Jing-reed's Musings from Thailand

Some Facts About Thanksgiving

Contrary to what most Americans learn in grammar school  . . . .

Happy Thanksgiving, You Buckle-Hatted Jackasses.

"Dear Pilgrim Forefathers:

In this wonderful nation, at this magnificent time in human history I have many, many reasons to give thanks. Why am I particularly grateful? After centuries of hard work we became the kind of country you people would have utterly despised.

It's strange how we teach our kids this fairy tale of your courageous search for what we somehow find the audacity to call "religious freedom." We act like you actually wanted to see a place where the First Amendment became law. That our struggle is a continuation of your own. And then the real story becomes something of an asterisk to the preschool fantasy we've created, complete with its construction paper hats and handprint turkey art.

I want to take a moment to remember that it is precisely this real story that should make us proud and amazed and happy. Out of the darkness of human history one of the nastier, more narrow-minded collections of primates emerged on a small, rickety ship trying to find an out of the way spot on the planet where they could set up an ugly little cult compound and practice their backward traditions without interference. They survived, prospered... They executed witches and outlawed the really fun sexual practices. They suppressed women and punished nonbelievers. They banned Christmas, for Chrissake. And yet... the colony they created grew into the kind of country that would snuff out their whole stupid culture  . . . . . ."

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Avatar As A Demonic Film

Rev. Mark Driscoll: Avatar is a “demonic, satanic film”

"Driscoll helped build the popular Mars Hill Church into one of the most talked about evangelical mega-churches in the country...

His main objection appears to be that “Avatar” preaches a worship of “created things” rather than the creator. Of nature rather than God.

In that, Driscoll sees demons. And demons — to him as to many Christians — are as common as weeds.

“['Avatar'] is new age, satanic, demonic paganism, and people are just stunned by the visuals,” he said. “Well, the visuals are amazing because Satan wants you to emotionally connect with a lie.”

Driscoll often makes fun of fundamentalists, but he sure sounds like one himself. He tries to be so hip and cool, but then he starts talking like this, and it’s clear he’s just like all the other fundie preachers but with different clothes and music."


 
Personally, for me Avatar is one of the most enlightening, spiritual films ever made. Having seen it multiple times, I always come away from a viewing feeling a million times better than having experienced any Christian sermon.
 
So, just STFU Rev Driscoll. 

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Related articles

Were you raped by a demon?

Wackadoodle Prayer Warrior

CBN News wonders if prayer moved Isaac away from Tampa to guard Republican delegates. so Rev. Justin Peters of the 'Pray Tampa Bay Team' explains all.  Are these idiots at all aware of the nonsense they are spouting?

Pertinent comment:
"So, they prayed to save themselves and for their God to send the storm on to hit some other city instead? Seems like a very Christian thing to do."

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Yet Another Apocalypse . . . . . [yawn]

This time the date is May 27, 2012.  And Ronald Weinland is the most recent of god's 'end time prophets'. 

"As readers of this site know, May 27, 2012, is the time that I have stated as being the date Jesus Christ will return as King of kings over all government on this earth. For such an event to come to pass, the Trumpets of Revelation must all sound, the United States and dollar collapse, the ten nations of Europe arise to fulfill the final revival of the Holy Roman Empire, and Russia with China must unite against Europe in WWIII."

As can be seen in the following video, at least evangelical christians are consistent - they are certainly comitted to doom and destruction.  Sounds to me llike yet another 'great disappointment' for the christians. Tsk, tsk.

[FYI, did I neglect to mention that the good Rev. Weinland is also facing a criminal trial for federal tax evasion this month?]

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Teaching People to Think

Why Teaching People to Think for Themselves Is Repugnant to Religious Zealots and Rick Santorum

by: Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | Op-Ed

"Right-wing fundamentalists such as Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum hate public schools, which he suggests are government schools wedded to doing the work of Satan, dressed up in the garb of the Enlightenment. Santorum, true to his love affair with the very secular ideology of privatization, prefers home schooling, which is code for people taking responsibility for whatever social issues or problems they may face, whether it be finding the best education for their children or securing decent health care.

