Jonathan's Web Journal

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Tracy Aviary & Thanksgiving videos - 11-2012

Tracy Aviary visit - 11-17-2012:

Thanksgiving dinner - 11-22-2012:

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Crazed old fart virgins don't know shit - and keep them away from your children

From the BBC today:

"...Pope Benedict reaffirms the importance of the Christian belief in the virgin birth, that Jesus was not conceived through sexual intercourse but through the Holy Spirit."

Isn't that nice.

Back to the sex is evil gig of a bunch of crazed old farts.

An apt response from Andrew Sullivan:
"...The Catholic church does not condemn a whole class of human beings, regardless of their acts, as deemed inferior by God for all time because of their biological nature, having to wait even in the hereafter behind all other groups to become gods themselves. It condemns non-procreative sex for all, and by that teaching uniquely singles out gays for lives of loneliness, celibacy and repression, while permitting the infertile and the elderly to be full members of the church even as they too have non-procreative sex..."

Also check out:

http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2010/04/its-celibacy-stupid/188420/
and
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/apr/01/why-celibacy-should-be-abolished/

Now, then there's the perverse alternative from Mormonism, where we learn that God the Father (Elohim) had sex with Mary the Mother of Jesus.

Didn't they teach you that in Sunday School?
http://www.mormonwiki.org/Conception_of_Jesus

And, once again my friends, Joseph & Brigham, they like'd'em young, and also women who were simultaneously married to other men:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Joseph_Smith%27s_wives
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Brigham_Young%27s_wives

But then, later, it's the f-ing old farts again, who screw things up. Spencer Kimball's hate filled book: http://www.amazon.com/review/RTF9W8850RNTE

Boyd KKK fudge Packer comes out with his anti-masturbation little factory pamphlet:
http://www.lds-mormon.com/only.shtml

Spencer Kimball tells Mormons that oral sex is bad:
http://lds-mormon.com/worthy_letter.shtml
http://lds-mormon.com/worthy_letter1.shtml

So, what's the bottom line?

Crazed old fart virgins don't know shit, AND keep them away from your children.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Response to Sam Harris's 'Science on the Brink of Death'

In Sam Harris's recent blog post "Science on the Brink of Death" it's worth noting that Steve Paulson is interviewing the guy in question. Paulson is a "Templeton wonder boy," and host of the Wisconsin Public Radio program "To the best of our knowledge."

Paulson's connection to Templeton:
http://www.templeton-cambridge.org/fellows/showfellow.php?fellow=6

Paulson's got a lot of smoke to help blow, everywhere he can. But mention of Paulson & public radio reminds me of another public radio host with a Templeton connection, Templeton wondergirl Krista Tippett.
http://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grants/krista-tippett-on-being-pursues-the-big-questions

My current responses:
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/2012/11/nobel-prize-winner-harry-kroto-michael.html

And a response video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nj4KIix2vI

Steve Paulson is very interested indeed in blowing smoke about "spiritual realities" and Templeton loves him for it.

Here is a great website I just found on the whole issue:

http://www.skepdic.com/essays/templeton.html

"...The subtext is clear: secular science alone can’t solve our problems. We must seek our answers in a realm that includes the non-secular..."

"...The TF’s anti-secularism is also evident from the fact that Taylor was nominated for the Templeton prize by the Rev. David A. Martin, Ph.D., emeritus professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and author of A General Theory of Secularization, which, among other things, laments the way religion has been marginalized by sociology and pushed to the periphery of significance in some quarters. (Taylor wrote a blurb for the back cover of Martin’s follow-up: On Secularization: Towards A Revised General Theory, published in 2005.) Taylor’s latest work, A Secular Age, was published last September by Belknap Press. It is being promoted as “the definitive examination of secularization and the modern world.” At 896 pages, it is certainly the heftiest examination of religion in a secular world..."

"...Those who argue that our only hope for peace on earth is to become purely secular will never win the Templeton prize. To win the Templeton Prize, one must be selective and focus on those aspects of 'spirituality' that don’t involve bigotry, hatred, ignorance, or superstition. If you ignore many religions, many religious beliefs, and many religious practices, you can come up with a fine set of ideas showing how spirituality must move back to the center from the periphery if we wish to live free in a new golden age. I look at it a little differently than Charles Taylor does. In my opinion, secularism is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for peace on earth and for understanding the things of this universe. Religion, on the other hand, is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for continued misery and obfuscation of even the simplest truths..."

"...For a million dollars, I'll tell them why that’s so. For another million, I’ll do it in 900 pages..."

