Mammon or Messiah research

Friday, December 11, 2009

BARTHOLOMEW’S NOTES ON RELIGION article

The Quest for the Conservative Jesus article link

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Richard Bartholomew

A few months ago it was announced on the absurd Conservapedia wiki website that plans were underway to create a “Conservative Bible”, in which Biblical texts problematic to conservative sensiblities would be expunged.

This is actually a remarkable development: until now, one of the defining hallmarks of conservative Christianity has been that the whole Bible is to accepted as inerrant and as having been faithfully transmitted. Downgrading particular Biblical passages in the light of reason (such as Thomas Jefferson excising miracles), or due either to ethical re-evaluation (such as a call to remove anti-Jewish passages from the Gospel of John) or textual and historical study (such as the Jesus Seminar) have always been dismissed as undermining the Bible as the Word of God. There may be arguments about points of translation, and over interpretations of difficult texts, but mainstream or liberal Christians whose religious views have been informed by critical approaches are usually excoriated and accused of seeking to marry their faith to the spirit of the age. Yet now we see the son of a major Christian right activist cheerfully consigning parts of the supposed Word of God to the dustbin purely for ideological reasons.

BARTHOLOMEW’S NOTES ON RELIGION blog home

Common Dreams article

Published on Friday, December 11, 2009 by The Independent/UK

Leaders of the Rich World Are Enacting a Giant Fraud article link

by Johann Hari

Copenhagen Summit

A study by the University of Stanford found that most of the projects that are being funded as "cuts" either don't exist, don't work, or would have happened anyway. Yet this isn't a small side-dish to the deal: it's the main course. ...

A highly complex system operating in the dark is a gift to corporate lobbyists, who can pressure or bribe governments into rigging the system in their favour, rather than the atmosphere's. ...

This system has been made incomprehensible because if we understood, ordinary citizens would be outraged. If these were good faith negotiations, such loopholes would be dismissed in seconds. And the rich countries are flatly refusing to make even these enfeebled, leaky cuts legally binding. You can toss them in the bin the moment you leave the conference centre, and nobody will have any comeback. On the most important issue in the world - the stability of our biosphere - we are being scammed. ...

Common Dreams home page

Join the movement. For the greater good.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Faith & Life: America

America: A City Set On A Hill blog link

November 30, 2009 by David McCrory

America is no longer a Christian nation. We are not even a post-Christian nation. We have become, to our own detriment, a Christ-hating, anti-Christian nation, which despises the Lord to the point there is no fear of God among us. The hand of almighty God is heavy upon us, and we rightly deserve His just judgment and grave displeasure. So how can we restore America? Can we ever recapture the former glory of this once great nation? And if so, how? Allow me to suggest we can: By recovering the original Pilgrim and Puritan vision of America as a shining city upon a hill.

Faith & Life blog home

“Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life” ~ I Tim 6:12

ELIZAPHANIAN quote

Christianity connives directly in the murder of creation ...

"Despite its protests to the contrary, modern Christianity has become willy-nilly the religion of the state and the economic status quo. Because it has been so exclusively dedicated to incanting anemic souls into Heaven, it has been made the tool of much earthly villainy. It has, for the most part, stood silently by while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households. It has flown the flag and chanted the slogans of empire. It has assumed with the economists that 'economic forces' automatically work for good and has assumed with the industrialists and militarists that technology determines history. It has assumed with almost everybody that 'progress' is good, that it is good to be modern and up with the times. It has admired Caesar and comforted him in his depredations and defaults. But in its de facto alliance with Caesar, Christianity connives directly in the murder of creation. For in these days, Caesar is no longer a mere destroyer of armies, cities and nations. He is a contradicter of the fundamental miracle of life. A part of the normal practice of his power is his willingness to destroy the world. He prays, he says, and churches everywhere compliantly pray with him. But he is praying to a God whose works he is prepared at any moment to destroy. What could be more wicked than that, or more mad?" (Wendell Berry, author Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays (quote))

ELIZAPHANIAN blog home

Watching the Tide Come In

Aaron Thomas: Love averts environmental and social catastrophe

I wish to include in the discussion that Jesus Christ in the Gospel does teach an ethic that (in my estimation) averts or powerfully mitigates the environmental and social catastrophes that we are facing. Jesus teaches love: love for God, love for neighbour, love for enemy. Jesus' teaching of Love can be articulated as caring for Creation, caring for the well-being of all other people, caring for enemies (blessing, doing good for, and being kind to, them), taking help from the Spirit of truth.

