2 posts tagged “religion”
Religion in modern America
Newsweek claims that the Christian Religion is dead in America.
CNN proclaims that the battles for "morality" in America have all been lost by the "religious right."
The Huffington Post laughs at you silly little people who are worried about socialism, the loss of personal freedom, and religious persecution.
And I am here to simply define the word: "Persecution."
Founding Father and the FIRST President, George Washington said this:
"True religion affords government its surest support. The future of this nation depends on the Christian training of our youth. It is impossible to govern without the Bible."
Would President George Washington be "persecuted" TODAY, if he made that statement now..??
I believe that he would be.
Why would George Washington MAKE a statement like this, (with all that "separation of church and state" stuff..??)
Because- President Washington; being an extremely intelligent man, knew that a country filled with "free" people would KILL themselves, without a good sense of morality. (Or a King’s Army to control all of you radical bastards.)
Since Washington was among people who fled Europe to get away from "The King’s Army", and the persecution of a State run Religion...
President Washington didn’t want to create an "all-powerful King’s Army" here in America to stop you from stealing my goat. He hoped that you and I, as free people, could work out our differences. The best way he knew for you to learn morality, (if you didn’t learn it from your parents) was from religion.
Today, the liberal left would persecute George Washington for his beliefs, and the liberal left would laugh at a man like John Adams who worried about personal freedom from an over-bearing government.
The founding fathers wanted to form a country where anyone could practice a peaceful religion and be FREE from religious persecution.
Here is where that pesky word: "persecution" comes in.
Many people (on the left) believe that "persecution" MEANS- to harm physically, to banish from the country, etc.
This is not a correct definition.
Persecution simply means: subject a person to prolonged hostility and ill-treatment, persistently harass or annoy.
This is what people on the left are doing to the modern religious believer and exactly what Bill Maher did with his movie: "Religulous."
Religulous does have its funny moments, I will give Bill Maher that. But it should.
After all, Maher started out as a stand-up comic, before he decided to become a "deep thinker." Also, Bill Maher used Larry Charles as his director. Charles; who also directed the movie: "Borat" which stared Sacha Baron Cohen, has made an art out of using stupid people, saying stupid things, to make a point.
Religulous follows the same "mold" as Borat. Charles takes footage of anyone who made a coherent thought and tosses it on the editing room floor. You never see it. However, any person who stumbles his way through an answer; gets in the movie.
So, with Bill Maher and Larry Charles at the helm, it should have been a funny movie. And it was in parts, (if you like to laugh at people.)
However, Religulous was a BOMB for Charles. Domestically, Religulous made 13 million at the box office. Foreign release saw an even worse result with: $355,000 bucks.
Put that next to Larry Charles’ direction of "Borat", which saw 128 million in the US, and 133 million in foreign, for a total of 261 million worldwide, you can see that the 13 million total from "Religulous" was a disaster for Larry Charles.
Throughout the entire movie, you find yourself wanting to grab Bill Maher and begin to quiz him. But you; the audience, never gets that chance. No intelligent religious people are allowed within a mile of Bill Maher, during the filming of this movie.
You find yourself asking: "Bill, do you believe in the talking monkeys..?? You know, the small group of monkeys who decided to gain intelligence, and the thousands of other monkeys that never did..??"
"Mr. Maher, do you believe in the bubbling mud puddle..?? The oozing and churning ‘mud puddle of life’ that created the first single cell..??"
"Bill Maher, do you believe that space aliens planted ‘LIFE’ on earth..??"
"Do you believe in the tiny particle that exploded into the universe..??"
If you wanted to ask these questions, you will be disappointed in this movie because they are never asked.
Bill Maher does have a "stock" answer for anyone who asks these types of questions; Bill says: "I don’t know..??"
Deep thinkers, they amaze me...
Bill Maher says: "I don’t know..??"
(Let me frame it exactly the way that Bill Maher says it) "At least I’m honest, I do not know where life comes from. But neither do religious people..."
Well, Bill...
That is only HALF right.
Science also doesn’t know where life began.
Religious people believe they know how life began, but they cannot prove it with a scientific test.
Nor can science. (Prove where life began with a scientific test.)
Bill Maher hides behind a rock while slinging his dangerous barbs at religious people.
When you begin to tear into people like Maher about the oozing "mud puddle of life", or the talking monkeys, Maher quickly hides behind the rock of: "..I don’t know where life began.."
