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Philosophy
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Philosophical Thoughts about Mind and Body
The dependence of a person's mind upon his or her body is an old philosophical question (referred to as “Dualism by philosophers” and jumped on by non-believers in an effort to shoot down the belief that one has a consciousness (eternal soul) that exists separate from the body. They point to the ill effects that disease, poor health, hunger, fatigue, and severe injury have on consciousness. We have seen cases where it seems there is no longer any connection between body and consciousness; therefore proving, to some, that body and soul are intimately related and that consciousness is dependent on the body.
What if the soul is merely the operator of the conscience body? Think of a vehicle that has dark windows so you cannot see the driver; you see this vehicle everyday as it comes by your house. One day you discover the vehicle has stopped in the middle of the street in front of your house and you go out to investigate. What you have never known is that this vehicle is remotely operated by the engineer who lives at the end of the street. You try to open the driver's door but it is locked and you cannot see inside to see if the driver is ok or not; so, you call the police and report that you think the driver must be dead.
We know the driver is not dead; he has just lost radio control of his remotely controlled vehicle. The engineer's loss of control could be the result any number of electrical or mechanical problems, the receiver in the vehicle could be out of order or the receiver could be working but the commands are not being executed due to a mechanical or software fault.
In this case, the person investigating the stopped vehicle has made an erroneous assumption based on incomplete information, the vehicle has stopped but the driver is not dead!
Thoughts about the Absurdity of Immortality
Has anyone ever seriously examined the absurdity of eternal existence, just the thought of it terrifies me. I think the basic problem is that we have such an extremely short finite existence; an existence that can be measured in hours (A 50 year old has lived 438,000 hours), an existence where every event we experience can be easily measured, recorded, and proportionality evaluated. Because we are so painfully aware of our brief existence, we fantasize about immortality; however, while only a few people have tried to grasp the concept of eternity, I think no one has ever given a thought to the hazards of eternal existence.
The dictionary defines eternity as:
1. the quality or state of being eternal
2. infinite time - lasting throughout eternity
3. an endless or immeasurable time
Infinite Time
The dictionary defines infinity as:
1 : extending indefinitely - endless
2 : immeasurably or inconceivably great
3 : subject to no limitations or boundaries
4 : extending beyond, or being greater than any pre-assigned value however large
As an example of the lack of thought and lack of understanding of eternity, consider the Muslim suicide bombers. They believe that Allah is waiting to award them with 72 virgins upon the completion of their holy mission of murdering innocent people. I am certain that none of the bombers ever stopped to think; oh, sorry, that is an oxymoron. Let me start again; I wonder if it has ever occurred to any of them just how long, in relationship to eternity, 72 virgins would last. If they only deflowered one every 1000 years, the virgins would only last for 71,000 years, assuming they deflowered the first one immediately upon arrival. Now, 71,000 years is a long time, right? Well, it is a long time if your existence can be measured in hours.
This is where the thought process of eternity fails people. If we could place three marks on the time line of eternity; one mark designating a starting point, a second mark at 72 days, and a third mark at 72,000 years, then, if we had a place where we could examine the time line of eternity, we would find that we would not be able to detect any measurable difference between the 72-day period of time and the 72,000-year period of time. Then we might try, in our never-ending drive to quantify things, to measure the difference between the 72-day time period and a time period of 72,000,000 years. To our surprise, we would find that the difference in the two time periods would still be too small to be measured with an eternity ruler. It would be like trying to measure the distance between two atoms using a standard 12 inch ruler.
A scientific summary of the experiment would state: “Using the measuring stick of eternity, the time difference between the 72 days and 72,000,000 years is too small to be observed and measured.”
Another thought that really terrifies me: what can one do to keep busy or to entertain oneself for eternity? Let us suppose that, along with being granted eternal existence, you are also given the ability to travel to the ends of the universe and see everything and learn everything that can be seen and learned; then what? Eternal existence would degrade quickly into eternal boredom. Just think about it. Before eternity even had a chance to get a good start, everyone given eternal existence would have already been everywhere, seen everything, and learned everything. Everyone would have identical knowledge and experience and nothing would be new and exciting. Conversation would be exceedingly boring because no one could say anything that you did not already know. In the end, the knowledge of all those granted eternal existence would become identically the same.
