In the past, I’ve discussed how Easter has been co-opted and corrupted by Christianity from what had been a pagan festival of fertility. What was once a celebration of life and our sexual nature has become for most Christians a mythology of a composite character drawn from Ishtar, Horus and Eostre. This wild tale of “an all-powerful god from outer space [who] decided to send his unborn son on a suicide mission to planet Earth” has been mocked by Bill Maher. But even worse is the idea of a God-man who died for the expiation of human “sin,” then made a bodily resurrection. If true, that would be a horrifying refuge–a “get out of jail free” card for the most immoral and irresponsible among us. But that’s what they’re claiming. That’s what they would have us celebrate, instead of the “circle of life.” That transition from something primal and real to a pallid and degenerate mythology is well documented, so I don’t need to elaborate further.

But trying to prop up this house of cards at Easter 2010 must be like living in a carnival fun-house. The distortions, lies and fantasies have piled on top of one another so quickly, there isn’t time to even evaluate them any more. The only thing that’s left for a person of faith to do to maintain their world view is to just stumble from the crooked floor to the warped mirror: deny, deny, deny and keep praying. When that fails, accuse the secular of persecution, and all manner of imaginary crimes, all the while appealing to people’s fears of a godless society.

The real arguments over religion have lost any of the relevance they might have once had. Even ‘debates’ have become a joke, with believers increasingly recycling every fallacious argument, no matter how many times or ways they’ve been called on it. It’s now just “defend the faith at all costs.” ”Whatever you’re claiming, it’s wrong,” they repeat in various ways with growing desperation to anyone who remains sympathetic.

But even the religious are being forced to admit the news has become surreal. For an atheist, it’s hard to muster any more than feeble outrage. The scandals keep rolling in, and nothing ever gets done. I mean, at what point do you just throw up your hands? Should that be my response to the Pope protecting child rape and torture and refusing to own up to it? Really, who thought they’d live to see that day? Who thought they’d live to see the day those demanding Papal accountability would be compared by the Vatican to persecutors of Jews.

I guess I’m not quite that cynical. I’m with Christopher Hitchens, who recently called for the arrest of said Pope. I still think people can snap out of their stupor to see religion for what it is. I still think we’d live in a better world if we got rid of our double standards and held people accountable for their delusions. Whether we’re talking about the Tea Party or the defenders of the Vatican in 2010, we’re having a far-right flameout of epic proportions. The only good news is that it can’t last.

The future still points toward greater rationality and coming to grips with age-old human follies. Those who have reaped the short-term benefits of the cover-ups, the lies, the unasked questions, the failure to challenge authority, or just plain incuriosity are in for a rude awakening. It can’t come soon enough.

So to that end, here’s a few samplings from today’s Easter-basket of denial:

Cardinal Tells Pope: Faithful Not Influenced By Gossip

“Also with you are the faithful who do not let themselves be influenced by gossip,” Sodano said in Italian, using the word “chiacchiericcio,” which means chatter or gossip. “May the Lord continue to sustain your mission at the service of the church in the world.”

In his Easter message, the pope did not address the scandal that encompasses high-profile abuse cases in several countries including Ireland, France, the United States, Mexico and his native Germany. More and more people have come forward complaining that as children they were victims of abuse by religious leaders, and that the church did little or nothing to stop it.

So now the heinous crime of sexual abuse by trusted priests has become “gossip.” That’s almost as rich as Bill Donohue’s outrageous claim on Larry King Live that priests were not pedophiles because their victims were post-pubescent. You think I’m kidding:

The head of the influential Catholic League says that the priest who allegedly sexually abused 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin did not engage in pedophilia because ‘the vast majority of the victims [were] post-pubescent.”

Bill Donohue made the argument during a raucous debate on Larry King Live Tuesday night, during which he repeatedly pointed the finger to homosexuality — rather than pedophilia — as the cause of the church’s sex abuse problems.

“You’ve got to get your facts straight,” Donohue said, addressing sex abuse victim Thomas Roberts. “I’m sorry. If I’m the only one that’s going to deal with facts tonight then that’ll be it. The vast majority of the victims are post-pubescent. That’s not pedophilia, buddy. That’s homosexuality.”

A rather surprised panel of commentators — which included pop icon Sinead O’Connor — then began to debate at what age, exactly, does sexual attraction to children cease to be pedophilia.

Donohue argued the age at which children become “post-pubescent” is around 12 or 13.

Coming from the likes of Donohue, this line of reasoning is not even shocking. But wait, there’s more. Secularism is now not only responsible for “hatred of God,” mass murder and man-boy love, but now also loneliness in old age:

Secular Society A Fast Track to Loneliness

“I have emphasised human loneliness this Easter because that is what expert observers of our society are saying is a real problem,” Dr Jensen said.

“It is what we would expect to occur given the secularist philosophy we have embraced.

“This philosophy emphasises the individual and individual rights, it invites us to invent our own lives and it undervalues commitment to other human beings.

“It is a recipe for loneliness and the path to a very lonely old age.”

Bishop Fisher said godlessness in the 20th Century led to Nazism, Stalinism, abortion and mass murder in his Good Friday address while in a similar address Dr Jensen said atheists hate god.

And finally, here’s the worst rotten Easter egg hiding under the fake plastic religious grass, an unrepentant murderer using the Bible to justify his killing:

Scott Roeder Gets Maximum for Tiller Murder–Life, With No Parole for 50 Years

In January, Roeder was found guilty in Tiller’s murder as well as of assault charges stemming from his attack on Tiller. It took a jury just 37 minutes to find him guilty.

During today’s day-long sentencing hearing, Roeder read a lengthy statement in his own defense that included details descriptions of abortion procedures and the fetal reactions to them.

Roeder admitted that he killed Tiller and compared an abortion to premeditated murder. He said that the state of Kansas was to blame for the abortion “holocaust” through its law legalizing abortions.

“The blame of George Tiller’s death lies more with the state of Kansas than with me,” he said. “George Tiller was their hit man.”

The statement cited the Old Testament of the Bible, as well as a book by Paul Hill entitled, “Why Shoot an Abortionist?”

