The pope said more in his homily than “look behind the pretty sparkly glitter.” He said . . .
Anyone wishing to enter the place of Jesus’ birth has to bend down. It seems to me that a deeper truth is revealed here, which should touch our hearts on this holy night: if we want to find the God who appeared as a child, then we must dismount from the high horse of our “enlightened” reason. . .
There’s the voice of the cleric telling you to ditch the best thing about you so that you can be stupid and ignorant so that he can go on wearing expensive robes.
No we must not, you evil bastard.
Category Archives: Writing
Book Review: Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights, 1750-1790
The great names one learns at school — Voltaire and Rousseau, Newton and Locke, Leibniz and Kant — turn out never to have been willing or able to think themselves through to the new. Israel’s real heroes were hard-nosed atheists, materialists and revolutionaries who brooked no compromise with the status quo.
Israel traces the lineage of this Radical Enlightenment to Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century philosopher who serves here as the father of all atheists and “one substance” materialists who rejected the suspiciously spiritualist dualism of mind and body. Spinoza was certainly a radical critic of Scripture, who denied miracles and seemed to equate “God” with nature.
Young Goethe in Love: In fact, just another love story
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832), poet, novelist, dramatist, philosopher, naturalist and physicist, was a towering figure in German and world culture. . .
In the film’s production notes, [German filmmaker Philipp] Stölzl writes: “Goethe is Germany’s most famous and important poet and philosopher, yet there has never been a relevant feature film about this extraordinary personality. There’s a reason for this, too: Goethe could do everything and was everything! He was handsome, came from a wealthy family, wrote successful novels, theater plays and poems, was an accomplished horseback rider and fencer, invented roller skates and discovered the pharyngeal bone, and he was a natural scientist, privy councilor, traveler, artist, minister, lawyer, and much, much more—all in all, a universal genius and thus a completely non-dramatic character for a feature film.”
Quote: Al Stefanelli
Al Stefanelli
Author, Journalist, Outspoken Atheist,
Blog, “A Voice Of Reason In An Unreasonable World”
Reason is to examine a statement, ponder the validity of it, consider the source of it, question the authority of it, search for the truth behind it and make an intelligent assessment of it.
Christopher Hitchens: Forced Merriment: The True Spirit of Christmas
One of my many reasons for not being a Christian is my objection to compulsory love. How much less appealing is the notion of obligatory generosity. To feel pressed to give a present is also to feel oneself passively exerting the equivalent unwelcome pressure upon other people. . .
But the Christmas cycle imposes a deadening routine and predictability. This is why the accidental genius of Charles Dickens is to have made, of Ebenezer Scrooge, the only character in the story who has any personality to him—and the one whose stoic attempt at a futile resistance is invoked under the breath more than most people care to admit. . .
It also offends—by being so much in my face, without my having requested it and in spite of polite entreaties to desist—another celebrated precept about the right to be let alone. A manger on your lawn makes me yawn. A reindeer that strays from your lawn to mine is a nuisance at any time of year. Angels and menorahs on the White House lawn are an infraction of the Establishment Clause, which is as much designed to prevent religion from being corrupted by the state as it is to protect the public square from clerical encroachment.
The “wall of separation” has to be patrolled in small things as well as big ones.
Faith no more
Robert Reich: The Great Republican Crackup: How Angry, White, Southern Men Took Over the GOP and Made Our Government Into a War Zone
. . . today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority – predominantly Southern, and mainly rural – that has repeatedly attacked American democracy in order to get its way.
. . . This isn’t to say all Tea Partiers are white, Southern or rural Republicans – only that these characteristics define the epicenter of Tea Party Land.
America has had a long history of white Southern radicals who will stop at nothing to get their way – seceding from the Union in 1861, refusing to obey Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, shutting the government in 1995, and risking the full faith and credit of the United States in 2010.
Christopher Hitchens Memorial Scarlet A
Image found here on 12.22.2011
The Christianity Meme: A Viral Infection of the Mind
The mind virus of religious belief preys on fear, warps instinctive attributes and skews morality. It contradicts responsible behavior, reason and compassion. It retards free will and causes a lack of ability to differentiate between rational and irrational choices. It allows the religionist to exist in a perfectly rational way in many other aspects of their existence in society while the infected area of the mind is stuck in a cyclical delusion. . .
Conversion Immersion…
Just as a physical virus does, Fundamental Christianity protects itself by sequestering the infected host against outside attack. Thus, the “world” is discredited. Any evidence that is contrary to doctrine is willfully ignored and taught as persecution. In the real world, this stunting of intelligence causes a decline in mental health due to the allowance of instruction only through approved church doctrine. . .
Reason Is The Enemy…
The viral use of fear is particularly effective on believers who were already ignorant and superstitious prior to their conversion, but the virus of fundamental religion has propagated and adapted well only until very recently. . . The virus of fundamental Christianity is getting most of the press and although it is often marketed as the true religion of love and tolerance, inwardly it is a destructive force that causes division, promotes willful ignorance and retards intellectual growth. . .
An Atheist’s “Great Hope”
The rise of atheism on planet Earth has already caused fundamental religious belief problems maintaining itself in our post-modern world. Religious apologetics have stagnated. Like a virus that is running toward the end of its course, the meme of fundamentalism is losing its ability to replicate.
Did Eisenhower Predict The End Of The GOP?
Found at MoveOn.org on 12.21.2011





