Author Archives: Dale Husband

A Critical Mistake in the UU World

Posted on by

The UU World is the official magazine of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), the religious organization I belong to. About two years ago, a controversy erupted over the embarrassing fact that despite its stated commitment to racial diversity, the UUA was far too white dominated and people of color were being passed over for positions in it that they were indeed qualified for. When this became too obvious to ignore, it forced President Peter Morales to resign.

Now, two years after that blew over, another problem has emerged: the disrespecting of transgender people by the magazine itself!

Continue reading →

John Wiley and Madaline Wampler

Posted on by

The title of this blog entry refers to two people that I dearly loved last year. And both of  them broke my heart, though not at the same time. But they ARE connected. Both professed to be Unitarian Universalists, like me. And I dealt with them both on Facebook. I will tell their stories through links and screenshots of my Facebook postings about them and those who commented on them. Continue reading →

A Positive Interaction with a Baha’i on Facebook

Posted on by

Ever since I defected from the Baha’i Faith, my only dealings with members of my former religion have been through the internet and most of them have been battles that tended to leave me angered and even a little sick of their arrogance and nonsense.

Some of those battles are seen or described on these blog entries:

Baha’is must reject the Guardianship!

My Battle on Amazon with a Haifan Baha’i

Another Battle with a Haifan Baha’i, this time on Blogspot

Treachery of Baha’is @ reddit

Muslim-bashing and Libel Against Ex-Baha’is in Reddit

A series of ludicrous comments on YouTube and Facebook

But last month a totally different encounter occurred on Facebook, one that gives me hope for the future.

In the following conversation, the Baha’i who contacted me will be referred to as L B (for Local Baha’i) and his words will be in red italics. My words in the actual conversation will be in blue italics, while additional notes I add here for commentary will be in green. To protect his privacy, all specific identifying information will be withheld.

First, L B sent me a friend request, which I rejected, not even recognizing his name at first. I then asked who he was.

Have we met before? I see you sent me a friend request.

Yes, you used to come to feast at my house in (city). I’m (mother) and (father)’s son

That was enough to jog my memory. This young man had been only a child when I knew him.

I remember them. But I haven’t been a Baha’i since 2005 and am now a Unitarian Universalist.

I know, I saw your blog
I just thought of you randomly and wanted to say Facebook Hi
Are you still in Haltom city? I work at (medical job).
Ok, no harm, no foul. I looked at your profile and worried you were trying to harass me.
Like a scammer or like a malignant Baha’i?
your profile is open, so I saw your screenshots of responses to scammers
His using the words “malignant” and “Baha’i” in the same breath was the first indication to me that he wasn’t as loyal to the Faith as I thought he’d be.
Yes, I live here with my elderly parents. You say you saw my blog? You must know then that I’m one of the most hard-core critics of the Faith now. But that doesn’t mean I hate Baha’is. I cannot hate what I used to be.
At this point, I thought he would end the conversation. But he continued.
Oh no, I saw the basis of your criticisms and your recommended conversation or cooperation tactics with Baha’is for other Universalists
As for scammers, I enjoy busting them and then warning others about their tricks.
I admire a person who investigates the truth and is dedicated to the truth, so I admire your spirit
Thank you.
I guess he really takes seriously the supposed Baha’i idea of “Independent Investigation of Truth”.
Do you or your parents ever come to (my workplace)?
I don’t think so.
Honestly, I never thought I would see or hear from any of you again.
I’ve thought of you a few times throughout the years
I searched for you once maybe a year back, but I didn’t find anything
then last night my sister was telling me about a meme her friend had referred to that was anti-Baha’i
and in the course of finding this unrelated meme, I saw a blog that had posts critical of the Faith by someone named Dale Husband
and I was like “No way!” and I looked at your blog and found you on Facebook
His sister was only a baby when I knew her. She would be a teenager now.
I’m all over the internet. Also, my essays have been copied and cited by many others.
well, I found the ones in your reasoning thinker blog
Anywhere you see a red, white and blue Circle H logo, that’s me. It’s my trademark.
You are welcome to ask me questions.
where is there a unitarian universalist church near here?
is the following large?
WOW!!! So he is not even trying to defend the Baha’i Faith, but goes straight to the other big issue of mine in religion. I was elated!
There are several UU churches in the Fort Worth area. The oldest one is First Jefferson Unitarian Universalist Church. Google that name. The total number of UUs in the Fort Worth area is about 400.
There are an estimated 250,000 UUs nationwide.
The address for First Jefferson is 1959 Sandy Ln. in east Fort Worth.
Since you seem to respect me despite my defection, I invite you to come visit me at the aforementioned church in the interest of having a dialogue between us. It would be very helpful for you to see what UUs are like and what they might offer you.
What service do you attend?
Sunday service is at 11:00 AM, but you can arrive as early as 9:00 AM if you want to be given a tour of the place and then attend one of the gatherings that start at 9:30 AM such as Adult Forum or Adventures in Religion.
I can’t make it this Sunday, but it would be nice to check out the church on a Sunday soon
my work has me working weekends many weeks, so it might be a struggle for a bit
thank you for the invitiation
OK. Just let me know if and when you plan to visit so I could meet you there.
For the record, it never occurred to me, because of his Persian background, that L B would likewise defect from the Baha’i Faith. All my blog entries I wrote against the Faith were not about making people leave it, but about showing non-Baha’is what it is really like so they would not be so easily deceived by Baha’i propaganda as I was. But if my blog has made him quit believing, then I have scored a stunning victory far beyond my wildest dreams!

A Critical Analysis of the Epistle of 2 Peter

Posted on by

The Second Epistle of Peter is one of the most controversial parts of the New Testament, with many Bible scholars claiming it wasn’t even written by the apostle in question, and was instead composed many years after his death to promote the teaching of Peter’s rival, Paul. Let’s start looking at the text.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Peter%201%20;&version=KJV

Continue reading →

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is kicking @$$ in Washington D. C.

