Your place to speak out against religion - GodlessRant.Com

wow! can places like this still exist in the 21st century? this is like something out of the bronze age!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/06/13/iran.porn.ap/index.html

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s parliament on Wednesday voted in favor of a bill that could lead to the death penalty for persons convicted of working in the production of pornographic movies.

With a 148-5 vote in favor and four abstentions, lawmakers present at the Wednesday session of the 290-seat parliament approved that “producers of pornographic works and main elements in their production are considered corrupter of the world and could be sentenced to punishment as corrupter of the world.”

The term, “corrupter of the world” is taken from the Quran, the Muslims’ holy book, and ranks among the highest on the scale of an individual’s criminal offenses. Under Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, it carries a death penalty.

The “main elements” referred to in the draft include producers, directors, cameramen and actors involved in making a pornographic video.

The bill also envisages convictions ranging from one year imprisonment to a death sentence for the main distributors of the movies and also producers of Web sites in which the pornographic works appear.

Besides videos, the bill covers all electronic visual material, such as DVDs and CDs. Other material, such as porn magazines and books, are already banned under Iranian law.

To become law, the bill requires an approval by the Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog in Iran.

It is widely believed that the drafting of the bill came about as a reaction to a scandal last year, when a private videotape, apparently belonging to Iranian actress Zahra Amir Ebrahimi and allegedly showing her having intercourse with a man, became available across Iran.

The videotape was leaked to the Internet and released on a black market DVD, becoming a full-blown Iranian sex tape scandal. Ebrahimi later came under an official investigation, which is still ongoing. She faces fines, whip lashing or worse for her violation of Iran’s morality laws.

The unnamed man on the tape, who is suspected of releasing it, reportedly fled to Armenia but was subsequently returned to Iran and charged with breach of public morality laws. He remains in jail.

In an exclusive interview with the British newspaper The Guardian early this year, Ebrahimi denied she was the woman in the film and dismissed it as a fake, made by a vengeful former fiance bent on destroying her career.

In recent years, private videotapes have increasingly been leaked to the public in Iran, riling the government and many in this conservative Islamic country, where open talk of sex is banned and considered taboo.

However, pornographic material is easily accessible through foreign satellite television channels in Iran. Bootleg videotapes and CDs are also available on the black market on many street corners.

on an off-note…this post instead of picking on religion, will highlight one of the amazing skills of man - big words! a lot of letters to say a lot about a lot and about a little!

this was sent to me by my good and brainy friend james of http://fallfromgrace.godlessrant.com.

The last word deals with religion, but we thought you might find this interesting. Here are some of the biggest words in English. We expect you to learn them…quiz at 3pm LOL

acetylseryltyrosylserylisoleucylthreonylserylprolylserylglutaminyl- phenylalanylvalylphenylalanylleucylserylserylvalyltryptophylalanyl- aspartylprolylisoleucylglutamylleucylleucylasparaginylvalylcysteinyl- threonylserylserylleucylglycylasparaginylglutaminylphenylalanyl- glutaminylthreonylglutaminylglutaminylalanylarginylthreonylthreonyl- glutaminylvalylglutaminylglutaminylphenylalanylserylglutaminylvalyl- tryptophyllysylprolylphenylalanylprolylglutaminylserylthreonylvalyl- arginylphenylalanylprolylglycylaspartylvalyltyrosyllysylvalyltyrosyl- arginyltyrosylasparaginylalanylvalylleucylaspartylprolylleucylisoleucyl- threonylalanylleucylleucylglycylthreonylphenylalanylaspartylthreonyl- arginylasparaginylarginylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylvalylglutamyl- asparaginylglutaminylglutaminylserylprolylthreonylthreonylalanylglutamyl- threonylleucylaspartylalanylthreonylarginylarginylvalylaspartylaspartyl- alanylthreonylvalylalanylisoleucylarginylserylalanylasparaginylisoleucyl- asparaginylleucylvalylasparaginylglutamylleucylvalylarginylglycyl- threonylglycylleucyltyrosylasparaginylglutaminylasparaginylthreonyl- phenylalanylglutamylserylmethionylserylglycylleucylvalyltryptophyl- threonylserylalanylprolylalanylserine Can you believe this is actually one word?! It is a virus of some sort: the chemical name for “Coat Protein, Tobacco Mosaic Virus, Dahlemense Strain”. By far the longest word in the English language with a whopping 1,185 letters!

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu- The name of a hill in New Zealand, an unremarkable one at that…. But nonetheless the second longest word with 85 letters!

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis- Some kind of lung disease, although there is a debate on the validity of this word, because there is a much shorter spelling. But it is listed in almost all of the major English speaking dictionaries, including the OED. It racks up 45 letters.

Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism- A disorder of some sort, the symptoms are not well explained where I read this: it is an inherited disorder that closely simulates the symptoms, but not the consequences of pseudohypoparathyroidism, thus it has mild or no manifestations of hypoparathyroidism or tetanic convulsions….But anyhow, it has 30 letters.

loccinaucinihilipilification- is “the act or habit of estimating or describing something as worthless, or making something to be worthless by deprecation”. Also the longest non-technical word in the English language, at 29 letters.

antidisestablishmentarianism- Disestablishmentarianism is a word the dates back over hundreds of years referring to the idea of separating the protestant church from England’s government, vis-a-vis separation of church and state. So when you put the prefix anti in front of it, it refers to people who object to the people who want the separation…. Here is the listed definition: it originated in the context of the nineteenth century Church of England, where “antidisestablishmentarians” were opposed to proposals to remove the Church’s status as the state church of England. The movement succeeded in England, but failed in Ireland and Wales, with the Church of Ireland being disestablished in 1871 and the Church of Wales in 1920. Antidisestablishmentarian members of the Free Church of Scotland delayed merger with the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland in a dispute about the position of the Church of Scotland….

Reverend Donald Wildmon’s “National Federation for Decency” DOES NOT want you to see HEART of the BEHOLDER.

HEART of the BEHOLDER is based on the true story of how an average American family lost everything because they stood up to religious censorship, religious intolerance, and political corruption.

HEART of the BEHOLDER has won more Best Feature Film awards than any other independent movie ever, but has been banned from theaters and video stores because of pressure from religious extremists.

HEART of the BEHOLDER can now be seen FREE online. There is no cost, registration, or login to watch what the “religious right” doesn’t want you to see.

PLEASE copy this message and pass it on to your email friends.

If you have any questions or comments, please send them to Producer@Beholder.com.

HEART of the BEHOLDER Web Theater http://www.beholder.com/webtheater/webtheater_msa.aspx

HEART of the BEHOLDER Website http://www.beholder.com

HEART of the BEHOLDER Video Player http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid403535559?bclid=403534727&bctid=400725250

Genesis 38

1And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

2And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite, whose name was Shuah; and he took her, and went in unto her.

3And she conceived, and bare a son; and he called his name Er.

4And she conceived again, and bare a son; and she called his name Onan.

5And she yet again conceived, and bare a son; and called his name Shelah: and he was at Chezib, when she bare him.

6And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, whose name was Tamar.

7And Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him.

8And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.

9And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.

10And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also.

what was so wicked that “the LORD” slew Er for? who knows? it must have been really bad to piss off “the LORD”.

well we know what Onan did…or didn’t do….he ejaculated on the ground!! WOW, what a horrible crime. A crime against humanity. So shocking it hurts even to describe it here.

Lest he give seed to his brother, he did an early withdrawal. This was SO EVIL that what can any loving and peaceful “lord” do?

SLAY SLAY SLAY!!

this is supposed to be the “prince of peace” and a “just god”….yet this poor boy was killed because he dared not cum in his dead brother’s wife’s lovebasket. I know, I know he “sinned” or whatever.

yet another example of this filthy and absurd religion’s lies. oh i guess that was part of the “old covenant” or whatever. if that’s so why not just remove that entire section of the bible? so that the deception that this deity is “loving” can continue without such annoying verses?

has it come yet, fundies?

oh yeah! no man knows the “hour”.

how long do you actually expect people to believe in your silly cult with an event that never happens? i guess long enough to fleece the “faithful”….forget logic, just accept that fake ol’ sky daddy into your “heart” however that can be done.

i know i know, i’ll believe it when “he comes again”. ever stop to think about what will happen if your precious sky daddy doesn’t return…ever? don’t you realize your religion has an expiration date on it?

All the way through this exposition, I will assume, for the sake of argument, that 1) Jesus exists and 2) that it was he who said the words attributed to him by “Matthew,” so-called. I’ll try to be as concise as possible so that this doesn’t turn into some ten or twelve page thesis.

Deuteronomy 18:22 “When a prophet speaketh in the name of Jehovah, and the thing followeth not, nor cometh to pass, that is the word which Jehovah hath not spoken; the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: be not afraid of him.”

The context of Matthew 24 starts, at a minimum, with chapter 23(it goes back even further but chapter 23 is good enough for our purposes) where Jesus curses the Pharisees and tells them that their house is left them desolate. They’ve killed the prophets, like their fathers, and they will kill those Jesus sends them when he’s gone.

