Via MSN.

About half way down on the right side of the page is a stupid poll.  It needs your help!  I don’t like the title “Teen forces….”  NO!  She pointed out that they were violating the constitution and asked the school to take it down and the would not.  She then took it to court and won.

So….  Follow the link at the top and go vote – you know what to do!

Tip to Friendly Atheist.

via MSNBC.

NASA’s “Blue Marble” image is one of the best-known high-resolution pictures of our planet. It’s even included as one of the default images for Apple’s iPhone. Now NASA has released a brand-new “Blue Marble 2012,” based on image data from the VIIRS instrument aboard Suomi NPP, the most recently launched Earth-observing satellite.

The Suomi spacecraft was known as the NPOESS Preparatory Project, or NPP, when it was launched last October. This week it was renamed the Suomi NPP — or Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership — to honor the late Verner. E. Suomi, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who became known as the father of satellite meteorology. The $1.5 billion mission is a partnership involving NASA as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Air Force.

Suomi is the first of a new generation of satellites that will provide data for climate research as well as weather prediction. It carries five instruments on board, and the biggest and most important of the five is the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite, or VIIRS. This composite image was built up from swaths of surface image data collected on Jan. 4.

To learn more about Suomi, check out the mission’s website. For a huge 8,000-by-8,000-pixel version of Blue Marble 2012, go to the NASA Goddard Photo and Video Flickr gallery. And for a daily dose of Earth imagery, including more pictures from VIIRS, click on over to NASA’s Earth Observatory.

The Nicene Screed, I mean Creed, Is the god affirming rant, that god is one and three, coeternal, and damn it, uhhh, you, if you don’t know the difference. It is also other canon law that mostly supports the whole jealous god thing that your only chance for salvation is through him and his minions. It firmly places deism as heretical and worthy of anathema. Now you know when a deist is claimed to be Christian it is total BS, damnation.

I most recently experienced the screed at the funeral of an in-law though the screed, creed, is also done on Sundays which I choose not to attend except under duress. Which is as it should be as I find nothing pleasant about it and worry that my children will catch a bad meme.

I really don’t understand why any family would expect a person of different faith to attend an event that requires a swearing of opposing fidelity. I understand that weddings, funerals, and occasional church are appropriate places for belief but in a community of varying faiths it would be gracious and right to not insist of someone to commit perjury merely to make the ceremony inclusive.

Shortly after this funeral, where I was banned from accompanying my partner in future church attendance because I commented, there was a family wedding where I foolishly thought I could mediate the disgust and participate because there was so much good will present already. It is important to attend these things even if one is retching their way through in some sort of Sartrean nausea. It’s not the bastards on the walls in the patriarchal paintings that objectivize you here but your fellow worshippers, happy sheep, and closet seculars feigning comfort, and demanding desired demeanor.

At the end, in an outside ceremony, the members weave their way through each other, hug, or shake, and say “peace be with you.” Oy my goodness, no one told me this was going to be part of it. Such sweet nonsense and yet I knew not what to do. I clumsily made my way and attempted to be sincere during at least this somewhat generous part of their spiritual retinue.

It really was very sincere, I loved the couple, and I marveled at the contradiction of exclaiming peace, yea, only to those of the group, after swearing fidelity to a three-part godhead, and achieving ascendance to heaven by vowing fidelity to Jesus, god, logos, whomever.

I had an awkward moment with the bride and groom who know I am secular and though I thought we’d hug, any excuse to hug, transcend the event, wink at the lie, finger to the nose, we sort of shuffled by in awkwardness. Boy, this religion thing sure is a comfort!

I wondered why they drink and smoke so much. Oh, we still do though health or lack of it caught up to me. That’s why they call themselves Whiskeypaliens. And indeed, afterwards, some retreated to Bloody Mary’s and some retreated to the back for something more vivid.

I  muse at screed. The Nicene Creed is like a screed used to level fresh poured concrete, or as a leveling guide when plastering. How many church members have openly praised their screed as the moral leveling of fresh young minds?

The Nicene Creed as most commonly recited by Episcopalians, as set forth in the 1975 Book of Common Prayer, goes like this:

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of Life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.

Amen

It’s not too long but long enough to be interminably long for those enduring it terminally. My apologist bro-in-law thinks believers are righteous for their dislike of secularists because we wish to stop foolish faith but acquiesces to my eternal exclusion from absolute bliss by not saying a word or even a wink during these dreadful, enforced, solipsistic silences.

read more »

Mitt Romney tithes to his church, the LDS or mormons for slang, as detailed by Rachel Zoll in the AP News. Keep religion out of politics unless you wish it examined on its merit… I continue.

“Romney reports he will give a total of $4.13 million to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over two years as part of his overall charitable donations. The former Massachusetts governor reported income of about $43 million for the two years. Separately, over the past decade, Romney and his wife, Ann, have given more than $4.7 million to the denomination through the Tyler Charitable Foundation, a multimillion-dollar trust the couple leads.

