Its bleak. I think its just old fashioned power grabs and dictatorships.

They want power and control, realize that there will be scarcity in the future and want to grab it, control it, and at the same time create a climate at home which will allow dictatorship and the police state. This will stop the "pesky people" from making problems for the dictators, the police will be deployed against them and they will have greater powers of arrest

although the religous versus secular theory is appealing - it's just a theatrics.

The meat is in the markets - power and control.

Religion and its opposition are simply used to manipulate minds into one camp or another.

Though in a sense it does have something to do with God -

Anyone who strives for full spectrum dominance on earth DOES NOT believe in a God that created all men as equals and will judge them based on their treatment of eachother and the creatures of this earth.

As sure as the SUN rises from the east, these men and women WORSHIP THEMSELVES.

They are not expecting any return of a mythical Jesus. They are atheist who are the functional pawns of the New World Order. They have found, in the fundamentalists, a stupidity of unbelieveable degree and they say the right words to prod these stupid sheep. It's all about One World Order. They actually believe that they will have a place of honor in the One World Hierarchy. Sad, foolish toads.

"Sad, foolish toads"

I love it!

out there who just love to blame the Christians.

Bush is a puppet. His religious belief might be genuine or not, but it has very little to do with policy.
Dick Cheney is not religious at all and neither are his friends from the PNAC.

All the Christian Zionists who believe in "rapture" and Armageddon around the corner, are nothing more than dupes for a power-agenda.
Those neocon atheists might worship (figurativly) Nietzsche or Leo Strauss or literally some esoteric crap, but definitely not a Christian deity.

But it just makes me mad, when I read once again, that the whole mess is the Christians´ fault.

You cannot go on any progressive American website without the blame for all evil being put squarely on the shoulders of the Christians.

But if you look closely at world events the last 100 years you can see, that all wars were started by atheist power-worshippers.

Hitler tried once to play the Christian card and now the atheists tell us his ideology was Christian.

That´s total crap.

Hitler wanted to reintroduce some Nordic religion worshipping Thor and Odin.
He believed Christianty was weak and he hated it because it taught compassion and equal rights and was non-racist. He put thousands of Catholic priests and hundreds of thousands of ordinare Catholics in concentration camps, many of them died because of the terrible conditions there.

Stalin, of course,whose deportation, starvation and resettlement policies killed millions, was an atheist.

Kennedy was at least nominally a believing Catholic, however it´s rather clear that he wanted to end funding the Vietnam adventure and pull the Americans out. LBJ who escalated, was definitely no devote Christian.

Bush, the elder, is no believing Christian.
And the neocons are in their majority no Christians.

Some 40 years ago the Christian Zionist were a small and apolitical sect in America. With the help of the often Jewish owned media and some financing directly from Israel, they became larger and very political.

One other reason are the very aggressive "liberals" pushing an agenda of hatred against Christianity.

It´s not only the abortion-rights, which 80% of Americans, most of them women are opposed to and the gay-marriage issue, it´s mostly the laws pushing any sign of Christianity out of public life.

In Germany there is religious freedom and also a seperation of Church and state in many ways, but there are religious classes in school, and parents decide, if their children attend.

Nowadays some schools offer classes in islamic religion and classes in "ethics" taught by secular humanists.

In Christian religious classes a lot of time is taken in teaching about other world religions in a positive manner to further tolerance between the cultures.

There is far less aggressiveness in German atheists and a lot more tolerance in German Christians than there is in America.

When there was an asylum debate in Germany and the state was trying to deport some Kurdish asylym seekers back to Turkey,without regard to the danger they would be in, there were Catholic churches, who tried to give them Church-asylum.
The whole Catholic community was feeding and shielding those Muslim families.

In Germany atheists and christians can talk to each other without insults. In America this seems totally impossible.

If the atheists would have been less aggressive, George W Bush could never, ever have played up the Christian card to be elected on a war-agenda.

... always bring the worship of man himself. My view is that Man created God and not the other way round (but I understand why so many humans believe the standard story). If the problem is three man-centered religions, why not revert to a Sun- or Nature-centered one? Go back to the times of Ekhnaton, worship Sunlight. What would we do without It? Or are we heading towards worship of the hydrocarbons?
By the way, they (the neo-cons) went into Afghanistan for the drugs, yes, but also for the Caspian Sea's natural gas, to be transported by pipeline through Afghanistan and liquified and shipped from Pakistani ports ...

You know what, I think that the power elite are nature-worshippers.

The "Doctor Death" kind of guys.
They hate humanity, see humans just as another animal species, which must be culled from time to time or there would be too many of them.

They are environmental facsists who deliberately hinder the progress in environmental technologies which would make human living less harmful to nature.
They want a crisis and then cut down humanity.

The whole crap about we eating the planet is just propaganda.
In Europe there is outside from Russia not a single spot of land which has not been changed by men. But we still can live here and feed ourselves and above. We have found ways to clean up rivers, our level of smog has gone steeply down since the 1800s and still we have with the exception of Bangla Desh the highest per capita population on earth in our countries.

In Germany we will in the future produce 25% of our energy need from giant wind wheels in the the Northern Sea.

We will cut down energy need by 50% from today by using energy saving technology and isolating all houses well, no cardboard houses like in America.

We have developed technology where we can use the temperature differences from above ground and several meters below ground, for either heating or cooling houses and even house-blocks. It is already used in pilot projects.
Some of our energy houses can produce more energy than the family needs and sell the rest into the public grid.

New research from the very thorough Max Planck institute has come to the conclusion (together with scientific researchers in other countries) that global warming is more or less a natural phenomena caused more or less by periodic changes in sun-intensivity.
Since this happened many times before in human history we can be sure, that this will not lead to a man-erasing catastrophy.

Drillings into glaciers have shown that climate changes have allways happened in small jumps forwards and backwards, not gradually as mainline media wants to imply.
There is nothing new to stormy periods, there is nothing new to raising or lowering of temperature by a degree or so.
And humanity has next to nothing to do with it.

One other thing, thats in the anti-human fear- and hate-mongering is the notion that the earth is a "stable ecologic system".

That´s crap. The earth has allways been in a flux:
Ice-ages have reduced flora and fauna dramatically and warm-ages have increased it. The whole planet became a growing paradise.

And whenever a species of plants or animals through the air or water-waves has happened to settle in a new place it did not just find an empty room, it went in there and changed the environment in some way, helped some other species to encrease and some were hindered or even exstinguished be the new arrival.

We are no "virus to the planet".

We do what other species have done before us. But we are the only species which can realize what it is we are doing and try to save other species from extinction if we choose to do so.

All this talk about a nature based philosophy is a thin disguise for misanthropy.

I believe, that God created earth so that we can live here.
He gave us the tool of intelligence to use and show us a spark of Himself.
Therefor human life is sacred above all other species. We can use our intelligence as tools in working with and respecting nature, but when we start to love nature more than our fellow human beings then something is definitly wrong.

All this talk about a nature based philosophy is a thin disguise for misanthropy.
Maybe. But why do you say I am/we are misantropists? Because we are critical of humans? Is being critical of Jews (who are not semitic btw) being then anti-semitic? In your own philisophy, as exposed, you come up as a christian supremacist to me. God's given right to use and misuse Nature and the planet's resources as you please!
I have worked in the Max-Planck Institutes. They are full of Ashkenazi 'Jews', of philo-'semites' or even philo-zionists. So their opinions, frankly, don't impress me.
Global warming is not just a regular fluctuation of the Earth's climate, because it's so rapid we can see it with our own eyes. Have we been hit by an asteroid? Is it all due to Mount St.Hellen's eruption? Maybe, but my view is that it's better be safe than sorry.
Germany is an ashkenazi/israeli colony, admit to it (you just gave free-of-charge to Israel 3 nuclear-weapons carrying submarines). You're right we should love our fellow humans before Nature, our progeny in particular - and that's why we have no right to consume the planet as we wish. What are we going to leave to our children?

I will share my two cents worth later this evening - just wanted to say thanks, to Steven, for triggering this outstanding and crucial debate.

but it seems to me, that your anti-Jewish anger might have clouded your judgement.

Some time ago I posted on a German forum a link to economic analysis on the Dollar and its decline.
One of the forum members answered me, that this analysis was irrelevant, because the guy who wrote it, was a holocaust denier.

Doesn´t this sound a bit ridicoulus?
What does the Holocaust have to do with the dollar economy?

Sure there might be Jewish people working at said institute, so what? Physical evidence is physical evidence, just like in matters of the Holocaust and in matters of 9/11.

