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.
Yoni (Sanskrit: योनिyoni) means "source or origin of life." The ancient Vedas contain the word yoni in various contexts. The meaning of the word expanded, and got a secondary meaning "Divine Passage." A child was considered to be born from a "yoni of stars" - constellations that prevailed during the child birth.
Yet, as with many other aspects of ancient culture, the word "cunt" was and still is strongly demonized by the culture of Christianity (and monotheism in general, it seems) - which has a well-documented history of making the aspects of the old culture into the demons of its own.
Understanding our past is vitally important. To me, it makes me continually remember how truly human we have been for a long time. The Ancients were far from barbaric buffoons; all too often it seems they were more respectful (especially to women!) than our culture is today.
Atheist comic and social commentator Pat Condell rightly calls to the carpet the Kangaroo Court in Amsterdam. These Dutch court jesters are trying popular populist politician Geert Wilders for telling the truth about Islam. Why isn't this Inquisitorial trampling of free speech, human rights and justice being widely reported in the media?
As Pat says, this man is a hero. Indeed, Geert Wilders is a modern-day Galileo, and upon this trial may hang the fate of much of Europe. We ignore this situation at our own peril.
Yesterday, I had heard the sickening news out of Turkey about a 16-year-old girl named Medine Memi being buried alive in a so-called "honor killing" because she talked to boys. In other words, she was murdered because she's a girl - and that's what happens to girls in classical - not "radical" or "extreme" - Islam.
Islam encourages girl murder, period. According to Islam, girls are worthless sex/household slaves and baby machines. If her "honor" is sullied by any male - except, of course, the 70-year-old men she's "married" to - a young girl needs to be murdered - that's what millions believe all across the Muslim world, whether or not the atrocious practice is pre-Islamic or condemned by certain imams.
Indeed, regardless of all manner of shrieking, "That's not Islam!" the practice of murdering girls and women continues freely in Muslim countries. And that fact is exemplified by this recent act of misogynistic barbarism in Turkey.
This Turkish situation is so appalling that even the lefty liberal Huffington Post had to say something. It seems that the normally Islamoappeasing blog is slowly becoming awakened to the atrocities that fester in Islamic lands - something the rest of us have known for a long time. Although, naturally, the writer still has to make a lame disclaimer that "the brutalization of women and girls cuts across all religious and cultural boundaries..." Yes, yes, of course, we must coddle cuddly Islam wherever we can, even thought the ideology is one of the most awful violators of human rights in history and is certainly the most sexist and misogynistic.
The question is now, will Europeans really open up their borders to allow citizens of Turkey to move freely about, bringing with them these sorts of savage customs?
The murder of girls and women purportedly based on Islamic teachings has been so rampant over the past 1,400 years that we have scarcely scratched the surface. Add to that atrocious fact the shortage of marriable women - and girls, of course, since child marriage is allowed in Islam - because wealthy Muslim males take up to four wives to themselves, and we can understand to some extent why there are a bunch of angry, sexually frustrated Muslim men running around blowing things up. Islam does not encourage romantic love; on the contrary, it takes the rigid and hateful biblical attitude towards sex and women to the most derogatory and repressive extremes.
Classical Islam is, in effect, anti-love. And anti-girl. Islam hates girls unless they are completely enslaved under its oppressive doctrines. Girls who follow their hearts, make up their own minds and become free of external authority are despised by Islamists, who murder them at will.
In Tanzania, you can be arrested for "illegal preaching," as two Christians have been, after they showed up for a supposed interfaith debate and dialogue with Muslims. The fact that it was "Islamists" who essentially had them arrested suggests that "illegal preaching" in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, is becoming defined as anything that threatens Islam. This sort of restriction is the rule in Saudi Arabia, where the classical form of Islam, Wahhabism, strangles the people, especially women. Perhaps non-Muslim countries should follow suit and ban Islamic proselytizing as "illegal preaching" - especially since it frequently includes virulent hate speech against other religions, ethnicities, women and nonbelievers. Problem solved!
Of course, we in the civilized world have constitutions and laws that prohibit persecution based on religious belief. These laws in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave extend to freedom not only of religion but also from religion. Violent speech and threats as part of religious "preaching," however, is discouraged, and one can be arrested for that violation. Such as:
"God's curse be upon the infidels! Evil is that for which they have bartered away their souls. To deny God's own revelation, grudging that He should reveal His bounty to whom He chooses from among His servants! They have incurred God's most inexorable wrath. An ignominious punishment awaits the unbelievers." --Koran/Quran, 2:89-2:90
"Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate." --Q 9:73
Two Christian evangelists in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, have been arrested after Muslims invited them to debate religion but instead called in security agents who charged the evangelists with illegal preaching.
Anglican evangelists Eleutery Kobelo and Cecil Simbaulanga, released on bail and facing a hearing on Feb. 11, told Compass that Christian and Muslim groups organized the inter-faith debate that was planned for a neutral venue in October of last year in the Kariakoo area of Dar es Salaam.
Kobelo said no Muslims showed up at the debate until Islamists arrived with government security agents who charged them with "using religious sermons to incite Muslims and Christians into viewing each other with suspicion."
"This continuous intimidation by the Muslims using the police is worrying us," he said....
