Interesting political ad currently running in Iowa--Mitt Romney ADMITS that Both He & Huckabeeare Anti-Choice & Anti-Gay-Rights BIGOTS!

The ad has been on TV ad nauseum all over Iowa for about two weeks now, as crunch time for the crucial Iowa Caucuses has arrived. The purpose of Romney's hugely-negative (translate: "desperation!") ad is to politically disembowel Mike Huckabee -- the candidate that suddenly has jumped well in front of him in the polls.

Poor multi-multi-millionare Romney. Despite the countless dollars of his own that he's throwing at trying to buy the Presidency, he's in the process of being trounced by a guy who only has 1/20th as much to spend. Hilarious!

The only problem is that both of those Republican candidates (like every other candidate in that party, including even Rudy Giuliani, who has pledged to appoint only "conservatives" (i.e., bigots) to the U.S. Supreme Court, which would surely further poison it against personal liberties beyond the point of redemption, for decades to come) are loathsome bigots with respect to abortion and equal rights for gays. Both of them seek to see girls and women forced against their will to gestate all preganancies, whether they want to or not. And both of them hatefully (and ignorantly) seek to deny marriage of gays to their same-sex partners -- even though same-sex marriage is totally harmless!

Their hateful and ignorant stances on both of this highly-important social issues is revealed in the very first seconds of Romney's TV ad.

Works for me! Nothing like a good, constant reminder to almost all Iowans that neither of those bigoted losers is worth a damn! (I hope Romney is running the same ad in New Hampshire... where even more Republicans than in Iowa want nothing to do with such hateful idiocy!)

Thus, we viewers (and caucus-and primary-going voters!) have been treated to the spectacle of Romney's politically disembowling Huckabee in the TV spot, as he'd planned -- and of simultaneously politically disemboweling himself!

Finally, Huckabee was on "Meet the Press" this morning, and in the course of that interview he clearly showed, once again, his profound ignorance of the human reproductive process. By claiming that life "begins" at fertilization. Isn't it fascinating that he's never yet managed to learn that gametes (sperm and ova) are alive? As well as comprising Stage ONE of the human reproductive process?

Huckabee seeks to make the lives of a million American women per year utterly miserable (and have them relegated again to second-class citizens) -- and to destroy their pre-ill-timed-pregnancy full range of future opportunities -- all in the name of supposedly "defending" Stage 2, 3, and 4 RPEs. (Zygotes, embryos, and fetuses -- the last three Reproductive-Process Entities.) While mindlessly, hatefully, and hypocritically ignoring the quadrillion-plus gametes that are being electively aborted daily, worldwide, by men. Those Stage One RPEs, just like those of the other three stages, also are human, alive, and potential people. Kill one sperm, and the unique person that it otherwise could have become will never be born. (The "H" word obviously is lost on the bigots of Anti-Choice.)

Clearly, the ONLY human life that counts (and thus, logically, the only human life that the Bible ever defends, as people) are... people. Who have been BORN.

Both Romney and Huckabee have a LOT to learn about good sense, fairness, compassion, and demonstrating the Christianity that they both claim to profess. By their fruits are Christians known, according to the Bible. Shamefully, the fruits of both of these candidates, and their other Republican counterparts, are spoiled and rancid!

Both Romney and Huckabee are utterly without excuse, and their bigotry should be a deal-breaker for every American at the ballot box. The last thing America needs is yet another hateful and mindless bigot in the White House! It's current resident (GW Bush) has already done grievous, and possibly even irreparable, damage to the nation.

Abortion's Truths.Debunking the Vicious LIESSpewed by "Focus on the Family."

In the January 2008 issue of their magazine is an insidious little article, which, true to form for FOF, which wouldn't know the truth about abortion if they tripped over it, tells lie after lie about it. It was supposedly written by a "senior director of Issues Analysis" for that organization, named Carrie Gordon Earll. Well, she may be a real person, and that may be her real name, but in any case, she's clearly delusional on this topic.

So we've decided to have some constructive and informative fun, and -- as a public service -- re-write her article so that it contains nothing but TRUE statements about abortion. The initial paragraphs are just as "Carrie" originally wrote them... before she proceeded to leap off the deep end and start spewing lies. From there on, we've corrected her lies, and presented them as the TRUTHS that actually pertain to abortion. We'll call the author of the corrected version, below, by the fictional name of "Sandy Jackson." And that will be the only fictional aspect of the article.

Abortion's Truths

by "Sandy Jackson"

"I'll have an abortion, of course."

Those were my words about 20 years ago when the pregnancy test came back positive, threatening to put my plans for graduate school and career development on hold. I was a woman of the 1980s -- empowered and liberated by the right to abortion.

Abortion was legal, advertised in the telephone book by physicians with the government's implied stamp of approval.

Abortion empowered me to face an unexpected pregnancy with clarity, decisiveness, and self-respect.

At the time, I recognized that abortion was a reasonable solution for an unmarried woman, even for me -- a pastor's daughter attending a Christian university.

The termination of my unwanted pregnancy was a decision that I have never regretted. It immediately put my whole life back on track, and re-opened all the future opportunities that had been available to me before the ill-timed pregnancy had threatened them. It reversed a very bad situation, and simply made it as though the sperm and ovum had never met in the first place!

Truth No. 1:
Abortion is the cure-all for an unwanted pregnancy

I correctly believed that my abortion would erase my pregnancy and make my life as it was before. And that is just what happened. It was simply a case of keeping it in it's proper perspective: abortion is nothing but a hugely-valuable cure for an unwanted medical condition. Just as aspirin alleviates the unwanted medical condition of headache. And it is just as pointless to dwell on it afterward as it would be in the case of curing a headache. Who can remember the last time they took an aspirin to end a headache? Same thing, since abortion is a perfectly harmless and usually simple medical procedure. The only thing memorable about it is the unusualness of it. Since taking aspirin is done more routinely and more often, and one doesn't have to see a doctor to accomplish it.

