Florida to produce Christian license plates?

It seems like lots of controversy, religious and political, comes out of the state of Florida. Two years ago we found a pizza maven building a Christian city.

Now the Florida legislature is debating whether to produce a Christian-themed auto license plate similar to ones they and other states produce that let drivers show support for colleges, ecological endeavors, and other "worthwhile purposes."

The proposed license tag will contain the words "I Believe" and show a stained glass window and a Christian cross.

If approved, it will be the first religious-themed license plate any state has produced, Breitbart.com reports.

Even some Christians are opposed to the idea, including state representative Kelly Skidmore, a practicing Roman Catholic. I suspect her opposition isn't because she supports the "separation of church and state" so much as she doesn't want to offer the same privilege to other religions.

She told reporters, "It's not a road I want to go down. I don't want to see the Star of David next. I don't want to see a Torah next. None of that stuff is appropriate to me."

The group asking for the plate is the Orlando-based Faith in Teaching, Inc., a non-profit group supporting "faith-based" school activities. On the group's website you can sign up to show your support for the idea.

Rep. Edward Bullard, the bill's sponsor, says he does not support other religious groups being given the opportunity to have similar plates, and says he would oppose any bill promoting equal opportunity.



Image: The tag proposed by Faith in Teaching, Inc.

Religion | Florida | License Plates | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Our changing American landscape: Education and religious affiliation

A study about American culture by the Pew Foundation has recently been released, exploring how knowledgeable 17-year olds are about "common-knowledge" historical facts and references.

A low percentage of students knew, for example, the Civil War was fought between 1850 and 1900. Only 52% could identify the theme of George Orwell's 1984. Just over half knew that the controversy surrounding Sen. Joseph McCarthy focused on communism.

Some would argue that knowledge of these references isn't needed in modern times, that these facts and events don't have significance in the lives of today's young adults. Others think the study shows that our educational system is sorely lacking.

As some who posted comments to this story pointed out, the results of a history quiz which simply tests whether someone has been exposed to and then retains certain "information" are hardly indicative of "knowledge," and doesn't tell us whether a student has actually learned how to think creatively, or has learned the necessary skills to enter today's job marketplace. After all, this kind of "knowledge" is readily available online if you want it. Does stuffing your brain with information actually help you be a "better," more educated person, or does it just make you more likely to win at games like Trivial Pursuit?

Personally, I think having an awareness of these kinds of facts is important. These "facts" are reference points to our history as a nation and a species. Perhaps our educational system has been driven in recent years by television, which seldom goes into detail about any particular event, but rather simply creates sound bites without explaining background. Sure, every student knows that Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream, and that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white person, but have they learned the whens and whys and what was really going on in race relations during that era? Have they been taught about Jim Crow, Reconstruction, the Klan, busing, how blacks were enslaved on plantations, and about the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas?

Is 1984 just nothing more to them than the year their parents got married? I'm no super-charged Dennis Miller, traveling at warp speed with off-the-wall neuronal explosions, but I do enjoy slipping literary and historical references into conversations and blog entries. Not to show how smart I am, but because nothing exists in a vacuum. Common references, if not too obscure, create a tsunami of thoughts and memories in those who hear them, and I can communicate a whole sea of ideas with just a single reference.

For example, if I say to someone who has read or seen the movie 1984 that they should face their fears by going into Room 101, I've hopefully jumpstarted their brain into thinking about their fears in a whole different way than I would have if I'd clucked and said, "Oh, come on. Don't be a chicken."

Knowing Sen. Joe McCarthy's crusade was against communism isn't just a fun fact to know and tell about events that happened over 50 years ago. His activities shaped a nation, and for a while held a nation in fear unlike anything we saw again until the post-9/11 paranoia and attacks on our liberties. McCarthyism, and its eventual rejection, changed America in many ways. If nothing else, it teaches us that even though we collectively travel towards political extremes, we can and sometimes do turn around and go the other way, letting the pendulum again find balance. It's something we need to keep in mind as we choose a new president this year.