The LDS are a full family function for its members; they want your soul and your life. Their churches, wards, stake houses, and temples provide welfare, emergency services, and near all show necessary support. They also recommend members keep a two-year food supply for when the rapture, uhh, second coming, comes though they tell gentiles it’s for emergencies. Monday is family home night and on at least two other days a week there are Ward or Stake functions to attend. Additionally, members must “seal,” baptize, fifty or so dead people so they can be saved and there is a tremendous amount of genealogy performed, unfortunately some of it bad (many pro’s say terrible), to find family to save. This means Lincoln, Washington, probably Hitchens now, all baptized mormon.

I wonder how those dead people feel about being baptized, sealed, and saved without their knowledge–thank goodness they are dead. That’s the great thing about sheep and dead people, you can do anything to them. Piss on em even but that’s another story only religious people care about.

It is not a church so much as a culture and harkens back to preReformation Catholicism, modern Hasidic Jew, and modern Muslim (I’d say orthodox or fundamental Islam but Koran suffers no living apostates). Mormons thought I was a “golden prospect” as I didn’t smoke or drink at the time and being of Jewish descent was from another all inclusive tribal culture, Israelite tribe, that is a fellow descendent of their tribe.

I can’t help taking up space for this but… Laminates, Indians, Polynesians, Blacks, whoever dark, are colored because of past sin, uhh, curse (they fought and lost a good and evil battle with the light-skinned Nephites) and once forgiven by god they will lighten up–or when the Supreme court makes them equal. My doctor friend insisted that they lightened during their stays in mormon hospitals–as if blacks and Indians don’t tan. It would be a giant article to discuss the absurdities and oddities of this wanna-be Christian church founded by a traveling patent-medicine man receiving bastard, uhh reformed, Egyptian hieroglyphics on golden tablets somehow lost. Why do modern people descended from obviously false faith insist it’s true? Reputation rules!

The hardest cultural exclusion is to be excommunicated or become a jack mormon, there is no such thing as a secular mormon, and still live there. Nevertheless these often unhappy (from familial isolation or castigation) apostates abound, they call them excommunicated, either for abominations to material laws like drinking, blasphemy, nonattendance, witnessing to bad character, homosexuality, or lack of tithing 10% of your income not counting all of the other things you have to buy into.

My first wife a social worker was furious that mormon bishops served as counselors, untrained, unprofessional, and prosthetically unreliable. My high school teacher said “teen age pregnancy isn’t a problem here, they just get married.” Right out of the old testament where a rapist must marry his victim–as if that made it Ok–and let’s hope no one hers her scream or she gets stoned and worse.

Romney may claim he is a good church guy because he tithes but it’s the mormon law and, more intrusive than the IRS, church auditors and accountants come to your door and help with your budget and accounting to be sure they get their share. It happened to my family in West Granger every year and when they found we weren’t mormons they’d mumble away. 80% of members tithe according to the above article. The rest are probably in the process of being excommunicated.

Rick Warren the megachurch demigod who prayed for Hitch at death, calling him friend, when Hitch blasted him, claims he reverse tithes by donating 90% of his income. But Rick has more money than god and need never work again for his palace and it is his current pillaging and financial raping of his members from which he pays 90%. Maybe he should have a tax, I mean indulgence, uhhh, tithing refund, or just stop pillaging people’s savings and give his own money to all of the people without prejudice. Oh wait, he wouldn’t have any of his own money if he hadn’t robbed it, uhh, had it donated.

Romney and other LDS claim the bible says to tithe but there is nothing in the new testament on tithing. It is all from Leviticus the old testament which mormons tend to dislike for it’s confusing and often terrifying myths, as well as those multiple food and social sanctions that maker theirs look like playground stuff. Jesus hated taxing and tithing from what I can tell in spite of rending Caesar’s to Caesar. He’s hanging out with poor people, telling them they are poor and it’s good to be poor. Near everything I see says to shed wealth to be poor and nary a word to says give it to temple.

As an aside, I can’t help it, the weirdest mormon food sanction is not to drink cold water and my doctor neighbor used to try to convince me that current research showed it was bad to drink cold water–so bad that it is an abomination?  Mormons laugh that since they can’t drink alcohol they eat ice cream, vat fulls from what I can tell.

Mormons love to say how it is all about self reliance and good will (god will) to their members but nonmembers don’t get it and I can’t tell you how many mormons I knew were terrified of the rapture, umm, return of the messiah, when the gentiles will gather to Salt Lake City, the streets will flow with blood, and their houses will be raided by heathens.

What they don’t get is their superior attitude and exclusiveness, surpassed only by the Amish (who are at least passive), Hasidim (not socially passive) and FundoIslamists (not passive), caused them to be hated by their neighbors just because they were such arrogant bastards and like the chosen ones (Jews) bragged about how they were going to heaven and you weren’t and then proving it here on earth by becoming far more successful than the average citizen, such  that few would suffer them, even though they may have started out as oppressed or a minority.

