I’m a passionate believer in God. I pray before every meal, and before I go to bed every night, but I have absolutely no respect any organizedreligion of any kind. Organized religions are filled with ignorant, pompous, and closed-minded people who are much more interested in shoving their particular beliefs down the throats of others than they are God. They simply use the name of God to promote what they want you to believe, and use the Devil as an adult version of the Bogeyman designed to scare grown men and women into complying with their nonsense. Thus, every one of them constitute a ridiculous assault on our common sense and intelligence.
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There are over 4200 different religions on Earth, and God doesn’t have anything to do with any of them, if he did there would only be one. Religion was created by man to manipulate idiots. You don’t have to believe in talkin’ snakes to prove you love God, all you have to do is live your life in a way that honors his creation, which involves paying your tithes to the homeless, treating your fellow human beings with dignity and respect, and not killing children or putting them in cages.
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The fact is, following any religion is a slap in God’s face. God didn’t create you to be stupid, so believing in walking dead men only shows that you have more faith in man’s Mother Goose tales than you have in the common sense that God blessed you with. And if you're basing your belief on the so-called “Holy Scriptures”, they're not the word of God, they're the word of man. All they represent are the superstitious rantings of 3000-year-old dead men. Just because these men – and they wereall men - lived 3000 years ago doesn’t mean they knew any more about God than you do – which is absolutely nothing. You can only know God by what God has done, and God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think, not to believe in the Bogeyman, or to praise demagogues. So, falling for this evangelistic nonsense is absolutely idiotic. . What kind of God would tell you to honor Donald Trump? I mean, come on!!! Anyone who believes he would is a fool by definition, and they should begin to question all their other beliefs. But they won't, because they're idiots, and Trump validates their bigotry. But religion has something for everybody. With respect to Black people, it tells you that all you have to do is pray and God will do all the heavy lifting. But that's not true either. God did his part when he gave you a brain, so you better get out there and organize, and educate yourself, and vote. The White man loves seeing you on your knees, because that assures him that he can keep you right where you are. You don't honor God by being humble, you honor God by being excellent - like he is.
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So again, religion is an attempt by narrow-minded bigots to shove their beliefs down the throats of their fellow man. That’s why 99% of all of the hatred, bigotry, murder, mayhem, and wars on Earth have religion at their root. A loving God wouldn’t set that kind of plague upon man, at least, not the God that I believe in. According to the Ten Commandments God says, "Thou Shall no Kill", and "Love thy neighbor", yet another scripture says the following: . "This is what the
Lord Almighty says ... 'Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all
that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and
infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.' " - 1 Samuel 15:3 . And look at what’s going on in the Middle East. They’re killing one another in
droves over a disagreement on the placement of a comma in the “Holy Koran”. A Muslim man cut a woman’s lips off because she had the audacity to try putting on lipstick. Women are not allowed to drive, and a woman can go to jail for showing her ankles in public. In India, a truckdriver was forced off the road and nearly beaten to death after being accused of transporting “sacred cows”, and here in the United States, they used to burn women at the steak as witches just for being educated and having more knowledge than ignorant men could understand. So all religions are primarily the ignorant bigotry of man being carried out in the name of God.
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The religious mindset can easily be explained by recognizing the fact that as a group (there are always a few exceptions), the most deeply religious people in the world are invariably either the most backward and ignorant people in the world, or the most greedy. As a result, you can't get through to the former, and the latter have a vested interest in ignoring you. Notice that here in the United States, what we call “The Bible Belt” is in the South. The reason for that is, they also used religion to justify slavery. . “Slaves,obeyyourearthlymasterswithrespectandfearandsincerityofheart,just as you would show toChrist. And do this not only to please them while they are watching, but as
servants of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.…” – Ephesians 6:5
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And finally, have you
ever wondered why there’s not one book in the Bible that was written by either
a Black man, a woman, or an Asian; or why women are not allowed to be Priests,
Bishops, Cardinals, or Popes in the Catholic Church? I’ll tell you why –
because the Bible was written by bigots, and God is not a bigot, men are
bigots. After all, a woman raised Jesus. Thus, she had to possess some
kind of wisdom, so why couldn’t we hear what she had to say? The reason for
that is quite simple - the chauvinist bigots who compiled the Bible thought
that women were irrelevant. They felt that God only spoke to men. They were
ignorant, closed-minded and backward. So how are ignorant men like that suppose
to teach mankind how to live our lives? One would think that if God did
want to speak to us through other men, he'd, at the very least, find people
with some sense. . "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent." - 1 Timothy 2:12 .
