This article was inspired by an African American female, who shared this story on Facebook.
"This weekend while in Winston Salem... my daughter, her friend and I stayed over night at a hotel where we had the continental breakfast the next morning. At that time we were the only 3 blacks in the room, we got our food and sat down at a table next to a woman and her daughter's table. We began to eat when we heard the mom tell her daughter, 'stop staring at them, they have a right to be here just like you'. We looked over at them, the mother smiled and they got up and left. I didn't really know how to feel or what to say to my daughter and her friend other than WOW!"
It would not be fair to blame Donald Trump for the actions of others. However, his ultra-conservative stance, his being supported by the KKK, Neo-Nazi Groups, Skinheads and the like, has emboldened pockets of Caucasian Americans to say and do things they normally would not do or say.
Hate is taught, it is a learned behavior, that is why the little girl was staring, based on what she has been taught. The apple rarely falls far from the tree.
I'm a supervisor for a fortune 500 company and work virtual office. About 2 months ago, for the first time in my adult life, a customer called me the "N-word." And he didn't stop at calling me a n*gg*r, he called me a "stupid n*gg*r," primarily because he was not giving proper verification info, which is why the call was transferred to me. My response was the same as the lady who posted her story on Facebook.... "WOW!" And I can tell you why she said WOW, the same reason why I could only utter the word, WOW! Initially you're in a mild state of shock and that is the only word that comes to mind. It's shocking because you're thinking you're in an episode of the Twilight Zone. Your immediate thought process is, "wait a minute, am I dreaming?" Is this not 2017, or is it 1965?
Another recent occurrence, a customer who chatted-in, requested to speak with a "white supervisor." The 1st level customer service representative cold-transferred the chat to me so the customer assumed he was chatting with a "white supervisor." I won't even repeat what the guy typed. When he finished, I simply mentioned to him that "I am African American" and disconnected the chat.
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Racial intolerance and racial hatred are at an all-time high in the post-antebellum world. In order to curb the animosity toward African Americans and other minorities, it's not going to be a government-inspired resolution, it has to come from Caucasian Americans; those who find racial hatred as appalling as we do.
In other words, the resolution lies in grass-roots America. Most of your liberal-minded Caucasian friends and co-workers have associates, friends and family members who live on a day to day basis under the archaic notion and absurd mindset that the White Race is the superior race. Often their words and actions clearly indicate such nonsense as being a strong part of their character and personality.
As an upstanding citizen, it's your responsibility to put these idiots in check! You must let these people know that their outlandish, disrespectful rhetoric, will not be tolerated. If the behavior continues, as a member of logical-minded-White-America (just as logical-minded-Black-America is obligated to do with rogue members of the African American race), you must sever ties with such individuals. If you don't, as Dr. King so eloquently stated, "A time comes when silence is betrayal."
Source: "When Silence is Betrayal"
Maybe you've heard the adage, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." It is not incumbent on the "non-believer" to prove their extraordinary claims for the "believer." The religious adherent believes there was a super-natural being performing miraculous, impractical, illogical and unscientific activities (along with a 600-year-old man gathering two of every species in the world and other outlandish evangelical apocrypha). The burden of proof falls on the individual making those claims to prove their contentions, not the other way around.
Logical objections to nonsensical medieval miracles are based on scientific evaluations, common sense, and the clear evidence of what we have, not what we don't have (aka, blind faith). Compare factual scientific and archaeological data to what's written in archaic text; to what was written 2000-4000 years ago, by men who thought we lived on a flat planet; by writers who had no knowledge of the Jurassic (about 200 million years ago) or Cretaceous (66 million years ago) epochs, and it would be tantamount to comparing Einstein to a first-grader.
The skeptic (or in religions parlance, the heretic) is not claiming, for example, the Greek son of God, Hercules, whose life resembles that of Jesus Christ in many ways, is actually a real historical figure. Therefore, the skeptics burden of proof should not be greater than that of the people making the extraordinary claims. Fallacious assertions such as Jesus walking on water, being raised from the dead, a 600-year old man - Noah - building an Ark, God parting the Red Sea, etc.
Christian theologians, scholars, and historians however, tend to rely on less evidence for proof of their faith, than for comparative religious mythology and for those who challenge their preposterous pious pronouncements. In other words, they want evidence for every minute detail when one speaks against their archaic beliefs, and all the believer needs is "faith."
The heretic is required to provide mountains of evidence, in different languages, various cultures, as far back into antiquity as you can go, to show conflicting motifs, contrasting themes, and origins.
In order to convince themselves that 2000 years ago, the god of the cosmos came to Earth (of all the other sextillions of planets that harbor thinking beings) in the womb of a virgin, performed miracles, raised the dead, transfigured on a mount, calmed a storm, resurrected himself from the dead, for all these miraculous events, Christians require nothing more than blind faith and ten percent of your monthly income.