Additional links:

On this blog:

Watering down science: Templeton, KCPW & KUER

http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/2012/11/watering-down-science-templeton-kcpw.html

On other blogs and sites:

On Templeton money
http://evolvingthoughts.net/2010/06/on-templeton-money/

Gledhill, Ruth. “Why do we believe in God? £2m study prays for answer,” Timesonline. February 19, 2008,

Horgan, John. “The Templeton Foundation: A Skeptic’s Take,” April 5, 2006,

Park, Robert L. (2008). Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science. Princeton University Press.

The 2009 (not prestigious) Templeton Prize Winner is....

The 2010 (not prestigious) Templeton Prize Winner is....

“Current Prize Winner,” March 14, 2007.

“Scientific study into religious belief launched,” The University of Oxford press release. February 19, 2008.

Mormon funerals - how they usually go down

Yesterday my wife and I attended a viewing for one of my uncles. I was trying to explain Mormon funerals to my wife. Here for example is how they usually go down:

http://marklynnhigbee.blogspot.com

...with it being a session where people get up and bemoan the fact that the only way to see the person who's died is to become a good Mormon - even if the person who died wasn't a particularly faithful or adherent Mormon themselves. Mormon funerals are often morbid demeaning sales pitches that can have little relevance to the life of the deceased person.

At my own mother's funeral I did manage to shed a bit of light though:

The talk I gave at my mother's funeral - February 2010:
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/2010/12/funeral-talk-that-i-gave-in-february.html

Friday, November 16, 2012

making hootenanny pancakes - November 10 & 11, 2012

On Saturday and Sunday we made Hootenanny pancakes. These are also called volcano pancakes. November 10 & 11, 2012

Recipe: http://corvus.freeshell.org/psittacus/three/serotonin/food.html

Clips showing Mr. Bebe helping out:

liberal and conservative religion, think about legacy

liberal and conservative religion, think about legacy - evening commentary Nov. 12, 2012

Problems with liberal religion and culture. Your right to be a zero: apology for overpopulation leading you to choose to be a zero. Be concerned about legacy: do something useful; have kids, or be a great scientist or artist. Do something!

Don't spend your whole life staring at your own navel. Spend some time staring at someone else's instead. Let's burn all the bras we want. Further notes about psychics, crystals, fortune tellers, and Deepak Chopra.

Nobel prize winner Harry Kroto, Michael Shermer, William Lane Craig, and unfortunate Templeton Foundation chumps...

More commentary and videos on the Templeton Foundation, Nobel prize winner Harry Kroto, Michael Shermer, William Lane Craig, and unfortunate Templeton chumps... November 11-12, 2012.

First video above:

Harry Kroto on Templeton. Michael Shermer blows a gasket. Further commentary.

Nobel prize winner Harry Kroto criticizes the Templeton Foundation. Michael Shermer blows a gasket and childishly demands an apology. My evaluation and response. November 11 to 12, 2012

Second video above:

Templeton, Craig, Shermer, and Rand - Nov. 12, 2012

Commentary on the Templeton Foundation, William Lane Craig, Michael Shermer, and Ayn Rand. Also about Steve Paulson of To the Best of Our Knowledge on Wisconsin Public Radio. November 12, 2012.

Related notes & phrases:
Conflating science & religion. Religious apology. Apologizing for genocide. Bible. God. Big bang. Cosmology. KCPW. KUER. Libertarianism. Libertarian. Obamacare. Memetic viruses. Camel's nose. Secularism. Veterans Day. 9/11 liberals. Afghanistan. Iraq. Hitchens. Burqas.

More info on Craig in a previous post:

more articles found on Kauffman, Templeton, and (ick!) William Lane Craig

Friday, November 9, 2012

Mr. Muffbrain blows more smoke about consciousness and (hopefully to him & to Templeton) non-overlapping magisteria

Steve Paulson is by his own account "...a lapsed Christian who's not a strict materialist..."

One full hour of smoke blowing by Steve Paulson on consciousness:

My latest video response:

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Steve Paulson & Stuart Kauffman - god & religion apologists get angry at Dawkins - my response

God & Religion apologists (and Templeton chumps) Steve Paulson (SP) and Stuart Kauffman (SK) tell us, in their article at http://www.salon.com/2008/11/19/stuart_kauffman/, the following:

SP: We should see the ceaseless creativity of nature as sacred, argues biologist Stuart Kauffman, despite what Richard Dawkins might say.
...

SP: You’ve suggested we need a new scientific worldview that goes beyond reductionism and incorporates a religious sensibility. Why?
...