Over the years since I restored my life options, I've heard the term, "post-abortion syndrome" from many Anti-Choice sources, so I took a look at studies dealing with it, and soon found that it is nothing but a lying fabrication on the part of people who are hateful and ignorant enough to actually seek to force full gestation upon girls and women having UNwanted pregnancies, against their will. So-called "post-abortion syndrome" is nothing but a vicious myth, perpetuated for the purpose of scaring women out of obtaining this valuable remedy.

There are almost never any "consequences" experienced by women following abortion, and the very few who have had regrets or misgivings afterward tended almost every time to be women who'd had misgivings before getting the abortion.

Truth No. 2:
Abortion is about choice.

The word, "choice," has become very closely identified with abortion, and very rightfully so. Since the ability of girls and women to choose between gestating to term and the remedy of abortion is one of the most vital rights in American society. When the benevolent justices of the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade in women's favor on January 22, 1973, it was the greatest act of emancipation since Lincoln freed the slaves. It enabled girls and women who did not want to be enlaved against their will to reproductive-process entities (RPE) that they did not want to gestate, to be free of that unconscionable stricture, in all 50 states. Overnight, the ignorant and hateful anti-abortion laws were struck down from coast to coast, and liberty has prevailed ever since.

The forces of Anti-Choice have viciously attacked this right for over 30 years, and their objective is to leave women with NO choice but to be FORCED to gestate ALL pregnancies to term, whether they want to or not. The term, "choice," is meaningless to them. The leaders of that movement are the cunning and hateful pseudo-Christians of the "Religious" Radical Right, which comprises a very real cult. Call it the "RRR Cult," for best descriptiveness. And like any other cult, it depends upon brainwashing a host of lemmings with constantly-repeated lies. The targets of that brainwashing generally are fundamentalist-oriented Christians of lower intellect, since more-intelligent Christians in the mainstream denominations, who recognize that much of the Bible is allegorical, usually want nothing to do with the RRR's ignorant lies and hateful repressiveness. Interestingly, the RRR cultists number only about 15 million is the USA, which is only about 6% of Americans who profess Christianity. And the other 94% are mostly actual, sensible, and tolerant Christians who want no part of the RRR or its loathsome, anti-personal-liberties agendas.

Reliable polls, such as Gallup, Harris, and others, have found over the last 30 years that 2/3 of Americans have very consistently been PRO-Choice. Since 83% of all Americans profess Christianity, it doesn't take a math whiz to see that the majority of Christians are sensibly and compassionately Pro-Choice.

Truth No. 3:
Abortion empowers women.

This important fact emerged during the 1960s, as Americans were awakening to the abject unfairness and hatefulness of forcing women to gestate to term against their will. Sensible and intelligent feminists sounded the clarion call that ready access to safe and legal abortion would enable women to have better control of their lives, and of their future opportunities. And that this freedom would further empower women with new opportunities in business, education, and society.

Many women like me believed this would be true, and indeed, that is precisely what has happened. Thousands of "glass ceilings" have been shattered in business, industry, and government, as women achieved more and more equality and opportunity with men on countless fronts. And for the first time, we are seeing the real possibility that a woman (Hillary Clinton) can be elected President of the United States. We truly have come a LONG way, baby! And the Emancipation we received in 1973 was a vital KEY to achieving that wondrous progress!

The RRR Cult has an oligarchical leadership of fewer than a dozen key people. Two of whom left the scene (and the planet) in 2007. It's founder, the late Jerry Falwell, who initiated the loathsome cult by brainwashing a couple of million fundamentalists into thinking they comprised a "Moral Majority," back in the mid-1970s. The cult, right from its inception, was not even remotely moral, nor a majority. And the head of Coral Ridge Ministries, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the late D. James Kennedy. Other surviving leaders include James Dobson, of Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs, former Watergate felon, Chuck Colson, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas. As well as Beverly La Haye, of Concerned Women for America (what a misnomer; "Concerned Women Against America" would be more factual), Gary Bauer, former head of Family Research Council, and Donald Wildmon, of American Family Association, in Tupelo, Mississippi. Those leaders are hatefully dedicated, 24/7, to the destruction of legal access to the remedy of abortion. And thanks to the cooperation of the cult's primary toady, President G.W. Bush, who has poisoned the Supreme Court against personal liberties for the first time in 80 years by appointing two repressive justices to it, they might well succeed in that goal, unless we work very hard to prevent it!

Freedom isn't free! If women wish to remain empowered, they'll need to fight for it! And sensibly-egalitarian men will need to join in that effort as their allies!

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =Merry Christmas to ALL!Tha above article of Christian affirmation of human rights is our Christmas Gift to you!

RRR Cult Loses Again. <<chuckle!>>Movie, "The Golden Compass," is No. 1 at Box Office.

The extremist pseudo-Christians of the RRR Cult have been whining for weeks, now, about "The Golden Compass" -- just as they did in the past about "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "The Da Vinci Code."

So it was fun to watch as that film soared to the top spot at the box office when it opened this weekend. No doubt at least in part due to the curiosity aroused in the populace by their whinings!

The nice thing about such whinings is that it does no one any harm! The films they take on almost always do better than they would have without their boistrous grousings... and thus even more people get to enjoy those movies.

Best of all is this: the time and resources they expend on such mindless and specious whinings dilutes their efforts to deny or destroy such liberties as abortion rights, and equal rights for gays. It's nice to see them waste their time and treasure that way.

