A story of revelation and rebirth, but not as Christians would like it

[Christa]

A story of revelation and rebirth, but not as Christians would like it.

William Lobdell, who found peace after shaking off the shackles of the Cross writes about his revelation and how he got rid of the yoke of belief.

http://freethinker.co.uk/2009/05/20/a-story-of-revelation-and-rebirth-but-not-as-christians-would-like-it/

This is one of the letters he received from a christian, a true man of god:

I would recommend to this guy to just stop trying, he obviously doesn’t have the mental capacity to understand what Christianity is. He’s too old to be properly taught, but oh well. He’s probably been forsaken already for spreading his stupidity.

So, again, being the foolish narcissist that he is. He goes and maintains some silly blog on a shitty wordpress software. He strokes his c*** every time he writes something, and ejaculates when people read it.

He’s not special at all, just another writer out of a million useless English majors. The real special people are those who wrote the network stacks, programming languages and software that run his shitty blog. The people who engineer and maintain the printing process. But no, he writes some words and claim himself special. He’s some sort of special ok. Delusional. Ok so I wasted enough time writing, I’ll go back to writing software that allows douchebags like him to express and propagate his ideas. Because I love America.

http://williamlobdell.com/archives/893

Why are so many believers so obsessed with sex and cock?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. To each their own path

of revelation and rebirth. For both are products of experience, not dogma.

As for people who focus on the sexual aspects of life--I think you'll find as many obsessed who are non believers as you do believers. One has to wonder if your take on this is that believers (in this case, Christians I guess) are not to be thinking about sexuality. That may be the case with that faith, but in some others, sexuality and spirituality meld--Tantric Yoga is an example. I think when sexuality is accepted as a part of life, and not suppressed, there is no obsession. And in many cases, as one ages and a woman becomes a Crone, wisdom and serenity are the goals of life, not "sex and cock".

[juno jones]

2. For the same reason victorians were obsessed with ankles

Chinese were once obsessed with lotus feet and fundie muslims feel free to sexually harass women who show their hair-taboo is sexually arousing and they have some major sexual issues stemming from deprivation, denial and fetishism of culturally hidden body parts.

They also seem to have problems with taboos relating to age, youth in particular.

[patrice]

3. Re: who's "real special people" and who isn't: A super well-educated Christian friend of mine noted

that about "Christians" recently when she brought up to me the news story that religious folk are more supporting of torture than non-religious folk.

Blasphemy, i.e. identifying one's self/mind/heart/understanding as being equal with that of "God" is THE fundamental flaw of "Christianity" (or that thing which people CALL Christianity today anyway). And if someone thinks s/he and "God" are buddies, s/he probably has a major addiction to that BUZZ one would get from divinity and then that buzz would become associated with and drive all kinds of masturbatory spew, including duels with other onanistic devotees.

The nuns always used to say that Blasphemy is the MOST dangerous sin. It's pretty clear that the majority of Americans don't seem to care that 1,000,000 Iraqis are dead and several million more are displaced and are orphans. Religion truly can be the opiate of the masses.

[rug]

4. Why are so many nonbelievers obsessed with believers?

[Christa]

5. Oh dear, do you feel prosecuted?

Because we are fucked by religion, left right and center.

[rug]

8. Hardly. Sorry you feel persecuted.

[Christa]

10. And rightly so

I do feel prosecuted by adults who let fairy tales be the foundation of their lives, who hear voices that don't exist and who often act upon what those voices tell them.

It is a frightening situation.

[rug]

12. I feel persecuted by people who don't know the difference between prosecute and persecute.

[Christa]

14. Excuse me for that

English is my second language.

I still maintain that believers are lunatics with no basis for their belief and that religion is a poison that eats away all rational thinking.

[rug]

16. A fixed false belief is a classic sympyom of mental illness.

Do you persist in believing that believers are lunatics?

[Christa]

17. Yes

Anyone who believes the BS in the Bible and Quaran to be the words of a creator of the universe must be insane.

First of all, it is an insult to even think that the gibberish in those two old books could come from anyone with an IQ of more than 100.

[rug]

18. So, Obama, Carter, Clinton, Kennedy, etc. are lunatics?

[Christa]

19. Being in Politics

they have to pretend to believe in a god. You know full well it would political suicide if they don't.

I cannot for a splitsecond believe any reasonably intelligent person can believe in any god. Many, many pastors and preachers are unbelievers who stay in the flock for the fringe benefits.

[rug]

20. Therefore, they are either liars or lunatics?

[Christa]

23. Most probably

Keep in mind fear is an awful emotion. Many never have the guts to face fear that they may be wrong.

Think about this:

A talking snake, a talking donkey, parting seas; virgin birth; a world wide flood; the sun standing still, a snuff story. Who in their right mind can believe it?


The more you know about the Bible, the more laughable it becomes. It is amazing how much is unquestioned within faith. I think the reason is also the basis of religion: Fear.

