Archive for abortion

Imprecise Personhood Identities

Posted in Atheist, Bible, humanity, meaning of life, random, religion, scriptures, thoughts with tags , , , , , , on January 1, 2014 by chouck017894

Does God make mistakes? Such a suggestion of godly goofs will give religious fanatics heart palpitations, facial twitches and even incite some of them to pious rage. However, their eruptive energy would be better spent in seeking to understand the energy processes by which the creative Source functions and whereby every entity enters this energy dimension with matter identity. Every material entity takes form only by drawing upon its energy potential after conception, and this occurs in a gradual increase and interaction of primal energy. The initial energy involvement (conception) activates to become an involving and evolving accumulation of energies which amasses as an identifiable but transitory energy-form. Habitually ignored by religious fanatics in assessing the God approved “miracle” of life is the creation principle which may be assessed as the second law of Creation, which is the commandment for variety and diversity in all matter-life manifestations. This second law of Creation assures the continuation of the first Law of Creation, which is unlimited abundance of creative energy.

In the development of human life there is an obvious abundance and diversity of life-form examples. A consequence of that commandment for variety and diversity is that each manifested entity can assess any other life patterns around itself only from a temporarily imposed limited perspective. The negative aspect of imposing limitation upon a life form is the inclination for each life form to then pass judgment upon life’s variety and broad diversity by using the self as measurement for judgment–a challenging situation that faith merchants love to utilize to stoke devotional fire to their man-conceived faith systems. Even though the life force is demonstratively widely diverse and variable in its outpouring there are, nonetheless, endless similarities in all life forms, which demonstrates that no two entities are ever created using some assembly line of strict uniformity. Variety and diversity make for the avid rule in Creation. This unprejudiced, unbiased creative energy therefore sort-of-kind-of discredits all faith system’s claim of having godly favoritism.

And this brings us to that complex energy involvement which determines human life identity–personhood. What about all the many not-so-error-free births that occur every day? As just one small example of an ill-defined identity, consider the estimated 17,000 infants born worldwide each year with disfiguring cleft lips, the deformed upper lip that will make it impossible for them to speak or eat properly. In many deprived, less developed regions such children are scorned and ostracized, and destined to endure life (if they are allowed to live at all) an existence of isolation and heartbreak. Fortunately this little defect of their (Godly?) formation can be corrected by surgery in advanced societies. But, as noted, this is just one very small example of the thousands of potential persons who are brought into the world each year with some disfigurement or deformity or organ imperfection; this suggests that every potential life is not exactly a blessed (God-coordinated) event. Is a loving omniscient Creator-being really that haphazard or uncaring in his production of life?

Even in the more medically advanced countries today many infants are born each year with physical defects or medical conditions which, at birth or some future time, can lead to the entity’s misery. Medical studies indicate that there are more than 4000 different known defects, which include minor,major and acute. Statistically this averages out as one in every thirty-three newborns may have some birth defect. In the United States of America, for example, over 150,000 babies with structural or metabolic or functional birth defects are born every year! This tallies up to an estimated four-million-plus under the age of 18 who are categorized as disabled children resulting from some defect that is present at birth. (This may perhaps account for the over-abundance of self-serving politicians and pulpit-pounders.) The list of possible congenital defects is distressing–a fact that does not support the belief that some omniscient God actually wills such insensitive torture upon his favorite creatures–creatures which he allegedly made in his own (energy) image.

Most significant in regard to our connection to that energy image which we are taught to personify as “God” is the organ of the brain, which is responsible for the interpretation of sensory impulses, and the coordination and exercise of thought, emotions and memory. These brain connections are the essentials that unfold (evolve) to define potentiality of personhood. As noted in The Celestial Scriptures, “One of the most remarkable things in embryo growth is that the nerve network by which the organism is to function and sense its matter identity does not develop as part of the (embryonic) growth process. The nerve network pattern already exists within the energy field of the embryo and simply expands as the physical form grows! It is as though the individualized electro-dynamic energy field is superimposed over a network system that is to retain communications with cosmic consciousness. Until this nerve network fully expands into the body’s communication circuitry the biochemical balance remains too low for full emanation of (self-) aware consciousness. At the embryonic stage the nerve network is involved only with the foundation of the species pattern. The electro-dynamic field then involves as cellular matter, and the nerve network becomes an operative system of the “coming one” only when cellular matter attains a functioning energy balance…”

At birth the bulk of the neurons necessary for the brain to actually function are present: however, the brain mass continues to grow, and by the age of two it has amassed to about eighty percent of adult size. Indeed, the human brain continues most of its development through the first twenty years of life. And it is that remarkable soft, gray mass of nerve tissue that serves much like an electrical generator which controls both the conscious and unconscious, and which is also the seat of sensations, skills and intelligence. The electrical nature of the brain was first measured in 1924 by Hans Berger, a Swiss researcher, who invented the EEG machine. Furthermore, the physical body is also an electrical structure which virtually hums under the conductorship of the brain. However, this physical-electrical sensitivity also happens to be receptive to the oscillating electromagnetic forces of the telluric currents within our planet; plus that sensitivity is also vulnerable to the magnetosphere, and to cosmic influences such as the Sun! In other words, everything we speak of as Creation is closely interrelated.

