I would not mention this article, except the writer, Dan Delzel, in the Christian Post started to make assumption about non-believers... He uses these flat lies about non-believers to impress his flock of readers. Don't ever do that again, cobber...

Here I post in italics what Dan writes with annotation by GUS in CAPITAL LETTERS. 

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Here are 20 dynamic spiritual realties ("signs" if you will) to reflect upon so that you don't miss out on the greatest gift ever given.

NO REALITIES, NOR SIGNS, HERE, JUST STATEMENTS OF FAITH. PASS THE COLLECTION PLATE...

1. Man has a deep desire to know what happens after death. (Compare man's thoughts about eternity to what animals "think about.")

"MAN"? WHAT ABOUT WOMAN? WE HAVE A DESIRE TO FART HIGHER THAN ANIMALS, DON'T WE? DON'T WE KNOW THAT WORMS TAKE OVER WHEN WE DIE? HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT ANIMALS THINK ABOUT?

2. Other pleasures in life fail to satisfy man's most pressing dilemma: "Is there life after death?"

I COULD NOT CARE, BUT I CAN AFFIRM THAT THERE IS NO LIFE AFTER DEATH. AND I CAN ASSURE PEOPLE THAT A LIFE ON THIS EARTH CAN BE PLEASURABLE WITHOUT HAVING TO BELIEVE.

3. There is a sense in man's heart that he was created to exist forever.

NUPE. RELATIVITY RULES. DEATH BEKONS.

4. The Bible has plenty of internal and external support for its historicity and authenticity.

THE BIBLE IS FULL OF CONTRADICTIONS. HISTORICALLY THE BIBLE IS THE WORK OF RACONTEURS, FORGERS AND FIBBERS. STORY TELLING IS APPALLING AND A LOT OF IT CAN EASILY BE DEBUNKED BY SCIENCE.

5. There is tremendous consistency in Scripture concerning God's grace and the free gift of salvation.

NUPE. MOST OF THE SCRIPTURE IS ABOUT SIN, ORIGINAL SIN, BEING BANNED FROM HEAVEN, BEING PENALISED BY DEATH, ABOUT HELL AND WARS WITH THY NEIGHBOURS, CONCUBINES AND KINGS WITH MANY WIVES SIMULTANEOUSLY. BROTHERLY HATE AND KILLINGS. NO CONSISTENCY EITHER.

6. A God who can create man and paradise would likely want people to live in heaven with Him.

THE POOR BUGGER... "HE" WOULD BE MAD AS HELL, HAVING TO COPE WITH THE RIFF-RAFF WE "MEN" ARE !

7. At a funeral, people strongly sense that man was not created to die.

SOME PEOPLE MAY DO, MOST INTELLIGENT PEOPLE DON'T. THEY DON NOT THINK THAT "MAN" EVOLVED TO LIVE FOREVER. LIFE HAS SPECIFIC LIMITS FOR INDIVIDUALS AND RANDOMISED LIMITS FOR SPECIES, DUE TO PLANETARY EVENTS AND EVOLUTION, DEVOLUTION AND EXTINCTION. THIS DOES NOT UNDERVALUE THE LIFE OF THE DECEASED. TO THE CONTRARY THIS CAN HIGHLIGHT THE GOOD LIFE A PERSON HAD, ALTRUISTICALLY — THAT IS TO SAY A LIFE PERFORMED WELL WITHOUT BEING INFLUENCED BY GETTING A LOLLY IN THE SKY.

8. Millions of believers claim to know eternal life in heaven is a free gift through faith in Jesus.

HAPPY FREE GIFT TO YOU. JESUS WAS NOT A BAD BLOKE BUT RELIGION BUILT AROUND HIM OFTEN STINKS OF HYPOCRISY. WHERE IS THE SET OF STEAK KNIVES?

9. There is only one religion with so many followers claiming to have the assurance of going to paradise one day.

THIS IS THE SAME SHIT AS WHAT MY NICE ISLAMIC NEIGHBOUR IS TELLING ME. ONLY ONE RELIGION.... WHICH ONE? WHICH VERSION? HIS ASSURANCE IS A BANQUET INSTEAD OF A "GARDEN", MIND YOU.