When I was in the 3rd grade, a woman, Ms. Lady Lee, had a huge influence on my entire life. She prevented the principal from placing me in the "Dunce Brigade" for slow learners, and she taught me the value of knowledge. When she was done they skipped me a year in school. Instead of going into the 4th grade, they placed me into the 5th. . And later, another woman, Ms. Immel, taught me to write. I can still hear her in the back of my mind whenever I write anything - "Eric, you say absolutely nothing more eloquently than any student I've ever had. If you expect to get through this class, every time you make an assertion I expect you to start backing it up in the following sentence, or no later than the following paragraph." I also think of her every time I hear Donald Trump making unsubstantiated claims. Having "faith" in people like Trump is what makes evil possible, because what we call "evil" is actually ignorance. So it is not having "faith", but using common sense that is Godly. Snakes don't talk!!! - and if you believe they do, you're not a "child of God", you're a damn fool.
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So, whenever a preacher comes up to me talkin’ about the Bible, I know right off the bat that I’m dealing with a witch doctor and a fool who lacks the ability to think. So I completely dismiss anything he has to say. His voice simply becomes background noise to me – and I not only dismiss his thoughts on religion, but on any other subject, because I know I can’t trust the thinking of anyone who's so dimwitted and allergic to common sense that he's allowed himself to embrace the validity of Voodoo.
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"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and sincerity of heart, just as you would show to Christ. And do this not only to please them while they are watching, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.…"
Ephesians 6:5
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I've read this a thousand times, and I don't like it any more this time than I did the first time I read it. God didn't say this. This was written by a 3000-year-old idiot who didn't know any more about God than we do - which is absolutely nothing.
Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com Ewattree@Gmail.com BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, AND INDEPENDENT THINKERS . Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.
. Face it, Bone Spur, we’re not giving you one dime to waste on either building a tribute to your ego, or appeasing the bigotry of your supporters. So you might as well stop torturing the American people trying to make it happen.
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Dems, please stop tap dancing around this damn border wall issue. Just tell Trump NO, so he might as well stop calling meetings trying to negotiate. We’re not gonna to waste one goddamn dime on that boondoggle of a wall just to appease the bigotry of his racist base. He can throw a tantrum or do whatever the hell he wants to do, but whatever it is, he’s gonna have to do it without Democratic support of any kind. .
If he wants to build a wall, let him build it with the $1.5 trillion tax cut he gave himself and his rich friends - they’re patriots with plenty of cash; or make Mexico pay for it like he said he was gonna do. Tell him to do whatever he decides to do, but don’t even bring no silly-ass wall up to us anymore, and that's our final response. We’re not in the business of helping you appease either your ego or your bigoted base - end of discussion. .The point is, we’ve got to be firm with people like Trump and his ignorant-ass supporters, otherwise they’ll think we can be pressured into seeing things through their deluded eyes. So we can’t just stand around hemming and hawing and looking down at our feet. We’ve got to tell ‘em point blank - “Hell no, we’re not gonna pay for no goddamn wall, so get your dumb asses out of our face and take that crazy-ass bullshit with you!” . Yeah, I know, that’s kinda crude, but there’s a time and a place for everything , including being crude. If the Democrats had been a little more crude initially we wouldn’t be in a government shutdown today, because it would have sent a clear message that paying for a wall is a non-debatable issue. We’re in a shutdown because that idiot thinks he can convince us to see things his way with just a little bit more pressure. So a little crudeness is in order at a time like this. It’s time to simply say, “Man, kiss my ass! If you want to bring the government to a halt, that’s on you.” It's time to put all ceremony aside and call a fool a fool. It's time for the Democrats to say the following: . "Bone Spur, You don't give a damn about border security, if you did you'd also be concerned about the security of our Northern border with Canada. A terrorist can simply walk across the Canadian border into this country and his most formidable challenge would be trying to read the sign saying, “Welcome to the United States.” The Northern border doesn’t have anything but White folks on the other side, so it doesn’t contain the kind of bigoted red meat that you can throw to your base to generate a passion for a wall. That explains why you never mention it, because the Canadian border is not politically divisive enough. . "Your political philosophy is based on division, and since Canada is full of White Folks, advocating a wall on the Canadian border would serve no useful purpose. The entire purpose of the wall is to satisfy the racist inclinations of your bigoted White base by keeping non-Whites out of the country. Thus, the wall’s true purpose is not to maintain border security at all; the wall’s true purpose is to appeal to White bigotry by offsetting the growing demographic of non-Whites within the country, and also, to cater to your unquenchable need to glorify Donnie Bone Spur. . "It’s old news to most Americans that you will do literally anything to glorify yourself, so your proposed wall not only serves to create racial division within the country, but it also gives you an opportunity to build a lasting edifice to yourself - “THE GREAT WALL OF DONALD TRUMP.” Last year you wanted to give yourself a military parade. So we’ve got to keep in mind that we're not dealing with a rational person with you, Donnie. We’re dealing with the kind of mindlessly dysfunctional narcissism that most Americans just can’t wrap their heads around, and we’ve got to keep that fact in mind while dealing with your idiocy. . "So it's important that we get you and your supporters to view reality through stable eyes and stop treating you like you're normal people with reasonable points of view. The majority of your supporters are a collection of fascists and un-American lunatics, and we need to point that out with every opportunity we get, and we've got to stop normalizing your outrageous demands as through they're reasonable. . "We must never try to be reasonable in the face of stupidity, because the stupid are much too delusional to recognize our humanity. You'll confuse our compassion with weakness and see it as a partial victory on your behalf. The primary reason that we're finding it so difficult to deal with you is because the American people have absolutely no experience with dealing with the kind of dysfunctional instability that you've brought to the Oval Office. We've got to correct that. . "So if you wants to shutdown the government or close down our Southern border, we shouldn’t look at it as a time for compromise, we should view it as the opening salvo of a domestic enemy bent on destroying of the United States as we know it. So in short, it's time for us to get rid of your crazy ass."
