Exorcisms. Demons. Imaginary terrorists. Renditions. "Stress" interrogations.
One can't help but wonder when the new religious fanaticism and the new interest in torture will merge.
Centuries of enlightenment. Gone -- like that.

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All religious beliefs systems endure because of fear, intellectual lethargy, ignorance and plain stupidity but the cumulative effects of indoctrination and enculturation cannot be overstated. So long as these factors remain an integral part of our experience, so will our tenacious grip on magic, superstition and all manner of anti-reason. In support of my thesis I present you with the irrefutable evidence that you demand (WMP video).
~Rev. El Mundo de Guevara
Pastor, WVCSR

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This exorcism story got stepped-on by an official spokesman for the Vatican the day after its first appearance. http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=55627

Every world religion - even Scientism - has kooks and other parasitic remora on the margins. Bloggers give the netroots a bad name when they go to the margins for a story characterizing the whole.

Alternet pulled the same stunt last week with an idiotic story about Russell Means pulling the Lakota tribe out of its treaty relationships with the US government. Russell, like the Exorcist, can only speak for himself - no matter how many movies he appears in.

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Your credibility is slipping when you publish nonsense like this. Do a little research before you put fingers to keyboard, else you look like an idiot.

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if all of you good Christians (oxymoron intended) took the time to read the bible, old testament, and new testament, not just what you are told to read, but both books, plus the history of Christianity, and the bible, you would have to come up with the opinion that religion is just so much bullshit. Unless of course you are a total idiot which is what most religious leaders are counting on.

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.......because they're too busy practicing their Secret Handshake and washing their Magic Underpants. If their underpants are as full of shit as their brains, they will never come clean.

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You're seriously comparing Mormonism to Catholicism in the context of cults? wow. Do you even know what a "cult" is? I supppose you think that the Network of Spiritual Progressives (www.spiritualprogressives.org) is also a cult just because they might have spiritual undertones in their message, which by the way happen to be PROGRESSIVE? Since when is it a crime and/or worthy of being ridiculed if someone happens to believe in spirituality? A person should have the right to be spiritual just as much as he or she should have a right to be an atheist or an agnostic.

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I would like to see an atheist produce an enigma to equal that of the Shroud of Turin. Go ahead and do it. Then atheism, the National religion, can rise above its own Cult status.

How about a stigmata? C'mon, you can do it, right? Just concentrate, and it will come, and you'll bleed for fifty years like Padre Pio and defy all medical explanations. And while you're bleeding, you can be "seen" in two places at once, like the good Padre. Just do it!

Let me know when you do. Thomas A Nagy - Global Cooling Initiative

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Religion is caused by any one or more of about half a dozen mental illnesses.
The truth about religion can be found in these books:

"The Neuropsychological bases of god beliefs" Dr. Michael A. Persinger MD,
psychiatrist 1987 "Religious people are just like my temporal lobe patients"

"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind" Julian
Jaynes Professor, Harvard University 1976 "Religious people are just like
schizophrenic patients"

"The Psychiatric Interview in Clinical Practice" Roger A. MacKinnon, M.D.,
Robert Michels, M.D. W. B. Saunders Co. 1971 "Religiosity is a common
symptom [of] schizophrenic patients"

"The God delusion" by Richard Dawkins. "Religion is caused by a kind of
computer virus that infects the living computer, the human brain."

"The Science of Good and Evil" by Michael Shermer, 2004 "Morality and Ethics
are now in the jurisdiction of Science and greatly improved thereby."

Many books in the new science called "Sociobiology": Morals and ethics are
instinctive and they evolved.

"God: The Failed Hypothesis" by Victor Stenger Scientific proof that god does
not exist.

"The God Part of the Brain" by Matthew Alper 1996. "The USA is anomolusly
religious because many early founder groups were religiously insane and fleeing
prosecution in Europe. Religion is a genetic disorder."

"The Accidental Mind" by David J. Linden, 2007 Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press. Religion is caused by the extreme klugeyness of the "designed"
by evolution brain. In particular, the narrative creation system cannot be turned
off. It generates false narratives that are believed by the generating person. This is
seen in experiments done in the laboratory. This book has the best explanation of
resistance to evolution: "There has also been an assumption that if one accepts the
idea that life developed without divine intervention, it necessarily follows that all
aspects of religious thought must be rejected. Those who take this line of
argument to extremes argue that when religious thought is rejected moral and
social codes will degenerate and "the law of the jungle" will be all that is left. It is
imagined by religious fundamentalists that those who do not share their particular
religious faith are incapable of leading moral lives." These suppositions are not
true many times over. Linden later mentions that the creationists [intelligent
design advocates] are exactly 180 degrees wrong rather than just a little wrong.
Being exactly wrong, they are unable to unlearn their error. See Sociobiology or
Sciobio.

"Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism" edited by Petto &
Godfrey, 2007. The ID and creationist crowd are trying to do away with science.
They see science as a "godless religion." The ID and creationist crowd say
training in science is brainwashing. The creationists are seriously mentally ill. It
is religion that is brainwashing.

"Manufacturing Belief" by Lewis Wolpert
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/05/15/lewis_wolpert/

"Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon", by Daniel Dennett
Let's do scientific research on religion and find out what causes it.

"Origins of the Modern Mind" by Merlin Donald 1991 "So what did you expect
from a brain that is based on the Chimpanzee brain? Furthermore, the 4 Million
years it took to go from chimp brain to "human" brain is much too short for
Nature to get the bugs worked out."

