May You Be Touched by his Noodley Appendage!

Just a few days ago, a statue was erected at the Cumberland County Courthouse in Tennessee, to honor the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster. Pastafarians are rejoicing around the world!

Here is a transcript of the statement said during the erection...

Statement at Installation Ceremony March 21, 2008
We are lucky enough to live in a country that allows us, its citizens, the freedom of speech. I have chosen to put up a statue of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to represent the discourse between people of all different beliefs. The many faiths, ethnicities and backgrounds of Cumberland County’s residents make our community a stronger richer place. I respect and am proud that on the people’s lawn, the county courthouse, all of these diverse beliefs can come together in a positive dialogue. Here, we are all able to share the issues close to our hearts whether it is through a memorial to the soldiers killed fighting for our country, the Statue of Liberty honoring our nations welcoming promise to all, a group’s fight to stop homelessness, or powerful symbols of faith. I greatly treasure this open forum between everyone in the community.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a pile of noodles and meatballs, but it is meant to open up discussion and provoke thought. Being able to put up a statue is a celebration of our freedom as Americans; a freedom to be different, to express those differences, and to do it amongst neighbors -— even if it is in a noodley way.

Easter is Coming! But Where Did it Come From?

Easter is a very ancient holiday, that to the dismay of most conservative religious folk, predates Christianity. The Venerable Bede, a christian scholar from around the year 700, has ascribed the name, "Easter" to the Saxon Mother Goddess, Eostre. As far as the holiday itself, the earliest roots can be directly traced to the Spring Equinox, in the Roman veneration rites of Cybele/Attis.

This religion predates the Christian religion by many hundred years. As the roman society was changing into a more Christianized form, the early Roman Catholic Church kept most of the original Holidays so as to not disrupt the lives of their (mostly pagan) countrymen, and make it easier to integrate their Christian views into the existing culture. The ultimate goal being that of converting the masses in a sort of indirect way. We know this worked, as most of the Western world is now thoroughly Christian, and has lost the true meanings and origins of their Holidays other than the general party line as portrayed by the church.

The Story of Cybele and Attis...

Cybele was one of the great mother goddess figures from the ancient world. She originated from Phrygia, but was adopted by most other Roman area cultures. Metaphorically, Cybele was seen to be the personification of the ripe, fertile earth and of the provider of the life force itself. She also had a lover, Attis (representing plants and animals), who was born of virgin birth and was believed to die and be resurrected every year when the Spring Equinox rolled around. This sounds pretty familiar doesn't it? The early Christians explained it away rather conveniently, by saying the far older Cybele/Attis were created by the Devil to deceive man, proving once again that the old gods having been replaced, typically became the new religion's demons and devils. The holiday has since transformed into a totally Christian holiday, representing basically the same thing (the re-birth of life from the dark of winter) ever since. Though most Christians do not understand this. The see it simply as the day Jesus was resurrected, and the timing of the Spring Equinox being but a coincidence.

It is all very similar to Christmas, but that is another story...


Now, what about those all those silly bunnies and eggs? This brings us back to the namesake of the holiday, Eostre, whose sacred animal was a hare. Back in the old days of Europe, after the fall of Rome, Germanic barbarians took over after the Roman Empire fell. One of their main celebrations was in honor of the goddess Eostre, and was celebrated at Spring Equinox in a manner similar to Cybele/Attis. This custom was found in most areas of Anglo-Saxon influence until around the time that Catholicism took hold. It is still found in the German celebrations of Oschter Haws, where a bunny is said to lay colored eggs in nests to delight children on easter morning. This custom was brought to the United States by German immigrants to Pennsylvania, and is still practiced to this day. The eggs originally being seen as symbols of life and birth.

Many Christian churches, having gotten on the bandwagon to reduce "Pagan" influences, have started having celebrations with names like "Resurrection Sunday", and dropping the name of Easter. By doing this, they are actually being more true to the original Pagan meaning and origin of the holiday, though they do not know it and most likely would not understand if told.