If I am Christian supremacist, than you are an atheist supremacist, who believes all Christians are stupid. I have met many of them online.

One other thing:
I followed your argument with the Jewish person on the other thread. And in many ways I believe you are right, but in others you put too much blame on the Jews, Kazars or Azkenazis.

Yes, there was a high percentage of Jews in the Soviet leadership, but Stalin had lowered it in his purges.
There were many rapes against German women reported, but many Germans fled from the eastern provinces before the Russians even came, because of the Nazi propaganda saying the Russians would kill all Germans.

I have myself members in my extended family who did that.
Rapes are not uncommen in war and did not need to be organized by anybody.

It does anger me, that Germany gave Israel those subs, but it does not make Germany a Jewish colony.

And about the better "safe than sorry" argument, if you had actually read my post, you would have seen, that I make the point, that Germany is trying very hard to find more sustainable ways of energy production together with cleaning up the environment.

And in 2 things you do make my point:
Atheists are aggressivly anti-religion and they see a romaniticised nature as being more valuable than humanity.

And I repeat myself once again:

We human beings are part of nature, we can love it and respect it, but the minute we love nature more than our own fellow human beings we are doomed and that´s true for the next generation as well.

that I sound so aggressive.
I truly believe that all people of good will should work together and respect each other.

But I have seen this attitude of atheists so many times, since I have entered discussion on the
english speaking net.

I started on a religious forum and I have in my life before never seen so much hatred as was spoon out by the atheists.
Those people had no respect whatsoever for the religious forum members. And even when we tried to reach out to them and be nice and try some reconciliation we only got hate back.

When one lady from Saudi Arabia entered the forum and tried to explain to us Islam, both the Christian fundies and the athiests fell all over her.

In real life I have met many Muslim people and also on the net. I have been invited to Muslim homes.

Never, ever have I ever met a Muslim off-line or online who talked mean and vicious and hateful to me.
NEVER

But I have very seldom met an atheist on the internet who could refrain from calling the Christians names.

So in my experience atheism is a supremacist and intolerant ideology. Many atheists are so full of themselves, they cannot even see religous people as equals to talk with.

And I do blame atheists for the sorry state in American politics.
The hateful atheist "liberals" have driven far too many Christians into the arms of the just as hateful but so cleverly deceptive neo-conservatives.

And as a conspiracy-theorist I have my suspicions that this might not be an accident at all.

As for the nature versus humanity argument I would like to make a blog post out of it.

I think it is important, to at least discuss the suspicion that part of the environmental fear-mongering is a disguise for power-politics, a justification for aggressive war-mongering.

... may be my religion, maybe. Perhaps, if Ekhnaton were around I would go for him. But I see more sense in worshiping Sunlight (don't you Germans do it all the time when you go south?) than a Man made God (which was Moses' invention). Please don't take offense: I said and repeated I respect ALL religions, really, because I see them as part of the historical development of Mankind. I don't view Christians like stupid at all, on the contrary they were/are very clever. But yes, Christian supremacism does grate on me. So does Jewish supremacism. The Judeo-Christian philosophy is consuming this planet beyond repairs. Does that make me automatically a Nature supremacist? I don't advocate Nature is best over everything: I kill mosquitoes and I combat germs and viruses when they attack my system. Humans must come first, but not to the point where Nature must succomb, because we are part of Nature and we can't leave the planet.

So since you challenge me, and I just love challenges, I shall comment on your criticism on my past posts. So sorry if I read your own posts so quickly, time is money unfortunately. Yes, I know Germany makes a strong effort to decrease her dependency on fossil fuels. But as a scientist I see some developments as futile. For example, wind power. As you know, wind arises because of thermal differences between different regions on the Earth's surface. With global warming advancing, what guarantees you have that the wind flux will remain as strong as it is now? Don't take it as brash criticism, I'm only saying wind-power is not a radical solution. But I agree that ALL must be tried to rid ourselves from our dependency on hydrocarbons. As for Germany being an ashkenazic colony, well it's true: look at all the russian Ashkenazis you are taking aboard and for free. I personally know of whole russian-ashkenazic families with elderly people in their midst moving block-solid from Russia to Germany, with profession-linked pensions being offered to all members. What will the young Germans say to that, having to pay for the pensions of people who never lived in Germany before? Look, the sauna-baths in Germany used to be quiet, relaxing places where to sweat; now they are noisy places, with Russian being spoken loud ... by Ashkenazi immigrants. There are Russian-speaking suburbs in every city in Germany, 'russian' shops and of course brothels. Some of these 'Russians' (most can't even speak German) are Volga-Germans, the great majority are Ashkenazis.
Now you attack me for being 'angry' on Jews and because they are mostly turkik. Look, I said many times we should not be angry at them, we should be angry with ourselves for lacking tribal bonding, that's all. I merely try to explain things as and why they are so. If I see 'the way of the steppes' in the ashkenazis it's because I have experienced these ways. I don't blame the Turanians for being so, imagine having to live in that flat, endless grassy inferno. Would you not try all you can to get away? Well, they did. The steppes are now almost devoid of nomads. They now live in our midst. So I try to explain with my schemes, never to condemn.
As to the rape of the German women in the aftermath of WW2. Have you read Alfred-Maurice de Zayas? James Baque? John Sack? The ONLY three books available on the German Holocaust by the winners of WW2, 9 million civilian+POW victims, defenseless people. Who else in this forum knows about this? The wholesale rape of German women resulted into about 2 million illegitimate births, fatherless children of untold violence and misery. That rape, you know it, was instigated by 'jewish' hero Ilya Ehrenburg and his fellows. So every war entails that kind of abomination? Maybe at the time of Genghis-Kahn! Let me remind you that the nazi soldiers besieging the USSR indulged in romances with the Russian women, not rape, which was severely punished (on racialist grounds).
What else ...? Ah:
Sure there might be Jewish people working at said institute, so what?
As I said, the Ashkenazis are not committed to alternatives to fossil energy, because right now they control its distribution. So I don't expect the Ashkenazi scientists to be credible in this domain, even if they are good scientists, because they're politicised on this issue.
If I am Christian supremacist, than you are an atheist supremacist, who believes all Christians are stupid. I have met many of them online.
I'm sorry you have. This one writing here is not one of them, not an atheist supremacist. Nobody's better here, we must all recognise our limits.
... you put too much blame on the Jews, Khazars or Azkenazis.
I don't blame anyone, like said above, I only try to explain. I know some sephardic Jews as well, they are so much softer, though OK always business-like. Why? We must give an explanation. Mine is the millenium-old animosity between the nomadic and the sedentary nations. It's a well-established theory, in fact, not mine at all. I just apply it.
Yes, there was a high percentage of Jews in the Soviet leadership, but Stalin had lowered it in his purges.
Since I've already written too much, let me just say this is a very complex history where few have really understood what went on. I have come to the only reasonable conclusion that the purges were mere in-fighting within criminal (jewish) ashkenazic (let's say khazar) competing gangs. What really lowered the ashkenazic share of power was the trauma of WW2 in the USSR. But we can continue on that later.
It does anger me, that Germany gave Israel those subs, but it does not make Germany a Jewish colony.
What, with the deep guilt-complex the 'Jews' have implanted in the modern German society? In France, Germany, Austria you can be imprisoned for saying anything against the Nurenberg Trials, the 6 millions. There are punitive laws just like in the early, ashkenazic, USSR of Lenin where to say the 'Jews' killed the Romanovs or organised the 1917 coup d'etat was punishable with death. So, if the young USSR was an ashkenazic colony, you agreed, is Germany now not the same in view of what I said above?
Atheists are aggressivly anti-religion and they see a romaniticised nature as being more valuable than humanity.
This one atheist does not want to be a supremacist, if you percieve him to be so: please, do attack me.
We human beings are part of nature, we can love it and respect it, but the minute we love nature more than our own fellow human beings we are doomed and that´s true for the next generation as well.
Granted, and your apologies are accepted.

Erlenda, I know what you mean. I debated on a place called www.atheistnetwork.com.

As I expected, immediatley the discussion was not much about religous apologetics, but more about character attacks and calling religious people sheep and idiots.

I responded calmly and brought the issues to bear, and had some really incredible discussions with them. Once they realized I was here to stay on their message board, they began to accept me, and I actually became the only theist member to be allowed onto their other regular boards reserved for atheists. I was willing to accept when points I supported were wrong and generally came with an attitude to learn, not to change their minds or teach them something, but rather to sharpen my debating skills and see whether what I believed was very logically sound.