Another study released this week looked at the ever-changing musical chairs Americans are playing with organized religion.

The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey found that only 78% of Americans consider themselves to be Christians. Over 25% of us have either changed from the faith we were born into, or have given up being religious altogether. If you factor in Protestants who have changed from one denomination to another, the number rises to 44%. Roman Catholicism has lost more members than other religious groups. While one in three Americans were born into Catholic families, fewer than one in four today claim to be Catholic. Traditional American Catholics are diminishing rapidly. Their numbers in America are staying high primarily because of the recent influx of Catholic immigrants from Latin American countries.

Even if the face of the growth spurt recently in evangelical mega-churches, which primarily attract Protestants from more mainstream denominations, religious "affiliation" in our country is fading.

Obviously, we're a nation that no longer finds solace in organized religion as much as our forefathers did.

Why?

Perhaps it's the same cause as the dumbing-down of 17-year olds in the other study: television and our growing acceptance of a fast-food sound bite society. Religion isn't simple. It requires study, and understanding, and a commitment of an hour or more on Sunday mornings and often other times during the week. It's too much work.

The evangelical groups may be growing because they entertain their congregations more, and give them catchy jingles and easy to remember phrases like "Got Jesus?" and "Praise God!" You don't have to learn litanies and all four stanzas of Amazing Grace to feel like you belong.

But in general, mainstream Christian religion, Catholicism and Protestantism, is fading away. Within a few more generations, our religious landscape may be totally different. Just as Christianity came on the scene a few thousand years ago and changed the landscape, so too will something new come along and re-align our spiritual thinking and our religious affiliations. Just as Christianity supplanted a belief in Jupiter and Juno, and before that Zeus and Hera, and before that Osiris and Isis, so to will Christianity's Jesus and Mary be replaced.

We're all looking for something deep and eternal, I'd like to think. For many of us, Christianity just doesn't provide answers to the eternal questions or the peaceful states of mind anymore.

I hope what replaces it is a more personal, spiritual nature, a One Happy World or a Federation of Planets-type scenario, dreamed about by new agers, mystics, hippies and science fiction writers. God knows what we have today — dividing ourselves into Catholics and Protestants, Christians and Muslims, etc. — isn't working too well.

Peace be with you.

Religious Affiliation | Education | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

The Christian States of America

If belief creates reality, it's no wonder we're living in a Bizarro World.

The First Amendment Center just released its 2007 survey results of Americans' opinions on the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment.

Sixty-five percent (nearly two-thirds) of the respondents said they believed the nation's founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation, and 55% believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation.

When asked to name the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, 64% knew that freedom of speech was one of them. Only 19% knew that freedom of religion was a right enumerated in the First Amendment. Sixteen percent knew about freedom of the press, and 16% knew about the right to associate and assemble. Only three percent mentioned the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

A full 29% either refused to answer the above questions or flat out admitted they just didn't know!

After having the First Amendment read to them, 25% agreed when asked if the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.

Let that sink in for a moment.

One in four Americans believes that we have too much freedom!

Thirty-four percent think the press has too much freedom. Thirty-seven percent do not think the press should be allowed to criticize the U.S. military's strategy and performance.

Twenty-eight percent believe that the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion "was never meant to apply to religious groups that the majority of the people consider extreme or on the fringe."

More from the survey:

• Public schools should be allowed to put on Nativity reenactments with Christian music: 43% agreed.
• Musicians should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics that others might find offensive: 42% disagreed.
• People should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to religious groups: 39% disagreed.
• People should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to racial groups: 56% disagreed.
• Teachers and other school officials should be allowed to lead prayers in public school: 58% agreed.
• A public school teacher should be allowed to use the Bible as a factual text in a history or social studies class: 50% agreed.

The demographics of the respondents: 67% with at least some college; 79% white; 62% having a household income over $40,000 a year; 30% Democrat, 28% Republican, and 26% claiming to be Independent. 49% were men, 51% women. Only 1/3 of the respondents had children under the age of 18.