Aaron Thomas blog home

The Daily Bell interview

Guest Interview

11/29/2009 - with Scott Smith interview link

Legendary Financial Historian Ed Griffin on the Economic Crisis, the Monetary Elite and the Future of the Internet

excerpts:

Daily Bell: Will the American establishment media ever get to the bottom of 9/11?

Griffin: The American establishment media will never get to the bottom of 9/11 because they are controlled by the same financial and political forces that seem in some sense responsible for 9/11. I am talking about that cluster of personalities on the Council of Foreign Relations and the people that circle around them. They are the ones that are really calling the shots, not only in the government, but also in the media, educational systems, foundations, etc. The media is as much a part of that group as the government. So I don't expect to see the media break step with the official position of the government.

Daily Bell: From our point of view, the Middle Eastern wars are intended to spread Western-style collectivist democracy to the Islamic world. Has the West stumbled in its war against the Muslim religion (failure in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc.)?

Griffin: Have they stumbled? In my view, the conflict between the Western world and Islam is largely manufactured. There is no question that there are extreme groups within Islam, but my own research leads me to the conclusion that those are the very groups that have been fronted, aided and abetted by forces within America because they wanted to create an enemy - a dreaded foe to justify all the other schemes.

Daily Bell: The BBC, in a program last year came to a similar conclusion.

Griffin: Without an enemy, they cannot fight a war. Without a war, they cannot justify being in the Middle East. If they are not in the Middle East, they can't control the oil and on and on you go.

Daily Bell: So ... it's at least partially manufactured?

Griffin: The war against Islam is manufactured and is actually a war that need not be. Did they fumble the war? No they created it! They created it and it is just a meme. They don't want to win the war! They want to fight the war for ten years, twenty years, thirty years. They are not fumbling it. It is exactly what they want. It is not a question of winning or losing, it's a question of just having it, prolonging it and using it as a means of scaring the daylights out of the American people and conditioning them to accept the loss of their freedom at home.

The Daily Bell home page

A Daily Compendium of Free-Market Thought

The Daily Bell article

News & Views

12/8/2009 - by Staff Reports (ARBP)

Recession for a Whopping 20 Years article link

So ... the pace of change is accelerating in the new century and we don't anticipate it slowing any. In our opinion, the "change" actually comes from a series of promotions launched by what we here at the Bell like to call the monetary or power elite. Since the power elite itself in our opinion is an extremely small, powerful and generational force, people often focus on appendages (hundreds if not thousands of them, a purposefully baffling maze) such as the CFR, the Bilderbergs, the Trilateral Commission, etc. In truth these appendages come and go and some provide more sophisticated promotions than others. But what is happening in the world today seems fairly clear, simple even, if one allows oneself the luxury of Occam's razor.

Occam's razor may inform us, if one is willing to accept the premise, that the world's differing promotions are NOT emanating from different places. It does seem that way of course. Climate change is a product of the "Greenies." Central banking is a plot of the banking industry. Overpopulation is a concern for the Club of Rome. Yet are each of these issues, promotions really, and many more, really manufactured by disparate forces and just casually tossed into the media-sphere? They are so many of them, and they are alike! And each one is set up to create a sense of hopelessness and panic. Each one as well, conveniently, demands immediate action and has an authoritarian solution such as the United Nations or its subsidiary, the IMF.

Much easier to decide, if one is so-inclined, that there is indeed a monetary and power elite, a generational (Western) force of wealthy families, individuals and corporate citizens in America and Europe whose interests and coffers are benefitted by increased global control via private-market and government processes. This is not actually a startling insight by the way - as this process is called mercantilism and it has been around for hundreds if not thousands of years. Wealthy families and individuals constantly try to grab the levers of power from behind - and especially in modern times leave government figureheads out front to take the blame for whatever is going wrong.

