Tag: religion

No, Dogs Don’t Have Souls and No They Don’t Go to Heaven

Sorry the news reports about the Pope’s comment on dog-afterlife got your hopes up. Here I am to dash them: Dogs don’t have souls and when they die, they are gone forever.  As with all the bad news I am duty bound to deliver, I say this not to bum you out, but to make you better prepared for reality. Enjoy your pets while they’re alive. Because the series of algorithms from their genetics and outside stimuli that made them unique is going to be gone forever.

But before I get to the meat of this story, I have to get this piece of clipart out of the way:

There… I did it. The most easy, most obvious hack reference to make on this story: use of the 1989 Don Bluth animated feature All Dogs Go To Heaven.


DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE??????

Now that that obligatory nonsense is out of the way, I can go back to crushing your dreams. First the background:

Recently reports claimed that the current hippie Pope said otherwise. but only kindov. Kindov because Catholics believe the Pope is infallible because God talks directly to him so if he says something then its basically God saying it. But that only counts in official Popey Speeches, of which this was not. So…. this is more “the guy who is the Pope” said it than it is “the Pope said…” if you’re following me here. Then the reports clarified that it wasn’t even this hippie Pope who made the claim but rather the Pope from the Hippie 60s…

The original report claimed that a kid was sad about his deceased pet and the Pontiff made him feel better with something silly. From the New York Times:

Citing biblical passages that assert that animals not only go to heaven, but get along with one another when they get there, Francis was quoted by the Italian news media as saying: “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”

Theologians cautioned that Francis had spoken casually, not made a doctrinal statement.

The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at large of America, the Catholic magazine, said he believed that Francis was at least asserting that “God loves and Christ redeems all of creation,” even though conservative theologians have said paradise is not for animals.

“He said paradise is open to all creatures,” Father Martin said. “That sounds pretty clear to me.”

This is nice to say to children, but not appropriate for adults to believe.

Also, not accurate. As the above text no longer appears on that NY Times link which has been correct-edited (corrected+edited). It now reads:

Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper, analyzing the pope’s remarks, concluded he believed animals have a place in the afterlife. It drew an analogy to comforting words that Pope Paul VI was said to have once told a distraught boy whose dog had died: “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”

This is PETA nonsense. If animals have souls then killing animals is murder. And Surprise: PETA of course feels validated. From the same NYTimes piece:

Sarah Withrow King, director of Christian outreach and engagement at PETA, one of the most activist anti-slaughterhouse groups, said the pope’s remarks vindicated the biblical portrayal of heaven as peaceful and loving, and could influence eating habits, moving Catholics away from consuming meat — which she asserted had already been happening anyway. “It’s a vegan world, life over death and peace between species,” she said. “I’m not a Catholic historian, but PETA’s motto is that animals aren’t ours, and Christians agree. Animals aren’t ours, they’re God’s.”

Whether the pope’s remarks will prove to be a persuasive new reason not to eat meat, a potentially worrisome development to the multibillion-dollar beef, pork, poultry and seafood industries, remains unclear at best. But they did cause discussion.

Gotta love the hippie bias of the Times rubbing its hands over how multibillion-dollar industries might be negatively affected by this non-news.

How did this fable spread across news sources and social media as fact? ReligionNews.com tracks its spread:

Part of the answer may be the topic of the pope’s talk to the crowd that day, which centered on the End Times and the transformation of all creation into a “new heaven” and a “new earth.” Citing St. Paul in the New Testament, Francis said that is not “the annihilation of the cosmos and of everything around us, but the bringing of all things into the fullness of being.”

The trail of digital bread crumbs then appears to lead to an Italian news report that extended Francis’ discussion of a renewed creation to the wider question of whether animals too will go to heaven, and what previous popes have said.

“One day we will see our pets in the eternity of Christ,” the report quoted Paul VI as telling a disconsolate boy years ago.

The story was titled, somewhat misleadingly: “Paradise for animals? The Pope doesn’t rule it out.” It wasn’t clear which pope the writer meant, however.