Seventy-three percent said they were Christians (50% Protestant, 23% Catholic).

Twenty-six percent of all respondents said they were "fundamentalist/evangelical Christians." If I remember high school algebra, that means that .26 / .73 = nearly 36% of the Christians interviewed considered themselves fundamentalists and/or evangelicals.

To me, the most telling of all the statistics is the section asking where the respondents primarily get their news. Sixty-one percent of the respondents said they got most of their news from passive sources, that is, television (52%) and radio (9%).

Twenty-one percent get their news from what I would call, for lack of a better term, active sources (newspapers, 20%; magazines, 1%.) By active, I mean, in comparison to TV and radio, where you don't usually actually think about the news, at least not while you're receiving it. With magazines and newspapers, at least you choose the pace at which you try to absorb a news story, and you have the choice of whether to actually read a story or not. With rapid-fire TV and radio, you're usually just bombarded, and before you can decide if you actually want to know about a story, yet another story is being presented. Often, you're not only given the story, but told, directly or indirectly, what you should think about it.

Fifteen percent said they got their news from the Internet, and four percent said "other," whatever that means. Again, for lack of a better term, I would call news you get from the Internet "interactive." You choose what to read. You can take your time thinking about what you've read, and leisurely form an opinion. In many cases, whether on news organization sites or on personal blogs, you can interact with others by posting your own opinions, conclusions, disagreements or rebuttals.

It's my hypothesis, which of course cannot be proved or disproved without access to the individual survey forms, that the readers (of magazines, newspapers and Internet) in this survey held more liberal or libertarian views, and knew more about, and held in a higher regard (or even higher reverence), the First Amendment, while those who got their news spoon-fed to them by television and radio talking heads and pundits held the more "conservative," anti-freedom viewpoints, and knew less about, and valued less, the freedoms enumerated in the First Amendment.

Agree? Disagree? Come on... be interactive!

You can find the actual survey questions and answer tables in a PDF file provided by the First Amendment Center. You can also find the Center's original press release on their site.

News stories about the 2007 survey can be found here, and here, and here.

First Amendment | Christianity | U.S. Constitution | Founding Fathers | 2007 First Amendment Center Survey | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Hot enough for you?

It's been an extremely hot and dry summer here in Georgia, as it has elsewhere around the country.

I've noticed several of the local Protestant churches around here have taken advantage of the heat wave to try to scare up, literally, old and new members who have probably been spending their Sundays at the lake or pool.

One local church's marquee has read for several weeks: "Hot enough for you? Try Son Block." Truly a stupid attempt at a pun.

Another church's sign shouts out: "You just THINK it's hot here!" Obviously, a reference to that pesky, humid, dry-roasted feeling you'll get when you go to Hell.

Last night, driving home along the Interstate, a truck pulling a trailer carrying a race car passed me. Emblazoned across the back of the race car was this loving Christian message: "JESUS: BELIEVE OR BURN!"

What the hell (pardon my language) is wrong with these fundamentalist types, that the only way they can find to express their Christian love is by trying to scare you with a mythological place of eternal torture? Where's the love their Savior exhibited? Where's the compassion for the weak and the downtrodden, the sense of community, the grace of God?

Religion should make you feel warm and fuzzy, or at least noble and spiritual, not fearful. It should help bring out the best in a person. Don't you have a better reason to believe in your Jesus than that it supposedly gives you a Get Out of Hell Free card?

Update, Wed. Sept. 12: Most of the references to "hell" by Jesus used the Greek word "gehennah," which actually referred to the burning trash pit outside the city. One poor fellow recently experienced the "fiery pit" in Jeddah, a Saudi Arabian city on the Red Sea. While walking in an area formerly used as an animal market, he sank into "soil" that left him with second and third degree burns. Toxic waste was ruled out; what he sank into was animal waste, which as it decays produces scalding temperatures and diphosphane gas that can spontaneously combust.