Pagan warriors for the earth? The recognition by the U.S. military of various Earth-centered, Pagan and Wiccan sects as valid religious and spiritual systems is good news for those of us who value freedom of religion, as well as freedom from religion. The acceptance of a circle of rocks as a sacred site on an Air Force base in Colorado is also great news, because it reflects the earliest religious ideation about which we know: To wit, the most ancient religious concepts revolve around nature, constituting the reverence and worship of the sun, moon, stars, constellations, planets, Earth, wind, water, etc. This nature worship was dominated by what is called "astrotheology," a fascinating body of knowledge dating back many thousands of years and prevalent but largely hidden in our "modern" religions of today.
Wiccan cadets and officers on the Colorado Springs base have been convening for over a decade, but the school will officially dedicate a newly built circle of stones on about March 10, putting the outdoor sanctuary on an equal footing with the Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Buddhist chapels on the base.
"When I first arrived here, Earth-centered cadets didn't have anywhere to call home," said Sgt. Robert Longcrier, the lay leader of the neo-pagan groups on base....
The Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs is establishing a worship area for followers of Earth-centered religions -- Wiccans, Druids, witches, pagans -- on a hill overlooking the campus, the USAFA says.
The chief of the academy has made religious tolerance a priority after 2004 a survey of cadets found instances of harassment, the Air Force Times reports....
Naturally, Christians just could not leave them alone, and someone vandalized the site by putting up a wooden cross, apparently after this story aired.
An Air Force Academy staffer who helped build a worship area for Pagans and other Earth-centered religions says he and others are the victims of a hate crime because someone placed a wooden cross at their site....
Perhaps the Pagan ideals and morals will "trickle up" to members of the more sizeable religions/cults such as Christianity and Islam - these would include being good stewards of Earth as well as peacekeepers.
The beautiful and dignified Ayaan Hirsi Ali overcame severe hardship and rose to prominence by possessing innate morality, kindness and decency. Having come from Somalia - the most dangerous country in the world, where she suffered under a brutal and violent social system that included having her genitals hacked off when she was five - Hirsi Ali has continually displayed grace, intelligence and courage in her sounding of the alarm concerning Islam.
And Hirsi Ali doesn't speak of "radical" or "extreme" Islam - she talks about what is in reality classical Islam, Islam as it was meant to be. and has been She spoke at the University of Wisconsin at Madison recently, where, of course, Muslims were angered by her mere presence, as many of them are by her mere existence (and so much else).
..."Initially it was decided that we didn't want our names associated with her," said Reid Tice, DLS chair.
"Today though, I'm really proud to be a Badger and strike up these insightful critiques of free speech and religion."...
...She referred to examples of flogging and beating as prescribed by the Qur'an and urged feminists and other activists to scrutinize the religion practiced by 1.5 billion people across the globe.
"Islamic doctrine is incompatible with American theory," she said.
It's appalling that anyone would not "want our names associated with" a respectable black woman who has suffered so much, including genital mutilation and mental and physical enslavement. Unfortunately, such a mentality reflects the power of the mob, as coddling brutal Islam is obviously far more important to many than supporting an individual who was harshly abused by it.
I expressed discomfort over a scene in which Jake mates with the ikran using his queue. While some have claimed this union is non-sexual, the James Cameron/Avatar Wiki states that the bonding is "highly erotic": "The intertwining of queues is both highly erotic and profoundly spiritual, but does not in itself lead to reproduction."
On a lighter note, this guy's very funny!
The second part is funny too. Here he says: "I just had a hard time getting past how manipulative and simple the story was. Despite being really amazing visually, the Na'Vi were a little too perfect and harmonious for a primitive culture, and the military was a little too simplistic and destructive for an advanced culture. There wasn't, like, a middle ground."
"The Scientific Method applied to society, is something people don't think about..."
It can safely be said that there is an increase in people beginning to think about just that, it seems that as society becomes more aware of global problems we are beginning to question our values and look to new solutions.
We should be nothing but excited to see growth in this very direction. Do we continue to try and solve global economic and environmental problems (which, as Ban Ki-moon has noted, demand 'global solutions') using a system that is the fundamental cause?
Or, do we look to a new solution, namely the scientific method, which isn't really new but has a track record for success?
As Zeitgeist Day, on March 13th this year, nears how will you decide to think about the world's dominant and all too often worsening problems?
"Zeitgeist Day." or ZDAY for short, is an annual, global event day which occurs in the middle of March, each year. The goal is to increase public awareness of the Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project.
I didn't agree with the Iraq war over oil - not only has it killed many thousands of people and destroyed much of that ancient country but it has also left the Iraqis more vulnerable to fundamentalist Islamic enslavement than before. Whereas Saddam suppressed this fanaticism, we now have Shiites parading through the streets after cutting their heads and those of their children and babies during the religious holiday of Ashura. It was said that Iraq under Saddam's secular government was the best country in the region for women's rights; meanwhile, Iraqi women are now being attacked, raped and murdered over not complying with strict Islamic law. Then there's all the trauma caused by the many refugees flooding into Europe, where there's now evidently a crime wave caused by displaced Iraqi "mafia" bosses.
Nevertheless, this news is scary! Muslim fanatics are so powerful in England that they may actually be able to have former prime minister Tony Blair tried for crimes against humanity?! Is this the goal for the entire world - arrest all leaders who have been deemed "enemies of Islam?" There will be no resistance after that - we will all be enslaved under Islamic domination.