Actually, Santorum and many of his allies dislike any public institution that enables people to think critically and act with a degree of responsibility toward the public. This is one reason why they hate any notion of public education, which harbors the promise, if not the threat, of actually educating students to be thoughtful, self-reflective and capable of questioning so-called common sense and holding power accountable. Of course, some progressives see this as simply another example of how the right wing of the Republican Party seems to think that being stupid is in. But there is more going on here than the issue of whether right-wing fundamentalists are intellectually and politically challenged. What makes critical education, especially, so dangerous to radical Christian evangelicals, neoconservatives and right-wing nationalists in the United States today is that, central to its very definition, is the task of educating students to become critical agents who can actively question and negotiate the relationships between individual troubles and public issues. In other words, students who can lead rather than follow, embrace reasoned arguments over opinions and reject common sense as the engine of truth. What Santorum and his allies realize is that democracy cannot function without an informed citizenry and that, in the absence of such a citizenry, we have a public disinvested from either thinking reflectively or acting responsibly. There is nothing more feared by this group of fundamentalists than individuals who can actually think critically and reflectively and are willing to invest in reason and freedom rather than a crude moralism and a reductionistic appeal to faith as the ultimate basis of agency and politics. What Santorum and his appeal to theocracy longs for is a crowd of followers willing to lose themselves in causes and movements that trade in clichés and common sense. This is the Tea Party crowd with their overt racism, dislike for critical thought and longing for outlets through which they can vent their anger, moral panics and hatred for those who reject their rigid Manichean view of the world. This is a crowd that embraces the likes of Santorum and other fundamentalists because they provide the outlets in which such groups can fulfill their desire to be amused by what might be called the spectacle of anti-politics. ,,,,,"

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Three Jailed Over Gay-hate Leaflet In U.K.

Three jailed over gay-hate leaflet

"Three men have been jailed after becoming the first to be convicted of stirring up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation for handing out a leaflet calling for gay people to be executed.

Ihjaz Ali, Kabir Ahmed and Razwan Javed gave out the pamphlet, entitled The Death Penalty?, that showed an image of a mannequin hanging from a noose and quoted Islamic texts that said capital punishment was the only way to rid society of homosexuality. Ali was jailed for two years and Ahmed and Javed for 15 months each.

Following a trial at Derby Crown Court last month, they were convicted by a jury of distributing threatening written material intending to stir up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation - the first prosecution of its kind since legislation came into force in March 2010.

The Death Penalty? leaflet stated that the Islamic verdict on anyone caught committing homosexuality is to apply capital punishment to both parties involved.

Sentencing the men, Judge John Burgess, Recorder of Derby, told them: "You have been convicted of intending to stir up hatred. It follows that your intention was to do great harm in a peaceful community."

He went on: "Much has been said during the course of this trial about freedom of expression, and the freedom to preach strongly held beliefs; beliefs, which may have some foundation in scripture. Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of democracy and a basic ingredient of any free society.  . . . . "

 

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666 - Mark of the Beast ???

It was both amusing, and a bit depressing, to read last month about yet another evangelical christian announcing his stupidity to the world.

It seems that a Geogia factory worker [Billy Hyatt] was fired by Berry Plastics in 2009, and consequently brought a lawsuit against his empoyeer alleging religious descrimination. Berry Plastics required its employees to wear stickers indicating the number of consecutive accident-free days, and March 12, 2009, was the 666th day.   Naturally Billy Hyatt refused to wear "the mark of the beast" cllaiming that wearing this number would condem him to hell.  He was suspended and then fired.  Hence the lawsuit.

Now if Billy had done just a little bit of homework, but evangelicals are not well know for their intelligence, he would have known that the verse given in the KJV of Revelations 13:18  ["This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person."]  was iincorrect.  The number "six hundred and sixty-six" was a scribe's mistake dating back nearly 2000 years. The number was really 616.  The original Bible was compiled from earlier copies on papyrus sheets and scribes in the copying process often made mistakes.  [However,  one early version of the Bible in Greek even had 616 written in full: hexakosioi deka hex - "six hundred and sixteen".]

Billy probably doesn't comprehend that the compilers of the Bible did not speak English.  The various books of the new testament were first written in Greek, eventually translated into Latin, and then much later into English. I have even read that John, who had his visions while exiled on Patmos, and wrote the admittedly scary book of Revelations, was the Stephen King of his day. Or the visions of John of Patmos may have resulted from his having encounted some really powerful weed.

 

 

Beating Babies in the Name of Jesus

Just a personal opinion, but ANY religion, or religious teaching, which promotes child abuse should be deemed unacceptable by contemporary civilized society.  It is disgusting as well as barbaric, and has no place in the 21st century.  [And this includes mental as well as physical abuse .]