Image: Though this graphic was made using ChurchSignGenerator.com, it is representative of the type of messages seen on local church marquees around the country this summer

Christians | Christianity | Church Signs | Hell | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Freemasonry: Is it a religion?

If you've been following the Taper's comments sections lately, you know we've had a troll called Jean bombarding us with pasted commentary from the anti-Masonic sites, going on about how Freemasonry is a religion. She (or he) is convinced Masonry has a plan of salvation, based on the Apron Lecture, and that Masonry is "Luciferian," based on a couple of lines from Pike's Morals and Dogma.

But for every yin there is a yang. Or as Sir Isaac Newton stated, "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction."

There's a new Masonic blog, The Square and Compass, operated by an unnamed Entered Apprentice, who, judging from his choice of published links, is from Lewisville Lodge No. 201, in Lewisville, Texas.

Welcome to Masonry, brother, and welcome to the Masonic blogosphere.

I applaud his newfound enthusiasm for Freemasonry, and for blogging, but I question his direction.

His most recent article is a long list of reasons why Freemasonry isn't a religion. His list is lifted from a work titled "'Freemasonry and Religion' by Bro. Jim Tresner, Ph.D., 33rd degree."

The blogger says that he has made it his "priority to educate [himself], Masons and Non-Masons, as well as other Christians about the honor and joy of being a part of our Ancient Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons."

In doing so, in my opinion, he seems to be under the impression that Masonry is a Christian organization, or that it operates under Christian rules, a "fact" he wants to share with his fellow Christian travelers.

His interpretation of the Five Points of Fellowship is:

1. To Serve
2. To Pray for our Brothers
3. To Keep the Business of the Lodge Confidential
4. To Support All Who Are in Need
5. To Counsel

I've never seen an explanation of the Five Points like this before. Is this something taught in Texas?

Here's the line from his page on the Five Points that made me want to write this article: "Each day, we must serve first our church, then family, brothers, friends, and even strangers we see in need."

Is this what the Five Points of Fellowship mean to you? Serve first our church?

In the article meant to explain that Masonry isn't a religion that he has copied from Bro. Tresner's work, it says, "And [Masonic principles] are not in conflict with Christianity. Masonry has nothing to do with the religion taught in the Mysteries. Rather, we are concerned with the ethics and morality taught there, ethics and morality which have been ratified by Christianity."

And in yet another one, written by Bro. Rev. Neville Barker Cryer, it states: "As in the case of King Solomon’s Temple we, as Freemasons, can withdraw into our lodges from the rush of the busy world, and in a quiet and solemn atmosphere, find inspiration to put into practice, in the world outside, the lessons we derive from the Holy Bible and our Masonic principles."

So on one extreme, there is Jean's "Freemasonry is a religion, and a Satanic, unchristian one at that." On the opposite extreme, we have this Christian brother's "Masonry is not a religion, but we get our lessons from Christianity."

From various comments, I know that no one who regularly posts on the Taper agrees with Jean that Freemasonry is a religion. Masonry offers no dogma or religious creed, and no "path to salvation." But, as wrong as Jean is, does that mean that the new blogger's explanation that Masonry is not a religion, but since he is a Christian he's going to treat it, more or less, as if it is a religion or an extension of his religion, is correct by default?

I assume Jean colors her (his?) opinion of Masonry with a fundamentalist Christian worldview inspired by conspiracy-minded anti-Masonic websites. And I color my opinions by having been chewed up and spat out by a lodge full of evangelical Christians who see lodge meetings as a Tuesday night prayer meeting. I wonder if that's the kind of lodge our new E.A. blogging brother from Texas has joined.

I have no answers, just questions. What do you think?

Update, Wed., August 29: All the links listed above to the Square and Compass blog have disappeared. It seems the blog has been taken offline.

Image: The Letter G from inside the lodge room at Lewisville Lodge No. 201 in Lewisville, Texas, from an online collection of G's from Texas. It's one of a handful in the collection that appears to be made with stained glass, and the only one that is superimposed with a cross.