RUIN an RRR Cult Bigot's Whole Year!Ask Him THIS Question.

I doubt if you will ever find a homophobe (and pretty much all RRR Cultists are homophobes) who can give a rational answer to this question. It'll put him right on the spot! Don't be surpised if he sputters and blusters a lot, and even gets angry with you. But guaranteed -- he will not be able to give you a good answer. (It's one of the most fun things you can do to a bigot! Enjoy!!)

SCENARIO: Assume that there's a gay couple that has been cohabiting in a state for 20 years. Then, the day finally comes when they are able to get legally married to each other, and they go ahead and do so.

QUESTION: HOW would their getting married have any negative impact on the marriage of any opposite-sex married couple in that community, or anywhere else? I mean -- remember all those so-called "Defense of Marriage" laws that were passed? Just WHAT did those so-called "traditional" marriages need "defending" from?

This may just be one of the BEST ways to exemplify both the hatefulness and the ignorance that pervades the pseudo-Christian "Religious" Radical Right. Then, just to rub it in even further, remind the person that same-sex marriage has been legal throughout all of Canada for a couple of years, now -- and that it has been totally harmless. Canada is doing just FINE!

Well, fellow Christians, if the Bible is to be believed,it looks like everyone on earth is DOOMED!Including us!

It's time to play "devil's advocate." Have some food for thought. Your comments are invited!

Many, many actual Christians, both mainstream and fundamentalist, believe that the Bible contains no contradictions. But that's such an extreme case of living in denial as to be ludicrous. If a person does a Google search for: "Bible" "contradictions" -- he'll find that there are hundreds of contradictions -- most of which cannot be explained away by even the most far-fetched and clutching-at-straws attempts to do so.

And here is a KEY example of that: Rev. 21:8 vis-a-vis the New Testament's promises of salvation.

"But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death."

There you go! "ALL liars."

Have you ever met any person who doesn't at least tell "white" lies? Every sentient and conscious person older than infancy on the planet lies some of the time. So -- pretty much everyone on earth, whether Christian or not, is inexorably doomed to hellfire, according to this passage, which provides for NO exceptions.

So if you're not an infant, then tough luck, gang! That's the... way it goes...

Hey! Sudan!! I just named my DOG "Muhammad."After yer PROPHET. Whatcha gonna DO about it?

If there is any major religion in the world that has more loony WACKOS infesting it than Christianity, it's gotta be Islam! Christianity is infested by the pseudo-Christian RRR Cult (whose False-Teacher leaders and lemmings are almost all found within the USA; the rest of the world really lucked out on that one!), which seems to be primarily interested -- so far -- in mindlessly executing the personal liberties of millions of people. But in Islam, we find thousands of idiots running around seeking to execute people. And in this latest instance, it's a teacher from Britain who completely innocently named a teddy bear, "Muhammad," after a student -- not after the prophet. And crowds of idiotic loons in Sudan are screeching for her to be executed for that!

How utterly DUMB can people be?

Answer: In the USA, dumb enough to be RRR cultists. And in much of the rest of the world, dumb enough to be Islamic extremists.

All of them crazier than barn owls.

And all of them giving their religions, and their normal adherents, a very bad name. I have the utmost respect for reasonable people who practice sensible religions fairly. Trampling on NO one else's rights or personal liberties. But I have NO respect for extremists. (In the USA, the RRR Cult is our own, home-grown version of the Taliban. They are utterly without excuse!)

So -- Tough luck, extremists in Sudan!! My DOG now is named "Muhammad" -- after your PROPHET! Not "innocently." On PURPOSE! And he's a nice young dog. He'll have that name for the rest of his life. And then I'll name my next dog "Muhammad." (Or maybe I'll make that a pot-bellied PIG.) Again, after the prophet!

And there's not one single damned thing you can do about it! (Picture me laughing right in your faces!)

READERS -- I invite you to JOIN me in doing that. With your pets and your stuffed animals. And then do your best to let the world know that you did it -- and why.

There are Christians and there are PSEUDO-Christians.It's important to know the critical difference!

The first, unfortunately, is often painted with a hateful brush that only the latter deserve.

Interestingly, whenever anyone complains that "Christians are being bashed in the media," those complaints (usually more in the form of plaintive whines) emanate not from normal Christians, but from pseudo-Christiams. And the media is very properly critical of them for their extremist agendas. Or would "properly" be, except...

There's just one problem with that. The media (news, TV sitcoms, dramas, etc., and articles & commentaries in print) all too often come down on "Christians" in general. I'm not at all sure that the media even realizes that there's a huge difference between those whom they actually are targeting with derisiveness or criticism, and the vastly-larger number of professing Christians who don't deserve a bit of that treatment. Many of the mefia folks may actually believe that ALL professing Christians are extremists. (And boy, is it ever a good thing that they are very wrong if they make that assumption, for reasons you're about to see!)

In order for the unfairness to end, it is very important that society comes to the full realization that there's a dichotomy in professing Christians that has a day-and-night difference!

Normal Christians are everyone's sensible, fair-minded, pretty intelligent, usually tolerant, ordinary, unobtrusive, work-a-day next-door neighbors. Unlike their counterpart, they are quiet, low-profile, and friendly people who usually have a live-and-let-live attitude with respect to the personal affairs and behaviors of other people. Very few of them ever engage in any form of busybodyism or discrimination.

In America, 83% of the population professes Christianity. Only a mere 6% of those are the obnoxious and bigoted counterparts of the Normal Christians... a group that can very aptly be called the RRR Cult. The psueudo-Religious Radical Right. Which has an oligarchical leadership and about 15 million lemming-like adherents who follow their pronouncements and agendas in unquestioning lockstep. Like the good little cultists that they truly are.