Tony Blair was branded a murderer and liar last night after he ended his historic appearance before the Iraq inquiry with a blank refusal to voice regrets over toppling Saddam Hussein.
After six hours in which the Chilcot inquiry team had largely failed to breach his defences, the former Prime Minister brought trouble on himself by failing to show the contrition that his critics wanted.
Mr Blair, who gave a fluent, assured performance, refused to apologise for going to war, said that he would do the same again, and then warned that today’s leaders might have to take similar action to disarm Iran...
It’s official. Tony Blair...former Prime Minister of the once-great nation of the United Kingdom, has been branded a liar and a murderer by current Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Chilcot Inquiry, and by a British national press that has lost its collective senses. The leftist British government’s fear of Muslim mass violence as retaliation for resisting England’s ongoing Islamization is now greater than the fear of incremental surrender to the Forces of Islam, and what that surrender will eventually bring to the English people – Sharia....
wear anything but Muslim clothing, including hijab, niqab, chador, abaya or burkha
drive
associate with non-Muslims/infidels
What we discover, therefore, is exactly what Islam means for a woman: Debilitation and isolation. And that demoralized and derogated state is essentially enslavement, since she obviously has no choice, according to megalomaniacs who believe they have the right to impose such debilitation and isolation on her against her will.
The solution seems to be to ban the burkha for future generations. Allow the women who are very uncomfortable exposed to dress as they wish, but don't let them force this oppression on their children. If members of society who are deformed want to dress this way because they are uncomfortable, they should be allowed. In this regard, fundamentalist Muslim women have been conditioned to believe their entire bodies are as sexy as what we consider the "erogenous zones." It's safe to say that most women would feel mighty uncomfortable if demanded to expose their breasts in public. I suspect that's exactly how these Muslim women feel without their various veils.
Oh, and I agree wholeheartedly with Pat Condell's remarks below. Go, Pat! A brave man, indeed.
This story is important for a number of reasons, including and especially the willingness of the Spanish authorities to charge and prosecute this man. Many times, such legal action is not taken, especially these days in Europe. The story is also helpful in demonstrating exactly what the differences are for women under Islamic domination as contrasted with "Western" influence.
Although he denies the charges, this bully apparently thought that he was ordained from on high - according to Islamic scriptures, dogma, doctrines and traditions - to menace and threaten this woman and her family. He evidently felt he had the right to impose his cultic mindset on others, based on his religious fanaticism.
Of course, much worse things happen to women all over the world largely because of religious brainwashing and fanaticism, including and especially Islamic. Indeed, this woman may have been gang-raped and killed if she had behaved in this (free) manner in Saudi Arabia.
"...Benbrahim had harassed her and campaigned to have her removed from her job in the town hall's cultural department purely because she had a job, dressed in a Western style, drove a car and associated with non-Muslims."
To be a good Muslim woman - apparently according to this imam, who is quite orthodox in his Muslim beliefs - she must not:
have a job
wear anything but Muslim clothing, including hijab, niqab, chador, abaya or burkha
drive
associate with non-Muslims/infidels
What we discover, therefore, is exactly what Islam means for a woman: Debilitation and isolation. And that demoralized and derogated state is essentially enslavement, since she obviously has no choice, according to megalomaniacs who believe they have the right to impose such debilitation and isolation on her against her will.
MADRID – Charges have been filed against an imam in northeastern Spain accusing him of threatening a woman who refused to wear an Islamic headscarf or abide by certain Islamic customs, prosecutors said Thursday.
The prosecutors are seeking a five-year jail sentence for Mohamed Benbrahim, a Moroccan, on charges of calumny, coercion and menacing behavior against fellow Moroccan Muslim Fatima Ghailan. The two live in Cunit, a town in Catalonia, a region with a sizable Muslim population.
The court filed similar charges against the president of the Islamic Association in Cunit and lesser ones against Benbrahim's wife and his daughter.
In a statement to the court in the nearby town of Vendrells, Ghailan, 31, said Benbrahim had harassed her and campaigned to have her removed from her job in the town hall's cultural department purely because she had a job, dressed in a Western style, drove a car and associated with non-Muslims.
She said the imam and his supporters also pressured her husband and children.
Ghailan filed a complaint in December, 2008, after she said she and her husband were accosted in the street by the imam, who told them they would be run out of the town....
A fascinating find has come from the tragic loss of Brazilian rainforest, making some lemonade out of that lemon. Of course, what this discovery of a long lost Amazonian civilization means is that there have been other times when the forest was likewise not there, giving us hope that currently devastated areas can be regrown as well.
What this find also means is that those intrepid explorers of earlier times, such as Colonel P.H. Fawcett and many others, were correct in believing the natives, whose stories beginning centuries ago described not just one but many civilizations or cities lost in the massive rainforest as well as elsewhere in remote, overgrown parts of South America.
As a result of the deforestation of the Amazon basin, a startling discovery has been made. Hidden from view for centuries, the vast archaeological remains of an unknown, ancient civilization have been found.
A study published in Antiquity, a British archaeological journal, details how satellite imagery was used to discern the footprint of the buildings and roads of a settlement, located in what is now Brazil and believed to span a region of more than 150 miles across....