Anwyays. As time went on, I saw many theists come and go, whether Muslim or Christian, or even Deist, one and all, they came with their beliefs that they HAD to share with the "heathens". They believed they had a monopoly on truth, they were rude, stubborn, condescending, and often provided little proof other than their holy book, or arguments that had been disproved 200 years ago. It was sickening, and I generally didn't like being lumped or associated with any of them. I'd often join the atheists in picking apart their ridiculous positions on various issues.

Long story short: Once they realized that I wasn't an ass, they accepted me, and treated me fairly. There is an overwhelmingly large number of un-educated christians, muslims, and other religous persons who joined these message boards and insisted they were right in the face of overwhelming evidence that they were completely wrong. They were, to be blunt, stupid people. To atheists, the belief in a Deity is a weakness, something to support personal problems or inadequecies to justify your meaningless life. It would be hard not to be condescending in that situation. Give them some grace.

-Jebus

... what Jebus says here applies to me too:
To atheists, the belief in a Deity is a weakness, something to support personal problems or inadequecies to justify your meaningless life.
It is also my firm belief: I don't need religion, I can live without it. Maybe, I'm creating a religion of my own and for myself. But I respect yours, whatever your religion might be, so long as you don't throw your holy books at my face. Then I will listen to you when you quote them. Always.

Is ridiculous, it neglects to see all the evidence that points to a Creator. A real Creator, with Attributes of Speech, Hearing, Will and Power.

It is not stupidity, to recognize that man is weak, and needy. One day without water and he cannot think about anything else, a week without food and he will do anything to survive. Man is totally dependent, he may not realize this because of 'civilization', but we would all know in a situation like Katrina. Atheist man would revert to animal like existence, brutal etc. A God believing man would rely on the Creator.

Atheism logically means nihilism, if life is meaningless with no need for a 'crutch', then the morality is the strong must take from the weak and social Darwinism. This might appeal to Fascists, but it does not appeal to me.

Materialistic science is collapsing, all their cherished ideas of mechanistic naturalism and Evolution (without a God) are collapsing or are in the process of collapsing. Matter is not eternal, it came into being during the Big Bang. The Big Bang is from nothing = something. Nothing cannot do anything.

The Atom was thought to be a solid structure by early atheists, now e find that it is mostly empty space and energy, and at the sub-atomic level it is not even there.

some links:

http://www.globalfreemasonry.com/index2.html

http://www.harunyahya.com/m_site.php

The religion issue is an elaborate smokescreen used to corral all the non-suspecting sheople, which I now refer to as "sleeple". Bush and his lackeys are no more Christian than Billy Graham is. For those of you unaware of Rev. Graham's freemasonry status, he is a 33rd degree Mason and we all know what "they" represent to humanity.

God was created by Man and there is adequate evidence available that clearly points to this fact. Including the Pope himself, none of these ultra high-ranking members of society believe in God or the Devil. BTW, Lucifer, the Devil, Satan, also created by Man. Lucifer is the Light - nothing more. It's not malevolent, but the people behind the icon are.

I believe it's still about power, control, domination, and OIL under a one world government system using religion, whether it's Christianity or Judaism, to enslave us.

who are not ready to talk outside their scriptural quotes. They were taught to argue like this. And

it takes time to take argumentation on a different level.
However most atheist will not allow christians to progress to this level.
Jebus you said and History Worm agrees, that "To atheists, the belief in a Deity is a weakness, something to support personal problems or inadequecies to justify your meaningless life. "

Can´t you see, that calling somebodies life as meaningless and inadequate means to deny the persons value as a human being?

Do you actually think, that this makes for a good and fruitful conversation?

Christians and Muslims do not deny anybody´s inner value. We believe that equal worth is intrinsic in any human being,
accorded to him from God Himself.
They might see the other person as a sinner, seriously mistaken in deeds and beliefs, but never ever without value, since we are created in the image of God(some think in a literal sense, others only in a spiritual sense).

My belief in a nutshell is this:
Religion was implanted in us human beings from the very beginning of human existence. It was a prerequisite for the
developement of intelligence.

Intelligence entails the question for a purpose. This question alone makes us different from the apes. They do have a limited intelligence, but they are incapable of asking the question: "Why?"

God is the answer to humanity´s eternal question.

Tribal religions were necessary, when the human population was small and started to spread over the earth. Tribal cohesion and tribal solidarity was absolutly necessary in ancient times for survival. So God inspired tribal religions.

But for more than 2000 years we have become a global species. What we now need is growing cooperation between all tribes and cultures.

And so God could reveal more of Himself and inspired universal religions.
By that time human knowledge had grown enough to understand more universal principles.

Now we have come to a point where we need even more cooperation within the whole of humanity.

We also have come to the realisation, that there is a limit to human knowledge.
Some astrophysicists say, that our universe contains more than 4 dimensions, some say 10, some say even 26.
However many they are, we human beings can only comprehend the 4 dimensions of time of space, we know.

God, the Creator, by definition must comprehend all those dimensions. So our understanding of Divine truth must necessarily be limited and incomplete.
What seems contradictive in our world might not be a contradiction with God.

So the inspiration God gave to different religions might be different facets of eternal truth, which cannot be combined here on earth.

In my opinion, Christianity and Islam, as universal and egalitarian religions are progressed towards those eternal truths.

Other religions in the strains with are already in there, like the Hinduism of Ghandi and the Buddism of the Dalai Lama and Judaism of the Naturei Karta Jews are evolving into this direction.

Esoteric religions, however, from the Gnostics, to the Masons, the Anthropsophs, the Theosophs, the New-agers, the Wiccas,the Scientologists, the Kabbalists and what have we not, are regressing into the opposite direction, into tribal religions and into unbridled individualism.

They all are exclusive and worship the "great souls" which stand above humanity and are therfore closer to the Divine.

Secualarists call those "great souls" Nietzsche´s Übermenschen.
This religious and/or philosphical regression of the esoterics and the Nietzsche worshippers is an obstacle to human progress and possibly even human survival.

All universal religions have as end-time vision the time, when "the love in the human grows cold", in other words, when unbridled egotism finally conquers altruism.

The purpose of God inspiring different universal religions in different ways is, that, because we as single individuals and even single cultures are too limited in thinking to solve all of humanity´s problems, we need to put our brains together from different directions to come to workable solutions.

I´m obviously not a literal believer in the Bible. The Bible was written by human beings, inspired by God in the form of parables.
But all divine inspiration needs interpretation.
Some interpretations change with time and higher understanding, others are plainly wrong.

And sometimes, interpretations tend to be twisted manipulations for power-politics.
This happens, but it is not the main purpose of religion, neither is it the main consequence.

It becomes more and more clear to me, that religion might be necessary to keep us humane.
Many athiests believe that a human being has no intrinsic value. He or she must proof his value either by being an agent for human progress or by being a tool for this agent, a more advanced and therefor more worthwhile human being.
A human being in their opinion has only a right to life according to the value they place on him or her.
Political goals can be achieved by walking over mountains of dead human bodies, since those human beings have no real valuewhatsoever.
The end justifies the means.

We Christians believe, that there is no perfect human being, except Christ Himself, the Son of God and the Son of Man.
And we, the Church, all Christians in the whole wide world, constitute "the Body of Christ"
Actually I would not only include all Christians, I would include all religions of universal love and compassion and all people with similar philosophies.
All these constitute the body of the perfect man, the body of humanity in its ultimate purpose.

You believe that "Kazar" tribalism comes from their more than 1000 year ago history of being a nomadic Steppe-people.

I disagree.

Tribalism has nothig to do with a genetic trait.
It is a cultural thing. When your culture teaches you that your people is in constant danger of physical extermination, tribalism seems the only survival tool.

All people resort to tribalism, when they are pressed against the wall. Look at immigrant minorities, when there is an anti-immigrant movement.
When you feel hated, you hate back and cling in desperation to your own group.

The remedy to Jewish tribalism is not that we gentiles of various ethnicities start to resort to "tribal cohesion" of our own.
That´s a move in the wrong direction.
As I said, I believe that human diversity is an important factor in humanity´s survival.
We need to become more acceptant of differences and more respectful to other cultures in order to solve humanity´s problems.

And b.t.w. the Russian speaking immigrants into Germany are mostly descended from the Christian German minority who had lived in Russia for centuries.

They come by the old citizenship law which grants anybody German citizenship whose ancestors were Germans.
Only very few of them are Jewish.

The problem of the Russian-Germans is, that some have not yet integrated into German society, because high unemployment gives them little chances on the job-market.
Young people, their children, with little prospects are easy prey for recruiters of organized crime.
But only a minority of them becomes actually criminal.

this evening. But, I am exhausted and I have a long day tomorrow.