And the Muslim suicide bombers (who were suckered into killing themselves for 72 virgins), even if they were given free rain to ravage every female they could find, they would run out of new conquests very quickly when faced with eternity.
Mark Twain evidently thought seriously about immortality, he stated that when he was young he wanted to be immortal; however, he said, as he got older he lost all interest in it.
I think Star Trek had it right with the character known as Q, he was an eternal being who was bored and tried to entertain himself at the expense of the Enterprise crew; and, as imaginative as he was at causing trouble for them, he even became bored with that task.
Will Everyone go to Heaven.
I believe that every person on earth is a product of his or her past psychological environment. I believe that each of us is borne with a complete set of all possible emotions programmed in our psyche. I also believe that the emotions that surface and the way we react to them is dictated by our past psychological environment.
I remember a sermon I once heard where the pastor claimed that a lion could not sin even if he ate a human because he was reacting in the manor nature (God) had programmed him. The pastor’s point was that the lion has no choice it must do as it is programmed to do.
With this thought in mind, can a person with a mental aberration (caused by something that was out of his control) commit a sin?
Dear God, and I do believe in God!
Please Save Us from Religion.
It always irritates me when I hear someone say they know exactly what God expects form us. Every "man of god" on TV claims to have a personal insight into the true meaning of the bible. Then you have the truly gifted men who cannot only tell you what God expects from us and the exact meaning of the bible but can also reveal hidden messages behind each and every verse in the scriptures; messages that those who are untouched by God cannot see.
The Birth of The Concept of God
Somewhere back in time when people were just developing into conscious beings a group of people were huddled in a cave terrified by a raging storm; during the storm an old man or woman, who was not as terrified as the others because he or she had seen many storms just like this one, tried to calm the group by making up a story. The story was an explanation about what was causing all the water to fall from the sky, the loud noises, the flashing light that momentarily turned the night into day and the frightening fingers of light from the sky that poked the ground and started fires. The storyteller told the group of a great being who lived in the sky and ruled over all the earth. The storyteller continued to explain that the great being was angry about something that had taken place that day and was in a rage.
Since men were known to become angry over the smallest events and then destroy everything in a fit of rage, it was not long until the group decided that the great being had to be a man.
Soon, mothers found out that they could get their children to do what they wanted them to do by saying "the great being will be angry if you don't do what I say." Then, after the storyteller died and the story became accepted as true, a man or woman found out they could control the entire group by telling them "the great being will be angry if you don't do what I say."
Not long after this beginning every event (desirable or undesirable) was attributed to the great being's state of satisfaction.
Today, after one hundred thousand years of trying to appease the great being, man has developed an amazing array of ideas and methods of controlling people by telling them "the great being will be angry if you don't do what I say."
I am constantly amazed that this one story, told somewhere in a cave in Africa more than one hundred thousand years ago could have developed into the more than three thousand different religions that exist today.
Religions Need to be Updated
I think religions need updating periodically just like a mother's survival instructions for her children. In Little House on the Prairie the mother's instructions to her children were simple and easy to follow "don't go too far from the house" and "keep away from any approaching strangers".
Fifty years later a mother living in the same place might tell her children "don't go too far from the village" and "keep away from strangers".
After another fifty years in Life with Father the mother's instructions might have been "don't go too far away" and "stay away from boys who use bad language" and "keep away from strangers".
Then, after another fifty years in The Cleavers the mother's instructions might be "don't go into that section of town" and "stay away from boys who smoke and use bad language" and "keep away from strangers".
Each mother understands the dangers her children will be exposed to and tailors her instructions to help them survive. Each set of instructions is only valid for the time period in which they were given.
There are a few instructions that mothers give that remain valid over the centuries (i.e., always ware clean under cloths, always wash your hands before you eat, always treat others the way you want to be treated and stay away from strangers.
