News & Articles

Thomas  Browne: “But Man Is A Noble Animal, Splendid In Ashes, And Pompous In The Grave”

Some scientists think there is water on Mars, although temperatures say it would be ice anyway. It might be wishful thinking. There seems to be a crowd wanting to leave Earth for safer climes. The Uppermost Animal is back to killing, torturing, raping, and starving each other at the rate established by the First Crusade between Muslims and Christians, the Mongol invasion of Europe of Genghis Khan, the Nazi Holocaust of Adolph Hitler, the KGB Lubyanka of Joe Stalin, or the killing fields of Pol Pot. Some people have already volunteered to go to Mars. A recent cartoon in USA TODAY shows an American astronaut in his space suit on Mars with his space vehicle parked behind him. He is looking over the barren, perhaps waterless Marscape at Earth millions of miles away. Smoke, explosions, bullets, and guns almost obscure all of planet Earth. He is speaking into his shoulder radio: “Hello, Houston? Forget the rescue. I’m good.” Perhaps he is thinking that maybe there is more intelligent life on Mars than there is on Earth.
Large-brained man seems to be the only Upper Animal that kills to dominate. Large-brained elephants, whales, and dolphins kill to live, and kill Uppermost Animals only when they have been provoked or mistreated. Upper Animals, both men and women--and human children--can get used to killing other humans, often mysteriously justifying their actions. A German soldier during the Holocaust wrote this letter home to his wife after killing Jewish babies at the death camp at Belarus: “During the first try, my hand trembled a bit as I shot, but one gets used to it. By the tenth try I aimed calmly and shot surely at the many women, children, infants (in the death trench the victims had dug)…Infants flew in great arcs through the air, and we shot them to pieces in flight.”  (But one gets used to it!) Hitler was convinced that Aryan Germans could become a superior race but would have to prove it in competition with other races on Earth. Then Germany would establish the 1,000-year Reich. Many Americans believe in racial superiority. The Uppermost Animal in the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan claims that Holocaust killing camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka were “summer camps” for Jews. When asked what Jews were doing in Auschwitz, Klanners responded: “Swimming and working. Because they didn’t want to, and what Hitler was trying to do was he was trying to teach them how to work, trying to rehabilitate them, if you will. They had swimming pools, movie theaters, and everything else.” Let’s remember that more than a million were killed by their Uppermost Animal brothers and sisters at Auschwitz alone. A survivor of Auschwitz was asked after he was rescued whether he still believed in God: “Only when He gives me a sound reason for allowing six million to die in the Holocaust.”

What Happens When “True Believers” Establish 32,000 Different Religions?

    With 1,000 mass shootings so far this year tarnishing the reputations of 315 million U.S. Uppermost Animals, we have had ministers such as Reverend John Bergh of Kindred urge that Upper Animals “need to come back to God. We have left him…Beware of feel-good, country club churches that have placed the Scriptures in a secondary role. Our country is on the brink of a self-made disaster. Only God can save us now.” He might be right. But whether religions and churches have the capacity to “save us” is still open to question because of their barbarous activities. New research on ruins of the Aztec “civilization” near Mexico City tends to prove that the Aztecs had a number of religious gods they paid strict attention.  They sacrificed other Uppermost Animals every few days to keep the fertility god Quetzalcoatl, the jaguar god Tezcatlipoca, and the warrior god Huitzilopochtli satisfied. Over 500 years ago a caravan which was part of the Spanish conquistadores led by Hernan Cortez who had invaded Mexico for gold, silver, and precious stones was captured by the Aztecs of Tetzcoco, a major Aztec city.
It was an Aztec tradition that enemies captured by Aztec tribes were often sacrificed to the gods. Children were sacrificed to the Aztec rain gods. The Spanish caravan captured was composed of 60 male adults, 50 women, 10 children, and about 100 natives. They were all imprisoned, sacrificed, and eaten over a period of about six months. The town’s name was changed to Tecoaque, which in the Aztec language means “The place where they ate them.” The Aztecs also ate the caravan’s horses, which might upset some horse lovers of the day. It’s interesting that the pigs belonging to the caravan were also sacrificed but were not eaten. Bones of the humans and horses had knife marks on them but the pigs were wasted. Maybe the Aztec priests did not like the taste of bacon and chops. Or maybe they couldn’t eat pork on Fridays—or some other rather silly reason.