1 And Jesus went forth and went away from the temple, and his disciples came to him to point out to him the buildings of the temple,

2 And he answering said to them, Do ye not see all these things? Verily I say to you, Not a stone shall be left here upon a stone which shall not be thrown down.

3 And as he was sitting upon the mount of Olives the disciples came to him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be, and what is the sign of thy coming and the completion of the age?

The disciples, impressed with what they just heard, immediately ask him the famous three part question, “when shall these things be, and what is the sign of thy coming, and of the completion of the age” They obviously understood what Jesus said as an apocalyptic declaration, and based on passages like Matthew 16:27-28, to name but one, they were not wrong. His answer confirms that.

Notice the ever-important context: When Jesus departed the temple, his disciples/apostles — not some future generation yet to be born — asked him how those things would happen, when he’d come and when would the end of the age would happen. They assumed that the destruction of the temple would be the end of the age and according to Jesus they were right, it was a precursor to the end. The end would come when “And these glad tidings of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole habitable earth, for a witness to all the nations, and then shall come the end(v 14).

Did this happen? Was the gospel preached to all nations? Well, according to Paul, who is said to have written Colossians, yes it did: “if indeed ye abide in the faith founded and firm, and not moved away from the hope of the glad tidings, which ye have heard, which have been proclaimed in the whole creation which is under heaven, of which I Paul became minister.” The whole creation which is under heaven doesn’t leave much room for error: Matthew 24:14 had been realized and it had happened only a few decades after Jesus had left, therefore he should have come back. Did he? No!

In this context, it is evident to all but the blind that Jesus is saying not only what would happen, but when and to whom. It would happen to them (his disciples, as per Matt 16:28,28) in their lifetimes.

The words are clear: (4) See that no one mislead you (6) See that ye be not disturbed; for all these things must take place, but it is not yet the end. (9) Then shall they deliver you up to tribulation, and shall kill you; and ye will be hated of all the nations for my name’s sake.

Did you notice what he said here? “and YE will be hated of all the nations!” not just in your own country, but by all the nations. They would proclaim the gospel to all nations and then Jesus would come. Did they do that? According to Paul they did.

All the way through, he tells his then disciples what would happen to them, what they would do and suffer, and after the gospel had been preached by them to all nations — which means the gospel would be preached to all the world within their generation, then the end would come and Jesus would come back.

Then, from v 15 to 28 Jesus tells them of a “great tribulation,” not a tribulation that is to come some 2000+ years from then, but in their lifetime! I’m assuming it was the destruction of the temple, which fits the context, and of Jerusalem.

Now, “immediately after the tribulation of those days,”(v 28) there are great signs and portents and they herald the coming of Jesus. then V 31 couldn’t be clearer as to what happens: “And he shall send his angels with a great sound of trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the one extremity of the heavens to the other extremity of them.”

From everywhere on earth, when Jesus comes, which is in the lifetime of his disciples/apostles, there will be a great judgement, also known as “The Great Assize” by Christians of old. This is the end of the world, the judgement(there’s only one) and it was all supposed to have happened at Jesus’ coming, which was clearly predicted to happen in that generation! What generation? The generation Jesus was addressing, according to the context.

The rest is about that “Great Assize” and how Jesus sits on the throne of judgement to reward his brothers and all those nasty evil-doers who were not his brothers, yada yada yada.

Did this ever happen? NO! Did Jesus ever come back accompanied by earth-shattering portents, as predicted by him? HELL NO! Did he predict he would come soon, within one generation? HELL YES, he most certainly did! And he predicted he would come back very visibly, with a lot of noise, within one generation and that all the “tribes of the land” would see him(Acts 1:11; Rev 1:7).

None of that happened. He didn’t come back as predicted, therefore he was a false prophet. There is no room(and I challenge you to find some) in Matthew 24, or anywhere else in the NT, for “Partial Preterism.” It was clear that not only the gospels were apocalyptic in nature, but that the whole NT, save Philemon, was apocalyptic; we can debate this latter if you wish.

The half-baked Partial Preterists, just like their fully baked cousins the Full Preterists, are wrong, and the reason they are so desperate to correct the errors of Full Preterism, in that they realize the consequences of not re-interpreting these passages.

Christians, down through the centuries, after they realized that Jesus hadn’t come back, used their clever little minds to re-interpret the prophecies so they could hang on to their faith. It took a while to sink in, but in the end they saw that they had to find a way to retard the coming that hadn’t materialize, and in a stroke of circular genius they managed to convince generations upon generations of Believers that Jesus’ coming was in the future… somewhere… sometime… maybe even in our generation. Yeah, right!

GR Gaudreau

Jesus is slower than the second coming.