Isn’t mankind, the creatures presumed (by humans) to be closest to God’s image, not expected to use that godlike resemblance to creative wisdom to oversee and direct the quality production of personal offspring? The reproduction rights were not just granted arbitrarily to man by some Creator so that his alleged favored creatures might produce haphazardly. If fetal (prototypal) entities posed any imbalance or dangers to the wellbeing of an established consciousness, then one’s personal connecton to Creation energies was expected to be used to take “dominion” of those creative energies for prevention of far-reaching circumstances. That “dominion” granted to man over lower life forms–and fetal life is only potential self-conscious life–is stated in the book of Genesis. Primal energies, once activated, expand through attraction and repulsion. That means that any reflex actions in fetal forms which are in the process of energy constructions are not yet due to any self-awareness (consciousness), but are simply due to energy interactions which are on the increase (evolving) toward a defined matter form.

So it is basically positive-negative energy interaction within the creative Source (personified as “God”) which sparked an electromagnetic involvement that involved into the energy prototypes of you and me. But it is only when the evolving energy-matter form attains the consciousness of “I AM” that it enters upon its responsibility of advancing in wisdom. Indeed, in Exodus, chapter 3, verse 14, God is quoted as saying, “…I AM hath sent me unto you.” And it is only when that new-born energy-being attains the consciousness of “I” that it can say, “I Am That Which I Will To Be.”

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Abortion and Personhood

Posted in belief, Bible, culture, faith, random, religion, sex, Social, thoughts with tags , , , , , on April 7, 2013 by chouck017894

Read the Holy Bible word by word from front to back and you will never once come upon the word abortion.  No such situation is ever advanced as a “sin,” and considering the many denunciations labored over, that omission concerning abortion is bewildering if it is true that standing sentinel over sensible allowance of life production is a sin.  So where do the overconfident “true believers” get all their divine memos?

When the sin seekers choose to ignore what the Bible does not say, but instead listen to some faith system hawker who cunningly incites naive followers to commit acts of protest, the seekers indulge themselves in judgment passing which holds no genuine spiritual benefit.  The instigator of such rallies may possibly think that he or she is defending a holy principle, in which case he or she has not really read the Bible which, nonetheless, they often hold aloft like some battle flag.  The spiritual benefit that the provokers really achieve from these demonstrations is ego stimulation, a kind of ego masturbation.  To accomplish gratification they use as stimulants a few cherry picked verses that can be fashioned to slip-slide around their desire.

One of these spiritual lubricants used by the self-proclaimed “pro-lifers” is often lifted out of The Ten Commandments; the sixth one which says, “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”  That commandment is not at all specific, however.  If that commandment is taken as an all-inclusive directive it would mean that we should not even squash a mosquito.  The intent of that sixth commandment is that we are to revere the moral rights which are active within all conscious life.  Considering that the “pro-lifers” murder doctors at women’s clinics, their stance is beyond hypocrisy.  Nothing in the Bible equates a developing fetus as a cognizant human being.  That is actually made clear in Exodus 21:22-25 where it is judged that even if a man should accidently kill a pregnant woman while in a conflict with another man, he is held to be guilty of murder.  If, however, that pregnant woman is caused to miscarry–i.e. the fetus is killed–it is not considered, according  to Exodus, to be a case of murder.  Just as an acorn is not an oak tree, a fetus–a seedling or potential person–was not declared by God’s secretary-priests to be a comprehending entity which is equipped for directing authority over life. 

Quick!  Find another stimulant!  Eager hands grasp at Psalms 139:13-16, allegedly the poetic work of David, which avows that God formed him in his mother’s womb.  The claim is made that the Lord used some especial means to create a male who was preordained to be King of Israel.  That was openly declared to be a special case carried out by God who apparently had nothing better to do in the universe, and so took up dabbling in the politics of Israel.  Clearly that birthing method is not applicable to your average conception routine.  In today’s terms, Dave was hot wired to play the lead role in a manufactured history.  Oddly, most of his story in the books of Samuel pivots on his adulterous romp with Bathsheba and his arrangement to have her husband killed.  Oh my, that wasn’t very pro-life of that glorious king.

Hey, there’s gotta be something in Bible tales for antiabortionists to use that seem almost rational.  Ah, here it is; good old Jeremiah!  It is clear here; it says that God knew him before he was  even conceived in the womb.  You mean even before the sperm and egg linked up?  Jeremiah 1:5 declares that God told Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”  And that must mean also that each and every one of us is preordained and sanctified to be a prophet!  So how come so few of us know what is destined to happen around us?  Oh, I remember: Jeremiah was pre-formulated to fulfill a designated purpose because God was once again dabbling in Israel politics.  Even so, somehow that must indicate that God is right in there at the very instant of every conception and that He regards that undefined squirming mass that he is supervising to already be a full-term self-aware person, right?  A rational person does not have to possess prophetic capabilities to know that God is not in every vagina at the very instant of conception.  That claim is directly opposite to the Genesis command (1:24-25) that each life form is endowed so it may multiply “after its own kind.”  Nowhere in the Bible is it ever claimed that God was going to be present to supervise over every act of “multiplication.”

Leaving the Creator’s alleged political obsession over 8th century BCE Israel politics to be checked only occasionally in the rearview mirror, let us focus on some vital clues concerning personhood that the Creator provides.  Consider the brain.  The  organ of the brain does not begin to develop as a unit of definable energy substance until after the third week of conception.  This initial unit of energy-substance is referred to in medical terminology as the neural plate, a discernable formation of around 125,000 cells from which the physical form is to develop (evolve).  From this initial period of evolutionary development through the remaining months of gestation new neutrons then begin to appear at the rate of 250,000 per minute!  As awesome as this is, it does not mean that God is right there overseeing every gene placement.  It is simply energy-substance interacting within an energy field (the human body) which is the process by which every energy-matter form assumes visible manifestation. 

