fayfreethinkers.com

They would turn him into something useful... "goat berries."

Saw it on Skeptic Money

.

Image of Jesus Seen on Walmart Receipt

(Sorry no image to post, it's on video. )

"Going shopping usually isn't a religious experience.

However, something "divine" may have happened to a South Carolina couple after a recent trip to a Walmart.

They discovered what they say looks like the face of Jesus on their receipt.

Jacob Simmons and Gentry Lee Sutherland make no secret about being religious folks.

"God is real, and He is watching," Simmons says.

So, when the engaged couple saw a face mysteriously appear on their Walmart receipt, there was only one person it could be.

"The more you look at it, the more it looked like Jesus, and it was just shocking, it was breathtaking," says Gentry Lee.

They got their receipt after buying some pictures on June 12th. They say it didn't have a face at first, but three days later Jacob saw the receipt on the floor of Gentry Lee's apartment and says it had changed.

"I was leaving the kitchen and I just looked on the floor, and you just see the receipt was, it's like He was looking at me."

They both said they have no idea how the face got there. The stain that looks like soot, or maybe ink, doesn't wear off at all when it's touched. Simmons says he called the store to find out how it could have happened.

"They said the only way you could really get it black was to put heat on it. And if it was on the floor, and heat hit it, how could it come out to be a face?"

After the initial spookiness wore off, the couple have started to take comfort in the image. They said they first saw it after coming home from a church service.

"We had a message on knowing God, abiding in him. 'If you know God, would you realize it if you saw Him?'"

And, they're hoping that this little slip of paper will show Jesus to everyone who sees it.

"We just feel like it's a blessing that God showed it to us and opened our eyes. And we just feel like we should share the blessing God gave to us to everybody else."

The couple swears they didn't tamper with the receipt.

They also say they would like to have someone test the paper to see what caused the image to appear.

Arkansas Matters.

.........................................................................................

"When two or three are gathered to shop Everyday Low Prices I will be there with them."
granny

Jesus and Wal-Mart. Somehow, that's a good fit.

Just put:

jesus wal-mart receipt

into google and of course, it's everywhere:



You know, I have to admit, that is one good looking Jesus. Maybe there is something to this whole religion thing...

Now that people know they can make images on this paper by heating it... watch for the legion of copycats that will be along shortly.

D.

SherryH asked me to post this ABC Nightline News story (that was also recently featured on Phil's Skeptic Money blog):

http://www.youtube.com/embed/wt0w7KF9eT0

From an exchange on facebook:

***

MIKE: "If there is no Hell then Religion is completely pointless and I wouldn't be a Christian."

DAR
I ask readers notice, consider how upside down and morally broken a person would have to be to say: "unless the vast majority of humankind does NOT burn for all eternity in a tortuous hell after death, then being religious or Christian has no point." Breathtaking.

MIKE: A major reason I hold to my belief in God is I want something to balance the cruelty and evil of people in this world."

Notice that it really doesn't matter what follows after Mike's "I want something...". Mike goes directly from "major reason" to... "I want something..." This is Mike admitting, probably unbeknownst to him, that his basis for belief is "wanting to believe" in something. This is wishful thinking. And does Mike wish? Peace on earth, goodwill to all mankind? No, Mike wishes that the vast majority of humankind burns for all eternity in the hell his God created.

MIKE: "Its a thin hope I admit it, but it keeps me sane, and allows me to rest easy at night."

This is religious training at its finest and most complete. This is humanity reduced to its most base animal core. At the end, when your religion has so broken your moral thinking ability that it has convinced you to believe that the best moral situation is one where the vast majority of humankind either is, (or will be soon), burning eternally in the hell your God created (and it is this situation that allows you to rest easy at night), then your religious training is complete. There is no lower a human can go. You have completely forfeited any semblance of being a rational, thinking, caring human being. You have become a monster, something less than fully human.

D.
-----------
"Neither by word nor look have I expressed any other feeling than sympathy with those who hope to live again -- for those who bend above their dead and dream of life to come. But I have denounced the selfishness and heartlessness of those who expect for themselves an eternity of joy, and for the rest of mankind predict, without a tear, a world of endless pain. Nothing can be more contemptible than such a hope -- a hope that can give satisfaction only to the hyenas of the human race." -- Robert Ingersoll

US judges rule for teacher who called creationism 'superstitious nonsense'

8/19/11

"A public high school teacher in California may not be sued for making hostile remarks about religion in his classroom, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday. The decision stems from a lawsuit filed by a student charging that the teacher’s hostile remarks about creationism and religious faith violated a First Amendment mandate that the government remain neutral in matters of religion.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the lawsuit against an advanced placement history teacher at Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo must be thrown out of court because the teacher was entitled to immunity."