[rug]

25. How much of that list do you think is intended to be taken literally?

[RaleighNCDUer]

28. As much of it as they can successfully sell.

The Torah was ALWAYS taken as a mix of parable, myth and history. Simple-minded gentiles decided that if it was a holy book, every word MUST be true, and the church hierarchy was not inclined to disabuse the unlettered masses of that notion. With the schisms in the late medieval period, culminating in the protestant reformation, all semblance of rationality went out the window as each breakaway sect decided to interpret the book differently.

And that is why we have presidential candidates TODAY who don't believe in evolution.

Morons. All of them.

[RaleighNCDUer]

21. Not to break into a private spat -

but please, define "fixed false belief".

IMO, nobody who takes the bible as truth has any right to criticize anyone about "fixed false beliefs," when hundreds of years of scholarship has proven that that book is nothing but a collection of myths, poetry and very one-sided 'history' written over a period of at least 4,000 years - going back to Sumerian god-tales and Egyptian religion, up to the conversion of the Roman Empire into a religion.

[rug]

24. "Hundreds of years of scholarship" has not proved

that the Bible is nothing more than an anthology of ancient myths. There has been excellent scholarship detailing how the Bible was written but you have drawn the wrong conclusion.

If you consider the Bible to be science text or a hodgepodge of tales, you're missing the point of the Bible.

[moobu2]

6. Because the believers belief directly effects us every day?

[rug]

9. Actually it's actions taken, in the guise of those beliefs, that's the problem, not the beliefs.

And most of those obnoxious actions are a pervesion of those beliefs.

It's a more accurate and fruitful distinction.

[Christa]

11. Come on

It's rooted in the evil of belief.

[rug]

13. To the extent it is, it is far from exclusive to religious beliefs.

Nationalist, capitalist, sexist and racist beliefs, to mention only four, are far more destructive and have little to do with theology.

[Christa]

15. Not so

Religion the single most destructive force on earth.

eta:

Most, if not all forms of stupendous stupidity comes directly from religion. If one isn't working within the framework of reality - how can one NOT err?

[charlie]

22. Since you asked

Take a couple of minutes to see the creationist head of the head of the Texas School Board sputter about "someone (having) to stand up to these experts!":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzrUt9CHtpY

He has a hand in setting the curriculum for one of the two largest markets for schoolbooks in the nation. Which means he'll affect your child's education as well as us woebegone Texans.

Meanwhile, the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury just deemed non-belief as the "greatest of evils", worse than sin.

"You see the things that result from this are an affront to human dignity, destruction of trust between peoples, the rule of egoism and the loss of peace. One can never have true justice, true peace, if God becomes meaningless to people."

No trust, no peace, no justice, as long as atheism is afoot. This is the guy who not long ago characterized atheists as "not fully human."

Answer your question?

[rug]

26. Your first example has as much to do with religion as Lee Mercer does with politics.

And how does Williams' opinion harm you? You can counter it with your own.

So, no, you haven't answered the question.

[charlie]

27. Maybe you don't want the question answered

You don't seem to know the question.

Why are so many nonbelievers obsessed with believers?

Believers, not belief. So that "it's not religion" reply doesn't make sense.

I gave you two examples that had caught my eye in the previous hour. I can keep them coming for as long as you like. What you characterize as nonbeliever "obsession" is meager compared to the avid fixation hordes of believers have on the rest of us. You know that.

And how does Williams' opinion harm you? You can counter it with your own.

Great. Take your own counsel and end the complaints about unseemly interest in believers. Get to opining.

And I did counter with an implicit opinion, which was: Check out this ass O'Connor. Was I "obsessing" by noticing him at all?

[rug]

30. "Why are so many believers so obsessed with sex and cock? "

I believe that was the original question.

Your obsession is your own business. Although there's another term for believing in "the avid fixation hordes of believers have on the rest of us". If it's any consolation, I have no fixation on you, avid or otherwise.

[charlie]

31. Cute

DU helpfully provides a dotted line between my post and your question. If graphic aids can't help you from getting lost, call 911.

[charlie]

7. He wrote about it at length a couple of years ago

I think I posted the article here before:

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/21/local/me-lostfaith21

The religion beat was his dream job, largely of his own creation, that he lobbied his editors for years to allow him to do. He loved it, felt lucky and blessed. Then he encountered monsters and their enablers, people seized by a collective madness who would bring harm to anyone who disrupted their bubble.

[Jeffersonian Dem]

29. False Christians are like false Muslims and false Jews

They betray God and the true purpose of their religion, because they are power-hungry, self-important, self-righteous bigots and hypocrites. And it's time to put an end to their theocratic imposition. Just my two cents worth.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

32. the Bible supports bigotry and hatred, didn't ya know?

Jesus was not just a nice guy. He was very judgmental and went along with the Old Testament genocide.

True Christians support what's in the Bible -- hatred, mass murder by god, genocide, ignorance, illogic, absurd actions by Jesus, etc.

