The Crack that Lets the Light In

It does sound to me as though you are taking legitimate disagreement as an attack.

AND you have a respite from "reading wore for wore at least twenty years ago and seen repeated often." As you mentioned earlier, you no longer read my posts.

I love that word 'IF' don't you?

GRRrrrr, and now the terrible monster speaks again. You will have noticed, no doubt, that my reference was to those atheists who believe that there is no such thing as a God or gods and attack the Bible even though they have never studied those scriptures.

Are you saying that those atheists have the right to attack another’s beliefs?

I would love to be there when they wake up one day and see a member of their family carting their body off to the crematorium and wonder what the hell is happening.

I will say no more.

I plainly said that nobody should, not just the religious.

Did you really?

I seem to remember that you said, 'What you wrote here is the stuff of monsters.'

Of course I did. And then I elaborated. Had you read the whole thing in an unbiased way you might have gotten the full meaning of that post.

Thank you for admitting that you believed that my thoughts which were converted into words, was the stuff of monsters.

You are very welcome.

The monster crack comes from unrelenting bigotry against one who believes differently from you.

You think, do you? Well, the monster crack must let so much light into
their dark minds of ignorance. What do you recon old mate.

I figure bigotry to be a trigger of oppression.

Somebody who broke up with me many years ago stated that my atheism was a big factor. This despite the fact that she knew this about me before we started seeing each other. In the course of the conversation she made the argument that society decrees it in favor of religion, making it the default position. I scoffed. I told her that if society knew some things about her that I know she would be in jail. Needless to say, she went her way and I went mine. She held my opinion against me, but I never held her opinion against her. Yet I get labeled the intolerant one.

Fine thanks EB and I trust you're well too.

Census data blindly projects that atheism will be the most believed stance in many countries in the near future although total world believers continue to outpace scholastic education.

As I have long asserted, I believe we are hard wired to believe or not. I don't think education or brainwashing can alter that. It may take the brainwashed half a lifetime to settle for the correct one but it, generally at least, will happen.

I was brainwashed by my atheist father, but when I was seven years old the young teenage girl from next door took me to Sunday school for the first time, I floated home on cloud nine and began my lifelong pursuit of discovering the truths as revealed in the Holy Scriptures.

But don't get me wrong, my atheist father had more love for his fellow man than every pope who has ever lived.

In my case nobody taught me a thing. I automatically did not believe. At one low point in my youth I wanted what Christians claim to have. I read a collection of books based on the Bible and I went to church every week. Try as I might I could not be convinced and remained an atheist.

In other words, you read a collection of books based on the false traditions that have evolved over thousands of years. What a pity you hadn't studied the scriptures themselves and allowed the indwelling evolving spirit of "WHO YOU ARE" guide you through them.

Let me give you an example.

Helena was the mother of Emperor Constantine, who established his Universal church in 325 AD, some 300 years after Jesus had established his apostolic church in Jerusalem. Constantine appointed his mother Helena as Augusta and gave her unlimited access to the imperial treasury in order to locate the relics of early Judeo-Christian times. And the church of the Nativity in Bethlehem of Judaea, was originally financed and built by Helena the mother of Emperor Constantine, who have both been deified as saints by the Universal church that was established in 325 AD.

According to the traditions of the Church of Constantine, Mary and her child [supposedly] rested in a cave, called the Milk Grotto (la Gruta de la Leche), near the Helena place where today stands the Church of the Nativity (la Iglesia de la Natividad). There, (Or so it is said) their supposed Virgin Mary breastfed the child Jesus to keep it quiet, while the soldiers of Herod were slaughtering the innocent children in Bethlehem of Judaea. A drop of milk [supposedly] fell on a stone of the cave, and the stone was supposed to have magically turned white.

During the early centuries, this white rock, diluted in water, took the appearance of milk and was used as a religious relic. Both Christians and Muslims believe scrapings from the stones in the grotto boost the quantity of a mother’s milk and enhance fertility. Mothers usually mix it in their drinking water; would-be mothers place the MAGICAL rock under their mattress. There is also an old tradition which originated from the universal church of Constantine that identifies this as the burial site of the young victims of Herod’s Slaughter of the Innocents. There is a chapel dedicated to them in the caves beneath the Church of St. Catherine. None of this can be historically or scriptually supported.

According to the traditions handed down by their saint Helena, it was in 6 BC, in the first few days after the birth of the child that the wise men paid homage to the baby Jesus in the manger in Bethlehem of Judaea, and immediately after the wise men were supposed to have left, Herod’s men began killing all the male children in that district who were two-years and below, while Mary supposedly hid in the milk Grotto, after which, Joseph and Mary with the baby Jesus, fled from Bethlehem of Judaea into the land of Egypt.

These traditions are based on the bible, but nothing there can be supported by the SCRIPTURES. Such as the fact that the wise men, according to the bible didn't even appear in Jerusalem in search of the promised king, until almost two years after the birth of Jesus.

I read more than that collection afterwards and I certainly read much more in succeeding years. I tell you you can't educate a person into belief, just as you can't educate into disbelief. In my 82 years on this planet I've experienced nothing spiritual or miraculous and neither has anybody I know.

I too am 82, born in July 1942.