Roeder also criticized the court’s handling of his trial, arguing at one point that prosecutors were allowed to show “pictures of George Tiller lying a pool of blood,” but he was not allowed to introduce pictures of aborted fetuses.

[...]

“If I didn’t do it, those babies would die the next day,” Roeder testified, describing how he shot and killed Tiller in a church vestibule.

Roeder’s testimony, gruesome at times, proved immensely difficult for Tiller’s family, who openly cried in court. He detailed how he walked up to Tiller at the Reform Lutheran Church, put a gun to the doctor’s head and pulled the trigger.

He told the jury of how his religious faith had convinced him that what Tiller was doing was wrong and how he had considered cutting off the doctor’s hands with a sword. When told Tiller’s clinic had closed and asked if he felt regret, Roeder replied simply, “No I don’t.”

Cutting off a doctor’s hands with a sword. Seems Christianity and Islam are not that different, after all. In what crazy alternate universe do the good people of Earth let such systems go unchallenged, and even celebrate them?

An article forwarded to me by a friend brings up the old New-Age argument, this time dolled up in pseudoscientific garb.

Comes Robert Lanza, MD, a biologist, proposing to rip up the scientific frame in favor of his pet theory, “biocentrism.” He proposes that one day we will discover that time and space are both products of consciousness, and will be able to move through them at will:

Sometime in the future science will be able to create realities that we can’t even begin to imagine. As we evolve, we’ll be able to construct other information systems that correspond to other realities, universes based on logic completely different from ours and not based on space and time.

Immanuel Kant declared in 1781 that space and time were real, but only indeed as properties of the mind. These algorithms are not only the key to consciousness, but why space and time − indeed the properties of matter itself - are relative to the observer. But a new theory called biocentrism suggests that space and time may not be the only tools that can be used to construct reality. At present, our destiny is to live and die in the everyday world of up and down. But what if, for example, we changed the algorithms so that instead of time being linear, it was 3-dimensional like space? Consciousness would move through the multiverse. We’d be able to walk through time just like we walk through space. And after creeping along for 4 billion years, life would finally figure out how to escape from its corporeal cage. Our destiny would lie in realities that exist outside of the known physical universe.

Go read the whole article. It really doesn’t get any better. Just another breathless fantasy to help us escape from the reality that we have short lives, over which we have very limited control, and we must spend them on a small insignificant planet, and we die all-too-soon.

I find the article extremely vague and unconvincing–bordering on intellectually offensive. If this is true, let Dr. Lanza define the parameters of his new world so we can all take advantage of expanded awareness and “travel through time in three dimensions.” Until then, it’s just another fantasy conjecture by a “frame ripper” which distracts the gullible and muddies the waters of what we do actually know. It’s so nice that he’s laid it all out for us in one small essay, and destroyed our quaint little scientific understanding.

He’s as wrong as non-scientists about the implications of quantum theory. People think that it is conscious observation that changes the behavior of particles. This is wrong in two ways:

1) Even if thinking could affect the position of particles, any real-world object has so many particles that the effects of any number of conscious real-world observers would null out. For example, one gram of carbon has 12 x 602,214,150,000,000,000,000,000 carbon atoms (Avogadro’s number).

2) It is bombarding a particle with another particle or wave that changes its position or velocity. This is what Heisenberg meant when he said “observe.” It doesn’t mean consciously “look at.” It means “bounce another particle off of,” stealing or adding energy or momentum.

Lanza’s also wrong about dreams. Simply, they are simulations our brains create, very similar to the ones we create while awake. When we walk into a room, we mostly see a simulation of the room. The human visual system can only take in a very small amount of detail at once (from the tiny area of the retina called the fovea), which is why we often don’t notice small changes in our surroundings if they happen slowly.

So here we have someone who might as well be illiterate about both quantum theory and the nature of dreams proposing a new theory of time. Biocentrism? Huh?? He might as well be that medieval town crier (previous article) talking about how in the future announcements and music would travel thousands of miles through thin air. I wouldn’t have bought airtime from him, or invested in his radio station, would you?

There is an underlying reality, governed by energy and particle interaction, however incomplete may be our perception of it. That reality, even when we stop believing in it–as Philip K. Dick wrote–doesn’t go away.

Lanza is proposing basically solipsism, an old philosophical saw. If we create our own realities, why don’t we live in a perfect world of our own choosing? Why don’t all the men have harems and the women Prince Charmings? Why don’t we all live in castles like kings? Why do children in the Third World not get a say about whether they are killed by malaria or crushed by faulty and flimsy construction every time there’s an earthquake? Why don’t their minds create a better reality for them? Are we really to blame their faulty thoughts for their horrible predicament?

So much of this philosophical bollocks rests on a misunderstanding of the subjective-objective divide. In a subjective sense, we do create our own ‘realities’ and we can move through time and visit the past in our memories. But let’s not confuse that with the universe that is, and would continue to exist even if all consciousness and life on Earth were snuffed out by a giant solar flare. That universe is the one I’m interested in learning about (with all the people still in it, naturally). And it doesn’t care one whit about the fantastic mental contrivances of Robert Lanza, MD.

To really get where this is all headed, it’s interesting to note Deepak Chopra had the following to say: “Lanza’s insights into the nature of consciousness [are] original and exciting” and that “his theory of biocentrism is consistent with the most ancient wisdom traditions of the world which says that consciousness conceives, governs, and becomes a physical world. It is the ground of our Being in which both subjective and objective reality come into existence.”

The Old Man And The Cartoon
by J.P. Christiansen

Once upon a time,
in a country small, up north,
near close to sea and fjord,
so peaceful and pleasantly agreeable,
there lived an innocent and friendly old man
who loved to draw cartoons to express his thought.

He looked out upon the great, wide, wonderful world,
and to his amazement found religious strife and killings
practiced by people called Muslims.

Living, as he did, among fellow, open-minded citizens
who valued human life and human values above all else,
he decided to draw the prophet of Islam in a cartoon.

The image which appeared, like magic, on his paper,
was of the prophet’s head wrapped in a turban,
and in the turban rested a round, black, lit bomb.

People first thought the prophet was about to commit suicide,
but, after contemplating the drawing for awhile,
it became apparent some other meaning might be hidden.