Masons | Masonic Religion | Anti-Masons | Freemasonry | Grand Lodge of Texas | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

The Invisibily Visible: New World Disorder

Here's just what the world needs: Yet another anti-Masonic video.

This one, called The Invisibly Visible, is narrated by Washington, D.C., homeboy Abdul Shareef who walks the capital's Masonic-laid-out streets (13 blocks between The White House and the Scottish Rite's House of the Temple!) and interviews a Catholic priest and a Black Muslim cleric about Lucifer and the anti-Christ, and a Jewish rabbi about mysticism, Cabala, Israel's Supreme Court building and the six-pointed star. There are lots of quotes from Albert Pike, Albert Mackey and Manly P. Hall that prove Freemasonry's an occult cult, oddly mixed with sound bites and short clips from a Church of Satan video.

Then there is the obligatory montage of famous politicians making the sign of the Texas Longhorns, this one set to hardcore rock music. And of course, we hear about Adam Weishaupt, the 13's on the Great Seal of the United States, and the eye-in-the-triangle icons on corporate logos.

The video also includes the now classic folding of a $20 bill to show the burning twin towers of the World Trade Center.

What makes this one different? It's long — it's 25 minutes of your life you'll never get back — and it has an interesting soundtrack, with hip-hop, rock, and, near the end of the movie, a song that sounds to me like Cat Stevens singing new words to Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven.

"I give it an 86, Dick. It's got a funky beat I can dance to."

You know — if I keep watching this kind of stuff I may just come to believe it. Trite as it is, it's infinitely more interesting than your average blue lodge stated communication.



Masons | Masonic Secrets | Conspiracy Theory | Freemasonry | Albert Pike | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Truth has given up and gone off to the pub for a pint

Or view it on YouTube.

Truth | Comedy | Religion | Marcus Brigstock | Video | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Jack Chick parody tract warns against Tiki worship

You'd think with all those tracts Jack Chick has done, the world would have been made safe for Christianity. I mean, he's warned us about EVERYTHING, hasn't he?

Not quite.

Parodists found the one religion Chick forgot to write about: Tiki worship, which apparently is running rampant in the U.S. of A.

Save your soul against this danger by reading the tract here.

Jack Chick | Parody | Small Town Freemasonry | Religion | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Get your theocracy off my democracy: America is not a Christian nation

After reading more articles spawned by the Blog Against Theocracy campaign, I was musing ("musing" is such an overused word on blogs these days) thinking about the Radical Right's continued dead-horse beating of their mantra "America is a Christian nation."

A few miscellaneous and random points to ponder:

• George Washington wrote into the Treaty of Tripoli, later signed into law by John Adams, the phrase "...the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." [A comment on a forum about this article says this is "a myth being spread across the Internet." And this website, which posts the text of the entire treaty, indicates that Joel Barlow, not Washington, wrote the Treaty.]


• Thomas Jefferson wrote in "Notes on the State of Virgina, "It does me no injury for my neighbors to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."


• The days of the week are named after gods or goddesses or things-in-the-sky that were once considered gods. Sunday and Monday are named in honor of the Sun and Moon; Tuesday is named after the Nordic god Tyr, who was the equivalent of the Roman war god Mars. Wednesday is named for the Germanic god Woden (Wodan), who was a god of the Anglo-Saxons, equivalent to the Norse Odin and akin to the Roman Mercury. Thursday is named after the Germanic Thunor, or Norse Thor, akin to the Roman Jupiter. Friday takes its name from Frigg or Freyja, the Germanic goddess of beauty, roughly equivalent to the Roman Venus and Greek Aphrodite. Saturday, of course, is named in honor of the Roman god of agriculture and time, Saturn.


• The planets in our solar system are all named for Roman Gods: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, Charon, and Eris. Earth's other name, Gaia, was a Greek goddess.