[Jeffersonian Dem]

33. Well, yes, and no

The Christian Bible was corrupted. It's questionable whether it was by the original authors of the New Testament, or by later copiers and translators, or by those who finally established Christian canon and compiled the Bible in the fourth century. Whatever the case, it was and is corrupted, even though it also still contains much truth.

The reason my handle is Jeffersonian Dem is because Thomas Jefferson was very much against what he called the “corruptions” of Christianity, and against the religious bigotry and hypocrisy of arrogant, self-important and self-righteous people who claimed to be Christian authorities.

However, Jefferson loved the actual teachings of Jesus. In fact, Jefferson wrote that: "Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus."

Jefferson even compiled a reformed version of the gospels to rescue the philosophy of Jesus and the "pure principles which he taught," from the “corruptions and artificial vestments” which were established as “instruments of riches and power” for church patriarchs. Jefferson concluded that Jesus never claimed to be God, and he regarded much of the New Testament as corrupted with "palpable interpolations and falsifications." In other words, Jefferson separated ethical and true teachings from the religious doctrine and dogma and other fictional supernatural elements that were intermixed in the gospels between the mid-first century and the fourth century when the Christian Bible was compiled and edited. Jefferson called his book “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted Textually from the Gospels.” He didn’t publish it, because he regarded religious beliefs as a private matter. But now people know it as The Jefferson Bible.

Listen to Songs of Liberation at http://www.soundclick.com/davidjnunson

[onager]

34. Can't answer your sex question...

But I have Lobdell's book, and look forward to reading it.

:hi:

Whenever this topic comes up, I eagerly look forward to reading all the posts about how Jesus Christ was a great liberal (if he existed at all, which is a pretty large assumption, IMO).

So I have to note, for the 4,567th time, that I disagree, and the Jesus presented in the New Testament is just one more egomaniacal religious fanatic. A first-century David Koresh or Jim Jones.

Now in the Xians' favorite misquoted author--Flavius Josephus--there is an interesting guy named Jesus who lived after the Christ one. (Josephus mentions many people named Jesus, including a famous highway robber. Cough...)

This Jesus went around the streets screeching "Woe to Jerusalem! Woe to us!" for years. To the point where mobs wanted to lynch him. The Roman governor of Judea at the time, Albinus, had him taken into protective custody. Albinus questioned him, decided he was just a garden-variety religious lunatic, not a Revolutionary Insurgent, and let him go.

Jesus then went back to his exciting career of Random Religious Hectoring. During the siege of Jerusalem, a stone from a Roman catapult hit him in the head and finally shut him up for good.

I'm pretty sure the Jesus "of the Bible" resembled that guy more than the heavily edited version who eventually emerged as the star of the New Testament.

[Jeffersonian Dem]

35. Re: The sex question

As Thomas Jefferson and countless other wise people have recognized, the "Christian New Testament" was corrupted by the doctrines and dogma of men. Whether the corruptions were established by the original authors, or by later copiers or translators, or by the councils of Nicea when they established Christian canon and compiled the Bible in the fourth century, they exaggerated, embellished, and even fabricated part of the story and message of Jesus.

Part of the corruption was regarding sex, trying to make desire for the "pleasures of the flesh" sinful. But, as we all know, rigid prohibition is counterproductive, in any form and for whatever reason. Whether it's against alcohol or drugs or sex, prohibition creates all manner of negative human behavior and thoughts, and produces self-righteousness, repression, guilt, rebellion, etc.

The "Christian" you quoted falls under the category of a self-righteous bigot, as so many misguided Christians are. They wouldn't know the Christ if he was standing right in front of them.

[struggle4progress]

36. If you would like a serious discussion about human preoccupation with sex, I have no objection

It seems to me that humans are naturally very interested in sex. There is, of course, a biological and evolutionary basis for this, which I would expect many people already understand: sex is somehow related to producing children, which is useful because most people live only seven or eight decades. Since human children require more than a decade to mature, during which time they may exhibit all manner of strange and impulsive behaviors, the presence of adults is conducive to children's survival, education, and ultimate reproductive success. Some voluntary association of adults is encouraged by the fact that many human females (as opposed to females in most other species) remain sexually receptive in times of low fertility. This hardwired interest in sexuality may be accompanied by other potentially hardwired psychological features, such as a predisposition towards jealousy; and other species (such as the syphilis spirochete) may take opportunistic advantage of human sexual behavior. Psychologically, this leads to a very rich and complicated landscape, marked by features such as desire, affection, intellectual amazement at pregnancy and birth, and instinctual reactions to the cuteness of immature mammals, as well as by features such as jealousy or betrayal or horror at sexually transmitted diseases. As a result, issues associated with sexuality confront and interest many people throughout their lives, regardless of their religious views or lack thereof

Your "Why are so many believers so obsessed with sex and cock?" is, of course, nothing but flame-bait