God created us to love. Then man came right behind him and gave us religion, which taught us to hate everyone who doesn’t look, think, and act like ourselves. For that reason the very same man who is a devout Christian in Georgia would be a devout Jew if he'd been born in Israel, a devout Muslim if he’d been born in Iraq, or a Buddhist if he’d been born in China.
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This is a very important fact to take into account, because it clearly demonstrates that in spite of what the many self-serving preachers and theologians try to say, religion is not from God, it's merely a form of cultural indoctrination by man in order to control other men. Clear evidence of that is the fact that 81% of White evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in spite of the fact that he's been married three times and bragged about grabbing women's genitals, all of which is diametrically opposed to their professed Christian values. Yet, for years I've heard these so-called “anointed men of God" recite the mantra that “I was called by God to spread his word.” But obviously, as these polls suggest, they consider "God's word" whatever is convenient for them at the time.
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So I've always been suspect of such men, but unlike them, I've never considered myself to be a part of God's inner circle, so I never thought it my place to directly accuse them of lying - at least, out loud. But I think the world is currently in such dire straits that it's time to seriously examine the contention of these men. In that regard, every since I was a child I've always wanted to ask such people (generally men) two questions - first, what makes them think they're so special that God would choose them to speak on his behalf, and secondly, how did they know it was God calling and not simply their desire to make a dollar without having to go to work like everybody else?
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Thus, it has always been my view that most of these "men of God" share three things in common - they're arrogant, they're presumptuous, and they're less than trustworthy. They're arrogant to assume they know what's on God's mind; presumptuous to think he needs their help to carry out his will; and they're less than trustworthy to even make such claims. I mean, would God choose Pat Robertson to speak on his behalf? Somehow, I don't think so.
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WOULD GOD CHOOSE PAT ROBERTSON
TO SPEAK ON HIS BEHALF?
God doesn't need man's help to either spread his word, or to express his will, any more than he needed to anoint a "holy pigeon" to teach other pigeons that it's his will for them to fly. He incorporated both his will, and his word, into everything he created at the moment of creation just as he willed the Sun to shine and the billions of galaxies to hurl through space in search of the center of the universe. So if God didn't need man's help to create the universe or to send our galaxy of over 200 billion stars hurling through the emptiness of outer space, he certainly doesn't need the help of a mentally challenged preacher to teach us how to live our lives.
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The fact is, the so-called clergy is more of an impediment to living a Godly life than anything else. Just imagine how much more Godly this world would be if we didn’t have Christians, Muslims, and Jews killing one another over their varying interpretations of "God's will." When I was in the Marine Corps I found it completely ironic that we had military chaplains praying for God to help us kill more of "them" than they killed of us. Thus, these people are so delusional that they think they can actually draft God to help them in their fight to steal oil from the Middle East.
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BLESS YOU, MY CHILDREN
So what we often refer to as "the word of God" is nothing more than man's attempt to control the lives, votes, and bank accounts of other men. Therefore, if we take the time to look closely enough, we'll find religion at the very root of all of the murder, hatred, bigotry, and destructive mayhem on the face of the Earth. Think about it - virtually every war and act of terrorism throughout the world is based on religion, and there's a very good reason for that - because the very purpose of religion (ALL RELIGION) is to promote man's selfishness, greed, and false sense of superiority. That's why the primary pitch of these so-called "anointed men of God" is that they're God's best friend, so unless we want God to do something horrible to us, we have to pay homage to them with our money, loyalty, and through our absolute and unwavering "faith" in every form of idiocy that spews from their mouth.