10. Believers base their assurance of heaven on God's promises, rather than on the testimony of other believers.

NO IDEA. NEVER SEEN GOD'S ASSURANCES BUT PROMISES FULL OF ILLUSIONS, WRATH AND VENGEANCE.

11. Believers experience joy when reflecting upon their eternal home.

JOY IS NOT EXCLUSIVE TO CONTEMPLATING ETERNITY.

12. Works-based religion creates spiritual uncertainty, while providing no assurance of going to heaven.

NO IDEA WHAT WORKS-BASED RELIGION IS: CATHOLICISM? ISLAM? BUDDHISM? SOUTHERN BAPTISM? THIS SENTENCE MAKES NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.

13. Heaven and hell are ideas man wouldn't naturally devise.

SAYS WHO? THE GUYS WHO THOUGHT OF IT, IN ORDER TO PUSH US AWAY FROM THE SCENT OF THE TRICK? WHAT ABOUT RELIGIOUS SENSE WHERE THERE IS NO HEAVEN NOR HELL? 

14. The Gospel message is so unique, comforting, and life-changing.

NOTHING UNIQUE IN THE GOSPEL. THE 10 COMMANDMENTS ARE EXTRACTED FROM EGYPTIAN LAW. BELIEF IN ETERNITY IS NOT EXCLUSIVE TO THE GOSPEL AND WAS ALSO PART OF THE EGYPTIAN BELIEF SYSTEM. IN THE ROMAN AND GREEK BELIEFS ONLY GODS AND HUMAN DEMI-GODS CAN BE "ETERNAL" THOUGH SOME DEMI-GODS CAN DIE, DEPENDING ON CIRCUMSTANCES.

15. Genuine believers do not consider the assurance of salvation a license to go out and freely sin.

THANK GOD FOR THAT. THANK GOD I AM AN ATHEIST. THANK GOD SINNING IS LIMITED...

16. Christians who experience the blessed assurance of salvation have produced much beautiful music and art.

ART WAS MOSTLY PERFORMED FOR CASH. MICHELANGELO, BACH, DA VINCI WERE PAID HANDSOMELY FOR THEIR TRAVAILS. MOST OF THE CHURCHES, CATHEDRALS WERE BUILT WITH CASH. PEOPLE WITH SKILLS WERE SOUGHT AFTER. MANY ARTISTS WHO HELPED DECORATE THE CHURCHES WERE ALSO INDULGING IN THE ARCANE, INCLUDING WITCHCRAFT. CHURCH MASONS ARE SAID TO HAVE STARTED THE "FREEMASONS". CHRISTIANS OF THE REFORMATION REJECTED THIS ARTISTRY OF "CHRISTIANITY". A LOT OF GREAT ART WAS PAGAN AND/OR NOT BASED ON RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS.

17. Many unbelievers become agitated when rejecting the notion that the devil is blinding them.

DO THEY? AND IS THE DEVIL BLINDING THEM? NEVER NOTICED ANY AGITATION NOR BLINDNESS. THE DEVIL IN AN INVENTION OF LAZY RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.

18. There is a strong correlation between unbelief and the fear of what happens after death.

BELIEVERS ARE THE MOST AFRAID OF DEATH. MOST BELIEVERS ARE UNSURE OF THEIR GLORIOUS STATUS AND WORRY THEY MIGHT END UP IN HELL OR THE PURGATORY FOR THEIR SINS. NON-BELIEVERS KNOW THAT DEATH IS INEVITABLE AND MOST DO NOT FEAR DEATH. ALL NON-BELIEVERS DO NOT FEAR WHAT HAPPENS AFTER DEATH. NON-BELIEVERS DO NOT SUBSCRIBE TO THE CONCEPT OF SIN.

19. Would a works-based system boil down to percentages? (i.e. 53% good works; 47% bad deeds)

THIS "WORKS-BASED" SYSTEM BELIEF MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL... THE PERCENTAGE BOIL IS CRAP. MANY NON-BELIEVERS WOULD TRY TO BE 100 PER CENT ALTRUISTIC AND GOOD IN HELPING OTHERS. THE ONLY CAVEAT WOULD SOMETIMES BE OF NOT DESTROYING ONESELF IN THE PROCESS.

