This afternoon has been another spent in deep devotion and conversation with my God. One of the questions that I have not had answered before received an answer today. I wanted to know where everything with mankind went wrong. When did mankind lose its way and its faith?

The answer [...]]]> Originally posted on FaceBook.

This afternoon has been another spent in deep devotion and conversation with my God. One of the questions that I have not had answered before received an answer today. I wanted to know where everything with mankind went wrong. When did mankind lose its way and its faith?

The answer was a little surprising but not unexpected.

Mankind went wrong when it discovered farming! Farming untroduced needs that could not be met from the tribe. Farming needed more and better land so tribes fought over the best land and were merciless in its defence. Farming was labour intensive and attacks were made on other tribes to secure slaves to work the land.

As the farms grew more important it was necessary to have trained warriors to defend them and these costs had to be recovered by using even more slaves to do the work so that there was more money left to pay the warriors and ensure their loyalty.

As hunter gatherers, mankind was subject to the harsh laws of nature. A long hard winter could see tribes being thinned out as members died of starvation as food supplies ran out.

Farming enabled the tribes to set aside so much food that winter deaths became rare – the tribes expanded. Eventually the farms had to organise themselves for their own protection. Towns and villages grew and the demand for food and wealth became insatiable.

Social order was imposed so that the few controlled the many.

Mankind is now a massive element that has permanently destroyed the natural order of things.

Comfortable survival is no longer seen as enough – idiotic geegaws are needed. How is it even remotely reasonable that mankind should have several factories that produce ONLY rubber ducks?

As for faith, it seems we lost that when we refused to believe in the circle of life.

Fanciful tales were created all over the world to explain that death is really only the door way to a new life. Our contentment with our place in the world and the belief in the circle of life were destroyed by those who sought the wealth of the farmers without farming for themselves. They told tales of gods and reincarnation that were the fruit of the imagination they had acquired. Mankind began to worship itself and forgeot where it came from.

It started with farming.

I am having a real problem with social site and Sunday Christians at the moment. Their pontifications and constant references to Jesus in their posts has me wondering what the hell these people talk like when they are not posting.

The levels of hypocrisy that [...]]]>

Am I an MLM product?

I am having a real problem with social site and Sunday Christians at the moment. Their pontifications and constant references to Jesus in their posts has me wondering what the hell these people talk like when they are not posting.

The levels of hypocrisy that are plain for all to see are mind boggling.

A dog called Marko recently rescued and in need of  veterinary help was refused EVEN A SINGLE DOLLAR by all but three people on FaceBook. Two people even told me I was wrong to appeal for help for a dog when people needed help. This is absolutely indicative of the duplicity and lip service the Christians pay to their religion. Even worse, one of these two people even had the gall to post the picture of a loving dog and say how people could learn from them.

There seems to be something basically wrong when a collection of people listen to the words of a man in a frock, especially if that man in a frock is pontificating about homosexual men (the vast majority of whom would not want to be seen dead in a frock!). Why does wearing the frock also require that a shirt collar be worn back to front? Is this to try to fool the Devil that they are looking the other way?

There must also be a reasonable degree of concern when many Christian churches practice a form of mystical cannibalism in order to secure their souls and acknowledge someone who was tortured to death on a cross.

I like to put my faith to the test by asking questions and seeking the opinions of others. It is very sad when the only response I get is from “a Biblical quote for all occasions” – especially when the quote is neither apposite nor transparent. It is fairly obvious that most of these Christians do not know their Bible as well as they could (or should).

One huge inconsistency that has me puzzled by social site and Sunday Christians is the way they claim that everything good is a direct result of the actions of God or Jesus while they are in denial that if He can do good, He could also be responsible for some bad. (After all, He does work in mysterious ways!) One recent film on YouTube showed an athlete winning despite some adverse actions by others. Naturally, there was the sanctimonious claim that it was the strength of Jesus that made winning possible – not the dedication, discipline, training and courage of the athlete. This is crass stupidity because we all know that if the athlete had not won, Jesus would most certainly NOT have been blamed.

Despite my open doubts, my oft stated questions and my easy accessibility, why are no Christians strong enough in their faith to enter into an open discussion? Why are they so vain and full of pride that they feel that a Bible quote is all that is necessary to win any argument. They won’t even accept the premise that the Bible, having been written, translated and transcribed by men might not actually be the word of God.

The Christian church is on to a good thing. It pre-dated multi level marketing by many centuries and  is actually a brilliant MLM model to follow.

