Fear and Love

Love God:

Deuteronomy 6:5 (King James Version)

And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Matthew 22:37 (King James Version)

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

Fear God:

Deuteronomy 6:13 (King James Version)

Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name.

Psalm 33:8 (King James Version)

Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.

There is no fear in love:

1 John 4:18 (King James Version)

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

Grilled Cheese Sandwich

The Harvest festival has been held in Hancock NY for the last 15 years and provides the visitor with a taste of real freedom. I [highly] recommend going if you get the chance. I still enjoyed it even at 50 years old.



I awoke to the smell of grilled cheese sandwiches. A new tent had popped up over night. A cute but some what grungy young woman was happily flipping the hot golden brown answers to my breakfast dilemma.
Dodging the peddlers along Shakedown ally, I made my way to the foot of a tree, just off the path, where I could see over the lake and down into the the business center of the new community. I ate the still warm sandwiches and drifted back to simpler times when the government had no say in the business of the people and no say over our bodies and minds. If you wanted to sell grilled cheese sandwiches from your front porch you just hung a sign and started cooking. Today you would have to apply for a vending license and have your food preparation equipment inspected and approved. Then you need to get the proper zoning to be allowed to run a business out of your home and you would be forced to carry a certain amount of Insurance (in cases you get some bad cheese and someone sues you for making them sick!) You would have to file a DBA form to register your business with the government, who will want there cut of your hard earned money!
All for a fucking grilled cheese sandwich!

Makes Perfect Sense

We are all full of sin and need forgiveness from God.
God died as a sacrificial scapegoat to appease God.
God excepts the sacrifice of God as an atonement.
God declares; that if you except this sacrifice, he will not torture you for all of eternity.
Yeah OK what ever. I except!

Religion the Hypothesis that Wouldn't Die

If religion is simply a hypothesis that's so full of holes it's absorbent! Why does it persist?
I think it's because people naturally think they are special. The instinct for self preservation is the mother of self importance without the feeling of self importance, there would be no self preservation. Being in possession of a rather large brain and evolving into the number one apex predator can make you a little smug too, but that large brain had only begun to scratch the surface when the big questions came up; what makes the sun hot, why is the sky blue in the day? and black with white dots at night?,why am I here?, where did I come from? and where do I go when I die? The large brain didn't even know that it was alone. None of the other brains could think the way it did. That big brain was special and it slowly began to wonder why; why was it at the top of the food chain, using tools that no others could fashion? The big brain went on to do wonderful things and archived greatness as it took over and claimed the world as it's own. It found nothing to explain where it came from in the natural world but, there was another world. The world of dreams, while the brain was at rest it seemed to enter a different realm, a spirit world not governed by any earthly limitations. The brain hypothesized that some unseen spirits were at work and started to use this catch-all to explain everything that it had no explanation for. The spirits got more and more sophisticated as time went on and evolved into gods. Great and powerful gods who watch over us and punish us when we are bad.
Old gods were abandoned as needed as the brains started to figure out how thing really worked and new gods took there places. New gods that better fit the times. New gods that better fit the new world views. But now we only have a few unanswered questions and they are the big ones; why am I here, where did I come from and where do I go when I die? In our egos we are the most important species on the planet. We seem to have been put in charge. We must be special! The brain thinks it is special and cannot fathom death to nothingness simply because it is alive and thinking. Therefore it clings to an the hope of an afterlife. There is no proof of an afterlife but, the brain needs to feel that it will go on because, it can never know any other condition.
All is not hopeless though; the brain is evolving and so are the gods. I think the gods will go extinct first.