Tag Archives: god

Time to send in the Branch Dividians

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Last week I stumbled across an interesting (and lengthy) 2006 Rolling Stone article by Janet Reitman (“Inside Scientology”) that takes a peek behind the curtain of “America’s most mysterious religion.”

I’m not sure how someone could read this and not be convinced L. Ron Hubbard (the guy that came up with Scientology) was a wacko con man. Try to imagine convincing a new convert of the following:

“…75 million years ago, an evil galactic warlord named Xenu controlled seventy-six planets in this corner of the galaxy, each of which was severely overpopulated. To solve this problem, Xenu rounded up 13.5 trillion beings and then flew them to Earth, where they were dumped into volcanoes around the globe and vaporized with bombs. This scattered their radioactive souls, or thetans, until they were caught in electronic traps set up around the atmosphere and “implanted” with a number of false ideas — including the concepts of God, Christ and organized religion. Scientologists later learn that many of these entities attached themselves to human beings, where they remain to this day, creating not just the root of all of our emotional and physical problems but the root of all problems of the modern world.”

Let me say once again, this sounds like a load of horse shit. But why am I more skeptical of these “teachings” than the miracles of the Christian faith? The Bible is the literal Word of God and Dianetics is science fiction? That works for a lot of people.

Not sure where this post came from, maybe all the killing and dying in the name of religion.

Speaking of Holy Wars, maybe we should send the members of our most fanatical faiths (Scientologists, The Jonestown Brigade, The 101st Branch Davidians, etc) to mix it up with the extremists of other religions. If the other team is playing 12 year old suicide bombers… we send in some grandmothers willing to drink poison Cool-Aide. Let’s out-crazy them.

Paul Simon: Old

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The first time I heard “Peggy Sue”
I was 12 years old
Russians up in rocket ships
And the war was cold
Now many wars have come and gone
Genocide still goes on
Buddy Holly still goes on
But his catalog was sold

First time I smoked
Guess what – paranoid
First time I heard “Satisfaction”
I was young and unemployed
Down the decades every year
Summer leaves and my birthday’s here
And all my friends stand up and cheer
And say man you’re old
Getting old
Old
Getting old

We celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas day
And Buddha found Nirvana along the lotus way
About 1,500 years ago the messenger Mohamed spoke
And his wisdom like a river flowed
Through hills of gold
Wisdom is old
The Koran is old
The bible’s
Greatest story ever told

Disagreements?
Work ’em out

The human race walked the earth for 2.7 million
And we estimate the universe at 13-14 billion
When all these numbers tumble into your imagination
Consider that the lord was there before creation
God is old
We’re not old
God is old
He made the mold

Take your cloths off
Adam and eve

Life After Death

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“A must read for everyone who will die.” That’s how one reviewer describes Deepak Chopra’s “Life After Death.” I ordered the book after seeing Dr. Chopra on The Colbert Report. The title pretty much describes the book which got a fair amount of highlighter (my measure of good non-fiction). Here’s one graf from page 239:

“In spiritual terms the cycle of birth and rebirth is a workshop for making creative leaps of the soul. The natural and the supernatural are not doing different things but are involved in transformation on separate levels. At the moment of death the ingredients of your old body and old identity disappear. Your DNA and everything it created devolve back to their simple component parts. Your memories dissolve back into raw information. None of this raw material is simply recombined to produced a slightly altered person. To produce a new body capable of making new memories, the person who emerges must be new. You do not acquire a new soul, because the soul doesn’t have content. It’s not “you” but the center around which “you” coalesces, time after time. It’s your zero point.”

I’ve never studied or researched reincarnation, but I’ve always had a curiosity about and openess to the idea. In 1988 I wrote:

“As I think about the idea of a past existence, I feel a fondness for this “earlier me”. A sense of gratitude for whatever spiritual progress he was able to achieve. At the same time, I feel a sense of anticipation or expectation for my “next life”. And some responsibility to that future self. I’d like to move him (or her?) along as far as I can on this “cosmic lap.” To move him closer to…a perfect consciousness? Nirvana?”

“Mixed in with all of that is a sense of relief that I don’t have to complete everything in this lifetime. This is not the only shot I’ll get. And this awareness is vital because we all know –consciously or subconsciously– that we won’t “get it all done” in a spiritual sense. We hope (and work) for progress but a single” lifetime seems hopelessly short.”

Upon rereading the full post, I’m struck by how close I got (to Dr. Chopra’s explanation), given my complete ignorance.

I confess I could never stretch my common sense and logic (and faith?) around many of the stories in the Bible. And my recent read of Richard Dawkins’ case for atheism (The God Delusion) didn’t convince me. But I really enjoyed Life After Death and will read more by Dr. Chopra.

The Religion War

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“The Internet (is) God’s central nervous system, connecting all the thinking humans, so that one good thought anywhere could be available everywhere. The head would know what the feet were feeling. It would be an upper consciousness, above what the human beings that composed it would understand.” (Pg.151)

“God is everything, all the matter and empty space that now exists, or ever will exist. He expresses his preference in the invisible workings of gravity, probability, and ideas. God is that which is unstoppable, permanent, all-powerful, and by its own standards perfect. God was in no hurry. He was reforming. He didn’t think in the way that humans do, as that is unnecessary for an entity whose preferences are identical to reality. Humans think in order to survive and entertain themselves. God has no need for a tool that is useful only to the frail and unsatisfied.” (Pg. 177)

“You’re a collection of molecules and those molecules are made of smaller bits, and those bits are made of even smaller bits. The smallest bits in the universe are all identical. You are made of the same stuff as the concrete in the floor and the fly on the window. Your basic matter cannot be created or destroyed. All that will survive of what you call you life is the sum of your actions. Some might call the unending ripple effect of those actions a soul, or a spirit.”

“Consciousness is a feedback loop. It has four parts: You imagine the impact of your actions, then you act, then you observe the actual result of your action, then you store that knowledge in your brain and begin again to imagine the next thing.” (pg 31)

Excerpts from The Religion War, by Scott Adams

Reverend Phelps says god hates queers

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The Missouri Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony last night on a bill that would ban demonstrations at funerals from an hour before to an hour after the service. The bill was introduced after Topeka, Kansas minister Fred Phelps and his followers demonstrated at the funeral of a St. Joseph soldier killed in Iraq. Phelps claims the death of American soldiers in Iraq is God’s vengeance on this nation because it tolerates homosexuals. Some emotional testimony (about 10 minutes into the audio) by the wife of a soldiar who was killed in Iraq. The good reverend and his posse were committed enough to demonstrate at some funerals but didn’t have the balls to show up at the hearing. [via Missourinet.com]