Perhaps it is proof of the supernatural truth of Christianity that heresy tends to snowball into things that have vast consequences.

I believe in God the Father Almighty,Maker of heaven and earth:And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate,was crucified, dead, and buried: He descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic Church; the Communion of Saints; the Forgiveness of sins; the Resurrection of the body, and the Life everlasting. Amen.

Look at what happened when people began denying the one communion of saints. Finding that the Church was not named by name in the Hebrew Bible, some folks imagined that the Jews might have some kind of eschatological fate separate from the Church.

This break in the unity of the communion of saints led to further breaches in unity. No more single Second Coming; the Church gets a separate second coming and the Jews get a third coming. No more single Last Judgment; they too come in a series of multiple judgments. The Bible is shattered, treated like a jigsaw puzzle that believers must piece together.

Eventually this heresy led to a floridly psychotic interpretation of history. Omens of the End Times were seen in current events. The foundation of the Jewish state in Palestine was invested with cosmic significance. Because we have been blessed through Israel, the heretics transfer this blessing to the current Israeli government and all its oppressive works, which, though not the worst that's ever been, are nothing we should smile on. Because war is found in prophecy, the heretics turned their back on Jesus blessing the peacemakers. Instead, they teach us to look forward to wars, especially Middle Eastern wars, for they are omens that Christ's return is imminent. Peace is the language of the Antichrist, according to the heretics. The Antichrist is a single person, a satanic Messiah, and he might be the talking head on the TV, or the King of Spain, or the prime minister of Vanuatu, or your next door neighbor.

When Jesus does return, these people will appear before Him and say, "Look at what we brought you! War, tyranny, and paranoia! Aren't You proud of us?"

Astounding that such a small matter of apparently arcane theology started a snowball rolling that led to the construction of an entire belief system that Christians ought to regard with disgust and dismay and that it has deceived many believers.

what is everybody reading this summer?

me? when i'm not reading emperorbma or PineHall at theophiles.org, i've been taking another swing at Jaroslav Pelikan, through whom i've discovered that i would probably have been a Marcionist sympathizer had i been around back in that day. and Montanus possessed a certain charm, too... lucky for me it was all settled by the time i came on the scene...

but anyway, what are you reading?

Found this on reddit, a bit of a bulleted rant, thought I'd share

http://current.com/news/92523546_help-for-annie-and-her-daughter-both-facing-serious-illnesses.htm
http://digg.com/health/Help_for_Annie
http://www.reddit.com/r/Health/comments/cld1q/help_for_annie_and_her_daughter_who_needs_a_kidney/

I wanted to bring this to your attention, in trying to support a friend of mine who suffers the same mental illness as me and is persecuted online because of it like me and it makes our illnesses go crazy some times and post annoying and stuff that might be considered trolls and we might troll sometimes for it. Well he had a bad cycle and left his car and medicine at Annie's house. I was worried about Mike because he went though a lot of bad stuff and so I tried to find people that were local that he mentioned to me before. That is how I met Annie but I was not aware until later that Annie's daughter was sick and needed a kidney and is a baby and Annie does not qualify for WIC because it was never adjusted for inflation, etc.

I know that both theists and atheists here have supported me and my mental illness in the past, and my father is recovering from brain surgery and has the same prognosis as Ted Kennedy had. So I ask you now nicely to consider helping Annie and her daughter.

If you email me at orion.blastar at gmail.com and make it a real address and replace the "at" with the @ symbol and remove the spaces I will email you her Facebook profile and/or email address so you can support her and see what we can do.

I never met her but know through email and private messages that she had her daughter and has medical problems of her own but is strong enough to support Mike through a bad mental illness cycle, support her sky diving group (she is brave as are her group for doing stuff like that) and lists more skills than the average Navy Seal on her Facebook profile, and is a good person who cares about others and a good mother because she cares about her daughter.

If you want to skip the news sites and don't want to vote try http://www.helpforannie.com/

Mike gained a bit of fame via being a software consultant and giving info on the Joe Stack IRS incident. http://ricksanchez.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/18/the-austin-texas-suicide-pilot-what-set-him-off/ http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=7286291

But apparently he is still not notable enough for Wikipedia.

He wrote about the rare and poorly understood mental illness we both share here:

http://psychcentral.com/lib/2009/living-with-schizoaffective-disorder/

Mike and Annie I am not sure what their relationship is, but if Annie can put up with Mike and this mental illness and still have time for her sky diving group, and her daughter and help out others like me via email by saying how interesting my writing is and I said I would do what I could to help her and her daughter get what they need.I am not in a relationship with Annie and consider her my pen pal and like any one of you a good person to know. I hope to find more people like Annie and promote their web sites and stories for free and see what the Internet community websites can do to help people who slip through the cracks of the system and get them money, kidney, food and drinks, whatever.

I don'[t care who you are or what religion you have or have not if you believe in God then we are all children of God if you don't believe in God then we are all children of the Earth and Universe and Annie and her daughter deserve better than what they were given. I do not pro-bono or Latin for free as lawyers use. I am not a lawyer but I have an interest to try and afford law school pass it and a bar exam and help out the less fortunate of this nation and maybe planet.

I believe she is in the Santa Cruz, California area so what charities can help her for anyone who does know? Thanks for your help in advance even if all you do is pray if religious or keep her and her daughter in your thoughts if non-religious. Anything can help.