Some of the believers of the religion called Islam,
lived in the small country, up north,
and when they saw the cartoon of their beloved prophet
depicted in such a blasphemous manner,
thought it might be a good idea to show the cartoon
to other followers of their beloved, peaceful religion.

They set upon a journey to countries far away in the big world,
where they soon found other adherents of their religion.
Together they decided the cartoon might be of use
to incite hatred of the heathens, up north,
and so it came to pass,
dear children,
that masses of Muslims went out to burn and kill.

They wanted to show the small, peaceful country,
up north,
that people, of different faiths and opinions on life,
had better temper their freedom to think, talk, and act,
‘cause if they didn’t,
the prophet’s holy men and warriors would come after them.

The religious leaders of Islam pronounced that the old man
should die for having drawn their prophet in unflattering light,
and he had to go into hiding from the theistic thugs hot on his trail.

The old man survived for several years,
and one day he got an invitation to travel to a big country
on the other side of the ocean.

It appeared that certain folks, over there, in America,
wished to hear the tale of the old man and his cartoon.
He learned that in America many different people and religions
co-existed mostly in peace,
and that America might be a safe place to show himself.

When he arrived,
he learned that many people were afraid of him and his cartoon,
and that only a very few newspapers and television-stations
had dared show the cartoon to their viewers.

He realized that many inhabitants of America
were somewhat immature in their intellectual convictions,
and had to be protected from their own mental habits
by not being exposed to certain images and words.

The old man thought it humorous that editors of print and image
would tow the line of a mentally unstable person and his believers;
after all, weren’t these moderns atheists, Christians, Jews, or Other?

He went on to be interviewed by reporters and T.V. personalities,
and soon found out that the believers of Christianity and Judaism,
in particular, showed support for the old man and his cartoon,
some even calling him a hero and fighter for freedom of expression.

Being an old and wise man, he knew they supported him
because various religions tend to dislike each other,
and by praising the old man,
could gain support for their own religion.

This type of behavior of conversion, dear children,
has been playing-out for many, many centuries…
ever since the so-called prophets of religion
suffered their psychotic episodes of hallucinations and visions
to be imposed on the rest of the world.

Once upon a time,
in a country small, up north,
near close to sea and fjord,
an old man drew a cartoon of a prophet’s head with a lit bomb in his turban,
and guess what, children,
nobody knew that beneath the big, black, lit bomb,
there nested many little bomblets waiting to go out in the big, wide world
to spread the good words and news about Islam.

Good night, children, and sleep well.

Solar showdown in Calif. tortoises’ desert home

In a redux of the Cape Wind debacle and other misguided public opposition, (previous article) dumb environmentalism is again standing in the way of humanity’s Bright Green future. A utility-scale solar plant is now being held up over a few dozen tortoises. And it’s not the only one. The government is now sitting on 150 applications for solar plants. And what happens now could have an impact on all of those projects.

The Bureau of Land Management has received more than 150 applications for large-scale solar projects on 1.8 million acres of federal land in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. In California alone, such projects could claim an area the size of Rhode Island, transforming the state into the world’s largest solar farm.

BrightSource Energy wants permission to construct three solar power plants on the site that together would generate enough power each year for 142,000 homes, potentially generating billions of dollars of revenue over time.

The sun’s power is used to heat water and make steam, which in turn drives turbines to create electricity. Built in phases, the project would include seven, 459-foot metal towers, a natural gas pipeline, water tanks, steam turbine generators, boilers and buildings for administration and maintenance. Each plant would be surrounded by 8-foot high steel fencing.

The site has virtually unbroken sunshine most of the year, and is near transmission lines that can carry the power to consumers.

We must do the right thing. Which is whatever it takes to get these projects fast-tracked.

BrightSource President John Woolard warned in government filings released last month that heavy-handed regulation could kill the proposal. He did not mention the tortoises directly but referred to “unbounded and extreme” requirements being placed on the company.

At a time when the White House is pushing for the rapid development of green power, Woolard predicted the outcome in the California desert would reverberate widely.

The large-scale solar industry “is in its infancy, with great promise to compete with conventional energy,” Woolard wrote. “Overburdening this fledgling industry will cause it to be stillborn, ending that promise before it has truly begun.”

The Sierra Club wants regulators to move the site closer to Interstate 15, the busy freeway connecting Los Angeles and Las Vegas, to avoid what it says will be a virtual death sentence for the tortoises. Estimates of the population have varied, but government scientists say at least 25 would need to be captured and moved.

I find myself siding here with opponents of government regulation. We need to cut this red tape, now. The Sierra Club should know better, and prioritize their goals. We need to save humans first, then we can worry about the rest of the species.

I’m not unsympathetic to the need for preserving biodiversity. But climate change will kill more species than the Sierra Club can possibly imagine. Some people over there need to see the bigger picture, and fast.

I don’t suffer fools gladly. As BSJ moves into a new decade, I’ve decided that certain subjects are not worth discussing, just as people who hold certain extremist opinions are not worth debating. Still, there’s no shortage of tin-foil-hatters who like to pretend there is life in their dead-end ideas. The further removed they get from reality, the more their behavior begins to resemble the desperate begging of the religious, praying in vain for help (or acceptance) that will never come.

I get the sense that, birthers, 9/11 ‘truthers,’ climate change deniers, Alex Jonesers and other New World Order nutjobs all have this one thing in common with fundamentalists: They think that wishing will make it so. They feel that if they, “believe” their delusion strongly enough, that if they can somehow convince enough people–or better still–make their case “heard” by the “mainstream media” that there will be a “great awakening” through which their delusion will carry the day. Then they imagine that everything wrong with the world will be ‘exposed’ and put right.

It’s a very, very old story.

So I’ve updated my comment policy to reflect this. Birthers, Truthers, Climate Deniers and fundies are trolls. It’s not merely that some can be trolls, it’s that the very act of posting such opinions defines trolldom. Such posts contribute nothing of value about the subject being discussed, yet shout loudly about the psychology and poor mental skills of the person posting the ‘information.’ They’ve replaced analysis with wishing and willing, proving Hume right when he said (of non-objective thinkers) “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.”