The tenets of the RRR Cult are frequently unbiblical, but are presented to the lemmings so as to seem to be Biblical. One of the key objectives of the leadership is to cause their followers to believe that it is their duty to act as enforcers of the cult's agendas upon society in general -- as a whole. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Because there is one key passage in the Bible that prohibits anyone from doing that. 1 Cor. 5:12-13. A passage that the cult's leaders will never cite to their lemmings.

You see, there is only one way that the Bible authorizes peer pressure or enforcement of its precepts by a person or group of people, against anyone else, and that is church discipline. Which is non-violent "punishment" of a "sinning" person (or group of people) within a church's own congregation -- by fellow members of that congregation. As for society in general? Well -- if it gets out of line, then it is God's business to deal with that -- and no one else's. As the passage makes very clear, in the NIV Bible:

1 Cor. 5:12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside.

Neither God nor the Bible appoints or authorizes a Gestapo. But that's what the RRR Cult is trying to emulate. A self-styled and self-appointed Gestapo.

It should be pointed out that not all of the RRR cultists are pseudo-Christians. Many of them are limited-mentality actual Christians (most of whom were already fundamentalists) who have been conned by their crafty leaders to believe that the cult's agendas are worthwhile. The cult's agendas are so extreme, however, and so ludicrous, that the leaders need to target the lower-IQ folks. Since people who are more astute would see through their nonsensical and hateful shams and lies in a heartbeat! False Teachers don't have to con everyone. To be successful, they need only to appear to be benign and Christian to those whom they delude -- and to deceive enough people to be powerfully influential within society.

For example, President GW Bush, who is Number One Toady to the cult, has probably destroyed the U.S. Supreme Court for the rest of all of our lifetimes, by appointing two anti-personal-liberties justices to it. Those are lifetime appointments, and both of them are fairly young! Up until now, that Court has had a pro-human-rights majority for the last 80 years... but many of those decisions that protected our rights did so by hair's-breadth 5-4 majorities. Almost no one alive today has ever experienced anything BUT a benevolent and egalitarian Supreme Court. But we have the opposite now -- and that may constitute the camel's nose under America's tent, leading ultimately to tyranny.

HOW dangerous is the RRR Cult? Consider this analogy --

RRR : Society :: 5% arsenic solution : glass of drinking water

Until their loathsome agendas can be relegated to the boneyard of extinction, to join the equally-ignorant and hateful agendas of the segregationists of 50 years earlier, America is seriously threatened. Far more that the above-cited poisoning of the U.S. Supreme Court (as though that weren't more than enough, in its own right.)

Fortunately for America... and the infestation of the RRR is pretty much confined just to this country (lucky us! )... the RRR's False Teachers (they fit the prophecies of those perfectly!) and their lemmings are outnumbered almost 20-1 by tolerant, common-sense, and compassionate Normal Christians. Now if we can just get the media, and society in general (which listens to the media), to recognize the clear-cut dichotomy between the two groups! Most Normal Christians (who make up most of society) aren't even aware why they are being targeted and accused of hatefulness -- and most of them actually are unaware that they even are being painted with that brush. They're too busy pursuing their own, individual, work-a-day lives.

That other 94% of Christians -- the Normal Christians who are sensible and tolerant people -- make up about 250,000,000 of the USA's 300 million people. IF they were anything like the RRR cultists, America would already be a tyrannical theocracy that would make Iran look benign by comparison. So PLEASE -- keep these two completely opposite groups of people straight in your minds, and don't blame "Christians" when you see hatefulness and bigotry. We do not deserve to be wrongfully painted with the RRR Cult's brush. (And one more thing... the RRR loves to proclaim that "Christians oppose abortion." That's a major LIE. Fully 2/3 of Americans support the right to choose, and reliable polls have shown that to be consistently true for over 30 years. And 5/6 of Americans are Normal Christians. Do the math. Most of us are sensibly Pro-Choice! Ironically, when it comes to breaking that Commandment against lying, RRR cultists are experts at it. And their leaders are past masters of deception, propaganda, and the practice of cafeteria theology. When the Bible and the RRR's agendas conflict, that's ignored. And when the leaders think they can get some mileage out of a passage -- no matter how tenuous! -- they employ it.)

The RRR Cult can best be summed up as America's internal, sociopathic terrorists. They seek to deny or destroy vital personal liberties of tens of millions of girls, women, and gays for NO good reason. They would love to impose theocratic rule upon America, and that is their ultimate objective. They are the USA's very own home-grown version of the Taliban.

How LONG is Eternity? How will we spend it?

Eternity is incomprehensibly long. Our lifetimes here on earth are almost literally nothing by comparison, since eternity is endless. But just for fun, let's look at some numbers.

A googleplex is a 1, followed by 100 zeros. Looks like this:

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

This is a bit problematical, since 3 doesn't divide evenly into 100, so what we really have is 10 of something else (gosh knows what its name is) that equals a googleplex.

But that's neither here nor there. Because if, after you die and your new eternal life gets underway, you find at some point that you've been out and about in the universe for the above number of years, and you'll know that's been a very long time.

But consider this -- the time you've spent by then is only the first split-second of endless eternity.

Let's jump ahead in time. To the time when you've spent a googleplex of years TIMES a googleplex, of your eternal existence. That's still only the first split-second of eternity! Which will never end.

If there's some math in your background, try to imagine that latest number of years we've just discussed... to the google-times-a-google power... factorial! And after your eternal life has gone on for that long -- you STILL are only within the first split-second of eternity!