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To the average person with common sense, the idiotic demands that these "men of God" make as a requirement for "everlasting life" is immediately recognized as complete lunacy, but what's so unbelievable about it is how effective preachers have been in convincing so many highly educated, and normally intelligent people, to embrace their nonsense. Even my own brother, who I've always considered a pretty smart guy, told me, "You're gonna be sorry about what you said when you have to face God." I couldn't believe it. Since when do we have to be sorry about speaking the truth and not being a fool? Do Christian values impose a moral obligation upon us to be absolute idiots? Unfortunately, they do - that's what they're designed to do. That's why Christians are often referred to as "sheep," and the Lord as their shepherd - but since the Lord is not around, the preacher steps in to take his place. There's a phrase to describe that technique - it's called "mind control," and that's why the word "faith" plays such an important role in Christianity. Christians are required to have unwavering faith, not in God, but in what they're being told about God.
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A perfect example of the hypocrisy inherent in this epidemic of backward-thinking can be seen in the fact that women are virtually NEVER allowed to lead any church or religious cult, because
"Will you get up off your knees and quit
beggin' - I did my part when I
gave you a brain, fool!"
as we all know, God doesn't speak to women - it's God's will that they just keep their mouths shut, stay in their place, and do what these "anointed" men tell them to do. In fact, in many Muslim countries it's against the law for women to even drive a car or rent an apartment without being sponsored by a male - even if that male is their own son. They're treated like children, in spite of the fact that women gave birth to, and raise these young men and boys who are require to "sponsor" them.
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But if you're a Christian, before you begin to smirk, you need to take a look at your own "faith." According to what we see in the Bible, the Whiteman reigns supreme in the eyes of God. In fact, he occupies a status just beneath that of God himself. The Bible says, "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ.” - Ephesians 6:5. In other words, when Black people allowed themselves to be freed from their "masters" after the Civil War, they committed a sin. Just like the Confederacy, the Bible considers the emancipation of Black people in the South the theft of private "property."
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Frederick Douglass had the following to say about Christianity and the jackleg preachers of his time:
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"The church of this country is not only indifferent to the . . . [bad treatment of] the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the . . . [defender] of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent . . . [preachers], who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world . . . [as] Christianity."
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In addition, the Catholic church - which was responsible for compiling the "Holy Bible" under Pope Damasus I - refuses to allow women to become priests. That suggests that women are inferior to men. So if the pope is truly suppose to be advancing the will of God, somebody must be a bigot, either the pope, or God himself. So if we agree that God's not a bigot, that's prima facie evidence that the pope is lying about advancing God's will. What he's actually doing is perpetuating man's bigotry toward women, and if that's true, we then have to ask ourselves where else is God and the truth slipping through the cracks?
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IF IT WEREN'T SO SAD IT WOULD BE A JOKE
And yes, I referred to the world's greatest religions as cults, because anyone who believes in walkin' dead men and talkin' snakes is, by definition, a part of a cult. After all, how is what Pat Robertson and T.D. Jakes preaching any more credible than Voodoo? The fact is, it's not. They all believe in zombies, so they'll never be able to convince me that being stupid, ignorant, and superstitious is a part God's will - and, to my brother I'd like to say, I'm prepared and more than willing to argue my case before God himself in the hereafter.
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So while I'm a firm believer in God, it's for intellectual reasons that I can defend, not because I believe in Voodoo, talkin' snakes, and walkin' dead men as a matter of blind faith - and I neither require, nor expect, God to do magic tricks for me in order to prove his existence. In fact, why should God care whether or not man believes he exists? If we don't believe in God after observing this wondrous universe around us, it simply means we're stupid. So there's no reason for God to be fixated on us. In terms of just this galaxy alone, man is about as significant as a germ under a toilet seat in Ozbekistan, so I doubt very seriously that God's walking around worried about whether or not we believe in him. We're simply not that important, and the mere fact that we're under the delusion that we are clearly demonstrates that we're on the mother of all ego trips.
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So whenever I hear these preachers, witch doctors, and soothsayers talking about God like he's their next-door-neighbor, I have to scratch my head and ask myself, "What kind of idiot is this?" And what's even more amazing is how they can look you directly in the eye and spew the most outrageous kind of nonsense, and then act like you're crazy if you refuse to believe that Moses commanded the Red Sea to scoot over and get out of his way. So no wonder man is suffering. Many of us are just as backward and superstitious as we were when we were living in caves - yet, I'm suppose to have faith in these men as God's valued confidants!!!? I don't think so. Even if I was so "God fearing" that I tried, I'd be lying, and God would know it.