Posted on by

For most of American history, the federal government in the USA, including its Congress, has been a haven for elitist jerks with no interest in relating to the average American. Most members of Congress are millionaires, after all.

Enter Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a young New York woman who was a waitress only a year ago, but who this year upset all expectations by overthrowing a member of the Democratic establishment in the primaries and then went on to win a seat in the House of Representatives. And what is she doing now to change things?

Continue reading →

The Foundational Lie at the Center of all Conservative Politics

Posted on by

One of the biggest problems with our modern society is the limited vision far too many people seem to have and their unwillingness to look beyond that vision and outside their comfort zone to see all of reality and what it involves.
For example, the average white person in the USA rarely deals with black people on a personal level and thus has no idea of how racism affects blacks on a frequent basis. Because their dealings with police are usually pleasant or at least respectful, they assume that blacks are treated the same way by police. So when they hear of cops shooting unarmed blacks, they assume that the black suspect must have provolked the cop in some way. But even if that were true, being defiant towards a cop should not merit the death penalty, so the excusing of the killings is racist on its face.
Let me emphasize one important point about those in the media who defend the political status quo and those who are privledged because of that status quo; they are ALL liars. Because those in power want to feel comfortable about their power, these media thugs rush to tell their followers what they already assume to be true, thus the followers express confirmation bias rather than looking for objective truth to take all the facts into account.
Rush Limbaugh is a liar.
Ann Coulter is a liar.
Bill O’Reilly is a liar.
Shawn Hannity is a liar.
Michael Savage is a liar.
Dinesh D’Souza is a liar.
I could go on with dozens more names of media personalities as well as hundreds of names of officials in our various federal, state, and local governments, but you get the point, right?
And what are all these different conservatives lying about? One basic concept, which can be summed up as follows.
“There is no need to reform or improve society, what we have right now (or had in the past at some point) is what we should have forever in the future, because change will be too painful for us to endure.”
Doesn’t that sound like self-serving cowardice to you?
In the 1960s, there was a tremendous struggle over civil rights for blacks in America, especially in the south where they were kept in dire poverty and even denied voting rights in most cases, as well as cut off from the same opportunities whites enjoyed. The U S Supreme Court ruled against these racist institutions and forced most of them to change. Afterwards, most whites across America thought the racial problems had been solved. But the white supremacists, while they were down, were certainly not out and they began to strike back.
Indeed, I have come to believe that the Religious Right of the 1980s and the Tea Party that rose up in response to Barack Obama becoming President were both scams that enabled white supremacists to sneak into and take over the Republican Party and then through that to grab control of the entire political apparatus of the United States federal government, not merely taking back control of the southern states. And with Donald Trump they have finally succeeded.
Why is conservatism so harmful to society? Because human nature is corrupt and abusive. When people allow themselves to act according to their default biological programming, the result is always tribalism, the placing of members of your own group above outsiders instead of promoting equal justice for everyone.
Ironically, Christianity, which most American conservatives claim to believe in, teaches this very thing, that we are all sinners who can’t be trusted to control ourselves without guidance from above. However, it is clear that even authorities in conservative forms of Christianity can’t always be trusted; they promote religious bigotry rooted in the past instead of ethical standards that fit the real needs of real people in this present age (ironic, considering that Christianity itself started as a rebellion against Jewish legalism). That’s what secular humanism does. And democracy is a humanist ideal.
Whenever people believe, for any reason, that society is good enough and needs no improvement, they actually open the door for society to become corrupt and abusive later; the only sure way to protect the people is to constantly look for ways and means to improve society. I am therefore a champion of “perpetual revolution”; the American Revolution of the 18th Century was only the beginning of reforms and progress and should never end as long as we have viable societies of any kind. There should be NO place whatsoever for Conservatism in American politics, period. To be consistent, the aforementioned conservatives in the media should be bowing down to the British government that Americans rebelled against in 1776, but they don’t because they are hypocrites.

Sinéad O’Connor goes off the deep end

Posted on by

I’ve written about Sinéad O’Connor before:
https://dalehusband.com/2010/03/27/sinead-oconnor-was-both-wrong-and-right/

And I’ve also written about the Irish and the abuse they have suffered from the Catholic Church:

https://dalehusband.com/2011/01/20/the-irish-people-must-abandon-catholicism/

So it does not surprise me that she would finally reject any allegiance to Catholicism, just I would have urged her to do. But I never expected this:

Sinéad O’Connor Says She Never Wants to ‘Spend Time with White People Again’

Sinéad O’Connor is taking her commitment to her new religion one step further.

The 51-year-old “Nothing Compares 2 U” singer, who now goes by the name Shuhada Davitt, shared in a series of tweets early Tuesday that, a few weeks after officially converting to Islam, she wants to avoid everyone who does not share her spiritual beliefs.

In the first message, she wrote, “I’m terribly sorry. What I’m about to say is something so racist I never thought my soul could ever feel it. But truly I never wanna spend time with white people again (if that’s what non-muslims are called). Not for one moment, for any reason. They are disgusting.”

If her spiritual orientation is indeed Islamic, by all means she should embrace it. But this sounds like bigotry against non-Muslims. How can you promote the virtues of Islam except by interacting with non-Muslims to show them how good the religion is for you?

Then, O’Connor called into question the social platform’s policy about blocking hateful content. “Interesting to see if Twitter bans this when it allows people like Trump and Milbank spew the satanic filth upon even my country,” she said.

The musician also addressed the role of violence in Islam, Judaism and Christianity. O’Connor is a known critic of the Catholic church.

“BTW if one IS an intelligent theologian and has taken the journey, one would know there is no more talk of ancient violence in the Q’ran as the Tanukh, the Bible or The sodding Mahabarata. And its ALL EQUALLY [IRRELEVANT] TO OUR TIMES,” she mused, adding in a follow-up tweet, “Everyone says the Poor Americans are the victim of Trump. But you hired him. So fire him. Otherwise you’re complicit. It is the same with all so called Islamic Terrorism. Which is exactly what the devil wants and loves.”