The bottom line is this: I have no interest in debating these subjects, only debunking. If someone has truly new information that has been properly vetted and survives the critical thinking process, then I’m very, very glad to hear from you. I have a lot to learn, and there is much we do not know about many subjects including the climate, the brain, and our government. But I set the bar very high.

What that means is please post nothing less than peer-reviewed data that is properly documented,  and would survive rigorous scientific analysis and is worthy of acceptance by organizations like the NAS, AAAS, or the Royal Society. Lack of certainty about such subjects is no excuse for wild posturing. As I’m fond of saying, you don’t have to know “everything” to know “something.”

If you Google the ‘fact’ you are planning on posting and all you get are a bunch of conspiracy sites, then you ought to plan not to post it here, because I will delete it and block your IP address faster than you can say “Bullshit!”

I’m just no longer interested in spending the finite time I have left on this earth entertaining nonsense. If you wonder why, check out this fruitless exchange I had over the holidays with a former CUT member:

It appears that at least some folks are still deluded with the “Anthroprogenic Global Warming” scam. Haven’t you been following the latest news ? (Google search “Climategate”). The one-worlders hijacked the environmental movement decades ago. They are using it as a Trojan horse to set up their global government to be financed by, guess what,..Carbon Taxes!

Carbon dioxide is NOT a harmful gas and does NOT contribute to the warming of the planet. If anyone is interested in finding out more about the lengths and depths of this scam, look up Lord Monckton, advisor to former British Prime Minister Thatcher. He is probably one of the most knowledgable and articulate debunkers of this man-made global warming hoax. He has posted a detailed report called “Caught Green-Handed” on his website.

Re: Black Sun Journal comment–I delete any comments which say words to the effect that “AGW is a scam.”

I do support an eventual global government. Pollution, people, goods, money flow across borders. We are becoming too interconnected to manage the world without some form of global legal cooperation.

I’m sorry I’ve been down this road too many times and won’t put much time into arguing with anyone about climate change. It is real, documented and accelerating. The information is overwhelming. It’s something close to mental illness to deny it. It’s psychologically very hard to deal with the fact that our lives and industry could be destroying the Earth’s capacity to sustain future generations. But that’s exactly what’s happening, and nature doesn’t give a crap what anyone thinks about it.

America is falling far behind, in no small part thanks to the utter unforgivable willful stupidity of people who would rather ruminate about conspiracies than listen to their scientists and deal with the problem. Fortune favors the bold, and in this era, the boldest thing to do would be to tax carbon, shut down the coal plants and stop importing oil over the next 20 years. Then shift all that capacity to wind, tidal, geothermal and solar power, for both fixed installations and electrified transportation. (Nuclear as currently designed is too expensive).

It would be the single biggest stroke of genius America could accomplish and it would put us back in a position of global leadership. It would make us a leading exporter of green energy solutions. But we probably won’t because we’ve become a nation of pussies who refuse to change. We’ve elected a series of leaders who’ve failed to confront difficult issues of finance, energy, and effective use of our massive military strength. And many of us want to pretend some evil conspiracy is stealing everything from us rather than realizing we’ve ruined it for ourselves by becoming hopeless fossil fuel addicts–and filling our atmosphere with nearly double the natural concentration of CO2. Clearly you do not understand the carbon cycle if you deny this. Every year the world burns through a million years of stored carbon. Plus we continue to burn rain forests which took thousands of years to grow.

We’re too afraid of owning up to our shadow and joining the rest of the world in a low-carbon economy to be worthy of being its leader. It’s a damn shame. China will kick our ass–both in being green and becoming a 21st century political and economic power. They’ll burn all their coal AND simultaneously build out a green economy, because they’re smart, realize what’s happening, and they think long-term. Even if there’s a global carbon treaty, China will delay implementation until the last possible minute. Then they’ll sell us geoengineering schemes to make us pay for fixing the damage they caused.

Or we can just keep trying to negotiate this away from a worst-case scenario. China might change its behavior if the rest of the world moves together with concerted action. They do care about their global image, since their coming dominance is based on their continued trade relations.

Seriously, I don’t want to sound insulting, but this denial BS is just killing me (and the planet). I have ZERO patience for it, OK? Or was that not clear from the article?

regards,

Perhaps you’re right. I realized by way of our exchange that I simply don’t know enough about the subject (AGW) to argue about it. I am not a climate scientist. It’s better to let the experts duke it out.

All I know is it looks mighty suspicious. Why would the scientists at East Anglia University be conspiring to manipulate data? Why would they be trying to supress other scientists who disagreed with their theories? Why were they defiant even in the face of a Freedom of Information request, to release their data, computer codes, etc. so that other scientists could check their work?

Thirty-five years ago the scare was global cooling. Now it’s global warming. But wait a minute, they’ve changed it again to “climate change”. They don’t know for sure if the global temps are trending up or down, but it doesn’t matter. As long as they can convince folks that human activity, left unchecked, will ultimately cause an environmental catrastrophe.

I said I wasn’t going to argue about it and here I am arguing.

On other fronts; I’m not sure what you were referring to when speaking of “birthers”. As far as “truthers” go, I, myself, am convinced that the attacks of 9-11, 2001 were a “false flag” operation orchestrated by rogue elements within our own government. As you have repeatedly said, the info is out there. In my view the evidence is overwhelming. What is so frustrating is that the conspirators, and we know the names of the major players, are still out running around free when they should be in jail awaiting trial for treason and mass murder.

Being a former staff member of the Summit Lighthouse, I usually stop by your website to check for any new SL/CUT-related articles. I apologize that I haven’t read and digested all of the material on your site. By the way, I was saddened to learn that your mother passed away a few months ago. I found out when I was browsing through David Lewis’ website. This delusion of ascended masters just goes on and on doesn’t it?

If I attempt any more posts, I will avoid the climate subject. And I will be more diligent to eliminate all typos and mis-spellings before pressing the submit button. It’s embarassing. My eyesight is not what it once was.