Some Christians Finally Accepting the Inevitable...

(CNN) -- Several prominent leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention said Monday that Baptists have a moral responsibility to combat climate change -- a major shift within a denomination that just last year cast doubt on human responsibility for global warming.

Forty-six influential members of the Southern Baptist Convention, including three of its past four presidents, criticized their denomination in a statement Monday for being "too timid" in confronting global warming.

"Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed," the statement says. "We can do better."

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, adopted a resolution last year urging Baptists to "proceed cautiously in the human-induced global warming debate in light of conflicting scientific research." The resolution said "many scientists reject the idea of catastrophic human-induced global warming."

On Monday, however, dozens of Southern Baptist leaders expressed a different view.

"There is general agreement among those engaged with this issue in the scientific community," their statement says. "A minority of sincere and respected scientists offer alternate causes for global climate change other than deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels."

The signatories pledged to do their part to fight global warming "without any further lingering over the basic reality of the problem or our responsibility to address it. Humans must be proactive and take responsibility for our contributions to climate change -- big and small."

The signatories include Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention since 2006; James Merritt, president of the convention from 2000 to 2002 and Jack Graham, president of the convention from 2002 to 2004. The group posted the statement on its Web site.

The signers of "A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change" acknowledged that some of them were skeptics at first.

"Some of us have required considerable convincing before becoming persuaded that these are real problems that deserve our attention," the statement says. "But now we have seen and heard enough to be persuaded that these issues are among the current era's challenges that require a unified moral voice."

The Southern Baptist Convention's 16 million members make up roughly 7 percent of the U.S. adult population, according to the convention and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The competing and evolving views on climate change within the Southern Baptist Convention mirror a debate that has played out among members of the theologically like-minded National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group that represents about 30 million people in 45,000 church congregations, including many Baptist congregations.

Its Washington policy director, the Rev. Richard Cizik, has pressed for years for more action to combat climate change, saying in a recent documentary that "to harm this world by environmental degradation is an offense against God."

His advocacy raised eyebrows given that global warming sometimes conjured "impressions in people's minds of being liberal, democratic, left wing, big government, tied to population control, all these kinds of things," Cizik told CNN last year.

Several conservative evangelicals signed a letter in 2007 urging the association to rein in Cizik or encourage him to resign. The signers included James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Gary Bauer, a former presidential candidate and president of American Values.

"We have observed that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children," their letter said. "The issue (global warming) should be addressed scientifically and not theologically."

Why would "rational" minded human beings let something as simple as scientific facts stand in their way?

The New Faces of an Old Problem?

I remember my days as a youth during the Cold War with the USSR. Many older people I knew, mostly teachers (I was a schoolboy after all), used to go to great lengths to preach about the differences between Capitalism and the horrors of Communism. It was said that the biggest problem with the Communist system, other than the appalling lack of freedom, was that creativity and initiative was stifled by the system itself. This due to the way Communism attempted to make all persons within it's grasp totally equal and the same. It was concluded that with no social/class differences, all the ills of society would be solved. We all know what really happened. The ones in the government simply used it for their advantage, at the expense of everyone else.

Now flash forward to 21st century America, and the "Triumph" of the Capitalist system. How many of our virtues have turned out to be vices? We are now living in a society where 2% of the world's population controls 80% of the world's wealth. Out of all this wealth, maybe(?) 1/8th of our population controls the lion's share of it, with most of the US population living dangerously close to the poverty mark and maxed out on credit. The same argument once made against the Communists can now be made against our own society, though in a different way.