If the violent stories in the Quran are indeed irrelevant to our times, why would anyone assume that the dogmas and rituals associated with Islam are relevant to this present day? Does simple logic not occur to her?

Tying in her own Irish culture, the singer continued, “No Irish person on earth would disagree. We didn’t fire the church. We let them please themselves in our children right under our noses and there is no recompense. No balm in gilliad for Irish human beings under ‘[civilization].’ “

To conclude, O’Connor acknowledged the bizarreness of the rant: “Final word. If its ‘Crazy’ to care. Then by all means, spank my ass and call me Fruity loops : )”

It is never crazy to care, but remember when you tore up that photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live and the fallout resulting from that? That was a crazy stunt. And it seems you learned nothing from that failure.

Last month, she confirmed on Twitter her conversion to Islam, explaining that her new faith “is the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian’s journey.”

“All scripture leads to Islam. Which makes all other scriptures redundant,” the Grammy winner added, before revealing she would henceforth be known by a new name. “I will be given (another) new name. It will be Shuhada.’”

In addition to changing her name on her Twitter page, she also replaced her profile picture with a photo that reads “Wear a hijab just do it” alongside the Nike swoosh logo. Additionally, her Twitter bio now reads, “PLEASE BE AWARE THAT IF YOU POST RACIST OR ANTI MUSLIM RHETORIC ON THIS PAGE YOU WILL BE BLOCKED.”

Demanding tolerance for your beliefs while being intolerant towards those who disagree? We have a word for that.

I wonder if she ever considered the Baha’i Faith. A Baha’i could just as easily proclaim that “all scripture leads to the Baha’i Faith. Which makes all other scriptures redundant.” As a Christian, I was taught that most of the “Old Testament” pointed to Jesus as the fulfillment of the Jewish covenant, which would have been an offensive thing to claim to any Jews that heard it. Well, as a non-theist, I think they are ALL wrong. There is no final religion, no perfect religion and no “true” religion. And no one can prove otherwise. That’s why we have so many religions and the many, many, MANY divisions within all of them.

The day after revealing her big news, O’Connor shared that she had been given her first hijab, writing that she wouldn’t be posting a photo because it’s “intensely personal,” before humorously adding that there was a second reason for her decision.

“I’m an ugly old hag,” she wrote. “But I’m a very, very, very happy old hag.”

Over the next couple of days, the Irish singer went on to share a number of photos of herself wearing a head covering, simply writing that she was “happy.”

O’Connor was ordained as a priest in 1999 in a dissident Roman Catholic group.

She has previously spoken out against the abuses of the Catholic Church, even ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II during a Saturday Night Live appearance in 1992.

The singer has struggled with her mental health in recent years, including suicidal ideation, yet said she was open about her issues in the hopes that it would inspire others suffering to seek help.

Could her conversion to Islam also be a sign of mental illness? I’m not saying that all Muslims are mentally ill, of course. But her stated contempt for white people, while herself still being white, reminds me of THIS lunatic, Rachel Dolezal:

https://dalehusband.com/2015/06/14/lying-to-fight-racism/

And both should be ignored.

What will it take to end the abuse?

Posted on by

Look at this disturbing news story:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/04/america-minority-rule-voter-suppression-gerrymandering-supreme-court

Rigging the vote: how the American right is on the way to permanent minority rule

Underhand Republican tactics – gerrymandering, voter suppression, more – underpin a vice-like grip on power

The American right is in the midst of a formidable project: installing permanent minority rule, guaranteeing control of the government even as the number of actual human beings who support their political program dwindles.

Voter suppression is one, but only one, loathsome tactic in this effort, which goes far beyond just winning one election. Minority rule is the result of interlocking and mutually reinforcing strategies which must be understood together to understand the full picture of what the American right wants to achieve.

Examples are everywhere. Take North Dakota. In 2012, Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, won a surprise victory in a Senate race by just 2,994 votes. Her two largest county wins were in the Standing Rock and Turtle Mountain Reservations, where she won more than 80% of the vote. Her overall vote margin in counties containing Native reservations was more than 4,500 votes.

Observing that Heitkamp literally owed her seat to Native voters, North Dakota’s Republican legislature enacted a voter ID law that requires voters to present identification showing their name, birth date and residential address. There’s the rub: many Native voters do not have traditional residential addresses, so this law effectively disenfranchises them.

Or take Georgia, where the Republican nominee for governor, Brian Kemp, is the secretary of state and in that capacity has placed more than 50,000 voter registrations on hold, many from urban areas with high black populations. That is in keeping with Kemp’s privately expressed “concern” that high voter turnout will favor his opponent – Stacey Abrams, running strongly to be the first black female governor in US history.

Exacerbating voter suppression is the ongoing partisan gerrymandering effort – the redrawing of electoral maps to favor one party over another. After the 2010 census, the Wisconsin legislature (controlled by Republicans) drew a map for the state’s legislative districts explicitly designed to ensure they would retain control of the legislature even if they received a minority of votes. It worked: in 2012, despite receiving only 48.6% of the vote, they won 60 of 99 seats. Democrats won an outright majority of votes cast but secured just 39 seats.

To this, Wisconsin added a voter ID requirement designed to make it harder to vote at all. Voila: voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election was the lowest since 2000 and Donald Trump carried the state. (To be sure, there were other factors at work.) The combined, national effect of partisan gerrymandering is such that in the 2018 midterms, the Democrats might win the popular vote by 10 points and still not control the House.

Legislative maps designed to promote minority rule plus voter suppression of the constituencies opposed to it is a potent combination. And there’s more.

The two most recent Republican presidents have entered office despite receiving fewer votes than their opponent in a national election, thanks to the electoral college, which systematically over-represents small states. (California gets one electoral vote per 712,000 people; Wyoming gets one per 195,000.) With the presidency in hand in the run-up to the 2020 census, minority rule will be further entrenched by adding a citizenship question to the census. This will result in systematic undercounting of the population in heavily Democratic areas, which will in turn further reduce their influence as legislatures draw maps based on the data.

