High Fives for Kids
A few days ago children all over the country started returning to school. For some cultures and areas of the country the men of the community are either troubled, gang members, drop outs, thugs, etc. Those two things clash in neighborhoods like a mac truck and a wine glass. Children are not encouraged to attend school, are bullied for going or just shamed by those who have already failed life’s tests.
But this year that changed. Two men, DeVaughn Ward and Pastor AJ Johnson stood up and had had enough. These two men created a group called “Calling all Brothers” with a goal of getting all the men of color in the neighborhood to come out and give out High Fives and words of encouragement to the returning school children, wearing suits. The group started with a few men, and within a couple of days had grown to over 100.
Great job guys! This is humanism at work. Getting out there and getting in the positive spaces in the world is what progress is all about. I hope others are encouraged by your outreach.
More here: http://aplus.com/a/100-men-color-greet-kids-MLK-school-first-day
More Evidence that Christ is Fictitious
In the footsteps of amazing scholars like David Fitzgerald and Richard Carrier, Biblical scholar Joseph Atwill will be presenting the most current information regarding the historicity of Jesus Christ. Joseph Atwill is the author of the best-selling book “Caesar’s Messiah” and its upcoming sequel “The Single Strand.”
Atwill will be presenting his papers at a one-day symposium called Convert Messiah in Holborn, London on October 19th. If there is a web stream, I will post it when available. http://www.covertmessiah.com
Just to wet your lips a little, here are some excepts from an interview with Atwill:
Was Jesus based on a real person from history? “The short answer is no,” Atwill insists, “in fact he may be the only fictional character in literature whose entire life story can be traced to other sources. Once those sources are all laid bare, there’s simply nothing left.”
“the Roman Caesars left us a kind of puzzle literature that was meant to be solved by future generations, and the solution to that puzzle is ‘We invented Jesus Christ, and we’re proud of it.'”
“When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare. They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system. That’s when the ‘peaceful’ Messiah story was invented. Instead of inspiring warfare, this Messiah urged turn-the-other-cheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to ‘give onto Caesar’ and pay their taxes to Rome.”
Will this be a deathblow to Christianity? Was the science that the Koran is older than the people who wrote it? Nope. The religious have an amazing ability to ignore science and data that disagrees with them, and just stick with ‘faith’. I expect this to get people on the fence, or people who are already skeptic of the historical Christ, but the ‘true’ followers, the blindly devoted, will not be shaken. Yet.
Scheduled Rocket Launch Befuddles Social Media
Its amazing that in today’s world of technology and instantaneous information that there are people who still think everything they cant explain is a UFO, or big foot, or gods.
This morning (sept 2nd) there was a scheduled launch of an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida carrying a new addition to the GPS network. The launch created an amazing visual illusion in the sky, apparently confounding onlookers, and causing millions of Facebook and twitter posts claiming UFO!!! or GOVERNMENT PHOSPHOROUS MISSILE!!
To make matters worse, earlier in the day a Russian Soyuz rocket launched from Kazakhstan taking three new astronauts to the ISS.
All that being said, its interesting to me that we live our daily lives with all of this technology (really since the late 90’s) and yet we have zero evidence of any actual Aliens, government conspiracies making contrails, big foot sightings or appearances of god. It seems that the claims of the supernatural should be increasing in frequency along with supporting video/photography. What is actually happening is the opposite. The amount of supernatural claims are actually decreasing, an inversely proportional response to the rising number of cameras running almost 24/7.
Remember the three R’s of the internet my friends; Read, Research, Repost.
Wildlife Overpass for Los Angeles Freeway System
Yes, you read that correctly. Los Angeles is preparing to build an overpass for wildlife, and idea LONG overdue. Today’s world is very different than just a few decades ago, expecially in the arena of animal rights. Today more than ever people seem to be more worried about their environmental impact, people killing endangered animals, and trying to eat more vegetables than animals. One area of serious neglect is traffic ways. Everyday in America, 190 million motor vehicles hit the road, and one million animals get hit by motor vehicles. That’s counting cars, buses, motorbikes, and trucks, but not ATVs, snowmobiles and other off-road vehicles. The figure includes mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, but not insects and bugs, who somehow never count. (The insect thing is something I dont understand, vegans are all about 0 harm to animals, but kill millions on millions of bugs rodents, etc in planting, tilling, spraying, harvesting crops….) For every dead animal counted, three or four more die unnoticed. Even at 55 m.p.h., we smell the remains of far more dead skunks than we see. The walking wounded die far from the road, so only instantly killed animals are seen and get counted.
By contrast 33,000 human animals are killed each YEAR. Im very glad to be part of a city that can see the amazingly preferential treatment human beings get over every other animal on the planet. Its selfish, its self serving, and its time to change the way we look at ourselves. We are part of the Earth, not its owners.
Full story can be found here: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-caltrans-proposes-wildlife-overpass-on-101-freeway-20150902-story.html
The conceptual drawing that would make a land bridge over 10 lanes of LA traffic.
Breaking news: Kim Davis is officially in contempt and under arrest
A few minutes ago the nation got to see what happens when someone in a country that has separation of church and state. People try to govern by their religion, and it gets shut the hell down.
Raw story did a great write up, and I think my favorite quote is “Her attorney from the conservative Liberty Counsel argued Wednesday that Bunning should not punish her for disobeying his order because issuing a marriage license to a same-sex couple would “irreparably and irreversibly violate her conscience.” “It is not as if Kim Davis the individual stops existing while Kim Davis is performing her duties as Rowan County clerk,” argued attorney Jonathan Christman.
EXACTLY. I dont stop being me when I have someone ask me to say grace at thanksgiving. I can deal as a secular, decent human being. I can set aside my preferences to do whats acceptable. You be you, but do what you are paid to do. Kim, if you arent happy there, do something else. Here’s an idea that seems to fit with your moral compass: http://westky.backpage.com/FemaleEscorts/
I do honestly hope this all sinks in to her, but alas, I think this will only embolden and reenforce her and other’s bigotry.
Kim Davis Christian or Democrat?
Here is a comment I received when discussing the hypocrisy and general ass-holery of Km Davis: “My point is, is that you refer to Christians when talking about Ms Davis. I don’t agree with what she is doing either. She is Democrat, but I don’t try to imply all democrats are like her either.”
My problem with this comment is that the problem we have (and any freedom of religion people should have) is that this stance she is taking is ALL about her being a Christian, and standing on her Christian ‘morals’. I say morals in quotes because I would question that what shes doing (along with most christian laws) is not moral at all. I do not bring her Democratic position to the table any more than I do the fact that she wears glasses, is a woman or is white. Those things are irrelevant to her actions. So yes Sir, we do indeed refer to her as a Christian in this case. I am also no implying that ALL Christians do this or think this way, but a lot of them do.
As a secondary point, Kim is being unethical in addition to being immoral. She is fleecing the taxpayers while refusing to do her job. She continues to draw a pay check and has already stated that she will be able to create a lucrative KickStarter campaign for her legal defense should she need it. Sickening.
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