In the beginning Capital created the newspaper and the academy.

And the newspaper covered current events; and the academy pursued the higher learning.

And Capital said: let there be ideology: and there was ideology.

And Capital saw the ideology, that it was bourgeois: and Capital divided the political economists from the factory workers.

And Capital called the ideology Truth, and he called criticism Fallacy. And from morning until evening was the length of the working day.

So Capital created man in his own image, in the image of Capital created he him; financier and factory hand created he them.

Now the socialist was more subtle than any beast of the field which Capital had made. And he said unto the factory worker, Yea, hath Capital said, Ye shall produce surplus value unto the Last Hour of the day?

And the factory worker said unto the socialist, We may work from dawn to dusk:

But of the fruit of our labour, Capital hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it lest ye die.

And the socialist said unto the worker, Ye shall not surely die:

For Capital doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as capital, knowing the difference between leisure and fatigue.

And when the worker saw that the shorter day was good for life, and that it was pleasant and made one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that their labour was being appropriated; and they sewed a banner together, and demanded an eight-hour day.

And the LORD Capital said unto the worker, What is this that thou hast done? And the worker said, The socialist enlightened me, and I did rest resist.

And the LORD Capital said unto the socialist, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

Unto the worker he said, I will greatly multiply thy divisions and thy alienation; in debt thou shalt bring forth commodities; and thy desire shall be to thy paycheck, and it shall rule over thee.

And the LORD Capital said, Behold, the newspaper is become muckrakish and the academy simmers with heresy: and now, lest they put forth their analysis, and embolden the workers to take also of the tree of state, and to live in liberty:

Therefore the LORD Capital convened a tells-you-what-to-think tank; And it was adorned with "fellows" and "seminars"; And these scholarly adornments lent it the cachet of the academy.

And the tells-you-what-to-think tank was nimble, like unto a newspaper; And it cranked out boilerplate for publication in the daily press.

And the LORD Capital saw that the tells-you-what-to-think tank was faithful and adaptive unto his each policy vacillation; that it was good.

So Capital created scores of tells-you-what-to-think tanks in his own image, in the image of Capital created he them; Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute created he them; National Center for Policy Analysis and Centre for Policy Studies created he them; Fraser Institute and Friends of Europe created he them.

And Capital blessed them with endowments of cash, and Capital said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply the boilerplate, and replenish the ideology, and subdue the earth: and have dominion over the scribes of the newspaper and over the eggheads of the academy, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

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Another bunch of religious wacko's...

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Executive Order: Responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security with Respect to Faith-Based and Community Initiatives



By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to help the Federal Government coordinate a national effort to expand opportunities for faith-based and other community organizations and to strengthen their capacity to better meet America's social and community needs, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Establishment of a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the Department of Homeland Security.

(a) The Secretary of Homeland Security (Secretary) shall establish within the Department of Homeland Security (Department) a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (Center).

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/print/20060307-5.html

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Executive Order: Responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security with Respect to Faith-Based and Community Initiatives

And so is this a bad thing?

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Depends on if you believe in a seperation of Church and State....

It's a sure bet that Bush's Initiative office won't be inclusive when it comes to treating all religions equally.

But those that co-opt God to disguise their own un-Christian purposes never worry about the hypocrisy.....

Praise the Lord and pass the Appropriations.........

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And so is this a bad thing?

Yes... Because Christianity is slowly but surely turning into a false religion...
Weren't we warned of this beforehand?

II Timothy 3:1-9

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people. For among them are those who make their way into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses, who will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth. As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith; but they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.

And in case you missed it... Here are the highlights...

men of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith
holding the form of religion but denying the power of it.
who will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth.


Who gave Homeland Security the right to be ambassadors of God anyway?
Oh, that's right... It sounds like the President did... ;)

And so is this a bad thing?

Yes... Because Christianity is slowly but surely turning into a false religion...
Weren't we warned of this beforehand?


Who gave Homeland Security the right to be ambassadors of God anyway?
Oh, that's right... It sounds like the President did... ;)

Respectfully Jeffrey did you read it? do you know what it says?

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Just like with his other 'faith based' initiatives, he does it without, ...and in spite of, the checks and balances previously enacted that were inherent in our government system.

"Congress wouldn't act," Bush said, "so I signed an executive order--that means I did it on my own."

