Secular

In the early 1990s, my attention was drawn to the popular Indian guru and godman Satya Sai Baba. For a period, I spent much time watching every video and reading every book I could find about the man. My study occurred before the internet was popular, and there was not much debunking material around. But, there was enough, and I soon discovered the Indian Rationalists’ video “Guru Busters” showing Baba doing typical magician’s tricks. I also discovered much worse, especially after I finally went online.

God on Earth?

I had read many books by devotees and others who were impressed by the seemingly endless stream of divine miracles by Sai Baba, including his purported manifestations of artifacts such as watches, statues, lingams, ash and so on. The enthusiasm and conviction with which these alleged miracles were recounted were infectious, and I would have loved to believe they were true. How exciting that would have been! Here on Earth in our day and age supposedly had appeared a man who was clearly God because he could manifest an amazing array of miracles! What fun! I really wanted to go visit him at his ashram in Brindavan because it looked like such a great time. Who doesn’t want God to be real and walking among us, to love us and shower us with blessings?

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For millennia, countless people have been taught that there was a real man named Noah who somehow piled two (Gen 6:19) – or seven (Gen 7:2), depending on which scripture in the “infallible Word of God” one reads - of every animal on the planet into an ark and with his family survived an enormous global flood. Obviously, to thinkers worldwide this story is logically to be considered an impossible fable, not history.

Over the centuries, many people have tried and failed to find evidence for this implausible tale, largely looking around a mountain in Turkey called Ararat. This quest began hundreds of years ago and pops up in the news periodically, including several times in the 20th and 21st centuries, such as with the Noah’s Ark Ministries brouhaha of 2010. At that time, it was claimed that a “wooden structure” was found at about 13,000 feet up Mt. Ararat and had been carbon-dated to around 4,800 years ago, reflecting a “99.9% certainty” it was the “real” ark. Skeptics and Christian evangelists alike soon dissected that claim, as they had so many others in the past.

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If you are, you breathe
If you breathe, you talk
If you talk, you ask
If you ask, you think
If you think, you search
If you search, you experience
If you experience, you learn
If you learn, you grow
If you grow, you wish
If you wish, you find
If you find, you doubt
If you doubt, you question
If you question, you understand
If you understand, you know
If you know, you want to know more
And if you want to know more,
You are alive

-National Geographic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing them.^[2] It is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.

Dissonance occurs when a person perceives a logical inconsistency in his beliefs, when one idea implies the opposite of another. The dissonance might be experienced as guilt, anger, frustration, or embarrassment. The idea of “sour grapes“—from the fable The Fox and the Grapes by Aesop (ca. 620-564 BCE), where the fox decides that the grapes he is unable to reach are probably not ripe enough to eat anyway—illustrates an example of cognitive dissonance: desiring something, then criticizing it because it proves unattainable, a phenomenon that Jon Elster calls “adaptive preference formation.”^[1]

A powerful cause of dissonance is an idea in conflict with a fundamental element of the self-concept, such as “I am a good person” or “I made the right decision”. The anxiety that comes with the possibility of having made a bad decision can lead to rationalization, the tendency to create additional reasons or justifications to support one’s choices. A person who just spent too much money on a new car might decide that the new vehicle is much less likely to break down than his or her old car. This belief may or may not be true, but it would reduce dissonance and make the person feel better. Dissonance can also lead to confirmation bias, the denial of disconfirming evidence, and other ego defense mechanisms.

I’ve been interested to find today that the word “cunt,” which is used in our society most commonly as a degrading insult, is actually an old term that was demonized by medieval clergymen.

As our friend LaciGreen highlights, inspired by the work of Barbara G. Walker, the word is derived from the name for one of the Great Oriental Goddesses: Cunti or Kunda, the “Yoni of the Universe.” It was a word that represented beauty, power and the amazing ability of the female body to bring new life into the world.

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Give someone a fish, and they’ll eat that day. Teach them how to catch a fish and they’ll never go hungry. Proverbs like these remind us how learning skills help us to move towards self-reliance. This is never more true than critical thinking. Memorize the solution to a problem, and you may master that particular problem. Improve your critical thinking and you’ll give yourself the tools to create your own effective solutions to a multitude of unfamiliar problems. Critical thinking refers to a diverse range of intellectual skills and activities concern with evaluating information as well as on our thought in a disciplined way. When we are willing enable to examine our capabilities thinkers acknowledging problems and weaknesses, this can help us refine our thought processes, so we learn to think and assess information in more comprehensive way that increases our ability to identify and reject false ideas and ideologies.

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“The more you begin to investigate what we think we understand, where we came from, what we think we’re doing, the more you begin to see we’ve been lied to. We’ve been lied to by every institution.

“What makes you think that the religious institution is the only one that’s never been touched? The religious institutions of this world are at the bottom of the dirt. The religious institutions in this world are put there by the same people who gave you your government, your corrupt education, who set up your international banking cartels. Because our masters don’t give a damn about you or your family. All they care about is what they have always cared about and that’s controlling the whole damn world.

