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3/25/2012 - Brendon O'Brien - Brilliant, Bigoted or just plain Whacky?

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I really like this guy maybe some of you know him :D

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
The Christian god is a three headed monster, cruel, vengeful, and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law. February 10, 1814

Christianity...(has become) the most perverted system that ever shone on man. ...Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus.

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and state.

Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, January 1, 1802

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read, "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination."
When we see religion split into so many thousands of sects, and I may say Christianity itself divided into it's thousands also, who are disputing, anathematizing, and where the laws permit, burning and torturing one another for abstractions which no one of them understand, and which are indeed beyond the comprehension of the human mind, into which of the chambers of this Bedlam would a man wish to thrust himself. The sum of all religion as expressed by it's best preacher, "fear god and love thy neighbor,' contains no mystery, needs no explanation - but this wont do. It gives no scope to make dupes; priests could not live by it.

Letter to George Logan, November 12, 1816
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose.

To Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814
Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

Notes on Virginia
Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear

To Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787
It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one. But this constitutes the craft, the power and the profit of the priests.

To John Adams, 1803
But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.

To S. Kercheval, 1810
History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose.

To Baron von Humboldt, 1813
On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.

To Carey, 1816
But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man. The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent morality, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems, invented by ultra-Christian sects (The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of the Hierarchy, etc.) is a most desirable object.

To W. Short, Oct. 31, 1819
It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ) in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it. Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore him to the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, the roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and the first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus.

To W. Short, 1820
The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.

To Story, Aug. 4, 1820
The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man. But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, is nothing.
3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more merit the faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save.
To Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822
Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church ... made of Christendom a slaughter-house.
To Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822
The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
To John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823
The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere lapses into polytheism, differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible.
To Jared Sparks, 1820
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Lol. I thought that was Steven Hawking for a minute. :p

I wanted to leave that as a cute little remark. But, ya know I can't. In my job I've come into contact with folks that have ALS. It's no laughing matter. If, and please note I said IF! there were a "Satan" this is the disease he would invent. Actually, Steven Hawking is something of a miracle. I've talked with folks who had sadly declined in mere months. The disease in most folks just won't stop. I remember someone in a meeting saying "If it would just stop!" But, it takes away the body until the spirit is simply looking out of a prison. Anyway, if you do read up on it you would say that Hawking is either lucky, or very unlucky (depending on your worldview I guess.) Because he is an exception to the rule of this cruel disease. Anyway, just couldn't leave it like that. I'll kid Stephen Hawking another time.
 
tyder001 said:
I don't believe in bigfoot at all. But, if there is one then it most likely is a uncataloged primate of some sort. Nuts and bolts ufo's? Well, it's a big ole universe so I can't say they don't exist. I've never been convinced of it but it's certainly possible. I will also have to say that if "abductions" are anything other than sleep paralysis or some kind of hallucination then they are most likely separate from the nuts and bolts ufo question. I think the work of John Keel and Vallee is very interesting. I don't think we are anywhere near understanding the creatures we are. Much less the reality of off world beings. If there are any. ;)
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Bingo, we still don't have all the answers to who WE are, much less who THEY are. I'm not talking physiology we seem to have a good handle on that, I'm more talking about the brain and how it works and how it came to be. Modern evolutionary theory doesn't explain what scientists call "the big bang of the brain" going by other species models of evolution we should still be roaming around the plains with stone tools and sleeping in caves. So how did our intelligence come about? How does the brain really work? I think if we could answer these questions we would have some clues about things like abductions, psychic phenomena and other paranormal activities.
 
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