I will share my views, soon, though.

Thanks, everyone for sharing your thoughts and ideas.

I'm more worried about whomever steps into the WH next, and what they do with all these powers. Repubs are playing the role of devils and laying the groundwork while the Dems will get to play benevolent redeemers leading some faux "Blue Revolution" in '08. Likewise, Bush Jr. only picked up where Clinton left off, and so on.. they're all of the same Powers That Be and have been for some time. I also believe most Democrats/establishment liberals problem with the current admin isn't so much what they're doing but rather that it's not "their guy" who's (seen as) doing it.

But back to the why, it isn't Jesus or Christian empire(Bush is certainly a Talmudic, judeo-centric scholar - I'd be very surprised if he's even ever read the Gospels let alone the rest of the New Testament); they're out to mutually destroy both Christianity and Islam - both from with-out and with-in. It's much more about our living culture and heritage than it is any actual religion/secularism, the latter often being perverted into a weapon of warfare - or a social activity as opposed to a living culture, heritage, etc., which most religions are more intended to serve.

Side note, tribalism = ethnicity, both culture and genetics make-up a part of tribalism and both influence and effect the other. There may not be nice straight lines to point at, but both factors are always there.

The Jewish Supremacists are not genetically any different than any other ethnic group. Their hatred of "goyim" is learned from an early age, and it all originates in their Holy Book, the Talmud.

Those characteristics that have caused them to behave so despicably and ruthlessly exist because of what they're TAUGHT early in their lives. They are not born with hatred toward Gentiles. If they had been born into Muslim or Christian families, they wouldn't believe in their being members of the "Chosen" Race, and they wouldn't have learned to manipulate, torment and exploit the goyim.

... I must shy away from discussions of this sort. I will listen to you, but not participate. I never said it is stupid to be religious, never given names to anyone who needs religion. I believe it must be a matter of choice.
Regarding tribalism, John said it right in my view:
both culture and genetics make-up a part of tribalism and both influence and effect the other
That's also my viewpoint, both blood links (genetics if you want) and culture (customs) make up tribalism. That's why the genetic efforts to 'prove' that Koestler was wrong about Ashkenazis=Khazars are pure nonsense. Beside the fact that those studies are statistics-based on tiny and selected population samples.
So in my view the Ashkenazis drew up from many smaller gene pools after the khazar conversion and assimilated their customs too. But I agree to disagree with Erlenda, in my view the Ashkenazis have kept many of the ways of the steppes. Of course justice seeker also confirmed correctly that the Talmud shaped much of their thinking.
Regarding the 'Russians' in Germany, indeed there are some Volga Germans, like I did say. But how many are they? In many 'russian' suburbs in Germany I see ashkenazic names on the doorbells, overwhelmingly so. But OK, I never made a statistic and I may be extrapolating. Almost all newcoming 'russian' professors and scientists in Germany are ashkenazic or turanic (some karaites, some tartars), that I know, almost none are slavonic/Rus. Are the latter stupid?
Regarding what we Gentiles should do, well Erlenda I do think you are naive (and please don't take offense). We will never be accepted by the 'Jews', we will never win them on our side. Am I not right, justice seeker?

I appreciate the claim that Leftfield made:

"I think it's just old fashioned power grabs and dictatorships."

In my original piece, I recognized that this view would be considered an alternative to my own, if not a more likely explanation.

I acknowledge the view, but I question whether for Bush, et al, it's about wealth and power accumulation. I think for them it's not about power because of how extreme they've been. There's so much destruction and ill will that I find it difficult to understand where the wealthy who are supposed to be behind all this will spend their ill gotten gains, or what planet they'll be able to control with their power. They're in a position where they could easily ruin everything.

I cannot see how my question about why they want so much power is answered by reiterating the claim that they just want more power, etc.

Furthermore, I'm saying that despite the fact leftfield gives the popular view about Bush's policies, we have not also been given any reason to think it's about power instead of what I've offered in my religious story.

I'm not surprised that qrswave and leftfield downplay the role of a religious account of Bush's policies. On their view, religion and the debates we have about it are distractions from where the action really is in "the markets -- power and control."

Nor am I surprised that erlanda would try to distinguish true Christianity and the directives of the Christian deity from whatever beliefs Bush, Cheney, et al, might have. Erlanda says,

"Those neocon atheists might worship (figuratively) Nietzsche or Leo Strauss or literally some esoteric crap, but definitely not a Christian deity."

And, I guess, I'm not surprised that erlenda goes on to argue that I am unfair to Christians because I want to blame the whole mess on them.

I am not surprised.

I have to differ, however, with qrswave and leftfield that religion is just another distraction or "opiate" to keep people from paying attention to where the real evil is going on.

Erlenda has a point that there are good "Christian" people trying to make the world better sometimes against the efforts of just those who take advantage of others for their own personal gain. Erlenda points out that qrswave and leftfield do not give these Christians credit for doing the same work that qrswave and leftfield seem to want to do themselves.

I would wonder whether the good works people do in the world have more to do with the fact that people want to do good things because they have good reasons to do so involving such things as there being a crying need for work to be done, the suffering comforted, and injustice addressed. Or, is their care for others and the good works they do to be understood as people just doing what Jesus tells them they should do.

Isn't erlenda telling us that Christian charity is a lot like the good works done by Hitler youth. Yes, the youth felt bad about the old ladies having trouble getting across the street, but we would not want to credit their membership in Hitler's youth movement for their good works.

I have to also differ with erlanda.

The problem we have understanding why Bush Jr. needs so much power and why he does so many incredible things is related to the role of Christian Zionism in our nation's life. Erlanda makes no effort to understand how this movement differs from other cases like Hitler's manipulations of religion or the "liberals" hatred of Christianity. Erlanda's allusions to these matters is nothing but a red herring. The issue of how these others were mistaken about Christianity is beside the point I am making.

I object to Erlenda's assumption that criticism of Christianity, even the total rejection of it, is motivated by hatred and hence understood as being irrational.

Bush believes he needs unlimited domestic power, enough to eliminate his critics, and the power to invade countries at will, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as nuking Iran, to prepare the world for the second coming of Jesus. There is the question of why he would think these wars were an appropriate response to hearing about Jesus's return. There is also the more important observation that if it's true he is willing to kill and steal from others outside the U.S., and gut our country of its constitutional protections, then he is truly a danger to himself and others. With the power Bush has he can destroy us all and the world itself. I do not have to hate Bush in order to object to the dangerous and unnecesary path he's leading us down.

I want to go back to the idea it's all about power. Whitewraithe said,

"I believe it's still about power, control, domination, and OIL under a one world government system using religion whether it's Christianity or Judaism, to enslave us."

If Whitewraith is like Jebus, he would go on to explain that belief in a deity does not give our life meaning, but,

"...is a weakness, something to support personal problems or inadequacies to justify your meaningless life."

Again, as I've complained before, neither whitewraithe nor anyone else here tries to explain why they think it's about power, etc. This is so curious to me because this is just the issue I've tried to raise. Why the Imperial Presidency? Why the drive to accumulate unlimited power, control, etc?

I have to bring up my own thoughts on this. Both those who think it's about power, and those who think that it can't be about Christianity because life is only made valuable by the Christian Deity, assume that force works to achieve goals. Those who control the most force will be the most successful at achieving their goals.

It's fairly straight forward that those impressed by the idea it's about power would agree that force works. The surprising thing about Christianity, I believe, is that Christians must also believe force works in order to explain that it's because accomplishing life's goals is a matter of force, that makes life meaningless, and hence, that's why, according to erlenda,

"We believe that equal worth is intrinsic in any human being, accorded to him from God himself."

If what we did had any meaning, it wouldn't be necessary for God to accord us any.

It's the assumption of this idea that makes Whitewraithe's belief that it's all about power with Bush seem so true. We believe Bush needs to accumulate power because that's what we would do in his shoes.

All I'm saying is that if this assumption about force seems so true to us, and yet we would suppose that a world driven by violence, stealth, and deceit would make our lives meaningless, then we should understand people who would do anything to improve matters for us.

Given the vision that Christianity gives us about how a world driven by force is corrected, we should see that Bush could just be doing what he can to bring about a world where the "peace and justice" of God's rule overcomes the meaninglessness of the present world, - a world where the reliance on force is the normal way of doing things.

Whereas qrswave, leftfield, and whitewraiths, et al, assume that the movers and shakers of the world are motivated by greed and self betterment at the expense of others, they have been unable to devise any reasonable solution to the problem.

