"Genocide

I hear a lot from Christians about God’s “infinite compassion and mercy”.

Instead of harping on me about something so unapparent, they should go tell it to the Midianites. (Please open your Bibles to Numbers 31) The following verses are a classic example of wholesale slaughter and rape under the direction of the same God they claim to be so merciful.  A quick sample of this tale: On the way to the promised land, God had Moses wage a war campaign against the Midian.  Moses was told to put every Midianite to death, plunder anything of value, and set fire to the towns where they lived and all their encampments.  Moses gave the orders to his troops (the sons of Israel) and went on a further campaign.  On the return of his troops, Moses was enraged with the commanders of the army.  He said, “Why have you spared the life of all the women and children?  You are to kill all the children and kill all the women who have slept with a man. The Lord says spare the lives only of the young girls who have not slept with a man, and take them for yourselves, so that we may multiply into a great nation.”  Yes, friends, this is biblical infinite mercy and compassion for you. I particularly like the way that Moses got upset with them for sparing women and male children, but allowed the young girls to be kept for later raping.

I have had some Christians proclaim that these Midianite girls were not taken for raping but for marriage.  How ridiculous!  If you continue further in the scripture, you will find that marriage to a Midianite was a crime against God.  A man named Zimri broke the law and married a Midianite woman this angered God so he sent a plague among the Hebrews.  Fortunately, a zealous son of Israel speared Zimri right through the genitals, and the plague went away.  So now I ask you, if you could not marry a Midianite, just what were these “virgin women who were to help multiply” good for?

I don’t think the firstborn in Egypt during the captivity would have agreed with the verdict of compassion and mercy either.  (Exodus 11:5 & 12:29) First of all, Jehovah is the one who purposely hardened the heart of the Pharaoh so that he would not let Moses and the Jews go.  God messed with someone’s free will.  God could have even teleported the Jews out of captivity without bloodshed, or put the Egyptians to sleep while they left, but no.  God decided to set up a situation in which he knew he would have to punish the Pharaoh.  Though this he didn’t even do.  He punished the children instead.  Judging from God’s previous actions, killing innocent children is much more his forte.

Lastly, please attempt to read the entire book of Joshua some evening. It is a long sequence of atrocities. I have not given all these quotes for space reasons. I urge you to look them up for yourself. Especially for Christians who are not familiar with the bible. It will leave you not only shocked and in the question of just what you are worshiping, but it will give a new definition to all morality you claimed was a derivative of God. If by some chance you read Joshua and you are still compliant with the loving notion of God, I suggest you re-evaluate your code of ethics."

"1.  According to your Bible I am to believe that human kind is sinful for Adam and Eve ate the fruit of knowledge.  Why are we being punished for the original sin?  After all, they ate the forbidden fruit, we didn’t.  Reason would lead one to say it’s their problem, not ours.  Even the bible contradicts itself by claiming in Deuteronomy 24:16, “children shall not be punished for the sins of their fathers.”

2.  We are told that the Bible has no scientific errors and is utterly perfect/protected, yet it says the bat is a bird (Leviticus 11:13 & 19), hares chew the cud (Leviticus 11:5-6), and some fowl (Leviticus 11:20-21) and insects (Leviticus 11:22-23) have four legs.

3.  Heaven is supposed to be a perfect place.  It is of course, the place you strive for and name “salvation”.  Yet, it experienced a war (Revelation 12:7).  How can there be a war in a perfect place and if it happened before why couldn’t it happen again?  Why would I want to go to a place in which war can occur?  That’s exactly what I’m trying to escape, aren’t you?

4.  We are told salvation is obtained by faith alone (John 3:18 & 36) and then the Bible claims that it is repentance that shall save us (2 Peter 3:9) yet Jesus told a man to follow the Commandments-Matthew 19:16-1 8 (saving by works)-if he wanted eternal life. So which way is it and how do you know your belief is the correct one?

5. According to the text there are 29 cities listed in Joshua 15:21-32.  One need only count them to see that biblical math is not to be trusted.  The total is 36.

6. Surely you don’t believe Ecclesiastes 1:9 RSV (“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun”)?  How many cities had an atomic bomb dropped on them prior to 1945, and how many people walked on the moon before 1969?

7.  If the Bible is our moral guide, then how can it make pornographic statements such as: “…they may eat their own dung and drink their own piss with you” (2 Kings 18:27)?  Also consult Numbers 31 where a whole tribe of people, including the elderly and children are slaughtered.  The only survivors were the virginal women, who were later raped by the “just and perfect” Moses and his men.  Is that what you want your children reading on Sunday?

8.  If God created everything, (Colossians 1:16, Ephesians 3:9, Revelation 4:11 & John 1:3), then he did create the world’s evil (Isaiah 45:7, Lamentations 3:38). Thus, he is responsible.  Any being who could create situations such as rape, death, malnutrition, disease, molestation and murder is certainly not fit for worship.