And he did. And he just did it again.

Bush alone is responsible for supporting the granting of billions of dollars of taxpayer money without requiring audits, or proof that the funding produces results. He distributes this taxpayer money to private groups which can then lawfully restrict who receives this 'aid' from your tax dollars.

By establishing a new government bureaucracy to give special help to what he calls a "discriminated" community, he singlehandedly bypasses all known controls or assurances of equality previously guaranteed in federal tax spending.

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Bush recently signed into a law a bill enabling private groups supported under the $17 billion Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program to hire as they choose through 2010. The law also extends that "charitable choice" hiring authority to private programs operating under Bush's new Marriage and Fatherhood Program.

Why not just streamline hiring at federally funded faith-based organizations by requiring that everyone's religious affiliation be tattooed on their arms?


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Under the Bush administration, the total amount of federal taxpayer dollars available for social services has been slashed.

The result has been that long time established organizations that had successfully proven to have provided social services for decades are now in competition with, and/or are being displaced by untested, unaudited, so-called religious discriminatory groups.

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And so is this a bad thing?

Yes... Because Christianity is slowly but surely turning into a false religion...
Weren't we warned of this beforehand?

Who gave Homeland Security the right to be ambassadors of God anyway?
Oh, that's right... It sounds like the President did... ;)

Respectfully Jeffrey did you read it? do you know what it says?

You're right... I should have read it first... ;)

But it doesn't change the fact this 'uniform' 'faith based' form of religion is on the horizon and I see it drawing nearer every day...

Please forgive me for jumping to conclusions too soon...

Public reading of Voltaire's 'Fanaticism' angers Muslims
265 years ago, play enraged Catholics

By Andrew Higgins
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

March 10, 2006

SAINT-GENIS-POUILLY, France – Late last year, as an international crisis was brewing over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslims raised a furor in this little alpine town over a much older provocateur: Voltaire, the French champion of the 18th-century Enlightenment.

A municipal cultural center here on France's border with Switzerland organized a reading of a 265-year-old play by Voltaire, whose writings helped lay the foundations of modern Europe's commitment to secularism. The play, “Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet,” uses the founder of Islam to lampoon all forms of religious frenzy and intolerance.

The production stirred up passions that echoed the cartoon uproar. “This play . . . constitutes an insult to the entire Muslim community,” said a letter to the mayor of Saint-Genis-Pouilly, signed by Said Akhrouf, a French-born cafe owner of Moroccan descent and three other Islamic activists representing Muslim associations. They demanded the performance be canceled.

Instead, Mayor Hubert Bertrand called in police reinforcements to protect the theater. On the night of the December reading, a small riot broke out involving several dozen people and youths who set fire to a car and garbage cans. It was “the most excitement we've ever had down here,” said the socialist mayor.

The dispute rumbles on, playing into a wider debate over faith and free speech.

The name Voltaire – and the Enlightenment tradition he embodies – has frequently been cited by pundits across Europe commenting on the Danish cartoon furor. That controversy has triggered violent clashes in Pakistan, Nigeria, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, leaving scores dead. It has led to the arrest of nearly a dozen Muslim journalists who published some of the drawings and has driven the original artists into hiding.

Editors in France, Germany and elsewhere have explained their decision to reprint the drawings by pointing to principles enshrined in a statement often attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Voltaire said something similar, but the phrase was coined in 1906 by a biographer of Voltaire to sum up the French writer's views.

“Fanaticism,” the play that stirred the ruckus in Saint-Genis-Pouilly, portrays Muhammad as a ruthless tyrant bent on conquest. Its main theme is the use of religion to promote and mask political ambition.

For Voltaire's Muslim critics, the play reveals a centuries-old Western distortion of Islam. For his fans, it represents a manifesto for liberty and reason and should be read not so much as an attack on Islam but as a coded assault on the religious dogmas that have stained European history with bloody conflict.

When Voltaire wrote the play in 1741, Roman Catholic clergymen denounced it as a thinly veiled anti-Christian tract. Their protests forced the cancellation of a staging in Paris after three performances and hardened Voltaire's distaste for religion.

Asked on his deathbed by a priest to renounce Satan, he quipped: “This is no time for making enemies.”