The following is a quote from page 35 of a book by Alexander Waugh titled “God.” This is an excellent study/history of the god of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

~~~~~~~~ Begin quote Dysfunctional family. — When a peasant happened to pass his plough over an artificial mound at Ras Shamra on the Mediterranean coast of northern Libya in the late summer of 1929, he heard a funny noise. What was that his plough had faltered against? He looked bewildered. ‘Perhaps I better get the police.’ A few days later experts agreed that the plough had struck a tiny corner of the long lost Canaanite city of Ugarit. This was to prove the most important archaeological find of the twentieth century. Thousands of interesting things were unearthed at Ugarit, among them a mythological tale, etched unto stone tablets in 1380 BCE. In the story, El, High God of Canaan, reveals that ‘the name of my son is Yaw.’ Some scholars believe, as many have long suspected, that God’s (Yahweh’s) father was none other than the Canaanite supreme deity, El, and that God was once, like Ba’al and Dagon, simply one of the elohim.

In the book of Deuteronomy God (Yahweh) is granted Israel as a carve-up of family property presided over by El: “When the Most High (El Elyon) divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Yahweh’s portion is his people, Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.” (Deut 32:8,9)

According to this passage God must be El’s son, but the monotheistic defence interprets it differently. ‘No no, what the deuteronomist is really saying is that God (El Elyon) divided the land among the “son of God” (for which read “angels”) and that he kept the house of Israel for Yahweh (i.e., for himself). This argument fails to convince most modern scholars.

If God (Yahweh) really was one of the sons of El, he can lay claim not just to a father but to a whole squabbling family of Middle Eastern gods. His mother would be Athiru or Ashera, the fertility goddess; and his siblings are Ba’al, the god of fertility ( a much hated figure in the Hebrew Bible), who spent most of his time fighting his other brothers, Mot (god of drought infertility and death) and Yam (the many-headed monster god of the waters, who is also the god of chaos). Their sister is Anat, a feisty battle axe who, when not being raped by Ba’al, enjoys fighting at his side against Mot. On one occasion she fought for three days in a lake of blood which rose to her breasts with dismembered heads and hands adorning her wrists like jewellery. ~~~~~~~~ End quote

After having read this, as well as Karen Armstrong’s “A History of God,” which I also recommend, I have little trouble understanding why Yahweh was so messed up, having come from such a family. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

GR Gaudreau

If a god like Yahweh is needed to comfort the human heart, then we are still a savage people.

There’s been a lot of hoopla lately about archaeologists having found the bones of Jesus, Joseph, Mary & Mary Magdalene(allegedly Jesus’ wife) and one or more of the sons of Jesus. What crap! How in hell are they going to know that it’s actually the Jesus so venerated by Christianity — not actually followed but venerated?

Jesus, more precisely Y’hoshua, was a common name in first century Judea/Samaria. So was Joseph, Mary and a host of other names seen in the NT, such as Judas or Judah. The whole things smacks of wishful thinking. John Cameron, the director of Titanic, is quite sure he’s reporting the finding of the century, i.e., the bones of the so-called ‘holy family’ and he’s making a movie about it. Gee, does that sound like some Hollywood type trying to make a fast buck and getting some free publicity? Nah, couldn’t be!

There’s no way that any DNA taken from the bone samples can ever identify Jesus, since there was no DNA ever extracted from him. DUH! That seems like a no-brainer, but people John Cameron don’t seem to mind this slight discrepency as long as things are going his way.

the news has been going around the world, getting a lot of attention and making some religious folks nervous — why I don’t know — and forcing big organizations like the Roman Church to issue statements about this going against one the the most fundamental doctrines of the Church, i.e., the resurrection of Jesus — another bit of crapola, only this time originating from the first century instead of the twenty first.

All-in-all, it’s interesting to see the reaction of religious folks, but most of all this is a good thing. Yes, you read me correctly, it’s a good thing! Why? Because when Christianity occupied the corridors of power, nothing remotely like this could ever have been said or done. Questioning a most fundamental doctrine was very dangerous.

The fact that Cameron can exploit such a thing is a testament to how much power has been lost by the Christian Church and that, folks, can’t be anything but good. That people are free to take apart and examine Christian doctrines without fear of reprisal is a sign that we’re getting out from under the yoke of religion, and that can’t be anything but good. It’s high time we went further, stopped acting like a bunch of sheep and started thinking for ourselves.

GR Gaudreau

Christian: “I’ll pray for you.”
Me: “Okay, I’ll think for you.”

In 1st Corinthians 13, love is defined as follows: “Love is patient and is kind; love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud, doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil; doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