Then there’s the Senate. Because of its bias toward smaller, rural states, a resident of Wyoming has 66 times the voting power in Senate elections as one in California. Thus, in 2016, the Democratic party got 51.4 million votes for its Senate candidates. The Republicans got 40 million. And despite losing by more than 11 million votes, the Republicans won a supermajority (22 of 36) of the seats up for election, holding their majority in the chamber.

The hideously malapportioned Senate and electoral college permit the last piece of the minority rule puzzle to snap into place: the supreme court. In 2016, after losing the contest for the presidency and the Senate by millions of votes, the Republicans were able to install two supreme court justices. There may be more.

In fact, when the Senate confirmed Trump’s first nominee, Neil Gorsuch, it was a watershed moment in American history. For the first time, a president who lost the popular vote had a supreme court nominee confirmed by senators who received fewer votes – nearly 22 million fewer – than the senators that voted against him. And by now, it will not surprise you to discover that the senators who voted for the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh represent 38 million fewer people than the ones who voted no.

With the supreme court in hand, all those other tactics – partisan gerrymandering, voter ID and the rest – are protected from the only institution that could really threaten them. But it doesn’t stop there. The supreme court can be used to do more than approve the minority rule laws that come before it. It can further the project on its own.

In 2015, the court came within one vote of holding that independent redistricting commissions (which reduce partisan gerrymandering) are actually unconstitutional. The swing vote in that case, Anthony Kennedy, is gone. And the court in 2013 famously invalidated a major portion of the Voting Rights Act which put checks on voter-suppression efforts of the kind now taking place all over the country.

Taken together, this is a powerful set of tools. Draw maps that let you win even when you lose. Use the resulting power to enact measures to suppress the vote of the other side further. Count on a minority rule president to undercount your opponents in the census, and a minority-rule Senate to confirm justices who will strike down any obstacles to the plan.

With the deck this stacked, it isn’t enough to win. Wresting control back from the entrenched minority will take overwhelming victory. It may take, in other words, a genuine political revolution.

  • Ian Samuel is Associate Professor of Law at Indiana University Bloomington’s Maurer School of Law. He is also the co-host of @FirstMondaysFM
In short, the USA is  becoming the 21st Century version of South Africa under apartheid.
Which brings up the obvious question: Who will be the American version of Nelson Mandela? Who will be willing to fight, to be imprisoned, or even to die to put an end to the Republicans’ efforts to destroy democracy and freedom among us?

We can start here:
Then proceed with:
More details on gerrymandering:
And also see:
Unless and until people of all colors, both genders, various religions and even different social classes are finally willing to rise up and OVERTHROW the Republican Party and its march towards fascism, we won’t have freedom, period. We can only truly be free if we fight for it.

 

The Downfall of Sears

Posted on by

Sears as a corporation has been dying for many years. This past week it finally filed for bankruptcy, even though it was once one of the largest companies in the entire world. Just as the Roman Empire was once a superpower but fell into ruin in 476 AD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhrK3GKNmLY

Here’s a video from two years ago showing how bad things were even then:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORV4kYa8J18

Continue reading →

The Wayback Machine preserves the debunked nonsense of hypocrites!

Posted on by

On several occasions, I have recorded on this blog and directly answered the lies and unfounded nonsense of Christian apologists. Here are two examples:

Lying About History for the Bible

Insulting and Libeling Unbelievers

In the first, I showed how history was distorted regarding the city of Tyre and the obviously false meaning of Bible “prophecy” was papered over in an incredible display of projection and damage control, while in the other one I attacked Creationist Hugh Ross when he tried to explain why people often do not become Christians. In both cases, at least one of the false web pages were removed completely by the writers, while in the second case the other false web page’s address was changed to make it harder to find (but I caught that and updated my blog entry anyway). You’d think with that, both liars would have sense enough to shut up, but their phony websites remain to this day:

https://www.reasons.org/home

http://exchangedlife.com/

Here’s a basic rule of thumb to prevent you for falling for a con artist of any kind: If a person is caught telling ONE lie, then anything else he says should not be taken at face value. Huge Ross lied about whale ankles, while the unknown writer(s) of the Exchanged Life Discipleship website lied about the issue of the prophet Ezekiel. I am pleased that their web pages in question were deleted after I busted them on this very blog, but don’t you think they should have had the courage to make a public apology for their lying? Instead, they chose to hide what they did like it never mattered!

But a special website known as the Wayback Machine preserved what they said anyway.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120131174133/http://www.reasons.org/philosophyreligion/atheism/barriers-salvation

https://web.archive.org/web/20101124175220/http://exchangedlife.com/skeptic/ezekiel.htm

And with these falsehoods exposed, seekers of truth can know to avoid those websites and their creators to prevent being deceived by anything else they might claim.

Ironic that the Christian rock band Petra made a song about hidden things being revealed in an act of judgement against people.

As a Christian, I LOVED Petra, so this pleases me to no end!

 

 

The So-Called Baha’i Faith (SCBF)

Posted on by

I was lurking at the ex-Mormon subreddit and kept finding this acronym being thrown around: TSCC.
I finally googled it and found: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TSCC

{{{ The So-Called Church – a pejorative term for the Mormon church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, LDS) primarily used by ex-mormons during online discourse. }}}

So, what if ex-Baha’is and other critics of the Baha’i Faith could use their own acronym, SCBF, the So-Called Baha’i Faith? This would stem from the “Haifan Baha’is” claiming to be THE Baha’i Faith and it would get across to non-Baha’is what a LIE that really is, since there are indeed other groups out there! Then we could drop the term “Haifan Baha’i”, since only “Covenant-Breakers” use it.