The next day, Nov. 27, a story in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera by veteran Vaticanista Gian Guido Vecchi pushed the headline further: “The Pope and pets: ‘Paradise is open to all creatures.’”

Their full following of the false story is worth reading for insight of how news and false news spreads across sources, alone. But the fact is that to our scientific and religious knowledge, animals don’t have souls.

If you think that only dogs have souls then you’re letting your personal attachment to something rewrite your religious doctrine (or dog-ma).

Don’t blame the messenger, kids….

Watch And Learn All 10 Commandments

As the biggest moral advancement in human civilization, the 10 Commandments are a historically big deal regardless of your belief as to whether they were actually written by a deity that created the universe or not.

In a special segment of his fantastic Prager University 5-minute-courses on important subjects, Dennis Prager has explained all 10 Commandments of the Bible to you in easy to understand videos that you all need to watch.

INTRODUCTION / Still the Best Moral Code

Humanity has everything it needs to create a good world. We’ve had it for 3,000 years. It’s the Ten Commandments; ten basic, yet profound instructions for how to lead a moral life. If everyone followed the Ten Commandments, we would not need armies or police; marriages and families would be stronger; truth would be a paramount value. Dennis Prager explains how the Ten Commandments led to the creation of Western Civilization and why they remain relevant to your life today. This video course introduces a ten-part series.

1- I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD / God Wants Us to Be Free

Although the First Commandment (“I am the Lord your God”) appears simple at first glance, it actually set into motion the most revolutionary idea in human history — ethical monotheism, the belief that there is one God whose main wish is that people treat each other decently. Dennis Prager explains that without this commandment, the following nine mean little. With it, the Ten Commandments becomes world-changing.

2- NO OTHER GODS / There Are More Idols than Ever

Today, the idea of idol worship feels ancient and remote to many people. Thus, the Second Commandment, “You shall have no other gods,” doesn’t seem applicable in modern society. But the opposite is true. We have more false gods than ever — art, education, fame, money, to name just a few. Over the past century the worship of false gods has led to massive evil; Communism and Nazism are just two examples. On a personal level, the worship of false gods leads to unhappiness.

3- DO NOT MISUSE GOD’S NAME / The Worst Sin You Can Commit

Not all sins are equal. Some are worse than others. The worst of one of all? Committing evil in the name of God. This commandment is often misunderstood because it’s mistranslated. It’s not concerned with saying God’s name “in vain” like “God, did I have a terrible day at the office.” It’s about using God’s name in the commission of evil. We see this today when Islamists invoke God’s name while they murder innocent people.

4- REMEMBER THE SABBATH / Don’t Be a Slave

Setting aside of day of rest each week was a revolutionary concept when it was first introduced as the Fourth Commandment. But this Commandment does more: it extends that day of rest to slaves and animals and thus set in motion the slow process of ending slavery and the compassionate treatment of animals. As Dennis Prager explains, the power of the Fourth Commandment to change your life is no less real today than it was for our ancient ancestors. Just ask the spouse of a workaholic how she would feel if her husband took off a day each week to spend with family and friends.

5- HONOR OUR FATHER AND MOTHER / Even if You Don’t Feel Like It

Children owe their parents one thing. And no, it’s not love. The Fifth Commandment understands that sometimes it’s difficult or even impossible to love your parents. But it’s almost always possible to honor them. Dennis Prager explains what that means and why it’s so important. And consider this: if your children see you honoring your parents they are much more likely to honor you.

6- DO NOT MURDER / You Can Kill, but You Can’t Murder

If asked to state this Commandment, most people would say “Do Not Kill.” This is understandable because the classic King James Bible translates it this way. But the English language has changed since 1610. Furthermore, Hebrew has two words for killing just as English does. The correct translation, as Dennis Prager explains, is “Do Not Murder.” Once you grasp this, the meaning of the commandment changes entirely.

7- DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY / The Best Way to Protect the Family

Why do the Ten Commandments single out adultery as particularly harmful? Because adultery can destroy the foundational unit of a society — the family. If exposed, adultery leads to sense of betrayal. If hidden, it forces the offending spouse to lie. Children are often the unintended victims. This may be one of the most difficult Biblical laws to follow, but it’s also one of the most important.