The Ten Commandments that Moses gave us three thousand years ago are still valid; however, most of the laws that men made three thousand years ago to insure the survival of the tribe are no longer valid. If you follow today's instructions on refrigeration and good hygiene, you can eat pork, milk, cheese, eggs, beef and any other combination of food from the same plate without fear of getting sick and, at God's cosmic level of supervision, I don't think He really cares.
Everything we do and are exposed to has changed with technology and technology has changed the everyday dangers that we have to deal with. Our mother's instructions reflect today's dangers and, I think, our religion should also.
I think there are two things to be concerned with here, religion and tradition (or custom). I am all for tradition, as an ex-military man I am fully aware of the value of tradition in giving people a sense of continuity, history, and belonging. However, in a society, if someone decides not to follow a particular custom whether it is religious or social he or she should not be told that God will punish them. A custom is not a law from God. There were no mandatory customs set down in the Ten Commandments, the New Testament or, for as much of it as I have studied, the Quran.
Our clothing has changed with social requirements and technology. Five hundred years ago the majority of people had two types of clothing; they had warm-and-drab clothing for winter and they had cool-and-drab clothing for summer. As our technology advanced our clothing changed to make us more comfortable and attractive while at work or play. Oh, attractive, I can here the protest! If God had wanted everything to be black, white, and gray why did he invent color; and why did he create plant life and wild life of every color in the rainbow. Oh, yes, what about the rainbow?
Our technology has created new dangers and every mother on earth has updated her warnings to her children to reflect the new dangers. Should we not expect religion to do the same? We should not be expected to follow blindly those religious customs or even laws that were meant to keep us out of trouble in a society that existed a thousand years ago. While most of the laws and some of the customs are still valid, some are not and we should not allow ourselves to be dragged down by them.
Religious leaders constantly fight with technology and every religion has their own line drawn on the technology time line chart where, they say, God has told them to stop and go no further. Where should we have stopped? Should we have stopped when we learned to make a weapon by tying a stone to a stick to protect ourselves from wild animals? Should we have stopped when we discovered how to make fire? Should we have stopped when we learned to make bows and arrows? Should we have stopped when we learned to make guns? Should we have stopped when we learned to use a horse for transportation? Should we have stopped when the automobile was invented? Should we have stopped when we learned to make aspirin? Maybe we should have stopped when we discovered penicillin or the heart transplant? Where does God want us to stop?
The Amish in Ohio and Pennsylvania have stopped the technology time line at a house without electricity, a horse and buggy, and black-and-white cloths. However, the males and females are limited by the same rules.
Some Arabs have stopped the technology time line at wearing particular clothing; however, this interruption of the time line only applies to women, men can travel as far down the clothing time line as they wish.
An Amazing Similarity Between Religion and Guns
A highly educated, liberal, idiot has written a book about God and the Folly of Faith in which he claims that religion is the source of all man's problems. He claims that religion has not only held back scientific advancement but is also responsible for retarding the general intellectual development of people throughout our history by filling their minds with the Folly of Faith.
If you could interview this author I would bet that he is also convinced that guns have caused all of the wars that have plagued the earth for the past four hundred years. He could even write a book about it called Guns and the Folly of Freedom and explain how guns have held back the advancement of science and retarded the development of society.
The first point that Mr. Stenger's superior intellect has missed is the fact that religion, like the gun, is a tool; religion is a psychological tool and guns are physical tools and any tool can be misused by the man holding it. The second point that Mr. Stenger has missed is that religion, like the gun, delivers power to the man holding it. So, Mr. Stenger, is the fault in the tool or in the man holding the tool? This is where intellectuals, liberals, and atheist fall over the cliff into a pointless rage against inanimate objects; they just cannot see or understand that the problem is the attitude of the man holding the object and not the object itself.
Most religions, used properly, provide mankind with a philosophy that respects life and promotes acceptance, tolerance, love, and understanding of other people and their chosen way of life - Jews, Christians, Buddhist, and most Oriental religions fall into this category; Islam is the only religion that espouses hate, murder, and intolerance. However, the men who were in charge of the Christian religion centuries ago painted Christianity into a corner in several major areas of thought, and now they refuse to accept the fact that certain early concepts were in error due to a lack of knowledge at the time or to a power struggle to maintain control of the people.