Beating Babies in the Name of Jesus?

"There is a brutal movement in America that legitimizes child abuse in the name of God. Two stories recently converged to make us pay attention. Last week, a video went viral of a Texas judge brutally whipping his disabled daughter. And on Monday, the New York Times published a story about child deaths in homes that have embraced the teachings of To Train Up a Child, a book by Christian preacher Michael Pearl that advocates using a switch on children as young as six months old.

What many people may not realize is that in the evangelical alternative universe of the home school movement, tightly knit church communities and the following of a number of big-time leaders and authors, physical punishment of children has been glorified for years.

As the Times illustrates -- "Preaching Virtue of Spanking, Even as Deaths Fuel Debate" -- the books of Michael Pearl and his wife Debi have been found in the homes where several children were killed. . . . . "

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9-11: Was There an Alternative?

9-11: Was There an Alternative?  [Noam Chomsky]


"9-11: Was There an Alternative?" , published in November 2001 and arguably the single most influential post 9-11 book, internationally renowned thinker Noam Chomsky bridged the information gap around the World Trade Center attacks, cutting through the tangle of political opportunism, expedient patriotism, and general conformity that choked off American discourse in the months immediately following. Chomsky placed the attacks in context, marshaling his deep and nuanced knowledge of American foreign policy to trace the history of American political aggression--in the Middle East and throughout Latin America as well as in Indonesia, in Afghanistan, in India and Pakistan--at the same time warning against America’s increasing reliance on military rhetoric and violence in its response to the attacks, and making the critical point that the mainstream media and public intellectuals were failing to make: any escalation of violence as a response to violence will inevitably lead to further, and bloodier, attacks on innocents in America and around the world.

This new edition of 9-11, published on the tenth anniversary of the attacks and featuring a new preface by Chomsky, reminds us that today, just as much as ten years ago, information and clarity remain our most valuable tools in the struggle to prevent future violence against the innocent, both at home and abroad."

     Chomsky - How To Fight Terrorism

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A Recollection of 9/11 - Córdoba, Veracruz, México

I was going up the broad staircase at the 'Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey [ITESM], Veracruz campus, prior to my first class of the day.  I had been teaching at the university for some 9 years since I moved to eastern Mexico from northern California.  Suddenly a colleage grabbed my arm, said 'you have to see this' ['tienes que ver esto'] and forcefully ushered me into the office of a fellow professor.  A number of teachers were standing around the large TV on the wall in hushed silence.  I saw one of the large towers in New York with smoke billowing out it and since it was a relay broadcast from Mexico City the  announcer somehow presumed that a plane had accidently crashed into the tower.  Then no more that a few minutes later what appeared to be a large passenger airplane flew into the second tower.  It suddenly became evident that this was a purposeful act.  I, like all of those in the room, was in a state of shock.  Things like this just didn't happen in the USA, the most powerful nation on the planet.

       

I eventually made my way to the 'Méthodos de Investigacíon Científica' classroom, attempted to explain why there would be no class that day, stopped by the main office to have the secretary cancel my other classes, and walked home, still in a state of confusion and shock.  I utilized a shortcut to my home which passed through a coffee plantation filled with an abundance of nature.  The birds were singing, butterflies were floating through the air and this walk had always the most peaceful part of my day.  What I had just witnessed a few minutes before occuring in New York seemed more like a nightmare than reality. 

            
        

I like millions of others around the world sat as if glued to the TV for the rest of the day and early evening, attempting to make sense of it all.  I don't now recall how long before it was established that this horrendous act was perpetrated by Al Qaeda and was the result of Moslem fanaticism.  And since I was liviing in a predominately Catholic country, I couldn't very well proclaim with indignation that this barberous act was the end result of what religious fanaticism can produce.

I recalled the childhood history lessons from my father, a history professor, when he told me about the Albigensian Crusade, initiated by Pope Innocent III, which resulted in the deaths of at least a million innocent people in Europe, and the dreaded Spanish Inquisition which had also killled and tortured an untold number.  My own father had been a victim of the Nazi occupation of our country.  Our neighbors had been sent off to concentration camps from which they never returned.   Since childhood I have been made painfully aware of what any religious/political fananticism is capable of,  but especially during those troubling days after 9/11, I kept my thoughts to myself.

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