• Many of the months are named for non-Christian gods: January is named for Janus, the Roman two-headed or two-faced god of the doorway. One face looked back to the past, the other to the future, just as we still do in the month of January. February was named after the Latin term februum, which means purification, via the purification ritual Februa held on February 15 in the old Roman calendar. That ritual probably was related to February 14 as well; the "love" rituals we go through every Valentine's Day are hardly a Christian thing. Even if St. Valentine did begin it (he didn't), he would hardly be considered a Christian by today's standards. March was called Martius in ancient Rome, and was dedicated to Mars, the god of war. It has been suggested that the name April (Latin aprilis) comes either from the Latin word aperire, "to open," referring to the new growth in springtime, or, more likely, from aphrilis, which referred to the Greek equivalent of Venus, Aphrodite. The month of May may have been named for the Greek goddess Maia, who was identified with the Roman goddess of fertility, Bona Dea, whose festival was held in May. June is named after the Roman goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter and equivalent to the Greek goddess Hera, Zeus's wife. July and August were named for the Roman emperors who were proclaimed a god and son of a god. In 42 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus was formally deified as Divus Iulius ("the Divine Julius"), and Caesar Augustus henceforth became Divi filius ("Son of a god").


• Early American space missions were named for gods: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo; it was even mirrored in the fictional Lost in Space television program with the spacecraft Jupiter II.


• American (and foreign) automobile brands and models have been named after gods: Mercury, Roman messenger of the gods; Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and of time, equivalent to Cronus in the pre-Greek pantheon; Taurus, associated with the Greek myth of Zeus taking the form of a bull to seduce Europa; Mazda (full name Ahura Mazda), the Zoroastrian god of light; Thunderbird, a mythical creature common to Native American religion; the Dodge Odyssey reminds us of Odysseus, released by the goddess Athena only to have his raft destroyed by Poseidon. Dodge also had a car called the Aries, which was a mythological ram which carried Athamas's son Phrixus and daughter Helle to Colchis to escape their stepmother Ino. Dodge also had a car called the Phoenix, named for the mythological bird associated with Egypt's sun gods, as far back as the 1950s.


• Our favorite sinking ships are named for non-Christian gods: Poseidon, named for the Roman god of the sea, and the Titanic, named for the Titans (Gaea, Uranus, Cronus, Rhea, Oceanus, Tethys, Hyperion, Mnemosyne, Themis, Iapetus, Coeus, Crius, Phoebe, Thea, Prometheus, Epimetheus, Atlas, Metis, and Dione), who ruled before they were overthrown by the later Greek pantheon we're more familiar with (Zeus, Ares, Aphrodite, et al). The NFC football team from Tennessee is named for these gods, too.


• American culture and products are rife with pagan god names: Canon cameras are named after the Japanese name of the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy. Trident chewing gum is named for the pitchfork-like staff carried by the gods of the sea, Neptune and Poseidon. There are Venus razors and a Venus Bridal brand of bridal accessories. There are condoms named for Ramses II, a pharaoh-god of Egypt. The popular Disney characters Snow White and Cinderella, taken from folklore, are veiled archetypes of European goddesses, and Pocahantas, though she was a real woman, is also a goddess archetype of Native American religion. The Allman Brothers originally recorded for Capricorn Records. Sirius Radio is named for hunter Orion's canine companion. And don't forget Mickey Mouse's dopey dog Pluto. Even our weapons of war are made by a company named after mythology: Raytheon, maker of missiles such as Patriot, Maverick, Sidewinder and Tomahawk, means "light of the gods."


• America even has her own goddess, Columbia, who graces the top of the Capitol, New York Harbor, the old Liberty Head dimes, and the start of every movie by Columbia Pictures. She is based on earlier goddesses Venus, Aphrodite, Ishtar and Isis.


• And that overused word, "musings," comes from the Muses, fifty goddesses, water nymphs, or spiritual guides who embody the arts and inspire the creation process with their graces through remembered and improvised song and stage, writing, traditional music and dance.


• Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter, and even our favorite anti-Christian holiday (since the Christians abandoned All Hallow's Day), Halloween, are pagan in origin. The word Easter derives from the name of the Germanic Goddess of the Dawn, or spring, the dawn of the year. She was called Ēaster, Ēastre, and Ēostre, in various dialects of Old English, and may go back as far as the similar-sounding middle eastern Astarte and Ishtar. Easter eggs and bunnies represent new life at springtime. Many Christmas traditions have their origins in the deep past, long before Zero A.D.


• The American Superman saga is a loose re-telling of the Jesus story. But then, the Jesus story — a virgin birth, ascensions, miracles — is a re-telling of savior myths that predate Christ by hundreds and in some cases thousands of years. Learn more about Tammuz, Bacchus, Osiris and Isis. And those stories, just like the legends told in Masonic lodges, ultimately lead you back to man's fascination with what happens in the sky.

Yes, America is anything but a Christian nation. Our culture is steeped in polytheistic paganism. Even if we're not always consciously aware of it, these archetypes live in our subconscious, reminding us that, as they say in the movie Magnolia, "we may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."

Christianity is only 2,000 years old; it's simply today's most popular Western religion. The modern American version of fundamentalist Christianity is even younger, and in many ways would be unrecognizable to Christians of the past, and totally baffling to the billions of people who lived in pre-Christian times.

Spirituality and religious belief in things greater than and beyond ourselves is timeless.

Neither Christianity nor America is ultimately cosmic, or universal, or changeless. Like everything that has come before, both will change, adapt, mutate, and eventually fade away. Or perhaps become the brand name of a toothpaste or an automobile.

We're all only here for a short while, and while we're here, we've got to co-exist — all of us — Christian, Jew, Muslim and pagan. Christianity and other religions and spiritual practices and beliefs have their place in people's lives... even in mine. The one you follow, if any, is a matter of one's consciousness and conscience. One size doesn't fit all, and no one religion is the "only one," no matter what your Bible or other Volumes of Sacred Law say.

Let me take this down to a common denominator we all understand — bumper stickers: "Get your theocracy off my democracy."

Or simpler still: "My karma ran over your dogma."

I say no to theocracy in America, and yes to religious tolerance.

Sources: Wikipedia, Wilson's Almanac, and my mind

Image: Sunrise, taken by the crew of Apollo 12 on their return trip from the Moon.

Masons | Religion | Astrotheology | Freemasonry | Blog Against Theology | Christianity | Theocracy | America | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Blogs against theocracy: 'We're not gonna take it!'

Bro. Don Tansey of the blog Movable Jewel has already said it better than I could. He said it politely. I'm more prone to ranting when it comes to this subject.

I stand with him and other bloggers this weekend in putting Christian fundamentalists on notice: We're not gonna take it!

Keep your hypocritical, overzealous, ultra-conservative, paranoid religious hands off the U.S. Constitution, the judiciary, federal, state and local governments, our schools, our kids, our bedrooms, our lodge rooms, and every other aspect of our lives you would like to control. Your twisted theological views do not represent the views of the majority of Christians or Americans, and your actions certainly aren't what Jesus would do.

The United States of America is not a theocracy. It will never be one.

Keep your church separated — stand way back! — from our state.

• Jesus is not a Republican. Or a Democrat. Or even an American.
• The Bible ain't science. Don't try forcing teachers to teach creationism in public schools. Take your own kids to that silly dinosaur park Kent Hovind created to teach that dinosaurs roamed the earth a couple of thousand years ago, but leave my kids out of it.
• Decisions about health and the use of medicines, alcohol and plants, abortion, and how to end your own life are personal decisions, not decisions to be made by your groups.
• All people are God's children... "red and yellow, black and white," as the Sunday School song goes. "Love one another," as Jesus said. "All you need is love," sang the Beatles. Stop being racists, sexists and homophobic. You're not any more special than the rest of us.
• God didn't tell George W. Bush to invade Iraq, and He damn sure doesn't support the war.
• God doesn't "hate fags," no matter how many signs you wave at soldiers' funerals.
• All families should be respected, no matter what form they take. It's none of your business who someone marries, or what someone does behind closed doors.
• Art is art. If you don't like it, don't watch it, read it, or look at it. Quit trying to keep the rest of us from watching it, reading it or going to museums to see it. (I thought the Chocolate Jesus was a minor masterpiece.)

