I agree. I have recently been exploring Humanism as a philosophy and way of life and it makes a great deal of practical sense. It also is somewhat of a threat to organized religion. Kurt Vonnegut, the famous novelist was an Atheist and a Humanist up until the point that he died. Vonnegut was descended from a family of German freethinkers, who were skeptical of "conventional religious beliefs". He had this to say about it which has stuck with me in its powerful impact time and time again.

“I am a humanist,” he said, “which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishment after I am dead.”

If we were forced to somehow see how there IS "only today"...

...the Human obsessive drive to define the life out of everything (past, present and future), which has created a perpetual false sense of ownership and of being owned (and being damned "right" about all of it), would seem to naturally have to disappear.

(Uh-Oh! Sounds like I'm defining )



Imagine living without expectation...

Imagine if we saw each other for the gods and goddesses that we already are (here in real-time) and respected each others wants, without any laws (spoken or unspoken) saying that we had to or that anyone had to in return...

Oh, What Freedom!

John Lennon seemed to have found a massively significant key to the freedom of humanity and spoke it in the simplest of terms...

In an interview, John Lennon said:

"We all have Hitler in us, but we also have love and peace. So why not give peace a chance for once?"

There's an acceptance here of both the negative and positive in everyone... without the obsessive demand to be and take in only good.

Religious oppression dictates that only good will create more good.

From that we live in fear that any bad (internal or external) will detroy us.

Logical observation shows that bad DOES create good.

Hard to see this when blinded by fear.

Yes I agree. I tend to believe in the concept of Polarity which insists that we ALL possess both elements of "good" and "evil" within us. So its a similar concept to the "Ying and Yang." Light and darkness. Many religions tend to force the doctrine of "duality" which is to say utter complete good exists (god) and more specifically their god. And then utter and complete evil which is labeled as "Satan." Or at least he's responsible for it in some respect. That little cloven hoofed one.

I tend to have a hard time with that and find Polarity much easier and more complete.

This is so true. I wish people could see this.

It should not even be considered feuding when a human questions or rejects a book that was written by men who claim to speak for the creator of all humans.

Especially when those authors claim that God supports such things as male chauvinism and the murdering of anyone who disagrees with what the authors wrote.

That should be a crystal clear signal right there that these men are speaking for themselves and not for any God.

I see no reason to believe that my creator would be as ignorant and uncouth as the men who wrote the Bible.

They simply haven't convinced me that they speak for God. And that's a totally valid view.

I don't reject God. I reject the idea that the authors of the Bible speak for God.

And as a human I should be totally respected for this without fear of being labeled as an immoral person, or that I am bashing someone else's beliefs.

After all, if a person claims that my beliefs about the Bible are wrong, then are they not also bashing my beliefs? I believe the men who wrote the Bible spoke for themselves. That's what I believe.

We've got to get past this idea that just because we don't all believe the same things that this equates to 'bashing' the belief of the other.

A belief that the Bible was written by men for their agendas is every bit as valid and respectable as a belief that it was inspired by God.

In fact, even a God would need to recognize the respectablity of either view.

Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors.

"All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental."

Yep me to. "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Cat's Cradle" were a couple favorites. He was so modest. He never considered himself a worthwhile writer. Brilliant man he was.

This is a taught belief that the religious are the morality of man. Men can be completely and utterly moral and genuine without religion to judge whether it is or isn't. Man has a brain.

That is one of the things I most admired about his writing. He never took himself too seriously.

awareness of the human brain indeed past thru many phases of developement along the path, as indeed it was once spoken, to look to the ant, as the ant mimic all human behaviour in all it's manner's, in preperation for the logos within it to pass on to the next stage???

humanism...

each human is equal in value to self in all ways, regardless of belief or race, and the self preservation of all as one, be the only essence of any perfect love, any thing once called lord being once called perfect love???

did not the book teach the same as well???

any injustice or atrocity perpetrated on another human being left undone, subvert all humanity from love itself, and there is no book or belief needed for this is there???

peace

Yeah, even Slaughterhouse-Five had sort of a dry, humorous wit to it. Like in the face of something so horrible all you can do is laugh. Did you ever see the film adaptation of it? They handled the Allied bombing of Dresden in an interesting manner.

I've been a humanist since I burned my copy of the Quran at the age of eight.

Burn your Bibles and Torahs... I assure you, the sensation you'll feel as your body and mind are being liberated, lifted from the chains of ignorance... that feeling is like biting into 10 York peppermint paddies!

Truly!

Burn the Bibles, Torahs, and Qurans and let's get rid of that ficticious image of a jealous God that fell into three parts and is at war with himself via the followers of his three differnent faces.

The first thing that might be helpful is to recognize that all three of those religion ultimately worship the same founding folklore!

They aren't truly about morals at all. They're all about denoucing the other two religions as being heathens! As well as denouncing all other spiritualities all around the world!

They are divisive cults! They just aren't divine spiritualities. Ironically they are all based on the very same jealous God that was basically torn into three faces and pitted against himself and the rest of the world!

We absolutely need to get past this schizophrenic man-made egotistical God who hates heathens! It just isn't conducive to peace on Earth.

If we're going to have religions let's at least choose pictures of Gods that aren't jealous. Let eveyone view their maker in their own way. Or even choose to believed they hatched from under a rock.

What's the difference what they believe? It's between them and their maker (or thier rock).

No man should tell another how to interact with God.

And now, open your hymn books to "The War is Over" and sing along:

http://users.csonline.net/designer/ideas/peace.htm

OMGarsh Abracadabra,

Thank you for the link. I did sing along, only because there was no one around to hear me... (I sing as flat as pancakes!!)