According to Martti Parssinen, Denise Schaan and Alceu Ranzi, the authors of the study, the community likely had a population of more than 60,000 people. The researchers said they have only uncovered roughly 10 percent of the existing structures, which may date as far back as A.D. 800....
...British explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett claimed he had found evidence of an ancient civilization, which he called the City of Z, in the same area. He disappeared in the jungle on a 1925 expedition undertaken with his son and a companion...
The author of a book on this subject, David Grann, relates:
In cleared-away areas of the upper Amazon basin, researchers, using satellite imagery, have recently pinpointed a vast network of monumental earthworks, including geometrically aligned roads and structures, constructed by a hitherto unknown civilization.
According to a new report published in the journal Antiquity, the archeologist Martii Pärssinen and other scientists have documented more than two hundred and ten geometric structures, some of which may date as far back as the third century A.D. They are spread out over an area that spans more than two hundred and fifty kilometers, reaching all the way from northern Bolivia to the state of Amazonia in Brazil....
Over the past several years, however, there has been mounting evidence that nearly everything that was once generally believed about the Amazon and its people was wrong, and that Fawcett was in fact prescient.
None of this wondrous discovery would have come as a shock to various authors who decades ago recorded the stories of the natives and explorers. During that time time, however, mainstream archaeologists have frequently pooh-poohed these tales and ignored the whole astounding field. As we can see, times are changing.
The potential for what is presently called "alternative" energy such as geothermal, wind and solar power is absolutely astounding - and it's time it's put to good use. We have no excuse not to provide energy for everyone.
The Icelandic President said, "The time for lengthy debates and dialogue is over. Now it is action that must bring us together, and that is the mission of Masdar, the World Future Energy Summit and Abu Dhabi." He went on to say, "With the momentum that we have gathered at this Summit, we will go forward from this place inspired and determined to succeed. Since the first Summit, the progress has been remarkable."
His Excellency emphasised that when carbon tax comes into effect, countries with renewable energy sources will have a strategic advantage. Indeed he continued, a green energy era could become a renaissance for the developing world due to the abundance of solar and geothermal sources.
This makes me wonder whether carbon taxing could in actuality have one positive aspect. Will it provide an incentive for the fossil fuel guzzling nations of the world to move into renewable energies?
A follower of paganism claims a health visitor told her she should put her religious items away because of the effect they could be having on her son.
Jemma Hawkins, 29, receives regular visits from a mental health home treatment team because of her bi-polar disorder.
But on one of these visits, Mrs Hawkins says the health visitor told her she should remove pagan images and accessories from her living room because of her concerns for her 10-year-old son David...
'I was really angry because Wicca is a recognised religion.
'You wouldn't go into a Muslim's home and ask them to take down their religious items would you?'
This last point is a doozy - imagine this healthcare worker telling a Muslim to do that! The "peaceful religion" and all that jazz...
Information on logical fallacy is available on many websites. If you really wish to argue coherently and honestly please visit one of those websites and learn what the logical fallacies are and how to avoid them.
What is more important is how the supernaturalists employ these very same logical fallacies in almost every argument. To demonstrate this point I will use a few arguments from creationism.
Creationists don't seem to care about logical fallacies. They use them freely and then demand absolute perfection in the arguments from the other side. It is frustrating that a supernatural point of view normally gets a pass on the application of the rules of debate. However, this merely illustrates how faulted their position is. Lets take a look at some of the most popular creationist arguments:
Claim: Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact.
Logical Fallacies: False Major Premise, Strawman
Response:
The word theory, in the context of science, does not imply uncertainty. It means "a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena" (Barnhart 1948). In the case of the theory of evolution, the following are some of the phenomena involved. All are facts:
Life appeared on earth more than two billion years ago;
Life forms have changed and diversified over life's history;
Species are related via common descent from one or a few common ancestors;
Natural selection is a significant factor affecting how species change.
Many other facts are explained by the theory of evolution as well.
The theory of evolution has proved itself in practice. It has useful applications in epidemiology, pest control, drug discovery, and other areas (Bull and Wichman 2001; Eisen and Wu 2002; Searls 2003).
Besides the theory, there is the fact of evolution, the observation that life has changed greatly over time. The fact of evolution was recognized even before Darwin's theory. The theory of evolution explains the fact.
If "only a theory" were a real objection, creationists would also be issuing disclaimers complaining about the theory of gravity, atomic theory, the germ theory of disease, and the theory of limits (on which calculus is based). The theory of evolution is no less valid than any of these. Even the theory of gravity still receives serious challenges (Milgrom 2002). Yet the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is still a fact.
Creationism is neither theory nor fact; it is, at best, only an opinion. Since it explains nothing, it is scientifically useless.
Claim: No case of macroevolution has ever been documented.
Logical Fallacies: False major premise (Some people call this a lie), Strawman
Response:
We would not expect to observe large changes directly. Evolution consists mainly of the accumulation of small changes over large periods of time. If we saw something like a fish turning into a frog in just a couple generations, we would have good evidence against evolution.
The evidence for evolution does not depend, even a little, on observing macroevolution directly. There is a very great deal of other evidence (Theobald 2004; see alsoevolution proof.
As biologists use the term, macroevolution means evolution at or above the species level. Speciation has been observed and documented.
Microevolution has been observed and is taken for granted even by creationists. And because there is no known barrier to large change and because we can expect small changes to accumulate into large changes, microevolution implies macroevolution. Small changes to developmental genes or their regulation can cause relatively large changes in the adult organism (Shapiro et al. 2004).