 

How to have a Truly Healthy Relationship

Posted on by

To me, having a healthy relationship with someone else is about first loving and respecting yourself and then learning to love and respect another person in exactly the same way and at all times. You must see that partner not as someone to possess and control, but as someone to add your own strengths and talents to. If you are not strong and independent on your own, then any relationship you have is likely to be abusive and a trap.

Love2  Love1 38122073_2319866978040090_3749237086239064064_n

38701175_2313660788706774_2489772432454320128_n 12642823_1117408031652802_6910481043329339339_n

10348433_904321036244736_1260409867326483783_n 38085153_10155649901436220_7551297352481374208_n

 

A Violation, an Apology and a Lack of R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Posted on by

Read this disturbing story:

Bishop at Aretha Franklin’s Funeral Apologizes to Ariana Grande for Touching Her, Taco Bell Joke

Bishop Charles H. Ellis III has apologized to Ariana Grande for the way he behaved towards her at Aretha Franklin’s funeral.

During an interview with the Associated Press at the cemetery where Franklin was laid to rest following her 8-hour “Celebration of Life” funeral service on Friday, Ellis expressed regret for the way he touched the singer onstage and for saying he initially thought the 25-year-old singer was a new menu item at Taco Bell.

“I personally and sincerely apologize to Ariana and to her fans and to the whole Hispanic community,” Ellis said. “When you’re doing a program for nine hours you try to keep it lively, you try to insert some jokes here and there.”

He also apologized for touching Grande too close to her chest during their televised interaction.

Ariana Grande and Bishop Charles H. Ellis III

“It would never be my intention to touch any woman’s breast. … I don’t know I guess I put my arm around her,” Ellis continued. “Maybe I crossed the border, maybe I was too friendly or familiar but again, I apologize.”

Continuing, he added: “The last thing I want to do is to be a distraction to this day. This is all about Aretha Franklin.”

Ariana Grande

Ariana Grande

After watching Grande honor the late Queen of Soul at the service, the American Apostolic Pentecostal preacher said that, “When I saw Ariana Grande on the program, I thought that was a new something at Taco Bell.”

“My 28-year-old daughter tells me, ‘Dad! You are old at 60’ ” he joked.

In the moment, Grande appeared to take the joke in stride, as she proceeded to laugh and give Ellis a hug.

“Girl, let me give you all your respect,” Ellis then remarked. “Did you enjoy this icon? She is an icon herself. Come on, make her feel loved.”

There is absolutely no reason this incident should have happened. This was done at a FUNERAL (is nothing sacred anymore?) of one of the world’s greatest singers (who demanded respect in one of her songs, which clearly was not shown to Ariana Grande), long after so many Catholic priests have been condemned for sexual abuse of children and the “MeToo” movement has highlighted the problems with sexual abuse and sexual harassment of women by powerful men…….and yet it happened anyway.

An apology cannot be enough. This Bishop should be defrocked and banned from serving in a clerical position in any religious institution. If he did this idiotic act in public, what the hell could he be doing in private?

Debunking Libertarian Economic Bogosity

Posted on by

The title of this blog entry refers to this earlier one:

Shane Killian sells out!

It’s time to revisit that issue. Look at this meme:
37211526_10211829385762290_2164135833207046144_n

The whole premise of that meme is a lie. Capitalism and corporatism are one and the same and have been for at least 300 years. The attempt to make a distinction between them is profoundly dishonest, implying that “real” capitalism does not exist. If so, it never did and never will. The only real alternative to crony capitalism is Democratic Socialism, period.

Here’s what really happens:

A individual has an idea.

That individual forms a company and makes a product with that idea.

Consumers give the company money for the product.

The company becomes successful.

Someone else has a better idea and creates a better product.

The first company uses its money to buy out the new product from its inventor and sells it in addition to or even instead of the original product, increasing its profitability and leaving the actual inventor with almost nothing later.

As a result, the company makes money no matter what product it sells.

Always remember this:  Those who already have a lot of money will always have an unfair advantage over those who don’t.

Government corruption does NOT produce corporatism. Tyranny and abuses can also come from economic forces too if government does nothing to stop them with policies such as “trust-busting” and progressive income taxation, among other tools at government’s disposal to redistribute wealth. That is why Libertarianism is worthless.

FIVE Ways to Create a Religion of Hypocrites

Posted on by

Note: This is a slightly expanded version of an earlier blog entry:  Four Ways to Create a Religion of Hypocrites.

  1. State that religion no longer needs clergy……and replace them with leaders that are as authoritarian as the clergy ever was.
  2. Claim that men and women should be equal……but then deny women membership in the all-powerful leadership council of the religion.
  3. Condemn as heretics those who believe in your religion but dare to challenge the claims of your religion’s current leadership, while at the same time claiming to welcome as friends the followers of other religions.
  4. Claim there is harmony between science and religion, but also claim that anything your leaders say is absolutely true, even if on topics science is expected to address.
  5. Claim to shun partisan politics, but favor a government of their own, which is as partisan as it gets.

Any one of these makes a religion not worth following, but what should you do if you find a religion that has all five of these contradictions?

My Failed Marriage to Cheri

Posted on by

Dale and Cheri

Cheri and me as newlyweds.

I was in my mid-thirties and had been looking for someone to love since I left high school.

Then I met a beautiful lady named Sara. She seemed to have a wonderful personality, but even after I made clear how attracted I was to her, she said she saw me as just a friend.
Anyway, I had a choice to make. Walk away from her, or remain and be her real friend. I chose the latter. At one point, I even helped her get a job at a Target in Arlington, Texas. Where a certain woman was already working.
Sara then met a guy named John Ellington. The moment I saw them together, I knew she had found the right man for her. A year later, I get invited to their wedding. Guess who was also invited?
Cheri Day, my own future wife and Sara’s co-worker at Target. Cheri actually sat near me. I danced with Cheri at the wedding and we swapped addresses and phone numbers and we began dating. We often double dated with Sara and John.

