Constitution to be understood and applied subjectively, as it applied to the ideas and issues of the day.  He wanted the Constitution to be interp

How an Atheist Knows Christ

I am an atheist who does not believe in god, mostly because such a word can not be defined. The word “god” is so amorphous and abstract that it can mean anything to anyone. And the more broadly we define such a term the more it could be be like something that maybe even atheists would accept, while the more narrowly such a term is defined the more finite, contradictory and thus purely man made it becomes. As such, when my mom told me she was sad that I did not know Christ, I explained it to my mom this way: Mom, the word “Christ” means “anointed,” which is a word the ancient Greeks used to describe people like Socrates or Aristotle. It’s what they would’ve called Buddha or Confucius, or Bertrand Russell, or maybe even Noam Chomsky, and lots of other people. It’s what they called people who possessed particular brilliance, in other words, and who often imitated “Jesus” by picking up their cross of speaking truth to the world, even though they knew they may well be crucified on

mind gender

Conservatives believe that gender is biological, and biology dictates certain fixed behavioral norms for each gender that are mutually exclusive and never change, across time or place, even though anything that can be defined as biological is always changing and evolving, according to time and place. Hence the Conservative believes that gender, however inseparably linked to our biological, must be mostly psychological. And the only proof that the Conservative has that the psychological is forever fixed with regard to gender, is the Conservative's religious devotion to never changing their mind about anything. 
Today, the only way a person can ever hope to become all that Jesus taught humanity to aspire to be, is by becoming an atheist and a humanist. Because to practice religion is to act like the Sanhedrin.
The question of God is a very simple one. Which do we prefer: the truth, even if it scares us to death, or a "belief" that protects us from having to face such a truth?  Which is easier for us to accept? That there is a God that will save us from meaninglessness and oblivion, or that the only one who can save us from "meaningless and oblivion" is ourselves, regardless of whether any "God" exists or not? Time is indifferent to what we believe. But we hope these is a god who can change all of that. And that if we "worship" Him enough, and in the right ways, and convince Him we really "love" Him, He will change all of that.

Vampires

The simple difference between life and non-life is the ability to change. Religion, with its addiction to tradition, constancy, and infallibility, worships the idea of never changing your mind about God or your religion. Religion, therefore, is the worship of non-life. Maybe that's why Christians worship a guy who is basically a zombie, by acting like vampires.

stop doing it

When you see how people are taught to hate themselves, and how to confuse that hate for love of one idea or another, it breaks your heart, because you know they’ll never stop doing it. And then you get angry at them, because they won’t stop doing it.

Why Our Flag Is Still There

It's been years already Since that September so many years already As we look back and remember A warm sunny day that began like a kiss And ended in tears for all those we miss Years since Guiliani became The countries mayor And so many Police and Firemen Became hero's beyond compare since Great Britain played our national anthem in Buckingham square to remind us we are not alone in the grief that we bear since a nation turned to God in prayer and we told all those we love just how much we care since we lit candles in the depths of despair and congress sang "God Bless America" on the capital stairs since we marveled at courage so inspiring and rare and "bucket-brigades" worked night after night beneath the halogen glare since we discovered we all have something to share And red, white and blue seemed to blossom from everywhere since we all forgot about "who wants to marry a millionaire?" and we longed for t

gallery of echoes

 hard come the hawks of winter's blow when springs ambitions do concede to autumn snow and into that clanging hall of memories do all our yesterdays go for with the crown of thorns of all we know walks one writhing tongue in a gallery of echoes