At birth each human does happen to be in possession of all his or her nerve cells.  Technically, however, the newborn baby can be said to be a mindless organism, for the cerebral cortex–the portion of the brain-matter which holds the seat of higher intellect–scarcely functions.  The newborn’s actions are almost totally dictated by the lower brain stem, a portion of the brain which humans share in common with all primate animals and reptiles.

In the first days of separate existence outside the mother’s body, the situation changes very rapidly with the cerebral cortex then bursting forth with growth.  The first few months of independent survival is the most crucial period of brain development for every human being.  The intense network of interconnecting nerve fibers swiftly develops so that by the age of one year the infant’s brain has reached around fifty percent of its adult weight.  Even so the infant cannot be said to be self-aware in a mindful sense.  The entity does not yet have any consciousness of “I”; that self-awareness emerges around the age of three.  The accelerated growth of the cerebral cortex reduces around this developmental time, and the brain then gradually acquires around ninety percent of its adult weight by the age of six years.

The first six years in general serve as the crucible where the child’s basic values and ethics are set into a pattern, and their interest, abilities and talents develop which shape their personhood and sets the direction of social behavior.  Brain development, the structure that establishes personhood, reaches its average adult weight of about three pound around the time of puberty, when physical growth begins to taper off.

The brain of every individual is assembled from a narrow spectrum of genetic material provided by the parents.  The interaction that will develop as a physical body is itself composed of only about one hundred thousand genes.  This sounds like an enormous quantity, but is a relatively small amount considering that it is from this modest quantity of genes that the brain, the nucleus of personhood, produces in excess of one hundred trillion-trillion nerve cells.  And each of these nerve cells may in turn form as many as ten thousand connections with its neighbor cells!  All this is done “after its own kind” as commanded in Genesis.  The physical brain is established with polar fields: the front portion is active with a “negative” charge, the back of the brain is active with a “positive” charge.  In other words, every living entity is a charged energy pack, and that allowance of creative power is free to progressively define itself in limited expressions of personhood, all of which are valid before the Absolute.

So the broad aspect alluded to in the book of Exodus 21:22-25 regarding the accidental termination of fetal development was correctly understood as NOT the killing of personhood.  And the alleged especial circumstances claimed for a few starring biblical characters who were said to be “chosen” for some special story line purpose clearly cannot be said to be applicable to circumstances of every conception.

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Distorted Echoes of Another Time

Posted in agnoticism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, faith, freethought, Government, history, humanity, politics, random, religion, Social, thoughts with tags , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2011 by chouck017894

The rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany in the 1930s, as surprising as it may seem, hinged upon the people’s need for spiritual identity.  The once strong and proud German nation had lost position and power in World War I (1914-1918), and the humiliation imposed upon them by the victorious Christian-dominated nations brought with it a breath of contempt for Christianity’s claims of compassion and clemency.  The truth was that the war had not been unexpected.  Indeed, most European nations had been preparing for eventual conflict.  After the most destructive war in history (at the time)—more than twenty thrones had crumbled—the world was anxious for a sacrificial victim.  Thus, ignoring the deceptive role that a number of the Allies had played, Germany was branded as the instigator.  The understandable resentment and distrust would fester, and it would play into the ambitions of Adolf Hitler and his cohorts. 

Hitler, as a boy, had been indoctrinated under Catholic guidelines, but his early life had been a dismal failure: and his ambition to be an artist was shattered when the art school to which he applied judged him not to be good enough.  Thus Hitler decided to use the hypocrisy that always infests religious posturing, and through the ’30s, and even during the war, Hitler’s government indulged in an active conspiracy with a vast array of European Christian churches. 

Broadly ignored in most history accounts is the religious undercurrent that fed and shaped the Nazi movement.  Hitler surrounded himself with men who assessed Christianity to have proven itself a mockery.  Consequently there was a driving quest in the early Nazi movement for a mystical identity that would provide a dogma of sorts that would regain and establish their  potential qualities.  The assortment of occult elements from wide-ranging fields of mysticism amalgamated into a bizarre Nazi code of belief in which Hitler became presented and viewed as the high priest and the long-awaited messiah of German legend.  Like all religions, the Nazi code of belief gained support because it fondled and gratified the angst-ridden people’s egos.

In the Reichstag elections of 1930 the Nazi party polled over six million votes, largely due to the frustration and disillusionment over the handling of the nation’s economic crisis, which also troubled much of the world.  The same general economic aggravation in the United States in 2010 stampeded the gullible to vote Tea Party cohorts into government positions. 

In the timeframe of July 13, 1931 the bankruptcy of German Danatbank resulted in causing the closure of all German banks.  The German millionaire Alfred Hugenberg actively supported the 800,000-strong Nazi Party, much as the Koch brothers support the radical right Republican Party in the US today.  Other wealthy men then threw their support toward the Nazis, just as have so many obscenely wealthy men thrown their support to the extreme religious-dominated Republican Party in the US today. 

