CNN reports that the Vatican has announced that drugs, pollution and genetic manipulation have been added to the Catholic Churches “you’re gonna have to pay more now to get into Heaven” list.
When asked to list the new areas of sinful behavior, (Monsignor Gianfranco) Girotti denounced “certain violations of the fundamental rights of human nature through experiments, genetic manipulations.”
Also interesting was the fact that:
Girotti said the Catholic Church continued to be concerned by other sinful acts, including abortion and pedophilia.
He said Church authorities had reacted with rigorous measures to child abuse scandals within the clergy, but he also claimed that the issue had been excessively emphasized by the media.
Interesting, considering that some statistics show that 6% of Catholic Priests could be abusive. The Great Realization points out that this would mean 24,000 Abusive Catholic Priests!
Beliefnet.com reports that Tom Coburn has endorsed Senator John McCain for President. Let’s talk about this endorsement for a second.
Tom Coburn is a U.S. Senator for Oklahoma with some extremely hypocritical views that are closely linked to his never-faltering Christian beliefs. From calling his fellow Oklahoma citizens“crapheads” to radical pro-life views, he’s a few cards short of a deck. For example, Coburn is ‘pro-life’ and goes with the “sanctity of life” right-wing buzzphrase that “all life is sacred” as if liberals hate life. Meanwhile, Coburn advocates the death penalty for abortionists. Pretty funny for a guy who has admitted to have performed abortions. The list goes on.
So congratulations, John McCain, on picking up thie stellar endorsement from a hypocrite. I’m sure it will ring loud and clear with psycho-conservative Christian people everywhere.
Mike Huckabee, according to the Drudge Report, recently said that The Constitution must change:
“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”
This couldn’t be further from what the founding fathers of this nation intended. Please help put a stop to this man’s political endeavors by letting people know what the founding fathers intended when they purposely did not include a mention of “God” in our Constitution.
Every once in awhile, we like to poke fun at those who post comments on the Internet with which we take issue. Today’s Idiotic Comment Award goes to a commenter on another Web site outside of TheGreatRealization.com. I thought it was fair game since the comment was on a story that referenced a Great Realization post questioning the Godliness of the world’s largest philanthropists.
[DRUM ROLL PLEASE] And the idiotic comment award goes to a user by the name of “Patrick” for the following gem!
I don’t know any religious thinker who says “without religious belief you cannot be moral.” I don’t doubt that there are some religious people who think so, but this is not a serious argument. I know many religious people who say that without religion, society cannot transmit morals, moral behavior is not promoted in society, and that immoral behavior is not discouraged. I don’t think a feeling of empathy can get a society to that point.
As far as the effect of religion on Buffet and Gates, I wonder if they haven’t been raised in religious homes. I don’t know. Maybe their motivations are simply altruistic, in which case they are the exception to the rule. Still, the American culture and environment in which they operate is religious. Good behavior is determined largely by the values that the Judeo-Christian tradition has engendered. As Arthur Brooks has shown, religious people give more than secular people. Of course that is not true in every particular. Regardless of their religious (or lack of) motivation, Gates and Buffet are doing good things.
Okay, Patrick. Let’s take this piece by piece. First of all – there are MANY religious thinkers (if not most) that argue that religion is essential for morality. Just recently Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney made that exact argument in a speech about religion. Christian writers argue all the time that without Religion, we’re relegated to being a bunch of immoral monkeys running amuck around the planet. Just yesterday, Chuck Colson used a twisted understanding of the philosophy of Nietzsche to argue in the Christian post that:
One atheist understood the moral consequences of his unbelief: That was Nietzsche, who argued that God is dead, but acknowledged that without God there could be no binding and objective moral order.
Of course, the “New Atheists” deny this. Instead, they unconvincingly argue that you can have the benefits of an altruistic, Christian-like morality without God.
Of course, it should also be noted that Colson thinks that “You won’t find many atheists feeding the hungry and ministering to the sick in places like Africa or Mother Teresa’s Calcutta.” Apparently he doesn’t read this blog.
