Your simple job is to identify, by line, each work and the artist. *answered

80’s Teenage Angst

1.    Mama, mama, I keep having nightmares.

2.    The virginal brides file past his tomb,

3.    Just because he didn’t want to learn things.

4.    Give the past the slip. *

5.    Rocky picture has lost his gun. *

6.    Falling on my head like a memory *

7.    The face you wore was cool. *

8.    I read you books and talked for hours.

9.    And when I die I expect to find him laughing.

10. It’s no better to be safe than sorry.

11. Sordid details following,

12. It takes a second to say goodbye,  *

13. The message is perfectly simple

14. as a bodyguard grabbed me.

15. It’s the only way to live.

16. Scheme those schemes, *

17. Luring disco dollies to a life of vice.

18. Two eyes staring cold and silent,

19. Don’t just sit there on your ass,

20. Weeping for the memory of a life gone by.

Please identify only one line and the artist per comment. And no cheating by resorting to Google; you’re on your honor.

Update: answer (answered by)

4 - Whip It - Devo (ladyhawk)

5 - Friends of Mine - Duran Duran (shakesrear)

6 - Here Comes the Rain Again - Eurythmics (shakesrear)

7 - Change - Tears for Fears (shakesrear)

12 - Seconds - U2 (shakesrear)

16 - Relax - Frankie Goes to Hollywood (shakesrear)

Now I know that he’ll get all this information in the movie, but since he brought it up on his comment to me, I feel the need to respond.  It gives me something to write about.  The Herd can skip all this since they know it all already.  I’m not writing anything new.

Something interesting about your “…there is no historical evidence that Jesus was anything more than a story recycled from other diety stories…” that I would like to point out. When you go to court as a witness, you are testifying to something you saw. Unless you are discredited, proven of lying on the stand, your word is taken as truth. Murderers can be sentenced to death because of one eye-witness. What do you think the Bible is? A testament of God and to God. The Gospel writers were writing their testimony of Jesus. Many disciples who were with Jesus were put to death because of their testimony. If they had made the whole thing up, do you believe that they really would have died for their lie, or wouldn’t they have sold Jesus out as a con?

1 John 5:11 (NKJV) reads:
“And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”

The word testimony is the Greek word marturia. It is where we get the word martyr. Marturia is an account or a record or report given similar to that given by a witness testifying in court. Marturia is no little word, but is packed with much fire behind it. John suffered much for his testimony. He fully stood by his words, as did the other writers of Scripture. What we have in hand is God’s revelation of Himself to us. He is testified of by His inspired writers.

Like all testimony, however, you have to decide what you will or will not believe. The consequences of either choice is clearly underlined in Scripture.

Jesus is under constant fire because if you nullify Him, you nullify all of Christianity. I believe that there is more than some logical, scientific, etc. reason that people want to deny the existence of God, something deeper. Perhaps these individuals were hurt by His “representatives.” Maybe they just can’t understand how a loving God could allow suffering into the world. Maybe they just want to live their own lives to their own ends and don’t want any interference from anyone, even God.

First, my motivation.  I wanted very much to believe in God and in Jesus.  And you are correct.  If you nullify Jesus you nullify all of Christianity.  It was in my search to find the true teaching of Jesus that I became an Atheist.  I felt that mankind had corrupted what the original Jesus Movement was all about and wanted to go back to that pure spring before any organized church had had a chance to poison the waters.  I wasn’t hurt or angry, the anger came later when I realized I’d been manipulated into a con by religion.

Second topic: witnesses.  I was under the same misinformation that you are now.  You won’t need to go far for confirmation on this but you might not want to.  This is the look behind the curtain.  The New Testament was not written by any eyewitnesses.  Not a one.  In a court of law, they are not credible witnesses because what they’ve written is called “hearsay”.  At best they were followers of others who claimed to be the disciples.  We do not have writings from any of the disciples directly.  And why in a literate world, didn’t Jesus write down himself his message for the future?  He certainly should have known what would happen after his death.  That someone is willing to die for their beliefs does not make their beliefs true – if that were the case than Charles Manson must be the second coming of Jesus.  As was David Koresh. 

I’m not going to go into all the specifics, because that would make for too long a post.  But I will point you to a page that gives a wealth of resources to all the controversy over did he or didn’t he exist, and if he did what or who was he.  Historical Jesus Theories.  As you can see you can spend years investigating all of the opinions of people who are way more learned than me. 

