Category Archives: Humanities

Article: “The Biggest Religious Movement You Never Heard of: Nine Things You Need to Know About Rick Perry’s Prayer Event”

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“Perry’s endorsers are not just a random group of radical evangelists making outrageous statements,” researcher Rachel Tabachnick subsequently wrote at Alternet.org. “These are the apostles and prophets of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), the biggest international religious movement you never heard of.” Almost simultaneously, investigative reporter Forrest Wilder of the Texas Observer published an extensive article on Perry’s prayer event and his endorsers, “Rick Perry’s Army of God.”

http://wp.me/p1GRG6-qZ

Aphorism: On Mandatory Prayer in the Military

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By Madison S. Hughes (08.13.2011)

On innumerable occasions during my twenty-three year career as a U.S. Army Officer I found myself a captive audience member of Staff meetings that began with prayer. While deployed I vividly recall one instance where a Mississippi Redneck Chief of Staff, Colonel Massey, asked before a mandatory Staff meeting if anyone objected to the Chaplain opening the mandatory Staff meeting with a prayer. When I voiced my objection, I was told that I was welcomed to leave the room during the prayer. The U.S. Army, especially the Officer corps, is highly right-wing, and religious. It never ceases to amaze me that I, a lifelong Atheist, was able to serve twenty-three years in such an overtly religious organization.

Quote: Arthur Schopenhauer

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Arthur Schopenhauer, Ph.D., German Philosopher, Atheist

Consider the agitated strife of man for food, mates, or children; can this be worth reflection? Certainly not; the cause is the half conscious will to live, and to live fully. “Men are only apparently drawn from in front; in reality they are pushed from behind”; they think they are led on by what they see, when in truth they are driven on by what they feel, –by instincts of whose operation they are half the time unconscious. Intellect is merely the minister of foreign affairs; “nature has produced it for the service of the individual will. Therefore it is only designed to know things so far as they afford motives for the will, but not to fathom them or to comprehend their true being.” The will is the only permanent and unchangeable element in the mind; … it is the will which,” through continuity of purpose, “gives unity to consciousness and holds together all its ideas and thoughts, accompanying them like a continuous harmony.” It is the organ-point of thought.