Look – I probably shouldn’t even use Colson as support here. He’s obviously got a screw loose and furthermore doesn’t understand science very well.
The point is – as an atheist, one sometimes fears telling other people about their lack of belief because of situations like this:
magikent: …so I helped serve food to the homeless at the shelter over Thanksgiving and then I delivered cookies to all the grandma’s in a three state area.
believer: Really, that’s so nice of you.
magikent: Yeah, then I went home and wrote a blog entry for “The Great Realization,” my atheist blog.
believer: What? You’re an atheist? I thought you said you helped feed the homeless? [HEAD EXPLODES]
I hear stories like this all the time. There are sadly many that simply can’t imagine a human possessing morals and values without the threat of eternal damnation.
Patrick also argues that “Good behavior is determined largely by the values that the Judeo-Christian tradition has engendered.” What? Patrick, my dogs can exhibit good behavior and I’m pretty sure they haven’t been up watching the 500 Club. Good behavior has to do with several things. The innate desire to end suffering, the natural understanding of “the golden rule,” and the desire to show compassion to others. These are things that are possible without any religious beliefs. They’re simply a condition of being human. We want to be happy and in order to be happy, we learn what makes us end our sufferings. One of the most obvious of these is to treat other people the way we would want to be treated. Even more sophisticated “learned behavior” could be attributed to mimicking of parenting styles and role models more than religion. However most Christians would tell you that it is the code of the Bible (most of the things above are mentioned as God’s word in the Bible) that is necessary to know these tips for good behavior. Because many of the Judeo-Christian God’s rules are natural, inborn desires and feelings in humans, the Bible is unnecessary for good or moral behavior. How many of the “Ten Commandments” can be explained through “Treat others as you wish to be treated?” Almost all of them. Yet Christians will argue that without understanding and living through God’s law, one can not be moral.
Patrick doesn’t believe it, so he get’s today’s idiotic comment award. YAY.
Matthew Murray wrote on an Internet forum of how he hated Christians between attacks on a mission center and church on Sunday, according to Denver-area media reports.
“You Christians brought this on yourselves,” Murray wrote at 11:03 a.m. on Sunday, CNN affiliate KUSA reported on its Web site.
“I’m coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill,” the KUSA report quoted from the final posting.
With the exception of symbols used to replace an expletive, this was the same wording used by Eric Harris in a posting before he and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting rampage at Columbine High School in 1999.
The posting, under the user name “nghtmrchld26,” was made several hours after Murray killed two people at the Youth With a Mission Center in Arvada, Colorado, and a few hours before Murray killed two people at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. He later died in a shootout with a church security guard.
First of all – this guy was a nut-job. Watch and observe how quickly his actions will be tied to an “anti-Christian sentiment” in this country, which will in turn be tied to an “atheist movement.” Anyone filled with enough hate to take the lives of others isn’t right in the head. I’m not sure what is to blame, but all this does is help fuel the stupid “War Against Christians” headlines that we see this time of year every year.
**UPDATE** Administrators and users of the web site where the killer’s postings were found have fired back at media, claiming their site is not an anti-Christian site, but rather one to try to help folks who have been hurt by the Pentacostal Church. So it sounds like an anti-Pentacostal site. I have not seen the site. I can guess that many of the postings on it are not pleasant. If you know of the site, please comment with a link!
The labor rights watchdog announced Tuesday that the crucifixes were made by young women working 14- to 25-hour shifts for less than half of China’s legal minimum wage. The report implicated the New York City-based St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Trinity Church, and, at the national level, the $4.63 billion dollar Association for Christian Retail.
We shouldn’t find it surprising, really. For an item that millions of people feel that they NEED to buy in order to be holy and live a good life, the necessity is that they need to be able to be sold cheaply or given away for free. To do so would kill the paychecks of those working in the holy places not to mention the retailers and manufacturers unless they moved the production overseas.