SP: You don’t accept traditional beliefs about God. But are you carving out a different space from atheists, especially the scientists who are atheists?

SK: I absolutely am. Take Richard Dawkins‘ book “The God Delusion.” It’s a very good book. And I know Richard, and he lays out the atheist case well. It appeals to the billion or so of us who do not believe in a supernatural God, and who’ve hidden in the corners, particularly in the United States, where religion is so widely adhered to. But it will do no good whatsoever in bridging the gap between those who do believe in some form of God and the secular humanists like Dawkins and myself who do not. We need something else.

SP: Well, Dawkins does not want to bridge that gap. He wants to convince those religious believers that they’re wrong.

SK: Absolutely. But I think Richard is wrong. Not that there’s a supernatural god. I think that there’s something else. I think the creativity in nature is so stunning and so overwhelming that it’s God enough for me, and I think it’s God enough for many of us if we think about it. You see, Richard’s view, and those of the new atheists, is simply not going to reach out and persuade those who hold to the standard Abrahamic religious views to consider something else. Whereas I hope what I’m saying may help create a new kind of sacred space.

SP: Can you explain what emergence is?

SK There are things that we just can’t deduce from particle physics — life, agency, meaning, value and this thing called consciousness. The fact is that we can act on our own behalf and make choices. So agency is real. With agency comes value. Dinner is either good or bad. There’s consciousness in the universe. We may not be able to explain it, but it’s true. So the first new strand in the scientific worldview is emergence.

SP: And that new scientific view has no room for reductionism?

SK: Right. In physics, and in the meaningless universe of Steven Weinberg, there are only happenings. Balls roll down hills but they don’t do anything. “Doing” does not exist in physics. Physics cannot talk about values because you have to have agency to have values.

... end of excerpts.

And here's an apt response in the comment section for the article:

by Curious1 at http://letters.mobile.salon.com/env/atoms_eden/2008/11/19/stuart_kauffman/permalink/bba3b48ea0aec88ca7ee8f95b28f79a2.html

Salon must have made some deal with Steve Paulson - he has had a whole series of articles here - all with the "God" apologist message. Salon needs to get some other perspectives from Shermer, Harris, Dawkins, etc. (I know they will say that they have done that, but, not nearly as often as Paulson's stuff).
This whole "atheists don't experience awe" thing is such bullshit. It is presumptive audacious pomposity. How the hell do these "god believers" know how atheists or agnostics or "non-believers" feel about "awe". I can tell you that as a former "believer" that I never felt REAL awe until I let go of the supernatural "god" stuff and started to study the real and natural world. It pissed me off that I had spent so much time with the phony baloney "awe" of religion.

And - those who say that Dawkins and other "non-believers" are "foaming at the mouth" fundamentalists is so much BS. I've never heard Dawkins speak in that manner. It just shows me that his detractors just don't like what he is saying. ...end of quote.

And here's my own responses to Paulson & Kauffman:

You guys are basically pretentious a-holes, who pretend that the only way to have awe about the Universe is through the lens of religion. It's not!

Reductionism can bring awe, and it doesn't exclude science working to explain things like morality, love, awe, and existence.

What's the history of science & religion? Religion was a first attempt, and a bad & faulty one. It got key answers wrong! And it worked very hard to kill detractors - and in Islamic countries it still does (because Islam never went through a sustained Renaissance & Enlightenment, or they're having theirs now with our help).

Where Kauffman says "...You see, Richard’s view, and those of the new atheists, is simply not going to reach out and persuade those who hold to the standard Abrahamic religious views to consider something else..."

My response: How the fuck do you know? Have you ever spent one second in any sort of a real religion? I bet not. In real religions they believe in real gods, not in just a nebulous "sense of awe." People's lives in real religion are being curtailed & suppressed. So, the light of science can and does help people see the true light!

Kauffman: "...There’s consciousness in the universe. We may not be able to explain it, but it’s true..."

Response: We'll never explain it unless we try. Science is the best method humans have developed thus far to separate fact from fiction, period. Sounds to me like you don't want us to even try to explain consciousness.

Paulson: "...And that new scientific view has no room for reductionism?"

My response: Not in your myopic Templeton-funded view of the world Steve! In your so-called "science" there's no room for honesty.

Kauffman: "...There are things that we just can’t deduce from particle physics..."

Response: No shit Stuart. That's why we also have neuroscience, and an emerging science of morality that Sam Harris has spoken of.

Kauffman: "...Physics cannot talk about values because you have to have agency to have values..."

