Word of the day: Religionard

I’m going to do a series on words and phrases. Some of these will be ones I made up, others will be borrowed. I’ll tell you which ones those are. First up, one of mine :-

Religionard

Now before we go any further, let’s make something clear: I don’t hate all religious people, in fact I'm very fond of quite a few of them, even though we will never agree about this. I do have serious issues with some religious people, though, and that’s why I need a new word, to differentiate between the nice people I know who happen also to be religious, and the nutjob fruitcake headbangers whom I would cheerfully strangle if only I were allowed to, in order to get them to shut the fuck up. And stop them trying to interfere in my life, or anyone else’s, because of their absurd delusions.

Pursuing the Goddess

[caption id="attachment_1273" align="alignleft" width="230"] Aset or Isis, Egyptian Queen of Heaven[/caption]

Since 2002 I have been researching into something that I felt more than anything else. Something was nagging me. At the time I lived, as I do now, in France, and the signs of Goddess-worship were all around me. Cathedrals were full of images of the Goddess, the art replete with them. I could see this but I couldn’t define it, I couldn't understand what it meant.

When I returned to Scotland I was a very busy man for a long time, building a house and trying to make ends meet from my freelance work, and also my own mother became ill and died, so the research went on hold. But it was always there in the back of my mind, and as I travelled round Scotland, that epicentre of dry Presbyterianism, I saw again and again the unmistakable mark of the Goddess all over the architecture and in the symbolism.

The Goddess was the principal focus of my Masters’ Degree research and even though I came a long way, I didn’t reach the answer I sought. When I came back to France I began to write, but in April of 2012 I had to stop. I was getting too confused.

Faith Destroys Friendship

A while ago I lost a friend. I don’t mean to say he died; he didn’t. I hope he is well, and has a long life. But we aren’t friends any more.

My friend, whom we shall just call David, was close. For many years he had been a pretty permanent part of my life. We operated a non-audited favour system; whenever he needed something, like help with his computer, or moving his stuff or, well, whatever, he called me and I helped. And if I needed some help, for example when I was building my house, David turned to. There was no imbalance, and while we often argued about matters of philosophy, we are both educated Scots; argument is in our blood.

So it came as a shock to me when he ended our friendship.

The ‘Ontological Argument’= busted

Anti-apologism 1: The ‘Ontological Argument’= busted.

When dealing with religious apologists it's always better to nail them into the real world and insist on the same standard of evidence that is required for Gravity, Plate Tectonics or Evolution, because no apologist can ever provide these. Insisting on real scientific proof is a perfectly legitimate position, any time that someone is proposing the existence of something in the real world, including a god.

However, it is worth knowing about some of the more ridiculous philosophical ideas you might find used by apologists, and I’d like to discuss a few.

The first is The Ontological argument

45% of Americans are Retards.

[caption id="attachment_1224" align="alignleft" width="234"] Pic: NASA[/caption]

45% of Americans—well, people in the United States of America, which is, as far as they seem to be concerned, all of America—are retards. Not only is this truth shocking, it is dangerous and threatens all of us.

That 45% of Americans are so gravely afflicted has already caused pause for many commentators, including other Americans. The scientist and media personality, Bill Nye, for example, lamented it publicly, and not for the first time, in a YouTube video posted yesterday.

If there is consolation, and there’s not much, it only comes from the fact that for the last twenty years that the Galup polling organisation has been researching this, the figure remains relatively unchanged. So how did Galup come to its findings?

Live, Love and Stop Making a Fuss.

[caption id="attachment_1197" align="alignleft" width="224"] Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]

On the end of an affair

Well, there it is; for the last fourteen months I was very much involved with someone, and now I’m not. It’s interesting to examine the feelings one has at times like this. Of course I grieve for the loss of love—and it was love, mutually—but at the same time I am aware that I am once again a free agent, faced, again, with the same choices. So how will I choose?

Buddha taught that all suffering is caused by attachment, and that is of course true; it is axiomatic.

Merry Xmas!

[caption id="attachment_1184" align="alignleft" width="214"] Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]

Merry Xmas, Christmas, Yule, Saturnalia, Holidays…it doesn’t really matter what it’s called, because the meaning is the same: this is the time of renewal, when we slough off the old year and the wearisome encrustations that have built up and look forward to the new. It is the time when our sun, Sol, which has been slipping lower and lower in the sky, at least here in the Northern Hemisphere, stops, and begins to rise again, bringing with it the promise of warmth.

Jesus? I have a better story than that...

[caption id="attachment_1176" align="alignleft" width="223"] Pic:Rod Fleming[/caption]

Today marks the first day in one of our greatest annual cultural events: the winter solstice. From now until the 25th, the sun will appear to hesitate before it once again begins to climb into the sky. That of course, is the reason so many solar deities have their birthday on the 25th—Mithras, Dionysus and Christ being but three.

But what you may not know is that while these three ‘dying and rising’ gods, every one of them an agricultural deity, are clearly men, the very first was not; she was a woman.

The earliest version I have found is in the Sumerian tale of the goddess Sul or Sud. This is not a Sumerian name and it's unclear where she came from, but that doesn’t matter. As befits a goddess, Sul was staggeringly beautiful and at the peak of her fertility; she knew it was time for her to choose a partner.

Women Got Us Here.

The fact is, women got us here.

Earlier this year, it was finally confirmed that humanity’s exodus from Africa occurred only around 50,000 years ago.

This settled a dispute, though there was actually very little, concerning a massive super-volcanic explosion at Toba, in what is now Indonesia. This cataclysm erupted around 3,000 cubic kilometres of ash. No other volcanic eruption during the life of humanity has even come close to this. Toba caused a six-year volcanic winter and an ice age that lasted for a millennium. Fantastically huge pyroclastic flows, made up of superheated ash and gas, would have incinerated everything in their paths,