For me, if there was a man who existed at the heart off all the myth, he’s lost underneath it all.  I can’t know who he was or what he said.  He could have been a mystic, a con, a nut job, or a revolutionary.  But if he was God made flesh, he certainly picked a bad way to make sure his message would survive past his death.  He should have written his own gospels down for us to use, supernaturally protected against deterioration or distortion.  That would have been proof that he was at least more than just a myth or a normal man.

Do non-theists believe their own sets of weird things?

And I think, “No way man!  We’re enlightened!  We’re skeptics!  We go to TAM and attend the Skep-track of Dragon-Con and read science blogs!  We’re 100% Woo-Free!”   But as one of my favorite people has pointed out:

I guess I ought to delight in this kind of challenge, critical thinking enthusiast that I am. But I’m a chimp, too, which means instead of delighting, I have to suppress an urge to fling feces and hoot.

As recently as a few hours ago I’ve been a having a debate with someone in the comments on a Christian blog – that right there is a seductive trap that is – confident that I have EVIDENCE on my side.  And now, Dale McGowan rightly points out:

Both the religious and scientific worldviews are evidence-based. That science does so well at uncovering reality and religion does so poorly is mostly due to the different ways in which the two approaches handle evidence.

The scientific method is largely devoted to neutralizing a single fallacy called confirmation bias – our strong tendency to find and collect whatever evidence supports our preconceptions and desires while ignoring the rest.

Fuck– fuck fuck-fuck– fuck.

That right there is my woo.  Thinking that I’ve somehow gotten beyond my own ape instincts.  That when I’m in the comments section going quote to quote with someone else that I’m doing anything more than flinging poo and hooting. 

Not that there’s anything wrong with it.  Nope, it’s too much damn fun for me to say otherwise.  But I do need to be honest that’s what I’m doing.  I’m not enlightening.  I’m not educating.  I’m not having a noble debate (though I’d like to think I am).  I’m just flinging poo.

So I guess you’d better duck.

Picture this dystopia: in the name of rationality, reason, and science-religion is severely pro-scribed. Some religious beliefs- beliefs -deemed so dangerous that those holding them should be killed. The concept of religious “tolerance” would also be anathema: persons would not be allowed to hold whatever religious beliefs they chose-this cannot be for beliefs deemed irrational. And parents could be charged with “child abuse” for giving their offspring a religious education.

So Clifford Goldstein begins his article “Faith Attack” at Liberty Magazine Online, a dire warning of the evil Atheists and our agenda. Quoting the most salacious parts of the “elitist clique of atheist writers” he shows how we atheists are threatening not only freedom to their beliefs but their very lives.

“As if that weren’t enough, he [Sam Harris] argues that ‘some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.’”

Not having a copy of the End of Faith on hand to see the context of that partial sentence, I quickly googled it. Much like the “God does not play dice” Einstein quote, this is another carefully extracted and often misused line. Just adding the lines before and after the partial sentence help to put it into the context that Clifford Goldstein so obviously ignored:

Certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the reach of every peaceful means of persuasion, while inspiring them to commit acts of extraordinary violence against others. There is, in fact, no talking to some people. If they cannot be captured, and they often cannot, otherwise tolerant people may be justified in killing them in self-defense. This is what the United States attempted in Afghanistan, and it is what we and other Western powers are bound to attempt, at an even greater cost to ourselves and to innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world. We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas.

Next on our Atheist agenda will be to go after the children. Taking offense to Dawkins he writes:

Dawkins labels certain religious teachings, such as eternal torment in hell, as nothing short of ‘child abuse.’”

Goldstein thinks it’s far more abusive for children to have to face a reality he obviously finds terrifying:

The children will also learn that they themselves, and all their hopes and dreams and desires, will also one day be forever gone-with no hope of redemption, no hope of having the hard questions answered, no hope of anything but the pain and suffering of this life, followed by the eternal blackness of a cold and dead universe.

After scaring his readers with images of being tortured and executed for “Thought crime” and a future of bleak nihilistic children, he has the hopeful outlook that,

Fortunately, their views aren’t likely to become public policy anytime soon, and certainly not in the United States (after all, look how well they worked in the Soviet Union)

One credit I can give to Goldstein, while spreading all his other fallacies he didn’t use the most common one of calling us “militant”. However he is operating under two other delusions; Atheists have an agenda and Atheists are nihilists.