Continue reading →

The Friendzone is a Sexist Myth

Posted on by

A friend of mine linked me to this blog entry and having known beautiful women who were great friends and I did not feel like I had to have sex with them to be with them at all, I am quite happy to have the word “friendzone” tossed out of the English language.

feministsatlarge's avatarFeminists-at-Large

by Erin Riordan

The Friendzone isn’t real. The idea that every “Nice Guy” is owed sex or a romantic relationship by his female friends is ridiculous. And if you think that’s not what Friendzoning is about, it absolutely is.

The movie Just Friends perhaps explains friendzoning best with the line, “See when a girl decides that you’re her friend, you’re no longer a dating option. You become this complete non-sexual entity in her eyes, like her brother, or a lamp.”

Or Urban Dictionary with, “When you are expected to support a girl you really like while she searches for a smarter, richer, or more handsome boyfriend. There is little you can do to get out without feeling like a dick. All in all, one of the meanest things girls do, whether they mean it or not.”

To some degree, the assumption of every guy claiming to be “friendzoned” is that…

View original post 1,019 more words

Muslim-bashing and Libel Against Ex-Baha’is in Reddit

Posted on by

This is a direct sequel to Treachery of Baha’is @ reddit

Baha’is in reddit have come up with a new tactic for attacking those who dare to leave and then criticize their former religion; they are claiming most ex-Baha’is are just Muslim enemies of the faith who never joined.

First see this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/bahai/comments/8vd7rj/do_bahais_worship_bahaullah/

At one point, a Baha’i named t0lk asserts:

A word of caution about r/exbahai, it is mostly populated by Muslims and not by people who were formerly Baha’is.

This was noticed and commented on here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/exbahai/comments/8vhhiq/a_word_of_caution_about_rexbahai_it_is_mostly/

Continue reading →

“Good Guy” vs. “Strong Guy” Dichotomy

Posted on by

In my younger days, I was often rejected by girls and young women even though I tried to be as loving towards them as possible. I assumed that it might have been because they thought I was ugly or weak. But the real issue seems to be something I often see in politics too.

Women naturally want men that are strong to protect them and their children, and our culture seems to depict men that have a strong sense of empathy and compassion for others to be “weak”, therefore such men are not considered as suitable for a domestic partnership as men that are highly aggressive towards others.

Likewise, people generally want a leader that is highly aggressive for the same reason. That explains why George McGovern lost so badly to Richard Nixon in 1972 despite having a much better character and this was repeated with Jimmy Carter losing to Ronald Reagan in 1980, and Donald Trump winning his election in 2016.

But what people often fail to consider is that the same aggressive attitude that makes a man look strong can be twisted to hurt or abandon the very ones the man is supposed to be protecting, including his love partner and their children. By contrast, a loving, empathic man can encourage a woman to stand up for herself rather than just let a man fight for her. And he would not leave her as long as she loved him just as deeply.

I have known several cases of women who used to see me as just a friend who after being abused and/or neglected by the men in their life, later took another look at me and decided I would have been the better partner for them after all. And I would consider it an honor to help care for them.

Likewise, I am hopeful that the American people will stop being seduced by the mere appearance of strength and seek in future Presidents the most powerful character trait anyone can have: LOVE! Its being seen as weakness is sheer ignorance. Have you ever seen a mother bear fight to protect her cubs?

Leaving World of Warcraft, and Playing Overwatch Instead

Posted on by

This month, I ended my subscription to World of Warcraft (WoW), the MMORPG I’d been playing for nearly seven years (I started my playing back in August of 2011). There were several reasons for this critical decision.

  1. The toxic nature of the WoW community.  I have already documented how I was humiliated and betrayed by people I trusted in guilds I was a member of. The first story is HERE and the second is HERE. In addition to that, I was swindled out of a lot of money by a female WoW player I was in love with and after she got the money I sent her (she claimed she needed it to go to school so she could get better employment), she turned on me and broke my heart with lies and incredible trickery. Her name is Heather Schneider and she lives in San Antonio, Texas.
  2. My dislike for the Warlords of Draenor (WoD) expansion.  Compared to the Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria expansions, which I loved, WoD was a disappointment, with not nearly as much content as any of the previous expansions had. Because of this, I considered leaving WoW then. My critical review and commentary of WoD is here on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifyBH7SYZjQ
  3. My falling in love with Overwatch.  It is the height of irony that instead of an MMORPG by a rival company, it was a completely different game by the SAME company, Blizzard, that killed my obsession with playing WoW! In fact, before I started with Overwatch, I HATED most First Person Shooter games because they seemed to be all about blowing away nameless enemy targets with no regard for them as people. By contrast, Overwatch features battles between characters that seem to have real personalities, and the lore of the game actually makes you care about what happens to some of them, while hating some of the others. I even fell in love with one character in particular: Mei! Watch this video to get an idea of why:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tjcm_kI0n0
  4. Hearing about the WoW expansion to come, Battle for Azeroth (BfA).  Legion, the expansion that came after WoD, more than made up for that last expansion’s deficiencies. I really wanted Legion to be the final expansion, so the WoW storyline would end on a high note. As soon as I heard that instead we were going to have an expansion after Legion focused once again on all out war between the Alliance and the Horde, I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I had already decided that if Blizzard ever put out another expansion that made me feel as bad as WoD did, I’d quit WoW. I just never imagined I’d feel so bad about one before it was to even be released!
  5. Trying the new expansion on beta. This was the final straw for me! I was one of the players selected to do beta testing on BfA, and it seemed like a great honor. Imagine my profound disappointment when I started playing it and found the content not only extremely buggy, but actually UNFINISHED! It felt more like an ALPHA build rather than a beta that was almost ready for release. I felt even worse when I learned that Blizzard had already set a date for the expansion’s release: August 14, 2018, only a few months away! What were they thinking?!

And so, I made the decision in May of this year to cancel my subscription in WoW and just walk away rather than endure what I feel will be a disaster waiting to happen.