The interesting and possibly ironic part of the whole story is that its the supplied items are being manufactured in a country with such a history of persecution of Christians.
“In light of the recent attack from the ememies (sic) of God I ask the children of God to go into action with Imprecatory Prayer,” Drake said, in an Aug. 14 press statement issued from the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park. “Especially against Americans United for Seperation (sic) of Church and State.”
Republican Rick Perry, who replaced George W. Bush as Governor of Texas is a pretty good representation of the religious right. (In 2003, he condemned the United States Supreme Court decision in Lawrence vs. Texas striking down sodomy laws and called Texas’s last such law “appropriate.”) Recently, Perry appointed Crazy Creationist Don McLeroy to be the Head of the Texas State Board of Education. Since then, there have been outcries from citizens calling him on his misinformed and dangerous view of science.
One angry citizen writes:
I received a message from a Texas Citizens for Science supporter about an email message from SBOE member Don McLeroy that he received on October 30:
As an educator, I strongly dislike this trend. Are you doing things to combat this? Here is the email…
I replied as follows:
I share your disdain for McLeroy’s irrationality and contempt for science. I didn’t elect him. I am doing everything I can to prevent him from accomplishing his goals. Many other scientists and science educators are also involved in this effort.
In a perfect world, individuals such as McLeroy would not be elected to the State Board of Education. But we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in Texas.
I can assure you that many people organized months ago to oppose this nonsense. McLeroy is not even the worst one on the board.
If we fail in the vote, a court suit will surely follow.
Best,
Steven Schafersman
I reprint McLeroy’s recent letter below. It apparently was sent to his fellow SBOE members. It is mindboggling in its ignorance and contempt for science. McLeroy’s ranting deserves the widest possible exposure and publicity. Citizens should realize what kind of individuals they elect to an important public official position. I won’t bother to comment on his ignorant misrepresentation of scientific methods knowledge, since I have done so elsewhere at great length. Instead, I want to discuss his newest and latest excess.
It is clear that McLeroy’s strategy is to play one publisher against the others, hoping that if the others see that one biology book will be put on the conforming list, they will quickly agree to revise their books to also be adopted to that list. The reason for this is because adoption on the nonconforming list greatly reduces sales. This is the insidious power that the SBOE possesses to compel publishers to censor their books.
His statements that, “This action would approve all the books up for adoption, plus reward the book that most closely follows our standards. It does not negatively single out any book but fulfills our responsibility of standards conformity,” are untrue. It approves all the biology texts–except one–for the nonconforming list, thus negatively singling them out for ultimate rejection. The lucky one (Glencoe) on the conforming list will garner most of the sales due to widespread adoption by the state’s school districts.
Nonconforming books–while often perfectly good and scientifically accurate–will nevertheless be chosen far, far less than conforming books by the school districts. Putting textbooks on the nonconforming list greatly reduces their sales There are two reasons for this:
1. The adoption of nonconforming books by districts requires that every parent must be informed by letter that such books are being used. This obligation is SBOE policy that has been communicated to all Texas school districts. The only reason for this paperwork policy is to make it extra tiresome and difficult for school districts to adopt books that the SBOE decides do not meet its standards (such as scientifically-accurate biology textbooks).
2. Books adopted as conforming by the SBOE are completely free to requesting school districts. Nonconforming books, however, are not totally free. School districts must pay a percentage of their cost (I believe this is 20%, but I will have to research this to confirm).
The difference is certainly worth many tens of millions of dollars to a publisher on the conforming list, especially if you are the only one on the conforming list. Adopting only one textbook as conforming would be extremely unfair to the other texts, especially when they are just as scientifically accurate–perhaps more so–as the lucky book and the reason for their nonconforming adoption is due completely to the personal ideology and politics of the SBOE members. Remember, the TEA textbook review panel found that all the biology books were 100% conforming to the TEKS. If McLeroy’s motions were to pass, all the publishers whose books were adopted on the nonconforming list would have major grounds for litigation.