My response: A whole boatload of smoke just came out of your bum Stew. You're blowing smoke and so is Mr. Paulson. May I suggest that you both take your heads out of your proverbial asses and check out where awe really comes from: From continuing to use science as a means of exploring! You both are essentially asking that we stop exploring! That we just sit around thinking about how things are not explainable! And that way, we can placate people still held back by the Abrahamic concept of god? I don't think so! Homey don't play that! You're both being fucking lazy!

Excuse my French and expletives my friends, but these types of bozos don't know where true awe can come from: From finding out how we really came to be here. Keep searching. Keep pushing. And when people are being oppressed by cults, just simply replacing one definition of the word god with another isn't enough! You've got to be honest about definitions, and honest about what the history of science & religion shows. Which one held humanity back for thousands of years, and which one is leading us to the stars?

Confirmation that KCPW receives a Templeton supported program for free: To the Best of Our Knowledge

Copy of email received from KCPW confirming that they recieve To the Best of Our Knowledge for free:

Subject: Re: drop To the best of our knowledge, move the Takeaway back to live, and drop Car Talk
From: Eric Ray <eray@kcpw.org>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2012 11:20:36 -0600

Jonathan,
Thanks for your note. We always appreciate hearing from our listeners. Let me address the programs you have mentioned.

To The Best of Our Knowledge: You obviously have strong things to say about the show's content, and it may not be your thing, however it's obvious by our ratings that the show does have a fair share of listeners. And to your point that KCPW would save money by dropping the show. Well, the show comes to KCPW free of charge, so no, we would not save money by dropping the program, but would likely have to pay if we were to look for a replacement.

The Takeaway: This is a tough one. We were shocked when the show was re-purposed as an afternoon news magazine and removed from the morning hours. That said, the show is live during our 7 am hour - which would mean breaking up the flow of Morning Edition with a random hour of The Takeaway - and any program director would tell you that's not good programming. Unfortunately with shows produced on the east coast, west coast stations suffer. We feel having a news magazine hour during the lunch hour is best for KCPW, despite our listeners not having the opportunity to participate. We have the same issue with On Point.

Car Talk: You are correct here, which is why KCPW /has/ cancelled the program. We announced the cancellation in August and only ran the program through the end of the new episodes. We now air The Moth Radio Hour on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Eric Ray
Station Manager/Program Director
KCPW 88.3 and 105.3 FM
Salt Lake City, Utah
eray@kcpw.org

On 10/26/2012 9:55 AM, Jonathan wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> As a contributor to KCPW and a listener (under FCC regulations) I
> would like to make the following programming suggestion:
>
> Drop the show, To the best of our knowledge.
>
> The show is largely a front for pseudoscience and obfuscationary
> religious apologetics and white washing, and the group the Templeton
> Foundation, whose mission is to fund such things.
>
> Please replace the show with something more useful and helpful. KUER
> refuses to drop the show. You can save money & all our our time by
> dropping it from your schedule.
>
> Secondly I would like to suggest that the show The Takeway can only
> really be useful if it's live. A big part of the show is near real
> time interaction with listeners. Tape delaying the show means we don't
> really get to participate.
>
> Lastly & sadly, please drop Car Talk. This long running show is, from
> what I understand, on near-permanent re-run status, with possibly
> occasional more recent inserts popped in. The operators of the program
> really aren't making new material - just digging up old stuff.
>
> http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/08/entertainment/la-et-st-car-talks-click-and-clack-ends-20120608
>

...end of quote

Watering down science: Templeton, KCPW & KUER

Draft email to: esweeney@kcpw.org, eray@kcpw.org
cc: news@kuer.org, Mike.Crane@wpr.org

For the FCC comment files, regarding KCPW, KUER, and Wisconsin Public Radio:

Here's the most recent things we've learned about the Templeton sponsored show, To the Best of Our Knowledge:

1. On KCPW, they receive it for free. Presumably there's a similar situation over at KUER.

2. Popularity is more important than content at some public radio stations.

3. Stations receiving government funding refuse to cancel this religion-advocacy program.

Templeton is apparently enabling their flagship To the Best of Our Knowledge program to sneak under the radar, rather in a similar fashion to how "creation science" advocates try to sneak religion into science class. Same smoke & mirrors.

