LET’S TALK ABOUT MAN, GOD, AND THE UNIVERSE

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

LET’S TALK ABOUT MAN, GOD, AND THE UNIVERSE

Let me start off by telling you right off the bat that man doesn’t know a damn thing about God. That’s why we speak of “having faith”. We don’t have to have “faith” in God. We have an entire universe to attest to God's existence. So when we speak of faith, we’re not talking about having faith in God, but having faith in what some delusional lunatic is TELLING us about God. God gave us a mind. It was man who gave us the Bible.
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I was raised in the church, and I’m a firm believer in God. I pray before every meal, and every night before I go to bed. But I do that for ME, and the comfort that it brings ME, not because God demands it. So I’ve got to be honest – I can’t stand preachers. The reason for that is simple - I consider preachers to be arrogant, self-absorbed lunatics who have deluded themselves into thinking they’re superior to others.
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Their attitude is, you’re not good enough for God to speak to directly, "so he anointed me to tell you what’s on his mind." But I have a number of immediate problems with that. First, there are over 4200 different religions on Earth, so why is God telling everyone something different? Secondly, a loving God would never curse man with anything that is at the very root of all the hatred, bigotry, murder, and mayhem on Earth. Third, if God had anything to do with man’s religion, there’d only be one.
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In addition, the mere fact that over 81% of all White Evangelicals support the evil machinations of the corrupt, ignorant, and inept Donald Trump is clear evidence that their "God" only tells them what they want to hear - and more often than not, what they want to hear is why they should hate other men who don't look, think, and act like themselves. Yeah, they're TOLD that they should love thy neighbor, but the underlying message is always about why their neighbor is evil, and not approved of by God. Think about that, and also the fact that the Nazis were "Christians".

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So people really need to wake up. God communicates with man through common sense, not by trying to convince us to believe in walking dead men and talking snakes. God has shown us through what he has DONE that snakes don't talk and dead men don't walk. So what we call "faith" is faith in MAN, and in what man TELLS us, not faith in God, and what he has SHOWN us.
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God doesn't do magic tricks for man. You either believe in him or you don't. God doesn't care what you believe. Why should he? God doesn't need it. The need for praise is a shallow-minded ego trip that smacks of the manipulation of man. God doesn't have anything to gain by what you believe, but man does. Only weak-minded Trumplodyte-like men crave your worship, not God. Would you tap dance in front of your toilet to try to impress the germs under your toilet seat to worship you? Of course not. That would be stupid, and God's not stupid. It's only MAN who has an interest in influencing our thinking through putting on a magic show, because that’s the only way he can manipulate us, by convincing idiots that he speaks for God. So man's not trying to get you to worship God, he's actually trying to get you to worship HIM. That's how he manages to control other human beings to promote his interest.

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So for exactly those reasons I have a very simple response to these self-proclaimed Godologists, and that's, “Who the hell do you think you are, you delusional lunatic?” Then, in spite of all the Hell and brimstone they preach from the pulpit, my response renders them completely speechless, because I strip them of all of their "Godly" vestments and holy pretenses. Then I go on to repeat my question again. "Who the hell are you!!!? - and how did God choose you to be of such superior character that he needs you to communicate for him? It certainly couldn't be due to your intelligence, because if you think I'm a big enough fool to believe you speak for God, you don't have any. And one other thing - why can’t God speak to me directly like he’s supposedly speaking to you? You can't answer that, can you? Well, I can. He does speak to me. He gave me a conscience, so whenever I decide to do anything un-Godly, he tells me immediately.
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So I don't have any more need for a book written by man to tell me how to live my life than a bird needs a calendar and a compass to know when to fly South in the winter. What man so solemnly refer to as "The Holy Scriptures", are nothing more than the superstitious rantings of 3000-year-old dead men. They were written by the Pat Robertsons and T.D. Jakes of their time. So, get your mindless, Voodoo-worshiping ass out of my face - and the next time you have lunch with God, you tell him what I told you." 

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You see, I feel perfectly free to challenge organized religion in complete comfort, because I'm not challenging God, I’m challenging the silliness of man. So when he asks me, “Where’s your faith?”, my response is, I’m not required to have faith in one word you say. Because again, it all boils down to what you say, as opposed to What God's done - and what God has DONE, is blessed me with a mind for the expressed purpose of challenging your silliness.
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When we place the universe in perspective, and think of the actual enormity of God, it shows us just how silly man's little provincial beliefs really are. Our galaxy alone has over 200 billion stars, and the Sun is only one of them. It takes the Sun, along with Earth, and it’s other 8 hitchhikers, traveling at 828,000 mph 230 million years to orbit around our galaxy just one time.  Yet, our solar system, with its 9 planets, is only a microscopic dust particle in our galaxy, and our galaxy itself, in terms of the universe, is nothing more than a microscopic dust particle in space.