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FIND EARTH
And we're just looking in one direction of one galaxy in a universe that's filled with hundreds of billions of them just like it.
Our galaxy alone is over 100,000 light years across, and has over 200 billion stars that are light years apart - and there's over 10 TRILLION galaxies in the universe just like it. If you go and look out at the night sky (as I do every night as part of my personal spirituality) some of the light you see, just from stars near by, left its respective stars traveling through time and space at 186,000 MILES PER SECOND (7 1/2 times around the Earth in one second), for over 100,000 years before Jesus was born just to hit your eyeball, and our galaxy is just a dust particle in the universe. There are thousands of billions of galaxies just like it, and billions of times more distant - and the universe is still expanding in every direction at the speed of light. There are a billion times more galaxies in the universe than there are grains of sand on every beach, desert, and particles of sand beneath the sea - and yet, man claims to know what's on God's mind!!!? That's utterly ridiculous. So for me, "God" is simply whatever force that was responsible for creating what we refer to as "nature," "reality," and/or "the universe" - period, and case closed. It's not my place to try to read God's mind, or define his nature, and I'm not arrogant enough to think I can.
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THE “HOLY” BIBLE
THIS IS WHAT RELIGION IS ALL ABOUT, BUT SINCE GOD TOOK THE TIME TO BLESS ME WITH A BRAIN, DOESN'T THAT SUGGEST THAT IT WAS HIS WILL FOR ME TO USE IT, AND NOT SIMPLY HAVE "FAITH" IN THE WORDS OF OTHER MEN?
The word "faith" simply means that you've chosen to believe in what some other MAN has told you instead of what God has done. Nobody can speak for God, so your so-called "faith" is an agreement that you've entered into with man to ignore the common sense that God gave you and intended you to use, and replace it with what another man tells you. Thus, your "faith" is not in God, it's in man.
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The Bible that Christians Worship today was compiled and “blessed” by the Catholic Church, not God. At the time, any book that disagreed with the Catholic Church was banned. What Christians call "The Holy Bible," and what preachers run around thumping, wasn’t even compiled until almost 400 years after the death of Jesus. So everything in it is hearsay. In terms of years, at the time the Bible was compiled they were twice as far away from the life and times of Jesus Christ as we are away from the life and times of George Washington today. So in reality, they didn’t know fact from fiction any more than we know whether or not George Washington actually chopped down a cherry tree:
. "For the first 300 years of Christianity, there was no Bible as we know it today. Christians had the Old Testament Septuagint, and literally hundreds of other books from which to choose. The Catholic Church realized early on that it had to decide which of these books were inspired and which ones weren't. The debates raged between theologians, Bishops, and Church Fathers for several centuries as to which books were inspired and which ones weren't. In the meantime, several Church Councils or Synods, were convened to deal with the matter, notably, Rome in 382, Hippo in 393, and Carthage in 397 and 419. The debates sometimes became bitter on both sides. One of the most famous was between St. Jerome, who felt the seven books were not canonical, and St. Augustine who said they were. Protestants who write about this will invariably mention St. Jerome and his opposition, and conveniently omit the support of St. Augustine. I must point out here that Church Father's writings are not infallible statements, and their arguments are merely reflections of their own private opinions. When some say St. Jerome was against the inclusion of the seven books, they are merely showing his personal opinion of them. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion. However, A PERSON’S PRIVATE OPINION DOES NOT CHANGE THE TRUTH AT ALL. There are always three sides to every story, this side, that side, and the side of truth. Whether Jerome's position, or Augustine's position was the correct position, had to be settled by a third party, and that third party was the Catholic Church. . "Now the story had a dramatic change, as the Pope stepped in to settle the matter. In concurrence with the opinion of St. Augustine, and being prompted by the Holy Spirit, Pope St. Damasus I, at the Council of Rome in 382, issued a decree appropriately called, "The Decree of Damasus," in which he listed the canonical books of both the Old and New Testaments. He then asked St. Jerome to use this canon and to write a new Bible translation which included an Old Testament of 46 books, which were all in the Septuagint, and a New Testament of 27 books"
(http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080928064041AATOZUD).
. SO THE POPE HAD SPOKEN, AND THE ISSUE WAS SETTLED. THUS, WHAT CHRISTIANS REFER TO AS "THE HOLY BIBLE" IS NOT THE WORD OF GOD AT ALL, IT'S THE WORD OF POPE DAMASUS I.