The first, Atheists have neither leaders nor dogma. While we may love our “elitist clique of atheist writers”, not every word that falls from their lips is a reverent holy pearl. Even if Sam Harris were calling for the outright execution of the religious, he’d be slapped down by more freedom loving atheists than you could shake a bible at. Goldstein obviously didn’t see the monumental blogging gang-bang Harris got for suggesting that we shouldn’t self-identify as “Atheist.”

The second, Atheists are as happy or sad or angry or friendly as everyone else on the planet. Speaking for this particular atheist, I don’t see the universe as cold or dead. I’m quite happy that long, long, long after I’m gone it’ll be there chugging along as it’s always been. I don’t have children so I’d like to introduce Clifford Goldstein to Dale McGowan, author of Parenting Beyond Belief. His kids are being raised not with forced Atheism, but with freethinking skills. And while I’ve only got his stories to go by, it looks to me they’re doing just fine making up their own minds.

Origin of the specious

Alternate title: Living with the Christians

I’m attempting to catch up on my blog reading (oh blog reader, thy name is Sisyphus) and of course reading other blogs always stirs topics in my head for my own blog. Over at An Apostate’s Chapel  a commenter wrote: 

If you are right, and there is no God…then that is all there is to it. There is no God. I die and…nothing. It ends there. This is why sometimes I don’t understand the Atheists who are so zealous and find a need to convince/convert others to believe as they do because we will all eventually find out if you were right in the end.

Here was a very nice man who self-identified as a Christian, who was responding in a civil way asking heartfelt questions and trying to separate himself from others who he identified as “Christian-ese; something that looks and sounds Christian but is far off the mark.” He goes on:

What I am, is a by the ‘Book’ Believer. My breed is out there. We are genuine in our Faith. We do share the Message because we have been commended to do so. I think that to a fault, we are too quiet. We should rise up and call out the counterfeit. Why we don’t, I’ll never quite understand.

I think part of the reason for this is that we look at the Bible with an incorrect understanding.

Yet the Bible -as I believe it- is a revelation of God given to us; how we relate to Him, how He relates to us, how we have come along, what we have done, and what He has done/will do for us/to us, how to know Him, how He calls us to live, etc, etc. It is a very personal testimony of God that we must take and consider; to accept or reject.

(In full disclosure I’ve been quote mining to focus in on the direction I want this entry to go. You can read his full comments here and here.)

Why are some Atheists so zealous? On my path to de-conversion I watched a show called Living with the Kombai, where two travelers immersed themselves into a South-American hunter-gatherer tribe to learn their customs and live as much as possible, the life of the Kombai.  Part of the attraction and tension of the show was watching them deal with extreme clashes of culture and belief.  They were accepted fully by a family, fed and housed, taught the language and the ways and were suddenly confronted with the fact that their nice new adopted father had killed many men in retribution killings.  They were confronted with the danger of being accused of witchcraft as one of their adopted Uncles told them of how he once risked being executed for being a witch.  That even though he had been cleared of being a witch, his family clan still carried the stigma of that accusation.  And if he hadn’t been cleared, his brothers sadly admitted that they would have tied him up and killed him.  It wouldn’t be the Uncle’s fault, because the forest was full of harmful spirits that are looking for ways to enter their bodies and take control.  The more the two travelers learned about the tribe’s customs the more they saw the pervasive superstitions that caused very serious real world consequences.  They had to seriously consider at what point, if pushed, should their decision to not interfere with the native culture be allowed to continue.

For me, there was also a point where I was no longer able to differentiate between this tribe’s “superstitions” and other modern peoples’ “religions”. I live in a country where the majority of the population, including it’s leaders, believe in invisible spirits and believe they receive communication from those spirits. I live in a world where these same believers want to enact laws on me based solely on what those spirits have either told them, or told through others who may or may not have lived 2,000 years ago. Actually to be more accurate, they’re basing their beliefs on what they’ve been told through people who have interpreted what they’ve been told by others who’ve interpreted what they’ve read from an unknown generation copy of what someone claims was said by someone who may or may not have lived 2,000 years ago.

I personally don’t believe that Jesus ever existed. However, even if he had, he’d still be a myth, because people have formed him into being whoever they want to believe he was. He is a mirror. When like-minded people get together and do good things because “He” wants them to, it’s because they’re the kind of people who have empathy and, unknown to them, they would do those same good things without “Him”. And when other like-minded people get together and do bad things because “He” wants them to, it’s because they want to do bad things and have someone who’ll tell them they’re not bad. And the worst part for me is all those people call themselves by the same names; Christian. I single them out because they have the most influence on this country and the people who run this country. There are so many different Christs out there that I can’t separate them.