Thankfully, Overwatch does not have a subscription; I just had to make a single payment to unlock everything I needed to play the game. There is no “pay to win with microtransactions” scam that some video games are known for (I’m looking at you, EA!). There are no expansions to buy; all players automatically get new maps and characters as they are released. And there are an incredible variety of characters, game modes, and other options one can choose freely from and you constantly get more from loot boxes the more you play. Even the drops from those loot boxes are strictly cosmetic; you never need to add anything to be a winner at the game. So I know now which game I will be playing for years to come!

The Issue of Alimony

Posted on by

As a firm believer in the equality of men and women, I see no justification for alimony being paid to a wife as part of a divorce settlement. Child support, certainly, but NOT money to the wife herself, unless and until she is disabled and completely unable to work to support herself.

Read this:

http://start.att.net/news/read/article/people-john_schneider_sentenced_to_jail_after_failing_to-rtime/category/entertainment

John Schneider Sentenced to Jail After Failing to Pay Alimony to Estranged Wife: Report

Dukes of Hazzard star John Schneider has reportedly been sentenced to jail for not paying over $150,000 in delinquent alimony.

John, 58, was sentenced to three days in the Los Angeles County Jail on Monday, according to TMZ, for not paying the spousal support due to his estranged wife, Elvira “Elly” Schneider, by mid-March.

In addition to jail time, John, who famously played Bo Duke on The Dukes of Hazzard (1979-85), will also have to complete 240 hours of community service.

A rep for Schneider did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

In February, the outlet reported that a judge gave him until March 14 to pay more than $150,000 in support to Elvira. At the time, the judge reportedly ordered John to transfer his Apple Valley property to Elvira and to resolve the property’s tax liens. TMZ reported that he did not resolve the tax liens.

Elvira filed for divorce in Los Angeles county on Nov. 14, 2014, after 21 years of marriage. She cited irreconcilable differences as the reason for their split, according to court documents.

In September 2016, he was ordered to pay Elvira $18,911 every month, TMZ reported.

The couple have three adult children: Leah, Chasen, and Karis.

This REALLY bothers me because I myself went through a divorce from my wife Cheri in 2012, and she was mentally and physically disabled, but I was not required to pay her alimony, because she still was able to work a job. Indeed the issue was not even brought up. But that was in Texas; I suspect the divorce laws are much more backward and corrupt in California.

People in California, and any other state that has this sort of absurdity, need to push for abolition of alimony in divorces. It is a relic from the time when women were either not working at all or could only hold jobs that paid far less than men. That’s not an issue now.

The Bogus Issue of Infallibility in the Baha’i Faith.

Posted on by

In the book Some Answered Questions, it was recorded that Abdu’l-Baha told a sheer absurdity that has badly damaged the credibility of the Baha’i Faith ever since.

http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/SAQ/saq-45.html

It is said in the holy verse: “There is no partner for Him Who is the Dayspring of Revelation in His Most Great Infallibility. He is, in truth, the exponent of ‘God doeth whatsoever He willeth’ in the kingdom of creation. Indeed the Almighty hath exclusively reserved this station for Himself and to none is given a share in this sublime and highly exalted distinction.”

Know that infallibility is of two kinds: essential infallibility and acquired infallibility. In like manner there is essential knowledge and acquired knowledge; and so it is with other names and attributes. Essential infallibility is peculiar to the supreme Manifestation, for it is His essential requirement, and an essential requirement cannot be separated from the thing itself. The rays are the essential necessity of the sun and are inseparable from it. Knowledge is an essential necessity of God and is inseparable from Him. Power is an essential necessity of God and is inseparable from Him. If it could be separated from Him, He would not be God. If the rays could be separated from the sun, it would not be the sun. Therefore, if one imagines separation of the Most Great Infallibility from the supreme Manifestation, He would not be the supreme Manifestation, and He would lack the essential perfections. But acquired infallibility is not a natural necessity; on the contrary, it is a ray of the bounty of infallibility which shines from the Sun of Reality upon hearts, and grants a share and portion of itself to souls.

Although these souls have not essential infallibility, still they are under the protection of God—that is to say, God preserves them from error. Thus many of the holy beings who were not dawning-points of the Most Great Infallibility, were yet kept and preserved from error under the shadow of the protection and guardianship of God, for they were the mediators of grace between God and men. If God did not protect them from error, their error would cause believing souls to fall into error, and thus the foundation of the Religion of God would be overturned, which would not be fitting nor worthy of God.

To epitomize: essential infallibility belongs especially to the supreme Manifestations, and acquired infallibility is granted to every holy soul. For instance, the Universal House of Justice, if it be established under the necessary conditions—with members elected from all the people—that House of Justice will be under the protection and the unerring guidance of God. If that House of Justice shall decide unanimously, or by a majority, upon any question not mentioned in the Book, that decision and command will be guarded from mistake. Now the members of the House of Justice have not, individually, essential infallibility; but the body of the House of Justice is under the protection and unerring guidance of God: this is called conferred infallibility.

Look up “infallibility” in a dictionary and you will read something like this:

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/infallibility

Sometimes in·fal·li·ble·ness. the quality of being infallible, or of being absolutely trustworthy.

Infallibility by logical definition is absolute in nature; it cannot exist in degrees nor can it be conferred on anyone. You either have it or you don’t, period. Therefore, logic proves that Abdu’l-Baha was a liar. He could not have been infallible, nor could the Guardian or the Universal House of Justice that came after him because NONE OF THEM WERE MANIFESTATIONS OF GOD!

Baha’u’llah made the limitation of infallibility quite clear in the Kitab-i-Aqdas:

He Who is the Dawning-place of God’s Cause hath no partner in the Most Great Infallibility. He it is Who, in the kingdom of creation, is the Manifestation of “He doeth whatsoever He willeth.” God hath reserved this distinction unto His own Self, and ordained for none a share in so sublime and transcendent a station. This is the Decree of God, concealed ere now within the veil of impenetrable mystery. We have disclosed it in this Revelation, and have thereby rent asunder the veils of such as have failed to recognize that which the Book of God set forth and who were numbered with the heedless.

