We traveled on down to Palmyra in order to see the Mormon pagaent about their religions back story. As a total athiest this was still interesting just to see. If nothing else Mormons are amazing organizers and performers.







It was so weird to see all the same Christian protesters that protest at gay pride, Thursday in the square, etc. Its especially weird because despite a few key strangenesses, the mormons still believe in God and Jesus and the teaching of Jesus including compassion, love, etc. It was unbelievable to hear the one old protestor guy screaming about such insignificant differences like which city was Jesus born in (Jeruselem or Bethlehem.) Especially when there are groups with more fundamental differences like not believing in Jesus altogether. It makes me think the real issue is fighting over sheep and who can have the most. Nothing about the way these people act reminds me of the teachings of Jesus.



In general mormons seem like a friendly bunch of people. Not that I want to be one or that I believe in their nonsense, it just seems like they are not as bad as the evangelicals I am constantly exposed to in public settings. At the same time they still have that gay hate thing going on.

I have a feeling non-mormons might mistake me for one today with my tie and backpack.

Last night everyone went out for the pride festival on Allen. It was great to be out in our own neighborhood. Even (e:matthew) went out for once. We went together and sat at a bar for a drink, which was great. They did a great job throwing the festival together. I hope to see the event stay in allentown in the future, for one night it felt like being in a big city.



Afterwards, we left because (e:southernyankee) was on her way out of town and had to get her stuff from our house so we came back with robert and james and chris, a new acquaintance.

Afterwards (e:terry)'s coworker Nicholas stopped by and brought me candy from the greek festival which was awesome. I freakin love that stuff but was busy buying blinds at JcPenny's sale and missed the greek festival.

Now to the crazy part. I had some colossal shrimp I bought earlier at the coop and I took them out to make a shrimp cocktail and that's where it goes downhill.

Sorry for anyone who this offends but I was immensely irritated last night by this guy and I wanted to record it so that I remember when I complain about christians that I feel the same way about preachy religious people of all flavors.

It started with a disagreement about shellfish. I also cannot ever understand people that are sensitive to one animal and not to another. I mean either you eat animals or you don't. And I am willing to undertand 100% why people don't want to eat them for personal moral or health reasons but when people restrict diet because of religion I just don't understand especially when it just involves certain animals for antiquated reasons.

When I looked it up this morning and saw that the bullshit comes from Leviticus I wanted to throw up. This is one section of the religious text I have no understanding for.

Leviticus 11, verses 9-12: "These you may eat of all that are in the water: whatever ... has fins and scales... that you may eat. But in all the seas or in the rivers that do not have fins and scales... they are an abomination to you... you shall not eat their flesh."

Especially when just a few rows down you get

Leviticus 18:22 "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."

Sorry, but I have principles too and one of them is I will eat shellfish every week until I die or they are gone. But somehow, a gay jew was in my own kitchen berating me about eating shrimp. It was such a surreal moment. I don't care what people are, you clearly do not act like that when you are invited to someone's house. I told robert I would pre-screen better from now on. I mean you could say, I do not eat shellfish on religious grounds and leave it at that but he kept going and going about how they are the chosen ones, like it or not, blah blah. It was a half hour lecture.

In fact I am so committed to shellfish that if you asked me if I would choose giving up shellfish or israel being scraped off into the ocean, I would choose continuing to eat shellfish. Especially with this recent gaza drama.

I had such a hard time with listening to him in my kitchen without wanting to crush his head. Instead I concentrated on making the food as I thought full on confrontation was probably a bad idea. James just kept telling the guy to stop. Eventually, the guy and terry left for the porch and I went to bed.

Unlike listening to christians talk about their stories, there was no note of conversion or chance that I could be saved, which is such an interesting twist. I mean its not like I take them up on the offer but at least it doesn't come across so stuck up as "we are the chosen people and it is a race you do not belong to."

If I ever hear anyone else refer to themselves as the chosen people and at the same time tries to dampen a otherwise perfect shrimp cocktail experience, I am going to release my full atheist rage on them. oyg, I just wish (e:jim) or james b could have been there.