There are many transitional forms that show that macroevolution has occurred
Claim: Evolution is the foundation of an immoral worldview, therefore you should believe in creationism.
Logical Fallacies: False major premise, Non-Sequitur, and Strawman
Rebuttal:
Evolution is descriptive. It can be immoral only if attempting to accurately describe nature is immoral.
Any morals derived from evolution would have to recognize the fact that humans have evolved to be social animals. In a social setting, cooperation and even altruism lead to better fitness (Wedekind and Milinski 2000). The process of evolution leads naturally to social animals such as humans developing ethical principles such as the Golden Rule.
morals, such as eugenics and social Darwinism, are based on misunderstandings of evolution. Therefore, it is important that evolution be taught well to negate such misunderstandings.
Despite claims otherwise, creationism has its own problems. For one thing, it is founded on religious bigotry, so the foundation of creationism, by most standards, is immoral.
Probably the most effective weapon against bad morals is exposure and publicity. Evolution (and science in general) is based on a culture of making information public.
Scientists are their own harshest critics. They have developed codes of ethical behavior for several circumstances, and they have begun to talk about a general ethics (Rotblat 1999). Creationists have nothing similar.
Some people feel better about themselves by demonizing others. Those people who are truly interested in morals begin by looking for immorality within themselves, not others.
"They speak of a Teacher of Righteousness and a pierced messiah, of cleansing through water and a battle of light against darkness.
"But anyone looking to the Dead Sea Scrolls in search of proof, say, that Jesus of Nazareth was the messiah presaged by the prophets, or that John the Baptist lived among the scroll's authors, will be disappointed."
News items are circulating about how "hints" and "insights" contained in the famous Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in caves near the ancient site of Qumran can be found in the Bible. In other words, certain ideas in the scrolls also appear in the New Testament, meaning, of course, that the impression of Christianity as a "divine revelation" appearing whole cloth miraculously from the very finger of God is clearly erroneous.
Few scholars today claim that any of the Dead Sea Scrolls ("DSS") date to the time after Christianity was allegedly founded by a "historical" Jesus in the first century of the common era. Indeed, it is agreed that most of the scrolls pre-date the turn of the era and that none of them show any knowledge of Jesus Christ or Christianity.
In my book The Christ Conspiracy, I demonstrate that Christianity is an amalgam of the many religions, sects, cults and brotherhood traditions of the Mediterranean and beyond. One of the major influences on Christianity is that of Jews, obviously, including those mentioned in the New Testament, i.e., the Pharisees and Sadducees. Ancient Jewish historian Josephus also mentions the sect of the Essenes, who are traditionally associated with Qumran, in a "by default" argument. However, scholar Solomon Schecter - who discovered a scroll at Cairo that was later found at Qumran - points to a heretical sect of Sadducees or Zadokites, as they are called in both the Bible and DSS. In The Christ Conspiracy, I discuss this Zadokite origin of the DSS and this group's obvious influence on the New Testament.
What this rumination all means, of course, is that Christianity is, as I contend in my books, largely unoriginal, representing not fresh and new "divine revelation" but, again, the amalgamation of not only the ideas of the Zadokite authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls but also influences from the Essenes, Jews, Samaritans and many others.
To understand how the Dead Sea Scrolls influenced early Christianity, just turn to the New Testament.
Take, for example, the Great Isaiah Scroll, a facsimile of which is on display as part of the Milwaukee Public Museum's Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. Written around 125 B.C. and the only scroll to emerge virtually intact from the caves at Qumran, its messianic message is quoted in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, John and Luke, the earliest of which wasn't written until around A.D. 65.
The scrolls' so-called "Son of God" text reads much like the story of the Annunciation in the Gospel of Luke. And the Scrolls' "Blessing of the Wise" echoes the beatitudes of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount....
This early dating of the gospels, it should be noted, is based only on the a priori assumption that the story they relate is at least partially true in recounting a "historical" Jesus who truly walked the earth at the time he is claimed in the gospels themselves. There is no external evidence whatsoever for the existence of any canonical gospel at this early a date. In fact, the canonical gospels as we have them do not show up clearly in the historical record until the end of the second century.
Moreover, the Sermon on the Mount - supposedly the original monologue straight out of the mouth of the Son of God Himself - can be shown to be a series of Old Testament scriptures strung together, along with, apparently, such texts from Qumran. No "historical" founder was necessary at all to speak these words, as they are a rehash of extant sayings. (Even in this patent literary device the gospels cannot agree, as Luke 6:17-49 depicts the Sermon as having taken place on a plain.)
It is easy to see why the Catholic Church would blanche upon the discovery of these scrolls, as it could be - and has been - argued that these texts erode the very foundation of Christianity. It appears that this news, however, when released slowly has little affect on the mind-numbing programming that accompanies Christian faith.
The bottom line is that the existence of the Old Testament and the intertestamental literature such as the Dead Sea Scrolls shows how Christianity is a cut-and-paste job - a fact I also reveal in The Christ Conspiracy, in a chapter called "The Making of a Myth," which contains a discussion of some of the texts obviously used in the creation of the new faith. These influential texts evidently included some of the original Dead Sea Scrolls, serving not as "prophecy," "prefiguring" or "presaging" but as blueprints of pre-existing, older concepts cobbled together in the New Testament.