Now, let's suppose your job in the next life is astro-geographer-historian, and your task is to personally explore, map, learn, and record every salient fact about every single astronomical body in God's entire universe. Would you have time? Sure! Because eternity will never end!

This is a photo of the Eta Nebula, right here in our own galaxy. It could easily contain a million or more stars. How long would it take for you to explore, map, and describe all the salient details of each of those stars, and all their associated planets, planetoids, asteroids, comets, and all material and gaseous particles that are at large in space, of all sizes, all the way down to the size of a molecule?

Okay. Let's say you've finished with that task. Of course, that photo shows only an infinitesimally-small portion of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Maybe only a millionth or so of it. Since this galaxy contains around 300 billion stars. (With a "B.") And you still have the whole rest of the galaxy to go.

Science thinks the known universe contains around 250 BILLION additional galaxies, most of them comparable in size to our own. So as you move on to the rest of them, one-by-one, you just know that you really have a LOT of job security!

One day though, an unspeakably-huge number of years later, you'll have completed the last survey.

But you've really only just started. Because in all those eons, the universe has completely changed, and the stars and worlds you first explored and studied don't even exist any more, and new ones... and galaxies... now exist in their place. So you start all over again.

LOTS of job security!!

But not to worry. After you have completed this entire task a googleplex of times -- you STILL will only be within the first split-second of eternity!

(I wonder if we'll get to change jobs, during the course of eternity? Or will our astro-geographer-historian have to continue doing that same task an infinite number of times? Forever!?! We won't know 'til we get there. Talk about God's keeping us all in suspense! The Book of Revelation really needed at least one, very detailed, additional chapter at its end!)

Regarding Abortion -- God's "WIN-WIN-WIN" Situation

God is omniscient and omnipotent. That means that He has always known everything about everything, past present and future. And that He may freely interact, uniquely, with any person, group, or all humanity, however and whenever He chooses.

Trillions (indeed, even octillions) of years ago, God knew just which human entities from gametes on -- sperm & ova, inclusive) would be born, and which ones would NOT, for whatever reason. In the case of Jeremiah, He interacted before Jeremiah reached the womb -- while Jeremiah was still at the sperm-and-ovum stage! (Jer. 1:5). In that particular case, at least, Jeremiah had been instilled with his soul while he was still at the sperm-and-egg stage -- the stage at which the Bible says God interacted with Jeremiah. So it's very possible that God instills all souls at that stage... since God already knows which of them will later become people, and which ones will not. And if He does choose to instill souls in all of those, then heaven must be a very populated place. And any potential people that happened to have been aborted then got a free pass to heaven. And missed the risk of not making it there, that's faced by all of us here on earth... God's "basic training grounds."

These pillars are incomprehensibly huge! It takes four years for light to travel, at the rate of 186,000 miles per second, from one end to the other of the taller one! But this is only an infinitesimal part of the universe. Think... perhaps akin to one molecule within one grain of sand vs. all such molecules from all the other grains of sand in the world.

And then, there also is the very real possibility that God chooses to instill souls only in the entities that He knows, beforehand, will be born. Then there are no free passes to heaven, except for infants and children below each one's age of accountability. Presumably. But that's no loss to the quadrillion human reproductive-process entities (RPEs) at Stage One which are electively aborted daily, worldwide, by men. Which, like the later-stage RPEs, never experienced conscious awareness, so never knew the difference.

Any way you look at it, it's a "win-win" situation for God. Which makes it no great surprise that neither He nor Jesus ever said so much as one single word against abortion in the Bible. And if He had felt so inclined, He certainly could have, via His writers. By the time of Christ, abortion had already been practiced for at least 1,000 years. (Mostly via abortifacients.) And from His vantage point in eternity, and through His omniscience, He already knew that in our age, abortions would be performed a billion times over any given 18-year-long period. But still probided no admonitions against it. (For anyone who's thinking about "Thou shalt not kill," at this point, I caution you against stepping on any ants! The Bible never accords any importance to RPEs, nor defends them. With only one exception. A passage In which the fetus was regarded merely as property. And which condoned slavery! (Ex. 21:20-25.)

Since abortion is a highly-beneficial remedy that enables millions of women to put their lives back on track, and gives them another chance to pursue the full ranges of future opportunities that they'd had before the ill-timed pregnancy, the availability of it is far more in line with God's compassion (and the compassion that Jesus commanded us to show to our neighbors), than it would be for women to be cruelly forced, instead, by their neighbors, to gestate unwanted pregnancies to term against their will, and thus have many of their opportunities and their well-being destroyed. (Particularly since God also was/is well-aware that most women who do obtain abortions go on later to have children, by choice, when the timing is better, and the circumstances and prospects for long-term stable family environments are far more favorable.)

Finally, God is a God of loving compassion and second chances. The woman at the well had sinned, but Jesus gave her her life back. Perhaps sin might have been involved in a given person's getting pregnant, in this discussion. (Whether or not that was the case is beyond this discussion's scope.) But if so, it wouldn't be at all hard to imagine Jesus blessing her getting her life via this remedy. (And if she had sinned in the course of getting pregnant, can't you almost hear Him saying to her, gently, "Go. And sin no more." (?) )

So for God, the status quo is "win-win-win" -- all the way!

Originally written on 10-21-2001.

Atheists UNITE to Fight the RRR Cult. Will this awaken Actual Christians to the need to JOIN them against that common foe?

E. Iowa atheists speak up.

They unite to fight sway of religion over government.

by Molly Rossiter
The Cedar Rapids Gazette

Jaime Sabel and her husband, Brian, started Iowa Secularists in 2004 to form ‘‘a community of non-believers’’ in the Iowa City area. Now their non-profit organization has 150 members statewide and 50 more on mailing lists. They are part of a growing group of atheists across the country becoming more vocal fighting what they call a budding ‘‘theocracy,’’ caused by an increase in religious issues they say are being injected into government.