On February 23, 1933 the Associated Press ran a feature story on Hitler’s campaign against the “Godless movement” in Germany.  To quote:  “A campaign against the ‘Godless movement’ and an appeal for Catholic support were launched by Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s forces.”  A couple of months later, on April 26, 1933, Hitler had this to say in a speech during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933:  “Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith…we need believing people.”  Kind of reminds one of the radial religious right in the US today insisting that the Bible must be studied in public schools, and that we must have a Bible-based government, doesn’t it?

One of the first things that Hitler did upon gaining political control in 1933 was to abolish worker and trade unions.  Uh-oh!  Sound familiar?  Ask the people in Wisconsin.

New laws were put into force regarding homosexuals, which defined them as “asocials” who, it was declared, constituted a threat to the Reich and the moral purity of Germany.  In 1936 the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion was setup by Heinrich Himmler.  That year, under the “asocials” law, the number of males imprisoned for their sexual nature was 4000; in 1937 that number rose to 8000.  It became routine for those who had served their allotted prison sentence to then be shipped out to concentration camps.  No doubt the priest-authors of Leviticus would have applauded.  There was a curious Biblical ring to such disregard for human diversity and the lack of sane justice in this Nazi application.  And all this is being echoed too threateningly in such absurd religio/political Right examples as these quotes spewed around the US today:— 

—“Gays and lesbians are destroying our nation.  I honestly think they are a bigger threat than terrorists;” this by Republican State Representative Sally Kern of Oklahoma.  “Government should not be in the business of promoting a behavior (referring to homosexuality) that’s proven (?) destructive to our society;” this by Republican US Senator Jim DeMint of South  Carolina.  “Homosexuals and transgenders won’t be happy until they sever every moral underpinning in America;” this propaganda by the so-called Family Research Council.  “Homosexuality tears at the fabric of  society;” from the 2010 Texas Republican Party Platform propaganda. 

Then there is also in the US today the religious fanatic’s feigned indignation over abortion that mirrors the Nazi condemnation.  The “moral” Nazis outlawed abortion outright, which is being attempted today in the US by Right Wing extremists.  Under Nazi control any woman who had an abortion would be sent to prison for five years.  How did that really serve Germany’s higher “moral” purpose?  Was that, in truth, for the good of the nation?  No, but it was insurance of renewing a near-slave population for their political machine.  And it was fully in line with the biblical command to be fruitful and overpopulate.

These, and many more, are propaganda distraction-points used by the radical right, which are hauntingly reminiscent of Nazi tactics of the 1930s, and they are used today primarily to avoid answering any questions regarding their strategy for takeover of the US.  The Republican right, especially the Tea Party, pointedly avoids public discussions of crucial national issues, always muddying any serious talks regarding citizens needs and welfare with phony outrage over a diverse peoples’ private lives.  Stirring up judgmental aversion to life’s intended diversities is a guaranteed way to weaken forces of people that have more in common than the activities of their private lives suggest.  And such policies aimed at divisiveness make for a guaranteed path to disaster. 

None of the self-serving indulgences of the radical right which have infiltrated so much of national and state governments have any genuine love or respect for the tested principles of true democracy.  Certainly their conduct and treachery do not reflect the concluding part of the poem posted on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

“…Give me your tired, your poor,/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,/ I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Let us not stand by idly while fanatical religious and political factions in the United States attempt to dismantle the highest spiritual qualities of democracy.

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Mixing Religion with Medicine

Posted in agnoticism, Atheist, belief, Bible, biological traits, Christianity, culture, faith, life, medical, random, religion, science, Social, thoughts with tags , , , , , , , , on March 17, 2011 by chouck017894

Corporation take over of medical care under the guise of religious insight is becoming a serious threat to democratic principles in the United States today.  The diabolical move by religious denominations to take over hospitals and health care facilities is not undertaken in the noble spirit of love or intellectual understanding of biological truths.  It  is all about materiality and a lust for control.  That these facilities receive generous public subsidies is simply coincidental, of course.  When life threatening situations arise there should never be injected into those threatening problems some religious supposition to further contaminate the situation.  Case in point: those hospital mergers in which Catholic standards, which prioritize unsupported theological doctrines, are made to supersede medical knowledge and the true welfare of patients. 

The ethical question of imposing strict religious dogmatic interpretations on medical situations remains firmly ensconced behind the facade of spiritual posturing, which ignores all laws of physical development.  As an extreme example, ignorance of biological processes instituted by the males who devised Catholic dogma reached the holy conclusion that surgical performance of abortion was forbidden by god.  It did not matter to god’s henchmen if pregnancy had been induced by rape or incest!  And the bishops declared that god didn’t like  individuals taking precautions during sex either, so contraceptives or any precautionary form of birth control was deemed unacceptable.  Not content with these inanities, the self-appointed representatives of  god then issued “ethical directives” regarding end-of-life issues which too often overrule the “living wills” and advanced directives of the terminally ill persons themselves. 

By imposing these things the Catholic hierarchy has never advanced much from the god-inspired “medical” advice given by such revered “saints” as Gregory of Tours (538-594).  His saintly view was that the practice of medicine was a godless science, for any medical attempts to heal interfered with the will of god.  This “saint” conveniently ignored that Jesus is alleged to have healed many medical conditions.  Thus “saint” Gregory dared to condemn as heretic anyone who sought a  physician’s advice.  Healing the sick, he declared, belonged to the realm of faith.  He therefore felt worthy to dispense prescriptions such as a pinch of dust from the Shrine of St. Martin as a cure for dysentery; or, as a cure for the inflammation of the tongue, he recommended that the infected should lick the rails at the shrine of a saint. 