The Daily Bell home page

A Daily Compendium of Free-Market Though

Socialist Courier: CAPITALISM IN ACTION

The case for a transformation of society from one of class division to one of social ownership was made very powerfully by two recent press reports. Here is how the present class division favours a tiny minority. Take the example of John Paulson, a hedge-fund manager in New York. "His firm made $20 billion between 2007 and early 2009 by betting against the housing market and big financial companies. Mr. Paulson's personal cut would amount to nearly $4 billion, or more than $10 million a day." (Wall Street Journal, 15 November)

At the other end of the class division we read of this. "According to the FAO, the number of malnourished people in the world rose to over 1 billion this year, up from 915m in 2008. Economists at the World Bank reckon that the number living on less than $1.25 a day will rise by 89m between 2008 and 2010 and those on under $2 a day will rise by 120m". (Economist, 19 November) Some people trying to survive on a couple of dollars a day while some useless parasite rips off millions, don't you think we need a new society? RD

Socialist Courier blog home

The Laymans Corner

The Laymans Corner TLC0189

No man can serve two masters at the same time. Spiritually speaking it is trying to serve both God and Satan at the same time. And it is like trying to stand both in the lights and in the darkness at the same time, it doesn’t work. But some are trying it just the same, serving God and Mammon, and Christ and Belial, one foot in the church and the other foot in the service of Satan.

The Laymans Corner blog home

Integral Options Cafe: Karen Armstrong - Think Again: God

So-called new atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens have denounced religious belief as not only retrograde but evil; they regard themselves as the vanguard of a campaign to expunge it from human consciousness. Religion, they claim, creates divisions, strife, and warfare; it imprisons women and brainwashes children; its doctrines are primitive, unscientific, and irrational, essentially the preserve of the unsophisticated and gullible.

These writers are wrong -- not only about religion, but also about politics -- because they are wrong about human nature. Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. As soon as we became recognizably human, men and women started to create religions. We are meaning-seeking creatures. While dogs, as far as we know, do not worry about the canine condition or agonize about their mortality, humans fall very easily into despair if we don’t find some significance in our lives. Theological ideas come and go, but the quest for meaning continues. So God isn’t going anywhere. And when we treat religion as something to be derided, dismissed, or destroyed, we risk amplifying its worst faults. Whether we like it or not, God is here to stay, and it’s time we found a way to live with him in a balanced, compassionate manner.

Integral Options Cafe blog home

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

rylisms: With Money on Their Minds

rylisms: With Money on Their Minds

Did you know that there is a competition for your heart and soul?

It's a winner-take-all contest and you are the one who will cast the deciding vote. The Lord Jesus calls you to walk with Him in faith, trusting in His word and experiencing His presence daily in many personal and powerful ways.

Mammon, on the other hand, holds forth the false promises of security through riches, power through wealth, and influence through affluence.

James Ryle - rylisms blog home

rylisms: Carriers of the Keys

rylisms: Carriers of the Keys

Did it ever occur to you that you can actually be the means whereby the Lord extends His love, light, and life to others? You can be the one that makes it possible for someone else to actually experience a real and lasting touch from Jesus; a touch that heals, that forgives, that cleanses, and that transforms.

Christ can make Himself known through your hands, through your words, and through your deeds. You are a carrier of the Keys that opens the Kingdom. And you have been authorized by the King to give away to others what your have freely received yourself.

James Ryle - rylisms blog home

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Mary Elizabeth Croft excerpt 1

Collectively we have ‘created’ our world. Truth is, if we want to know what is going on in our minds, we need only observe our circumstances. If we are happy with our circumstances, we can conclude that our minds are somewhat happy and vice versa. Our circumstances follow our thoughts. Nothing is created without thought, thought is the only source of energy, energy is what it takes to create, and energy is all there is. We have ‘cause and effect’ reversed. Our belief in time and space is what keeps us from knowing real cause and effect. Our circumstances are the result of our thinking, so our judging any situation is based upon our belief that circumstances came first and our response is the result.