A world controlled by superstition is an unstable world. The ER physician who works on me when I’m 43 and have been raped may deny me emergency contraception. The doctor who works on me when I’m 80 may base his primary medical opinion on prayer. The disease that will eventually rob me of my senses and my identity may not have been prevented by stem-cell research. My desire to see the world when I retire may be robbed because people who focus on “the next world” aren’t too worried about saving this one. And when I try to debate with one of these Christs, I’m caught in the shell game of “that’s not my Religion, that’s not what real Christians believe, that’s not how I interpret the Bible.”

I would love to let everyone just believe what they want and I would if they would just leave me alone. But they can’t. They organize and they lobby and they have prayer breakfasts with the President. They’re on my money, they’re in my school, my bedroom, my pharmacy, my emergency room, my government, and they’re trying to get into my Constitution.

This Atheist is zealous because she is fighting for her life. Her only life. She’s fighting for it’s length and it’s quality. And she’s not willing to shut up and respect the superstitions of those who are trying to shorten it or hinder it. Religions? Destroy them all and let Reason sort them out.

You could say The Carpool Heretics show is still going on, it’s just not being recorded.

Recently we listened to the audio-book “Escape” by Carolyn Jessop. If it had been a regular copy of the book, I’d have stayed up all night to finish it. As it was, it occasionally caused an additional trip around the block. Carolyn begins her tale with the night of her escape. Even though we knew going in that she already had escaped, we were still gripped with fear for her as she struggled to get her eight children into a car that didn’t have enough gas to get to town and was only able to reach her meeting point with her brothers by coasting the last part of the way.

From there she starts over at the beginning. What it was like to grow up as a 6th generation polygamist. Stories from her grandmother about the 1953 Short Creek raid, mishandled by the government and resulting in a public relations debacle, that reinforced on members of the community the dangers of the outside world and the mistrust of outsiders. Though written before the recent raid in Texas of the YFZ group (a group started by her ex-husband Merrill Jessop) her stories of the Short Creek raid were almost identical.

She describes in detail her unwanted and unhappy marriage. The power battles between the wives and even the children. The deterioration of the FLDS to a bizarre cult (this is her perspective, though she does now agree it was a cult all along it just wasn’t as bad before.)

After thirteen years of bondage and abuse, it was her fear of Warren Jeffs that finally motivated her to flee. She was convinced that Warren Jeffs, the Prophet, was preparing the FLDS for a mass suicide.

It’s a tale like this that starts an internal debate in my head between personal freedoms, which I believe in to an “extreme”, and the desire to protect people from fraud, predators, dogma, pedophiles, etc. In my opinion the government shouldn’t “marry” anyone. I didn’t originally have this opinion, and I forget how it was introduced to me, but it was a sufficient argument to change my mind about the Gay Marriage issue. Governments shouldn’t perform marriages–period–for anyone; they should only acknowledge and record legal contracts such as “civil unions”. Be they male-female, same gender, polygamy, polyandry, or communal units. The key in my perfect imaginary world is that the people entering these unions are all informed consenting adults.

Second, I do believe that everyone should be allowed to believe whatever woo they want to as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. Do you want to practice Hoodoo? Go ahead. Santería? Fine. Celestial Marriage? Enjoy.

The problem and the internal debate is how does a fair and free society insure that people are allowed to become “informed consenting adults” at the same time as protecting everyone’s religious freedom? Carolyn Jessop was of legal age when she was “married”, the ceremony was performed by The Prophet so it wasn’t a legal ceremony. But the social pressure she was under from her family and her religion didn’t give her the ability to say no. The Prophet reveals what God wants and who was she to question God? Who was she to bring humiliation to her family by being willful and disobedient? It took her 13 years to discover and develop the strength to break away.

While I would love to see all children receive a secular-only education and leave the religion in the home I have to acknowledge also that our school system sucks and, for many responsible and irresponsible parents, home schooling an affordable alternative. Plus, since I don’t have children, I’m not really in a position to lecture others in this area.

However, a book like Escape does open up a wealth of talking points regarding Religious Freedom versus Individual Freedom versus Parental Control versus Governmental Control. A book that has you thinking and debating with others or just yourself is definitely worth a recommendation.