This same mockery of spirit prevails in too many health care facilities supervised by religious orders—those governed by Roman Catholic directives in particular, which are anchored in doctrine-based rules imposed by a conference of non-medical bishops.  And those doctrines came  down through a hierarchy of other non-medical men at councils that date back from the first sitting of the Council of Nicaea in Bithynia in 325.  Even as late as 1973-74 the US Catholic bishops actually decreed that a woman did not have the right to choose what was to grow within her own body!  Their church-serving judgment was directly contrary to the religious premise that everyone possesses free will choice.  As always, the main objective of the haughty bishops was, first and foremost, to give themselves authority to run other people’s lives in the guise of supernatural guidance.

That the religious panels that tyrannize health care  facilities are wretchedly indifferent about biological issues is an understatement, and that is glaringly obvious in their judgments of when conscious awareness of self enters the development of human identity.  These allegedly celibate men (unnatural in itself) dare to pretend judgment of when a “soul” (ego?) is injected into the elementary stage of an energy formation.  A fertilized egg is nothing more than the cleavage of a cell.  To say that god is personally present in the uterine tract to inject a  soul at the moment when ejaculated sperm penetrates an egg is more obscene than it is divine knowledge.

With all the subversive attacks by Religious Right extremists on democratic principles in the United States today, 2011, and the accompanying recession, an alarming number of hospitals are considering merging with larger systems.  Far too often these merged facilities are run through publicly subsidized religious systems.  Thus what are supposed to be medical services, in this manner, operate more profitably than average hospitals, and they now account for around eighteen percent of the nation’s hospital beds.

But when the dogma of some faith system gets pumped into health technology when a person is at their most susceptible condition, the person’s best interests are callously made secondary to church interests.  Jesus must be so proud.

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Abortion and the Bible

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, faith, humanity, life, medical, nature, random, religion, science, thoughts with tags , , , on November 1, 2010 by chouck017894

More important than the event of being born into this harsh material world is the prospect of what the quality of that newborn’s life is likely to be.  This is not an aspect that those opposed to abortion seem willing to consider seriously.  They prefer to let incompetent religious hucksters manipulate them and short-circuit their reasoning ability by use of cherry-picked biblical verses taken out of context of certain stories.  To use two or three biblical verses out of context to claim a godly pronouncement against abortion, and jimmy them into a doctrine stoked with hatred amounts to true sacrilege.  Far more verses can be lifted out of context that will contradict the antiabortion stance, not to mention  that whole chapter in the Old Testament tell of god-approved slaughter of babes, infants, children and parents.  The book of Joshua, for example, is glorification of a holocaustic orgy of such slaughter of innocents. 

Anti-abortionists declare themselves to be “pro-life,” and yet they extend no compassion or thought as to the quality of  life into which a forming fetus is to be born.  Very few of those pro-life activists ever lift a finger to do anything about the infants after they are born into life-demeaning or life-threatening circumstances.  If these pro-life activists really were pro-life they would organize to help all those infants who are  born into poverty and have only a bleak, miserable existence waiting for them.  To ignore such tragedy that is played out all around this overpopulated planet is a testimony that pro-lifers actually lack any true spiritual perception. 

As a small example of how they blind themselves to the enormity of real life and spiritual problems, consider these facts from United Nations.  One-point-four billion people around the planet live in extreme poverty where income is less than $1.25 per day.  Around a billion people have no access to clean water, and infants and very young children perish from contaminated water.  And more than a billion persons, mainly infants and very young children, are chronically undernourished.  These are just a few examples of conditions of conscious, self-aware life, not potential life.  What do those who claim to be pro-life do to actually raise the quality of life in this world?  Nothing.   For pro-life fanatics to claim themselves as pro-life but ignore these tragedies while indulging in social mayhem amounts to nothing more than a stimulant for masturbating their egos. 

Nowhere in “holy word” is it said that God defined a fetus as being a sentient person.  In fact, in the timeframes in which the few cherry-picked verses were written a babe was not considered a person until it had passed its first year of life.  That is historical fact.  And it is made clear in the book of Exodus, chapter 21, verses 22 through 25.  It is highly unlikely that the anti-abortionists ever exert themselves to really read the Bible so here is what it says:  “And if men struggle and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide.  But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.”  So if a woman were to lose a fetus when accidentally struck as two men are fighting, it was not deemed a capital offense.  If the woman had been killed, however, then another life had to be forfeited.  In other words, a fetus was not deemed to be a person, but the woman was man’s property.

Biblical translations abound, and one can pick and choose what they want to use as basis to practice some prejudice.  In the verses quoted above, the word miscarriage is changed in some editions to read “gives birth prematurely,” which is claimed to be closer to original text. (The New International Version of the Bible.)  But here, too, the choice of words are not scripturally correct.  The Hebrew word yalad, a verb, was translated as the word “miscarriage” or as “gives birth prematurely;” but more correctly it describes the process of expelling a fetus, not the personhood of the fetus itself.  And in the wretched book of Leviticus, a baby had to reach the age of one month before it was judged to have any monetary value (27:6).  In the book of Numbers (3:15) it tells of a census that was taken, but any babes under one month were not to be counted, so it is certain that any fetuses were not counted as forthcoming persons. 