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To make sense of the distances we’re talking about, on January 19, 2006 we launched the space probe, New Horizon, for the planet Pluto in our own solar system. It was the Fastest man-made object ever launched from Earth.  It sped through space at 36,400 mph. That’s 24 times faster than an AK 47 military rifle bullet. Yet it took New Horizon until July 14, 2015 (9 years, 6 months) to reach Pluto.
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Thus, if the Earth was your house in Los Angeles, Pluto would be a flea in San Diego, and Alpha Centauri, the closest neighboring star to the Sun, would be an elephant in China - and that's just within our galaxy. There are over 200 billion stars, equally as far away from one another, in just our galaxy alone, and there are more galaxies in the universe than there are grains of sand on every beach, every desert, and every ocean floor on the planet Earth – and that’s just in the observable universe that's still expanding in every direction at the speed of light (186,282 miles per second). Yet, man thinks he can tell other men about God!!!?
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Man is way too full of himself.  In terms of the universe, man is trillions of times less significant than a colony of germs under a toilet seat in Uzbekistan. It’s only man’s incredible arrogance that causes him to think that we’re important enough for God to even remember who we are. After all, does God remember every germ that he created?  So every time I hear a preacher preaching “the gospel” I have to laugh. I ask myself, "Will you listen to this fool! I wonder does he actually believe this nonsense!!!?"

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Do you believe that God sent Jesus to all the hundreds of trillions of worlds in the universe? Or do you believe that we're so special that we're the

OUMUAMUA: WHAT IS IT?

only speck of dust in the universe with life on it? Both assumptions are ridiculous. It may seem like we're alone, but the only reason we don’t see other beings is because even if they lived right next door to us (which they do), even traveling at the speed of light, it would take them 137 thousand years to get here, because the next closest star to the Sun, Alpha Centauri, is over 24 trillion miles away.  So, think about that – in order to just drop in for a cup of coffee they would have had to leave home 135 thousand years before Jesus was born, and they won't get here for another 133 thousand years - and again, that’s just our closest neighbor!
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So, whenever I think about the universe that God has created, it helps me to place the concept of God in perspective. The limited intellect of man is much too puny to even conceive of the nature of God, and much less, know what's on his mind - that explains atheism. But that alone gives me more than enough reason to worship him. I worship God for what he’s done, and what I can see, not because of the superstitious rantings of 3000-year-old dead men - and that's exactly who wrote the so-called "Scriptures". They were no closer to God than we are today. They were the Pat Robertsons of their time, and just as clueless. These same men claimed that the universe revolved around the Earth until Galileo proved them wrong - and then they placed him under arrest for educating them.
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Thus, for exactly that reason, I feel absolutely no obligation to force myself to believe in walking dead men or talking snakes, nor do I feel any obligation to get all dressed up every Sunday morning and pay to be screamed at for two hours. And there's another important benefit - I don't have to be bothered with Bible-thumping lunatics. 
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So, whenever I want to commune with God – and I do quite regularly - I simply pour myself a drink, sit out in my backyard, and gaze out at the night sky – and I can do that for free, except for the price of a shot of gin.
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Eric L. Wattree 
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does. 

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A Contemplation of Good, God, and Evil

