Day: June 28, 2007

2007-06-28

an old pic . . . my angle . . . (nothing more)

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ancient Religious Cultures, Religion and Atheism
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While visiting the British Museum I took this pic of Mithras Slaying the Bull from this angle because it shows (more than other images I can recall) how the scorpion is, like the snake and dog, sucking in the life juices of the bull — whether its blood from the dagger wound or the testicles. (Okay, the blood sucking dog and serpent is clearer as such in other images, but this angle does display the scorpion’s target of attack in this particular statue.)

So what does this have to do with the Gospel of Mark? Who knows…. David Ulansey may have something to say about it. So, in close step with Ulansey, might Michael Patella, who similarly sees the origins of Christianity embedded in cosmological developments otherwise known to practitioners of Mithraism. Continue reading “an old pic . . . my angle . . . (nothing more)”

Did Iranian leaders really call for genocide of Jews and nuking of Israel?

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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There have been several rebuttals of the western media’s outrageous uncritical relaying of neo-con and “Bush-it(e)” propaganda asserting that Iranian leadership has called for the wiping of Israel off the map.

No such claim was made, and the fact that the mainstream western media reported it as fact speaks disheartening volumes about that media’s complicity with the corporate elite or lack of any principle other than $$ and ratings.

If you have been left with any impressions that Iran really did call for Israel to be “wiped off the map” then do please check out this latest rebuttal and forward to friends:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17925.htm

That such incredible lies can be perpetrated in the time of so much ability for a sincere media to really expose such nonsense for what it is, ….. what can one say, if not simply that when another mass killing happens that it will be the “fourth estate” as much as any who must be held accountable!

Richard Dawkins compounds the Sam Harris error on suicide bombers

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society, Religion and Atheism
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There is much to commend The God Delusion as a clear presentation of a wide range of reasons for viewing atheism as not only a rational but a wholesome and positive alternative to religion. I will probably address some of these in future posts. (The book is also far by miles from being the rabid polemic against religion that it has been promoted as being in many quarters.)

But there is one area where the book disappointed me — it follows Sam Harris’s End of Faith in simplistically reducing the fundamental cause of Islamic suicide terrorism to the belief that a martyr’s death will translate into heavenly and/or virginal bliss.

At least Dawkins acknowledges that there are other factors pressuring such terrorists to their acts, but he still comes down on this fanciful belief as being the bottom line that enables such actions.

The reason I think it worth addressing this claim is that I believe it has the potential of stoking the flames of intolerance, especially against a large part of non-western humanity, and contributing to western blindness that can only serve to perpetuate the whole problem. Continue reading “Richard Dawkins compounds the Sam Harris error on suicide bombers”