I'm wondering whether Bush, et al, as Christian Zionists, see the same problem and have decided the solution is to clean house in preparation for Jesus's impending arrival.

... are behind the reasons why Bush & Co. wield so much power. Steven says:
I'm wondering whether Bush, et al, as Christian Zionists, see the same problem and have decided the solution is to clean house in preparation for Jesus's impending arrival.
My view is that Bush is just a puppet king, like a medieval polish king (more below). He was elevated to kingship because of his influence on the fundamentalist Christians in the US, just like Condi Rice and (then) Colin Powel were recruited because they would attract the support of the Blacks in the US. The real power is in the hands of the people in the backstage of the US government. Bush and family are Christians of the very old fashioned type, they find comfort in religion to come to grips with the abominations they have unleashed in the US (9.11 etc.) and in the Middle East. They believe they have God-given rights to subdue the entire ME in order to secure America's supply of hydrocarbons for the next half-century or so. So they are remorseless about the untold civilian casualties in Irak, now to the 650.000 mark since the invasion, and even the casualties amongst US soldiers they find a way to cope with through religion. That is where another need we humans have for religion may hide.
As for the puppet king, now I know you think I extrapolate from ancient history too much. But look: european nations used to have one allmighty king, spiritual, military and secular head of his people. Gradually in Europe and elsewhere there has been a switch to a dual-kingship system, with a constitutional monarch (or a president) and a prime minister. Like in Britain, the 'spiritual' head of state has split from the military and secular head of state. Well, how strange that this is just what the turkik nations of the steppes had, a dual-kingship (a khagan and a bek). But there is more, since you will say the US now has no dual-kingship. When the Khazars (always them!) and the Mongols installed themselves firmly into Poland, they set up a system of oligarchs (the polish mongol magnates, or wealthy land-owners) who wielded the real power on a state only nominally headed by a puppet king (chosen by the magnates because powerless and subjected to their will). I would go as far as to draw the parallel between that system and the present US political system. The president is a puppet king chosen by the new oligarchs as they see fit. Russia is now very much in the same situation.

I do not see religion as a distraction and an opiate. I see true religion as a threat to the power elite.

The power elite also use a verient of religion as a means to control people and to manipulate them.

Being a leader, with money, power and influence is appealing to many people. It is a type of 'intoxication' with a buzz all its own. People who are intoxicated by it will do anything to maintain and increase it....there is 'a type' of person who is like this.

Of course being a leader also has a negative aspect, you can get assasinated, you get little privacy, you get blamed when things go wrong.....but all these are acceptable to the intoxicated person....drunk on power. It is not necesserily rational.

There are certainly irrational reasons why someone would accept to be made king. However fot the kingmakers, the reasons for a specific choice are mostly rational: they want to make sure to be the real ones in charge.

This is all very interesting. I think that its unfair to say that christians are taught to not think outside their holy books etc. because many of us are. I myself am a christian and have spent almost two years on a message board called the Atheist Network.

I seriously encourage any of you, especially those of Muslim faith (the atheists there are unused to argueing with Muslims) to go to www.atheistnetwork.com and participate in their forums.

Many there are vulgar, insensitive, and disrespectful, but if you can get past that and keep from getting angry or heated, it will be the most intense discussions you will ever have. I know i'm not very good at argueing points and stuff, but they absolutely demolish me on most arguments, even after spending hours online researching etc. and coming up with arguments to counter theirs. I don't take just a christian perspective, but a Deistic perspective so that I can hop and skip from religion to religion when they poke a hole in one.

I don't think atheists are ridiculous at all. Yes I believe there is a creator, but every major religion out there has some very serious flaws concerning their dogma. The atheists on the ahtiest network specialize in exposing those logical fallacies. Alot of the time they miss the point...but generally they give you some serious food for thought. If you join there, use the same user name as me and we can see what discussions we can have :)

Alot of the points they make are annoying haha. Like, alot of christians believe that God is omnipotent, and omniscent. But if God knows everything, then he knows his own future correct? But if he knows his own future, he cannot be all powerful because he cannot change his destiny. haha. Another is that Christians believe God is a loving caring God...but then you look at the world that he's created and all the suffering in it. You may say that without suffering we could never improve, or make proper choices to follow God...etc. etc., it doesn't matter your argument. The reason being that its all a game...we were created to worship him and follow him, and somehow make it through all these struggles on earth....doesn't sound like a loving God at all. Things like that.

-Jebus

And by the way, don't bother saying things like "materialistic science is falling apart, that evolution is obviously flawed and wrong", etc. You need real arguments, and whether evolution is flawed or not is irrelevent; it doesn't prove the existence of a God at all, only that science is CURRENTLY, not correct about the origins of the world. It does not mean we won't ever find out, merely that we havent made it yet.

-Jebus

Science is "a work in progress" is a load of nonsense. Conscious beings cannot put their lives on hold, until good old science works it all out for us. Science cannot tell us how to live. Religion provides all that already.

Science and the philosophy of science as I understand it, is allot to do with projection.

If the universe appeared with a Big Bang, it quite clearly means something brought it into existence...it could not have happened by itself.

In addition human consciousness is obviously not material. When you get hurt either emotionally or physically let someone tell you its not real, its just chemical reactions in your brain making you feel pain, and see if you find that satisfying. Most people would explode with anger because to them the pain has more meaning than that. Ibn Arabi the Muslim sufi can and has demolished all of the arguments of the atheists and he has made Islam pretty acceptable to modern man and I believe was elucidating Islam for this time.

All contingent being is a manifestation and a shadow or a reflection of the Necessary Being....totally dependent and Reflecting Him, annihilated in Him Forever.

... and have no interest to move to an atheist one. I am strictly not an atheist, maybe I'm a pantheist, maybe a secularist gnostic. I don't believe that science is everything, Jebus is right in saying that science does not tell us how to live. We need morals, lines of conduct: you noticed how I come down strongly on the sex-exploitation of women. I grew up in a christian environment, lived with christian women and practiced christian traditions. So why go discussing with aggressive atheists?
I just don't need religion, maybe I'm making my own up as I go along, though I can't refute the religious environment in which I live. As for the need for a creator, I don't feel that. The Big Bang was not the only act of creation, it just spewed elementary particles around. Those particles coalesced to make nucleons, nuclei, atoms, molecules, solid aggregates, ... stars and planets. Each can be viewed as an act of creation, that of a planet for example. Is a creator needed for that? No, the laws of physics provide for a full explanation of each single act, so if we go backwards in time ... we still have to find the rules behind the Big Bang, we don't know what was there before. No need for advocating a creator though.
But why care? It's truly a jewish sophism, this search for a theory of everything, when physics can't yet explain organic chemistry, biology, life. Yet you find arrogant jewish mathematicians or theoretical physicists who define themselves to be 'biologists' now. Ridiculous. So now let's not give science power over everything, the most valuable instrument we gain from science is the scientific method of reasoning and of investigation.

"If the universe appeared with a Big Bang, it quite clearly means something brought it into existence...it could not have happened by itself."

The same could be said of God.

"In addition human consciousness is obviously not material."

If you removed someone's brain, they are no longer concious correct? Its inherently tied to the living parts of your body, unless someone goes brain dead, i.e. the cells in your brain are dead and a machine is keeping you alive.

"When you get hurt either emotionally or physically let someone tell you its not real, its just chemical reactions in your brain making you feel pain, and see if you find that satisfying."

Whether its satisfying or not doesn't make it true or untrue. I know that there are drugs to make me happy, sad, depressed, or euphoric...if I know that chemicals can control me that drastically, its not a far stretch that i'm mostly controlled by chemical interactions.

There has been lots of studies on religious experiences, the nostalgia of doing repetive acts such as worship and prayer and how you link past powerful emotionally experiences to that act, hence the recurrent emotional states that some worshippers and prayer people experience.

"Ibn Arabi the Muslim sufi can and has demolished all of the arguments of the atheists and he has made Islam pretty acceptable to modern man and I believe was elucidating Islam for this time."

Seriously check out that board and see if his arguments hold up. If he demolished them so thoroughly, there'd be alot more Muslims I think.

The problem gets further compounded when you look at this question on the basis of a single religion. What makes Islam right and Christianity wrong? If you were asked to provide proof of God to anyone, could you? The atheists hold that the burden of proof is upon the presenter, and hence its our responsibility to prove God to them. You can bring up faith, but then what seperates you from me when I say i've got a Unicorn in my closet and you've just gotta believe me?