The "powers that be" don’t want us, whom they consider the ‘enemy’, to know their secrets. They promote each of us as the other’s competition, when in fact our opposition is way closer to home - our very own ego mind. If we continue to believe that ‘what is going on in the world’ is real and creates fear for us, we must consider that we are continuing to create it. If we want to change the world, which exists only in our own minds, we must first change our minds about the world. When we fear, we serve only the dark entities which David Icke claims thrive on our fear. When we rise above fear, they cease to exist, at least in our minds ... and seeing as everything exists only in our minds ... they will cease to exist - except for those who choose to keep them alive by paying their attention to them. We will win. We are watching a horror movie which ends well. Keep up your spirits in anticipation for the famous final scene.

Mary Elizabeth Croft excerpt 2

When we are told something over and over, as in programming and mind-manipulation, the public fool system, media, gov’t propaganda, TV advertising, TV news, satanic ritualistic cult abuse, billboards, sexual abuse, etc., with any emotion surrounding it (e.g.: the official story on the WTC demolitions) ... then the subconscious mind/ ego accepts it as true and incorporates it into its belief system. When the truth confronts us it is automatically rejected; it simply doesn’t fit into the belief system. Its like trying to file into your documents folder, two separate articles with the same title; the computer rejects the second one, even though the second file has the more accurate information (or you wouldn’t be bothering to file it). The computer is at least smart enough to request you either change the name of the second file or dump the original, which is what most people do, since the original is no longer true. But the ego mind is more tenacious than a computer because there is emotional identity behind it. Hence, we find closed-minded people who actually think they know what’s going on in the world, when in fact, it's all just propaganda. Based upon this premise I offer a solution to what appears to be the sole problem of the world with the intention that once we have information about what seems to be yet isn’t, we can change our minds about it, which will empower us to change our beliefs about who we are, which will allow us to change the world, which, by the way, doesn’t exist except as a projection of our minds. Thoughts never leave their source - they boomerang.

Mary Elizabeth Croft excerpt 3

Problem - Reaction - Solution
The ego mind tells us that it will solve all our problems for us. What it doesn’t tell us is that it is the cause of all our problems. Does this sound like something we’ve heard from some other entity? “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” The ego/gov’t has a plan:

1. Create a problem;
2. Wait until there is outcry and demand to solve said problem,
3. Reluctantly agree to find a solution for said problem, the cost of which is, in some form, further erosion of our rights and/or integrity, not to mention, already in the works because this was the plan of the ego/problem-creators in the first place.

Mary Elizabeth Croft excerpt 4

The IBs’ (Investment Bankers) Commerce Game is a game only they can win. The Banksters cannot lose; they have forced everyone to play and they have forced everyone into a debt from which we cannot escape. US/CA, as a bankrupt corporation, is owned completely by its creditors - the Bankers. They own all levels of the media, government, education, religion, everything; if you have a birth certificate, they own you too. They control every transaction; they control what is going on in the world; they even control the puppet whom the world blames for the terror and threat of war (GW Bush). Do you like the results of this control? Are you enjoying the game? The only way to win the Commerce Game is not to play. We were never meant to operate in commerce; they tricked us into it and for their benefit. Isn’t there something we’d rather be doing? What do banks do with this credit which we created with our signing of promises to pay? They lend it. Banks are not permitted to lend their money or their assets; they are allowed to lend only credit; credit which WE created. There is only liability which is being spread around with the added liability of interest attached to it each time it is used to ‘pay’ someone. The value of the note is thus diminished each time. Hence, we have inflation. When I ostensibly ‘pay’ you $50 for a service you provided me, since I am paying you with notes which were borrowed into existence, and now have interest attached to it, how can it ever get paid? From whence comes the interest to pay when the interest has yet to be borrowed into existence. If I borrow your car, how can I bring back more of your car than I borrowed? It doesn’t exist. Every transaction gets us further into a debt which does NOT exist, except in the minds of the Banksters.

Mary Elizabeth Croft excerpt 5

Will I, somewhere along my path of doing what I want to do, just happen to notice that I am no longer serving a major corporation, but rather my fellow living souls? Corporations, by definition, do not exist. They are legal fictions. The purpose for their alleged existence is for their limited liability and that of the living souls who operate them. The ‘law’ does not go after an entity who ‘owns’ nothing. Corporations have nothing to give. You can’t get blood from a stone. Now you see why the wealthiest in the world ‘own nothing yet control everything’.