To whom it may concern in the Elizabeth Dole campaign,

My name is Shannon Singleton and I am an organizer for a local atheist group in Phoenix, AZ and I wanted to inform you that I took offense to your press release regarding the proposed actions of Kay Hagan, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina. In your press release, you stated:

“Kay Hagan does not represent the values of this state; she is a Trojan Horse for a long list of wacky left-wing outside groups bent on policies that would horrify most North Carolinians if they knew about it,” [Communications Director Dan] McLagan said. “This latest revelation of support from anti-religion activists will not sit well with the 90% of state residents who identify with a specific religious faith.”

Excuse me? The Secular Coalition of America is a group “bent on policies that would horrify most North Carolinians”??? You specifically (and correctly) state that the purpose of the Secular Coalition is:

“the national lobby for atheists, humanists, freethinkers and other non-theistic Americans with the unique mission of protecting their civil rights.” (Secular Coalition For America, Press Release, 1/16/08)

And you are right… the coalition is there specifically to protect our civil rights!! Can you imagine the backlash you would receive if you were chastising Mrs. Hagan for associating with the 10% section of the population who refer to themselves as Jews? Or African Americans? You would be run out of town with such bigoted commentary such as that!

But alas we still live in a country where the last unprotected minorities are those sad, few non-believers who want nothing more than fair treatment in this great nation. However as the days go by, more and more of us are willing to stand up and speak out to let people like you know that we are not going to take this anymore.

For your actions, I have made a donation to Kay Hagan’s campaign in the hopes of unseating you from your position as representative of your state in this country that stands for freedom and equality. I have also notified the 430 members in my group of the situation and have asked them to do the same (if they so desire).

I hope that next time you will not disregard the impact that you can have by dismissing a proud, patriotic group of Americans simply because they do not believe in the same god as you do.

Thank you for your time,

-Shannon M. Singleton-
Organizer – The Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group
http://atheists.meetup.com/157/

***

From: Information <Information@elizabethdole.org>
To: Shannon M. Singleton

Thank you for contacting The Elizabeth Dole Committee. Senator Dole appreciates hearing from people regarding issues that are important to them. We will be sure to pass your message along to her. If you have any other questions or concerns please feel free to contact us at anytime. Thanks again for contacting The Elizabeth Dole Committee and may God bless you and your family.

Our first look through the larger telescope was M20 & M21:

While my view through the telescope wasn’t as impressive as this picture, it was still incredible. I could see the two bright stars, one blue and the other red.

Then we went to the smaller scope which showed us Jupiter:

Through the one smaller telescope, the planet was about the size of a dime, and I could just make out the lines going across it. As we left the smaller scope we heard the larger telescope move. It too was now showing Jupiter. What I saw was similar to the image above, but without the color. We were also able to see three of Jupiter’s moons as well. One of the moons being Europa which is my favorite, initially because of Thomas Dolby’s song (80′s child that I am), but now because of the tantalizing possibility of it’s subsurface ocean and extraterrestrial life.

However the surprise highlight of the evening was seeing M57, the Ring Nebula. 

My husband was impressed most by Jupiter, but seeing this ghostly image of a dead star gave me goose bumps. Our Sun is expected to undergo the same process in a couple of billion years.

And I was left with the wonderfully humbling and enjoyable feeling as being an insignificant speck of dust. How arrogant and small minded humans are to believe that, were there actually a being large and powerful enough to create this universe, it would care, or have the ability, to even notice us. It’s more likely that I would begin to hear the individual prayers of my own cells.

That would be work. My new job has eaten into, hell it’s completely decimated, my blogging time. Plus, there is so much to learn and do on it that by 3 PM my brain has usually been turned to goo and I need to use my headphones to prevent it from leaking out my ears. I “feel” connected because I listen to podcasts, but that connection is an illusion because it’s been only one-way. I realize I need to do more to participate, like using my lunch time to keep my blogs up-to-date, at least once a week. Unfortunately the firewall here is somewhat finicky about what I can and can’t get to. I can get to Galactica Watercooler, so I will attempt to participate on the forums there more. However, I can’t get to Atheist Nexus. I also can’t get to Photobucket, so anyone who has images linked from there I just see that lovely little picture with the red x in the corner.

But lately there has been a little writer in the back of my head saying it wants to be heard. So at least once a week, I’m going to let it out.