Again, a small dose of critical thinking should dispel those rumors. First, the government can’t manage to keep much of anything secret, even the smallest events are subject to leaks. Second, there were again hundreds of scientists and engineers involved in the forensics on the WTC, and a stack of reports several feet thick, documenting the most heavily photographed news event in history. So in order for there to have been a “false flag” attack, every one of those investigators has to be an idiot, a stooge, or both. I don’t like Bush, but to suggest that he or Cheney or someone else sworn to protect the Constitution would knowingly slaughter 3,000 Americans is to defy all reason.

All these conspiracy theories serve a twisted psychological agenda. It’s self-congratulatory and condescending toward those rubes like me who accept the “mainstream” explanation.

Sadly, the plain unvarnished truth is we were attacked and humiliated by a few guys with knives who used the element of surprise to turn our own technology against us in a horribly effective way. That’s again, like climate change, a very sobering and difficult reality to face. It puts the responsibility squarely back on us, where it belongs.

That is why I don’t allow birthers, truthers, or climate deniers any leeway. That stuff is the product of weak and twisted minds, a total corrosion of knowledge. Sorry.

A dose of critical thinking. If the world trade center buildings collapsed because of fires, then why was explosive residue found in dust samples from ground zero?

You don’t hear much about this in the mainstream media. NIST never even checked for explosives. It took the research efforts of independent scientists to expose it. Google search “Active thermitic materials discovered in world trade center dust”.

Thermite and thermate are explosives. Nano-thermite is even more energetic as the particles in the mix are ground down to microscopic size, thus increasing exposed surface area, accelerating the reaction. How did nano-thermite, a high-tech explosive, get into the dust samples? Maybe those few guys with knives pre-planted it there to throw us off.

False flag attacks are nothing new. Governments have used this tactic to further their agendas for a long time. The U.S. sunk the Maine so that we could enter a war with Spain. Hitler had the Reichstag torched so he could blame it on his political enemies and further consolidate power. Look up the “Northwoods” documents. A plan was on the table for President Kennedy to approve where we were going to kill Americans so that we had an excuse to invade Cuba. Even the Gulf of Tonkin incident which helped get us into the Vietnam war is now understood to have been a staged event. And still some people say our government would never do such horrible things. As Peter Josephs said in his film “Zeitgeist”, ‘If 9-11 was not a false flag attack, it would be the exception to the rule.’

I don’t give the slightest credibility to any of these theories. There’s any number of reasons those chemicals could have been there (if they were), with the collapse and burning of two 110 story buildings, complete with a shopping mall and train station underneath. See, conspiracy theories are not falsifiable. This takes them out of the realm of evidentiary investigation.

You bring up those chemicals as if it were conclusive. Really if there were chemicals, all it proves is that there were chemicals. Then the difficult work begins of figuring out why they were there. It’s not enough to say thermite –> therefore explosive demolition –> therefore false-flag attack. Those are leaps of logic not even the Golden Gate Bridge could span. But when you’re working backward from your preferred conclusion, none of that matters to your broken brain. (Ooooohh. NIST didn’t check for explosives. Ooooohhh, they whisked away the steel beams. That PROVES it.)

Critical thinking is the key. Break the addiction to delusion. Start today.

Zeitgeist, Loose Change and the like are pandering fantasy stories. Fairy tales for the modern tin-foil hat crowd. This stuff is so patently absurd as to be offensive. I won’t even talk to anyone who spouts this drivel. I’ve tried, and I can’t watch for more than about 20 minutes. The logical fallacies, non-sequiturs, guilt-by-association tactics, historical misrepresentations and lies pop out of the screen at such a furious rate it defies description. These are propaganda films of the worst kind. You should be ashamed of yourself for even quoting this horseshit. Did you ever stop to think why expert historians and political scientists avoid it like the plague?

Did you really read the NIST report? Or are you just taking these charlatans’ word for what it says and what it doesn’t say. Here’s a direct quote from the NIST site:

12. Did the NIST investigation look for evidence of the WTC towers being brought down by controlled demolition? Was the steel tested for explosives or thermite residues? The combination of thermite and sulfur (called thermate) “slices through steel like a hot knife through butter.”

NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.

The responses to questions number 2, 4, 5 and 11 demonstrate why NIST concluded that there were no explosives or controlled demolition involved in the collapses of the WTC towers.

Furthermore, a very large quantity of thermite (a mixture of powdered or granular aluminum metal and powdered iron oxide that burns at extremely high temperatures when ignited) or another incendiary compound would have had to be placed on at least the number of columns damaged by the aircraft impact and weakened by the subsequent fires to bring down a tower. Thermite burns slowly relative to explosive materials and can require several minutes in contact with a massive steel section to heat it to a temperature that would result in substantial weakening. Separate from the WTC towers investigation, NIST researchers estimated that at least 0.13 pounds of thermite would be required to heat each pound of a steel section to approximately 700 degrees Celsius (the temperature at which steel weakens substantially). Therefore, while a thermite reaction can cut through large steel columns, many thousands of pounds of thermite would need to have been placed inconspicuously ahead of time, remotely ignited, and somehow held in direct contact with the surface of hundreds of massive structural components to weaken the building. This makes it an unlikely substance for achieving a controlled demolition.

Analysis of the WTC steel for the elements in thermite/thermate would not necessarily have been conclusive. The metal compounds also would have been present in the construction materials making up the WTC towers, and sulfur is present in the gypsum wallboard that was prevalent in the interior partitions.[Italics added]

How can people really believe that scientists are that stupid that they would miss controlled demolition in a forensic analysis? I think it’s a way of a lot of dumb people make themselves feel better about their low intelligence, i.e. taking the piss out of ‘high and mighty’ scientists.

Someone’s making money off of other people’s gullibility. Nothing at all new, of course. There’s a sucker born every minute. The worst part is, these types of delusions play the same role as religion in keeping people stupid, off-track and out of the way of the real and ongoing machinations of power. In this sense, the conspiracy theories serve two purposes, one intentional (making money for the purveyors) one accidental, (they become tools of mass consciousness control, a diversion that actually preserves the status quo). Did you ever think of that??

