certe fictus...

babel babel

the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.

The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.

That is why it was called Babel — because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1998/01/the-flood-and-the-tower-of-babel?lang=eng Yep, after having killed all of humanity apart from the Noah family of Canaan (or wherevernaan), "from which we all are incestuous descendants” of course, god had another “certain” crack at annoying the humans who preferred gold to god. Who would not? These naked monkeys were too clever for their own boots and — possibly under tempting instructions from a winged bat-looking devil, (bats have a lot to answer for) — they started to behave as if they knew everything. This certainty displeased god no end, though as he knows everything, he knew he would be displeased. Fuck, it’s annoying to know everything — the past, the present and the future. No thrills. No need to gamble on the horse race… The ends of time are already settled. The stuffed dogs are dead, buried and cremated. It’s only the humans who don’t know their individual destiny and cosmic future, so they have to behave according to the rules and commandments which would be a piece a cake should we not be uncertain loonies or disobedient as shown by our “original sin” caper. Blame the woman!... God did us favours by stopping us becoming too smart in unison, altogether, at once. As you now know, divide and conquer was thus a technique invented by god to prevent humans from becoming angelical too soon: the Babel Tower being exhibit A. We have to adore god and not build tall buildings. He (god is a male) is like this. Nowadays, god has become a bit lazy in his vicissitude, is bored to tears or is used to our looniness. We’ve built towers bigger than Babel, especially in allah’s country, like Dubai — and we’re doing our own flooding. We’re doing this slowly for sure, by our burning of fossil fuel that is raising the sea level. We’re in no hurry, mind you, just a few millimetres per year and we don’t need god to do it for us. This disdain would piss Him (god is a male) off, to see our independently farting-around with his creation… So He (god is a male) sent us Covid to let us know who’s boss: Him or our desires? That will teach us… But are we begging forgiveness yet? Begging on our knees or with our arse up in the air? No! We’ve turned to sciences to tell us what is happening — and towards politics to fiddle with our responses… He’s going to be annoyed... In regard to the tower of "babbling", imagine the whole of humanity being the friggin’ same, thinking the same in the same language… We would be boring like a flock of guppies on Prozac* — or living in a Big Brother masterly whitey world during a blancmange festival… dedicated to god the almighty, the leader of boredom and ennui forever. Boy can we imagine crap! Lucky — sciences saved us from this religious quagmire. Sciences are about understanding differentiations within nature and the likes in a relative universe setting, in which atoms assemble according to the laws of thermodynamics. But having noted that religious dictums and their historical fabulation were bullshitic, and that these weird fake news stories were losing traction with the more educated people, the generally deceitful political system of the white men had to find a way to instil submission to a new order in the flocks of human sheep. From time to time, god had sent a few plagues to make sure we polished our boots in the correct fashion. A few prayers, a bit of isolation between infected gents and the diseases would eventually vanish — and/or come back with various levels of potency, according to the acquired herd-immunity and level of useless communal prayers. And god had his favourites. If you were not chosen, like the “chosen people”, you are/were crap or are/were a philistine or a Babylonian Arab… No heaven for you. Yep, “chosen people”, you know who you are… You’re still the same deluded but clever lot to make us accept your chosen status... Since Pasteur and his vaccination theory, sciences have been looking at what transformations make us tick. We are made of many chemical bits that some microbes want to steal from us, not with intent but by natural opportunism. When politics enter this world of battling proteins, we indulge in deceit as well, using sciences rather than religion as a tool. And this is the sad part. Politics is still a game of deceit and this deceit gives sciences a bad name even if the sciences are honest in their statistical possibilities. See some vaccines are more efficient than others but may have side-effects and god only knows what numeric illusions we stuff our brains with. Politics has always been a game of deceit designed to control people and for some people to make money at the expense of others. For the ruling class, the plebs can’t be allowed to behave like separated idiots at birth. We have to act in an idiotic togetherness, like sheep. We need to be united as global consumers of commercial beliefs in which our values are expressed in gold coins. We shall be controlled by our needs, under the regimen of advertising managing our wants. Religious beliefs having sunk below the credible fantasies, Sciences, including the art of "political scientific hubris", have been appropriated by the ruling class to refine the propaganda. The political class has gone up a notch in keeping us under control, while we think we are individually liberated. We trust sciences because sciences are used to make tangible miracles: smartphones, TVs, Internet, better vinos in bottles, taller buildings… you name it. Medical sciences have made us live longer, to end up garaged in homes for the forgetful where the system can bleed us of our cash until our last breath, because demanding mercy is not allowed. Meanwhile, vaccines work with amazing proportional efficiency, but as we know, or are bound to know, the more we find ways to fight the little Covid blithers, they will find ways to fight back. Some vaccines work at 60 per cent, some are 91 per cent successful, some have good side-effects like helping fighting MS, a form of self destruction, while others could spark bouts of allergies that will make our life as miserable but not as deadly. Now the Europeans are warning us that the Covid is here to stay for a long time (10 to 20 years or more), and we’re going to have to find ways to fight it without eternal lockdowns or confinement forever. Tautology is a state of mind. We’ve seen this with rabbit plagues. We even invented new viruses to destroy the rabbits. These kept the rabbit numbers down to a point. Rabbits are easer to see than say Covid viruses which come and steal the fluff out of our lungs. And should we be old and frail, we’re proportionally cactus, even with a miraculous respirator. But when our leaders, like Scomo, believe in god and are half-hearted about sciences — pickin' and chosin' the bits that suit their erroneous beliefs — we should be petrified that they’re going to play the game of politics with the greatest hypocrisy humans could ever invent. It's the game of half-fake truths with a rubbery public relation truncheon. The media, always awaiting for mana from the advertising gods, are in rapture or at least play the benefit of the doubt, without really understanding anything under the skin of the beast. "Some questions have been raised as to whether some hypotheses have been discarded. Having spoken with some members of the team, I wish to confirm that all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and studies,” Tedros, the god of WHO, said. We’re on the road to the future of certe fictus, while pedalling in the dark… It is up to the Venusians, the Martians and the Humanoids of planet Earth to discover what god knew, know and will know all along — that He (god is a male) was a vengeful trickstering prick. And that He (god is a male) enjoyed it despite being a loving know-all. Nasty. But a new god has risen on the horizon… Guano Looniskova atheist on the run... *Note: Prozac might need a new warning label: “Caution: This antidepressant may turn fish into zombies.”