1 - Find a hungry market – people scared of dying

2 – Create a product for the market – a book (the Bible)

3 – Enrol affiliates to service and expand the market – priests

4 – Create add-on products that can be sold repeatedly – indulgencies, holy water, religious artifacts

5 – Make the product a membership with regular membership fees payable – build churches, make collections, tythe the land

This MLM system has created enormous wealth while claiming to be aiding the poor and starving masses. The priests are well known for living in a manner far superior to their poor parishioners. Bishops and higher ranked priests display obscene wealth and contempt for those who should be able to go to them for assistance. Huge swathes of real estate or small pockets of very high value real estate have been acquired and yet they serve no useful purpose apart from the aggrandisement of the priests. The whole raison d’etre of the church is to make money. The buildings are often stuffed with treasures while in the houses nearby poor people cannot eat properly yet still contribute to the already immeasurable wealth of the church.

I cannot believe in a God that would lend itself to such vainglorious and uncharitable activities. It puzzles me that the dichotomy of good and evil should be so perfectly illustrated by the very organisation designed to promote good and banish evil.

Yes. I am having a real problem with social site and Sunday Christians at the moment.

]]> http://www.askoldcoot.info/2012/01/31/trouble/feed/ 0 http://www.askoldcoot.info/2012/01/29/mockingjay-the-hunger-games-book-3/ http://www.askoldcoot.info/2012/01/29/mockingjay-the-hunger-games-book-3/#comments Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:34:15 +0000 oldcoot http://www.askoldcoot.info/2012/01/29/mockingjay-the-hunger-games-book-3/

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she's made it out of the bloody arena alive, she's still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what's worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss's family, not her friends, not the people of District 12. Powerful and haunting, this thrilling final installment of Suzanne Collins's groundbreaking The Hunger Games trilogy promises to be one of the most talked about books of the year.

To set the record straight, I do not dislike Americans – I dislike what they do. Many older Brits have an almost tribal memory of the transgressions American troops committed against their country after they came across [...]]]> I suppose it was inevitable that someone would ask this question – even if it was anonymously.

To set the record straight, I do not dislike Americans – I dislike what they do.

Many older Brits have an almost tribal memory of the transgressions American troops committed against their country after they came across to sell their help in WWII. The “over sexed, over paid and over here” description of the American troops became popular as soon as they started to buy the honour of British girls. In a time of deep rationing, it took American troops very little time to realise that they could treat a young British mother as a prostitute – the price being a piece of cheese, bacon or chocolate for her child(ren).

While many hard working men who were not able to go to war were earning the equivalent of $2 a week and their wives were having to cope with ration coupons for essentials, American troops had their own massive and seemingly endless supplies with which to taunt and tempt. This created the initial ill will between a war torn country and these troops who had finally been forced to take  a side.

What really set the seal on the relationship and made it uncomfortable on the “home” front, was the attitude that everything was “up for grabs”. There seemed to be no honour among the troops and no respect for the British. Although my own home town did not suffer massive bombing, home owners who were bombed out soon learned that it was not safe to let Americans join any rescue missions. Anything of value in a bombed building would disappear – especially if it was pocketable. I am told that in many cities the rescue services respectfully declined the help of Americans because they would disappear as soon as they had enough loot and leave the rescue services depleted.

I had always treated some of these stories with a measure of scepticism but having watched the TV series “Band of Brothers”, I have to accept that the stories I heard were true.

The reputation earned by the American troops was cast in stone as soon as Hollywood began their huge propaganda sweep and showed how America won the war almost single handedly. The fact that hundreds of thousands of allied troops and probably as many civilians had been fighting for more than three years was simply swept under the carpet of lies. The resistance movements in Europe were ignored or made to look like circus acts so that the American soldier could step in and resue the day. Only recently have some more honest representations of events been made.

The crowning glory of the American reputation was the way that they stormed into the peace process and added to the crippling defence costs of the British people. The British had to see their own bombed cities and destroyed factories given second place in the queue for reparation. The British actually had to pay to repair Germany before they could repair their own wounds so that America could “rescue” the inventors of the V1, V2 and V3 rockets and spirit them across the Atlantic to develop even more weapons of mass destruction.

I was born in a relatively small town in 1946 (Grimsby) and, as I said, it did not get heavily bombed. Because of the crippling costs of American help and German reparations, I was still playing in bombed houses eleven years after the end of the war – at the same time as most German cities were once again functioning and wealthy.

I do not dislike Americans but I deeply distrust them and resent that 66 years after the end of the war, my country, the sole point of resistance at the time America chose a side, has only recently finished paying for the “help” America sold us.