Don McLeroy’s strategy–to succeed in his aims by using a publisher’s legitimate desire to make the highest profit and attempt to play one off against the others–is cynical and contemptible. Such conduct is completely unsuitable for an elected public official who is supposed to place the education of Texas students above his own personal agenda. Don McLeroy’s conduct should be condemned by all rational and ethical Texas citizens who value the education and welfare of their children.
The Observer has unearthed (now this is journalism, people!) a recording of McLeroy addressing a sermon to his church, Grace Bible Church in College Station, on the subject of ID and evolution. The real battle, evidently, is against liberalism and naturalism. McLeroy sees ID as this glorious “big tent” that brings together religious pseudoscience of all stripes to unite against evil liberal naturalistic…uh…all that stuff. I can imagine the flacks at the Discovery Institute groaning over this one:
“Why is Intelligent Design the big tent? Because we’re all lined up against the fact that naturalism, that nature is all there is. Whether you’re a progressive creationist, recent creationist, young earth, old earth, it’s all in the tent of Intelligent Design.”
I especially love this passage from the Observer article.
McLeroy counsels fellow travelers to publicly battle evolution on the merits. “We must know our subject — facts and evidence are crucial,” he said in his sermon. But he acknowledges that this strategy has proven an utter failure.
Great work by the Texas Observer here.
To the citizens of Texas. I’m sorry. You’re fucked. If your Governor insists on making decisions like this, the future of your state is in jeopardy. Why would a student in Texas want to grow up to study geology if its a useless endeavor? After all, there’s no sense in studying what we know God made, right? So look forward to a generation of people coming out of Texas with absolutely no ability to grasp scientific reasoning.
And thanks Texas, for your contribution to our ever-growing reputation in the world for being a country who no longer leads in education; a country in which more than half of the population reject the theory of evolution. I was just saying the other day that what this country needs is more fucking lunatics. And it turns out, Texas has proved its ability to provide exactly that.
In June, I posted a video that I found interesting. I never claimed the video profound, or attempted to support the video in any other way than asking viewers to take a few moments to watch it and make up their own minds. Since then, the video has been bringing hundreds, and on some days thousands of visitors to The Great Realization every day. While I appreciate the support and certainly appreciate the traffic, only a third of the movie really appeals to anything that this site is about.
The makers of the film, which is claimed to be largely plagiarized from other conspiracy movies, continued to lurk in the shadows, not seemingly proud of what they had created. Their excuse for doing so was that they had received death threats.
Over a hundred comments flooded the post with a bunch of people who apparently didn’t read the post, but simply looked at the video and were too busy or blind to read the accompanying words. Commenters asked me for a DVD of the video. Some asked for foreign translations. Some even asked for copies to show to classrooms of children, never bothering to realize that I am simply a blogger who posted a video from Google Videos!
I was okay with all the hub-bub and traffic until a man claiming to be one of the video’s makers started posting his rants in the comments section of the post. With that, one can see a troubled, disturbed and deeply paranoid conspiracy theorist who becomes incredibly defensive and is not someone this site would like to endorse.
This is not a blog about conspiracy theories, government cover-ups or anything of the sort. Does that stuff interest me? Yes. I occasionally will entertain a movie or documentary about that kind of thing, but I don’t obsess over it and this blog has nothing to do with it.
If you’d like to learn all the facts/lies about religion and its origin, you can do so in many places on the web. I was happy that this movie, in it’s first third, had attempted to do so in one place. But if this guy posting comments really has anything to do with the movie like he says, I have absolutely no interest in promoting this film any longer. I have closed down the comments section of the post and am considering removing the post altogether. Until then, you can read the comments here.
Posted by magikent 
what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”
Okay, Patrick. Let’s take this piece by piece. First of all – there are MANY religious thinkers (if not most) that argue that religion is essential for morality. Just recently Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney made that exact argument in a speech about religion. 
The Great Realization 