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$15/year All correspondence to: Editor: Joyce Bates All correspondence to: P. O. Box 1744 Greenville, SC 29602 August, 2011 |
The Voice of
Sanity
THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UPSTATE S.C. SECULAR HUMANISTS Visit our web-site for current and back-issues at: e-mail: uscshgvl@yahoo.com |
CALENDAR
Our August brunch will be Saturday August13th at 10:30 a.m. We
will meet at Denny's Restaurant on Wade Hampton Blvd., Greenville/Taylors. Join
us for good food and great conversation.
The annual picnic will be on August 28th at 1:30 p.m. at the home of Elaine
and Joe Norwood, 16 Oakleaf Road, Greenville. Please bring any
item/dish of food that you would normally carry to a picnic. If you need
directions or a suggestion of what to bring, call Elaine/Joe at 864-268-1889. Come and enjoy the
company of fellow Humanists. See you there.
IS THERE A NEED FOR
RELIGIOUS BELIEFS?
Often times we are engaged in conversation about
religion/religions and church teachings/doctrines and some one will make the
statement that “oh, those people need that religion to hold onto. It gives them
purpose in life.” Does it really?
I have disagreed with members of our humanist group (USCSH) and
followed up their statement with, “I don’t believe that is the fact of it.”
Until now, I have not bothered to sit down and put “pen to paper” (so to speak)
and set out to prove my point. Here it is.
I firmly believe that people do not need religion. Religion needs
people! It is a con job. With out the parishioners, religion would collapse.
They go. They sing. They communicate. They listen to a “sermon.” They teach.
They give money. They have done their visit with God for the week. After an
hour, that is it! After this visit with God on Sunday, it is then business as
usual.
The vast majority of people will either go to a restaurant or go
home and prepare a Sunday meal. In both cases they breach the forth commandment
(Remember the Sabbath day). Their Bible commands “No work on the Sabbath and NO
preparing of food on the Sabbath” (Exodus 16:23). Religions have their rules.
They are discarded; therefore, religion is not needed. This is only one example
of how “Christians” deliberately violate their own “sacred” teachings,
therefore exhibiting evidence that religion is not needed.
Thousands claim a supernatural experience with God called “being
saved” or “born again.” They have this experience in Church (99% of the time)
after a sermon is preached and they are invited to join the family of God. They
respond to an “invitation” at the end of the sermon, speak with the minister,
shake hands and their names are added to the church membership. For all the
good that does, they just as well sign a barn door and shake a mule’s tail. It
is a “feel good” thing! Now that they have joined and are a part of the
congregation, they give an attempt at trying to “trust God.” That experience
fades with time and they mesh in with the other members who give a beleaguered
testimony that pales in comparison to testimony of their secular life. After
all – there is one hour, per week, with God and 167 hours with self, family,
friends and work. They NEED their friends, family, and work but the religion
thing is secondary. The religion is community and in that sense, it fulfills a
need. The same fulfillment could be realized with a secular, political or
community setting.
Religion is community. It is tradition. It is meeting friends. It
is sitting with family. It is half-heartedly listening and enduring (not
enjoying) a sermon. They could have done all this at a picnic! The “tribe”
demands we conform to the rituals of the family. The “need,” if there is any,
is to satisfy the vanity of being a part of the group whether it be family,
friends, business, community etc.
The religion of the group is totally secondary. It is not religion
that is the crutch, but it is the pride of being accepted and there is nothing
wrong with that. In other words, religion NEEDS these people to continue the
tradition -- not the other way around. My wager is that instead of NEEDING
religion, many of these folk need a social worker or appointment with a
therapist. Religion is not the answer to their needs -- religion is the problem
in a vast number of cases..
It is possible that religion and family, in some cases, could be
synonymous. Family is religion to some, so this is their “crutch” and religion
is family. Man creates his own situations and looks to someone else to bring
him relief. Caught in the cross hairs, religion and/or family is there! Is
religion fulfilling that need? The religion is a bump in the road with no
permanent solutions. In some cases, the religion becomes divisive and an
impossible dream punctuated with nightmares. In other cases, the religion is
only tradition, family, business, community and sometimes an inconvenience that
does not par with reality; Therefore, subjecting one to an ideology and
superstition that is not the reality of a real world. They need this? No, they
do not need that. It is a fantasy, not a need! Lee Deitz
We’re Not So Smart
The thing about mind is that it’s so messy. Thinking about my childhood and about all the trips to church and sermons, I seem to have remembered only the good stuff. By that I mean the most hopeful and useful of the biblical lessons. My favorite was the lesson of the Good Samaritan. Over the years I have fine-tuned the memory of this story to apply to all human beings and a not a few individuals of other species. This rule to live by is based on a useful but now inaccurate memory. The haziness comes when I try to recall the original story and muddle it up.