And Abdu’l-Baha by claiming a lesser form of infalliblity (which by all appearances is identical to the Most Great Infallibility) was engaging in doublespeak, the same sort of dishonesty that allows Baha’is to claim they promote the equality of men and women even while women are denied a place on the Universal House of Justice. And we should indeed tolerate none of that nonsense.

 

Israel Commits Another War Crime

Posted on by

Can you think of any justification for military snipers to shoot down an unarmed MEDIC trying to treat injured people in the open? That is an incredibly cowardly thing to do. And that is what a soldier of Israel has just done!

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/03/middleeast/razan-al-najjar-gaza-nurse-killed/index.html

‘Her only weapon was her medical vest’: Palestinians mourn death of nurse killed by Israeli forces

By Ian Lee and Dominique van Heerden, CNN

Updated 11:07 PM ET, Sun June 3, 2018

Gaza (CNN)Razan al-Najjar is known to the world as the 21-year-old Palestinian medical nurse shot dead by an Israeli sniper during protests on Friday.

To her parents she was a beloved daughter who died just a few hundred meters from her home in Khan Younis, close to the fence that separates Gaza from Israel.
On Saturday, thousands took to the streets of the Gazan city for the young medic’s funeral.
The streets and lampposts surrounding Razan’s home are now adorned with her smiling image.
Her father, Ashraf al-Najjar, takes CNN up three flights of stairs and into their apartment. The rest of the family, their small home now filled with mourners, sit in disbelief.
Razan’s mother, Sabreen, dressed entirely in black, clutches her daughter’s blood-soaked medical vest.
She tells us Razan had been volunteering since the beginning of the protests, working without pay.
“I was afraid for her, but Razan told us she wasn’t afraid, she felt obliged to help and was clearly wearing a medical vest,” she says.
Sabreen says her daughter “may have been small, but she was strong, and her only weapon was her medical vest.”
Ashraf sits alongside his wife in a quiet state of denial, every so often nodding in agreement.
It’s a vest Razan thought would protect her.
“I’m protected by my vest,” she would tell her mother and father before heading out to help, “God is with me, I am not afraid.”
Razan al-Najjar’s death comes after weeks of Palestinian protests, known as the Great March of Return, during which more than 100 Palestinian protesters have been killed by Israeli fire.
She is the second medical worker to die. More than 200 others have been injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The Israeli military says it is investigating her death, adding, “the IDF constantly works to draw operational lessons and reduce the number of casualties in the area of the Gaza Strip security fence.”
“I want justice for Razan,” Sabreen says as she pulls a wad of medical gauze from the pocket of her daughter’s vest.
“Here is her weapon! I want the world to know this is the weapon of Razan al-Najjar — and is this the ID of a terrorist?” she asks rhetorically, holding up her daughter’s medical ID that she was wearing at the time of her death.

Israel is not worth defending if this is what it is willing to do. There is nothing to investigate; the killing of a unarmed person is itself an act of cold-blooded MURDER and must be avenged.

This was Razan Al Najjar and she was 21 years old.

Another Compelling Statement of Economic Truth

Posted on by

One of the biggest outright lies politicians have ever told their people was told by Republicans under the Reagan Administration in the 1980s, that cutting taxes would enable the rich to invest more and result in a stronger and more active economy. But that is not realistic. Ironically, conservatives want to cut welfare programs because poor people getting money from the government is supposed to make them lazy……so why would allowing the rich to keep more money due to lower taxation make them invest more? The opposite should be expected, because the whole point of investing is to make more money and they don’t need to so much if their taxes are lessened! And despite those repeated tax cuts, we keep having recessions repeatedly too.
Just as a poor person working even while getting welfare would be considered GREED, so would the rich investing more after getting a tax cut! And we should condemn both.

Trickle down lie

 

If your Spiritual Orientation is NEUTRAL…

Posted on by

File:Pictogram voting neutral.svg

I believe that many people in the world have a neutral spiritual orientation. Such people have the following characteristics.

  • They will usually follow uncritically whatever religion their parents profess and expect them to be. They do so out of loyalty to their parents, not out of loyalty to the religion itself.
  • They have little interest in controversies based on competing religious or anti-religious dogmas.
  • They are tolerant of people who profess a different religion or no religion, as long as those people do not cause them problems by trying to convert them to their way of thinking.
  • They think of religion as a means of social binding, not absolute “truth”, even if they do think of some of the doctrines of their own religion are true or at least likely to be true.
  • They pay little attention to propaganda designed to convert themselves or others to a religion.
  • They tend to not be active in religious worship practices and never rise to leadership in their religion.
  • If they do convert from one religion to another, it is usually because they marry a partner who does have a strong spiritual orientation and want to join the partner’s religion for the sake of family unity.

Such people, if raised in a multifaith religious group like the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), may choose to simply identify themselves as UUs and nothing more. If raised in a dogmatic cult like the Baha’i Faith, the Mormon Church or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, they may find themselves drifting away from such excessive social control once they reach adulthood, which is why these cults constantly seek new members to replace the ones they lose. The claim that they are trying to bring salvation to the world is merely the excuse they give for their obsession.

Seriously, parents need to STOP trying to “raise” their children in any religion, but tell them what the various options are so they can explore on their own once they approach adulthood.

For those who feel no strong attachment to religion, you can still express love and unity with others by finding secular causes to work hard for. What issues do you care about? What sort of difference do you want to make in the world?

The American Red Cross?   http://www.redcross.org/

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee? https://www.uusc.org/

Doctors Without Borders?  https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/

The Nature Conservancy? https://www.nature.org/

The Union of Concerned Scientists? https://www.ucsusa.org/

People for the American Way?  http://www.pfaw.org/

Those are just a few examples of worthy causes. I’m sure you can find many more.