Still the anti-abortionists love to point out cherry-picked verses chosen for them by some egocentric faith merchant, and then go forth in God’s name to bomb women’s clinics or indulge in outright murder of doctors who serve such clinics.  What part of the phrase pro-life do they not understand?  The favored verses chosen by the unspiritual faith merchants as a rallying cry for practicing hatred come from alleged special case character in some biblical tale.  One of their favorite rallying choices comes from Psalms 139:13-16, which reads:  “For thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb.  I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knows it very well.  My frame was not hidden from Thee, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth.  (Wrought where?)  Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.”

The verse quoted above is alleged to have been written by David, but sounds suspiciously like priest jargon.  In any case, it is about one  particular person who was to be used by God to intruded upon regional politics: that one glorified womb product was not in reference to every conception and fetal growth. 

Another cherry-picked phrase taken out of context and thrown around to stimulate their urge for inhumane conduct is, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee.”   And who was it that God allegedly said this to?  It was not to all humankind but to one particular prophet: it was to Jeremiah, supposedly chosen for a divine purpose.  The full passage reads: “Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto nations.”  This hardly applies to the run of the mill fetuses.  And further on it says: “See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build and to plant.”  How does that possibly apply to every fetus?

There is one  more favorite cherry-picked Bible episode lifted out of the New Testament book of Luke (1:39-41); the crafted scene where Elisabeth, mother-to-be of John the Baptist, meets with Mary pregnant with Jesus.  “And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda; And entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth.  And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost.”

Once again it is an alleged divine prophet that is portrayed as a sentient fetus.  Fetuses may kick and move as muscles and nerve systems develop, but the impulses of energy hardly makes every fetus a god-fashioned sentient person.  And using Bible verses out of context cannot be legitimately pointed to as a mandate against abortion.  If those who claim to be pro-life could find the stomach to actually read the “good book” from cover to cover they would find absolutely nothing in regard to abortion—neither condemning nor defending it.  As far as holy word is concerned, abortion is a non-issue.

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Abortion Anxiety

Posted in Atheist, belief, Bible, biological traits, faith, humanity, medical, nature, random, religion, science, thoughts with tags , , , , , , , on October 29, 2009 by chouck017894

Thoughts in regard to news that an extreme fringe group of anti-abortionists is trying to drum up cash for legal defense of Scott Roeder, killer of Dr. George Tiller who tried to provide for women seeking safe abortion.

Ask most anti-abortion supporters where in the Bible it is stated that inducing abortion is forbidden and they dutifully allude to three or four selected biblical verses, especially the sixth Commandment forbidding killing.  Other verses cited are in regard to the conceiving of one special person such as a man who is allegedly meant to be a “prophet” or who is to become king.  Because God is referred to as having worked in the womb of some certain woman for God’s special purpose, none of the verses used as authority declare or even imply that God is the active participant in every conception.

A favorite bit of anti-abortion propaganda is a phrase in the first chapter of the book of Jeremiah, verse 5, that goes; “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee…”  If these Bible pickers would just read the rest of the passage, the words there do not support their argument.  The phrase held in such fanatic respect was allegedly spoken to Jeremiah personally, to whom God also allegedly said, “…before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet of nations.”  The soliloquy continues through verse 10 and elaborates on Jeremiah’s call as “prophet.”  So, unless everyone is to play the role of “prophet” to nations it cannot be said of them, “…before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee.”

Another favorite bit of cherry picking the Bible is Psalms 139:13-16, supposedly composed by King David, that alludes, “…thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.”  And, “My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.  Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”  So, once again, only one particular pregnancy was personally activated and it does not support the claim that every conception is God-ordained.

The third popular selection of holy word ferreted out by anti-abortionists comes from Luke 1:39-41 that describes the unlikelihood of a fetus (who was to become John the Baptist) carried in Elisabeth’s body leaping in his mother’s womb when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, greeted her.  That passage is taken by anti-abortionists to imply that all gestating fetuses are sentient persons; but once again the account is in regard only to a “prophet” allegedly ordained by God. 

Religious dogma too often celebrates ignorance, such as the untruth that self-aware physical personhood begins at conception.  A fertilized egg—a zygote—within a woman’s abdomen becomes active with 23 chromosomes from her egg and 23 chromosomes from a man’s sperm.  The resultant single cell that evolves then contains all the DNA to initiate a cellular glob, but that cellular mass has only the potential to evolve into a physical independent being.  The unproven assertion that a cognizant human exists is not a scientific or holy fact.

During the gestation period, a simple cell amoeba becomes activated by drawing upon nutrients and oxygen supplied by the carrier, which then converts (evolves) into biological energy which causes cells to divide, multiply and grow.  The developing energy-substance, although containing all 46 chromosomes for a potential human being, is not yet endowed with consciousness of self.  It is still simply a growing amoeba, meaning that it is without consciousness of personhood.  This is the indifferent method as described in Genesis by which all life in nature was programmed to renew itself.

Although a zygote, the fertilized egg, does contain all 46 chromosomes that can involve and evolve as a potential human, it is alive only as a mass of cells that are multiplying as an energy substance which continues to lack any consciousness of self.  That energy-mass will react to stimulus around itself just as “dead” tissue can be made to jerk by electrical stimulation, but it does not and cannot exist except by drawing all necessary life stimulants from its carrier.  Until the developing mass can breathe and take nourishment with a smattering of consciousness, it remains only a potential person.