Once you realize that you cannot attack Bill Mahers ideas, (because he doesn’t have any..!!) You have nothing to fight with, and Maher (and his liberal buddies) are free to attack you. (From the safety of hiding behind "the rock of ignorance.")
Bill Maher: attacking religion.
THIS IS: persecution.
What Bill Maher does is exactly what the founding fathers didn’t want to happen.
The persecution of religious people in America.
Yes, Bill Maher has the RIGHT to speak free.
And, "we the people" spoke with our dollars because "Religulous" was a flop.
(I even hated to rent the dam movie. However, I like to know what I am talking about.)
Well, Bill Maher, I believe in God.
I do not believe in an "oozing mud puddle of life." I do not believe in a talking monkey. (Though I have seen a monkey push a yellow button when he wanted a banana.)
If you are a believer in evolution, you must ask "how did this all begin."
The question that Ben Stein asks in his movie "Expelled- no intelligence allowed", if you believe in an expanding universe; it had to start somewhere? Where did it start..??
Science is divided on how "it all started." They cannot prove it.
Bill Maher "doesn’t know" and doesn’t want to dwell on it. He is happy to persecuted religious people like some school yard bully.
I believe that God created it all.
I left the Catholic Church many years ago because I cannot belong to a faith that openly tried to move child molesting Priests around to different churches, and cover up the whole ordeal. I did not care for the politics that you find in some churches.
But this doesn’t corrupt my faith in God. These are examples of evil men doing evil things. Religion has little to do with it.
This is what Bill Maher cannot conceive.
Evil people do evil things. Regardless of origin or religion.
Did Hitler kill millions of people to get closer to God..??
Or did Hitler want to expand Germany and use Darwinism to create a "master race?"
Did Napoleon try to conquer the known world in the name of God..??
No, Napoleon made himself Emperor of France, King of Italy, Mediator of the Swiss, and "Protector of the Rhine."
Napoleon was after the cash and the fame.
Did the Crusades take place because God wanted it to happen..??
Or did evil men pervert a religion..??
Does Allah want men to kill innocent people..??
Or has evil men perverted another religion..??
Bill Maher cannot understand this.
Like the person who believes that if you remove guns from society you could stop murder...
Maher believes that if religion went away, the world would be "more fair" without this moral dogma.
I, for one, do not want to live in a world without morality.
Murder is OK. Neighbors possessions are yours for the taking. Killing babies is acceptable. Having sex with your friends spouse is encouraged. Children can be abandoned. And NOTHING is greater than yourself. YOU are the most important thing in your life.
Welcome to the: "Anti- religion."
Bill Maher claims that: "Man would have figured out that murder is wrong without religion.. Man doesn’t need religion to understand that theft is wrong.."
Oh, really Mr. Maher.
Then explain why some jungle tribes, who never had contact with modern religion, feel it is OK to kill your neighbor, and no one goes to jail. Why do some jungle tribes feel that theft is fine because "the strong can take from the weak." That is just a fact.
So the answer is NO...
Men may not learn that crime is evil, without morality.
Morality is the glue that allows us to live together.
Morality keeps good men honest.
Evil men will be dealt with by the police and military.
Without morality, good men have no reason to be honest. The police and military become overwhelmed.
Without morality, the city, the country, the world devolves into animalism. A place where the STRONG take what they want from the weak.
This is what George Washington was talking about, all those years ago.
President Washington knew that no army on earth could control free people, who lost their morality.
Washington didn’t want a powerful government that would rule the people of America. That is why the founding fathers wanted its citizens armed with guns and to have full voting rights. So that Americans could replace its government by voting, or by force, if necessary.
But most of all, the founding fathers wanted a country that practiced morality.
A free people who could police themselves.
For thousands of years, the best way to teach morality is through honest parents and religion.
This Easter weekend, I do worry that America is "losing its religion."
I am positive that even the liberal left wouldn’t want to live in a world with no religion.
Sure, they might receive their gay marriage and be able to abort children at will. They could cheat on their spouse without regard.
But I believe that liberals lack the vision of seeing beyond their own wants.
What about MY wants..??
If I no longer care about being "good." If I no longer worry about a heaven and hell, I might just take your possessions. What would stop me from taking your car..?? The police..??
Even the hard- core liberal might pray for a return of religion.
