A lot of people think that postmodernism is always the enemy of Christianity, but that is an oversimplified scenario. Postmodernism has many ideas that can be combined with Christianity. One may view it as a problem, but it can be a resource for Christian philosophy, Christian mysticism, Christian apologetics, and even for the understanding of the Bible.
Reflecting on the tapestry of human history, it is impossible to overlook the paramount influence religion has wielded in the formation of societies, civilizations, and cultural dynamics. While I express this understanding as an atheist, it’s crucial to honor all perspectives’ authenticity, even when they diverge from one’s views. Different people draw different meanings from various life aspects, and for many, religion serves as an unwavering beacon guiding them through life’s daunting maze. In this context, I’m aiming to explore a widening path in contemporary society; empowering self-driven lives, where belief in oneself takes precedence. It’s about ensuring that one realizes, “Yourself is Enough.”
Over the last few months in the USA — and across the world ashore — it appears we now prefer to burn our women and children on the altar of a consecrated, conservative, authoritarian, religioso, madness! It’s Leda and the Swan now embedded forever in The Marble Palace — and there’s no clear way out of separating alarming myth from tragic reality. Now the majority women don’t control their bodies anymore. Now the minority swans own their bodies.
Continue reading → We Burn Our Women and Children on the Altar of Madness
We live in a selfish world where Social Media has become the public square replacing the private confessional and the anonymous donation box. We click a LIKE button and we feel better. We promote our private good deeds in an open airing and our righteousness quintuples in the amount of retweets we earn. This is all wrong and misguided. We shouldn’t do good things just to be rewarded. We must not aspire to be the hero of our own invention just because that’s the immature nattering standard of the day.
Continue reading → What We Have Become and What Cannot be Undone
William Jennings Bryan — known as “The Great Commoner” and “Keeper of the Faith” — was a Populist, religious, conundrum. He was for the people. He was against big money. He fought, testified, and prosecuted via the Bible — in utter infamy — during the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial and died five days after the trial ended. Defending his Faith killed him.
William Jennings Bryan was a good son of Nebraska who was nominated three times on the national Democrat ticket — and he lost each time — and his failure to find a national political footing beyond his deeply religious Nebraska grassroots haunted him until his death.
I was able to purchase this fascinating photo of William Jennings Bryan, dated September 18, 1924 — he would be dead 10 months later — the caption reads:
WITH THE COMMENDATION OF THE COMMONER
Photo shows William Jennings Bryan pinning a badge of allegiance (David-Bryan campaign stuff) to Rose Minto’s coat lapel. She is a popular motion picture star in Hollywood who is actively interested in politics.
What is most interesting about the photograph is the use of the black editorial pen on the image. You can see the crop indices, but there are also black ink pen “lines of emphasis” added to Ms. Minto’s hat, Bryan’s lapels and face. You can see the dullness the pen makes when you move the glossy photograph in your hand in and out of reflective light.
At first wink, those added lines look like marks of defamation until you realize, after scanning the photograph for publication here, they must have been an important part of newspaper publishing in 1924 to help the highlights and shadows be more discernable in ink on paper.
Continue reading → An Unredeemable Removal: William Jennings Bryan as the Magnificent Loser
We know there is a faux war allegedly being waged against Christmas that those on the far right-wing of the American mindset claim to fight each and every season — but let there be no doubt there is a second, more insidious, religious war being fought against the black cauldron public celebrations of Halloween.
I’ve always enjoyed Halloween. It’s a universal, dramatic, moment in time where you can be someone else for awhile all while celebrating the changing season and the fun of each other’s imaginations.
Over the past few years or so, though, I’ve seen a dedicated effort by a religious few to remove the pumpkin spectacle from public purview. Is protesting the wicked witch the way some hope to preserve the baby Jesus?
There’s a lot of righteous arguing on The Internets recently concerning the way religion and science are cleverly being mashed up by fanatical Christian fundamentalists to create a whole new anti-science, anti-reality, anti-educational rhetoric that is being fed to our children as something real and true and factual when it is not. The monsters behind this religious terrorism of the mind are the same evildoers who invented the “Creation Museum” where they argue that people walked the earth with the dinosaurs even though there is a 65 million year gap between the last dinosaur and the first human.
Continue reading → When Religion tries to Become Science, Bad Things Happen
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