Lenin was on to something when he talked about “useful idiots.” Now please don’t bother me with any more of this nonsense. It’s neurological abuse. I had to figure out if you were really that naive, your brain really that dysfunctional, and based on the fact that you’re still not dropping the conspiracy charade, it seems that you are.

Sorry to be blunt, but after all the bullshit conspiracies I put up with in my life, I tell it like it is. Remember, I was born to my delusional parents. You followed them intentionally. Big difference. And it seems people who fell for the Ascended Masters are more likely than average to uncritically accept conspiracy theories.

Can’t get through the season without saying something about the annual “War on Christmas,” that perverse ritual when Bill O’Reilly, Bill Donohue and the whole gang of U.S. cultural conservatives get themselves all riled up because the government no longer grants them the religious privilege to which they’ve become accustomed.

No Angels, No Stars

Just four days before Christmas, Sonoma County’s acting administrator has ordered that all religious symbols be removed from Christmas trees erected in county-owned buildings.

“I understand the concern about government endorsing religion or a doctrine, and I respect that is not our role,” acting county administrator Chris Thomas told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

Thomas’ order on Monday, Dec. 21, meant all stars, angels and anything else smacking of religion had to be immediately removed from the trees, the newspaper reported.

The county administrator made his decision based on a complaint filed by Irv Sutley of Santa Rosa, a disabled veteran with “a long history of protesting the use of religious symbols in government settings,” reported the Press Democrat.

Commenters were predictably worked up into a lather:

Once again, this fool has allowed evil to prevail. Who paid for the decorations? (As if that is truly the issue.) So, why is the religion of atheism is allowed to over ride the desires of everyone else? This stupidity is offensive to God!…

Atheism should certainly be declared a religion. People like Mr.Sutley have nothing better to do than feel sorry for himself as a “disabled????” veteran which was so quickly used as some kind of excuse for his bitterness?…

Angelo, these idiots are not “brothers in Christ”, but children of the devil. As for Thomas and Sutley being created by God, there is an implication here that is false. Their wrong choices are not created by God, nor does God will that they rebuke Him. The Church does not hold these two fools in “high esteem”; “God is no repector of men”. To hold an anti-Christ is high esteem does not do justice nor does it enact charity, but serves vanity and the devil….

If Chris Thomas believes that a star is a religious symbol for “some people” and should be removed, then just think of the endless possibilities. Should the red star be dropped from the California flag? How about the bear — it must be a religious symbol for somebody somewhere…

I found this all highly amusing. So I replied:

Oh, the outrage!! I’m sure it was fun while the Christians had an unquestioned majority. But now the numbers are falling and Christianity is only one religion among many, and non-believers are recognized as legitimate citizens. So the shoe is on the other foot. Religious symbols must be eliminated from the public square because it is not the role of government to appear to favor one religion over another. Either you display them all or you display none. Christians don’t seem to be happy with either. If they can’t have a monopoly on holiday displays, they start pouting.

But get real. Faith is a personal matter, and if your faith is strong you shouldn’t worry about symbols being displayed in public. Display whatever you like in your own homes and churches. Anything else is just the petulance of a waning constituency and should rightly be ignored in a pluralistic society.

UPDATE: Apparently, Sonoma county has bowed to pressure and rescinded the ban. And on it goes…

Comes now Arsalan Iftikhar, an international human rights lawyer, founder of TheMuslimGuy.com, and contributing editor for Islamica magazine in Washington, to claim that religions don’t inspire murder.

Clearly, they do.

Iftikhar claims:

First of all, someone simply saying “Allahu Akbar” while committing an act of mass murder no more makes their criminal act “Islamic” than a Christian uttering the “Hail Mary” while murdering an abortion medical provider, or someone chanting “Onward, Christian Soldiers” while bombing a gay nightclub, would make their act “Christian” in nature.

Simply put; murder is murder and has no religion whatsoever.

Let me try to wrap my head around this logic. He just gave three clear examples of religion inspired murders, then a blatant non-sequitur. It’s worse than a non-sequitur, it’s an out-and-out contradiction of the very facts he just presented.

I know Iftikhar wishes it were otherwise. He condemns the Fort Hood atrocity. If it were an isolated incident, he’d have a point. But the famous website The Religion of Peace has documented over 14,000 separate acts of Islamic murder since 9/11. And the count goes up almost every single day.

In the U.S., we are still freshly smarting from the Christian murder of Dr. George Tiller. The case of the LGBT center shooting in Israel is barely 3 months old.

Iftikhar is in a monumental state of denial. Of course we should not respond by demonizing all Muslims. Most are peaceful people, if a bit overwrought in the name of their Prophet. But this is a Muslim problem, and it must be dealt with by Muslims if they want to avoid the backlash. The way forward is through facing the cancer of militancy by going to the source: the murderous language in their central scripture, the Quran. For it is the Quran (and the Bible, and nearly every other Abrahamic scripture) that contains the violent passages.

The most peaceful religious people are the ones who ignore their scriptures and follow humanistic ethics. It would not be inaccurate to say that adherents who kill unbelievers in the name of their God are technically the most faithful. They are doing what they have been told will secure them a place in heaven.

In the grand scheme of American politics, the gay marriage issue seems like it should really be a footnote. It affects so few people, how could it be so important?

The question is simple enough, right? Either you think same-sex marriage is a symbol of plummeting morality and the decline of Western Civilization, or you see it as a fundamental human right. Like abortion or gun control, it’s not a subject that lends itself to much middle ground.

And with 10.2% unemployment, a war raging in Afghanistan, and the worst mass-murder on a military base in US history having just occurred, it might seem trivial to discuss it. And if you’re not gay, why should you care?

Well, a few days ago, voters in Maine shamefully denied same-sex marriage rights, as they have done in all 31 states where the question has made it to the ballot. This completely mocks the idea of equal protection under the law, and exposes the tyranny of the majority–what my sister called the “fly in the soup” of democracy. And I will demonstrate that this is no empty metaphor.