Seriously check out the site, its at the very least an interesting read.

-Jebus

Also as a note, questions about the afterlife are obviously a huge issue. What evidence is there that conciousness persists after death? Without an afterlife, most religions are essentially toast.

-Jebus

re John:
I agree with you, that Bush most likely is not a real Christian.
There are rumours that he has replaced the cross in the White House bedroom with a crown.
There is also criticism by his base that he never visits any Church services, as other Presidents have done before him. (Carter even taught Sunday School while President)

We know for sure that Ashcroft, also a self-announced Christian, has visited meetings of a sect called the "Fellowship" or the "Family", which only allows rich and influential people to join.
According to an undercover reporter those sect-members have a strange way of refering to Jesus, its like "Jesus" is just another word for strength and power and even violence.
These people also are far more old-testamentarian than new-testamentarian.

re justice seeker:
I agree, Jewish supremacism is NOT a genetic trait, but it might be rationalized with some passages from the Talmud.

re History Worm:
No, I´m not naive, I´m realistic.
Fist I wanted to say optimistic, but this expression doesn´t fit.
What you are doing History Worm, is creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.
You say: "We will never be accepted by the 'Jews', we will never win them on our side"
If you do not give "Jews" or "Kazars" a chance, you push them into a corner. This will make many of them cling to their own group even more.

The reality is, that many of the crimes Israel has committed against the Palestinians have been exposed by Jews, often Israeli Jews. Many of those people Qrswave and I have quoted are Jews.
The article I posted recently, "Israel on the brink", which exposes Israel´s dangerous state-paranoia, was posted by a Jewish Professor who once had lived and taught in Israel, probably an Israeli citizen.
Israel Shahak, who wrote "Jewish History, Jewish Religion" exposing the chauvinist attitude of many religious Jews in Israel, was an Israeli Jew.
Gilad Atzmon, the Jazz-musician, who has a comedy show exposing Jewish chauvinism grew up in Israel in a Jewish family.
Lenni Brenner, who wrote a book, exposing the documents which proof Zionist collaboration with the Nazis, comes from a Jewish family.
So does Norman Finkelstein, who wrote "the Holocaust industry".

I have corresponded with some Jewish people and some would even talk to me, after I revealed, that I´m a Holocaust doubter.
Others would probably never, ever talk to me since the Holocaust belief or non-belief is still considered a Lithmus test for anti-Semitism or not, so what?
One day this might change too.
Finkelstein has come pretty close to questioning the Holocaust, Eisen, another Jewish intellectual has crossed the line and became Holocaust doubter like me.

I could go on for pages and pages to proof that neither "Kazar"genetics nor Talmudic influences predeterm a person to become or stay a tribalist all his or her life.
More and more Jewish people, influenced by humanistic ethics, become more and more Jews become daily more and more critical of Israel and Zionism.
Some have become as radical self-critical towards their own background as many Germans have after WWII.

One other thing: the role the Jewish communities have played in history, becoming tax-farmers and administrators for aristocratic gentile elites, is in no way something unic. Other minorities have played similar roles in other places with often similar consequences.
I will elaborate on this in a blog-post.

I stand by my view, that no person and no culture is ever beyond redemption.
We are neither preprogrammed by our genes nor encarcerated by our upbringing.
We have allways a choice.

You say that your views might be close to Pantheism.
Well, Catholic doctrine does have pantheist elements:
We believe, that there exists no dust-speck in the universe where God is not present in some way.

re Steven Andresen:
You said: "I question whether for Bush, et al, it's about wealth and power accumulation. I think for them it's not about power because of how extreme they've been. "

This is a legitimate question. I have asked me a similar one: "What does the power-elite, the money people I suspect stand behind Bush and his government, want to do with the power and wealth they are grabbing right now?"

Leftfield suggests, that power has some kind of intoxicating effects on people.
And I agree, this might be one reason for their unsatiable power-hunger: they´re addicted to it.

But I think there is more to it.
I suggested it before: Those people are environmental fascists. They have the notion that in order to save the planet in its beauty, they have to control the stupid parts of humanity and possibly even cut it down to size.

I will present the evidence I have in another post and tell you already that it is not totally conclusive, but I have the unhappy and sickening feeling that I might be right.
And actually I´d rather be wrong on this one.

Anyway there is very little evidence that Christians, even "rapture Christians" have signifcant influence on American government foreign policies. Insiders tell us that most officials look down on those Christians and consider them "useful idiots".

The majority of those in government and in the media, who have pushed for the Iraq war and are now pushing for a war with Iran, are atheists from Jewish backgrounds, the Neocons. Their main objective is the strengthening of Israel´s regional security and power. Many of them have already worked for the Israeli government before, some have dual Israeli-American citizenships.
They neither wait for Jesus to return nor for the Jewish Messiah to come. They are followers of Leo Strauss, who in turn was a disciple of the Nazi philosopher Carl Schmitt, who was in the tradition of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Leo Strauss believed that a country should be ruled behind the scenes by "wise men", who make all the decisions with the help of "gentlemen", the politicians on the front stage, who have no real power.
The population must be kept under control by deceptions, since they are too immature or stupid to comprehend or accept the hard truth.
Bush is one of those "gentlemen", no more than a puppet, in the Neocons´ elaborate web of deception.

I think with so much evidence pointing in the direction of non-Christian motives for the current American governments´ power-grabs domestic and foreign, your insistance that Christians are the real culprits is nothing more than wishful thinking. You want the group you dislike the most to be responsible, it would justify your dislike.

It´s like the "Know-nothing" party of the 19. century in the US.
When Lincoln was assassinated they blamed from all the partys who had a real motive for the assassination the one who had no motive at all: the Vatican.
The Vatican had condemned slavery 30 years before Lincoln had and the Union army was comprised in big parts by Irish Catholic immigrants.
Lincoln had once as a lawyer represented a Catholic ex-priest against a local Catholic diocese and won some compromise settlement. And now the Vatican was murdering him for this tiny minor defeat? What a crap!

You compare Hitler youth charity with Christian charity?
I compare the philosophies of both organisations and they are totally opposite to each other.

And about the intinsic value issue:
We believe that God created everything in existence and is therefore also the source of all value.
You can of course put high value on yourself, and that´s fine for your self-confidence.
But in a social and political context what counts is the value that´s put on you by society.
In a society, dominated by Muslim or Christian derrived philosophies every person has the same value and the same right to life.
In a society dominated by a Nietzsche or social Darwinist philosophy your value depends on your usefulness for the power elite.

On the argument of force, you just lost me, I just don´t understand it.

Why would Christians
"also believe force works in order to explain that it's because accomplishing life's goals is a matter of force, that makes life meaningless,"?

And to the argument:

"If what we did had any meaning, it wouldn't be necessary for God to accord us any."

That´s exactly my point:
In a Christian mindset, you allways have a high value, not because of what you do, but because of what you are:
A Human Being.

I know that seems not to be enough for you and everybody wants to be special or so.

But in the view of a universal religion this intrinsic value accords you intrinsic rights, a dignity which never should be compromised for whatever reasons.

I wrote:
"If the universe appeared with a Big Bang, it quite clearly means something brought it into existence...it could not have happened by itself."

You Replied:
"The same could be said of God."

My Response:
How can you say the same about God? Contingent being means it changes it has a beginning, has an end, gets worn out has entropy. Everything in the material universe including itself is contingent being......it is dependent on something else (you can see this all around you, including in yourself)......that something else we can call the Necessary Being, not going back in endless regress. The Necessary Being has no beginning has no end, does not change, does not tire, does not sleep. He is Everlasting, He is the All-Sustainer, the Ever Living, The First, The Last without end.

I wrote:
"In addition human consciousness is obviously not material."

You replied:
"If you removed someone's brain, they are no longer concious correct? Its inherently tied to the living parts of your body, unless someone goes brain dead, i.e. the cells in your brain are dead and a machine is keeping you alive."

The body can be kept alive by a machine, but this means what? Life is a perception/ a dream, when you die you wake up. When you wake up you will be in a different dimension of consciousness, there you will realize that this life was a dream....your soul was experiencing life as real and you were at the center of your life....in actual fact your soul was being shown this by God as a test, to see what you would do and so you could be a witness against your own self.

You do not exist, you are a imagination an illusion. The Non Existence of non Existence is Existence. God created this imaginary being so that He could be Known...for without you there is only He.