A 2,500-year-old clay cylinder bears what has been called the world's "first human rights charter" and was inscribed under the direction of the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE. In the Greek Bible (Isaiah 45:1), Cyrus is called "Christ" ("...τῷ χριστῷ μου Κύρῳ...") or "the Lord's anointed" for his role in rescuing the Jews out of the "Babylonian Captivity."
In addition to that alleged good and godly deed, Cyrus committed to writing what is believed to be the earliest charter establishing human rights so far found. Thus, Persia - or Iran - is ironically and tragically the birthplace of a remarkable tradition of human rights. Contrast that amazing fact with the state in which the ancient and noble Persian people live today, under Islamic fanaticism, with a severe restriction of many basic rights we take for granted.
THE "remarkable" discovery of two small fragments of inscribed clay at the British Museum will cast vital new light on a 2,500-year-old cylinder bearing what is often described as the world's first charter of human rights, it has been claimed....
The cylinder was written in 539BC on the orders of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire, after he conquered Babylon and freed the Jews and other peoples held captive there, while ushering in religious freedom.
Here an ancient Persian man deemed "Messiah" and "Christ" by a group of people is likewise renowned for "ushering in religious freedom" and inscribing one of the world's first known documents addressing human rights. Meanwhile his modern heirs are infamous as some of the worst human-rights abusers in the world, with little to no religious freedom under their tyranny. Who can honestly contend that human creation progresses linearly rather than cyclically?
It is time for a resurgence of the Persian spirit, as exemplified in the legends of Cyrus the Great and his civilized charter for human rights.
The entire world is evidently so terrified of the religion of peace that it is capitulating to Islamist demands in the most bizarrely in-your-face and transparent manner. Wow! To completely omit the name and religion of the Fort Hood shooter in the official report! Why not just give al Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamic fundamentalist groups the keys to the White House?
But don't stop there! Give Europe away wholesale to Islamist terrorists bent on global domination! Start with Holland, where you can prosecute your most popular politicians for bogus "hate crimes," simply for pointing out the obvious - come on, it's what we all know! - which is the link between Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. What an absolute travesty in the Netherlands, as Dutch politician Geert Wilders actually goes to trial for quoting the Koran and showing violent acts based on these koranic sutras.
Unbelievable. Human civilization is doomed, in the face of its tolerance of the intolerant and tyrannical.
The U.S. military's just-released report into the Fort Hood shootings spends 86 pages detailing various slipups by Army officers but not once mentions Major Nidal Hasan by name or even discusses whether the killings may have had anything to do with the suspect's view of his Muslim faith. And as Congress opens two days of hearings on Wednesday into the Pentagon probe of the Nov. 5 attack that left 13 dead, lawmakers want explanations for that omission....
What a complete and utter disgrace. And what a slap in the face of all those murdered and their families.
The 46-year-old MP, creator of the controversial anti-Islam film Fitna, was greeted outside the Amsterdam district court by about 200 supporters, some of whom came from Belgium and Germany to attend the proceedings....
The politician, under 24-hour surveillance following death threats, said on his website that he has done nothing wrong. "I am convinced that this trial can only result in my acquittal."
This great man must be getting very worn out from this life, which requires him to live essentially in jails and army bases so he won't be murdered by members of the peaceful religion. Another complete and utter disgrace. The Koranic scriptures Wilders highlighted constitute the real hate speech, with incessant attacks on infidels.
Much is being made of the highly symbolic win by Massachussetts Republican senatorial candidate Scott Brown, who will replace the late, longterm Democratic senator Ted Kennedy. For example, the anti-terrorist activists are crowing that the core issue in this defeat was the flabby actions taken by Democrats to protect the homeland against (Islamic) terrorism.
Whatever the case, I simply must say something about the overlooked factor of Brown's obvious charms for women and non-heterosexual men. Brown's bounty was handily revealed by "Cosmopolitan" magazine - also known as "Cosmo" - some years ago. Oh my! That's enough to get me out to the polls.
In my book Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection, I utilize thousands of ancient texts as well as the testimony of many highly credentialed authorities to show that the gospel tale and much Christian tradition are solidly based in pre-existing myths and rituals, in this case revolving around the ancient Egyptian religion. The book also demonstrates how popular was the Egyptian religion in antiquity, not only in terms of lifespan, having a significant following for well over 3,000 years, but also in terms of territory, spreading throughout the Mediterranean and Rome Empire, into Great Britain and all the way to India.
A recent archaeological find corroborates the popularity of the Egyptian religion well into the Greek period a few centuries before and up to Christ's alleged advent. Of course, we already knew that Horus, Isis, Osiris, Anubis and gang were major deities during this era - and long after, based on the intensely Egyptian elements incorporated into Coptic Christianity for centuries into the common era, as well as the writings of ancient authorities and other artifacts such as statuary, etc. Indeed, many mythicists assert that the Egyptian religion was a major - if not the main - influence on the creation of Christianity, contributing numerous aspects of the latter, again as demonstrated in my book Christ in Egypt. Another factoid revealed in this mass of fascinating information is that there were as many as 500,000,000 followers of the Egyptian religion during its long life.