We ought to stop wanting to own things, since we can’t anyway because we do not have legal title to the things we think we own; we have only equitable title. We are allowed to ‘use’ that which the state allows us to use. This includes our bodies. We cannot ‘own’ anything for which we haven’t ‘paid’ or for which we have relinquished title, e.g. our bodies via the birth registration. Since we have nothing with which to pay, we ‘own’ nothing - unless - we use asset funds to ‘pay’ for legal title. Unfortunately, unless we have handled our commercial affairs properly, we also cannot ‘control’ anything.

Mary Elizabeth Croft excerpt 6

"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy, and when you’re inside, and look around, what do you see? Businessmen, Teachers, Lawyers, Carpenters, the very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand: most of these people are not ready to be unplugged, and many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it." - Morpheus - The Matrix. Most people in the world are wholly dependent upon ‘The System’ and cannot function without it. This system forces them to live in a debt cycle which never ends. The system perpetrates an addiction to materialism for the purpose of producing interest which is created from debt. Since debt does not really exist, then neither does interest. Hence, the national debt is a hoax perpetrated by the PTB (Powers That Be). The biggest con game the world has ever known was perpetrated by those who control education, law, media, churches, banks, medicine. They played upon our innate belief that we must earn our right to life, that we are unworthy, not to trust our intuition, that we must depend upon the authorities, that any punishment we sustain is justified and deserved, that we have no self-generated power, that what is outside our minds is real. They have confiscated our health, wealth, love, and peace of mind under this ruse. This scam is known as The Matrix.

"How I Clobbered Every Bureaucratic Cash-Confiscatory Agency Known to Man" by Mary Elizabeth Croft read and/or download pdf.

It Is Time To Burn The Strawman blog link

Friday, December 4, 2009

The Silver Bear Cafe article

The Critical Unraveling of U.S. Society article link

David DeGraw

The economic elite have launched an attack on the U.S. public and society is unraveling at an increased rate

Report Contents:

I: U.S. Societal Breakdown

II: Environmental Crisis

III: The Obama Myth

IV: Economic Coup - Theft of Trillions

V: National Emergency

We have just witnessed the greatest theft of wealth in history, the greatest transfer of wealth from the working class to the economic elite ever. An organized banking cartel has seized the US treasury and they are making up the "laws" and the rules to this rigged game. The covert economy has grown at a staggering rate due to taxpayer-funded injections. As a result of this, economic shackles are just beginning to fall upon the American public like never before. 99% of our nation is now sentenced to a slow death.

The economic elite are operating under the belief that the world is theirs, they own it, and to hell with everyone else. They also take the view that as the environment grows more destructive, they don’t want us around to compete for resources.

The Silver Bear Cafe home page

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Who Needs God When We've Got Mammon?

The world's most prosperous (and happiest) countries are also its least religious, new research states. article link

From Dostoyevsky to right-wing commentator Ann Coulter we are warned of the perils of godlessness. "If there is no God," Dostoyevsky wrote, "everything is permitted." Coulter routinely attributes our nation's most intractable troubles to the moral vacuum of atheism.

But a growing body of research in what one sociologist describes as the "emerging field of secularity" is challenging long-held assumptions about the relationship of religion and effective governance.

In a paper posted recently on the online journal Evolutionary Psychology, independent researcher Gregory S. Paul reports a strong correlation within First World democracies between socioeconomic well-being and secularity. In short, prosperity is highest in societies where religion is practiced least.

Miller-McCune

Turning Research Into Solutions home page

Is religiosity beneficial in affluent first world nations? article link

The belief held by some scholars that strong religious belief is the universal human condition deeply rooted in our psyches, may be false. Also contradicted is the hypothesis that evolutionary selective forces have played the leading role in determining the popularity of religion. Environmental conditions appear to exert great influence on the degree to which religious beliefs are held. The popularity of religious belief may be a reflection of a psychological mechanism for coping with the high levels of stress and anxiety resulting from adverse social and economic environments.

Evolutionary Psychology home page

Evolutionary Psychology is an open-access peer-reviewed journal that aims to foster communication between experimental and theoretical work on the one hand and historical, conceptual and interdisciplinary writings across the whole range of the biological and human sciences on the other.

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