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As a sophomore undergraduate student in Physics, your homework may
include figuring out when the second coming would be required, assuming
that the bible was 100% true in the year zero. That is, when would the
bible be down to 50% true? The popular and professors' answer in 1965
was the year 500. The true answer: A friend of mine was born and
raised in Budapest, Hungary. As an adult, he came here and stayed.
After 25 years, he visited his home town of Budapest. He was unable to
communicate with his high school classmates because the Hungarian
language had changed so much. The correct answer is less than 25 years.
The first gospel was not written down until 50 years after the alleged
events and then in a different language. The people who told the story
were at about the same level of civilization as "wild Indians", I mean
Native Americans before Columbus got here. We have all played or seen
played the game called "Telephone" in which a story is passed down a line
of re-tellers. By the Sixth re-telling, the story has no resemblance to the
original. The gospel story had to have been re-told at least 6 times before
it was mis-translated the first time. [Note that whoever wrote it down the
first time was free to write whatever he wanted to. The storytellers were
illiterate and unable to check his written text by reading it. Besides that,
he wrote in Greek rather than Aramaic.] Conclusion: There is no truth
anywhere in the bible, and there never was.

ALL of the jurisdictions that were formerly in the jurisdiction of religion
have been taken over by Science. There is no longer a need to debate the
issue. Religion is an unfortunate side effect of a major and ongoing step in
evolution. [Not that evolution has a predetermined direction. We could
devolve, but we have to get over religion or go extinct. "God" will not
save us from the consequences of global warming or an asteroid impact
because there is no such critter as "god.".] Ethics and morality are
instinctive, not derived from religion. Look up "Sociobiology". The
origin of the Universe is the subject of Cosmology which is part of
astronomy which is part of the science of physics.
Religion is a SCAM. ANY religion, there are 10,000 to choose from.
ALL preachers, priests, imams, rabbis, iatolas, etc. belong in jail for "grand
theft, bunko type".

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Reference the book: "The Long Summer" by Brian Fagan. WHEN civilization
falls, you will give up your present religion because you will finally realize that
your preacher is a charlatan and your god is imaginary. It has been proven
experimentally that praying accomplishes nothing. Just before the final collapse,
you may be involved in a huge religious ceremony. The ceremony will not call
forth the god you thought would save you. Instead, the ceremony will waste the
last of your resources, resources that you could have used to move away in search
of food for your family. In the end, you may kill your preacher for betraying you.
Your preacher has always betrayed you. 99% of all people will die in the collapse
of civilization. You will not be among the survivors.

The bad news is that, if you survive, you will pick up some other equally
nonsensical religion. Religions are all about the same. All religions are nonsense
generated by the undesigned brain of man. Reference: "The Accidental Mind" by
David J. Linden, 2007 Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Religion is
caused by the extreme klugeyness of the "designed" by evolution brain. In
particular, the narrative creation system cannot be turned off. It generates false
narratives that are believed by the generating person. This is seen in experiments
done in the laboratory. This book has the best explanation of resistance to
evolution: "There has also been an assumption that if one accepts the idea that life
developed without divine intervention, it necessarily follows that all aspects of
religious thought must be rejected. Those who take this line of argument to
extremes argue that when religious thought is rejected moral and social codes will
degenerate and "the law of the jungle" will be all that is left. It is imagined by
religious fundamentalists that those who do not share their particular religious faith
are incapable of leading moral lives." These suppositions are not true many times
over. Linden later mentions that the creationists [intelligent design advocates] are
exactly 180 degrees wrong rather than just a little wrong. Being exactly wrong,
they are unable to unlearn their error. See Sociobiology or Sciobio.

If you truly want to save yourself from the collapse of civilization and possible
extinction, give up religion now and learn science. Science is not a religion.
Science is a method and process of disproving the false and finding truth.
Religion is easy. Anybody can become a member of any religion. Religion is
taken on faith, usually in the preacher or some ancient nonsensical text. Science is
hard. Science is never taken on faith. Science requires real work on the part of
those who practice it.

"Green" religion is a contradiction in terms. The greenest thing that can be done
with churches is to tear them down and replace them with schools and laboratories.
It is only by science that the collapse of civilization and the extinction of Homo
Sapiens can be avoided.

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In "Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," Jared
Diamond discusses how religion has played a role in the collapse
of many civilizations. Christianity contributed to the collapse of
the Greenland Viking civilization. If the Greenland Vikings had
spent their money on iron to make weapons and tools, they would
have had a better chance of survival. Instead they bought stained
glass windows and religious goods at a time when their sickles
were worn down to the point of looking like box cutters. The
Greenland Vikings stuck to their "Christian" and European values
when the Inuits [Eskimos] could have taught them how to hunt
whales and some kinds of seals. The Greenland Vikings stuck to
their dislike of fish while starving to death. The climate got
colder as well, but the Greenland Vikings could have survived if
they had been willing to give up their old time religion and values.
The Greenland Vikings killed the Inuits [Eskimos] they met when
they should have married into Inuit [Eskimo] society to get the
benefit of the successful Arctic lifestyle and culture of the Inuits
[Eskimos].
The inhabitants of Easter Island destroyed their environment and
caused their civilization to collapse to make more of their statue
gods.
If the Americans continue to choose religion and coal burning
over science and nuclear power, the civilization you are now part
of will collapse when global warming causes the drought in
Atlanta, Georgia, California, Australia, Greece, Turkey, the Sahel,
China and other places to grow to the point that agriculture
collapses.
Religionists will, of course, resist any change in values
regardless of the fact that a change in values is necessary for
survival. This is an issue of the preachers' income. In the end,
the preachers may be eaten, but it is too late by that time.
[Cannibalism has been proven in the case of the fall of Anasazi
civilization in Chaco Canyon. The Anasazi hunted their
neighbors at the end.]

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