8- DO NOT STEAL / Keep This and You’ll Keep Them All

There is one commandment that, if followed by all of humanity, would instantly create a peaceful world: Do not steal. The Eighth Commandment implicitly prohibits murder (stealing a life), slavery (stealing a person’s freedom), adultery (stealing a spouse), humiliation (stealing dignity), and so many other sins laid out in the Bible. If there is one Commandment that summarizes the other nine, this one is it.

9- DO NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS / Lying is the Root of Evil

The most important ingredient to building a moral society is truth, both inside and outside a courtroom. The prohibition against “bearing false witness” does not only demand that truth reigns supreme in a trial, but that it is a societal value throughout the culture. Bad things happen when people believe lies. With truth, we can build a decent society. Without it, even the other nine commandments won’t help.

10- DO NOT COVET / The One Thought You Should Never Have

There is only one Commandment that prohibits a thought, and it is this: “Do not covet.” Why does the Bible, which is preoccupied with behavior, legislate a thought? Because to covet, to want what belongs to someone else, is the root of the preceding four commandments and often leads to evil. Before someone murders, steals, lies, or commits adultery, the desire to take what is rightly someone else’s usually comes first.

Actual churches that preach getting drunk off Jesus

Forget “Jesus Juice”. Did you know you can get drunk off of pure, uncut, all-natural/organic Christ?

People who get really entranced by music, whether on a substance influencing their chemistry or not, really freak me out. This goes double for religiously entranced people listening to words talking about their religion. These things give me the creeps because they are humans checking out from the dimension we share and existing somewhere in their mind openly for a few moments. It’s like they’re sleepwalking because they’re physically inhabiting our public space but their mind is completely somewhere else.

Music doesn’t send radiation into the human receiver and manipulate anyones chemistry to put them in this alternate reality state and neither does religion. What both offer is a platform for the human mind, self aware and multi-layered as it is, to launch into a train of thought and emotion combined with a focus that tunes out other senses making you more isolated from the stimuli of your environment.

Our minds are able to tap into the physical control panels in our brains and dial the faucets that produce the chemicals responsible for joy, elation, sadness/depression, arousal, happiness, serenity and so on. When someone is being impacted by the profundity of a musical beat, lyric or speech from an impassioned pastor, they are giving themselves a low-level but mind altering drug in some form.Could be in dopamine or Gamma-Aminobutryic Acid (GABA) or testosterone or something else depending on the setting, but they are getting a brain bath of some chemical for sure and its a different mixture for each individual.

There are some fringe churches in the frozen American Northern mid-west who offer “God highs”. The God-drug-addicts claim to experience physical highs from God in this process. Mostly they go through the motions of drinking something or inhaling from something and experience positive effects. Most people probably think they’re just fooling themselves, but don’t realize that fooling oneself has physical biochemical effects, as I described above. So that leaves the freakiest conclusion of this matter, which is that this is very easily a real thing.

They don’t explain the process of what is happening to them in the way I did, and I don’t know if they make any actual claims that anything other than what I described is happening (I don’t know if they are claiming that God literally enters your body through magic if you pretend to inhale him) but they mime the use of an imaginary pill, blunt or pipe and get themselves high through their imaginations.

It’s bananas, for sure. They even do group sessions where they all do imaginary drugs and get drunk on “Godka”. This is not a joke.

For more info, check out the micro documentary below…

Take-away quote: “But really how weird is it compared to any other religious experience?”

Teebow Haterz

Michael Medved wonders whats up with the Teeb totolitarians:

The NFL is generously stocked with forgiven felons, including millionaire wife beaters and dog killers. So how did a clean-living quarterback with deep commitments to charitable service and miraculous last-minute victories become the most controversial player in the league?

The answer of course, is his perfection:

It’s easy to see why legions of loyalists lavish love on 24-year-old Tim Tebow, who leads his underdog Denver Broncos in a crucial playoff game against the New England Patriots on Saturday night. Yet other fiercely focused fans feel no hesitation at expressing their contempt and loathing for a remarkable athlete whose behavior on field and off exemplifies the values of hard work, fearlessness and concern for the downtrodden.