The rest...

Christian Science Monitor

Darrel wrote:US judges rule for teacher who called creationism 'superstitious nonsense'

I read the decision this afternoon. As an atheist teacher in the Bible Belt, I think that I'm in an interesting position to analyze.

First and foremost, I haven't yet read a news story that accurately describes the case. Thus, accept the "news" with a grain of salt.

The court overturned a lower court's finding that those remarks about creationism were unconstitutional. It was done not by finding the remarks to be constitutional but by asserting that the teacher could not have known -- based on existing findings -- that his comments might be unconstitutional. The court specifically avoided ruling whether the remarks were indeed unconstitutional, thus vacating the lower court's decision.

For the record, the student submitted a laundry list of remarks that he felt violated his freedom of speech. Each court rejected the claims for all but this one remark. Note how different this is than the laundry list of egregious violations that most non-believers can accumulate in short periods of time (including in my current position!) both in the Bible Belt and out.

The court cited, among other things, protection of academic freedom as a reason for creating a wide berth for teachers whose content subjects (in this case, history) require addressing hot-button topics like religion and politics. I understand the rationale, but it's a dangerous road to go down. The past decade of anti-evolution legislation has taken the guise of "academic freedom," and those arguments have been rejected by courts without fail, and for good reason. Although this wasn't science class, the teacher can't show favoritism or hostility to religion. Despite how much I agree with the content of his remarks, I feel that the teacher here crossed that line.

I think that this could open a can of worms regarding "academic freedom." I also fear that this would be overturned upon further appeal. Let's face it: there's plenty of case law "pointing the other direction," and I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that the teacher couldn't have known that calling a religious belief "nonsense" might not be neutral.
Worse, and somewhat suspiciously, the court took the only action it could to vacate the "unconstitutional" finding without issuing its own ruling on that matter, (I'd argue) because there's no way that it would pass the Lemon test. Isn't it odd to bemoan the lack of case law to guide the teacher and then pass on a golden opportunity to establish this much-needed case law?

A few Catholics still insist Galileo was wrong

They say Earth is the center of the universe,
embracing church teachings of four centuries ago.

Excerpts:

"The relatively obscure movement has gained a following among those who find comfort in knowing there are still staunch defenders of early church doctrine.

"This subject is, as far as I can see, an embarrassment to the modern church because the world more or less looks upon geocentrism, or someone who believes it, in the same boat as the flat Earth," said James Phillips ofCicero, Ill."

Those promoting geocentrism argue that heliocentrism, or the centuries-old consensus among scientists that Earth revolves around the sun, is a conspiracy to squelch the church's influence.

"Heliocentrism becomes dangerous if it is being propped up as the true system when, in fact, it is a false system," said Robert Sungenis, leader of a budding movement to get scientists to reconsider.

Hundreds of curiosity seekers, skeptics and supporters attended a conference last fall titled "Galileo Was Wrong. The Church Was Right" near the University of Notre Dame campus inSouth Bend, Ind.


"It's an idea whose time has come and gone," astrophysics professor Peter Garnavich said. "There are some people who want to move the world back to the 1950s when it seemed like a better time. These are people who want to move the world back to the 1250s."

[Interesting that creationist Ken Ham seems rather non-committal]

But Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., said the Bible is silent on geocentrism.

"There's a big difference between looking at the origin of the planets, the solar system and the universe and looking at presently how they move and how they are interrelated," Ham said. "The Bible is neither geocentric or heliocentric. It does not give any specific information about the structure of the solar system."

LA Times

Fundies have a new flick:

http://www.courageousmovie.com/

A fundie going by "MrD" on NWAonline, doesn't like my fruit:

I was not pretending to judge you. l was, and I am.
You were never a Christian and never will be. You are of the Devil and you are his child. He is a liar, the father of lies, and the truth is not in him. His sole purpose is to destroy, confuse, sow discord, and to divert humanity from the purpose which God created us. A tree is judged by the fruit it bears. Your apples are rotten and your grapes are sour and both are filled with poison.