To put it in perspective, let’s start with something that should send a chill up the spine of every American–even in “red” states: Opposition to gay marriage is what gave George W. Bush a second term. And the second Bush term is what plunged us into the “Great Recession.” Lest you think I’m overstating the case, Bush’s own Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in 2008 in this report:

The turmoil in financial markets clearly was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards for U.S. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 and extending into early 2007. (emphasis added)

Most of this gross malfeasance took place under the second Bush term. And it cost Republicans dearly in the 2008 election. It’s also a well-known political fact that John Kerry lost the state of Ohio in 2004 because of aggressive pastoral support for the Ohio Marriage Amendment. While other factors may have played some role in the outcome, both academics and Catholics acknowledged that the marriage amendment is what gave Bush the edge.

From The Religion Card: Evangelicals, Catholics, and Gay Marriage in the 2004 Presidential Election, Notre Dame University, Brigham Young University:

Does George W. Bush owe his re-election to the groundswell of opposition to gay marriage? We find that while gay marriage was not necessarily the most important factor overall and did not matter equally for every voter, it did matter to white evangelical Christians and Catholics. Specifically, evangelicals and Catholics were more likely to turn out to vote in states with a gay marriage ban on the ballot.

Catholic News Service article:

But when it was all said and done, 22 percent of all voters across the United States picked “moral values” as the most important issue facing the nation, followed by the economy and jobs (20 percent) and the war on terrorism (19 percent). Eighty percent of those who saw moral values as the most important issue voted for Bush, according to post-election data released by the National Election Pool.

Eleven state ballots included measures similar to the Federal Marriage Amendment, revising state constitutions to limit marriage to its traditional definition. The measure was approved in all 11 states, including Ohio, where a Bush win secured his victory in the Electoral College, (emphasis added) and eight other states won by Bush.

“Clearly the supporters of traditional marriage helped President Bush down the aisle to a second term,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

Why can’t they just have civil unions? What’s the big deal about calling themselves “married?”

In the runup to California’s infamous Prop. 8, someone I once greatly respected asked me this question in a disparaging manner. I lost my respect for them in a big hurry. It’s amazing how similar this sentiment is to labeling African-Americans “uppity” for wanting full equality. “Separate but equal” doctrines were struck down by Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954. Still it took until 1964 for full equality under the law to take effect with the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

1964 was the year of my birth, which means it’s been my entire lifetime since this issue was legally settled. Yet Americans still quibble over whether gay people are worthy of having their rights protected. Slightly over half of voters in at least 31 states feel they are not.

On the same day Maine decided to scrap its marriage law, Washington voters narrowly approved a separate-but-equal version, granting all domestic partners the same rights and obligations as married couples. I’m happy about the historic passage of Washington R-71, but even though it marks the first time recognition of gay unions has ever succeeded at the ballot box, it’s bittersweet. Gays can now have ‘weddings’ legally in Washington, but they still can’t drink from the same champagne fountain.

“He is entitled to his opinion”

The young son of a friend of mine posted his opposition to gay marriage on a Facebook poll. I took issue with it, told him he was homophobic, and ended up hearing back from the father: “He assures me that he is not homophobic.  He simply opposes granting special status to gay unions by legalizing them as marriages.” And that “there is plenty of reason for well-meaning people to differ on this one.  He is entitled to his opinions and, at fourteen, I would expect him to evolve as he grows up.”

I hope so. But in this case, it’s pretty damn clear that the young man had been influenced not only by his peers and locale (a strong red state), but also by the attitudes of his parents. And I’m not sure I agree at all with the idea that “well-meaning people” can differ. I think being opposed to gay marriage entirely excludes a person from the category of “well-meaning.” Exactly what “well-meaning” or humanitarian goal is being served by denying an entire class of Americans the right to join one of civilization’s most important legally-defined subgroups? How does such a “well-meaning person” sleep better at night knowing they’ve seriously degraded someone else’s quality of life–a state of affairs they could reverse at zero cost to their own well being?

Just as blacks were once considered by many Americans to be sub-human, so are gay people today. And this exclusionary attitude should be treated by all “well-meaning people” with utter contempt. The fiction that such opinions are within the range of acceptable dialog serves only to reinforce and prolong bigotry.

What about the children?

In an article about the Maine vote, political consultant Frank Schubert (who was also instrumental in passing California’s Prop. 8 ) said he discovered a deep vein of fear and disgust while conducting focus groups on the issue.

Schubert said he had an ah-ha moment in California when a focus group watched a campaign commercial featuring a Massachusetts couple who described how their 7-year-old son came home from school and explained that a man can marry another man, something he learned in a children’s book.

One of the members of the focus group shook his head, and Schubert asked the moderator to inquire. The participant said he would be angry if something like that that happened to his kids.

“So that was sort of a light-bulb moment, that this education issue was really going to be a powerful one for us,” said Schubert, who with Flint was named the “public affairs team of the year” for 2009 by the American Association of Political Consultants.

I talked about this on Facebook, and one friend of mine–who has four delightful kids–wrote “Kids should be taught about sex - period! Enough with the lies and denial, kids are aware of sex and if you put fairy wings on everything they will think that sex is a shameful thing.” I replied with the following comment:

I agree. Careful surveys (or eavesdropping) should be done to figure out at what age kids are already talking amongst themselves about sex. Then schools and parents should pre-empt them slightly with better information. But that would be using logic.

Never happen in a million years. Parents seem to experience an epidemic of prudishness when their kids are young. And that’s a trait that crosses the liberal-conservative divide.

Parents, if you don’t like being seen that way, then do something about it!

There’s an interesting herd phenomenon in social psychology that people act as if the group is more prudish than they are. To avoid being viewed as crass or amoral, they profess to be offended by something long before it actually offends them. They are more concerned with having the “correct” response to something that is seen as controversial than about authentically expressing their own opinion, particularly when it involves a risque topic.

And all it takes is one person to ratchet up the prude factor in a group of parents. It’s far easier to provoke a group shaming response than one of acceptance. We all know this, know it’s a problem, but there seems to be no way to fix it. “For the children” seems to be the most prominent thought-stopping tactic in politics.

So the end result is that anything about expanding sex education or reducing the age at which it is offered is political kryptonite.