9.  For justice to exist, punishment must fit the crime.  No matter how many bad deeds one commits in this world, there is a limit.  Yet, hell’s punishment is infinitely greater.  It’s eternal.  Shouldn’t a sinner suffer until remorse is felt and the crime is atoned for?  What “justice” is there in infinite damnation?

10.  Jesus said, “whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire” (Matthew 5:22).  Yet, he himself did so repeatedly, as Matthew 27:19, Luke 11:40 & 12:20 show.  Shouldn’t he be in danger of hell too?  Jesus also told us to “Love your enemies; bless them that curse you,” but ignored his own advice by repeatedly denouncing his opposition.  Matthew 12:34 (“0 generation of vipers”), and Matthew 23 :27 (“… hypocrites… ye are like unto whited sepulchres.“) are excellent examples of hypocrisy.  If Jesus himself is a sinner by his own admission then surely he can not be the “perfect lamb of god”."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion_classification (I felt all of the emotions listed within the organized crime part of my childhood)

"Anguish (from the Latin angustia "distress") is "extreme unhappiness caused by physical or mental suffering."[1] The feeling of anguish is typically preceded by a tragedy or event that has a profound meaning to the being in question. Anguish can be felt physically or mentally (often referred to as emotional distress).

Anguish is also a term used in philosophy, often as a synonym for angst."

"Time

When deciding whether to get a pet or not, you have to be honest with yourself.

"I’ve pinpointed characteristics of a cult leader based on a list made by Joe Navarro, a former FBI Counterintelligence Agent who has studied cults extensively, and backed up by my personal experience, which I share as well.

"Secular mysticism" is the theme of my latest book, “Path of the Novice Mystic – Maintaining a Beginner’s Heart and Mind”. Unlike most spiritual traditions of Mysticism which are connected to a particular religion, Secular Mysticism is not oriented around religion. Secular Mysticism offers us an alternative to either believing we can triumph over life or seeing ourselves as victims, conquered by life. The goal of the Secular Mystic is to live intimately with one or more of the four expressions of life’s mystery. The first expression of life’s mystery is the Self. The second is other people and the third is Nature. The fourth is the Transcendent Other or God. We foster an intimate relationship with ourselves when we live a self-examined life accompanied by compassion. It can be difficult to see the darker elements of our characters such as arrogance, false modesty, jealousy, and resentment, as well as claim the gold such as our gifts (talents), intelligence, kindnesses, and capacity to love.  We engender an intimate relationship with others when we compassionately speak our truth to them. Speaking the truth about how we feel treated and what we want from others. Our truths are accompanied by compassion when we do not attack the character of others, but rather refer to their behavior with descriptions of what we need or want from them, with no diminishing remarks about the way they have acted toward us. We also promote living intimately with others when we accept the mystery of who they are, not pretending to be able to define them, but remaining actively curious about them. If we create a story about others, we remain intimate by telling them the story we have created about them, seeking their confirmation or disconfirmation of our stories. We remain intimate with nature when we approach nature with reverence, grateful for the opportunity to live in harmony with the mountains, the oceans, the animals, and the plant life.  The suggestion from a Secular Mystical perspective is that when we live devotion to being intimate with ourselves, others, and nature, a dynamic connection to the God of your knowledge is created. The Divine is summoned as we live in truth, compassion, and reverence. 

For more information about my book, or to learn about my workshops, please Like my Facebook page.

Paul Dunion."

"A Brief History of Secular Buddhism

For 2,500 years: Buddhist meditation was practiced by monks—these practices are older than Christianity and Islam. Meditation was not generally taught to lay people.

19th century: Buddhism came to the attention of Western intellectuals

1890’s-1950’s: Buddhist meditation was first taught to laypeople en-mass: Burmese monks: Ledi Sayadaw, Webu Sayadaw and Saya Thetgyi taught meditation to lay meditation teachers such as Sayaguyi U Ba Khin.

1960’s: Sayagyi U Ba Khin teaches S.N. Goenka and after 1976 Goenka creates hundreds of secular meditation centers that teach Vipassana a form of mindfulness meditation and proto-Secular Buddhism.

1979: Jon Kabat-Zin founded the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program at the University of Massachusetts to treat the chronically ill.

2011: Stephen Batchelor published the book “Buddhist Atheist.” Small local and online Secular Buddhist groups form around the world

2015: Mark W. Gura co-founded the Association of Mindfulness Meditation and Secular Buddhism (AMMSB.org), the first national nonprofit dedicated to Secular Buddhism in the U.S. and he published “Atheist Meditation.”

2016: The Atheist Alliance of America started to inform the atheist community about Secular Buddhism.

2016: With the help of Peter Boghossian and Anthony Magnabosco, the AMMSB adopted the use of Street Epistemology to introduce Secular Buddhism to traditional Buddhists.

2017: With the help of Rebecca Hale and Roy Speckhardt the American Humanist Association and the AMMSB collaborated to further inform the secular humanist and atheist community about Secular Buddhism."