My response is posted below his.

Atheist Jews: Judaism Without God

Excerpt:

"At the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, many Jews who identify as atheists, secular humanists and other religious "nones" attend synagogue. Most go once a year -- like Christians who go to church only at Christmas or Easter. But others, like Schrogin, are active, integral parts of a religious community that, ideologically, they stand apart from.

"Atheism and Judaism are not contradictory, so to have an atheist in a Jewish congregation isn't an issue or a challenge or a problem," Shrogin said. "It is par for the course. That is what Judaism is. It is our tradition to question God from top to bottom."

Atheism is entrenched in American Judaism. In researching their book "American Grace," authors Robert Putnam and David Campbell found that half of all American Jews doubt God's existence. In other groups, that number is between 10 and 15 percent."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/2 ... 78418.html

Italian Worshiper Tears Both Eyes Out at Mass

"An Italian man tore both of his eyes out in the middle of the priest's homily at a church near Pisa, according to reports.
Fellow parishioners watched in horror as Aldo Bianchini, 46, used his bare hands to pull out both eyeballs. Bianchini later told surgeons, who were unable to save his vision, he heard voices that told him to do it.
"He was in a great deal of agony and he was covered in blood," Dr. Gino Barbacci told the Daily Mail. "He said that he had used his bare hands to gouge out his eye balls after hearing voices telling him to do so..."

"The Bible's Gospel of St. Matthew quotes Jesus telling his disciples: 'If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell."

NBC News

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." --Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Jesus Wields a Nasty Spatula



Christian Domestic Discipline, from Jesus General.

Darrel wrote:Jesus Wields a Nasty Spatula

My grandmother kept a screen-wire flyswatter handy for such purposes.

Too bad he didn't decide to be a painter:



LINK

This video clip is quite good. Seven minutes. Too hardcore for a meeting?

Jesus returns!

Freethinker

One who is not guided in the formation of his beliefs by obedience to authority, but submits the claims of authority to reason as the ultimate arbiter. The early application of the term was to those who occupied a rationalistic position in regard to current religious beliefs and dogmas; hence it acquired the still current sense of skeptic, infidel, and even atheist. The word, though employed earlier, is generally supposed to have been brought into common use in 1713 by the publication of Anthony Collins's “A Discourse of Freethinking, occasioned by the Rise and Growth of a Sect called Freethinkers,” Although this work defines free-thinking as the endeavor to judge a proposition according to the weight of evidence, and does not explicitly maintain any proposition which can offend a Protestant, it was rightly judged to be a covert attack upon fundamental tenets of the Christian religion. The free-thinkers specifically so called formed a class of deistical writers in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the chief of whom were Toland (died 1722), Anthony Collins (1676–1729), Woolston (1669–1733), Tindal (died 1733), and Bolingbroke (1678–1751).

See deist. Synonyms Unbeliever, Skeptic, etc. See infidel.

http://www.wordnik.com/words/freethinker

See here.

Penn Jillette's
10 Commandments For Atheists

1. The highest ideals are human intelligence, creativity and love. Respect these above all.

2. Do not put things or even ideas above other human beings. (Let's scream at each other about Kindle versus iPad, solar versus nuclear, Republican versus Libertarian, Garth Brooks versus Sun Ra— but when your house is on fire, I'll be there to help.)

3. Say what you mean, even when talking to yourself. (What used to be an oath to (G)od is now quite simply respecting yourself.)

4. Put aside some time to rest and think. (If you're religious, that might be the Sabbath; if you're a Vegas magician, that'll be the day with the lowest grosses.)

5. Be there for your family. Love your parents, your partner, and your children. (Love is deeper than honor, and parents matter, but so do spouse and children.)

6. Respect and protect all human life. (Many believe that "Thou shalt not kill" only refers to people in the same tribe. I say it's all human life.)

7. Keep your promises. (If you can't be sexually exclusive to your spouse, don't make that deal.)

8. Don't steal. (This includes magic tricks and jokes — you know who you are!)

9. Don't lie. (You know, unless you're doing magic tricks and it's part of your job. Does that make it OK for politicians, too?)

10. Don't waste too much time wishing, hoping, and being envious; it'll make you bugnutty.