Orion Blastar

Spotted at Philosophy Now:

Imagine that right after briefing Adam about which fruit was allowed and which forbidden, God had installed a closed-circuit television camera in the garden of Eden, trained on the tree of knowledge. Think how this might have changed things for the better. The serpent sidles up to Eve and urges her to try the forbidden fruit. Eve reaches her hand out – in paradise the fruit is always conveniently within reach – but at the last second she notices the CCTV and thinks better of it. Result: no sin, no Fall, no expulsion from paradise. We don’t have to toil among thorns and thistles for the rest of our lives, earning our bread by the sweat of our brows; childbirth is painless; and we feel no need to wear clothes.

So why didn’t God do that and save everyone a lot of grief? True, surveillance technology was in its infancy back then, but He could have managed it, and it wouldn’t have undermined Eve’s free will. She still has a choice to make; but once she sees the camera she’s more likely to make the right choice.

HT:  Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish

Fiction and Science Fiction authors tried to warn us but since the 1960's nobody bothers to read books anymore telling us that in the future our government becomes so corrupt that it puts Devils, Loki, and others out of business. But watch these Youtube trailers and judge for yourself:

Fahrenheit 451

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9n98SXNGl8

1984

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4rBDUJTnNU

Animal Farm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZldlyeR8DU

Even made into a modern version

Equilibrium

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRaVJnt5fk0

But no even modern versions trying to warn us people would rather see all the fight scenes than understand the warning the writer made to warn us about how corrupt our governments are getting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdYSB7z7hok

Books on the New York Times bestselling list are for sheeple, zombies, vooks (crazy people that blame others for their problems) and looters (who after the government and/or economy collapse will run riots and grab as much valuable stuff as they can) and even more. Anyone know what this is?

http://www.psywarrior.com/psyhist.html

Anyone know it is being used on the USA, Canadian, EU, etc citizens to manipulate and control us via fear and other stuff? Making any sense yet? Maybe these videos that governments and mega-corporations like oil and fossil fuel companies want to ban and get rid or our censor:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6718420906413643126#

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-678466363224520614

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6111922724894802811

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1122532358497501036

Is it too late to educate people, this stuff has been going on for years to brainwash, manipulate, and control the majority of the population using psychology and other stuff to change us into our animal state and selfish desires and narcissism and may very well lead to our own destruction. But what can we do, what can anyone do? Educate yourself, free your mind, resist this brainwashing, manipulation, become unselfish, become thinking about others, fight this evil that has creeped into the darkest reaches of our mind and set us against each other so those in power and mega corporations, etc can get rich off of us while we all suffer!

I've been gone from here for a long time, I got really sick, but my father got sicker he got a brain tumor and had brain surgery and is recovering and my family is having a hard time with one bad thing after another. If it was not for me borrowing strength from God I'd never make it this far and be in a hospital or dead. God gave me all he did to help me survive and I believe give others this warning message.

I am going to spend as much time with my family as I can, and help my father by supporting him and visiting him as he has what Ted Kennedy had but our family is too poor to afford to help him even if the health care reform bill was passed, our family still got screwed out of benefits and nursing home stays got cut somehow even if we were promised they would not. I am not a violent man, I am a pacifist, I follow Jesus Christ and learn a few things from other places like Buddhism, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, The Rev, Dr, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who never did anything wrong and tried to warn us about this stuff and protested with words. I am not on the left or right, nor am I part of any group like the tea baggers or tea party or whatever.

I've been trying to help educate and enlighten people to the truth. I am not a God, not Jesus Christ, not The Devil, not the Anti-Christ, not supernatural, just a man with too much pain and suffering in his life and his friends and family members suffered and are in pain too letting the rest of you know that you are not alone and maybe one day will wake up and notice the pattern of corruption and do something about it. As for me, I am too sick and too tired to do anything about it but write words protesting the injustice and evil in the world. Theist, Atheist, whatever, we are all in pain and suffering and instead of focusing on our differences we ought to focus on what we have in common and how we can become good and help each other out. But hey that is my views and opinions I could be wrong, but what if I am not wrong this time?

Thieves have stolen a cross in the Mojave Desert that was built to honor Americans who died in war, less than two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the religious symbol to remain on federal land.

We don't have a "follow-up" tag, but I thought this was worthy of its own tag.

The folks that took this cross are of a similar level of extremism as abortion doctor-killers, and are just as representative of their respective groups, but I have a feeling there are going to be some very broad brushes used in the next little while.

Spurgeon's Morning and Evening, Morning May 4

[...]

Favourite children are often the cause of much sin in believers; the Lord
is grieved when he sees us doting upon them above measure; they will live
to be as great a curse to us as Absalom was to David, or they will be
taken from us to leave our homes desolate.

If Christians desire to grow thorns to stuff their sleepless pillows, let
them dote on their dear ones.

[...]

Let us suppose that, instead of our abstract idols represented by words like neutrality, pluralism, democracy, secular, and such like the public square was governed by a giant named Dimblemuffin, who lived in a castle on a hill overlooking our town. The giant drank too much, had a red nose, and would eat some of the peasants from time to time, and I use illustrations like this because I am trying to make abstruse political and theological issues accessible to the modern reader.

Now suppose that we had Christian theologians who maintained that it was crucial for us to limit the authority of Jesus Christ to the spiritual realm of the church, and Dimblemuffin could have the rest. In fact, Dimblemuffin needed to have the rest. And suppose further they added that to propose that Jesus be acknowledged as having authority over the whole shebang would actually be an insult to Him, and to the true spirituality of the church. And, this being the actual point, it was pointed out that to suggest altering our arrangement might make Dimblemuffin very, very angry.