Made up mostly of atheists Jaime Sabel Started Iowa Secularists and agnostics, Sabel said, Iowa Secularists has provided a forum to ‘‘fight for the separation of church and state.’’

‘‘Last year there was proposed legislation that didn’t go anywhere saying that the Pledge (of Allegiance) had to be recited, and those who didn’t want to say it had to keep a respectful silence,’’ said Sabel, 29, of Iowa City.

‘‘That was in contrast to what atheists and secularists in general want to keep separate. I think secularists are more aware of what they have to lose because of this push by the religious right.’’ According to a new study by the Barna Research Group, about 9 percent of the American population, or roughly 20 million people, openly identify themselves as an atheist, agnostic or having "no faith." Of those, 56 percent say radical Christianity is a threat to the United States.

Meanwhile, 63 percent of Christians perceive the nation is becoming more hostile and negative toward Christianity.

‘From many points of view, the militant atheists and the militant evangelicals are peas in a pod — they both advance an array of question-begging arguments and act uncharitably toward their opponents,’’ said Howard Rhodes, a University of Iowa professor of religion, ethics and politics.

‘‘Given that most of the underlying issues are political, this kind of public discussion runs the risk of undermining essential aspects of democracy. Each side seems to say the other is not welcome in this society.’’ Membership in organizations geared toward non-believers is rising, and books touting the non-existence of God, such as ‘‘The God Delusion,’’ are hitting best-seller lists across the country. ‘

‘The fact that many educated persons of a certain class simply regard theism as unbelievable is not new,’’ Rhodes said. ‘‘What is new is the fact that many of them have felt compelled to denounce aggressively and in public the beliefs of their fellow theistic citizens.’’ Kirkwood for Reason, a student group for atheists, agnostics and secularists at Kirkwood Community College, is in its first year with 14 active members. Chairman Mike Ireland, 26, has started a Secular Student Alliance chapter on campus, as well. ‘‘A certain amount of the momentum can be attributed to a response to the increased pressure fundamentalist Christians are putting on government,’’ Ireland said.

Lydia Hartunian, faculty adviser for Kirkwood for Reason, has just started a nonprofit group, Iowa Atheist Alliance.

‘‘When President Bush got re-elected, the country seemed to be more divided. Now it is kind of a war between whether we want to be a theocracy or whether we want to be a secularized nation as the founders intended,’’ said Hartunian, who teaches humanities and philosophy at the Cedar Rapids community college.

• Contact the writer: (319) 398-8288 or molly.rossiter@gazettecommunications.com.

COMMENTARY

This blog supports the religions (or lack thereof) of ALL people, including atheists. The only thing we oppose in that regard is when thoughtless and hateful people use it as an excuse to attempt to discriminate against any people or groups, or deny or erode civil/human rights and personal liberties.

So this is a microcosm of a very interesting new development. Atheists, who have mostly been without much in the way of organizations, are now beginning to come together all over America in a dramatic fashion to oppose bigotry. It's not just happening in Iowa!

Fascinatingly, most atheists, just like an incredibly large number of normal (actual) Christians, are amazingly unaware of the huge dichotomy that exists between two groups of professing Christians. MOST of society has no idea that in the USA, professing Christians exist as (1) actual Christians who are mostly everyone's quiet, sensible, unobtrusive, tolerant, relatively-intelligent, work-a-day and egalitarian next-door neighbors. Fully 94% of the USA's professing Christians, and the group to which I belong... and (2) the pseudo-Christians and low-IQ propaganda-brainwashed actual Christians, and their cunning and deceitful leaders, who together comprise the RRR Cult... the "Religious" Radical Right. Only a mere 6% of Americans who profess Christianity. But they comprise one very obnoxious, control-freakish, busybodyish, rights-disrespecting and -hating, high-profile, strident, and noisome faction. America hasn't been infested with a more dangerous crowd of bigoted losers since the agendas of the segregationists swirled down the Drain of Extinction over 40 years ago. And they are so much like the segregationists, in terms of their level of abject ignorance, hatefulness, and warped mindset against legitimate liberties as to be downright scary.

I mean -- didn't America outgrow such abject stupidity when the segregationists either grew up or crawled into closets, to defend themselves against public scorn? Tragically, I don't think we did. Sadly, I'm afraid that when Jerry Falwell started the so-called "Moral Majority" (to his everlasting disgrace!), a million or more former segregationists, still as ignorant and hateful as ever, scurried over there and found a new home! NOW they could have a NEW and more "respectable" ste of targets for their vitriolic hate: women and gays. The RRR Cult is a repressive crowd of losers in many ways, but their primary goals are to destroy forever the right of girls and women to have safe and legal access to the hugely-beneficial remedy for the unwanted medical condition of ill-timed pregnancy -- the reversal of that condition. Abortion. Despite the fact that:

Reproductive-Process Entities (RPEs) : People :: Acorns : Oak Trees

And to deprive homosexuals of the SAME rights that heterosexuals have with respect to housing, the workplace, military service, and to marry their partner of choice. (Nothing in the Constitution governs the gender composition of married couples.) The RRR Cult lyingly calls all of those equal rights "special" rights, when it's homosexuals who are seek them. How ludicrous and stupid! And the RRR Cult leaders' lemmings swallow all of that mindless and hateful tripe, hook, line, and sinker!

Homosexuality is merely a variation of NORMALCY. Just like handedness, race, and eye color. It takes a very ignorant person to seek to discriminate against anyone on the basis of any such variations.