Researchers have found that long-term exposure to the drug makes guppies act more alike, wiping out some of the typical behavioral differences that distinguish them. That could be a big problem when the medication—technically named fluoxetine—washes into streams and rivers, potentially making fish populations more vulnerable to predators and other threats.

In recent decades, scientists have uncovered a plethora of ways that pharmaceuticals affect animals in the lab and in the wild, such as by altering courtship, migration, and anxiety. The drugs find their way into the environment through water that pours from sewage treatment plants, which is rarely filtered to remove the chemicals.

By Gus Leonisky at 14 Feb 2021 - 8:08am
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the new religion: google deus...

In Subprime Attention Crisis, Tim Hwang investigates the way big tech financializes attention. In the process, he shows us how digital advertising―the beating heart of the internet―is at risk of collapsing, and that its potential demise bears an uncanny resemblance to the housing crisis of 2008. From the unreliability of advertising numbers and the unregulated automation of advertising bidding wars, to the simple fact that online ads mostly fail to work, Hwang demonstrates that while consumers’ attention has never been more prized, the true value of that attention itself―much like subprime mortgages―is wildly misrepresented. And if online advertising goes belly-up, the internet―and its free services―will suddenly be accessible only to those who can afford it. Deeply researched, convincing, and alarming, Subprime Attention Crisis will change the way you look at the internet, and its precarious future.

FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Subprime-Attention-Crisis-Advertising-Internet/dp/0374538654

Note: GM and Ford motor car industry are worth $100 billion. Google is worth $2 trillion BECAUSE OF ADVERTISING (propaganda to buy goods and get the populace submit to ideas). This new god (and its little helpers: Facebook et al) can decide on WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO BELIEVE...

By Gus Leonisky at 14 Feb 2021 - 8:17am
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the babel thingy...

Is Casey Chalk maturing or is he becoming more cagey about his Christianity? In his analysis of the book, Real Philosophy for Real People — Tools for Truthful Living by Fr. Robert McTeigue .S.J. — he tells us:

In perhaps the meatiest section of the book, McTeigue explains how different philosophical systems, or worldviews, address eight basic questions. These include: (1) what’s really real; (2) what is the nature of external reality, (3) what is the nature of human persons; (4) what happens after death; (5) how it’s possible to know anything at all; (6) how we know right from wrong; (7) the meaning of history; and (8) what personal core commitments are consistent with the worldview. He then explains how some of the most dominant worldviews of our day—such as theism, deism, naturalism, nihilism, and existentialism—answer those fundamental questions. Digesting this intellectual framework enables a prudential observer to swiftly and adeptly analyze the kinds of arguments presented to them every day in the public square.

Unfortunately, all this is complicated by the fact that few people operate consistently and coherently within a single worldview—many glide carelessly between arguments that make sense only in a theistic worldview, and others that correspond only to a materialist one. For example, many of the most controversial issues of contemporary politics rest upon conceptions of justice that only make sense given certain metaphysical truths. Whether one is talking about promoting gender equality or opposing racism, such arguments rely upon certain conceptions of fairness and sameness that apply only if individual persons have an inherent dignity that a naturalistic or nihilistic worldview simply cannot provide. If we have no dignity stemming from a transcendent origin and telos, there is no basis for people having “rights” to anything. We are simply random collections of cells that evolved to become superior to other species. And those of us who are more superior than others of the same species—say by virtue of mental acuity, physical strength, or inherited wealth—have no reason besides some temporary personal gain (note: utilitarianism) to do anything for anyone.