How Ignorance Equals God

Religion is the "belief" that our own ignorance of the universe -  how it works in every detail, why it exists at all, and where it came from -  is proof that we should therefore "believe" in the existence of a God that is not only solely responsible for creating it all, but who only hides from us any direct evidence of this fact, for our own good. And in the same way this "God" ensures that all of our best scientific endeavors will never detect a single shred of evidence of its existence, in order to ensure that its "command" that we must love it more than anything else, including our own lives and even that of our own children (Abraham and Isaac), never intervenes in any of our squabbles for our "own good" as well. And this is because protecting the inviolable sanctity of our own "free will" is apparently far more important to that God than maintaining world peace, no matter how many millions must perish to protect the f
You cannot learn how to love if you have never been loved, and you cannot feel love if you have not first learned how to love yourself.
If you cannot look at the world and have meaningfulness, hope, love, joy and peace, without the need to first believe in a god, then you are not free to believe in a god. And this is especially true when hell is said to await anyone who dares to try ad find those things without a need to believe in that god.
Institutions, and especially ideologies, tend to demonize minorities, because those from without always have a better view of the serpent than those from within. It’s also why the quest for knowledge was defined as the sin that cursed us all to live in ignorance.

Freight Train

I always imagined that Judas hung himself because he could not bear to live with what he had done, because he had no idea of what he was actually doing.  And once he saw what he had done, he hung himself for being such a fool. He found humility, in other words, but it ran over him like a freight train. And Christians see themselves as the proud benefactors of his mistake, and all the suffering he now endures for our sake.

gods of the mezzanine

Evening comes ... And the gray ghost bleeds across a jagged sky As destiny plucks our strings Tis a play seen only by the bumble bee for the gods of the mezzanine We drink tears from the scorpion's eye And swim in that which is unseen the abyss that swallows up the fire fly are the gods of the mezzanine Come night ye gothic stalking steed the sun is but an apple to your serpentine when they kill us for their sport and feed these gods of the mezzanine
What’s the difference between truth and a belief? Truth is always unfolding before us, and can only be understood with the gift of being able to change your mind about anything upon learning new information or simply looking at something in a different way. A belief is a curse that dupes us into only ever looking at things the same way, and worshiping such a perspective as our "true" god.
It is a universal truth that everyone fails to live up to their own standards, which are always the very same standards they use to stand in judgement of everyone else.   We never truly see our own sins, but we damn sure think we can see everybody else’s.
The difference between love and religion is the difference between a tree and a cross. And as one bears fruit, the other crucifies.

Self Aware = EI

The difference between being emotional and emotional intelligence is the same difference between being self conscious and being self aware.  Or to put it more simply, self awareness is emotional intelligence, and to be self conscious is to be emotional. It's just amazing how many self conscious men  there are out there who are convinced that women are more emotional than men.
Religion often teaches people to be proud of the things they should be most ashamed of, and ashamed of the things they should be the most proud of.
As society becomes more complex relationships become more complicated, and it becomes more difficult to find someone who thinks or understands the world the same way you do.
How is it that Catholics can call for the end of the papacy of pope Francis over the sexual abuse scandal within the church but say nothing about making JP II a saint, even though JP II was even more guilty of facilitating that sexual abuse than Francis??

Why Would God Make Atheists?

Christians often feel compelled to "believe" in the God of Christianity, and feel even more compelled to deny that God is far more evil than the devil of Christianity, even though the devil can only torture us here on earth, while God can torture us in the afterlife for all eternity. And what's ironic is that God will torture us in the afterlife for all eternity, for not having allowed ourselves to be tortured by the bible here on earth, or even for just failing to "believe" both in God, and that that God is the "one and only, true God" (whatever that means exactly). But all of this only leads us to wonder why God would bother making atheists in the first place. Why bother making people that you know will not believe in you, that must figure out in the span of their lifetime - however short that may be - that God not only exists and is real, but "loves them," or they will be cast forever into an eternal furnace that makes the ovens at A
Christianity teaches us to believe that our woefully flawed intelligence is still perfectly capable of understanding a perfect intelligence that is infinitely greater than our own. And the problem with atheists is that they have failed to understand that this is perfectly possible, and thus perfectly true, for no other reason than that Christians believe that it must be, as an act of faith. And the only reason Christians believe this is ultimately so they can avoid roasting alive in an eternal hell.