Fortunately for America, society is awakening to their idiotic bigotries, and is starting to fight back, as we saw in the story above. And it's a good thing, too! UNchallenged, the RRR Cult -- the USA's very own home-grown version of the TALIBAN -- could be gravely dangerous to America and it's future. They would absolutely love to turn this nation into a tyrannical theocracy, no matter how much they may pretend to be patriotic.

Consider this. 83% of Americans profess Christianity. 6% of them (the RRR) works out to be just 5% of the nation's population as a whole. And as long as that cult survives to infest society, we must keep THIS analogy in mind:

RRR Cult : Society :: 5% Arsenic solution : Glass of drinking water

So BRAVO to the atheists, who recognize this awful threat, and are organizing to oppose it! May they become very effective in achiving this goal. But while they are doing it, they need to remember that they are not fighting "Christians." The 94% of us that are their good and fair-minded neighbors. They are fighting a small percentage of pseudo-Christian bigots who lyingly claim to be Christian, but couldn't be more UN-Christian in the way they behave.

MEANWHILE, it's time for the actual Christians to awaken to the threat, and JOIN the atheists against this common enemy. There are 250,000,000 of us in America. And there are 20 million atheists and agnostics. For a total of 270 million. And those of other faiths can join us. 15 million more. For a total of 285 million, opposing the RRR Cult's mere 15 million. Together, we can easily relegate the RRR's loathsome agendas to the dustbin of history, to moulder with those of the segregationists, overnight! The time for apathy is over. It's time to spread the word, and educate society (which mostly is comprised of actual Christians who don't know these facts yet) about this. It's time for a call to arms against America's liberty-hating internal Taliban.

Here's HOW the RRR cultists unwittingly ENCOURAGE their opponents. (This may come as a very pleasant surprise!)

Since establishing this blog and inviting people to visit and read its premiere article on the significant and powerful impact that 1 Cor. 5:12-13 can have upon the loathsome, anti-personal-liberties agendas of the "Religious" Radical Right, some people have made a very interesting sort of response.They are that relative handful of people who claim to be Christians, and claim that I am NOT one, and that dire things will happen to me when I die. Here's what's interesting about that. Anyone who has been a human rights advocate and activist for as long as I have probably wasn't too far from me in the early 1960s, when I was a worker in Mississippi in Civil Rights Movement I, and experienced the same sort of things that I did. Whenever we cornered a segregationist and proved his agenda to be wrong with solid FACTS -- he invariably would respond by calling US bigots, and in the process be very upset.

If further challenged to back his stance with actual FACTS, he’d sulk and walk away. Because no such thing as a fact that could support their hateful treatment of blacks even existed. And as the time drew closer to the day when segregation would become extinct, they got more and more strident, calling us (the freedom-fighters) un-Christian, hateful, and bigoted. This actually got to be very entertaining, because the more they screeched and yowled that we were the bigots, and the more upset with us they got, the more we realized that we were WINNING the war against that form of bigotry.

Now I’m seeing those same sort of strident (and lame) attempts to reverse the bigotry... this time being attempted by the RRR Cultists. But what those poor, ignorant pseudo-Christian lemmings don’t seem to realize is that there are still a LOT of us former Civil Rights workers out and about, and we still are fighting bigotry. And we’ve gotten pretty good at it, with all those decades of experience. We’ve seen that response from bigots before, and we know what it means.

FACTS beat ignorance every single time, in the end! And we are just as dedicated to winning the day for women and gays today, as we were for the blacks, 45-50 years ago. So I think that we should be thanking those cultists for tipping their hand, and letting us know just how desperate they truly are, as they watch their hate-agendas swirling inexorably and irreversably closer to the Drain of Extinction. So I have to wonder just how many of them actually realize that by trying to verbally turn the tables, they actually are giving the liberty-defending egalitarians in Civil Rights Movement II great encouragement!

So whenever an RRR cultist gets upset with you, and tries to accuse you of being guilty of his hateful shortcomings -- you might want to try really hard to stifle that hearty laugh you feel welling up inside you. Or not.

1 Cor. 5:12-13 -- Your KEY to Defeating the Hateful Agendas of the PSEUDO-Christians!

Have you EVER told a LIE?

If you have, then guess what? You've broken one of the Ten Commandments! (Read on, no matter what your faith may be, or what you may or may not believe. This gets good!)

What about shopping? Have you ever done it on Sunday? (Or Saturday, if that happens to be your religion's sabbath?) Then, by golly, you've broken yet another Commandment!

Have you ever attended a seance? Played with Tarot Cards? A Ouija Board? Had some tea leaves read, or in any other way had dealings with a soothsayer or fortune teller? ANY of those things? Yeah? Hoo boy!! You're in BIG trouble now! The Bible says that associating one's self with attempting to divine the future, or with trying to contact the spirit world is an "abomination" to God, and engaging in any such practices carries a penalty of DEATH!

SIDE NOTE: As a normal Christian (and we should never be confused with the hateful and delusional pseudo-Christians of the "Religious" Radical Right -- the RRR Cult), any proselytizing I do is of the passive (non-invasive) variety -- such as leaving sensible (non-bigoted) tracts lying around for people to either take or leave. So I won't be discussing salvation in here. Just in case you might have thought that was coming. It is very important that society comes to the full realization that normal Christians are everyone's sensible, fair-minded, pretty intelligent, ordinary, unobtrusive, work-a-day next-door neighbors. Unlike the RRR cultists, we are quiet, low-profile, and friendly people who usually have a live-and-let-live attitude with respect to the personal affairs and behaviors of other people. Very few of us ever engage in any form of busybodyism or discrimination. In America, 83% of the population professes Christianity. Only a mere 6% of those are obnoxious and bigoted RRR Cultists. The other 94% of us are normal and tolerant. We comprise about 250,000,000 of the USA's 300 million people. IF we were anything like the RRR cultists, America would be a tyrannical theocracy that would make Iran look benign by comparison. So PLEASE -- keep these two completely opposite groups of people straight in your minds, and don't blame "Christians" when you see hatefulness and bigotry. We do NOT deserve to be wrongfully painted with the RRR Cult's brush. (And one more thing... the RRR loves to make people think that Christians oppose abortion. That's a major LIE. Fully 2/3 of Americans support the right to choose, and reliable polls show that has been consistently true for over 30 years. And 5/6 of Americans are normal Christians. Do the math. Most of us are sensibly Pro- Choice! When it comes to breaking that Commandment against lying, RRR cultists are experts at it.)

