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Where Did All This F*cking Evil Sh%t Come From? (revisited)

Evil is not itself a reality. Rather, it is the absence of meaningful reality.

By Danny O’Connor
Flickr/creative commons

Believers, Atheists, and Humanists alike are asking questions, trying to rationalize evil in the world. It seems like civilization is in retrograde when it appears to us that right-wingnuts are making more progress than they should. So what’s the answer? We tried to address this a couple of years ago, and feel it is worthy of reprinting here. Let us know what you think.

***

También en español It is undeniable that there is often a lot of pain and suffering in a human lifetime. While individual experiences vary widely, over the course of a lifetime most people will experience instances when they are confronted with the reality of an apparently genuine evil. And this inevitably starts the discussion, “Why me? What did I do to deserve this? If God loves me, why is he doing this to me? How can we love a God that would let something like this happen to anybody (not just me)? I refuse to accept the religious proposition that there is a God because I see only evidence of universal randomness, filled with constant strife between good and evil partisans! And even if there were one single personal God of the universe, he’d be way too busy to pay attention to the crap going on down here.”

But there are fundamental assumptions in this line of questioning that often go unappreciated. First and foremost are the implied assumptions about the nature of God. If one assumes that the God referenced is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent throughout time and space, then why isn’t the universe perfect? Surely a universe under the total control of a God of Love would never tolerate the amount of human misery and grief that surrounds us on all sides. Therefore, since the observed world does not match my prediction of what the world would be like if there were an omni-cube God, either such a God does not exist or my predictive method about what the world should be like is wrong. Sounds bad for my predictive methods—what man dare attempt to compass the purpose of God? Well, men have minds that, if you are God-oriented, are surely gifts of God. And my mind tells me that simplistic faith contrary to reason is most definitely NOT what any God I could personally respect would ever require of me. Therefore, if I believe the workings in my mind are True, I must perforce reject the concept of the omni-cube God. There simply is no such deity active anywhere I’ve been in the universe because his existence is refuted by the reality of my own experience.

And from this line of reasoning flows the faith of many devout atheists. It’s not so much that they reject the general idea of some sort of Supreme Being, but they can’t figure out what it would be good for because it doesn’t seem to even try to put things right in the world around us. If it’s out there, we obviously mean nothing more to it than an ant does to the automobile that ran over it in the road. Let’s try looking at this situation from a very different and more hopeful viewpoint.

Suppose that the universe is destined to be a perfect place of light and life—a universe of continuous unbridled joy in loving service, living truth, doing good, and making beauty. By our actions, our relationships, we are building small parts of this great universe of constructed perfection. But the perfect universe is not here today. Only portions are in evidence—the areas where love predominates over the primal emptiness of original space-time—where evil is merely the region into which love has yet to penetrate. Evil is not itself a reality. Rather, it is the absence of meaningful reality.

So evil is not something inflicted on us by an angry God, who abandons us to the vacuum of space-time devoid of Love. Rather, evil is the state of being where there is a weakened or nonexistent presence of Love. Since we are the creatures in the universe who are equipped with the ability to sense the presence or absence of Love, and with the tools of Truth guided reason that enable our will to effectively direct our loving actions, it is necessarily our responsibility to fill the gaps in finite reality where Love does not adequately penetrate.

The response of the finite universe to the force of destiny, the necessity of evolution towards a perfect state of light and life, requires the participation of many beings working together and dedicated to the ideals of Love, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

If you see evil in the world and have sufficient resources of Love, you can make the repair yourself. Our planet seems to have been shortchanged on loving service in the past, so we have a lot of gaps in our Love coverage. Many of these will require the cooperation of many people of goodwill, even entire communities and nations, to bridge vast gaps of lost communication and long misunderstanding.

So let’s get with it. Is there evil in the world? Then let’s work together in Unity to Love it out of existence. It’s our job to do this and this is how destiny is realized. Fear not to act. With Love and Truth you can only do Good and make Beauty.

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

in Uncategorized by Alison Gardner 15 Jul 2014 0 comments

Express Your Dissent!

It is unbelievable that in 2014
we are still fighting about women’s
access to basic health care like birth control.

If you agree — say so. Just click here now
to add your name to the dissent.
— Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood

Photo by James Palinsad
Flickr/creative commons

In a dramatic 5-4 decision along ideological lines, the Supreme Court today chose to side with corporations over people and set a brand new (and untested) precedent that is just the starting gun for more and more corporations claiming religious freedom superiority over the needs of their employees.

(See a LATE BREAKING UPDATE at the bottom showing the already cascading effect this decision is having in the lower courts, in less than 8 hours.)

In Burwell v Hobby Lobby, the right-wing justices vacated a portion of the Affordable Care Act that applies to certain for-profit corporations, giving them superior religious freedom rights. They performed this bit of surgery with a dull hack saw. In the the process they perpetuated a fatal misunderstanding of the difference between pregnancy prevention and abortion.

Protecting the free-exercise rights of closely held corporations thus protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control them. — Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito

It was a good day to be a boss. And a very good day for all the lawyers who will now thrive because of the havoc this decision will fuel.

Justice Stephen Breyer and the 3 women Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayer, and Elana Kagan, dissented in consideration of the tens of thousands of working women who are now unable to exercise their religious freedom, or more bluntly, freedom from the religious freedom of others with whom they disagree. Ginsburg called it, “A decision of startling breadth,” and went on to say . . .

The Court’s expansive notion of corporate personhood . . . invites for-profit entities to seek religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their faith . . . The Court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield . . .

The longstanding, extreme right-wingnuts’ campaign to dismantle any gains in reproductive freedom is driven solely by their theocratic fundamentalist beliefs that dictate that women shouldn’t control their own bodies, or shouldn’t be wanting to have sex in the first place, and that pregnancy prevention amounts to another form of abortion. Their position is that discrimination against women health care is not discrimination at all — it’s okay for your bosses to know better what you need.

Now it’s up to the Congress to provide a contraceptive work-around, if possible. For now, however, working women have to pay twice, first by their labor which entitles them to health care, and then separately outside of their company’s health care program. For example, a working woman now must pay more than $1000 for a IUD, an intrauterine device that prevents pregnancy, in many cases equal to a month’s pay.

There is an irony here because less available contraception will result in more pregnancies which are even more expensive and more of a strain on women’s overall health and their economic opportunities.

This impasse is a perfect example of an inhumane and coercive system that must be replaced with a humane and voluntary association outside of the influence of governments, corporations, and religious hierarchies. Shall birth control, including abortion, be a matter for the growing theocracy or be a matter between a woman and her health care providers? See A Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom to understand why VenusPlusX believes issues like these are of supreme importance.

Join us and Planned Parenthood in expressing your dissent so together we can do everything possible to protect and defend women’s health and rights nationwide.

— Some equally bad decisions this session: McCullen v Coakley, stripping buffer zones at women’s clinics; and, today’s weakening of unions, and the worker benefits they sponsor with Harris v Quinn

— Two very good decisions: Protecting personal privacy in Riley v California Ruling, and denying cert rejecting challenge to California’s law banning gay sex therapy.

— When Will We Move to Impeach Certain Supreme Court Justices, Part 1 and Part 2

— When Free Speech Becomes Sedition

— How Right-wing Nuts are Actually Helping Progressives

UPDATE from SCOTUSblog: Acting swiftly in the wake of the Court’s ruling on Monday, and relying directly upon that decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Monday blocked all enforcement of the mandate against an Alabama Catholic TV network, a non-profit entity. Dozens of cases similar to Hobby Lobby are in the pipeline and now sure to be viewed with more favor.

When Free Speech Becomes Sedition

Chelsea Nesvig’s
Ripe for A Caption
Flicker/creative commons

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal:
People are ready for a hostile takeover
of Washington, D.C.,
warns of a coming rebellion.

Yeah, he really said that, hostile takeover, and I think he was speaking not only to those present (1000 evangelical leaders) but to all the trigger-happy militias and tea party folks who would savor the opportunity to do just that.

Jindal’s remarks foment unrest and civil war in America even though it would result in nothing less than a fundamentalist theocracy, one just as bad as the Sharia Law they rant against.

As Jindal sees it, religious freedom and the American Dream are being threatened. Someone over the age of 8 should be able to see just who is making threats in this situation, however.

There’s more and more online traffic, and Facebook and Twitter chatter, about the implosion of right-wing extremists, something that seems more inevitable with each passing month.

In a recent set of op-eds, including, Right-wingnuts Bless Progressives, and When Will We Move to Impeach Certain Supreme Court Justices (Part 1 and Part 2), I’ve been speaking out because these miscreants are so mean, so hateful, so exclusionary, but most of all SO SCARED of change anywhere, including in their own lives and behaviors. And, because they are so emotionally troubled and childish in their logic, their pronouncements are simplistic and without a future in the real world. They cause some pain, but there is no there there, no future. But, as I cautioned last week . . .

Make no mistake, these right-wingnuts, all of whom are white christianists with only a handful of exceptions, are just as misguided and murderous as any fundamentalist theocrat you can find in all the world’s trouble spots. And, just like them, right-wingnut politicians have fueled domestic terrorism.

The chief sponsors of this theocratic oligarchy are very sad, and so desperate to make their negative points that they now talk like we can’t see or hear them, resulting in a surreal effect. Lately it seems like one goes down a day, self-destroying their own legacy, self-creating permanent stains on their careers, what they will be most remembered for.

George Will damning campus sexual assault victims for obtaining a coveted status is relatively benign compared to the seditious comments and speeches of people like Jindal and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia whose words and conduct direct the overthrow of the state and the democratic process.

Jindal and Scalia are just two of these known threats to democracy, individuals that can be prosecuted under the current laws. If left to their own devices, they and their cohorts will spark a civil war. But what can we do out it? If we don’t know, we better dig deeper.

Limits on free speech are few and far between in an open society like ours, and finding someone guilty of the crime of sedition has faded from use over the last century. But are we ever to draw the line? I think I know where that line of criminal sedition is: Whenever a public servant with authority, or even a celebrity with lots of Twitter followers, uses their conduct or speech to incite people to rebel against the state (especially the U.S., which dominated by duly elected public officials), they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Domestic terrorism is a growing threat, according to the Department of Homeland Security, and these right-wingnuts are making the case for it. They must be stopped. Jindal can be voted out office and Scalia can be impeached but that won’t shut them up unless they are formally prosecuted.

We want to know what you think, so please comment here or on Facebook/Venusplusx, or write to us directly, columbia@venusplusx.

Bobby Jindal Says Rebellion Brewing in Washington

When will we move to impeach certain Supreme Court justices? Part 1 and Part 2

Right-wingnuts Bless Progressives

Budowsky: History to Impeach Roberts

Sign petitions to impeach John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas.

And, to learn why VenusPlusX thinks this is important, read A Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom, and catch our unique mix of posts and videos 24/7 that will get us all to our better future, sooner rather than later.

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized by Alison Gardner 23 Jun 2014 0 comments

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Search results for "right wing nuts"

Where Did All This F*cking Evil Sh%t Come From? (revisited)

Express Your Dissent!

When Free Speech Becomes Sedition