There is no proof other than the New Testament, so their standards are extremely low. There are no physical artifacts from the first century that support such ludicrous claims. There are no autographs or originals of the Gospels or Epistles. There is no evidence in the literary record of the existence of the Canonical Gospels as they would have been before the end of the second century.
The Bible we have today is not quoted verbatim, and none of the fabricated, plagiarized literature, appears anywhere in the annals of human history.
Furthermore, there is not a shred of evidence to show that the gospels were written by the people whose names are presented in the Bible. We don't have proof that the authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, actually lived, as depicted in the New Testament.
The stories pertaining to Saint Paul, were not recorded anywhere (except the Bible). Fantastic stories like Paul being brought before Caesar (Acts 25:10), rampaging with hundreds of troops, he's in a ship wreck, escapes from a Roman prison, none of these significant events make it into the historical records of that particular time.
There is no information in any contemporary writings of that particular epoch. Jesus is quoted and paraphrased to the tenth power. However, the plethora of forgeries and fabrications don't emerge until a century has passed. There really is no evidence for the entire Christian story other than the New Testament which is about 90 percent plagiarized from Egyptian mythology (the later).
In addition, at the death of Jesus; 1st Corinthians, 500 people supposedly witnessed the resurrection; there were earthquakes, the sun darkened, the saints rose up out of the ground and wandered through the streets of Jerusalem; Matthew 27: "And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." None of this finds its way into the contemporary record. You have to wonder why. The believer can't just say, "provide me with all types of documentation related to pre-Christian cultures and apocryphal stories but I'm satisfied with what I read in the New Testament, with absolute nothing to back it up except outlandish fairy tales.
There were numerous historians writing during one of the best documented periods in human history. None of the historians mention any of the miracles the Bible says were performed by Jesus.
Historians such as:
- Apollonius of Tyana, (Born: 3 BCE, Died: 100 CE) was a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Asia Minor.
"Being a 1st-century orator and philosopher around the time of Christ, he was compared with Jesus of Nazareth by Christians in the 4th century."
Apollonius was born 3 years before the purported birth of Jesus so to come back 300 years later and "compare him to Jesus," defies logic and common sense. It was more like Christians comparing Jesus to Apollonius, 3 centuries later. This is not a chicken and egg scenario because historical records show Apollonius of Tyana was an actual person; there is absolutely no documented proof (again, other than the Christian holy book) that Jesus walked around performing miracles in Jerusalem.
Furthermore, the character of Jesus has no last name, Christ or Christos is not really a name but an appellation, or title. It describes an appointment; a function in the theocratic structure of Israel.
- Phaedrus (Athenian): name translates to "bright" or "radiant", was born to a wealthy family sometime in the mid-5th century, and was the first cousin of Plato's stepbrother Demos.
- Philo Judaeus: called Philo of Alexandria (born 15–10 BCE, Alexandria - died 45–50 CE), he was a Greek-speaking Jewish philosopher, the most important representative of Hellenistic Judaism (Hellenistic Judaism was a form of Judaism in the ancient world that combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Greek culture). Philo would have lived during the time Jesus walked the Earth; there is no mention of Jesus in his contemporary annotations.
- Valerius Maximus: Latin writer and author of a collection of historical anecdotes. He worked during the reign of Tiberius (14 CE to 37 CE).
There are many more historians who lived slightly before, during, and after the apocryphal life of the protagonist of the Christian story, and none broach the subject of a guy who walked on water and rose from the dead.
Ok, that horse is dead, so lets look at the non-biblical records of the existence of Jesus, and this would be books of antiquity that do not quote the Bible. I'll wait...
Where are the legitimate historical records such as those that exist for Julius Caesar:
- Born: July 100 BCE- Rome; Died: 15 March 44 BCE (age 55) - Rome. Without a doubt, historians would not have omitted - as Christians would have it - the most significant man/deity in human history. If you're about to pull Flavius Josephus out of your pious hat, you may want to do some research.
or Plato
- Born: 428 BCE; Died: 348 BCE - philosopher and mathematician in Classical Greece, and the founder of "The Academy" in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.
or Xenophon
- Born: 430 BCE; Died: 354 BCE - son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, and student of Socrates.
Deny all you want, there is no way around the fact that if such a powerful entity perambulated the 90-mile stretch of territory (and with no means of travel except mules, he would not have been able to go very far), his life would have been recorded in history.
There was lots of construction going on in the area where Jesus was to have performed his ministry. The area was more of a crossroads, lots of traffic coming through, from the European continent into Egypt. Myriad people passed through this area and certainly would have heard and written about these miraculous feats.