It would have been impossible to explain airplanes, cars, radio, or TV to the people who lived a thousand years ago; likewise it would have been impossible to explain evolution to them, or the fact that the earth was a ball circling around the sun while floating in an infinite expanse of space along with billions of other suns and planets. The early leaders found it necessary to invent mystical concepts to explain these, at the time, unexplainable concepts and do it in child-like terms. The people believed the stories and it made them comfortable to think that they knew how the world worked and that God was taking care of them. Now that we know evolution is a fact, the church is in a thither as it tries to get itself out of the corner it has been painted into. Get over it, evolution was part of God's plan - He had a lot of time on His hands to sit back and wait to see what was going to happen with His new creation.
Society has a lot of problems and they are all caused by man misusing the philosophies, ideas, and tools that were originally presented, developed, or invented to stabilize society and protect its citizens. The basic underlying problem that has plagued the earth from the beginning of time is man's innate inability to handle extreme power; religion and guns, used the right way or used the wrong way, deliver a great power.
No man is capable of holding a great power for a long time without abusing it. That is why we have three branches of government where each branch is charged with watching the other two branches to ensure that they do not abuse their power.
Why Many Muslims are Masochistic and Sadistic
Over the past 25 years I have know and worked with Muslims, and for ten months I lived among Muslims in Iran. During my exposure to Muslims I have witnessed an inordinate number of sadistic and masochistic acts performed by Muslims of all ages. I have thought for a long time that the Islamic religion, if studied and followed rigorously, caused brain damage; however, after years of examining the phenomena I think I have finally put all the pieces of the puzzle together to explain why many Muslims are the way they are.
In my search for an answer I closely observed Muslims and tried to understand why they were doing what they were doing and to gain some insight into what could possibly motivate them to do what they were doing.
1. It was obvious to me that Muslims enjoyed witnessing and/or causing severe sadistic pain to others.
2. It was obvious to me that many Muslims enjoyed inflicting severe masochistic pain to themselves.
3. It was also obvious to me that Muslims (young and old) enjoyed witnessing and/or causing severe pain to animals.
4. It became obvious to me, after talking to a few young Iranian soldiers who had been arrested, that the city jail in Isfahan was a hotbed of sodomy and sadistic activities.
5. It became obvious to me that an incredible number of young Iranians, if not full blown homosexuals, had experienced homosexual encounters with other young men.
6. I think I know the origin of their sadistic traits: Muslim boys grow up without experiencing the close loving, nurturing and intimate connection to their mothers that European societies provide. Many of the Muslim men I knew demonstrated (and expressed) a serious lack of love for their mothers and sisters; I suspect this life long exposure to almost-total sensory depravation warps their outlook on life.
I had two good Sunni Muslim friends in Iran who were educated in the United States; one was a banker and the other owned a string of appliance stores. The banker warned me of the dangers I faced as a Christian living in an Islamic country, he frequently warned me about the days that I should restrict my travel or just stay at home. The appliance owner was a worldly man with three wives, all of whom lived in separate homes away from his. He enjoyed life and enjoyed his families on scheduled days during the week. Both of these men had gone to college in the States, the banker married an Iranian girl who was also attending college in the US. Both men had lived in the US for a while after graduating from college; they were essentially Iranian-Americans living in Iran. I detected no sadistic tendencies in either of these men. The banker, when I left Iran, adopted my dog for his two children.
I set out to determine why these two men escaped whatever experience or trauma caused the "normal" Muslims to be sadistic.
Intimate Family Contact
I talked to the banker and the appliance man about their families and found out that they came from well educated families that were not excessively religious in their day to day existence. I found out that both men came from loving parents who encouraged their children to do well. Their mothers and sisters were educated and covered their hair but did not cover themselves with a black sheet. They also shared the common room of their homes with the males of the family; they ate meals with the men and were not constantly banned to the restricted-to-females-only area of the house like other Muslim women.
This early investigation provided me with the starting point for developing my hypothesis to explain the source of the Muslim masochistic and sadistic traits.