But our minds do not always focus on accuracy. Recently a memory study was done in which volunteers saw a commercial for a fast food. They watched the commercial but did not eat the food. A couple of weeks later they were asked about the experiment and many of individuals recalled eating the food in the experiment, not watching the commercial. Eyewitnesses of crimes are hard pressed to remember accurate details, and will sometimes identify an innocent person as the perpetrator.
Many people today still remember the welfare queen mentioned in Ronald Reagan’s 1976 campaign speech. This was about a Chicago welfare recipient who scammed the welfare system. According to the story, she had 80 aliases and 12 social security cards which she used to get a great deal more than her share of benefits. There is only one problem. The story wasn’t true. The closest factual occurrence to this tale of welfare fraud was a con artist with four aliases who had disguises and moved from place to place. There were no children involved.
Poor memory isn’t the only brain problem. Emotional and physical responses can also take precedent over reason. A psychologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong was curious as to whether warfare might be partially driven by the opportunities it gives men access to more women, examples being pillage and warriors besting weaker opponents to gain access to mates. The researcher, Lei Chang, found men’s responses showed a significant correlation between seeing attractive faces as supporting war-supporting statements. There was no correlation for pictures of unattractive women. Women showed no effect when presented with pictures of attractive or unattractive men.
Faulty brain aside, we’ve done pretty well expanding our senses of the real world. The electron microscope, the Hubble telescope, instruments to measure and locate temperature, sound, and light have helped us see the unseeable. It’s a good thing, too. Our senses pretty deficient compared to some other animals.
Take the dog, for example. The dog can smell a million times better than we can. The dog also has an area at the back of its palate that allows it to taste the smell it is sensing. A polar bear does pretty well, too. It can smell out a seal’s breathing hole under three feet of snow. Passenger pigeons rely on the sun to find their way home, but on a cloudy day some still make it to the intended location. Like pigeons, many migratory birds are thought to have some kind of magnetic guidance system. There is evidence that a light sensitive molecule in the eyes of birds allow them to “see” the magnetic field in some way. In addition, they have an area in the upper beak that contains biological magnetite which functions like a compass. Fish, such as sharks and rays have organs that detect changes in electrical fields allowing them to locate prey. There is sonar location in bats, and let us not forget that bees can see polarized light.
Researchers at the University of Michigan and Georgia State created another interesting psychological experiment on the way we think. They gave their volunteers two newspaper articles to read on opposing political issues. The first article was not correct and the second article served as a correction of the first article. Also, the articles were read one immediately following the other. One example involved weapons of mass destruction. The first article stated there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The second article said no weapons were found. (Which was true). As expected those supporting the war agreed with the first article and those against the war agreed with the second article. But- those supporting the war continued to believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, in spite of what they read in the second article. When the experiments were repeated using stem cell research and tax reform as subjects the same thing happened. The beliefs were not changed with the truth of the second article.
Descartes said: “I think therefore I am”. His pursuit of truth involved disregarding every statement he could doubt. In the end, he could not doubt his ability to doubt. This is an interesting statement, because it relied on the reliability of his brain. If Descartes were alive today, he might wonder if his ability to doubt was really dependable afterall.
JB
Found at www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/BiblicalMarriage.htm:
A constitutional amendment codifying marriage entirely on biblical principles:
1) Marriage in the US shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Genesis 29:17-28; II Samuel 3:2-5; Matthew 25:1).
2) Marriage shall not impede a man’s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Samuel 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chronicles 11:21.)
3) A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deuteronomy 22: 13-21)
4) Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Genesis 24:3; Numbers 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Nehemiah 10:30.)
5) Since marriage is for life, neither the Constitution nor the constitution of any state, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deuteronomy 22:19; Mark 10:9).
6) If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother’s widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Genesis 38:6-10; Deuteronomy 25:5-10).
7) In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in you town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Genesis 19:31-36).