The Rant Institute

Conservatives are funny sometimes (and downright scary the rest of the time). Just look at what they've done with Colin Kaepernick. It's fine to hate how Kaep has chosen to protest about police brutality of African Americans, but it's quite another thing to continually, and deliberately, mischaracterize his protest as something it is not. And a lot of these Con(artists)s do this intentionally in a number of ways. First, they deliberately claim - over and over again - that Kaep is protesting that HE is being oppressed, even though they know full well that his protest is directed specifically at police brutality of African Americans.  This allows those Con(artists)s who seek to express their (pretend) patriotism - by complaining about how upset they are that anyone would ever dare to disrespect their  sacred national anthem or flag (even as they often have no respect for other people's nation or flag) - ...

Every person has some bias in their own eye that prevents them from seeing what it is other people see. Most of the time, this bias leads us to the conclusion that the other person is simply wrong in their assessment of our beliefs and wrong about their own. But are they the one who is wrong, or are we? If you are a Christian, for example, your bias will often lead you to not only see the "virtues" of Christianity as far out weighing its vices, but also that the vices of not being a Christian far outweigh the virtues. And if you are an atheist, you see it the other way around. Such a bias can also lead some Christians to believe that their beliefs can only ever produce virtue (because God is pure virtue) and anything that produces vice (even within or in furtherance of their beliefs) is always the result of something that is most definitely not their Christianity. Atheists, as a group of people, may certainly have those w...

For many Conservatives or religious believers (but not all, of course), there is often a common thread that weaves through most of their ideas, until it doesn't. "It doesn't" when their view of "objective reality," departs from the objectively real, of course, when they insist that miracles are acts of "god," rather than anomalies that illustrate how imperfect we are, and how "objective reality" is neither objective and (since god can arbitrarily change "reality" anytime he likes thru the use of such "miracles") may not even be real. The belief in an absolute "objective reality" that we can all agree on, as well as the belief that everyone can and does know exactly what constitutes that objective reality, is something both many Conservatives and Christians insist must be true. But even they don't believe this as much as they say, which is why they believe in God, angles & demons, and even miracles. ...

Arbeit Mach Frei is the inscription written above the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp were millions of Jews were reduced to ashes. It means, "work will make you free." Like the Benedictines and other Catholics/Christians, this idea is similar to the concept that "work is prayer," which was an idea used by people like Dr. Rev. Charles Colecock Jones to convince black slaves that they should be happy to submit to their masters. Colecock even wrote a book about it, called "How to Make A Negro Christian," written in 1837, about "the religious instruction of the negro."  But he was not the only one selling the idea that slavery was the road to salvation. Along with other Christian ministers, like Dr Samuel Cartwright and many others, convincing Christians that their toil was simply a tithing that could be depended on to help them reach heaven (even though Protestants insist that people cannot obtain salvation through their own "works...

One of the things I hate about religion is that it teaches people to judge each other, even as it claims that it tries to do the very opposite.  Religion teaches people to act like Cain, in other words, toward all those who wish only to be "like a child" as Christ put it, by being as happy, unencumbered, and appreciative of life as Able.  But if it were not for religion, most people would not have a rubric with which to judge each other in the first place. Or course, modern society, with it's ostentatious displays of wealth and botoxed photo shopped realty, and constant barrage of commercials designed to make us feel insecure so we will spend ever more to "fix" whatever such commercials program us to be insecure about, only teach us to unfairly judge ourselves all the time. Indeed, when we have created a society that leaves the vast majority of people unhappy and unfulfilled, it is no wonder America has the largest and most religiously addicted population...

For those who have yet to figure this out, religion is simply a rorschach test. It's an ink blot that we look at, and everyone has a different interpretation of what they see. The "lie" perpetrated by Churches comes not from convincing people to quite literally "buy into" their interpretation of the ink blot - with mega churches making mega millions by turning the orgasmic experience of spiritual euphoria into a financial Ponzi scheme for themselves - but by insisting that those who see the "ink blot" in any other way are simply 'wrong.' Their "lie," in other words, comes from insisting that there is necessarily a "right way" to interpret religion or the bible, and there is a "wrong way." But just like the ink blots of a Rorschach test, there is no objective, "true" interpretation of anything - especially religion - that is and must be accepted as 'fact' by all, in faith (how ironic that the ...

Jesus was spit on, beaten, attacked, and accused of all sorts of things before he was put to death, so the Christian bible claims. Yet despite all of this, he did nothing in retaliation. But his church was no so found of the idea that it should simply turn the other cheek. While Christ was willing to suffer every insult and injury inflicted upon him, his church would eventually decide that no such insults or injuries would be acceptable to God. The Church uses the idea of blasphemy not only to help keep its adherents in line, but also to prevent anyone from contradicting anything it says about god, moral law, and other things the Church claims it alone has authority to speak of. Yet there is nothing in the bible that shows Christ reproving anyone for offering a different perspective on his religion or his ideas about god. Indeed, Christ was offering his OWN interpretation of both, that eventually lead the Sanhedrin to behave in exactly the same way the Catholic Church would behave ...