Remember when KCPW lost 1010 AM to a Catholic radio station? I would imagine that the current owners of 1010 AM in Utah would be more than willing to their programs also on 88.3 and 105.3 FM in Salt Lake - for free. And I bet KCPW could find an audience for this. Or how about: Rush. Howard Stern. Sports. Or some other radio equivalent of porn? As long as it's popular, that's the most important thing, right? But, here's a more accurate and rational response to this Templeton-connected snake oil being foisting upon us:

By Dr. Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago:

"...I know I bang on about Templeton and its prizes and huge grants, but I see the Templeton Foundation as the #1 force in America devoted to watering down science with religion, thereby confusing the two and eroding habits of rational thinking..."

as from http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/templeton-uses-its-wealth-to-debase-philosophy/

Steve Paulson, a "journalist" on To the Best of Our Knowledge, has been honored in a high profile way by the Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Program in Science & Religion. http://www.templeton-cambridge.org/fellows/showfellow.php?fellow=6

So, what's the deal with the Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Program?

"The Templeton Foundation organizes an annual meeting in Cambridge where science journalists are invited (and paid very handsomely, not to speak but to listen! When were you last paid to go and be a part of the audience at a conference?). A few years ago, when I was more naive than I am now (and not knowing that the audience were being paid to listen) I agreed to speak (unpaid) at one of these meetings (I described the experience in The God Delusion.) If I were invited again, I would decline – indeed I did decline when I was invited the following year. One of this year's paid journalists, Edwin Cartlidge, wrote a letter to Anthony Grayling and Daniel Dennett, soliciting their cooperation. These two distinguished philosophers shared their correspondence with a group of people, including me. Dan's and Anthony's reasons for not cooperating with Templeton seemed to me so good, and so well expressed, that I suggested that they should be more widely publicized. All three gentlemen gave their permission. In Mr Cartlidge's case it was especially gracious of him because he is obviously vulnerable to being tarred with the Templeton brush. I hope that commenters on this thread will reserve their fire for the Templeton organization rather than Edwin Cartlidge himself. I see him as in much the same position I was in when I agreed to go, a victim of exactly the kind of subversion of science that Templeton is making its specialty.

Richard Dawkins"

as from http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/3973

So, presumably this letter I am sending is reaching people who claim to be "journalists," right? Can you follow the money?

Dawkins claims that journalists get paid to go to Templeton sponsored conferences?!? And, their camel's-nose-under-the-tent radio program To the Best of Our Knowledge gets carried for free on KCPW & presumably on other so-called public radio stations? What's going on here?

From Gil Gaudia:

"The Camel Is Heading for Your Tent
...
In October 2007, the Bible Literacy Project (BLP) reported that their glitzy textbook The Bible and Its Influence had been adopted by the Alabama State Board of Education, which unanimously approved it for statewide use as a comprehensive program. "This is major news in the field of education," said Bible Literacy Project Chairman Chuck Stetson. "While academic study of the Bible is legal in all 50 states, this decision means that any school in the state of Alabama can purchase our textbook with state-provided funds until 2013."
BLP is a study that was funded by the John Templeton Foundation, an organization that attempts to appear ideologically neutral, but nevertheless appears to be behind many efforts to "Christianize" American politics and education, indeed the country. A typical example of the type of funding The Templeton Foundation provides is one announced recently by the Baylor University News, "the Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR) has received a $378,862 grant from the John Templeton Foundation to fund ISR's Initiative on the Economics of Religion ... (F)our scholars [will use the funds] to investigate the connection between religion and economic growth and the effects of government intervention in religious markets on the practice of religion."
According to Media Transparency, an organization that tracks funding for conservative causes, a few of the recent top recipients of Templeton dough (and how much dough), are self-evidently connected to religion. They include "Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences" ($23,122,319); "Philadelphia Center for Religion and Science" ($4,811,892); "Science and Spirit Resources, Inc." ($4,632,933); "Metanexus Institute on Religion and Science" ($4,762,514); and the "Association of Unity Churches" ($3,509,971)..."

as from http://www.infidels.org/kiosk/article782.html

On a recent To the Best of our Knowledge program KCPW and KUER listeners were subjected to hearing a woman bemoan the fact that her son no longer believed in God.

Who's god?

Which god?

It's not up to my public radio stations to ask that I believe in any gods or any religion. That's what the Catholic station on 1010 AM here is for. It's what the other Bible beater stations are for.

Enough is enough. The religions have their channel he Bible Beaters have their channels. Rush has his. The sports freaks have theirs. And, the little spaces taken up by public radio are supposed to be for the rest of us - those of us who are children of the Enlightenment. Your taking on this program is a betrayal of that and of our trust.

