"If you can't determine right from wrong, then you lack empathy, not religion."

Determine Something

What is the frame of mind of a human - New York City, 2013 - that they would be drawn to this "Walk-In Special", put down an Alexander Hamilton or more, and have someone determine something from looking at patterns in wet tea leaves.

Depends On How You Look At It

Is this an apparition of Jesus Christ, or [fill in blank],
on a chair in an office where I work.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Did Jesus Christ, he asked, suspect that someday his church would spread to the farthest corners of Earth? Did Jesus Christ, he asked, ever have what we, today, call an idea of the world? Did Jesus Christ, who apparently knew everything, know that the world was round and to the east lived the Chinese (this sentence he spat out, as if it cost him great effort to utter it) and to the west the primitive peoples of America? And he answered himself, no, although of course in a way having an idea of the world is easy, everybody has one, generally an idea restricted to one's village, bound to the land, to the tangible and mediocre things before one's eyes, and this idea of the world, petty, limited, crusted with the grime of the familiar, tends to persist and acquire authority and eloquence with the passage of time.” 
                           ~ Roberto Bolaño,  "2666"

Thoughts on Patriotism

The red-white-blue 'n' bar-be-cue (& fireworks) fumes from the 4th of July have faded into the ozone.  Now is a good time to share some thoughts regarding this deeply ingrained mental and emotional disorder called patriotism.

"Imagine there's no countries / It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for / And no religion too." - John Lennon
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Naturally the common people don’t want war . . . Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders . . . All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. – Hermann Goering
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That worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor . . . This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism–how passionately I hate them! – Albert Einstein
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How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be “American” before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries? It is really too easy a disguise for our shortcomings to dress them up as a form of patriotism. – Edith Wharton
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God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed. – Luis Buñuel
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Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority. – Arthur Schopenhauer
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You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. – George Bernard Shaw
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Open Minds, Holes in Parachutes

If You Open Your Mind Too Much,
Your Brain Will Fall Out (Take My Wife) - Tim Minchin

“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.” - Frank Zappa

"If a mind or a parachute are open in such a way that the necessary barriers don't hold, and air flows through them freely - you spiral, dangerously fast, towards a thud." - Zena Koan

Remembering the Hits, Forgetting the Misses

For the Skepticism 101 curriculum, a brilliantly done advertisement for The Con Academy.

Jesus Done Somebody Wrong

When I came by a few hours later Jesus, his buddies, and that bread and wine had obviously gone to inspire some new home.

Inspiring Words

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." ~ George Bernard Shaw
 

"George Bush says he speaks to god every day, and Christians love him for it. If George Bush said he spoke to god through his hair dryer, they would think he was mad. I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd." ~ Sam Harris

 "The only difference between a cult and a religion is how much real estate they own." ~ Frank Zappa

"Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer," ~ Anonymous 
 

Passover Easter Springtime

A god sent down the-one-who-was-known-by-his-working-name, the Angel of Death, to kill all those particular innocent tots who possessed foreskins, and of course their baby sisters, because these innocents' parents were enslaving the ones he liked best. Pretty basic misdirection of wrath, your honor.

Quite a few episodes later this particular god sends his son down to earth, knowing of course that he'd get killed, the goal being something called redemption, which would somehow enable this god to stop killing enslavers babies in the future.
Lucky for Thomas Jefferson's offspring.

And, as happens only in make-believe, the son beats death and soon after disappears, never to be seen again, except in office furniture, musical numbers, and mostly in that special un-checked inner dialog called faith.

Superstition, social pressure, and spring in the air, is why this time of year is different from other times.

 

As to the election of a new new Pope: if "Napoleon" at Bellevue Hospital had that number of believers he'd be emperor of France.

 

A god who is . . .

A god who is all-knowing would certainly know what it would take for me to believe in it.

A god who is omnipotent could certainly make that thing happen.

And a god that is truly loving would do so ~ forsaking those I-hide/you-seek games.

"Holy Conversations" by AleXander Hirka (paper/glue montage, 1980s)

Click on image to enlarge

"The old paranoia ~ belief in a transcendent god who imposed order on a formless universe ~ has given way to a rainbow of new paranoias, new orders (often merely revived and updated old myths).
Any crazy Plot (far-fetching is encouraged) has room to Thrive. The more unmeasurable the numbers it tries to sneak in as "science", the more blurry or photoshop'd the visual "evidence", the more sinister (apocalyptic even) its premises which stir up the (exciting) fears, the more it is found to give Meaning, to be Comforting in it's own twisted way, and thus to be conveniently accepted as "True".
Any "order" at all rather than look Señor Randomness in the eye.
Me, I wake up every day and give thanks to Lady Luck, and ask her again to blow upon my dice."
~ Roz Koan


"If there is something comforting - religious, if you want - about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long." - Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

Atheism isn't a religion, it is a personal relationship with reality.

Evolution

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer gods than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen Henry Roberts, Historian (1901-71)

" Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks "That's enough of that. It's time to intervene," and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. " - Christopher Hitchens