While I walked through the local Big Boxed bastion of Greed, (I'll let you guess where), we pondered why the local area did not have any other stores like it, or why the local shopping mall remains devoid of stores other than military recruiters. This region has more than enough population and would definitely support several stores of this type. During our discussions on this topic, we surmised that the reason behind this is that with the rise of Uber-Capitalism, nobody, (meaning corporations), is willing to take a risk on anything. The only thing that appears to count is the gross outcome, and it had better be big, or it will not be done. Anything risky within our system is not done, all that is striven for is a "sure-thing". The whole effect of this is the breaking down of the classic American value system. American's have long been known as pioneers and entrepreneurs. This image has in truth been lost, as America has turned into a nation of franchises, dominated by Big Boxes, with no real innovation or freedom other than the freedom to buy more un-needed crap.

So here we come to the old argument proposed against Communism. How different are we really? Isn't the current system just anther, albeit corporate, version of the same old thing? who is really free? What is this freedom people speak of? Is it the freedom to actually say and live like you want, or is it the freedom to live within the rules established by the corporations as long as we buy their crap? Isn't this like a form of Communism, but with a different name?

Standard Election Editorial No. 1

What a hard decision this election will be. On one hand, we have an untested African-American. On the other hand, we have the real brains of the Clinton Dynasty. And on the elephant's side, it is shaping up like a male clone of Billary. Can any of these political wonders really reverse the effects caused by eight years of the Manchurian Dipshit? Or the past 13 years of Repooplican controlled government (House and Senate/Congress). Are the Democraps really any different?

Some of the problems they face from 13 years of Repooplican control are the near total elimination of all manufacturing and industry in this country, and the rise of the "Burger Flipping" economy. The dire state our trade deficit is in, is bleeding us dry and selling us out. In the next decade, if things are not changed, our enemies will be major shareholders in our economy. They already are, but it will be worse. The politician's in their quest for less government interference, have allowed the business world to sell away the very things which made our country great. All of our manufacturing has now relocated overseas. All of our consumer goods now come from our enemies. And no one is able to reverse this on a large scale due to the "Wal-Mart effect", that is the government subsidization of cheap consumer goods to the point that no other businesses can compete. This has TOTALLY devastated entire small town economies, and put most local retailers out of business. It has become so bad, that you cannot purchase anything without going to the "Big Box". No one even bothers to compete anymore, and the public is stuck with rotten meat, and low quality chinese consumer crap. All of the money generated by this goes straight to our enemies across the big ol' Pacific. They have no need to fight us, since they are destroying us from the inside out, and the good old GOP led government, with it's "Good for Business, Good for the US" attitude let them do it.

PISSED OFF

Am I pissed off? YES.

These traitors have sold us all out to the point where it is nearly impossible to get a job that does not involve the flipping of a meat patty. There simply is nothing else around for most of the country. And what else there is, does not pay any different than flipping a patty. The last bastion of decent jobs in this country, the Government Civil Service, is a favorite target of these buffoons in their quest to "get rid of big government" and destroy Socialism. The writing is on the wall for these jobs, with the new NSPS system taking effect. The people who want to "get rid of big government" are the ones who think government should have no say in their traitorous and shady business dealings. They want it out of their way. They do this in the guise of reducing government spending by cutting government jobs. Our government is now at a point where it is nearly impossible to accomplish anything because the personnel shortages are so bad. What? Can't perform? Let's slash them even more! They are obviously lazy! It is a big scientifically engineered "Vicious Circle" designed to destroy our government, leaving the corporations holding the power. Don't even let me get started on the sad state of government programs to help the needy, such as the SCHIP Controversy involving uninsured children of the working poor (yet another selling out of America and our rights).

TRAITORS

Traitors, yes, these folks ARE traitors. The GOP has been run by traitors for the last decade. They have sold us out, and even worse, they have sold out our children. The Demos are to blame too, for they did not have enough spine to stop them. The result of this is that our children now have a promising future in any one of the food service industries, nothing else is open to them unless they want to move to India, or China.

Now, who to vote for? Does it matter? Are any of them really so different from each other? We need someone who will get into office and place the rights and needs of the American People on the forefront, and not the rights and needs of the corporations as it currently stands. If a politician is not willing to do this, then they are not working for the US, and have allied with the enemy.

