Religion is like a penis!

[tugon (imported)]

I just saw this on the Davey Wavey page and I love it.

http://www.breaktheillusion.com/religio ... e-a-penis/

RELIGION IS LIKE A PENIS

It's fine to have one.

It's fine to be proud of it.

But please don't whip it out in public and start waving it around.

And PLEASE don't try to shove it down my children's throats.

[loveableleopardy (imported)]

I like this too!

[KimiRhoze (imported)]

Some members become cancerous and need to be removed

[janekane (imported)]

Here I go, off the deep end of unfathomable established socialization trauma psychosis, and into thoughts that are inherently ethically and morally forbidden? Or, not?

There are some folks who have put effort into making scientificalisticalishismical sense of the human social behavior sometimes named "religion." Such folks have, methinks, perchance included William James (twice president of the American Psychological Association and author of "The Varieties of Religious Experience), Ian G. Barbour (a college physics professor who went back to school to study religion and became a professor or physics and religion, and who, like William James, was a Gifford Lecturer, author of ""Issues in Science and Religion," "Science and Secularity," "Science and Religion," "Religion and Science," "When Science Meets Religion," "Nature, Human Nature, and God," and a bunch more. There is the book by another college professor, Philip H. Phenix, "Intelligible Religion," (the contents of which I find contrast starkly with unintelligible established religions).

Having studied H. L. A. Hart, "The Concept of Law," Clarendon Law Series, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1961, and many other books about law written by lawyers and judges and others, I am left without recourse to the scientific notion that the "Anglo-American Adversarial System of Law and Jurisprudence" is itself an inextricably unconstitutional established religion.

A legal concern was foisted upon me, against my will, by some people who make laws and enforce laws. There is the legal maxim, "Ignoranti juris non excusat," or, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." Whether (or not) ignorance of the law excuses is, to me, a form of hypothesis which profoundly merits being put to scientific testing. My life experience informs me that ignorance of the law is an absolute excuse with respect to any and all actual infractions of law. If my life experiences are actually valid, then I find that no actual validity exists within the Adversarial System.

In response to the aforementioned legal concern, I called an attorney-at-law, indicating that I needed to consult him/her and that I would pay the regular rates for the consultation. I have made a modest collection of posters, computer-printed, 11 by 17 inches, and laminated, the essence of which is a demonstration of why I find that ignorance of the law is an absolute and unconditional excuse for any and all infractions of law.

Having shown the posters to the attorney-at-law, I summarized the meaning I have for the whole set of the posters by truthfully saying, as a personal (and personally scientific) view, "I find that ignorance of the law is an excuse." The attorney answered back with the "dogmatic mantra," "No. Ignorance of the law is no excuse."

As his stated view and my stated view form a pure dichotomy, I found myself presented with a testable hypothesis, as to whether it can be shown that ignorance of the law actually excuses or does not actually excuse.

The hypothesis testing took the form of a "null hypothesis" and its dichotomous "alternate hypothesis." That is of the nature of an indirect proof, useful when one has a hypothesis which appears too complicated to prove directly. What I did was to deem as the null hypothesis the notion that ignorance of the law is avoidable, and as the alternate hypothesis, that ignorance of the law is unavoidable.

What follows is the sequence of words as best I now remember them; the meaning as accurate I can now make it.

I asked the attorney, "How many laws are there?"

The attorney answered, "I don't know."

I asked the attorney, "Is it reasonable to require people to do the impossible?"

The attorney answered, "I don't know."

I asked the attorney, "Is it decent to require people to do the impossible and punish them for the inescapable failure?"

The attorney answered, "I don't know."

I asked the attorney, "What is the law?"

The attorney answered, "I don't know."

I said to the attorney (who is known to me to be a member of a "church"), "Well, I do know the law, and there is only one of them. 'We are to love the Lord our God with all of heart, mind, soul, and strength, and, in so doing, learn properly to love neighbor as self, and in so doing, find ourselves learning the truth, and in so doing, find ourselves being set free. Now, you know the law. How much do I owe you?"

The attorneys said, "Nothing,' and immediately walked out of the conference room.

The very next day, came by post a letter from said attorney, telling me to never again contact the attorney at home or at work.

Bingo?

If I cannot know how many laws there are, I have no way to be perfectly certain that I have not unwittingly overlooked one or more laws. Because I cannot know, in advance of any action on my part exactly what laws will be applied to my action after the fact, nor how any judge will interpret the law with respect to my action after the fact, I have no way whatsoever to be law-abiding by any act of conscious will on my part. Only a religion (and, to me, only a false religion) would automatically condemn me to being a law violator long before I was born.

There is to be found, in the U.S. Constitution, that no ex-post-facto law shall be made by the Congress. However, every law which becomes understandably only when a judge decides what the law was at trial, long after the alleged infraction actually happened, is inextricably ex-post-facto.

I have put the above "stuff" on the Internet. I have brought it to the attention of a number of attorneys-at-law. No rebuttal argument has yet come to my attention. What has come to my attention is that the law demands that I comply with it, even though no attorney-at-law or judge or other person can actually understand the law sufficiently well as to be capable of being fully law-abiding in accord with the person's conscience.

Attempt to cram down my throat the notion that I make mistakes because I am inadequate to the needs of my life, and I find myself being subjected to a profoundly and devastatingly abusive religious dogma. Attempt to cram down my throat the notion that I was born into original sin (in the legal sense, as I can fathom it, that I was born incapable of being law-abiding) and I will assert that the law as a construct or construct of constructs, is of make-believe of a form which no amount of abusive coercion can make me believe, and I will further assert that I am a real and valid person who is not merely of make-believe nor of internalized coercively induced indoctrinated terror of self-denigration.

Alas, it is not the people who have internalized self-contradictory beliefs which constitute the actual problem at hand, it is only the damaging false beliefs which are in need of being removed from the human condition.

Such is a brief and very incomplete summary of what I have come to understand.

When someone can accurately inform me of the law with sufficient detail as to make practicable for me to never, never ever, be even slightly in violation of any aspect of law whatsoever, then I will allow that the rule of law has become useful instead of shatteringly abusive.

It is trivial, in my view, whether dogmas and doctrines come from what society deems religion or science, I live my life in accord with exactly one dogma and exactly one doctrine, which I hold at a safe distance within a tenuous grasp.

The one and only dogma? "There shall be no other dogma."

The one and only doctrine? "There shall be no other doctrine."

All else in and of my life is of existential observation.

[A-1 (imported)]

janekane,

...did you hear the one about the Medieval Deaf Dyslexic Hunchback bell-ringer who was burned at the stake for not believing in DOG? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPSfdmPt ... re=related)

:shakemitk

[loveableleopardy (imported)]

Anyone who does not believe in Bella will be put through the ringer...

BTW, Bella is my dog