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So if you're waiting around for Jesus to come back and "save" you, you can forget it. Dead men don’t come back. That’s why God blessed you with a mind, so you could handle your own problems. So believing in the Bible and believing in God are two different things. To believe in the Bible is to believe in the nonsense of man, where believing in God is to believe in the common sense that God bestowed upon you, which man claims is the Devil trying to mislead you. Therefore, going around worshiping man’s nonsense is the source of our misery, not our salvation. Just look around you! If God blesses those he loves, based on the suffering that Black people have endured for the past 400 years, one would think he must hate our guts. But that's not the case. We're suffering because we've been taught to fall on our knees instead of getting on our job. God blessed us with the most powerful computer of any species on Earth, but instead of using it to move forward, we're wasting it analyzing football games, worshipping other men, and writing rhymes calling the very womb of our culture "bitches" and "hoes" - and then, we don't understand why we can't get any respect. We're the only group on Earth who denigrate our own mothers, sisters, and daughters worse than we would any dog. That's the very definition of self-hatred, so why should anyone else respect us if we don't respect ourselves? And here's how we got that way:
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The Conversion
"Come here nigga and let me teach yo crazy, animal ass about the Lord. The first thing you got to learn is to Love thy Neighbor . . . especially me."
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"Yes sir, Massa. Why would anybody not love you, Sir? You so good to me, Massa. Anybody don't love you needs to have dey ass beat real good, Massa."
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"Shut up, nigga. I'm talkin'."
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"Listen, you been blessed already, and you don't even know the Lord. The Lord made it where you don't have to worry 'bout a thing. I feed you, I put clothes on yo nasty ass, and I give you a shed to sleep in, and all you have to do is whatever the hell I tell you to. Do you know how blessed you are?"
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"Oh, indeed I do, Massa. You take good care of me. I's so happy."
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"Now, listen real good 'cause dis impotant. God said, thou shalt not steal from me, thou shalt not kill (unless I tell you to), thou shalt not stick another coon's wife (unless we tryin' to make some mo niggas), and nigga, whatever you do, thou shalt not even look like you want to stick a white woman, or we gon lynch yo black ass. You here me, nigga?"
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"Oh yes, Massa. We know dat! But Massa, I thought you said thou shalt not kill?"
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"Dat means people, fool - real people! Dat don't go for niggas. God wants us to keep you in yo place."
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"Dat's right, Massa. We sho gotta keep niggas in dey place. No tellin' what a happen if we let dese niggas git loose. God so smart."
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"I said shut up, nigga, and listen to the word."
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"The next thing you got to learn is, whatever happens on this plantation is God's will bein' done. And if you listen to me, you'll get to live like I do when you die and go to Heaven."
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"Live like you, massa? A nigga ain't got no business livin' dat good. What a Po nigga like me gon do with all this? You know I ain't got sense enough to run nothin' like this."
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"Just shut up, nigga!" When you dead you gon get some sense - the lord gon give it to you. The Lord can do anything, even give sense to a nigga. And he gon give you all the other niggas you gon need to help you in the fields, too."
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"Massa, you so good to me! Thank you for tellin' me all dis. I'm gon be a good nigga - the best nigga you ever seened. Look, I'm gon pray for you right now, and thank the Lord for givin' me so good a massa."
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"Shut up and get up off your knees, ya dumb nigga! The fields need tendin'! You pray to the Lord on your own time. God don't won't you talkin' to him when you s'pose to be workin'."
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"A couse, Massa. What I been thinkin'? I's so dumb. I don't know why you put up with me, Sir."
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"How many times I got to tell you to shut the hell up, nigga?"
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"Yes Sir, I's a shuttin', Massa. I's a shuttin', right now."
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"Now get yo ass out there in that field and let's get some work done around here . . . Oh, and Toby, have yo woman meet me in the barn. I need to tell her 'bout the Lord too."
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"Yes sir, Massa."
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"And another thing, Toby, if my momma come a lookin', tell her I'm playin' in my tree house."
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"Why you gon go fibbin' to yo momma, Mr. Tommy? She knows you like to sit wit Lou Ann."
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"Just shut up, nigga, and do what I said! And tell Lou Ann to wear that pretty dress I like, cause we gon be talkin' 'bout the Lord, so it's gon be like chuch."
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"Yes Sir, Mr. Tommy." . . . . "Whaaaaaaat a friend we have in Jeeeeesus . . ."