Which, in an ironic twist, is when many find God. When it might be too late.
Even Charles Darwin found God (again) in his old age.
The young man has the luxury of believing that he is invincible, and can question a power greater than himself.
However, the old man doesn’t have that luxury. At deaths door, is when many begin to believe that there MUST be more to life then a few random particles.
Science gets Expelled
Do you feel that if you wear a sweater inside your house to keep warm, you can make the Arctic ice shelf stop melting?
Do you believe that if you drive your car less often, you can stop hurricanes and forest fires from happening?
It sounds silly when you think of it in that way.
However, you are not alone.
All through history people have believed some wild things. Men once believed that if they sailed too far out into the ocean, they would fall off the edge of the world.
Let me tell you about something that I believed since I was a child and just recently found out to be untrue:
All my life I believed that Galileo was thrown into prison by the Church because he believed the earth was NOT the center of the universe.
This is completely false.
The church never confronted Galileo on his scientific research. It wasn't until Galileo began to publicly decipher the Bible, which in those days was not permitted, without confiding in the church- first, that Galileo was arrested.
Galileo was never thrown in jail.
He was confined to his house, (which was a huge house) and he continued to work on his scientific theories. The church never bothered him again.See, Galileo was a member of the church and therefore church rules applied to him.
Most famous scientists believed in religion.
Actually, (and this is really wild) it was a Catholic Priest who first presented the theory that the universe is expanding outwards from "some beginning."
In 1927, Joseph Éduard Lemaître, using facts he obtained from years of viewing the sky with his telescope, presented his theory of an expanding universe. Albert Einstein refused to believe this expanding universe theory because Einstein held on to the belief that the universe was stagnant. (Unchanging.)
When most men would walk by and pay no attention to the night sky, it was religious people who began to chart the heavens. It was religious people who started mapping out the sky and created astronomy. Giving special names to the planets that they could see with the naked eye. Names we still use today like Mars and Venus.
It was religious people, who thought that they were naming Gods, who started us on this scientific journey to discover "who we are."
It has been said that science tries to discover "how things work." Religion tries to discover "why things work." This was very true in the past. For most, if not all, great scientists were religious. (And remained religious until their death.)
Today, I'm not so sure people understand this symbiotic relationship.
As I travel around this great blog world, I find many non- religious people who believe that they are the "cats ass."
Cats ass
- (definition) Free thinking intellectuals.They believe religion garrotes scientific study. Which is not the case. Had Galileo NOT believed in God, he would have been an outsider. He would have never had the money to own a telescope, let alone perfect it. Galileo needed religion to fund his studies, because no one else had that kind of money.
Liberal non-believers have their ears closed.
I have been called a "flat-earther", a Jesus freak, and ignorant because I believe in God.
Years ago, when I first started blogging, I would argue with these people. I would remind them that Darwin believed in God and actually dropped his evolution theory and dedicated the remainder of his life to God.
It doesn't matter to these people. They believe religion, all religion is wrong. Could you imagine a person saying that all Black people are criminals? But today, you have many people in the blog world claiming that all religion is evil. That religion is the cause of humanities suffering.
"Free thinkers" who do not have much freedom in thought.
I do not have much time for the non-believer who calls me ignorant. For I know where all science derives from. It comes from one person reaching out in this world. It has little to do with a belief in God, or if the person is male or female, white or black.
With that said
, I have given some thought to fighting with people who believe in "man made" global warming. I will still point out factual errors in the theory and fight a stupid greenhouse gas tax. But I am not going to fight with the "greens."If you believe that walking to work, instead of driving your car, will save the polar bears…
That's fine with me.
Walking is great exercise and you will save money not buying gas.
Besides, walking to work will give you time to think. And just like ancient man who thought he was naming the Gods. (But in reality, he was inventing astronomy.) Maybe while walking to work, you will ponder cancer and come up with a cure.
Maybe, while you are sitting in your dark house with the TV turned off, (to save the Australian Hissing Frog) you will become bored and write a great novel. Without the distractions of a computer, iPod, and cell phone- you might paint a masterpiece. (On recycled canvas, of course.)
So walk to work.
Turn off that TV.The polar bears thank you.
Written by AR Babonie for The Angry Republican
Research material used- The History Channel's- "The Universe."
Originally written and published on November 11, 2007
If you enjoyed that editorial, you might also like this one- "Hey, Mister Science Guy"
