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$15/year All correspondence to: Editor: Duane Bates All correspondence to: P. O. Box 1744 Greenville, SC 29602 April, 2009 |
The Voice of
Sanity
THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UPSTATE S.C. SECULAR HUMANISTS Visit our web-site for current and back-issues at: www.uscsh.org
e-mail:
secularhmnst@aol.com |
CALENDAR
UPCOMING BRUNCH
The April 2009 brunch will be
on Saturday April 11th at 10:30 a.m. at Denny’s Restaurant at 2521
Wade Hampton Blvd, Taylors. Hope to see you all there.
APRIL MONTHLY DINNER MEETING
The
forth Sunday dinner meeting will be on April 26 at the home of Lee Deitz, 21
Walnut St., Greenville, SC. The host will provide the main dish. Please call
Lee at 864-233-0905 to coordinate your contribution to the menu. The time of
the dinner is 5:00 p.m.
LOOKING AHEAD
We
combine the May and June meetings to only one brunch on the second Saturday of
June. The brunch will be June 13th at 10:30 a.m. at Denny’s Restaurant at
2521Wade Hampton Blvd, Taylors.
There
will no meetings after this brunch until our annual picnic on August 23rd.
Time and place of picnic will be announced in an upcoming edition of the VOS.
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VOICE OF SANITY
As
most of you know, Duane Bates, our editor, died on March 2, 2009. A memorial
service was held March 7th. We are attempting to fill Duane’s shoes
with continuing the Voice of Sanity.
If you can write an article
and wish to publish it here, send it via email to LeeInGvl@aol.com or to the
mailing address above. Thanks.
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MAILING LIST
If you are receiving THE
VOICE OF SANITY, and prefer to receive it no longer, please email us and we
will remove you from the email mailing. Thank you.
“SIN NO MORE”
Lee Deitz
The title of this article is
a quote from the Christian Bible (KJV), Jeremiah 31:34, John 5:14 and John
8:11. The phrase as used in this article has nothing to do with admonitions to
cease sinning. It is a revealing of things/acts/etc that use to be sin but are
not sins today. There are so many sins of yesteryear that are not sins today. I
will present only three here. Reminisce a few minutes with me.
1. The Sabbath. The fifth Commandment
states: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” The command is very far
reaching into limiting any activity on the Sabbath day. For example, There was
to be no cooking on the Sabbath, Exodus 16:23. No work, even to picking up
sticks, Numbers 15:32-35 -- the penalty was the death penalty. There were
scores of prohibitions against doing anything on the Sabbath.
I can remember my pastor
persuading a local man to close his store on Sunday because it was a “sin to
sell merchandise on the Sabbath.” Stores all closed on Sunday. It was a “sin”
to play a ball game on Sunday. “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves
together,..,” Hebrews 10:25 exhorts believers to be at the assembling place
(Church). Way back when, there were three services in the week -- Sunday
morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night. Those who failed to attend were not
the best of Christians and were by the standards of some, “sinners.”
BUT, these things are “sin no
more.” We cook on Sunday, we travel, mow lawns, “pick up sticks,” and use the
Sabbath for our own pleasure.
2. Strong drink (alcohol).
“Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is
not wise.” Proverbs 20:1. Billy Sunday spent most of his time condemning
“strong drink.” Preachers of yesterday preached against it and heaped
condemnation on those who made it, those who distributed it and those who drank
it.
BUT, today, wine, beer and
other alcoholic drinks are accepted socially by most “believers.” Drinking is
“sin no more.”
3. Television. “I will set no wicked thing before mine
eyes:..,” Psalms 101:3. Early TV was really “family friendly.” As Hollywood
began to maneuver its “sex and violence” movies onto the TV screen, television
became “wicked.” In many circles, it was a “sin” to “set an evil thing before
my eyes.” Old time country preachers railed against television and named many
programs by name and beat the pulpit as they preached “hell fire and damnation”
and television was a contributor to
most of the vices of the day.
BUT, television is “sin no
more.” In only a infinitesimal number of religious groups would any
minister/preacher condemn television outright as they did 50 years ago.
As “god’s ministers” on this
earth condemned these three “sins” and hundreds of other acts as vile and
wicked perversions and now that they are not sins in society today, is it not
fair game to believe that all the hype of what was and what was not sin, that
either God was wrong then or He is wrong today? The truth is, hundreds of
“sins” of yesteryear were no sin at all. It was truly propaganda to control
millions of people and to expand certain religions and build up the religious
treasurers. How about, “Judge not, that you be not judged.”