Who is the enemy? The enemy is us. The enemy is the ravenous, mindless, consumer world which we self perpetuate through our thoughtless actions. Change now. It can only begin on an individual level. Don't vote for anyone who seeks to perpetuate "The Matrix" in which we currently are stuck.

Well, what do you know?

Thursday, Feb. 07, 2008

Christians Wrong About Heaven, Says Bishop

By David Van Biema

N.T. "Tom" Wright is one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought. As Bishop of Durham, he is the fourth most senior cleric in the Church of England and a major player in the strife-riven global Anglican Communion; as a much-read theologian and Biblical scholar he has taught at Cambridge and is a hero to conservative Christians worldwide for his 2003 book The Resurrection of the Son of God, which argued forcefully for a literal interpretation of that event.

It therefore comes as a something of a shock that Wright doesn't believe in heaven — at least, not in the way that millions of Christians understand the term. In his new book, Surprised by HopeCaliforniaWhat's Heaven, which describes it as "a beautiful place where you can sit on soft clouds and talk... If you're good throughout your life, then you get to go [there]... When your life is finished here on earth, God sends angels down to take you heaven to be with him." That, says Wright is a good example of "what not to say." The Biblical truth, he continues, "is very, very different." (HarperOne), Wright quotes a children's book by first lady Maria Shriver called

Wright, 58, talked by phone with TIME's David Van Biema.

TIME: At one point you call the common view of heaven a "distortion and serious diminution of Christian hope."

Wright: It really is. I've often heard people say, "I'm going to heaven soon, and I won't need this stupid body there, thank goodness.' That's a very damaging distortion, all the more so for being unintentional.

TIME: How so? It seems like a typical sentiment.

Wright: There are several important respects in which it's unsupported by the New Testament. First, the timing. In the Bible we are told that you die, and enter an intermediate state. St. Paul is very clear that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead already, but that nobody else has yet. Secondly, our physical state. The New Testament says that when Christ does return, the dead will experience a whole new life: not just our soul, but our bodies. And finally, the location. At no point do the resurrection narratives in the four Gospels say, "Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven." It says that Christ is coming here, to join together the heavens and the Earth in an act of new creation.

TIME: Is there anything more in the Bible about the period between death and the resurrection of the dead?

Wright: We know that we will be with God and with Christ, resting and being refreshed. Paul writes that it will be conscious, but compared with being bodily alive, it will be like being asleep. The Wisdom of Solomon, a Jewish text from about the same time as Jesus, says "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God," and that seems like a poetic way to put the Christian understanding, as well.

TIME: But it's not where the real action is, so to speak?

Wright: No. Our culture is very interested in life after death, but the New Testament is much more interested in what I've called the life after life after death — in the ultimate resurrection into the new heavens and the new Earth. Jesus' resurrection marks the beginning of a restoration that he will complete upon his return. Part of this will be the resurrection of all the dead, who will "awake," be embodied and participate in the renewal. John Polkinghorne, a physicist and a priest, has put it this way: "God will download our software onto his hardware until the time he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves." That gets to two things nicely: that the period after death is a period when we are in God's presence but not active in our own bodies, and also that the more important transformation will be when we are again embodied and administering Christ's kingdom.

TIME: That is rather different from the common understanding. Did some Biblical verse contribute to our confusion?

Wright: There is Luke 23, where Jesus says to the good thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." But in Luke, we know first of all that Christ himself will not be resurrected for three days, so "paradise" cannot be a resurrection. It has to be an intermediate state. And chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation, where there is a vision of worship in heaven that people imagine describes our worship at the end of time. In fact it's describing the worship that's going on right now. If you read the book through, you see that at the end we don't have a description of heaven, but, as I said, of the new heavens and the new earth joined together.

TIME: Why, then, have we misread those verses?