A little like the film Matrix. See:

http://www.harunyahya.com/c_myth_called_matter.php

Pls listen to this:

It discusses Anarchism/religion/power quite useful for understanding.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20061207.shtml

Other archives:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_archive_home.sht...

with atheists,as you jebus suggest to Leftfield.
But if anyone expects to change their mind on the matter of the existence of God with logical arguments, he will be disappointed.
You can´t proof God, neither can you disproof Him, since by defintion God is above the physical universe and so is not subject to physical evidence.
Neither can you scientifically proof the doctrines of one religion being more sound than the doctrines of another.
That is futile.
Religion is first and foremost a matter of faith.

I´m not interested in proving my religion to anyone. What I want to proof is, that the philosophy on wich my religion and other egalitarian religions are based, is productive for humanity.

I do not see the big divide between atheists and religious people, although many atheists see it like this.
The big divide lies between on the one side universal religions like Christianity and Islam, together with evolving universal strains in other religions and secular humanists
against on the other side regressing tribal religions, esoteric religions and social Darwinists.

There is only one point I would argue:
I see "the Matrix" as a very useful parable to explain the conditions of exploitation and deception in which we live right now.
But if you actually perceive our world as not actually real, you might be in trouble.
Then you might perceive the people around you as not quite real either and your actions towards them as not too important.
It would influence the choices you make.

When you believe that we exist in the thoughts of God, it would be important to also realize, that God is not just another human being, but the Creator.
His thoughts become reality and even independent enough to receive the gift of Free Choice.

In what ever way we define our existence,we must, in order to not rob us of our choices, believe that we have them.
There are a lot of atheists who believe that we are determined by either genetics or environment, religious people should not fall into the same trap.

Steven, the arguments surrounding your theory assume that Bush and company ARE "Christian", but clearly their actions state otherwise. And if they truly are, then they are false Christians using scripture as the basis for their aggression and oppression on other nations.

But allow me to digress for a moment. Were I to bring to this roundtable the alternative theories on the present administration's power trip , no doubt, you would consider me a lunatic or at least, possibly unstable.

But consider this -

We, the people, are the very last ones to know what is happening in the government pipeline, if ever. Someone asked the question where would these powerful people live, well, what if I told you that complete cities exist underground all throughout the U.S., and that you can walk from coast to coast on an underground highway? Don't think for one minute that these people haven't considered every contingency because they have. They have insured the propagation of their bloodlines if nuclear war happens or some other catastrophe occurs for at least the past 50 years.

So, what does religion have to do with all of this? I believe, nothing - not in actuality anyway.

to respond to situations like this. It's one of the reason that I usually like to even stay away from atheist forums. No one ever wins when you leave the actual subject matter and start attacking one another.
ATHEIST is not a dirty word. Simply a total lack of belief in God or gods. Before some smart ass attacks my capitalization of the name God, It's a proper noun, another name for Jehovah, YAWEH, whatever! Some of you are professing not to be atheists and you're not even sure what kind of Christians you are.
I am an Atheist. Some of you are talking about going on atheist forums and managing to hold your own and even be trusted and accepted. If you are accepted then you have tucked your tail and cowered to the big dog.
I don't know if you realize it but we atheists are your neighbors, brothers, sisters, Americans just like you. I live among you and you know just as well as I that we are, most of us, just as prone to dirty mouths and thoughts no matter what we are. I have seen more evil in Christians than the average atheist but I have noticed something else, just as there are a seemingly myriad denominations of Christians who can't agree on anything except to agree to disagree, the same holds true for atheists.
What in the hell would you want to be on an atheist hate site for. They don't speak for most of us anymore than the Rapture bound Fundamentalists speak for Christians.
Back off Erlenda. People who come hard at those of us who know your bible and the bibles of most other religions do nothing but flame anger.
Bush, the more I consider this animal, may actually think he is a Christian. He is demonstrably insane enough to believe, if told by his handlers, Rove, Cheney, Rummy, et al, that God actually chose him to lift the Revelationary sword. I promise you that the rest only use Christians to further their own one world agendas.
I love to debate real Christians about the bible and all other religions but I prefer those who do not let anger do their talking.

I was busy for two days and look what you guys/gals did - there are almost 40 comments!

I don't even know where to begin.

I'll have to address it this weekend - God willing!

:)

re:

The Jewish Supremacists are not genetically any different than any other ethnic group. Their hatred of "goyim" is learned from an early age, and it all originates in their Holy Book, the Talmud.

Those characteristics that have caused them to behave so despicably and ruthlessly exist because of what they're TAUGHT early in their lives. They are not born with hatred toward Gentiles.

I would agree that they're not born with it, but the effects of certain cultural and genetic influences do make people inevitably predisposed to specific traits or conditions. But clearly, within the confines of nature, nothing is necessarily pre-determined.

I never used atheist as a dirty word.
I just stated that in my experience atheists are far more intolerant than Christians I met.
I blame this atheist intolerance in part for the move to the right-wing of American Christians.
I consider atheists as my allies when they have a humanist philosophy, when they have a social Darwinist philosophy they stand on the opposit side.

may depend entirely on how you are perceived in your approach.
As I said, we cannot be all bunched together anymore than can Christians. Considering the number of responses in this post I may very well have misread you or not read the right you.

I frequently approach Christians the wrong way. Simply a defense mechanism in anticipation of the "we must save you" attitude.

Although I refuse to believe that a man sprang from an amoeba and further branched from a monkey I find it no less believeable than invisible, all powerful friends who laugh at your suffering and do nothing to alleviate it as it amuses them.

I find that most readers of QRS's site are WRH readers also so you've probably already seen this but, if not, this is one of the best articles on the subject I've seen. Came along right in the nick of time.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/prophets.php

No matter what you believe or disbelieve, we will never really know where man sprang from, gods, aliens, amoebas. All too far in the past to ever really know.

All you will ever do is believe and sprinkle the pixie dust called 'faith'.

... is rapidly becoming a riot. Too many posts and viewpoints to respond to. And very little time to read carefully and respond.
I will briefly say it again, there is no need to advocate a Creator. Every 'act of creation' (like the birth of our planet) can be explained by the laws of physics. Probably even the Big Bang, except we don't really know what was there before. But scientists do make math models and obtain plausible scenarios. Let them play with that. On the other hand we need models and moral rules of human behaviour, so that's why the holy books are good to have. In the Soviet Union of yore people mostly stopped reading the holy scriptures, in fact morals deteriorated in human behaviour sometimes to extremes, like exterminating millions of lives of atavic tribal, not class, enemies or resorting to abortion as means of birth-control. So there must be moral-setting 'holy scriptures', but they could be written around the cult of a natural super-being, like Sunlight, why resort to Man-made-God? It's a matter of choice, but a pantheist religion is more likely to induce conservation of natural resources than an antropocentic one.