Family Sensory Deprivation
I casually interrogated other Muslim males who I worked with or who worked for me taking care of the aircraft that I conducted test flights on. I discovered that most Muslim males have little to no close intimate family contact with their sisters or their mothers from birth to death. From what I was able to find out most Muslim males are raised in a loveless, emotionally sterile, all male existence that is devoid of motherly love and affection. The young men I talked to never (not even once) expressed any love for their sisters or mothers the way an American or European young man would. Their only concern about their sisters seemed to be that they could, if not watched closely, dishonor the family name.
I found out that most of the men I talked to who claimed they had an advanced education had actually only studied the Qur'an during their college work. Many were trained in the most radical areas of the Qur'an by radical imams that espoused hate and intolerance for other religions and it did not take long to identify and pick these men from a crowd. I suspect that it is easy to fill a young boy's mind with a highly emotional, exciting, and directed hate when his life experience has been a dull, emotional void.
Sex and Pleasure Deprivation Conflict
Young Muslim males who are already damaged psychologically by sensory deprivation within the family are further traumatized when their hormones start pumping through their blood stream and they become interested in females. Muslim males are forbidden to see, touch, talk to, or be alone with a female who is not a relative; violation of any of these activities may be punished by anything from a public beating to death. I believe the sensory deprivation caused by this isolation is the basic building block for Muslim masochistic and sadistic tendencies. I believe a constant battle is raging within young Muslim males when puberty strikes; they want to be with a female but know that it is a sin. Then their conscience starts working on them when they think, and are told, if they were good Muslims they would not even want to be with a woman because it is a violation of the Qu'ran. This same conflict occurs when young Muslims are exposed to the Western pleasures of food, drink, music, dancing, the theater, and women who will casually stop and talk to you on the street. I have witnessed young Muslim men in Iran who experienced a great deal of guilt from enjoying the pleasures of Western culture through association with Americans working in Iran.
I believe this sex-pleasure deprivation conflict eventually results in male Muslims resenting all women, some to the point of hatred. This hatred is readily witnessed in the festive attitude exhibited by men watching the horse whipping of women being punishment; with each whimpering cry from the woman being beaten the men laugh out loud and mimic her pitiful cries, you would think they were watching a comical act on TV. This festive attitude is not exhibited by men who are watching a man being punished, male punishment is treated as a solemn event and women are forbidden to watch.
I think this same "I hate you because you subverted me" concept is directed at the United States and Americans by Muslim men who have experienced a great deal of guilt from enjoying the pleasures of our Western culture.
Muslim men, like ancient Christian men, can not help but have sinful thoughts about women once puberty strikes, and like ancient Christians they think they must beat themselves in some masochistic ritual to cleans themselves of all sinful thoughts. Luckily for Christians, we learned and accepted the fact that once puberty strikes it is impossible not to think about the ladies.
Incestuous Marriages
I recently read an article by Nicolai Sennels, a Danish psychologist, that provided me with what I consider the final piece of my Muslim puzzle. I have always thought that the rigorous study and memorization of the Qu'ran was the basic cause of so many Muslims being intellectually incapable of self-determination and always in need of someone to give them direction. It never occurred to me that the wide spread habit of incestuous marriages among Muslims was a big part of the problem; however. Mr Sennels article states that Muslim children have an extremely high rate of genetic illnesses due to Islam's 1400-year promotion of consanguineous marriages, a practice prohibited in the Judeo-Christian tradition since the days of Moses but sanctioned by Muhammad and has been going on now for 50 generations.
Mr Sennels article states that this massive inbreeding in the Muslim culture may well have done irreversible damage to the Muslim gene pool, including extensive damage to intelligence, sanity, and health.
Mr. Sennels says that a Muslim's ability to enjoy and produce knowledge and abstract thinking is simply lower in the Islamic world and he points out that all of the 58 Islamic countries together translates only 330 books a year, about 20% of what Greece alone translates. In the past 1,200 years Muslims have translated into Arabic about the same number of books that Spain translates in a single year.