----end of draft message

Further details via past blog posts:

Steve Paulson & Stuart Kauffman - god & religion apologists get angry at Dawkins - my response

Confirmation that KCPW receives a Templeton supported program for free: To the Best of Our Knowledge

more articles found on Kauffman, Templeton, and (ick!) William Lane Craig

Mr. Muffbrain blows more smoke about consciousness and (hopefully to him & to Templeton) non-overlapping magisteria

Krista Tippett, Templeton, and the denial of basic human rights

The Templeton Bribe to journalists & scientists who whitewash the problems of religion, and who conflate science and religion

University of Utah & KUER promotes rich conservative sugar daddy's god & his religion

The distortion of science via Templeton's chumps

Related videos:

More videos at: Mr. Muffbrain blows more smoke about consciousness and (hopefully to him & to Templeton) non-overlapping magisteria

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Yes-Bama! - you Ayn Randian Social Darwinistic Psychopaths!

He did it! We did it! Obama won, over the Ayn Rand & Ron Paul idiots, the social Darwinists, and the sociopaths and psychopaths.

Psychics are charlatans who prey on the gullible and uneducated

Psychics are, generally speaking, charlatans who use word games and common sense to prey upon the gullible and uneducated. Good work if you can get it, but let's not pretend that it should ever be taken seriously.

Good videos:

By Richard Dawkins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1ejmKC_DiM

Derren Brown - longer interview - part 1 of 6:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idVxRE8uM-A

Derren Brown on faith healers - similar charlatans to psychics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYjgeayfYPI

"...where hope is peddled at the price."

James Randi exposes James Hydrick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlfMsZwr8rc

BBC on the issue - exposes three mediums:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4qGfNViVN8

Penn & Teller:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQnqRaVT9tY

Psychics are leeches, sometimes self-deceived, often damaging, and always either wrong or right by fucking happenstance.

Similarly, we can easily replace the title "psychic" with "cultish religious founder." Same people. Same difference. Same result.

Friday, November 2, 2012

Hypocrisy and a pointed lack of morality with Mormon religious leaders

Fawn Brodie helped unearth info about Smith's horn dog and womanizing ways. h ttp://wivesofjosephsmith.org/

He liked them young and also simultaneously married to other men. His second brain apparently gave him revelations all the time about women his "god" intended him to meet and marry. Brigham Young had a similar proclivity. Here's Mark Twain's comments on Young's wives:
http://www.telelib.com/authors/T/TwainMark/prose/roughingit/roughingit15.html

"...Brigham Young’s harem contains twenty or thirty wives. They said that some of them had grown old and gone out of active service, but were comfortably housed and cared for in the henery..." - from Roughing It chaper XV

Also "...Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter.

I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here—until I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically 'homely' creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, 'No—the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure—and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.'"

...as from Roughing It chapter XIV
http://www.telelib.com/authors/T/TwainMark/prose/roughingit/roughingit14.html

Maybe Young's wives were homely, although perhaps when they were younger they looked better. But in any case the morality of Smith & Young is a stark contrast to the crazed puritanism of people like Spencer Kimball & Boyd Packer, and Kimball's hate filled book Miracle of Forgiveness - used as a virtual bible for all young Mormons to help them learn to fear normal human sexuality.

Review: http://www.amazon.com/review/RTF9W8850RNTE

"This book is a negativistic, manipulative, hate-filled waste of paper and ink, written by a guy who had no professional training in Religion, Philosophy, Divinity, Psychology or any other field that might qualify him to provide counseling for individuals who are going through some sort of crisis. In short, Mr. Kimball is only capable of repeating lame nineteenth-century folk superstitions as solutions to real problems in life. This man's advice, as codified in this book, has ruined countless peoples' lives - some to the point where they completely lost hope and killed themselves. What kind of counseling is that? If you have a personal moral or spiritual dilemma, go to a trained professional: avoid this garbage and save your sanity and your life."

Damn fucking right.

Related bio on David Koresh:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0466205/bio
"...Koresh got married to a 14 year old girl but decided that he could have a 'harem of many wives' as he wanted..."

Carl Sagan is much more refreshing. Too bad many religions don't let you be intellectually and emotionally honest while simultaneously being a member.

Monday, October 22, 2012

feeding the birds at Sugarhouse Park

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Exmormon conference, PTSD, and angry Muslims protesting against atheists in Australia

Yesterday at the Exmormon Foundation conference we heard a man speak about how his Mormon mission gave him PTSD.

Photos: http://public.fotki.com/petcrows-October-2012/10-20-12/
video: http://www.56.com/u13/v_NzcwNzk3MzA.html

More info with conference audio coming soon:
http://www.exmormonfoundation.org/conference2012.html

--------------------

Angry Muslims protesting against atheists in Australia:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCfwcd_Ajg4

Notice how the Muslims want key atheists to burn in hell, or die.