Being awesome and building a picture perfect life for yourself plus religion in your life makes people hate you. It’s why a lot of people hate Mitt Romney, as Medved also mentions:

Mr. Tebow, on the other hand, not only reminds the public of the conversionary ambitions of most evangelicals but also displays the intimidating perfection of what might be termed the “Mitt Romney Syndrome.” On New Hampshire primary night, the beaming appearance of the Romney clan made one of my friends physically ill: “All those handsome, perfectly controlled, wealthy, teetotalers with their gorgeous wives—I wanted to vomit. There was something unearthly about it. Like some weird superior race on the planet Krypton.”

In the same sense, most males look at Mr. Tebow and see a virtuous rebuke to our own limitations and imperfections. If we were 24, single, supremely athletic, enormously wealthy and adored by millions of young women, how many could still wear Tim Tebow’s “purity ring?”

Dear Atheists: History revision is not necessary to the argument

After seeing this getting applauded by like-minded people, I figured I should comment:

The truth is that America was not founded on the 1797 treaty of Tripoli and that the country wouldnt exist if not for the Judeo Christian values of every one of its founders with no “actually, so&so was just a deist” exceptions.

Jefferson wanted the seal of the US to be the Jews leaving Egypt for christ sakes. Stop using these arguments that rely on the readers ignorance. Just cuz religion is silly and that we have a secular government that doesnt take into account religious dogma doesnt mean we should rewrite history to remove religious influence.

The country is not “in any sense” not based on Christianity – it is in “some sense”. That should be good enough for both sides.

Praise Bieber & may his love continue to guide us.

Harry Potter VS The Bible

Did you know that Harry Potter was “directly copied” from the Bible?… So says this person. My ignorance of the Potter series, the fact that even literature openly intended to be allegories of the new testament (Narnia) aren’t usually called “direct copies” of their biblical source material among other things added to my reaction of this being kindov…weird. but I’ll share it here for you to decide.

Does it bother me that Harry Potter directly copied its story from the Bible? A little bit. What bothers me more is the amount of people out there worshipping Harry Potter instead of the real Person who resurrected from the dead Jesus Christ.

It’s not just the phony ‘resurrection’ I’m talking about either. J.K. Rowling made the clear parallels between the devil and Voldemort from the very beginning. And of course made Harry Potter to go through the same rejected, slain, raised pattern as Jesus Christ. Everybody at school thought he was a liar, no one would help him (except for his dedicated followers… errr… friends).

I took a while to catch on; I think the fact that she used ‘constant vigilance’ which is what our same warning is in Scripture about Satan tipped me off in some way (and really bothered me at the time). Then of course Voldemort started to have eyes and ears everywhere – quite like going around like a ‘roaring lion’. The snake was a major tip off and then also the fact that some of his followers had names assigned with constellations that had something to do with Satan.

And then of course there was the clincher. “The last enemy to be conquered is death.” From 1 Corinthians 15:26 and passed off as Rowling’s own. Speaking of course of the resurrection, the resurrection of the bodies of all believers. How in the viewpoint of the Harry Potter series ‘death’ can be an enemy I’m not so sure. But in the real world Satan brought death and from him it has become an enemy. In any other worldview besides Christianity it makes no sense to view death as an enemy because it’s supposed to be ‘natural’. So of course Harry Potter was inconsistent, as many people in the world today are.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Harry hater (I have read all the books) but does Jesus get the glory from all this? No. Is it evil that someone would profit so profusely from stealing a story right out of Scripture? Yes it is.

Just remember that Jesus is the only one who can give life, NOT Harry Potter. Think about it.

Cleric bans women from being near bananas and cucumbers due to their inherent sexual nature

Egyptian news site Bikya Masr reports that an Islamic cleric in Europe has forbidden women  from touching — or even being near — bananas and cucumbers because they resemble dicks too much. Or as they put it: “their oblong shapes can make women think of sex”.

The unnamed sheikh, who was featured in an article on el-Senousa news, was quoted saying that if women wish to eat these food items, a third party, preferably a male related to them such as their father or husband, should cut the items into small pieces and serve.