Scholar of comparative religion and mythology, writer, historian, and researcher, D.M. Murdock (aka Acharya S) states [paraphrasing]:
"It seems to be pretty obvious when you consider all the factors needed to understand, the context and milieu of the day, the only way you can sustain the gospel story is to have it in a vacuum; to remove all practicality around it."
"All the other cultures, you would have to be ignorant of all history, mythology, culture, and language of the time in order to maintain such a story."
Unfortunately, that's exactly what we have today; a collective sacrosanct, willful ignorance among Christian followers.
Murdock: I've actually had debates with people who have said, "oh, I don't want to know anything about those pre-Christian cultures because they were all evil."
At this point, there is no amount of evidence to convince the [brainwashed individual to study and do the research on his or her own]. Then you have the special pleading of "we can believe this, without a stitch of evidence, because it's 'faith'. But, we can't believe anything that you've said, without a mountain of evidence, that we will still reject."
This is where the canonical debate ends for me because, as I've told my children since they were old enough to understand, "it takes a fool to argue with a fool."
Source:
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." ~ Unknown
"Christianity, along with all other theistic belief systems, is the fraud of the age. It serves to detach the species from the natural world, and likewise each other. It supports blind submission to authority. It reduces human responsibility to the effect that God controls everything, and in turn, awful crimes can be justified in the name of divine intelligence. And most importantly, it empowers those who know the truth but use the myth to manipulate and control societies. The religious myth is the most powerful device ever created, and serves as the psychological soil upon which other myths can flourish."
~ Zeitgeist
Everything is energy and that's all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics. ~ Albert Einstein
If we succumb to the temptation of using violence in our struggle for justice, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate life of bitterness, and our chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos." "There is still a voice crying into the vista of time saying to every potential Peter, put up your sword. History is replete with the bleached bones of nations and communities that failed to follow this command. ~ MLK
We have been mislead away from the true and divine presence in the universe that men have called God. I don't know what God is, but I know what he isn't. Unless and until you are prepared to look at the whole truth, where ever it may go, who ever it may lead to, if you want to look the other way, or if you want to play favorites, then somewhere along the line you will find that you're messing with divine justice. The more you educate yourself, the more you understand where things come from, the more obvious things become, and you begin to see lies everywhere. ~ Jordan Maxwell
I'm baffled by the depth to which a person can be certain of something that is objectively false. I'm stunned by this. When encountering a person whose spiritual judgment has been warped by years of religious conditioning, suggest a brief study of the cosmos and the reality that surrounds him.
~ taskeinc
"The United States has a strong record of persuading the public that war is the only way. A Military Industrial Complex worth billions of dollars is largely America's driving force. Deeply rooted in the system, it would serve no purpose if there was no one to fight."
"One of the mistakes the Western world makes is to think that their enemies should be our enemies." ~ Nelson Mandela
"Nobody has a right of self-defense against America, even if it intervenes across the ocean to impose by force governments that the people of that country reject." ~ Noam Chomsky
"There are two problems for our species survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly." ~ Noam Chomsky
"Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism."
There are some people who realize that religion is a ruse but still support one or two televangelistic charlatans based on their ability to motivate audiences.
If these guys were who they profess to be, they would be speaking out loudly against War. They would have protested vehemently when the first bomb dropped in Iraq after 9/11.
They would have screamed at the top of their lungs to find out what really occurred on Sept 11, 2001. He may touch on the ills of war in a sermon to his sycophantic flock, that's later edited out of any public videos, but his words are meaningless.
These shysters have thousands of people sitting in their congregations on any given Sunday and millions watching on television. Their audience includes physicians, lawyers, writers, professors and entrepreneurs who, if a collaborative effort were made on the part of their spiritual leaders, it's no telling what they could accomplish.
At one time Carlton Pearson headed one of the largest churches in Oklahoma with an average attendance of 5000 people. He had a dream about religion being all-inclusive and that there was no such place as Hell. He began to speak about this new revelation and ultimately lost his wife, his church, and his tremendous wealth.
According to Wikipedia:
"Pearson rapidly began to lose his influence in ministry with the Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops and was eventually declared a heretic by his peers in 2004."
What the hell (pardon the pun) gives these guys, in the 21st century mind you, the audacity to "declare someone a heretic?" It's all BS, plain and simple.
When Dr. King took began to speak out against the Vietnam War, his own advisor's urged him not to get involved. They told him that he had his hands full with the Civil Rights Movement.
Dr. Martin Luther King's response,
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn, Pat Robertson, Eddie Long and many others, would not dare speak out against War and Dirty Politics because they know they would suffer the same fate as Carlton Pearson. These people are scam artist at the highest level and part of the most colossal ponzi scheme in the history of humankind.