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Breeding for God

Posted in Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, culture, ecology, environment, faith, freethought, history, humanity, life, nature, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , , on September 25, 2009 by chouck017894

Back in 1942 the world population was calculated to be two billion.  World War II then brought that number down.  Today, however, a mere sixty-seven years later the world population is hurtling toward a staggering seven billion!

 For some head-in-the-sand reason, world overpopulation has been pretty much treated as a taboo subject for far too long as a media concern.  This avoidance of facing responsibility for human over-breeding is indulged in despite the fact that global poverty and possible ecological catastrophe are directly tied to the explosive increase of human life.

The so-called sacred books of man’s religions alway catered to this preservation tactic, and encouraged in conjunction with that invitation  to sexual abandon the belief that exploiting the planet was humankind’s “divine right.”  In the Bible account of beginning, for example, god supposedly decreed: “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it…” (Genesis 1:28).  Oddly, at this point in the priest-written tale, the untutored, abandoned couple, supposedly made in the image of the creative power, is charged with the obligation to replenish the earth.  The word replenish means to fill or make  complete again: to renew a supply.  Taken literally then, as the fundamentalists like to do, this word “replenish” indicates that the world and the life upon it had some previous embodiment.

The “revealed” instruction as presented by the priest-authors of these tales, unfortunately, rings with an implication that all entities are expected to become nothing more than breeders for god.  Leaders of  most religious sects and  movements eagerly subscribed to this interpretation for the self-serving reason that it assured an increase of their supporters.  This is still the mindset of those seeped in the illogicality of religious storytelling and look upon bearing many children as an expression of god’s abundance.  This irrationality is so pronounced that even today there are some national leaders who actually advocate childbirth bounties to increase their national political power structure.  Breeding was a “duty” expected of German soldiers in the early 1940s to increase Hitler’s subjects,  for example.

The fact remains, however, that the present world population is ecologically unsustainable.  History has shown that in periods when human population increased up to sevenfold there followed disasters of unprecedented food shortages, escalating prices for essentials, mass migrations, followed by rampage and riots—even cannibalism.

 But man’s fundamentalist religions tend to conscientiously ignore history, preferring their own edification of “truth.”  So today we still have religious resistance to contraceptives, sexual instruction, abortion, and they teach—in the name of god, of course—hatred toward any same-sex attraction—which just might be Nature’s way of keeping resources and life forces in balance for a habitable planet.

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Our Legal Environment

Posted in Atheist, culture, history, life, politics, religion with tags , , , , , , , , , , on June 23, 2009 by chouck017894

Rules of the game: That is what cultures and societies establish and speak of as “laws,” and which, ideally, institute a framework of conduct that presumably serves to protect the majority.  But when a minority faction becomes the majority that occupies the seats of law policy for the nation, the likelihood of impartial interpretation of law becomes dubious.

As noted in the earlier posting, Democracy Under Siege (June 20), perfidious factions (extreme religious right) have for years sought to chip away at the safeguards that were established in the United States Constitution in a disloyal attempt to jam their religious interpretations into government rule.  If a wall is not maintained between church and state the result is theocratic bedlam, and gross orgies of persecution and harassment are enthroned as divine justice.  The clerical rule of Iran through the last few decades is a good example of such a divinely brutal system.

The United States skated close to the edge of disaster through eight years under a president that thought he had been divinely chosen to direct policy and the course of action that the nation should follow.  But his appointment had not been by majority choice of the people as it should have been, but by a Supreme Court that was heavily indebted to a Republican power base which had stacked the court with five doctrinally “conservative” Catholic “justices” out of nine seats.

When that court-elected president neared the end of his detrimental term in office, the US Supreme Court under Chief Juistice John G. Roberts, a doctrinally conservative Roman Catholic, openly indicated that the court was s willing to render wide-ranging decisions that would reverse time-honored trends in jurisprudence.  Those desiring a theocratic takeover of the nation were ecstatic at the decisions of the court that limited citizens’ rights to challenge government support for religion!  Anti-evolution propaganda thus gained muscle to combat well-proven evidence of evolution and inject into schools the biblical myth of creation as “scientific creationism.”  The Supreme Court also chose to ignore medical  evidence as a consideration in some abortion cases thus imposing  theocratic limits upon rules that had been established in 1973 in Roe vs. Wade.   And true to doctrinally conservative interpretation of law, the court increased pressure on scientists and educators to alter or even suppress scientitic research and findings that conflicted with the schema of the religious right.  Religious theory was/is being wedged into government policy.

With the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court the nation is now confronted with having still another Roman Catholic added to the Supreme Court, making the religious beliefs of SIX out of nine justices a drastic imbalance in the court’s point of view.  Having a Latina woman on the court is, in itself, a wonderful declaration of democratic principles.  Unfortunately, we should be excused for wondering can such an ideologically imbalanced Supreme  Court remember that narrow dogma is NOT the mark of wise democratic justice?

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“Baby Killers” & Biblical Pretexts

Posted in Atheist, Bible, Christianity, culture, history, humanity, life, politics, prehistory, random, religion with tags , , , , , , , on June 21, 2009 by chouck017894

With the murder of Dr. George Tiller, a doctor dedicated to women’s health, the delusional “pro-life” (anti-choice) crowd believe they have served god’s loving intention for mankind by indulging in killing life that is actually conscious of its life.  On the other hand, any initiated substance within a human female is imagined by them to be personally okayed by the “father” in heaven, whether through forced intercourse (rape), incest coupling, lustful abandon, or even if the pregnancy could kill the bearer of that lordly approved “blessing.”