“We have been misled away from the true and divine presence in the universe that men have called god. I don’t know what god is but I know what he isn’t, and unless and until you are prepared to look at the whole truth, and wherever it may go, whoever it may lead to, if you want to look the other way or if you want to play favorite, then somewhere along the line you’re going to find out you’re messing with divine justice. The more you educate yourself the more you understand where things come from the more obvious things become and you begin to see lies everywhere.

“You have to know the truth and seek the truth and the truth will set you free.”

The more humanity strays from his origin, the more we deny our bond with nature, the farther from perfection we become. We are the only creatures on the planet that use symbols in reference to something else. We use symbols for absolutely everything the mind can conceive of. There is at least one word or icon or jesture to insinuate everything our 5 senses can detect and then some, but along with this beautiful gift, comes a flaw. Most people are unwilling to seek and create their own interpretations of these symbols.

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Have you been reading the latest from the Catholic church?  Apparently they have decided to admit in the face of OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE that Evolution did indeed happen.  Gee, they’ve come along way!  I suppose since they aren’t a government any more that can’t poke out the eyes of leading scientists like they did in Galileo’s day.  Shouldn’t evolution invalidate the Biblical/Pentateuch creation account, hence throwing Christianity in the toilet?  (Even orthodox Jews are now claiming that Genesis is metaphorical and not literal.)  Why yes it should, but the Catholic church presented a loop hole that the masses have been touting as a mantra ever since.  I’m sure you all heard the lie they are spreading, the lie which tries to reconcile evolution with the 6 days of creation.  It’s the “a day can be like a thousand years to god” lie!  Here is an excellent example of this lie in use:

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Mesopotamia (Arabic: بلاد الرافدين transliterated: Bilad Al-Rafidayn, Greek exonym: Μεσοποταμία, “land between the rivers”) is a toponym for the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, largely corresponding to Iraq, as well as some parts of northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern Iran.

Mesopotamia was also known as Sumer, where the civilization of antiquity called the Sumerians lived. They have written down their civilizations’ history in clay tablets for us to decipher and to understand where it all began. In these clay writings which was deciphered by Zacharia Sitchens, was a tale that will defy religion and blow Darwin’s theory into oblivion.

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These files are not meant to condemn but to concern.

To explore, to discover more about Sai Baba and his millions of devotees and thousands of centers. To understand what makes someone become a devotee. Is it for the spiritual weak, confused spirits trying to find their Master outside themselves instead of by going inside to follow their only Own Master? Are the devotees giving away their strength, their inner power, or are they gaining on strength and inner power?

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An All-Virtuous Being Cannot Exist

1. God is (by definition) a being than which no greater being can be thought.

2. Greatness includes the greatness of virtue.

3. Therefore, God is a being than which no being could be more virtuous.

4. But virtue involves overcoming pains and danger.

5. Indeed, a being can only be properly said to be virtuous if it can suffer pain or be destroyed.

6. A God that can suffer pain or is destructible is not one than which no greater being can be thought.

7. For you can think of a greater being, one that is nonsuffering and indestructible.

8. Therefore, God does not exist.

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The Nicene Creed was quite literally the creation of the Bible and New Testament as we know it.

Appropriately, Constantine murdered his wife and elder son before making the journey in 325 AD

to his palace at Nicaea (now Iznik in Turkey) to decide what Christians to this day must believe.

He wanted to end the conflict between the Paulines and the Arians and install a single Christian

creed. He called 318 bishops together at Nicaea to tell them what their creed was going to be. Bitter

arguments erupted between the factions on the burning issue for the future of the world: Was Jesus

part of a trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost? Holy shit.

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By James A. Haught

Gospel fervor gleamed in 3,000 faces at the $30 million city arena at Charleston, W.Va. People around me, arms upraised, jerked in spasms as they loosed the unknown tongue: “Shend-a-la-goosh-a-ma. Dee-dee-dee-dee.” A young woman beside me leaped and squealed. Others wiped tears, swaying and rocking.

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A very interesting 3 Part YouTube series about Mithras and Orgies.

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INVENTED FOR THE PAGAN SUN GOD BAAL CATHOLIC DOCTRINES OF THE VATICAN

1. The nativity of the Sun, the birth of Tammuz Dec. 25 The nativity of Jesus, Christmas Dec 25
2. The Midsummer festival held Jun 24 The Nativity of St. John held June 24
3. The assumption of Semiramus who became the mother godess The assumption of Mary, who became the mother of God
4. The mother goddess was worshipped as the Queen of Heaven. Jer. 7:18 The Virgin Mary worshipped as the Queen of Heaven.
4.a “Queen of Heaven” is wrath suduer of the Pagan god
Mary, “Queen of Heaven” subdues the wrath of Christ and His Father against sinners.

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This pattern is based upon The Hero: A study in Tradition, Myth and Dreams by Lord Raglan

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