CAIRO (Reuters) - Relics in a newly discovered Greek queen's temple in Alexandria show how Egyptian deities were still revered by Egypt's later Greek conquerors, archaeologists said on Tuesday.
The temple of Queen Berenike, wife of Ptolemy III, dating back to the 3rd century BC, was discovered along with 600 statues in the Kom el Dikka area of the Mediterranean city, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said.
Alongside those Greek-era finds, a large collection of statues of Bastet, the ancient Egyptian goddess of protection and motherhood, was found along with bronze and ceramic statues of Egyptian deities such as Harpocrates and Ptah, indicating Egyptian religious beliefs remained influential...
As I discuss in CIE (85) Queen Berenike or Berenice is important because her husband Ptolemy III commissioned a tablet or stela for her, now called the Canopus Decree (239 BCE), which established various festivals and provided the most accurate calendar of the ancient world. The stela records the Egyptian celebrations of the Kikellia and procession of Osiris in the month of Choiak/Choiach, which by the turn of the common era occurred at the winter solstice or "Christmas," with 29 Choiak falling precisely on December 25th.
Moreover, it should be noted that Harpocrates is the baby Horus, who the ancient writer Plutarch said was born of Isis on the winter solstice. Harpocrates was popular for centuries into the common era, his image eventually morphed into a classical Roman style.
In a speech to many of the Internet's most prominent developers in Paris on December 10, 2009, Queen Rania of Jordan described the Internet as "more human than ever before" and praised it as a tool with which "everyone is free to say what they please."
Posing the question of whether the Internet is a useful tool for changing the world, Rania contends that "virtual movement leads to virtually nothing" - reinforcing the common conception that while words are big online, actions are little outside of it.
"We need to amplify our actions," she says, beyond the virtual world - something I think any of us involved in the areas of social justice would agree with on a very personal level. It is rather unfortunate that so many people have the words online for resolutions to major problems but seem to lack the will to act in the "real world" to bring about change.
Rania has been a long-time advocate of improving education and other conditions in general in the third-world, she highlighted this with a rather profound statement:
"If every child started receiving an education right now, we'd prevent more than 7 million cases of HIV in the next decade. Education promotes what we all want: Peace and Stability."
This idea, of course, rings very true. Why is it that societies with high literacy and general educational standards have the most productive and modern cultures? Whereas, countries where little to no professional education is available are limited in their capability for advancement.
The Internet is a revolutionary tool, and one that should be used ever increasingly to improve access to information (and thus education) for all people.
One has to wonder if the global Iraq War protests, which had likely the highest turn-out of any protest in history (around 23 million people), would have had a high degree of positive success had they occurred now when social networking tools are so much more prominent.
The Arab word "jihad" has a number of meanings, including the one that symbolizes "holy war" and that many globally are feeling. In a reverse jihad - part of an old holy war - it has been revealed that in the sighting scopes of American soldiers' rifles appear passages from the Bible. These scriptures are obviously designed to inspire the soldiers to give their lives if necessary but not to feel bad about slaughtering their fellow human beings, because they are not of the right religion anyway. Of course, these are precisely the goals of Islamist brainwashing of young men recruited to fight for the Taliban, for example, using koranic scriptures.
How are the American soldiers being brainwashed by these codes, which aren't the full scripture, obviously, but the number? Are they reading and reciting the Bible in classes on the Army bases? Is that Constitutional?
Does this sort of neverending religious war-and-violence brainwashing represent the only way human beings will be motivated enough to slaughter their fellow man en masse? Is this factor the real reason there are no atheists in foxholes?
Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found....
One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
Other references include citations from the books of Revelation, Matthew and John dealing with Jesus as "the light of the world." John 8:12, referred to on the gun sights as JN8:12, reads, "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."...
We often hear cries of "blowback!" when confronting the problem of Islamic fundamentalism and fanaticism - also known as classical Islam, not "extremist" or "radical." Everything but Islam is blamed for Muslim violence - it's the bad white/Christian/Jewish/Indian/French men, et al., etc., ad nauseam, who drove the poor, innocent Muslims to defend themselves by committing violent acts. Otherwise, they would have been the peaceful lambs of their peaceful religion, minding their own business.
In the meantime, here is the text of the image above:
"In 1480, a Muslim army under Mohammed II seized the city of Otranto in southern Italy. Of the 22,000 inhabitants captured by the Muslims, 12,000 were bound with ropes and tortured to death outside the city walls. The Muslims also killed all the Christian priests they could find. On a hill outside the city, still known as Martyr's Hill, they beheaded at least 800 city folk who refused to convert to Islam, including the town's bishop. It took a year before the Muslim invaders were driven out of Otranto, and when the Christian liberators found the beheaded bodies on the hill outside the town, they entombed the skeletons behind glass walls in the town cathedral, where they can be seen to this day."
These individuals were innocents living in their own homes and town. Unless it can be proved that the city of Otranto had committed some egregious crime against a Muslim community elsewhere, there is no "blowback" involved here, as there is none in numerous other atrocities committed by Muslim fanatics over the past nearly millennium and a half.
The well-funded jihad is relentless. And why not? The idiots from the West have given trillion$ in oil money to members of one of the two most aggressive proselytizing cults on the planet.
Now the Senegalese government has offered to take in Haitian immigrants, which sounds like a very nice offer, except when you consider the fact that Senegal is 96% Islamic. What that fact would likely mean, of course, is that anyone entering Senegal would be heavily proselytized if not forced outright to convert. Will these converts return to Haiti, Islamized and with Muslim children in tow, etc.?