The Romans get a lot of shit for oppression but the Christians were insisting on disobeying the law and attributing it to god, swearing that polytheism would take every Roman to hell, and looting and tearing down pagan images, temples, and public gatherings everywhere. Some of the poor were Christians and they used their religion to gain power rather then seek justice. It’s not until the Catholics revoke from the book no graven images that western European society suffered religious icons again.

It is 787 AD (After Despot) at the Seventh Ecumenical Council where they approve graven images in spite of the many biblical admonitions against it. Islam is more true to the bible in this respect! Technically, truly, any Christian creating a graven image is damned! It was all about crapping on the Roman iconography of polytheism present everywhere. Just like burning a library because you don’t agree.

If you want advice on how to avoid welfare, prepare for retirement, and avoid emergency indebtedness save 10%. My grandfather, FL Watkins, President of Dakota Business College, praised the value of duration in compound interest. No matter what when you start earning put 10% away and keep doing it. It’s the last few years that count the most and why accounts don’t pass through death to survivors except through usurous inheritance taxes or capital trusts without fixed interests–bankers aren’t dumb.

If I had done that even though I was a rather low earner I could retire at 54. But I didn’t so I won’t judge you on the equality bias. The other thing he said is always keep working; persevere to success and be open to opportunity; you make your luck. It doesn’t matter if it is for money but always work towards money through education, volunteering, or other preparation. Giving 10% to a cosmic salesman is like buying a car with sawdust in the transmission.

The only thing worse than a rich asshole is one who says he’s so rich because he’s more moral, more pure, more true, more naturally better. Even Aristotle warns of hubris, pride, the original confirmation bias, the down fall of most people. Only Mary Poppins gets away with that bullshit.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.brightpride.com

via CBS News.

Mr. Santorum tries to break the irony meter.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Wednesday that “the left” uses universities to indoctrinate young people for the purpose of “holding and maintaining power.”

After saying “we’ve lost, unfortunately, our entertainment industry,” Santorum told a Naples, Florida, audience that “we’ve lost our higher education, that was the first to go a long time ago.”

I guess one of his first acts as president would be to close down college.

“It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college,” said the former Pennsylvania senator. “The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination.

WOW!  I’m pretty sure he does not know what the word actually means.  The exposure to many new ideas in not indoctrination.  Exposure to one set of idea that can’t be tested or verified (like church) is indoctrination.

If it was the other way around, the ACLU would be out there making sure that there wasn’t one penny of government dollars going to colleges and universities, right?”

There are crazy fundie far right universities – and the ACLU does not sue them.

He continued: “If they taught Judeo-Christian principles in those colleges and universities, they would be stripped of every dollar.

Nope!  There are schools that do that.  You get a shitty education but you can become a minister.

Because you know 62 percent of children who enter college with a faith conviction leave without it.”

Yeah!  Where does that number come from?  What is causing that?  Reality?  or simply being away from oppressive parents?

Santorum went on to encourage his audience not to “give money” to colleges and universities that he said are causing harm to the country.

He hates college!

“I’ll bet you there are people in this room who give money to colleges and universities who are undermining the very principles of our country every single day by indoctrinating kids with left-wing ideology,” he said. “And you continue to give to these colleges and universities. Let me have a suggestion: Stop it.”

I say if you are giving money to a church you should stop!  They are undermining the very principles of our country every single day by indoctrinating kids.

Here is the video sensation “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus”
It seems like a self satire to me but it does have more than 16,000,000 views.


Here is a fantastic response from Zinnia Jones. (Plus it rhymes)

Via Americans United.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State today criticized the House of Representatives for approving two bills promoting the use of religious symbols and prayers at governmental monuments and war memorials.

The House voted to approve H.R. 290, the “War Memorial Protection Act” and H.R. 2070, the “World War II Memorial Prayer Act of 2011.” Both bills are designed to add religious language to monuments or allow sectarian symbols to be used to honor the nation’s war dead.

“These bills dishonor the memory of our country’s brave veterans by drafting them as fodder in yet another divisive ‘culture war,’” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director.

“The House ought to be ashamed of itself. At a time when the nation faces serious economic and public policy problems, I am appalled that House members would waste time on this kind of distraction.”

H.R. 290, introduced by U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) would allow the use of religious symbols in war memorials. Since no law bars such displays in certain settings, critics believe Hunter is trying to find a way to protect the constitutionally problematic display of Christian symbols on government property.

Lawsuits have focused on the Mt. Soledad cross in La Jolla, Calif., and a cross in the Mojave National Preserve. Defenders of the sectarian symbols say they memorialize service personnel of all faiths, but opponents contend that a Christian cross cannot honor those of other religious perspectives.

H.R. 2070 would order federal officials to add a prayer recited by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on D-Day to the World War II Memorial on the National Mall. The Bureau of Land Management opposes the move, noting that the memorial is complete and should not be tinkered with.

Lynn urged the Senate to ignore the bills.

“Brave men and women of many faiths and none have given their lives for our country,” Lynn said. “We honor them by respecting America’s great tradition of religious diversity, not by allowing Congress to hijack the language and symbols of one faith and impose them on all.”