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So that's how Black people - and many poor White people - got where we are today, and we're gonna stay there until we learn to get off our knees and start thinking. God helps those who help themselves. That’s why your preacher has a much bigger house than you do - and he worked a whole lot less to get it.
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Finally, there are only three commandments, and you don't have to read a "holy" user's manual to find them. You were born with this knowledge:
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1). Live the best life you can.
2). Help others whenever you can.
And most importantly,
3). Mind your own damn business.
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That came directly from God. It’s called common sense.
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AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. 81% OF WHITE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS VOTED FOR DONALD TRUMP
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Eric L. Wattree http://wattree.blogspot.com/ Ewattree@Gmail.com Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA) . Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.
Does God Love White People More Than He Loves Blacks? - Because they're Sure Rewarded Better
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Even as a kid, I saw the cat danglin’ out the bag that let me know that my "pastor" was standing up there in the pulpit spewing a lot of total nonsense. Every week he’d stand there screamin’ at us about what God was gonna do for us if we listened to him, and what he was gonna to do TOO us if we didn’t listen to him - and all the while, driving a big car, wearing a brand new suit every week, and wearing Florsheims that cost more a pair than my grandfather made all week trying to put food in our mouths. And even though my grandparents followed his words to the letter, every week, week after week, month after month, and year after year, they showed up at church just as poor as if they’d ignored him. And the irony is, they would have been doing much better if they HAD ignored him, because they were giving him every extra penny they could scrape up.
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it drove me absolutely crazy, because even as a kid it was clear to me that this man didn’t know any more about God than a drunk passed out in the alley behind the church - and he probably didn't have either as much character, or sense. Imagine how either clueless or deceitful a man has to be to go around claiming that God "called him" to speak for on his behalf. He's either a fool, or a hustler. His "calling" probably went something like this - "Man, I am so tired of having to get up and go to work every morning . . . wait a minute, is that you, Lord!!!?" That's how most of them are "called." So he wasn’t preaching the word of God. What he was preaching was bribery and threats, to keep the people coming, and to keep them paying him to scream at them every Sunday.
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Now, admittedly, I don’t know any more about God than a drunk passed out in an alley either (in fact, I've been known to pass-out a few times myself), but I do know about common sense, and it seems to me that if God did tell men what to say, he’d be more interested in telling us how we should treat "OTHERS," and why you should live a good life - not how to avoid Hell, or how to get into Heaven. God would probably say, "You should do what's right because it’s right to do right, and that is your reward." But what this man was spewing was religion based on selfishness, or "What am I gonna get out of it?" So that wasn’t the word of God. That was the word of the reverend, hustlin’ to keep that collection plate full.
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But I did recognize that the pastor was right in one regard - I would indeed be rewarded if I acted more like him, because he was there EVERY Sunday, without fail, begging his ass off. But that too perplexed me. I never understood why he needed to do that. Whenever we needed something, he'd tell us to go pray on it, but wherever HE needed something, he didn’t go to God, he came to us. Even when he wanted to take a vacation - or as he put it, "visit a sister church in Hawaii to spread the Gospel" - he’d pass the basket to us for his airfare and hotel accommodations - and what was our reward? "We had the satisfaction of going home just a little more poor than we were the week before, but, knowing we were "blessed" for helping the Reverend "spread the word of God" to every beach in Hawaii - and, of course, knowing that God would look kindly upon us . . . by and by.
. But even at 14 years old, I had a few questions about that. 1) Why did the Reverend have to go to Hawaii to "spread the Gospel," didn’t they have preachers in Hawaii? And 2). Why did he always have to come to us for financing? Why couldn’t he just ask God to inspire American Airlines to let him on the plane for free, and that the people at the Hawaii Hilton set him up in the Jesus suite? That’s what he told us to do when the rent was due, and I didn’t just keep these views to myself. I used to bring these issues up whenever I got the chance to speak with him, and he never came up with a reasonable answer. He’d simply tell me that the Devil had gotten into me somewhere, and I needed to pray for God to help me to see the light. But I did see the light, only too well. That, was the real problem.
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My grandfather used to joke about the fact that I was gonna get ‘em kicked out of the church. He was a highly religious man, but I think deep in his heart he was proud of the fact that I was willing to confront the man that everybody else in the church held in such high esteem. But I guess it’s just a flaw in my character, because to me, he was just another dude in a black rob spewin’ total nonsense, pimpin' in the name of the Lord.
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One day my grandfather told me, Rev. Hill came up to him and asked, "Mr. Wattree, where is that boy gettin’ all that stuff? I know he's not gettin' it from you and Mrs. Wattree." Actually, I can't even answer that question myself. I guess I was just born immune to voodoo. I've never understood how Black people could become so dedicated to a lie that was taught to them while they were tied up next to the mules. It was obvious that even the people who taught it to them didn't believe it; if they had, Black people wouldn't have been in the condition they were in.