I was searching for pictures from star trek and Anton Yelchin for my next journal and ended up on the Anton Levey page of wikipedia.



So this guy is the founder of the Church of Satan Yes, that is for real, their silly 90s retro homepage.

As a kid I was really scared of this guy and of satan worshippers. For some reason I had the impression they were all over kenmore west. I think it was because lots of kids in the 80s wanted to be "satan worshippers" to rebel and I was young and impressionable enough to believe they were. A visit to the old train tracks near military on the border between kenmore and riverside would convince you.

Then there was the whole drama with John Justice killing his family and everyone blaming it on dungeons and dragons and satan worshipping. Clearly, he was just disturbed.

John Justice, 17, of Kenmore, N.Y. on September 16, 1985 murdered his brother Mark, 13, stabbing him eight times, then killed his mother Mary, stabbing her 14 times. He then drove and picked up his father John, Sr., took him home and stabbed him four times. He then attempted to kill himself, slashing his forearms. He drove off and had a car accident, killing Wayne Haub,22. He reportedly was a devotee of Dungeons and Dragons and very angry with his mother. Some report he was into teen satanic cult and sacrificed his family on his dungeon master's orders. His parents fought frequently. John had developed an obsession with killing well before the massacre(Buffalo News 9/17/85 and People Magazine).

Anyhow, maybe the whole satan worshipping thing was a joke. As an adult, satan worshippers seem kind of funny, like "leather daddies mixed with ritual" And the fact that LaVey was a circus act to start just adds to it. Its hard to retroactively see what was acting and what was seriousness.

Another interesting tidbit is that the satanic bible and a lot of his writing were rumored to be inspired by Ayn Rand.

LaVey has stated that his religion was "just Ayn Rand's philosophy, with ceremony and ritual added",[9] though many say that he should be given credit for his creative synthesis of the thought of others into what has become the most influential statement of modern Satanism.

I also found it ironic he died in a catholic hospital. That must have been a scene. I wonder if it is as much of a nightmare for a satan worshipper to die in a catholic hospital as it is for a catholic to die in a satanic hospital (if they existed).

So then what does it generally boil down to? Not totally sure but after watching the video below, I realized they are actually atheists putting on a show - for some sort of emotional release. Wow, that seems like such a serious waste of time. All of the ritual and pomp of religion without any of the afterlife rewards.

So then there is there new spokesmen

The Video
And here it is with the horses mouth. As soon as this Mr. Lispy Lisp said, "going into a theatrical space", and "magically appropriate" I realized that in fact it is very much like the "leather daddies." Its interesting to see they don't believe in the spiritual aspects of it. I guess it is very much a theatrical joke.


Even Sammy Davis junior was a member. So not only was he a rare black/jew combo. He is an even rarer black/jew/satan worshipping combo.

Beliefs of the Church Of Satan

Wikipedia boiled their philosophy down to a few tenants that I think shed some light

Some of them are totally ridiculous. I think my favorite is "Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal." I guess I don't understand what the penalty is. I guess there isn't after watching the video.

The Nine Satanic Statements
The Nine Satanic Statements outline what "Satan" represents in the Church of Satan.

Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence.

Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams.

Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit.

Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates.

Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek.

Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires.

Satan represents us humans as mere animals, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of our "divine spiritual and intellectual development," have become the most vicious animals of all.

Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification.

Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, having kept it in business all these years!

The Nine Satanic Sins
Stupidity

Pretentiousness

Solipsism

Self-deceit

Herd Conformity

Lack of Perspective

Forgetfulness of Past Orthodoxies

Counterproductive Pride

Lack of Aesthetics

The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth
Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.

Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.

When in another's lair, show them respect or else do not go there.
If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat them cruelly and without mercy.

Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.

Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and they cry out to be relieved.

Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.

Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.

Do not harm little children.

Do not kill non-human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.

When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask them to stop. If they don't stop, destroy them.

There is the half that gets sun and the half that is frozen solid because the church next door prevents the sun from reaching the ground. I like
to think of it as a metaphor about organized religion.

If you play where's kitty you can see there is a new grey cat that lives in the yard. It looks like a superfluffy squiddt.