What is the appropriate response to such threats? MORE SPEECH.

Here's a good example of such courageous and apparently appropriate speech - the recent Charlie Hebdo cartoons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4A5Y67Q5TM

It's worth noting that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has to live with round the clock security. Having to live your life with security guards around all the time does I'm sure tend to sharpen your perspective.

Her recent Newsweek article:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/09/16/ayaan-hirsi-ali-on-the-islamists-final-stand.html

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Where to park for free in Salt Lake, and saving the Jordan River

Now that pompous mayor Ralph Becker and his idiot cohorts want everyone to pay for parking until 8PM (instead of 6PM like it used to be) on weekdays, here's where you can park for free in Salt Lake:

In back of the Salt Palace next to the Buddhist Temple: http://tinyurl.com/9gcvecn

Take the train, which is free to downtown from the Salt Lake Central station:
http://goo.gl/maps/3zkSy

Parking at the second place is not limited to 2 hours. Park there and take the free "trax" train to the malls & so on. You can also take the train to the nice big library: http://www.letsrideuta.com/tag/free-fare-zone/

Parking on Saturdays is supposedly still free, but check the signs on the new meters they've put everywhere.

Here's another key reason why Becker is an idiot:
http://westviewmedia.org/soccer-complex-on-hold-by-michael-mcfall/
...his attempts to destroy a part of the Jordan River parkway.

Jordan River Restoration Network: http://www.jrrn.org/

Previous attempted contact with Becker over these issues reveals the man is very pompous and has placed himself on a nearly unreachable pedestal.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Tag along friends, and problems with Ambien and Mormonism

There's this woman named Cindy who's a tag-along friend to a sister of mine. She was unfortunately converted to Mormonism in Ohio while my sister was there on a Mormon mission. Cindy has an issue with knowing what to say when. She's been fired from many jobs not only for this, but also for stealing money. She's also stolen money from my father. She's rather like a leech.

One additional key issue is that Cindy acts like she is a family member, a sister, and she takes liberties assuming she is, liberties revolving around making snide and derogatory and cutting remarks when other "family members" (according to her small brain) act in a way which she doesn't like.

In December of 2010 I dumped Cindy from my facebook friend list. During that holiday season I decided to have less contact with other people because of some epiphany work I was going through. She became angry at this and made a cutting remark then. Then I dropped her from my facebook friend list.

Subsequently I heard that she had stolen money from my father (hearing this from him), and that she was continuing to ask for money on a frequent basis from him.

My sister who went on a Mormon mission to Ohio has had a problem with Ambien. She also used to live the life of a rich woman, spending her days in the fluffy dream world of someone who need only concern herself with clothes, shoes, horse riding & training, spas, facials, and so on. Then her now ex-husband went bankrupt and she divorced him. Then she went straight onto Ambien. And Cindy was there during the Ambien years, acting as a bad influence, and apparently helping my sister get even more Ambien.

You know how some pretty women have tag along less pretty friends? Well, Cindy is the much less pretty one, and she's also been a bad influence - especially during the high Ambien fuelded druggie days of my sister.

My sister is in recovery from Ambien, and her brain is slowly coming back. But there's still division in our family revolving around her own past addiction and choice to use that terrible drug. But I think that division is also connected to Mormonism.

So now we come again to the wedding of another sister of mine. This Cindy woman was invited to another sisters wedding, because this other sister lives far away and is fairly disconnected from what's happening with the family back in Utah - by her own choice. But because she's disconnected she doesn't know that it's not really possible to just assume things are a certain way when they are not.

From the first entrance of myself & my wife into the wedding room Cindy demanded to know why I dumped her as a Facebook friend in December of 2010. I told her I didn't want to talk about it. Later she asked if she could take a picture of myself, my wife, and our new son, because she claimed she was doing this as a favor to my sister who was getting married. I told her "no thank you." Then she said "your loss."

As I was preparing to leave with my new family I walked over to Cindy and told her "stay the fuck away from me - you are not part of our family." She responded "how rude." But this woman has spent her life making rude and cutting remarks to other people.

My Ambien-damaged sister should realize that when people were upset that she was destroying her life with her use of that terrible drug, that we were trying to do her and everyone a favor.