Jean Goldzink, a scholar who edited a French edition of “Fanaticism,” sees in today's tumult a repeat of the polemics aroused by Voltaire in his lifetime.

“It is the same situation as in the 18th century,” Goldzink said. “Then it was Catholic priests who were angry. Now it is parts of the Muslim community.”

Voltaire, the pen name of Francois-Marie Arouet, peppered his writing with irreverent barbs that riled the Catholic Church. He wrote that, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”

Goldzink said Voltaire mocked all religions but had some sympathy for Islam, which Voltaire described as “less impure and more reasonable” than Christianity and Judaism.

Banned from Paris by France's Catholic king, Voltaire moved to Geneva. He quickly irked Swiss authorities, who burned one of his books. He then moved to a chateau a few miles from Saint-Genis-Pouilly and wrote a “Treatise on Tolerance.”

He later campaigned in vain to reverse a blasphemy conviction against a French noble, who was tortured, beheaded and then incinerated – along with a copy of Voltaire's “Philosophical Dictionary.”

Herve Loichemol, a French theater director who produced the recent readings of Voltaire's play in Saint-Genis-Pouilly and Geneva, said he wasn't trying to provoke Muslims but knew from experience his production might anger some.

Now that tempers have calmed, Mayor Bertrand said he is proud his town took a stand by refusing to cave in under pressure to call off the reading. Free speech is modern Europe's “foundation stone,” he said.

He said he does have one regret: He found the play, five acts in archaic verse, “deeply boring.”

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Afghan Christian, convert from Islam, faces death penalty
Case pits Muslim conservatives vs. reformists

By Daniel Cooney
ASSOCIATED PRESS

March 20, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan – An Afghan man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death on a charge of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country's Islamic laws, a judge said yesterday.

The trial is believed to be the first of its kind in Afghanistan and highlights a struggle between religious conservatives and reformists over what shape Islam should take here four years after the ouster of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.

The defendant, 41-year-old Abdul Rahman, was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada said. Rahman was charged with rejecting Islam. His trial started Thursday.

During the one-day hearing, the defendant confessed that he converted from Islam to Christianity 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, Mawlavezada said.

“We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law,” the judge said. “It is an attack on Islam.”

Mawlavezada said he would rule on the case within two months.

Afghanistan's constitution is based on Shariah law, which is interpreted by many Muslims to require that any Muslim who rejects Islam be sentenced to death, said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, deputy chairman of the state-sponsored Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

Repeated attempts to interview Rahman in detention were barred.

Prosecutor Abdul Wasi said he had offered to drop the charges if Rahman converted back to Islam, but Rahman refused.

“He would have been forgiven if he changed back. But he said he was a Christian and would always remain one,” Wasi said. “We are Muslims and becoming a Christian is against our laws. He must get the death penalty.”

After being an aid worker for four years in Pakistan, Rahman moved to Germany for nine years, his father, Abdul Manan, said outside his Kabul home.

Rahman returned to Afghanistan in 2002 and tried to gain custody of his two daughters, now 13 and 14, who had lived with their grandparents their whole lives, the father said. A custody battle ensued and the matter was taken to the police.

During questioning, it emerged that Rahman was a Christian and was carrying a Bible. He was immediately arrested and charged, the father said.

Afghanistan is a conservative Islamic country. Some 99 percent of its 28 million people are Muslim, and the remainder are mainly Hindu.

A Christian aid worker in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said there was no reliable figure for the number of Christians in the city, though it was believed to be only in the dozens or low hundreds. He said few admit their faith for fear of retribution and there are no known Afghan churches.

An old house in a war-wrecked suburb of Kabul serves as a Christian place of worship for expatriates. From the muddy street, the building looks like any other. Its guard, Abdul Wahid, said no Afghans go there.

The only other churches are believed to be inside foreign embassies or on bases belonging to the U.S.-led coalition or a NATO peacekeeping force.

Hakim, the human-rights advocate, said the case would attract widespread attention in Afghanistan and could be exploited by Muslim conservatives to rally opposition to reformists who are trying to moderate how the religion is practiced here.

“The reformists are trying to bring about positive changes,” he said. “This case could be fertile ground for extremists to manipulate things.”

Muslim clerics hold considerable power in Afghanistan, especially in rural areas where most women wear all-encompassing burqas and are dominated by men.