Mr Sennels points out the difficulties this creates for Muslims seeking to succeed in the West. Hampered by a lower IQ, together with a religion that denounces critical thinking, surely makes it harder for Muslims to gain success in the high-tech knowledge centric societies.
In the past 100 years only four Muslims have ever won a Nobel Prize in science, Israel has won more than one hundred Nobel Prizes in science during that same time period.
This lack of standing in the intellectual world causes Muslims a great deal of stress, evidenced by their insistence that they do not want science because the study of the Qu'ran provides everything they need socially; however, privately the imams realize that intellectual advancement and science would, sooner or later, cause the debunking and destruction of Islam.
Islam is Not a Peaceful Religion
The Muslims have never gotten over losing their shot at world domination during the crusades. They frequently refer to the Crusades as if it were an American idea - and we did not even exist during the crusades.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that we look illogical to Arabs. After all, they don't believe in freedom, democracy, free speech, and human rights, so when we make foreign policy decisions based on our beliefs, they can't understand our reasoning. To an Arab, power is to be used in furthering a country's ambitions (i.e., for Arabs that is spreading Islam). When we make decisions that do not further any obvious or perceivable goals, the Arabs think we are up to something they don't understand - and we are, we are trying to promote freedom, democracy, free speech, and human rights.
Intellectuals who believe that power and force are no longer necessary because all of our problems can be settled by democratic debate do not understand the basic concept of Arab foreign policy (i.e., while you are weak, compromise; after you become strong, conquer).
If any Arab nation had the military power or the United States, non-Islamic countries around the world would start falling like snowflakes into the Islamic basket.
Islam is not a peaceful religion. If fact, Islam is not a religion at all when compared with other religions around the world; other religions focus on developing a personal belief and relationship with God. Islam, on the other hand, has no room for a personal belief; Muslims must blindly follow the Quran and the hadith without question; and the Quran is first and foremost a plan for Islamic world domination.
All the peaceful passages in the Quran that intellectuals love to quote were written when Mohammad was in Mecca and under attack by other religious leaders in the area who saw him as a threat; so in an effort to keep them off his back he wrote the peaceful coexistence passages; later in Medina after he became a strong warlord with an army he superseded the peaceful passages with "a new message from God" - attack and kill the infidels where ever you find them (see paragraph 3 above). Mohammad is credited with chopping off the heads of between 600 and 900 captured Jews.
If Americans would pull their heads out of the TV, listen to something other than the liberal media, and read something other than the sports page they would discover the truth about the goal of Islam.
Dysfunctional Arab Civilization
The Arab Nation, now the Islamic Nation, is dysfunctional. Why, because of Islam.
The Arab Nation was once the premiere civilization on the planet. They created our math, they had poetry, they had philosophy, now they are dysfunctional. You cannot be a premiere civilization and have your head buried in the sand for five hours out of every day and only read and study the Qu'ran. I had friends in the Middle East that claimed to have a higher education; however, upon talking to them I found out that their only major was the Qu'ran. The Qu'ran does not tech you how to do anything useful in industry or society.
Also, you cannot be a premiere civilization and blame all your troubles on Israel and the United States when your religion is creating your troubles. Israel was not the reason Sadam murdered 100,000 Kurds; Israel was not the reason Al Qaeda murdered 10,000 Afghanis; Israel was not the reason for the Iran-Iraq war.
Arabs refuse to admit that it is their interpretation of the Qu'ran that is the root source of their dysfunctional society, and they find it so easy to blame Israel for every malady because they have been sold that lie from birth. Muslims have not built a viable society because all they think about and concentrate on is possible ways to destroy Israel.
Israel has built a thriving and prosperous society in the past 64 years; the areas where the Israelis live are green and productive, the areas where the Arabs live are mostly barren. Making bombs and rockets does not make the grass, the trees, or the crops grow.
A Religious Tainted Conscience
I read in college several years ago that there were more people in insane asylums due to religion than any other cause. What drove these people insane seemed to have been the presents of two powerful and conflicting thoughts within their minds; two apposing thoughts that were so powerful and inescapable that they were incapable of either reconciling the differences or choosing one and discarding the other. The mental stress that resulted from fighting this mental battle, after a period of time, caused their minds to retreat to a safe place where they would not have to make a choice.