Inside the dome of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., is a quotation by Thomas Jefferson: "I swear upon the altar of God eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Let his words be a warning to those who would replace American democracy with a Calvinist theocracy. Millions of us agree with Jefferson.

I have one suggestion for the fundamentalist Christians who want to rule America using eye-for-an-eye, hateful, vindictive, archaic Old Testament rules and practices and Paulian propaganda: Rip every page out of your Bible and burn them, except for one verse.

1 John 4:8 — Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Related websites: Blog Against Theocracy, First Freedom First, Journeys with Jood, Center for Inquiry, American Humanist Association, and many more.

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Beliefs, hexagons and the Mason's Lost Word

Today's a good day to re-evaluate beliefs, if only for a few moments. We should never get too cozy with what we believe, you know. Convictions make convicts, as the Principia Discordia reminds us, and Robert Anton Wilson suggested we shouldn't believe anything 100%, since "belief is the death of intelligence."

But... if we think outside our own self-imposed boxes, maybe we might just learn a thing or three.

Just as we were getting all excited about Some Higher Intelligence making those cool geometric shapes at Saturn's north pole (I've even seen a few "the Masons created it!" conspiracy stories about the hexagon in the past week), along comes reader Uri Kalish to bring us back to Earth. In a comment to "My God! It's full of stars! — The Polar Hexagon on Saturn," he pointed out an article from Nature.com that nearly a year ago explained the strange shapes on Saturn, and taught the reader how to duplicate them in a bucket in the kitchen sink. Thanks, Uri, for keeping us grounded.

(I didn't really think aliens or Monolithic Intelligence were responsible for the shapes on Saturn... just hoping.)

On to other things....

Is Freemasonry a religion? Was it originally intended to be a religion, or "religious" in nature? Or were early Freemasons primarily scientists and thinkers who were hiding from the established religious order, Catholicism?

An interesting article at the website Pietre-Stones: Review of Freemasonry, "Explanation of the Master's Word" by W. Bro. David Barrett, a Master Mason from Israel, makes several speculative stabs at discerning the meaning of the substitute for the Secret Word. He posits that original late 17th and early 18th century Freemasonry was Christian in nature, and that through the influence of Deists in the 1720s, was "opened up" to include non-Christians, especially Jewish men.

He comes to his conclusion by exploring variations in Hebrew writing characters, assuming that various symbols/letters were miswritten or mistranslated, which slightly altered the spelling and/or pronunciation of the substitute for the lost word.

I confess, when an author starts writing in Hebrew script and then follows with [some word] = [some number] so everything else that equals that number is the same thing (Gematria? Kabbalah?) my brain freezes and eventually my eyes glaze over (or jump to the next paragraph).

He surmises the legend of Hiram is simply a last minute substitute story for the death and resurrection of Jesus, which he says was the original story told in lodge. It was changed, or encoded, he said, to make it possible for Jews to feel comfortable joining Freemasonry.

So, anyway, I don't agree with his conclusions, or even his initial presumptions, and I don't understand his Kabbalistic/Hebrew logic, and he keeps seeming to place Albert Pike as having Masonic influence 50-75 years earlier than he did, but I enjoyed the article anyway. It nudged my current belief system, just a bit.

A third item that came to my attention recently was a letter to the editor in Gilroy, California from James Fennell, who whines about Freemasons getting special treatment by being the only group invited by the Gilroy City Council to participate in the cornerstone dedication of a new city building.

Even Fennell knows that Masonry is the only group that actually does a cornerstone dedication ceremony, but he doesn't let that stop him. To prove the city is supporting one particular religion over all others, he trots out a quote from Albert Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry thus "proving" Masonry is a religion.

Is it a religion? Was it? Should it be? What do you think?

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