Recent Comments

1. 2 days ago on For Heaven's Sake

   You: “I returned to my faith … Because of reason.”

   Sorry, not buying it. Your only “reason” was that you accept as a priori fact that the Bible is the inerrant and infallible Word of God and, based on that self-validating source, “reason” then becomes to accept the Bible because the Bible says so (though actually it doesn’t — even when Paul says that “all scripture is God-breathed [2 Timothy 3:16], he is referring to the scripture that already exists in his day — the Old Testament).

   You have already admitted that you filter out any objective evidence that does not pass through the “filter” of your pre-determined conclusions.

   Even you realize how absurd this is. You would not accept a Muslim arguing that the Qur’an is the Word of God because it says so, and only accepting as “evidence” supporting materials from the Qur’an itself or the Hadiths or other Islamic texts.

2. 3 days ago on For Heaven's Sake

   When you refuse to accept any actual, objective, neutral evidence that has not been filtered through the prism of your pre-determined conclusion, you acknowledge a complete lack of objective or ration consideration and disqualify yourself from any serious analysis.

   You are an intellectual and moral COWARD. You have never actually tested your “faith” — you have never actually challenged your assumptions with objective, external EVIDENCE — which you filter out through your prism of pre-determined conclusions. And in so doing, you acknowledge a complete lack of objective or rational consideration.

   By consciously rejecting anything that does not just reaffirm your predetermined conclusions, you disqualify yourself from being taken seriously in any rational exchange.

   You refuse to test — to really challenge — your beliefs with real, actual, objective fact-based EVIDENCE from the real world, because YOU ARE AFRAID. You know your faith — the legacy of primitive sheep herders and fishermen who didn’t know where they sun went at night — can not stand up to any objective, factual challenge.

   It is YOU whose house is built on the sands of superstition and primitive mythology.

   It is YOU whose theological assertions do not carry the slightest shred of fact-tested credibility.

3. 3 days ago on For Heaven's Sake

   Jesus did not choose Paul on the road to Damascus. Paul lied. He made up a whopper.

   Paul was a long-time persecutor of the followers of Jesus and then found a way to infiltrate and undermine from within.

   And, considering how completely opposite today’s conservative “Christians” are from the teachings attributed to Jesus, it appears he was actually quite successful.

   You are not a follower of the teachings of Jesus.

   You are a follower of the apostate, Paul.

   You are not qualified to analyze religious questions, because you just blindly accept what you were born into, and refuse to seriously question or to consider any evidence that contradicts your a priori assumptions.

   In contrast, I started out from the same place as you, including fully devout, but when credible evidence contradicted my beliefs, I struggled through the very difficult process of self-examination and re-evaluation.

   “Free or not?” For you, the answer is “NOT!” It always amazes me how conservatives are so eager to talk about “freedom” while trying to control and micromanage every aspects of everyone else’s private lives.

4. 4 days ago on For Heaven's Sake

   I was raised Christian, and was a true believer. Bought the whole line. Active in youth ministries. Four years of seminary. As a result, I became quite conversant in the scriptures, the creeds and much other material.

   The issue was that, the deeper I got into it, the more I found the numerous direct, internal contradictions, moral absurdities and outright atrocities that permeate the faith and which are used as scare tactics to control people.

   Before Jesus (Old Testament) and after Jesus (the apostacy of Paul and construction of a dogma-driven church, the religion was one of harsh, often cruel, legalism.

   But in that brief time called the ministry of Jesus, there was a teaching of love, kindness and compassion which Jesus made the foundation of his moral teaching and the basis of his views on “salvation” until Paul came along and corrupted it into something perverse. I have great admiration for the teachings attributed to Jesus; not so much for Paul and the corrupt faith that followed.

   And no, I don’t need your moral “authority” to dictate what “filters” I need in order to stand up for TRUE moral decency and something that actually resembles the teachings of Jesus, which your harsh cruelty certainly does not.

   And as long as right-wing “Christian” extremists seek to wield the cudgel of legal authority to impose their beliefs on others, you can be sure I will stand up to them and, yes, very vocally so.