He said that these fruits and vegetables “resemble the male penis” and hence could arouse women or “make them think of sex.”

He also added carrots and zucchini to the list of forbidden foods for women.

According to Bikya Masr, the sheik was asked how to “control” women when they are out grocery shopping, and whether even holding the fruits and vegetables at the store would be bad. The cleric said the matter is between them and God.

Meanwhile: a Salafist Sheikh in Egypt says a woman’s face is like a vagina…

“What is a veil? A veil is what covers the woman’s face. Therefore the woman’s face is like her vagina,” Sheik Abou Ishak al-Houwayni was quoted on the Elaph news website as saying.

His remarks were in reference to a discussion of the late Egyptian feminist, Hoda Shaarawi, who became the first woman to publicly remove her veil in a Cairo train station in 1923.

Houwayni is essentially arguing that the reason a woman’s face should be fully covered is because, like a vagina, it attracts men.

I am no longer surprised by disgusting displays of religious conservatism coming from sexually repressed men who’ve likely never even seen a vagina; they just feel around “down there,” while glancing away and mumbling something to Allah.

Norway Murderer wasn’t a “Christian Terrorist”

A correction and apology and Reason 9Billion why our (meaning America’s) news media sucks: I just found out now that this guys manifesto that was cited as him being Christian says so in the context of him differentiating himself from other non-Christian nations and that instead of any preaching, fundamentalism endorsement or anything somewhat somehow partially approaching a belief that God wants him to kill people – he says he has “no relationship” with God or Jesus Christ. So in other words: he is a “Christian terrorist” on less of a level that he is a “weird studded chin hair whisker terrorist”.

There’s no way around this one, guys. I get that people are eager to have a Christian, or at least non-Muslim terrorist movement example to point to in the decade wake of September 11th and it’s related jihadist bombings around the world, but distortion is never a way to argue a point. This Norway loser said that “Christian fundamentalist theocracy” is “everything we DO NOT want” and a “secular European society” is “what we DO want.” There’s no Christian-terrorism here…

I apologize for my previous comments that took anti-Christian biased reports as fact without checking for myself.

His use of the term is not based on faith but out of collective identification with a notion of “Christian Europe.”

“Regarding my personal relationship with God, I guess I’m not an excessively religious man,” he says in his 1,500-page manifesto. “I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe.”

Breivik’s video, in which he blames “cultural Marxists” for supporting a multicultural Europe, is replete with imagery of various sword-wielding and carnage-provoking crusaders and defenders, many of whom sport crosses.

Ironically, anyone who has recently checked the state of deep and abiding faith, or “piety,” in Europe, will find the place is decidedly, and more than ever, secular. In this sense at least Breivik is honest about his brand of Christianity. God-talk hasn’t occupied much of northern Europe for years, and not because bearded jihadists have blocked the entrance to the church.


Update, August 2012: Trained to be a sociopath?

UPDATE: More info and humorously delivered facts about the killerthat is spot on, but… you’re not gonna like that it’s from Ann Coulter, who titles her piece New York Times Reader Kills Dozens in Norway (a reference to the fact that Breivik cited the NY Times over a dozen times but the bible 0 times):

Breivik says he is “not an excessively religious man,” brags that he is “first and foremost a man of logic,” calls himself “economically liberal” and reveres Darwinism.

But Times reporters had their “Eureka!” moment as soon as they heard Breivik used the word “Christian” someplace to identify himself. No one at the Times bothered to read Breivik’s manifesto to see that he doesn’t use the term the way the rest of us do. That might have interfered with the paper’s obsessive Christian-bashing.

Other famous killers dubbed conservative Christians by the Times include Timothy McVeigh and Jared Loughner.

McVeigh was a pot-smoking atheist who said, “Science is my religion.”

Similarly, Breivik says in his manifesto that “it is essential that science take an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings” –- a statement that would be incomprehensible to all the real scientists, such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, Newton, Mendel, Pasteur, Planck, Einstein and Pauli, all of whom believed the whole purpose of science was to understand God.