Reflections Upon the Legacies of Irish Catholics
Tim Russert and George Carlin:
Obeying and Challenging the Authority of the Church*
By R. Georges Delamontagne, Ph.D.
[Dedicated to the memory of Duane Bates, M.A., whose
selfless, active commitment to the cause of secular humanism was and continues
to be inspirational. Like the deaths of
Tim Russert and George Carlin in June, 2008, Duane’s death on March 1, 2009,
was sudden, unexpected, untimely and a shock to family, friends and admirers.]
Religion was
everywhere in our lives -- not just in church or in school, but at home,
too. There were crosses above our beds,
and every evening, when we sat down to supper, one of us said grace … We had a
statue of the Virgin Mary in our backyard and another, smaller one on top of the
china cabinet … And like many Catholic households in Buffalo, we had a picture
of Jesus that portrayed his Sacred Heart.
Tim Russert, from the chapter on “Faith” in his best-selling book, Big Russ & Me -- Father and Son: Lessons of Life (2005)
I’m completely in
favor of the separation of church and state.
My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own,
so both of them together is certain death.
I would never want
to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.
George Carlin
* This is the title page of a nine-page article that discusses aspects of the social control function of the institutions of religion and the media and how the power, through influence, of celebrity icons can either support or challenge the status quo. Readers of Voice of Sanity wishing to receive a copy of the article may submit their request to
FROM
A ROUND TABLE
By Parcival
A while back I was out with a very attractive Baptist woman who persisted in going on about all the things wrong with her ex-husband. She then proceeded with great delight to tell me the details of how she got even with him: keying his Corvette and destroying his reputation causing him to loose his job. She said that he deserved it for not being the way she needed him to be. After about an hour of this, I stopped her and asked, " I understand, but what really annoyed you about your ex?" She startled me when she said, "he disillusioned me." I did, perhaps, the wrong thing and let out a great laugh and asked her, "But what greater gift can one give another than to free him from his illusions?" She got mad at me and emphatically stated, "I don’t want to give up my illusions, my beliefs about the world are sacred to me. They are the things that make me-me".
Now I have told this story a great many times and I have been surprised to learn that most of the responses I get back side with the angry girl. People don’t want to give up their beliefs about themselves and the world. The Churches drive this home: "Your belief is your salvation". "Whatever you do hold on to your belief, never give it up". "The most important thing in the world is your faith; never change it, better to die as a martyr to your faith than give it up and suffer eternal damnation"
I say, beliefs are simply hardened opinions. Everyone has opinions. The point is can we change our opinions? If everything and everyone must come to us in the very way we demand and we are willing to flood the entire world, killing all life, because we were ignored, we are surely not very healthy. Yahweh hardened Pharaoh’s heart, why? So he was justified in further punishing him with more curses. This god does not like free will. Poor Pharaoh, he was punished not because he was defiant but because god was. Martin Buber, the Jewish theologian said, "Evil begins with the insistence on affirmations independent of all evidence". Beliefs may be fine for children but adults making adult decisions on whom to bomb next should base those decisions on facts rather than opiates.
As children, many of us were taught that religion and politics are not subjects for polite conversation. Why should this be so? We are told that people have powerful feelings around these areas and disagreements and conflict are likely to result. The fact that there is so much free floating projection and anger associated with these subjects indicates a high level of illusion and unconsciousness. The areas of the priest and the king are off- limits to us common folk and shall not be questioned.
For hundreds of generations, people have adopted their parents’ religion and politics never questioning why they believe what they believe. They are good obedient little children and they surround themselves with like-minded people to assure themselves of how right they are. This is why all the monotheistic religions are so querulous. To accept another’s right to worship at another church would mean I would have to question my beliefs and I certainly am not prepared to do that. A man who worships an irritable, raging, jealous Old Testament god of destruction is telling the world exactly what kind of man he is. One would do well to avoid this "Christian" when he demands your soul lest one risk seeing his real nature.
The real danger here is that much of our culture is based on
this unconscious model of forcing every knee to bow to my will as if it were
god’s will. Two thousand years of killing unbelievers as "evildoers"
have not made the world a safer more blessed place. These are dangerous times
and the world remains in bondage to a demon more destructive than the devil. He
is the false god of the lie, and our own creation, who resides in stubborn
illusions about who we are, and what we will do in revenge for not getting our
own way.