20. Those who hated Jesus Christ were unable to produce His body after He died and rose again.

NO-ONE EVER FOUND THE BODY OF JESUS — NOT EVEN HIS DISCIPLES. THEY ONLY HAD "VISION" SINGULARLY. THERE IS NO HISTORICAL RECORD OF THE VISIONS, BUT WHAT WAS WRITTEN BY FORGERS CENTURIES LATER.

So there you go. These spiritual realities are certainly worth considering, wouldn't you say? Perhaps you will be someone who comes to trust the message of the Bible later in life, after having seen the emptiness of the other options

THERE IS NO EMPTINESS IN OTHER OPTIONS. THESE CHRISTIAN SPIRITUAL THINGIES ARE NO REALITIES, BUT STORIES BUILT ON FORGERIES DESIGNED TO GIVE A FALSE SENSE OF HOPE. THE BODY OF JESUS WAS NEVER FOUND, BECAUSE THE LEGEND COULD NOT SURVIVE SHOULD THE BODY REMAINED DECOMPOSING ON THE CROSS, WHICH IS MOST LIKELY THE CASE HISTORICALLY.

read more: http://www.christianpost.com/news/20-spiritual-signs-that-eternal-life-in-paradise-is-free-136766/

The shades of the dead were required to drink the waters of the Lethe in order to forget their earthly life. In the Aeneid, Virgil writes that it is only when the dead have had their memories erased by the Lethe that they may be reincarnated.[3]

Lethe was also the name of the personification of forgetfulness and oblivion, with whom the river was often associated. Hesiod's Theogony identifies her as the daughter of Eris ("strife"), and the sister of Ponos ("pain"), Limos ("starvation"), the Algea ("pains"), the Hysminai ("fightings"), the Makhai ("battles"), the Phonoi ("murders"), the Androktasiai ("man-slaughters"), the Neikea ("quarrels"), the Pseudologoi ("lies"), the Amphilogiai ("disputes"), Dysnomia ("lawlessness"), Atë ("ruin"), and Horkos ("oath").[4]

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The "modern" belief system has decreed that this is "Mythology"... Why? There is more psychological truths in the description of these human interactions in the Greek antiquity, than in the present Abrahamic religious beliefs — Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Greek beliefs are no more "mythologies" than Christianity, Islam and Judaism. 

Atheists do away with all — and usually live well.

Picture at top by Gus Leonisky. Panel on a "tomb/spire" in possibly the oldest cemetery of white people in Australia, located in Newtown, Sydney. Of course there are "tombs" (wooden totem, rock ledges, caves in which Aboriginal people have "buried" their dead for thousands of years (around 50,000 years).

Arianism is the nontrinitarian, heterodoxical teaching, first attributed to Arius (c. AD 250–336), a Christian presbyter in Alexandria, Egypt, concerning the relationship of God the Father to the Son of God, Jesus Christ. All mainstream branches of Christianity consider the teaching to be heretical. Arius asserted that the Son of God was a subordinate entity to God the Father. The Ecumenical First Council of Nicaea of 325 deemed it to be a heresy. At the regional First Synod of Tyre in 335, Arius was exonerated.[1] After his death, he was again anathemised and pronounced a heretic again at the Ecumenical First Council of Constantinople of 381.[2] The Roman Emperors Constantius II (337–361) and Valens (364–378) were Arians or Semi-Arians.

The Arian concept of Christ is that the Son of God did not always exist, but was created by—and is therefore distinct from—God the Father. This belief is grounded in the Gospel of John (14:28)[3] passage: "You heard me say, 'I am going away and I am coming back to you.' If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I."

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism

As we should know, the "Gospel" was written way after the "story of Jesus"... The writers were forgers, fibbers, or just story tellers with a fertile imagination. John's was written by several dudes. They wrote the legend of Jesus in many contradicting versions in Greek, which were translated into Latin later on, then purged of bits that did not fit, in order to create the myth upon which the Catholic Church is based — especially that of the "trinity". Other Christian variants adopted different bits to create their own myth.

The page below comes from a book, by H A Guerber — Hélène Adeline Guerber (1859–1929), British historian — first published in April, 1907. Called "The Myths of Greece & Rome" (London, George G Harrap & Co, 1908) in Wikipedia, there is a date discrepancy in the entry and the publisher's page of my personal copy of this book. The title page shows that the book was published in London, Bombay and Sydney.