The Tucson shooter, Jared Loughner, was lyingly described by the Times as a pro-life fanatic. Not only did more honest news outlets, such as ABC News, report exactly the opposite — for example, how Loughner alarmed his classmates by laughing about an aborted baby in class — but Loughner’s friends described him as “left wing,” “a political radical,” “quite liberal” and “a pothead.” Another said Loughner’s mother was Jewish.

The only reason Timothy McVeigh has gone down in history as a right-wing Christian and Jared Loughner has not — despite herculean efforts by much of the mainstream media to convince us otherwise — is that by January 2011 when Loughner went on his murder spree, conservatives had enough media outlets to reveal the truth.

As explained in the smash best-seller “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America,” the liberal rule is: Any criminal act committed by a white man with a gun is a right-wing, Christian conspiracy, whereas any criminal act committed by a nonwhite is the government violating someone’s civil liberties.

It’s Good to Celebrate the Death of Evil People

How is it that a month later I’m still hearing people wag their fingers (its a big woosh sound) over celebrating the death of Bin Laden? Where does this notion that every human life is precious no matter what? and how many of these people feel the same way about a developing fetus? That’s human life. Then of course you get into the split of how conservatives are pro-death penalty but pro-life on abortion, making people ask “if all life is so precious then then why do you want to kill people who kill people?” – and the reverse of liberals who have to answer why it’s okay to kill an innocent human life cuz you don’t feel like shitting out a kid at the moment, but it’s not okay to kill a murderous human life. Why is everyone but me stupid?

If you are one of these people who think it is shameful to celebrate the death of a man who dedicated his life to murdering completely random innocent civilians – explain yourself. I’m hungry for answers and never get any on this.

Bill Maher joined this claiming you’re not a Christian if you celebrated Bin Ladens death saying “Capping thine enemy is not exactly what Jesus would do — it’s what Suge Knight would do.” It’s only “not exactly” what Jesus would do because Jesus wasn’t an agent of the government. If you’re a Christian however and you honestly think that Jesus would be pissed at you if you celebrated the end of a person who murdered in the name of God, then your version of Jesus sucks. Maher also said “Martin Luther King gets to call himself a Christian because he actually practiced loving his enemies, and Gandhi was so fucking Christian he was Hindu” which are funny lines, but not good satire on the serious point he’s trying to make.

Dennis Prager on Celebrating the Death of Evil People:

When she saw images of Americans celebrating, “My first reaction was, ‘I wish I was with them.’ … My second reaction was, ‘This is disgusting. We shouldn’t be celebrating the death of anybody.’ It felt gross.”

Likewise, many Jews, including rabbis, have cited traditional — though seemingly conflicting — Jewish attitudes regarding how to react to the death of evildoers.

One frequently cited source is a famous one from the Talmud: “When the Egyptians were drowning in the Sea of Reeds, the angels wanted to sing. But God said to them, ‘The work of my hands is drowning in the sea, and you want to sing?'”

Also cited is the biblical Book of Proverbs: “When your enemy falls, do not rejoice, and when he stumbles, let your heart not exult.”

On the other hand, the Talmud also states, “When the wicked perish from the world, good comes to the world.” And the Book of Proverbs also states, “When the wicked perish, there is joyful song.”

So what is one to make of this mixture of sentiments?

I do not see them as contradictory. God may chastise angels for singing at the drowning of the Egyptian army. But God does not chastise Moses and the Children of Israel for singing at the Egyptians’ drowning. People may do so; angels may not.

Secondly, it is one thing to celebrate the fall of one’s personal enemy; it is quite another to celebrate the fall of evil individuals. The two Proverbs citations are not contradictory. The vast majority of our personal “enemies” are not evil people. Therefore, we should not exult at their downfall. And the vast majority of the truly evil are not our personal enemies. Bin Laden was not my personal enemy. He was the enemy of all that is good on earth.

It seems to me that if one does not celebrate the death of a truly evil person, one is not celebrating the triumph of good over evil. I do not see how one can honestly say, “I am thrilled that bin Laden can no longer murder men, women, and children, but I do not celebrate his death.”