Moreover, what steps are being implemented in Haiti to ensure that it comes into line with the global Islamic sharia banking/financing plan? As we know, along with sharia banking comes the rest of sharia law, as well as Islam itself.
The country has been warned of fraudulent online websites, embarrassed by the comments offered by aging televangelist Pat Robertson, and cautiously concerned that our own government might not want to "waist a good tragedy" for political gain.
Today there should be (there won't be due to political correctness) a growing concern with the offer from the government of Senegal; the regime in the Capitol of Dakar has openly offered Haitian Refugees "free land" throughout the West-African nation.
Senegal has a democratic political culture and has been named as one of the more successful post-colonial transitions in Africa. The concerns for the future; local administrators are appointed by, and responsible to, the president – who is controlled by Islam....
Meanwhile, we are not seeing the economic and other vitally important humanitarian assistance for Haiti coming out of the Muslim world in the same way we do from elsewhere, as illustrated in the following article.
Haiti has nothing to offer to the Western world. No natural resources. No oil. Haiti is no threat to the Westerm world. It does not even have an army. There is no need for the Western world to support, or assist, Haiti. The Western world has nothing to gain by assisting Haiti. And the Western world has no Haitian threat is has to be fearful of.
However, news agencies were quick to report on those countries, NGO's and aid agencies that have responded to pleas of assistance....
The United States has pledged and intial $100 million in aid, and Barack Obama has promised more. 800 American paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division were deployed from North Carolina. 2000 marines will be joining them....
No, not just fluoride, which is bad enough - much of our drinking water, in the U.S., Canada and U.K. at least, is contaminated with Prozac and a "vast array" of other drugs.
And you wonder why everyone around is sleepwalking and/or sick?
A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.
To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.
But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health....
Nine different drugs were found in water samples near 20 different water treatment plants across Ontario, Canada. The drugs were "acidic pharmaceuticals", which include ibuprofin and neproxin (painkillers), gemfibrozil (cholesterol-lowering medicine), and prozac (anti-depressant). The area with the highest levels of contamination were from locations near sewage treatment plants, suggesting that the chemicals are getting into our water supply from our own bodily wastes! Areas that tested the lowest were plants whose sourcing water was from groundwater or lakes...
"Right now nothing is more aggressive than political religion," Pat Condell intones in his most recent video on so called "aggressive atheism" that has recently been the focus of "bleeting and whining in the press," as well as a focus in the United Nations "Human Rights" Council.
In light of the United Nations passing "Defamation" of Religion as a human rights violation in March (as well as other similar resolutions in previous years), nobody should be surprised at groups and individuals applying more pressure in the social sphere on religious fanaticism - especially when it is taken into account that the anti-defamation resolutions passed are largely a result of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), an organisation which has "indicated that the goal of its efforts is the adoption of a binding international covenant against the "defamation of religions" [1] which is nothing more than an attempt to bring to the West the oppressive blasphemy laws found in many theocratic Muslim nations.
This group has undertaken efforts to give Muslim citizens special protection, which we can confirm, because the original resolution submitted in 1999 was entitled "Defamation of Islam" and later changed to 'Defamation of Religions' (which was, ofcourse, necessary in order for the resolution to gain favour of predominately non-Muslim nations) with the aim denoted as:
"...a view to contributing concretely to the prevention and elimination of all such forms of incitement and the consequences of negative stereotyping of religions or beliefs, and their adherents..."
These resolutions, while given the justification of being intended to prevent human rights abuses such as "the propaganda campaign that had been led by the Nazis in the Second World War against the Jews which had led to the Holocaust" [2] are in essence a deviation from the concept of universal human rights because the resolutions are an attempt to "protect religious institutions and interpretations, rather than individuals, and could help create a new international anti-blasphemy norm."
The notion that speaking against an idea (which is essentially what religious ideology is) can be thought of as defamation requires us to redefine the term itself, which is generally defined as "the act of making untrue statements about another which damages his/her reputation."[3]
The idea of defamation, and claiming right to protection from it, is obviously a matter regarding the protection of individuals - not institutions or ideas from criticism. The right of people to speak critically (and even offensively) in regard to an idea or an organisation should always be upheld by a freedom loving society, for if it is not, then the body deciding what speech about an ideology or group is acceptable will be the governing body.
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 I said in my last 
Oh, but having an emaciated dead Jewish guy on your wall who has been tortured and nailed to a cross - that's a great image for your children to see!
Information on logical fallacy is available on many websites. If you really wish to argue coherently and honestly please visit one of those websites and learn what the logical fallacies are and how to avoid them.
A 2,500-year-old clay cylinder bears what has been called the world's "first human rights charter" and was inscribed under the direction of the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE. In the Greek Bible (Isaiah 45:1), Cyrus is called "Christ" ("...τῷ χριστῷ μου Κύρῳ...") or "the Lord's anointed" for his role in rescuing the Jews out of the "Babylonian Captivity."
No, not just fluoride, which is bad enough - much of our drinking water, in the U.S., Canada and U.K. at least, is contaminated with Prozac and a "vast array" of other drugs.
"Right now nothing is more aggressive than political religion," Pat Condell intones in his 