Wright: It has, originally, to do with the translation of Jewish ideas into Greek. The New Testament is deeply, deeply Jewish, and the Jews had for some time been intuiting a final, physical resurrection. They believed that the world of space and time and matter is messed up, but remains basically good, and God will eventually sort it out and put it right again. Belief in that goodness is absolutely essential to Christianity, both theologically and morally. But Greek-speaking Christians influenced by Plato saw our cosmos as shabby and misshapen and full of lies, and the idea was not to make it right, but to escape it and leave behind our material bodies. The church at its best has always come back toward the Hebrew view, but there have been times when the Greek view was very influential.

TIME: Can you give some historical examples?

Wright: Two obvious ones are Dante's great poetry, which sets up a Heaven, Purgatory and Hell immediately after death, and Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine chapel, which portrays heaven and hell as equal and opposite last destinations. Both had enormous influence on Western culture, so much so that many Christians think that is Christianity.

TIME: But it's not.

Wright: Never at any point do the Gospels or Paul say Jesus has been raised, therefore we are we are all going to heaven. They all say, Jesus is raised, therefore the new creation has begun, and we have a job to do.

TIME: That sounds a lot like... work.

Wright: It's more exciting than hanging around listening to nice music. In Revelation and Paul's letters we are told that God's people will actually be running the new world on God's behalf. The idea of our participation in the new creation goes back to Genesis, when humans are supposed to be running the Garden and looking after the animals. If you transpose that all the way through, it's a picture like the one that you get at the end of Revelation.

TIME: And it ties in to what you've written about this all having a moral dimension.

Wright: Both that, and the idea of bodily resurrection that people deny when they talk about their "souls going to Heaven." If people think "my physical body doesn't matter very much," then who cares what I do with it? And if people think that our world, our cosmos, doesn't matter much, who cares what we do with that? Much of "traditional" Christianity gives the impression that God has these rather arbitrary rules about how you have to behave, and if you disobey them you go to hell, rather than to heaven. What the New Testament really says is God wants you to be a renewed human being helping him to renew his creation, and his resurrection was the opening bell. And when he returns to fulfil the plan, you won't be going up there to him, he'll be coming down here.

TIME: That's very different from, say, the vision put out in the Left Behind books.

Wright: Yes. If there's going to be an Armageddon, and we'll all be in heaven already or raptured up just in time, it really doesn't matter if you have acid rain or greenhouse gases prior to that. Or, for that matter, whether you bombed civilians in Iraq. All that really matters is saving souls for that disembodied heaven.

TIME: Has anyone you've talked to expressed disappointment at the loss of the old view?

Wright: Yes, you might get disappointment in the case where somebody has recently gone through the death of somebody they love and they are wanting simply to be with them. And I'd say that's understandable. But the end of Revelation describes a marvelous human participation in God's plan. And in almost all cases, when I've explained this to people, there's a sense of excitement and a sense of, "Why haven't we been told this before?"

The World is Truly Going to End...

If you have not heard of her, Anna Loginova is dead. She is, or was, the hottest chick on the planet, and the epitomy of my tirade on the misguided feminists. She is the HOT russian supermodel, who was a trained bodyguard/ninja and provided bodyguard services to the Russian elite when not on the set. Damn! If that is not hot, I don't know what is! Sexy, Russian, Tough, Martial Arts Expert, HOT, and a Bad-ass! Sort of like the old TV show VIP, only not lame and with heaps of James Bond thrown in.

This woman should have given speeches to the people in my previous feminist article, maybe then they would get a clue. Alas, she was killed by a car-jacker when she fought it out while he was trying to escape from her. She clung to the car while he sped off, and she eventually got thrown off, striking her head on the road. She had just fought off another car-jack attempt the week before, when she got the drop on the guy with her gun.

Why don't we grow chicks like this in America?


The world is truly a darker place. This chick was a real life Bond girl


One more shot for good measure...