Hakim said that if Rahman was acquitted, it would be a propaganda win for the Taliban rebels, who have stepped up their insurgency in the past year.

In the months before U.S.-led troops ousted the Taliban in 2001, it claimed Western aid groups were trying to convert Afghan Muslims. They arrested eight foreign aid workers for allegedly preaching Christianity, but later released them unharmed.

Afghan who converted from Islam to Christianity may be freed
International leaders have asserted pressure

By Amir Shah
ASSOCIATED PRESS

March 25, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan – The Afghan government faced heavy international pressure yesterday to reconsider the charges against an Afghan man who faces a possible death sentence for converting from Islam to Christianity – and reports emerged that the man might be freed soon.

Pressure against the case has been building, and the Afghan government may be rethinking the charges against Abdul Rahman. A government official and MSNBC said yesterday that Rahman may be freed within the next few days.

“He could be released soon,” an Afghan government official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

MSNBC, citing an Afghan diplomatic official it did not identify, said Rahman, 41, could be released Monday.

Senior clerics in the Afghan capital have voiced strong support for prosecuting Rahman and again warned yesterday they would incite people to kill him unless he reverted to Islam.

Ansarullah Mawlavi Zada, the chief among three judges trying the case, asserted the autonomy of the court.

“We have constitution and law here. Nobody has the right to put pressure on us,” he said.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard, meanwhile, joined the chorus of Western leaders expressing outrage over the prosecution and said he would protest personally to President Hamid Karzai.

“This is appalling. When I saw the report about this, I felt sick, literally,” Howard told an Australian radio network yesterday. “The idea that a person could be punished because of their religious belief and the idea they might be executed is just beyond belief.”

Rahman faces the death penalty under Afghanistan's Islamic laws for converting 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Karzai's office has declined to comment on the case, which has put the Afghan leader in an awkward position.

Karzai took power after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime in a U.S.-led war in late 2001 and relies on international forces to maintain his still-shaky grip on the country.

But he would be reluctant to offend Islamic sensibilities at home or alienate religious conservatives wielding considerable power.

Diplomats have said the Afghan government is searching for a way to drop the case.

On Wednesday, authorities said Rahman is suspected of being mentally ill and would undergo psychological examinations to see whether he is fit to stand trial.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice phoned Karzai on Thursday, seeking a “favorable resolution” of the case. She said Washington looked forward to that “in the very near future.”

Senior clerics condemned Rahman as an apostate.

Rahman had “committed the greatest sin” by converting to Christianity and deserved to be killed, cleric Abdul Raoulf said in a sermon yesterday at Herati Mosque.

“God's way is the right way, and this man whose name is Abdul Rahman is an apostate,” he told about 150 worshippers.

Another cleric, Ayatullah Asife Muhseni, told a gathering of preachers and intellectuals at a Kabul hotel that the Afghan president had no right to overturn the punishment of an apostate.

Did God provide us with proof of His existence through scientific facts found in the Qur'an? ;)

Big Bang?
"Do not the unbelievers see that the skies (space) and the earth (matter) were joined together (as one unit of creation) and we ripped them apart?" The Quran, 21:30

Orbits?
"and the sun and the moon, all travelling in orbits." 21:33

Expanding universe?
"and the heavens we created with might (power) and we are expanding it." 51:47

Smaller than an atom?
"There isn't hidden (from God) the least little atom in the heavens or earth, nor what is smaller (than the atom)." 34:3


More can be found here:

Science in the Qur'an

And here:

Mathematics in the Qur'an

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II Peter 2 ;)

3 And in their greed they will exploit you with false words; from of old their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction has not been asleep.

12 But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and killed, reviling in matters of which they are ignorant, will be destroyed in the same destruction with them, 13 suffering wrong for their wrongdoing.

14 They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children!

15 Forsaking the right way they have gone astray; they have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Be'or, who loved gain from wrongdoing,

19 They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved.

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Jeffrey can you take it here please, quotes from the bible are not a discussion.

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Reality Internet Personality

quotes from the bible are not a discussion.

Sure they are... This IS the 'Religious' thread is it not? ;)

Jeffrey can you take it here please, quotes from the bible are not a discussion.

Sure they are... This IS the 'Religious' thread is it not? ;)

No it's not it's Preaching.....

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