But this not the reason why I am showing the page below. I have highlighted the amazing statements about the scriptures considered to be true as a source of definite knowledge and they answered all the questions to be asked with "no room for conjecture."  The poor Romans and Greeks (who had not been instructed by god, since god only talked to the Hebrews "alone") had to invent myths since they were "still anxious to know everything". 

One can cringe. In my view the Greeks and the Romans did a far better job at their various entertaining myths than the Hebrews did with their exclusive obsession of superiority.

One interesting aspect of Abrahamic religions (the current myths) is that they have borrowed some elements of the Greek and Roman mythology. For example, the Sistine Chapel ceiling in Rome has Roman mythical figures as painted by Michelangelo (see item 16 in top article). Of course these mythical figures were adopted into the Christian religion as "having predicted the coming of Christ..." A very neat appropriation in order to convince myth believers that the new myth is an extension of the old myth... devious trick.

If only the great arguments between religion and doubt could be settled by scientific evidence. A story this week has it that solid evidence has emerged about the historical Jesus: the “tomb of Jesus” reportedly contains proof that Jesus was married, had a son – and was never resurrected.

So that’s settled then. Or at least it would be if the scholarly world unanimously accepted these claims (which seems unlikely) or if religious belief were grounded in evidence. If that were the case, all religious belief would have disappeared when Charles Lyell uncovered the nature of geological processes and intimated the true age of Earth in the 1830s – the first clear evidence of a godless natural world.

Religion sees only the evidence it wishes to see. This is very apparent in western art. Christian paintings are full of supposed evidence for the divinity of Christ. His real face is purportedly recorded in paintings that faithfully copy his uncannily preserved image.

Long before the Turin shroud became famous, the veil of Saint Veronica fulfilled the function of spookily revealing the “true” face of Christ. According to a widely believed story, Veronica was in the crowd when Jesus carried his cross to Calvary. She wiped the blood and sweat off his face with her veil – it’s known as the sudarium, Latin for sweaty cloth – and his features left a miraculous imprint, like a photograph.

Mythically, the face of Christ in art – with his long hair and beard – is based on this uncanny image. The veil of Veronica appears in many paintings, as proof of Christ’s true appearance. Hans Memling portrayed Veronica holding up her veil and revealing Christ’s face. An anonymous medieval painting in London’s National Gallery similarly shows her revealing the veil’s secret. In the baroque age, artists including Domenico Fetti depicted the veil as an isolated, eerie revelatory object.

There are many more portrayals of the veil of Saint Veronica, not only in Catholic art but in Russian Orthodox icons. Yet almost no one believes in it any more. In fact, it was discredited in 1629, when the pope declared it a fake.

The veil was actually a medieval legend. The middle ages produced physical evidence of Christ and the saints in abundance: every cathedral had its holy fingers, heads, arms or splinters of the true cross. Much medieval art was made to glorify relics. The spectacular stained glass architecture of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, for instance, was created to house and venerate relics of the passion, including the crown of thorns itself.

Few relics have withstood scientific scrutiny, but the modern age produced its own peculiar piece of Christian “evidence”. The ghostly face revealed by a photographic negative of the Turin shroud in 1898 made this relic suddenly convincing to many eyes – a genuinely inexplicable image. Radiocarbon dating has revealed that it is in fact a medieval fake (as relics tend to be) but the “photographic” quality of the shroud still seduces some.

Christianity, then, does care about evidence – as long as it suits pre-existing beliefs. The mountains of evidence for a universe that works just fine without any divine intervention are easily ignored by anyone who wants to believe in God. Lots of people would rather believe in the veil of Saint Veronica than in a historical Jesus who got married and had a kid.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/apr/08/jesus-christ-tomb-family-church-will-not-accept

Read all articles from top...

It’s been 150 years since Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland was published—a most beguiling children’s story that’s not what it seems.

If you suspect that the creator of a hookah smoking caterpillar might have been a radical, then you’re not alone—take your place alongside millions of baby boomers. 

Jefferson Airplane’s biggest hit, ‘White Rabbit’, from the 1967 albumSurrealistic Pillow, was based on the idea that Lewis Carroll’s beloved children’s tale foretold their generation’s love of tripping out on acid.

Carroll, however, was far from liberal. His real name was Charles Dodgson, an Anglican deacon and don of Oxford’s Christ Church College. According to Canadian poet and fantasy literature scholar David Day, Dodgson was a thorn in the side of the reform-minded Henry Liddell, dean of Christ Church and father to the real life Alice.