Paul Tillich: “The Bible Is A Subject Of Interpretation: There Is No Doctrine, No Prophet, No Priest, No Power, Which Has Not Claimed Biblical Sanctions For Itself”

Recently Rev. Steve Berntson of Fargo’s Messiah Lutheran Church resigned because he was opposed to court decisions about same-sex marriage. His defender wrote in a letter to The Forum that “We can all agree that God’s church is called to welcome all persons. We are all his children made in his image and likeness and he draws each one of us to himself.”  Aren’t gays “persons?” Aren’t gays God’s “children?” Aren’t gays made in “God’s image and likeness?” Aren’t gays Uppermost Animals with large brains? If God does not accept gays as persons made in his image and likeness so they can’t be married by religious Uppermost Animals, why are they so difficult to recognize in public? Did Jesus reject the companionship of gays and lesbians? Did he reject transgenders and bisexuals? Did he carry the cross he was crucified on just for saving straights? I must have missed some proverb, some conversation, some psalm, some song in the Bible. Please point out his rejection of gays. I suppose some of those Uppermost Animals who have created 32,000 different Christian churches should have the academic skills to do that. On October 6 Kiesha Jenkins, a 22-year-old Philadelphia transgender woman, was assaulted by six men and then shot in the back twice and killed. Is a Bible verse responsible for her murder? Is it possible for a transgender to be made in the image of God? It was the 21st transgender murder in the U.S. so far this year. Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong has written 25 books about the Bible and religion. My two favorites are RescuingThe Bible From Fundamentalism and The Sins of The Scripture/ Exposing The Bible’s Texts Of Hate To Reveal The God Of Love. He raises many interesting points about various interpretations of Bible verses. Even ministers should read them.
I wonder what the Muslim God Allah thinks about the 1,453 stampede deaths and the injuries to thousands more during the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca by devout Muslims. The crowd stampeded because  a road was abruptly closed where they conducted a stoning ritual. Stone pillars representing the devil are pelted with stones to symbolically reject sin. Millions of Muslims from all over the world go to Mecca each year for the religious rituals. This year pilgrims from 19 countries died in the panic. It’s not the first time many have been killed during the hajj. In 1990 1,426 met their deaths. With all the killing going on in the Middle East one might think an Uppermost Animal’s life is not worth much.

Who Has The Bigger God?

U.S. Army General William Boykin is a well-known Christian evangelist who often makes controversial remarks about religion. In his speeches to civilian groups he has often said that “George W. Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States…he was appointed by God.”  (In a sense Boykin is right. Gore actually received a majority of the popular vote, but Bush received a majority of the Supreme Court vote, the “God” vote that really counted.) Perhaps his most controversial statement was provoked by a Muslim warlord in Somalia who Boykin was trying to catch who told his followers that “They’ll never get me because Allah will protect me.” Boykin did catch a top lieutenant of the warlord, and responded: “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.” No wonder the world has suffered conflicts and uncivil wars between and among religions and Gods and gods for thousands of years. In just Syria alone we have major tribes, groups, or sects who have battled each other for centuries: Christians, Druze, Bezerkis, Zoroastrians, ISIS, Turkmen, Yazidis, Kurds, Alawites, Sunnis, Shias—and hundreds of minor groups. Since 2012, with Assad still in power, so to speak, 320,000 Syrians have been killed. Out of a population of 22 million more than four million Syrians have fled the country and another 7.6 million have been displaced but are too poor to leave. That’s more than half of the entire population—and millions are trying to gain refugee status in many European countries. And the savagery used by all sides is a reminder of all of the horrible things Uppermost Animals have used against each other for all time. The Middle East is now a Muslim holocaust. The question of who has the bigger God has not been answered yet.

Child Soldiers, Suicide Bombers, And The Splendors Of Paradise

Uppermost Animals have committed individual and mass suicides many times in our long history.The Hebrew-Roman battle at Masada where 960 Jews committed suicide is sometimes used to describe a heroic effort.  In World War II Japanese pilots known as Kamikaze, “The Divine Wind,” flew their airplanes into U.S. ships in a suicidal effort to bring victory to the emperor. Almost 3,900 pilots died in the religious effort. But in the 21st Century something relatively new has been added to religious wars: the mass use of children as young as five years old playing principal roles in conducting wars on the battlefields and in the streets of competing countries. Julien Harris, the United Nation’s UNICEF official in Yemen, says about one-third of the fighters in Yemen are children. The UN has documented the 2013 recruitment of 106 children as young as 6 years old. At least 77 children have been killed in Yemen since March, and suspicions are that the total is much higher. The advocacy group War Child estimates that at least there are 250,000 child soldiers active in armies around the world today.
The Pakistani Taliban are the world’s experts in creating and training child soldiers and suicide bombers. The Taliban kidnaps young boys as young as five years old from families in Pakistan and Afghanistan and puts them in  schools where they may be kept awake for days on end, reciting Islam’s holy text the Quran for hours on end, rocking back and forth chanting the verses until they fall into a trance. Most are sexually abused by Taliban members. Then their minds are concentrated on the many sins of the West, particularly Americans. We are all infidels, and according to sections of the Quran, must be killed. Psychiatrists who have studied boys and girls rescued from the schools say the training is so complete hundreds of these kids are “ticking time bombs” just waiting to explode into violence. Some will be lost forever. Sunni Saudi Arabian Uppermost Animals announced today they are going to behead and crucify a teenager who had attended a Shia protest. It’s hard to believe Browne’s idea that man is a noble animal when he trains five-year-olds through religion to kill and beheads and crucifies teenagers for protesting religious ideology.