In Utah there's a lot of women on anti-depressants. Why? Because Mormonism drives them fucking crazy. So perhaps it's understandable why one of my sisters went down that path. But, on the other hand, I have no obligation to treat as a sister a friend of hers who tries the take the liberty of assuming she's a sister of mine. And, I also am not particularly pleased at the turmoil Ambien, and indirectly & directly Mormonism, has played a roll in dividing my family and keeping us apart. Also if it weren't for Mormonism, this retarded fat ugly rude tag along woman named Cindy would have never come to Utah, as a moocher and tag along little puppy friend to my Amdien-damaged sister.

Now, as my own father has dementia, and as our family drifts apart, at the very least I have my own new family.

When you see how fucked up your own older family can become, at the very least you can determine to try to do something different with your own. And one important thing to recognize is that passive aggression is still aggression. Mormon people are famous for this. They say they love you and want to care for you. But they also believe your views of the world are evil. So in the end they really aren't nice people.

People who believe you're going to hell (or in their case, not to the highest level of heaven) because you don't kiss the ass of their god & prophet aren't nice people, no matter how many batches of cookies they may also bring to your door in the mean time. It's a means to an end for them.

And, if it weren't for Mormonism, my sister would probably have never gotten a divorce, and would have never been on Ambien (hopefully). Also another sister would never have felt the need to leave Utah, live the life of a traveling partying rebel, and not had a family of her own - because of her apparent distaste for the stuffiness of ultra-conservative Mormonism. Salt Lake has become much more liberal while she was away though. But one key thing to keep in mind is that religion can and does divide families, keep them apart, and destroy lives in the process. Unless you're educated about what the facts really are, you have no idea.

There can be some good that comes from religion, and religion is a natural phenomena. So it is a mixed bag, with good and bad, extreme damage and some good happening simultaneously. The more honest a religion can be the better though - the ones that allow their members to be intellectually and emotionally honest while still being a member. The more conservative a religion is the less this tends to be allowed though.

Friday, September 21, 2012

"The left" and Islamic fundamentalism

Speaking as a left-leaning anti-authoritarian myself:

What is up with the left wing in America?

I think the Iraq war made them very upset, very upset indeed. So much so that they are now engaging in several logical fallacies and conflationary actions themselves - primarily in response to their own hatred for the right, their hatred for people like George W. Bush and so on.

But, one thing the left wing lacks is experience with what it's like to live in a real religion. They have no idea what it's like. Their primarily experience with religion is light and fluffy. So, they have no concept of what it's like to be a woman or a man living in a sexually repressed culture - in other words what it's like to live in an Islamic country.

Remember George Galloway?
Here's a debate between him & Hitchens:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6804714963382152969

Galloway is a buddy of Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now(?):
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/1/canadian_judge_upholds_government_decision_to

Remember Iran, where they kill people for all sorts of otherwise trivial reasons? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Iran

Do you know Galloway works for Iran's Press TV?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySTJLeMN4M0

What's up with the connection between the "left" and Islamic fundamentalism? Galloway's own actions by working for Press TV shows they are now the same thing.

I don't want to be a tool of the left or the right. Not of Israel nor of Palestine.

Dictators should be opposed & defeated. All of them, everywhere.

Freedom of speech should resign supreme, as should the right to offend cultish religions & their brain washed followers.

People who live in cultural prisons should be freed.

Offensive speech should never be banned. Rather, it should simply be responded to with other speech.

Just because the right to say certain things in certain countries has been and is being abridged, that doesn't make it right. Living together as a community doesn't mean forced silence. That's no solution for anything. It just causes feelings to be suppressed - to simmer until they boil over. Let everyone speak. Let there be a crucible. That's what true democracy is all about. That's what science is about. And only then can everyone truly figure out what is right & what is wrong, and separate fact from fiction.

Do we have "democracy now?" Can we have "democracy now?" We could well ask Amy Goodman and her buddy George Galloway. But can we have true democracy within Islamic sharia, where even the supposed moderates cry for censorship of cartoons and films? No.

Sadly, and unfortunately, the ultra left now IS the same thing as Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic sharia. This happened due to anger, ignorance, and stupidity. What's the solution? Freedom of speech & education. Left originated censorship and self hatred is just as unappealing as right originated censorship and self hatred.

------------

Oh, and p.s., a reading of the posts on the following page indicates that Pakistan is a prison. And so is Iran.

http://blogs.aljazeera.com/liveblog/topic/anti-islam-film-protests-10701

Before September 11, 2001 I never thought much about the Muslim world. But the prison they live in made them so upset, some of their representatives lashed out in anger & violence on that day. Bush may have overreacted with Iraq, but not with Afghanistan. Anyway...