The above, we are told by Christians, is what love does. Love isn’t a feeling, they say, it’s an action, and if you want to know how to act in love toward your neighbour, then this passage is the place to find out. Fair enough.

In 1st John 4:8 the author of this epistle say this: “He who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for GOD IS LOVE.” (EMPHASIS MINE)

Did you get that? God is love and love is defined by I Corinthians 13. God, Jesus said, makes his sun to shine on the wicked as well as the good, therefore we should be perfect as God is perfect. The implication here is that we should love and freely forgive our enemies.

Does that sound anything like the God who drowned the whole world, except for eight humans and a few pairs of animals, because he thought men were wicked(Genesis 6-9)?

Does that sound like the God who commanded Joshua and his army to overrun Canaan and annihilate everything that breathed(Joshua 10:40).

Is this the same God who wanted all the men and boys and the non-virgin women of Midian to be utterly destroyed, but that the virgins, those who had not “lain with a man,” should be kept alive and serve as sex slaves for Israelite men(Numbers 31)?

Is this the same God who commanded the prophet Samuel to tell Saul to slaughter all the Amalekites, including women, children, suckling infants and all the animals(I Sam 15:1-3)?

And finally, is this the same God who had to have his own son tortured and nailed to a cross in order to be able to forgive us, when he commands us to forgive without asking for a price? Why the dog and pony show? Why not just forgive? If we can do it, why can’t the Christian God do it?

If this is the God of love, then love is empty and void of any meaning. If the word love is different for God than it is for us, then God can be made to say and do anything and he comes out smelling like a rose. What’s the different between this God and Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot, or Mao Tse Dung?

I’ll leave you with the words of Dennis McKinsey: “If God kills, lies, cheats, discriminates, and otherwise behaves in a manner that puts the Mafia to shame, that’s okay, he’s God. He can do whatever he wants. Anyone who adheres to this philosophy has had his sense of morality, decency, justice and humaneness warped beyond recognition by the very book that is supposedly preaching the opposite.”

GR Gaudreau

“Man will never be free until the last king has been strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” ~~ Denis Diderot

There’s a lot of hoopla about Jesus being the son of king David and Messiah of Israel, but judging from the stories propagated by the authors of the gospels of Matthew & Luke, Jesus couldn’t have been Israel’s Messiah.

Based on a promise made to David(II Samuel 7:12) and apparently confirmed by Peter on the day of Pentecost(Acts 2:30), Messiah was supposed to be a direct physical descendant of David, but if we base our answer on the stories in the two gospels in question, then the answer to the above question has to be no for the following reasons:

1. Both genealogies are based on Joseph(Matt 1:17; Luke 3:23) and both the authors of those gospels make it clear that Jesus had no earthly father(Matt 1:18-25; Luke 1:25-38), he was miraculously conceived when the “Holy Ghost” impregnated a virgin named Mary–naughty boy! Since both genealogies are based on Joseph, then they are not the genealogies of Jesus, therefore they cannot be used to connect Jesus to David. One wonders why an omniscient deity couldn’t figure this out.

2. The genealogies have two very different sets of ancestors leading to Joseph, i.e., the list of names in both genealogies are very different. As well, there are 42 generations between Jesus & David in Luke, while in Matthew there are only 28. There are 56 generations between Jesus and Abraham in Luke, but 41 in Matthew. Joseph’s father is named Jacob in Matthew, but Heli in Luke. These were in effect two very different and disparate traditions about Jesus’ ancestry.

3. Matthew’s line of descendants passes through Solomon, which is correct because the promise was made through king Solomon, while Luke’s genealogy passes through Nathan, another of David’s sons who was never king in Israel. Remember that Messiah had to descend from a line of kings.

4. Matthew’s genealogy also passes through Jechoniah(AKA Coniah AKA Jehoiachin) a king who was cursed of Yahweh in the days of the deportation to Babylon. It was said of him: “This is what the LORD says: ‘Record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime, for NONE of his offspring will prosper, NONE will sit on the throne of David or rule anymore in Judah.’” (Jer 22:30, emphasis mine) If Joseph was one of his descendants and if Jesus was adopted by Joseph, as is alleged by some desperate apologists, then he too was cursed and couldn’t rule on David’s throne in Jerusalem. One way or the other this puts the kibosh Jesus’ ascension to the throne.

All in all, if one examines these two genealogies without the rose-coloured glasses of Christian apologetics, one finds that various traditions and beliefs were at work in the first century and that very different stories(read “myths”) arose about a man called Jesus, but that there was nothing written to connect him to King David and therefore Jesus was not Israel’s Messiah. If he had been, things would be very different today.

GR Gaudreau

“Man will never be free until the last king has been strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” ~~ Denis Diderot