Religious misconception (excuse the unintended pun) is the basis for such an attitude with it roots buried deep in primal tribal encouragement to “multiply” for the purpose of increasing the tribal power base.  Most all religious cults have always encouraged the same “go forth and multiply” scheme to keep their range of manipulative influence as large as possible.  It is for this very reason that so many Old Testament starring characters are  recorded to have slain even pregnant women and infants in their battles over territorial control.  That “Holy Book” accounting does not exactly support the claim by the “pro-life” crowd that god is favorably inclined to any and all new-forming human life.

If in doubt of  god’s indifference toward forming life forms maybe some inspirational incidents from “holy” scriptures will give pause for thought.  There’s good ol’  Joshua as a prime example, the savior of  Israelite/Hebrew/Jewish lifestyle.  At Jericho, Joshua made certain “…every man to woman, from young man to old man and to bull and sheep and ass..” perished; i.e. every living creature was slain, including pregnant women, allegedly at Jehovah’s instruction.  At the city of Ai Joshua “…did not draw back his hand with which he streched out the javelin until he had devoted all the inhabitant of Ai to  destruction” –which means the slaughter included pregnant women, new borns and infants (Joshua 8:26).  “Only domestic animals and the spoil of that city…” were spared.  God’s strange obsession with material things alway seemed to accompany Joshua’s murderous campaigns.  At Hazor “no breathing thing at all was left over…” (Joshua 11:8).  This holocaustic rampage continues for pages as he went about “striking every soul within” the cities.  Etc., etc.

The  scriptural “authority” by which the anti-abortion crowd justify their indulgence in domestic terror and violence happen to have been written by mortal MEN; tribal-thinking men who regarded women as chattel to be used for men’s pleasure or to further their worldly ambitions through many offspring.  Even impregnating one’s own sister, daughters or “bond maidens” was divinely acceptable if biblical tales are to be taken as instruction.  No wonder these domestic terrorists mistakenly think that any animalistic procreation that man is responsible for is “god’s will.”   Ignored is the fact that human life has evolved and prospered because our species  (has supposedlly) developed a superior brain—which, if they believe in “intelligent design,” man was obviously expected to use to monitor the quality, not reckless quantity, of life reproduction.

Tellingly, rogue elements of the anti-choice demonstrators have been predominantly men with only a small scattering of women drawn in to present an air of diversity.  At women’s health care centers, however, the defenders have been, with only rare exception, all females.  It is telling also that the slogan “pro-life” is carried by outright murderers.  Apparently the pro-life crowd feels that it is much more righteous to ignore the fact that an estimated 20,000 unwanted newborn infants die every day throughout the world and that thousands of other helpless babies are abandoned every hour.   If the so-called “pro-life” terrorists are truly concerned about new human life, why do they ignore the millions of abadoned or starving infants around the world that are left without a chance for a decent shot at life?

 

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God Forgot to Say

Posted in Atheist, Bible, sex taboos with tags , , , , , , , , on March 31, 2009 by chouck017894

The priests and prophets of biblical lore claimed to have received all necessary information needed by man directly from an omnipotent, all-knowing being. It is astonishing, therefore, how much God seems to have neglected to explain to his favorites. In view of the fact that sex is the foundation of all material life forms, why did he not make clear the microscopic process by which he bestowed diversity within all life forms?

For example, male and female development is dependent upon the different determinants or segments or genes distributed along the X and Y chromosomes–X for female and Y for male. Every individual is “designed” or created with different and unique combinations of these, and they affect each person’s body structure, brain activity (including physical desires), and behavioral patterns.

The X and Y chromosomes demonstrate how the chemical process results in character traits and attractions that are of psychological and social interest. For instance, all males with an excess of either X or Y chromosomes tend to produce an increased amount of male hormones which tend to become expressed with a tendency toward aggressiveness and a lower threshold for committing violence in comparison with so-called “normal” male population. Perhaps the hardline religious leaders could possibly be accounted for by an extra X or Y in their chromsomal composition.

For YXX males it seems that violence generally begins early; around the age of 13 instead of around age 18 for the “average” male. The YXX males issue out of a fairly “normal” sample of the population, but they feel at odds with the “normal” environment.

The religiously obsessed choose to ignore the means by which life’s diverse “designs” are allowed and encouraged to manifest as physical form. The idea that human propagation is a sacred duty, for example, elbowed its way into western religious decree through the development of a self-serving Jewish “law,” said to be passed down by God, but clearly fashioned upon tribal mentality. The priest-authors who interpreted God’s “laws” sought to encourage reproduction of their followers to insure the increase of their followers to stand against the differently oriented societies around them. Any sexual activity that did not contribute to the desired growth of followers was deemed a threat to the social/political authority of those priests and prophets claiming divine guidance.

Thus it was claimed by the priest-authors of “holy word” that the Lord abhorred and condemned any nonproductive sexual activity such as masturbation, abortion, homosexuality, celibacy, etc. This was, to be blunt, politically and economically profitable for the priest class, as well as racially eugenic.

Today, with the human population on this little planet hovering over seven billion, for Judaism, Christian, Islam and even eastern “faiths” to continue to regard the propgation of more humans to be a sacred duty is hardly pursuing life’s  higher potential in a responsible manner.

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