Che Ahn is a one of the leaders in the New Apostolic Reformation . . . [He] believes the President of South Korea Lee Myung-bak illustrates how government apostles can fulfill their dominionist duties . . . Che Ahn said, “Once we do get to the top, we can make decrees and declarations that shift and influence that whole mountain.”
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Among religions, Christianity in general (and Catholicism in particular) is a great example of an authoritarian hierarchy . . . The thing about being told what to do is that it provides a measure of psychological relief by convincing one that one is absolved of responsibility. Read more . . .
Tonight, we have a treat. The Republican Presidential candidates will vie for the support of America’s Stupidest Voters – the Tea Party party movement. This is not name-calling. This is reporting a verifiable fact. A recent Yale-George-Mason poll shows that 66% of the Tea Party members deny the truth of global warming and evolution. Really, on average, these people excel in stupidity. Interestingly, they also exhibit one of the primary characteristics of idiots – an inflated sense of their own intellectual superiority. Read more . . .
Lofgren, in describing the reasons for his defection from the Republican party, describes a Republican camp that increasingly acts not like a traditional peacetime political organization, but more like an apocalyptic cult or one of the authoritarian movements from early 20th century European history . . . But for the new GOP, compromise of any kind defeats their central purpose, which is political totale krieg. This party’s entire reason for being is conflict and aggression. There is no underlying patriotic instinct to find middle ground with the rest of us, because the party doesn’t have a vision for society that includes anyone outside the tent. Read more . . .
Look back over the last hundred years and you’ll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income — as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 — the nation as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. Germany has grown faster than the United States for the last 15 years, and the gains have been more widely spread . . . How has Germany done it? Mainly by focusing like a laser on education (German math scores continue to extend their lead over American), and by maintaining strong labor unions . . . Reviving the middle class requires that we reverse the nation’s decades-long trend toward widening inequality. Read more . . .
An educational system born in an agrarian culture, and later industrialized to produce compliant employees, mass produces the skills of how, but inhibits questions as to why. The result is a debilitating kind of existential ignorance taught in assembly-line fashion, as millions of people learn to be human doings, but not human beings . . . Willful ignorance is human tragedy writ-large; it contains seeds of destruction for mankind and for most of the species on the earth . . . Why is so little attention given to being responsible for the veracity of one’s opinions ?
. . . It is a sad commentary that legions of our citizens decry elitism instead of striving to become living, breathing examples of it . . . Why are exceptional athletes who break records revered, while exceptionally well-educated people are reviled? . . . Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is a self-destructive, self-defeating void where misspent emotion provides the substance needed to sow distrust and keep hatred at the forefront of public discourse. Read more . . .
Christopher Eric Hitchens (born 13 April 1949)
English-American, Journalist, Author, Essayist,
Polemicist, and Outspoken Anti-theist
Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things because to demystify supposedly ‘holy text dictated by god’ and show that they are man-made and what you have to show is their internal inconsistencies and absurdities. One of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority . . . it is an indispensable thing people can call it blasphemy if they like, but if they call it that they have to assume there is something to be blasphemed – some divine work, well I don’t accept the premise.
The proliferation and public acceptance of willful ignorance is evident when we realize there are millions of history revisionists and creationists among us, many of who hold graduate and post-graduate degrees and occupy high-ranking positions in academia and the political arena
. . . Ultimately, it is the mind that defines our species. The ability to discern fact from fiction is what advances our society. Religious indoctrination of our educators, legislators and political leaders only serve to dilute our collective evolution as a species, stymie our collective intellectual growth and come at a great cost to our mental and physical of existence, especially in the realm of education and politics.
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Always Question Authority 