On another note I was up till 5am programming custom eclipse IDE plugins in java. I love eclipse.

Maybe we will get a new couch today as the old one broke from extreme usage. It will not have a drink holder.

In regards to (e:zobar,46545) and my (e:paul,46546) and the comments there. I get that not all chistians are awful people. I at least know 10 good ones. I do, however, find that a lot of them are quite stupid and will follow anything their leaders tell them - and a lot of them have questionable leaders that tell them bullshit having nothing to do with Christ's messages. I got that Drew is not like that - he seems to to follow what I think is the real message (e:drew,46580)

I can't believe that anything is based on the laws of leviticus. What I find most irritating is how people pick and choose which ones to follow. I know jesus didn't say these things and some of the christians believe in what jesus says is most important but its all in the same book. Why not edit the book and just have a whole new book? Its not like Jesus commanded the whole book be read in its entirety. He didn't write any of it. I would support a religion that cut the nasty jew law part out and just left in the messages of Jesus. Keeping that baggage in the book to me, nullifies the books messages as a whole.

This whole leviticus book is so utterly ridiculous:

Leviticus 20.13: If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. Lev. 18.22

Why are they not passing laws to prevent men from lying with women "having their sickness" lol. He seems to be pretty much against that too.

Leviticus 20.18: And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people.

Or from eating unclean beasts. We have a whole proposition against gay marriage but nothing against unclean beats on the state constitutions.

Levitius 20.25: Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean.

I want to see prop Eat Clean and proposition Period.

I went with (e:imk2) and faben to go see Religulous. It wasn't that exciting because I share mostly the same views and there was little new information. I think for some people it would be more interesting.

The only thing that kind of shocked me was that the Jesus story isn't unique. Apparently, it is also the same store as Horus and some other previous god-men.

In the end, the movie just confirmed my belief that I am terrified of muslims and christians alike and that jews are also scary but there aren't a lot of them - so not so much. Who knew there were so few of them? I guess there are a lot more if you count the christians as religious decendents.

According to the Jewish Agency, as of 2007 there were 13.2 million Jews worldwide; 5.3 million in Israel, 5.3 million in the United States, and the remainder distributed in communities of varying sizes around the world; this represents 0.2% of the current estimated world population.

Rare religion post from paul - This article just made me so mad.

Pope Benedict XVI condemned unbridled "pagan" passion for power, possessions and money as a modern-day plague Saturday as he led more than a quarter of a million Catholics in an outdoor Mass in Paris.

This is not a modern day plague. In fact your church is a trend setter for it. You know what pope, the thing that struck me most about your vatican was how gaudy and gold crusted it was. Like the giant gold spires behind the alter at St. Peters or the rooms full of idols from other civilizations of antiquity, e.g. the Egyptian and roman area at the vatican. Get the fuck over yourself. You are not god, you are a crusty old man with way to much money and power preaching about the evils of money and power - its not ironic - its sick.

Not only that all that gold came from really sketchy, anti-christian actions like plundering the Americas, Africa and as I learned just today the Jews in collaboration with the Nazis

So before anyone should believe anything you say, you should go ahead and give it all back. Thats right, melt down all your fanciness and go back to be a christian church for the sake of christianity or live like you do and stop condemning the rest of the world for it.

On Friday, Benedict told young people they shouldn't fear spreading their faith in a society where secularism is entrenched and Islam is growing.

Hello holy war ;(

In response to (e:enknot,43055) I know that religious folks will totally disagree with me for this but I don't think children should be introduced to religion until they are a bit older as they are so suggestible and imaginative and can get carried away with it in unhealthy ways.

My Two cents: This is really going to make me seem insane but read the whole thing before responding. First of all my parents were religious, but not overbearing about it or anything - so don't read that into this. They went to church on Sunday, we prayed before meals, etc but not like its all we talked about.

I know for many Christians this is impossible to even think about. I think sects with adult baptism make more sense.

As for the moral/ethics argument, here is no reason not to teach them the same moral values outside of the religious context.

It is just that I can see how imaginative, strong willed children could get totally carried away as I did myself. Now I am not saying all children, in all circumstances - just something to think about..