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Later that Summer when I was MANDATED to attend Bible School, the reverend assigned the assistant pastor to council me, and according to my grandfather, "After a few sessions the assistant pastor disappeared and we ain’t seen him since." I just had to take grandfather's word on that, because the following Sunday the pastor preached a sermon telling all the pretty young sisters in the church that they needed to stop wearing naturals and all of those short, revealing miniskirts. That was the last straw for me. I left church after that sermon and, except to attend funerals, haven't set foot in one since.
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But if the reverend wasn’t anything else, he was tenacious. When I showed up at my uncle’s funeral as an adult, he preached the sermon looking directly at me. But he stepped over the line. He said, "This isn’t the last funeral we’re going to see in this family." The meaning was clear, and it wasn’t lost on anyone, but I wasn’t in any mood for that. My uncle was my mother’s youngest brother, so we were more like brothers than uncle and nephew. He had been shot and killed right after he'd dropped me off for my first day at the university, and I was devastated by it. So while everyone was absorbed in grief, I caught the good reverend after the funeral and demonstrated the assorted colors that I had added to my vocabulary since we'd last seen one another, and I never had a problem with him thereafter.
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I went into all of this for the specific purpose of relating one message for my Black readers to consider - if the reverend is right that God rewards people for following his word, he must view White folks as much better Christians than Black people, because he’s sure compensating them a whole better. That should be clear evidence to Black people that what they're being fed is pure unadulterated nonsense. So Black people need to get up off their knees, stop giving their money away to these preachers, and start hustling to move the community forward. Because as the old saying goes, "Free your mind, your ass will follow" - and not until then, regardless to who's in the White House. But don't just take my word for it: . Matthew 6:1-34 .
"Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues [churches] and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues [churches] and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward . . ."
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So if you're trying to "sanctify" your way into Heaven, forget it. God's got your number. In fact, he's probably gonna to want to know how you could possibly be so selfish about getting yourself into Heaven that instead of using your money to feed your kids, or dedicating your tithes to helping the poor, you thought you could buy admission into Heaven by making your preacher rich? That's not thinking about God, or the poor, that's thinking about you. So are you gonna follow the word of God, or continue to worship your preacher? If you truly believe in Heaven and hell, you need to consider that question along the verse above very closely - and here's another one for you:
. John 8:32 - The Truth will Set You Free.
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Bible School wasn’t completely lost on me.
Strive To Become Your Own Hero... Then Let No One Remove Your Cape.
BIO
Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet, and musician, born in Los Angeles. He’s been a columnist for The Los Angeles Sentinel, Black Star News, The Atlanta Post, and is a member of the Sigma Delta Chi Society of Professional Journalists (http://www.spj.org/). He’s also the author of "A Message From the Hood."
Some of the greatest minds I’ve ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores, while some of the weakest minds I’ve ever known roamed the halls of academia in pursuit of credentials over knowledge.
Am I a hater, you ask? You're damn right I'm a hater. I hate injustice. I hate hypocrisy. I also hate demagoguery, apathy, and the stupidity that allows it to exist. Hater? Absolutely. I'm a big time hater. I hate what I see happening to this country, and I hate watching the development of a culture that embraces ignorance with a stupid sense of pride. So yes, I am indeed a hater, but not only that - I'm a hater with a very low threshold for bullshit, so step off.
And finally, have you
ever wondered why there’s not one book in the Bible that was written by either
a Black man, a woman, or an Asian; or why women are not allowed to be Priests,
Bishops, Cardinals, or Popes in the Catholic Church? I’ll tell you why –
because the Bible was written by bigots, and God is not a bigot, men are
bigots. After all, a woman raised Jesus. Thus, she had to possess some
kind of wisdom, so why couldn’t we hear what she had to say? The reason for
that is quite simple - the chauvinist bigots who compiled the Bible thought
that women were irrelevant. They felt that God only spoke to men. They were
ignorant, closed-minded and backward. So how are ignorant men like that suppose
to teach mankind how to live our lives? One would think that if God did
want to speak to us through other men, he'd, at the very least, find people
with some sense.
When I was in the 3rd grade, a woman, Ms. Lady Lee, had a huge influence on my entire life. She prevented the principal from placing me in the "Dunce Brigade" for slow learners, and she taught me the value of knowledge. When she was done they skipped me a year in school. Instead of going into the 4th grade, they placed me into the 5th.
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