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

A Contemplation of Good, God, and Evil

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I'm a freethinker on the subject of religion. I’m not a Bible thumper, I never attend church, and I don’t have much use for preachers. In fact, I just can’t see the logic in getting up early on Sunday morning and getting all dressed up just to go pay somebody to scream at me for two hours. I don’t see the logic in that, and I never did, even when I was forced to participate in the ritual as a kid. But I am a spiritual person, because logic, and the night sky, does inspire me to lean toward the belief that there is indeed a supreme force that governs the universe. After all, the universe didn’t just come from nothing. Some force had to caused the universe to spring into existence, and whatever that force was, I’ve chosen to call it God.
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Now, an atheist would undoubtedly tell me that I have no proof of the existence of God. The fact is, one told me that just today, and he was zealously insistent upon it. He dismissively suggested that by embracing the concept of God, it was tantamount to my embracing a belief in the "Flying Spaghetti Monster." That was clearly a dismissive assault on my intellect, but I recognized that for some reason, many atheists tend to take great pride in being arrogantly disdainful of the intellect of believers. So instead of vigorously objecting, I simply took note. I did point out, however, that his tone sound quite similar to that of a religious zealot, to which he responded, that religion required faith, and atheists have no use for faith. They deal in pure logic. So I thought I’d examine that contention.
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I pointed out to him that it takes more faith to be an atheist than it does to be a believer, because believers do have the existence of the universe to point to as a basis of support for their belief, while all an atheist has is his belief, or "faith" that God doesn’t exist. Thus, faith in the non-existence of God is an integral part of what we have now established is his religion.
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I then went on to point out that in order to maintain the atheist position that God doesn’t exist, he bears the burden of having to prove that something (the universe) came from nothing - or that an effect was "initiated" without a cause - and, from out of nowhere. And since it is my contention that whatever force is responsible for the universe, order, and existence meets the definition God, how can an atheist know with any degree of certainty that nature, and/or the universe itself, isn’t God? After all, is it not true that the universe is responsible for the existence of all living things? That defines God.
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Thus, the debate, I went on, is no longer one of whether or not God exists, but rather, the NATURE of God’s existence. And that, in turn, leaves an atheists with only his "faith" and/or "religious" conviction to support his claim that God doesn’t exist. Therefore - contrary to what atheists would have us believe, and in spite of their renowned disdain for the silliness of religious dogma - atheism itself is nothing more than just another religion clothed in intellectual pretense, and their denial of the existence of God is merely another religious doctrine. That pretty much shut down the discussion.
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But that said, neither do I buy into the way God is portrayed by religious zealots of the opposite stripe. The mere thought that in a universe with over 800 billion galaxies - with each containing an average of 300 billion stars, and with each star separated by light years of space - that God would be fixated on the infestation of a mote in the ghetto of an insignificant galaxy is beyond belief. But then, most religious doctrine go even further than that. They suggest that God is so fixated on us that he's watching everything that each of us do, jumping through hoops, and performing magic tricks to get us to worship him (I'm using "him" to keep things simple). That takes us beyond delusional - it’s absolutely psychotic - the accompanying mood-setting music in the background notwithstanding.  It constitutes an absurd attempt by man to turn God into some kind of circus performer.
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The mere assumption that God is preoccupied with everything we do is merely a reflection of man's arrogance and exaggerated sense of self-importance, and the very idea of God being obsessed with trying to get man to worship him is patently ridiculous. That would be the direct equivalent of man spending every hour of every day trying to demand the respect of the germs under his toilet seat. That would be stupid, and while God may be many things, I doubt very seriously that stupid is among them. 
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Thus, since I view the foregoing perceptions of God as so grossly out of touch with reality, it should go without saying that I don't believe in Heaven or Hell. The entire concept just reeks of man’s tendency to threaten and/or bribe other men into subservience. And besides, if God was indeed watching and evaluating our behavior, he would have long since hit the delete button.
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So the fact is, we can only know God’s will by what he has done, and as I’ve said many times before, God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think. He anticipated our needs when we were created, so he gave us the intellect to answer our own prayers, and the common sense to live the kind of life that would create our Heaven right here on Earth, if used properly; but if used improperly, we could also create our own Hell, which we have done. So we don’t require a Pat Robertson as God’s Special Envoy and Chief of Staff, nor do we need the Bible as a user’s guide to dictate how we should live our lives any more than fish need a swimming coach or birds need a compass to know which way is south, or a calendar to know when to head in that direction. Again, he blessed us with common sense to be our guide - at least, most of us.
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That leads me to the concept of good and evil. Actually, it’s quite simple. "Good" is to act with common sense, and what most people call "evil," is nothing more than ignorance. It’s as simple as that. Thus, the key to living a good life is to be an independent thinker, to use our intellectual capacity to explore what it actually means to live a fulfilling life, and to have the good sense to avoid the ignorant machinations of other men. I've boiled it down to one sentence - Never give anyone else's ability to think priority over your own.
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At this point I’m sure that many have come to the conclusion that I have a disdain for religion, but that’s not true - I have a disdain for the ignorant way in which it’s practiced. There’s nothing wrong with religion itself, if that’s what butters your bread. Some people find it comforting and inspirational to "fellowship" with others. But the problem is, man tends to completely ignore the primary point of religion - to inspire one to treat his fellow man with more caring, and to reinforce the idea of living a good and honorable life. He embraces dogma instead, those things that make his religion different from everyone else’s, and that’s not by accident.
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The bottom line is, while we pay it a lot of lip service, man doesn’t want to "love his neighbor." Due to his personal insecurity, and the resulting need to feel like he’s a part of a special breed that’s been anointed by God, he wants an excuse to hate, feel superior, and look down upon his neighbor, and religion gives him a "God-approved" pretext for doing just that. Man wants an excuse to say, "It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does." That’s why what we refer to as "The Bible Belt" also just happens to be the most bigoted and intolerant region in the entire country, and you’ll find the same to be true throughout the world - the more religious, the more bigoted, narrow-minded, and intolerant. Does that sound like the work of God? Personally, I don’t think so.
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So I look upon organized religion as a form of ignorance, and as I mentioned above, I equate ignorance with evil. You show me a man who believes in talking snakes, and I’ll show you a man who may be learned, but he’s not very bright, so he can be convinced of anything. So does organized religion have to be evil? No it doesn’t. But wherever you find hoards of insecure and unthinking people, you’re also going to find excess, hatred, subservience, and greed - or in short, evil.
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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.comEwattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.


　

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