Standing for Liberty and Freedom

We Americans seem pretty pleased with ourselves, as if we were some kind of bastion of liberty and freedom–a beacon to the world. Horseshit. We must recognize that the greatness of our society is measured specifically in how we treat our pariahs–gays, Muslims, atheists, and illegal immigrants. We must learn to be very disturbed as long as any American minority is committing suicide at several times the rate of other citizens (as gays do). Lives are literally at stake. And that’s not all.

There once was a Republican Unity Coalition, way back in 2001, dedicated to making sexual orientation a “non-issue” in the GOP. It was chaired by Alan Simpson, joined by former President Gerald Ford, and counted such prominent members as John Danforth, Mary Matalin and Diane Ravitch. But that was before–before the religious right devoured the soul of the former party of Lincoln and Eisenhower. The “Log Cabin Republicans” have likely never seen a worse time in the party’s history. Why can’t today’s arch-conservatives remember the words of President Ford?

I think they ought to be treated equally, Period. I have always believed in an inclusive policy, in welcoming gays and others into the party. I think the party has to have an umbrella philosophy if it expects to win elections.

But Ford did not forsee the rise of the exact inverse strategy: today’s relentless wedge politics. The story of how the radicals stole the party from the moderates is outlined in Max Blumenthal’s horrifying book Republican Gomorrah. Ford couldn’t have grasped the towering ideological collapse of a party which could so quickly be seduced by the scent of raw power into straying so far from its principles of limited government and individual rights.

But we had better learn to understand why and how they are succeeding. First and foremost, we’d better come up with a better rejoinder to help American parents get rid of their squeamishness over their children learning about gay marriage and gay sex. Whether it’s actually taught in schools or not is irrelevant. Many parents have bought into the idea (or fear) that it will be. If we can’t beat them on this messaging challenge, the radical Tea Party Republicans will milk this issue again and again and again to put their people in power and roll back progress on everything we hold dear: health care, the climate, renewable energy, corporate accountability and a host of other vital issues.

It’s almost as if some people wish the Cold War had never ended. There was something attractive about the US-Soviet bipolar world. Kind of like the religious black-and-white thinking of absolute good and absolute evil. All you had to do is choose sides and keep score. So recent changes on the planned US “missile shield” in Europe comes with a bit that old thunder-on-the-right you might have heard in 1956 or 1968 when the Soviets rolled tanks into Budapest or Prague. Drudge couldn’t resist noting it was the “70th anniversary of…” something awful Russia once did.

Except it’s nearly 2010, the Soviet Union doesn’t exist, and the country brutally suppressing demonstrations is not Russia. And the “betrayal” is a strategic change initiated by the Obama administration responding to developments in the budding nuclear state of Iran. Not to mention the fact that the non-existent missile interceptors were planned to be the wrong type. As Newsweek commented:

The Czechs and the Poles, who had hoped that the system would somehow protect them against Russian aggression, were appalled. (The Polish prime minister refused to take a call from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton informing him of the decision.)Conservative Americans, who counted on the missile shield to contain Iranian missiles, decried Obama’s move as dangerous, or even treasonous. Only Russia, which believed that the system would somehow impair their ability to use their own nuclear missiles, was delighted. The real question, though, isn’t whether Obama is right or wrong about the system’s efficacy. (He’s obviously right.) The real question why everybody cares so much. How did a piece of technology years from reality work its way to the center of so many diplomatic crises?

To begin with, it’s important to remember that while plenty of missile defense systems capable of hitting short- and medium-range missiles exist (remember Patriots and Scuds?), none are yet capable of knocking out long-range ballistic missiles. So far, that is a theory that looked good on network-news computer graphics but that never actually existed. The idea was for radar stations in the Czech Republic to monitor missile launches from the Middle East, and for interceptor rockets in Poland to shoot them down en route to their targets. The interceptor rockets, though, don’t even work; after years of trials and billions of dollars of research, a prototype tested in Alaska still can’t reliably tell real missiles from decoys or kill missiles that change course midflight, as truly sophisticated weapons can. Not that it would have mattered: no country in the Middle East actually possesses the kind of missiles that could reach the United States, or even Northern Europe. No, what ultimately killed off missile defense was the news that Iran has nothing like the kind of long-range, Soviet-style ballistic missiles that the system was supposed to stop.

So why the fuss? Simple: a missile-defense system is a great symbol—far more potent than any practical weaponry could ever be. Among Eastern Europeans, it became a totem for American protection against a resurgent Russia, even though the system was never designed to guard against Russian missiles. The basic point is that, by design (and remember we’re talking about something that never got beyond the drawing board), the system was designed to intercept ballistic missiles in the stratosphere and low orbit. A simple glance at the map shows that such intercontinental ballistic missiles are not what Russia would fire at Poland, just a few hundred miles away.

Symbolism. Rah-rah chest beating. That’s what all the fuss is about. With deployment many years away, now is the time to tweak strategy, not after billions have been spent. Now is the time to recognize that with military weapons, unlike the cartoon fun house of tabloid news, truth does matter. When it comes to the physics of blasting missiles out of the sky, paranoia, patriotism and faux outrage won’t get the job done.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Some critics worry that Washington is “appeasing” Russia, encouraging more bullying from this bear. But the United States isn’t abandoning its European friends under pressure from Russia. Washington still wants to involve Eastern Europe – specifically the Poles and Czechs – in an antimissile shield directed at Iran. It just wants to do it later, and with more up-to-date equipment.

The Bush plan had called for an antimissile shield in those two countries that was aimed at detecting and knocking out long-range Iranian nuclear missiles that might threaten the US and Europe. The installations were expected to be ready in 2017 or 2018.

As Defense Secretary Robert Gates explained today, however, intelligence shows that Tehran is developing short- and medium-range missiles much more rapidly than the long-range missiles for which the Eastern European shield was intended. At the same time, technological advances in the US military’s ability to shoot down short- and medium-range missiles has vastly improved.

That argues for the more flexible, two-phased approach of the Pentagon: sea-borne interceptors first, land-based by around 2015, all the while continuing to work on the trickier technology of intercepting long-range nuclear missiles.

None of this nuance is likely to blunt the furor. It’s funny how on the issues that matter, like climate change and strategic politics, Eastern European governments and media are as crazy as Glenn Beck. I’m glad our President isn’t being swayed by any of it.