As a child I was really religious. Like I thought about it all the time and it really controlled my life. Mix that with a little imagination and OCD and I had a hard time checking myself before I wrecked myself.

I invented all these imaginary friends to accompany me and God on our adventure in life. I thought those imaginery friends gave me super powers - just ask any of my close childhood friends (e:iriesara) - which honestly, sounds insane now - but put it in a religious context and it isn't that weird. Even Jesus was one of my imaginary frinds. HE took the form of this water creature. In fact, I believed it so much that I could see him wiggling on the ross in church and then he would "drip off"into water creature and fly around. That creature mated with another one and became another friend with other powers, etc.

So I created this whole fantasy world around them and their existence based on what I thought was possible from reading the bible. Just like God, my imaginary friend all had requirements/commandments for loving me.

Some of them required simple things like me repeating chants, others required more complicate stuff like particular movements or blood dripping on rocks, etc. It sounds totally crazy but in a bible reading child world, these kind of stories seemed congruent with what I was reading. It was like my sacrifice to these minions that God and I knew about.

This sadly went on until my mid teens. Then I went on some bible camp scavenger hunt where their existence came out and the people made me get down on my knees and prey to let Jesus into my heart. That was definitely the most terrifying moment of my life because I felt like I definitely had jesus in my heart and they were trying to poison me with some fake jesus. I was confused and for sure scared. I had my imaginary friends create this mystical bubble around me to protect me from them. In fact I even had prayers I would use to command my imaginary friends to do stuff.

Basically, what I am saying is that opening up a child's mind to religion, can open it up to the possibility of insanity because accepting the idea that all this supernatural stuff exists, is a concept that is hard to put reigns on once it is fully accepted.

Luckily for me, this girl named Daniel Woodman,w ho also had imaginary friends came along and stole all my imaginary friends in some sort of imaginary friend battle and they went away, like all in one day. It was both tragedy and a relief.

As a side note and testement to my OCDness as a child, I remember this one chant I would use. The beginning chant came from some religious book about protecting yourself from witches and the end I made up.

"Black lugie and hammer head, rowan tree, and red threat - but the warlocks to their speed, everything, everywhere, disconnected and also extras."

After, a little search I found some info about its origin here I love the ending. It completely describes my OCD as a child. It referred to the fact that I would give myself time limits to say the chant and previously I would have to include things like requesting that my family and friend don't die, we had food on the table etc. But he list became so long I created this macro that basically included, "everything I ever asked for, for everyone, everywhere and that if there were conflicted requests, their dependencies were disconnected and that I would also like an extra things I might think of in the future to be included in my current requests.

I used to also mix this up with the Lord's Prayer as I kind of ending to it that no one else knew.

Plus, I feel to a degree it stymied my creativity. I found a box poetry I wrote as a child and almost every freakin' poem has some overbearing religious context and god overwatching his children. I wish instead I could have thought about other stuff.

To see just how bad it can get check out Jesus Camp
I know (e:enknot) that you and meg are nothing like the woman in this movie but check out Jesus Camp if you hadn't, to see how crazy kids can get with religion.

Here is the wiki article

"85% of all Sudanese are below the absolute poverty level (which means their lives are in danger because they do not have enough money to provide food, water, and shelter for themselves)."

(e:ajay,42342), I can't believe that story either about the British teacher who was working in Sudan, and let her students name a class teddybear Muhammed. She is now in hiding under death threats from angry mobs learned her lesson about helping poor people in third world countries.

I think it is time we just give up hope on all the ones that have fundamentalist religions of any nature and poverty combined, which is about all of them. Its a hopeless case, I say let them all fight each other to death or eat themselves. Someday when everyone else is goin g to heaven, I am going to be judged for that statement.



I can't really believe it but I am really over the top sick of religious freaks getting all angry about stupid shit. It is a teddybear. I don't care what some crazy, obsessive compulsive person wrote down in a book ages ago and you believe - it is a freakin' teddybear and you people are whackos. Don't you have better things to worry about - like where your food is?

I am so angry about this I am about to rename Basra - muhammed in protest - an he is just a dirty, eat his own shit kind of beast.