The above comment needed to be said, in context with this post, and should always be kept in mind. I invite you to make copies of it, or netter yet, even this entire article, to pass out and send to your friends. And a way for you to e-mail it to them is provided below, as well.

Whether or not the Bible is relevant to you, the reader of this, it is very relevant to the RRR cultists. Or, at least, they do a really good job of pretending that it is. Since they practice cafeteria theology with it constantly. Whenever any passage seems to support their hate-agendas toward personal liberties, they cite it to beat the band. But when a passage contradicts them, or would prove them to be a collection of hypocrites, they studiously ignore it! Just as they usually ignore soothsayers and mediums... and have no major agendas against them.

And, for example, you will never see an RRR Cult leader cite I Corinthians 5:12-13. (And thus, the mostly-ignorant lemmings of the cult are generally unaware of its very existence!) Here's what it says, in the NIV Bible.

12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside.

Do you have ANY idea of the very magnitude of the command issued to Christians in that passage? It literally tells the RRR Cult (and anyone else who feels so inclined) to BUTT OUT of the personal affairs of people in society, in general. It makes it crystal clear that the Bible neither authorizes nor appoints ANY person to act as an enforcer of its precepts vis-a-vis society! In short, the Bible authorizes NO Gestapo!

That is DEVASTATING to the RRR Cult. It de-legitimizes ALL of their intrusive and obnoxious agendas against personal liberties.

Here's why. Take note of the words, "Are you not to judge those inside?" That refers to the only controlling action that the Bible authorizes for Christians: CHURCH discipline. Congregations are authorized to take certain (non-torturous or lethal) measures to "correct" the "misbehaviors" and "sins" of fellow believers. But NO one else!

And there goes the very linchpin of all of the hate-agendas of the RRR Cult, right down the drain! Society needs to learn this, and to -- on that basis -- reject all of the cult's loathsome agendas against tens of millions of people in society.

Okay -- that being said, let's get back to LYING.

The RRR Cultists do that habitually. For example, they claim that abortion is sinful, and that the Bible opposes it. Wrong. Abortion is nothing but a hugely-valuable remedy, and it harms people no more than a squirrel's dining on acorns affects oak trees. And it's not even mentioned in the Bible, much less condemned. (And it could have been, if God had felt so inclined when He inspired the writers of the Bible. Since abortion was already being practiced (mostly via abortifacients) in biblical times. And already had been for at least 1,000 years before that.)

And they lie about same-sex marriage (SSM), claiming that "traditional" marriage must be "defended" against it. So we've seen a rash of so-called "Defense of Marriage" laws and state constitutional amendments passed at the cult's urgings. But in reality, there's nothing around that could possibly be more harmless than SSM. There's no way that any opposite-sex couple's marriage could be harmed in the slightest if a gay couple in their community were to be legally married. And gays don't engage in more sex because they get married, so gays' having sex can't be used as an argument against SSM. Any sexually-active person, gay or straight, will have sex whether he/she is married or not. (Those "sanctity of marriage" arguments that the RRR loves to spew are meaningless, too. Consider: How "sacred" are the millions and millions of NON-religious marriages that are performed by JPs, ship captains, judges in courthouses, etc.? And those arguments that "marriage is for producing children" doesn fly, either, as a reason for excluding gay couples from the institution. Since millions of couples are sterile, or prefer not to have kids... and yet are allowed to marry, without challenge.)

There's a LOT of ammo in this post that you can use against the RRR Cult. Not the least of which is to point out all of the hypocrisies I've revealed about them in here. They whine about gays, and seek to make the lives of millions of them miserable by subjecting them to dismissal from military service, and discriminating against them in the areas of housing and the workplace. And they oppose SSM.

Isn't that interesting? Don't we always hear the RRR cultists claiming that they are "pro-life?" Consider this: One of the key things that marriage does is to provide an extra incentive for the couple to remain monogamous and faithful to one another. Now granted, we all know that this doesn't work out that way, a large percentage of the time. But suppose that SSM were universally legal, and that tens of thousands of gay couples got married. That extra incentive to remain monogamous would work with some of them, and that means that some folks who otherwise would likely contract HIV/AIDS via casual sex -- wouldn't. So legalizing SSM clearly would save some lives. So -- the next time you talk to an RRR cultist, remind him/her of this, and then ask the person this question: "How much is ONE person's life worth? By opposing SSM, which is harmless, you are contributing to the condemnation of some people to deaths that otherwise would not have occurred. And you call yourself 'pro-life?'"

Finally, ask them why they are picking on homosexuals and their behavior when there are FAR MORE people engaging in practices that the Bible condemns at least as much. If you happen to be gay, tell them that you might listen more to them AFTER they have launched an all-out campaign (of at least the magnitude of their crusades against women and gays) against Tarot Card and Ouija Board Players, fortune-tellers, and mediums.

Take the above talking points and run with them! The RRR Cult is eminently defeatable!