‘Dodgson was exactly the opposite and did everything he could throughout his life to basically sabotage any kind of liberal reform,’ he says.

That included being dead set against removing Latin and Greek as compulsory subjects for Oxford students, a move Liddell initiated, despite being a leading scholar of ancient Greek. While Liddell was trying to bring Oxford into the modern world, says Day, ‘Dodgson was going backwards, fervently.’

The most radical idea of the time was Darwin’s theory of evolution. Oxford was the scene of a legendary debate between Thomas Huxley, known as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’, and the bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, at the British Association on June 30, 1860.

How did Dodgson react to evolution? A keen photographer, he took photos of everyone involved in the debate. Perhaps he was already thinking of how he would send them up and satirise the idea of evolution in Alice in Wonderland, which contains a farcical ‘kitchen of creation’ scene where everything goes wrong: men with fish and frog heads, a boy turned into a pig—it’s primordial chaos and very funny.

Even the idea of the survival of the fittest is satirised in the ditty ‘Speak Roughly to Your Little Boy’. Alice spirits the boy away, only to find him transformed into a pig. Oops!

The kitchen scene also features the Cook, whom Day believes was a spoof of Sir Richard Owen, the natural scientist and advisor to Bishop Wilberforce who disagreed with Darwin on how things evolved.

The trouble was that the bishop kept getting Owen’s science muddled, and according to Day their relationship was rocky, similar to that of the Duchess and the Cook in Wonderland, who scream and throw pots at each other.

Above the raucous scene, and throughout this charming tale, appears the smiling Cheshire Cat, the most mysterious figure in the story. Who is he? (We can probably assume that in the Oxford of the 1860s it would not be a she.)

Day believes he has rightly identified the grinning cat as the ‘conscience of Oxford’, Reverend Edward ‘Puss-Cat’ Pusey, the canon of Christ Church College.

If that seems too obvious an association, Day points out that word games, mathematics and even Latin references were all part of Dodgson’s mental playground. 

Indeed, Dodgson, a polymath, invented the popular parlor game Doublets, which was first published in Vanity Fair.

Dodgson saved his most entertaining buffoonery, the Mad Hatter’s tea party, for Christian socialists. While today Christian socialists of various kinds are the doyens of the academic world, Dodgson regarded them as dangerous and even vaguely traitorous. Hence the party takes place at Cambridge, a town Dodgson never visited.

What of Charles Dodgson’s own religious sympathies? They were complex and fascinating, and anything but straightforward. On the one hand, his highly Victorian morals recoiled at vulgarity, which saw him walk out of plays that offended his sensibilities. Apparently, little girls shouting ‘damn’ in HMS Pinafore prompted him to write an angry letter to The Times.

Yet his religious beliefs were adventurous. Supernaturalism, Rosicrucianism, and Theosophy (at the time called ‘esoteric Buddhism’) drew his interest, as did the Christian Kabbalah.

In fact, if Day is correct, it was the Kabbalah which prompted him to write Alice in Wonderland with its opening illustration of a rabbit being pursued down a hole.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/spiritofthings/decoding-alice-in-wonderland/6523994

Read from top...

Today the teens have volunteered to be pallbearers for a man who died alone in September, and for whom no next of kin was found. He's being buried in a grave with no tombstone, in a city cemetery.

"To reflect on the fact that there are people, like this gentleman, who probably knew hundreds or thousands of people through his life, and at the end of it there's nobody there — I think that gets to all of them," Pojman says. "Some have said, 'I just gotta make sure that never happens to me.' "

The students, dressed in jackets and ties, carry the plain wooden coffin, and take part in a short memorial. They read together, as a group:

"Dear Lord, thank you for opening our hearts and minds to this corporal work of mercy. We are here to bear witness to the life and passing of Nicholas Miller.

"He died alone with no family to comfort him.

"But today we are his family, we are here as his sons

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/25/463567685/today-we-are-his-family-teen-volunteers-mourn-those-who-died-alone?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=

Sorry folks, great gesture, but yesterday what was important to him... See image at top. And dear lord has nothing to do with it. It's humanity only.

Note: The plaque at top is on an old tomb in a Newtown cemetery, Sydney.