I have witnessed cases where fanatic religious training, that clashes with reality, has caused a person's conscience to run amuck. The best and most current example of this is Muslim men who have been raised in a strict eighteenth century Muslim culture and then exposed to a modern Western society. When I was in Iran I met Muslim men who liked to drink, dance, chase women, and go to American movies; some of these men were tormented by the fact that they really enjoyed these things. While, on one hand, they believed that they were good Muslims, they were convinced that if they were good Muslims they would not actually enjoy doing what they were doing; therefore, they were tormented by the thought that (because they enjoyed these activities) they obviously could not be good Muslims. I knew a young man who ran amuck to the point that he joined civil terrorist groups who burned down theaters) that were showing American films (and they did it with the people trapped inside.
To live and function successfully in a society one needs a conscience; however, to survive, you need to exercise control over your conscience. A conscience that is driven out of control by any form of fanatical training will only lead to a ruined life. I am sorry for the Muslims because there is no help available for them, their religious leaders refuse to make the necessary concessions to keep pace with discoveries and technology. One need not dress to live in the desert unless one actually lives in the desert. An Eskimo would not move to Ohio and insist on dressing like he did when he was hunting polar bears on the ice pack. The Christians do not walk around in the clothing that Jesus wore; the Jews do not walk around and emulate Moses. Muslim society is stuck in the mud of the past. No new discovery or invention has come out of the Middle East in decades and none are likely to be forthcoming if they continue to insist on spending all their time teaching their children to hate and to memorize the Qur'an.
For Jews and Christians there is hope because they teach their children that any mistake that does not kill them is only a mistake to be learned from and that God will forgive them. Jews and Christians believe that God is a loving and a forgiving god and that He will forgive them again and again. Muslims; however, seem to believe that God is a vengeful god who just waits to crush them at the first sign of weakness and that He enjoys seeing his Muslim children kill his Jewish and Christian children. What should bother all of us is the fact that Muslims don't seem to have any problem with the absurdity of that idea. I guess that follows right along with their willingness and ability to kill the female members of their own family if they somehow, even in a most minor way, shames the family name.
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Dear God, and I do believe in God!
Please Save Us from Religion.
It always irritates me when I hear someone say they know exactly what God expects form us. Every "man of god" on TV claims to have a personal insight into the true meaning of the bible. Then you have the truly gifted men who cannot only tell you what God expects from us and the exact meaning of the bible but can also reveal hidden messages behind each and every verse in the scriptures; messages that those who are untouched by God cannot see.
The Birth of God
Somewhere back in time when people were just developing into conscious beings a group of people were huddled in a cave terrified by a raging storm; during the storm an old man or woman, who was not as terrified as the others because he or she had seen many storms just like this one, tried to calm the group by making up a story. The story was an explanation about what was causing all the water to fall from the sky, the loud noises, the flashing light that momentarily turned the night into day and the frightening fingers of light from the sky that poked the ground and started fires. The storyteller told the group of a great being who lived in the sky and ruled over all the earth. The storyteller continued to explain that the great being was angry about something that had taken place that day and was in a rage.
Since men were known to become angry over the smallest events and then destroy everything in a fit of rage, it was not long until the group decided that the great being had to be a man.
Soon, mothers found out that they could get their children to do what they wanted them to do by saying "the great being will be angry if you don't do what I say." Then, after the storyteller died and the story became accepted as true, a man or woman found out they could control the entire group by telling them "the great being will be angry if you don't do what I say."
Not long after this beginning every event (desirable or undesirable) was attributed to the great being's state of satisfaction.
Today, after one hundred thousand years of trying to appease the great being, man has developed an amazing array of ideas and methods of controlling people by telling them "the great being will be angry if you don't do what I say."
I am constantly amazed that this one story, told somewhere in a cave in Africa more than one hundred thousand years ago could have developed into the more than three thousand different religions that exist today.
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All free people around the world should insult Islam every day until the nut-case Muslims get tired of protesting and shut up about how sensitive they are. It's free speach - live with it!
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