   As for “she,” “he” and “him,” I see that the people who don’t want to respect others’ preferred pronouns get their dander up pretty quickly if we don’t use the pronouns they prefer for their imaginary friends.

5. 4 days ago on For Heaven's Sake

   Yep. God does not grant blessings freely, of love. She wants to make us beg. Grovel. Tell ourselves we are nothing.

   “Our father?” What kind of parent belittles their child and demands self-effacement as a condition for beneficence?

   Real parents love their children UNCONDITIONALLY and try to build up their children’s self-esteem, not put them down, tell them they are conceived in sin, dirty, worthless.

6. 4 days ago on For Heaven's Sake

   A prayer of thanksgiving or quiet communion with a higher power may be uplifting and set a positive frame of mind in something of a meditative way, but prayer of supplication — asking god to cause a specific outcome — does nothing to cause actual change and, yes, is an act of begging.

   And yes, as recorded in the gospels, Jesus did teach private personal prayer, not in the places of worship, but as individual, personal communion, without vain repetitions such as are found in the prescribed texts of prayers in liturgical rituals.

7. 4 days ago on For Heaven's Sake

   So glad you agree that Jesus commanded that prayer be personal, private, SECRET and expressly criticized public prayer, including in the place of worship (synagogues).

   Yet the Catholics love to hold their grand public spectacles and public prayers, before men, replete with vain repetitions (scripted text). And same for Protestants, Evangelicals, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Adventists and all the rest who give lip service to acceptance of the Bible but ignore what it actually says.

   And what is prayer?

   Prayer is not an act of faith — it is a demonstration of lacking faith. Praying for a specific outcome is an act of doubt, not faith. If you really had faith in “god’s perfect plan,” you wouldn’t need to beg her to change it.

   Praying to ask for something is where you talk to an imaginary friend you believe to be all-knowing, all-wise, all-loving and all-powerful who has a perfect plan and makes sure everything follows that plan — and try to get her to change her mind.

   Praying for things is kind of like, “When you wish upon a star” except that the star isn’t invisible.

8. 2 months ago on Michael Ramirez

   Yep, Trump mocked a disabled reporter,Ramirez mocks people who use wheelchairs.

   It’s what conservatives do.

9. 3 months ago on Mike Luckovich

   Yes, David seemed to be very smitten with Bathsheba from the moment he first voyeured her bathing on her rooftop.

   Out of the eight wives David had that are named in the Old Testament, Bathsheba was not the first, but she became his favorite. Even though his son by her, Solomon, was not the firstborn (he was son number ten) David worked things out (apparently Bathsheba, with all her, um, charms, was quite persuasive) for Solomon to be the one to succeed him.

   David had eight wives named in the Old Testament. But he was a piker compared to his (tenth) son and successor, Solomon (son by Bathsheba), who had 700 wives according to the Bible, along with 300 concubines (mistresses). Busy fellow. Trump’s role model, though Trump is having a hard time keeping up (so far only five kids with three wives and who-knows-how-many mistresses).

   Many of the revered prophets of the Old Testament had multiple wives. THAT is “traditional marriage,” most of them with god’s blessing; THAT is Biblical marriage. None of this “one man, one woman” nonsense they try to peddle today.

   For most of recorded human history around the world, and especially the Biblical variety, “traditional marriage” has meant one man with multiple underage prepubescent females of the same ethnic tribe, as a property agreement in arranged marriages in exchange for a dowry (possibly goats, cows and sheep), maintaining “dominion” over these wives as chattel property in the same way as his herds, flocks and other livestock.

   Fortunately, marriage has been EVOLVING and being redefined for millennia.

10. 3 months ago on Mike Luckovich

    Good reminder that the guy who cheated on wife one with wife two, and cheated on wife two with wife three, and cheated on wife three with a porn star and a Playboy Bunny (and lots and lots of others in between for all of them) is paying for his “sins” by selling Bibles overpriced at $59.99.

    And for the low, low additional price of $6.66 you can get your choice of centerfold — Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal or Melania.