re: erlenda
I do maintain that your views on the Jews are naive. We will not win them on our side because they don't want to be assimilated, so long as their traditions (millenium-old history, cultural habits and, yes, the Talmud) are passed on generation to generation. Can you see the Jews burn their Talmud spontaneously? They despise us and at the same time feed on us, it has always been that way since the days of Khazaria (a completely parassitical state). The czars did attempt to assimilate the Ashkenazis, softening their racial laws against them. The result was the assassination of czar Alexander II and, in time, the 1905 attempted coup d'etat and the 1917 successful one. Can't you see they want to be our rulers and exploiters and for this they need to keep us in a condition of inferiority? Mine is not a position of hatred, it's a mere consequence of observation. Yours, erlenda, is a position born out of the philo-'semitic' indoctrination and guilt-complex the Ashkenazis have imposed on the Germans since them beating you in WW2. You say:
If you do not give "Jews" or "Kazars" a chance, you push them into a corner. This will make many of them cling to their own group even more.
They will cling to their own group anyway, so we better begin clinging to our own (much larger) Gentile group ourselves. Enough with this post-WW2 indoctrination!
The reality is, that many of the crimes Israel has committed against the Palestinians have been exposed by Jews, often Israeli Jews.
So does Norman Finkelstein, who wrote "the Holocaust industry".
Yeah, but these are isolated voices of dissent, these people end up on the shit-Jew list (SHIT=Self-Hating Israel Threatening) of the www.masada2000.org jewish hate site. In fact these are not radicals, they have not really left Judaism like Benjamin Freedman or Michael Hoffman. Finkelstein for example would never deny the 6 million claim, he just exposes that claim as being lucrated upon.
I could go on for pages and pages to proof that neither "Kazar" genetics nor Talmudic influences predeterm a person to become or stay a tribalist all his or her life.
Please leave genetics out of this, call it tribalism (customs+genetics) and its encoding in the Talmud, which was developed substantially by Khazaria's diaspora in Eastern Europe. This powerful combination does have a formidable influence on the Ashkenazis. I have known 'Jews' who have been shunned by their family for marrying a Gentile. Is that not tribalism, racialism? Ask justice seeker.
Some have become as radical self-critical towards their own background as many Germans have after WWII.
There is a big difference in numbers; the first group of 'some' may be 1% of the total and the second group 99% due to ashkenazic indoctrination. How many Germans speak publically about the loss of the oriental provinces and their 9 million victims of the soviet+allied persecution after WW2? How many Jews downplay the role of the 6 millions?
One other thing: the role the Jewish communities have played in history, becoming tax-farmers and administrators for aristocratic gentile elites, is in no way something unic.
OK, I wait for your elaboration on this, which to my knowledge was unique to the Ashkenazis, and racially linked (the magnates, though catholic, were of mongol descent). Don't be like Radioscope and quit the confrontation on history.
I stand by my view, that no person and no culture is ever beyond redemption.
Not a millenium-old system of beliefs and parassitical practices. Can you convince the Catholic Church, with 2000 years of practice, to stop interfering in italian, polish and irish civil policies?
We believe, that there exists no dust-speck in the universe where God is not present in some way.
But this God is the same as the Jews', is it not, and the Jews say He has chosen them, not you Gentile believers. How can you be convinced this God will eventually change the Jews' system of beliefs?
I suggested it before: Those people are environmental fascists. They have the notion that in order to save the planet in its beauty, they have to control the stupid parts of humanity and possibly even cut it down to size.
This too is naive. They might have an interest in cutting the world's 'stupid' population down to size, but they don't give a nickel for saving planet and its beauty. Who, the Big-Oil barons? They own islands in the best spots of the Earth and plan to end their days there, while we choke on diesel and kerosene fumes in our cities.
The majority of those in government and in the media, who have pushed for the Iraq war and are now pushing for a war with Iran, are atheists from Jewish backgrounds, the Neocons.
Finally a sign of realism, these 'atheists' have all ashkenazic names. Starting from Leo Strauss.
Leo Strauss believed that a country should be ruled behind the scenes by "wise men", who make all the decisions with the help of "gentlemen", the politicians on the front stage, who have no real power.
Exactly. And exactly the philosophy of the Protocols of Sion and exactly what I've been teaching here about the medieval polish political system. So is it just the pious Jews you are trying to save and win to your side, erlenda? They are very very few and the great majority of the Ashkenazis (coming from the ex-USSR and the USA) are ultimately atheists at heart. We are talking about the very same people, the very same opponents.
As for Abraham Lincoln's assassination, that and the Civil War in the US was about the confederation vs. federation issue, not slavery (which was a decoy). The same in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, those ethnic wars had their roots in the confederation vs. federation issue. Hitler did have some sympathy for the Catholic Church, which saw (rightly) in Bolshevism the greatest threat to Christianity and covertly supported Nazism. Just like it supported, overtly, the crusades of the Teutonic Knights against Balts and Russians. Religious values are important and commendable, but the political use of religion must never be understated or forgotten.

t´was fun while it lasted, kind of anyway.
If you read my posts you would have seen, that I was not trying to convert anybody to my faith, just saying that to be religious does not mean you deny science and logic.
And I wanted to make clear that logic and evidence tells us, that at least this time the Christians are not the main culprits in war-mongering and mass-murder.
But when a mind is made up before hand, discussion is futile.
And anybody who pretends to be tolerant and then calls other people´s faith pixy dust, is well... what should I call this kind of "tolerance"?
Tolerance includes respect.
Kurt Nimmo, an atheist I respect very much, has stopped to call God "Sky-Daddy" out of respect for the Christians he respects.

Am I angry? No, not at all, I have realized that I have been baited, for a while now.
I´ve seen it before, it´s a Macho game: Truth is relative, justice is irrelevant, you just have to win.

Sometimes it´s not even a game. We Germans have heard about ads where pro-war Republican volunteers were recruited to populate German message boards to push an American war-agenda.Some didn´t even speak German, used that fish-translator. Those who did speak German acted in many capacities and under multiple identities as agent provacateurs, pack-attackers against any new arrivals, to scare them off, and spinners and twisters between some truth, half-truth and outright lies.
But after a while, you could tell who they were by the strange way in which they presented their opinions. No German from the far right to the far left would talk like this.

I don´t think those recruiting ads found enough volunteers to populate every message board and comment section in English.
So I give Americans the benefit of the doubt, in saying they just play the Macho-game.
From American movies and TV-shows to judge, this seems to be part of American culture.

Women, and actually most European men as well, try to find common ground and resolve conflicts from there in a solution both sides can live with.
American men, in my experience, just want to win the game and demolish the perceived enemy at whatever cost.

That´s most often self-defeating, but then, logic is not men´s strongest trait. That´s why you need women.

Hard to say just to whom you were addressing your last post. Me? I'm not American and I'm not trying to win at all costs in this discussion forum. I'm here just to inform, to share with you my knowledge. If attacked, of course I must respond, but if proven wrong I will stand corrected. That's how you learn and better yourself from dialectics, not?
If you're tired of arguing, erIenda, then just explain. Explain for instance, please, why Germans like you risk emprisonment in your country for voicing doubts about the Holocaust (like you implied you do). Why Germany presented, kostenlos, 3 nuclear-weapon carrying submarines to Israel. So that she can hit almost any country in the world (except perhaps Central Asia) with her nukes now. Is Germany not an israeli colony? If you don't like my tribal reasoning, then explain why Israel and Turkey are in such good relations, despite the latter being islamic. Why Israel is setting up agricultural projects to improve life in desertic Sinkiang, when she could do so much to help her arabic (and semitic) neighbours.
Nobody wants to convert you or prove you wrong, or attack you. This is just a discussion forum where we can all learn something.
A good weekend to everyone.

You seem genuine in your believes.
But the fundamental flaw in them is, that you say "the jews", "the Kazars" want to dominate us as a group.

To view the world in only groups and ethnicities, taking individual behavior as symptomatic for the whole group, is racist.

I distance myself from this, not because of my "German guilt complex", but because I see racism as dangerous and totally counter-productive, if you want to live in a peaceful and at least moderatly just world.

My point in quoting for you all those jews critical to the crimes of Israel and the Zionist lobby is to show, that you cannot judge an individual solely on his membership in the group he was born into.

The reason why many Jews still have a blind spot towards the crimes of Zionism is an indoctrination of fear, not of supremacism.
Anti-jewish racism breeds even greater fear. It is totally counterproductive, if you want to stop Zionist crimes.

Isn´t that our goal here?
Or do you just want to replace one supremacism with another one?

And the strongest evidence for me that Jews do not have an absolute etnic cohesion is the behavior the Zionist elite showed during WWII.
They actually prevented many of their fellow Jews to flee from danger, and while there might not have been gas-chambers, the Jews under German rule did suffer and many died, often were directly murdered.

As for attacking the Catholic Church, you should know by now, that this would not go down so well with me.
I have read too much, about the Churches doctrine and agenda to be taken in by anti-Catholic conspiracy rethorics.
The Church has not allways acted in a Christlike manner in the past.

But in the way I see it, she has cleaned up her act quite well in the last century.
The Church isn´t perfect, but she is well on the way of becoming one of the forces for peace and justice in the world. And that´s enough for me to stay loyal.

So let our discussion end here. I wish I could convince you, that anti-Jewish racism, together with all other racism is a belief system not based on general evidence but only on very selective evidence generalized by prejudice.

But if you made up your mind a long time ago, and have worked on this mental block you have, its highly unlikely I could ever punch a hole in it.

So just lets leave it at that, we agree to disagree.

You Wrote:

"There is only one point I would argue:
I see "the Matrix" as a very useful parable to explain the conditions of exploitation and deception in which we live right now.
But if you actually perceive our world as not actually real, you might be in trouble.
Then you might perceive the people around you as not quite real either and your actions towards them as not too important.
It would influence the choices you make."

The external world is real, but we do not know it cannot know it. We see, hear, feel, taste, touch.....these are just sensations felt somewhere....we cannot step out of our sense perception to see 'how it really is'.

Erlenda, I did not mean you harm nor disrespect. I most certainly would not and did not 'bait' you. That's a technique for ambush patrol and I am not on ambush.

Please don't leave. I will happily pull back as I have really been thoroughly enjoying you folks. Let me back out as I am an avowed atheist and this has been an otherwise excellent debate among folks attempting to find their own beliefs and those who already know. Believe me, as an atheist I would not wish to turn this into a hate conversation.