———————
The book is “Christian” by its philosophical reductionism: As the author insists, "A key test of any philosophy is: Can it be lived?" With Thomas Aquinas, this book teaches not only how to know the truth, but how to love it and to do it.

What’s the truth?

immune escape by polyphosphate?

A heterogenous microbial consortium producing short-chain fatty acids from lignocellulose?

Glutamatergic neuronal circuits?

Catalytic active homotrimetric plant cellulose synthase complex?

These are the important questions to ask about the truth… These are very few of the complex true vectors that energise life. The amazing complexity, speed, energy and relationships of many such assemblage end up giving us a quantum of consciousness Should some of these chemicalities vanish or change for the worse, our brain starts to forget. Our delta of awareness becomes fuzzy till it becomes nil, even before death.

Yes Casey… to "operate consistently and coherently within a single worldview” would be too good for our own Babel Tower… God would forbid… God did forbid. That’s why some people live differently in various part of the world, using the resources available on the spot… The philosophical questions have been with us since the Greek and Roman philosophers veered away from the godly bullshit. But soon the illusion of transcendence had to be used by leaders in order to keep us underfoot. That kings and queens be rulers by divine authority is a completely stupid notion. That priests, imam and doodahs in funny hats represent a godly value on this planet is completely deluded views of the truth.

The depth of sciences is massive.

"If we have no dignity stemming from a transcendent origin and telos, there is no basis for people having “rights” to anything?"... Correct. There is no such thing as transcendent origins nor intrinsic telos. It’s an invention, a trick of the mind to fill its blank spaces. Aristotle used it to infer the inherent purpose or objective of a person — or thing — like an 'end goal' or a 'raison d'être’. A glass is a glass to perform a function that we decided would suit our ability to grab, see through and drink… Sometimes the decided telos fills up with godly garbage.

And we have no reason to do anything for anyone, yet the way our life is structured we need someone’s help to reach maturity. Far more than for other animal species. This is the lesson of natural survival. Without anyone to support us, from a mother to a family and ultimately a state, we would soon be dead. We thus learn by osmosis that we also should support others in order for us to survive. This concept is simple enough, though from time to time we tend to forget it because of our natural individual selfishness. From understanding our dependency from others, we enter the world of stylistic compassion in which we can chose whom to support because we’ve been trained to love and whom to hate because they “don’t think” like us.

Take a deep breath, Casey, and accept that god isn’t the truth...

GL.

By Gus Leonisky at 15 Feb 2021 - 9:28am
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progressive amen...

A progressive Nashville church has drawn the ire of the internet after sharing a message on social media declaring the Bible isn’t the Word of God, inerrant or infallible.

Two Sundays ago, GracePointe Church, led by Pastor Josh Scott, shared a recap of the day’s message on Facebook, discussing the Bible and the question: “What Is Progressive Christianity?”

“As Progressive Christians, we're open to the tensions and inconsistencies in the Bible. We know that it can't live up to impossible, modern standards. We strive to more clearly articulate what Scripture is and isn't,” the church noted before stating what the Bible is and isn’t.

"The Bible," the church said, "isn’t: the Word of God, self-interpreting, a science book, an answer/rule book, inerrant or infallible." Rather, it is: "a product of community, a library of texts, multi-vocal, a human response to God, living and dynamic."

https://www.christianpost.com/news/nashville-church-says-bible-isnt-the-word-of-god.html

God using Facebook? Blimey...

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Gus is a rabid atheist...

By Gus Leonisky at 19 Feb 2021 - 7:46pm
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god isn't black...

While it was a “distant motivation,” black Americans did not embrace Christianity to get to Heaven, according to renowned historian, filmmaker and public intellectual Henry Louis Gates Jr.

“Why did they do it? Did they do it to get into Heaven? No. Is that why they embraced religion? Well, I think that that was one distant motivation, and that's part of, you know, their belief in Christianity. But I think that they did so that they could believe in another kind of future here on Earth,” Gates said in an interview with NPR published Monday.

Gates, whose new book, The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song, released Tuesday, explores the black embrace of Christianity, also explores the 400-year-old story of the black church in America in an intimate four-hour docuseries of the same name. The series premiered on PBS Tuesday night.

He delves into the story of the churches built by freedmen in the North in the 1800s and the black Protestant traditions that thrived after the Civil War in the South emerging as the backbone for black communities in the U.S., and the cultural shifts that took place as a result of the Great Migration.

“The black church has been the heart and soul of the black experience generally but of black politics, from the abolitionist movement to Reconstruction politics to the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, if you think about it, without the church, there wouldn't have been a Civil Rights Movement,” Gates said. “And the church is still relevant to politics today, as we've just seen with the critical role played in the nomination and election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Senator Ralph Warnock, himself a pastor at Martin Luther King's former church, Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta.”

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Last month, Warnock was elected as Georgia’s first black senator, defeating Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler in a closely contested runoff.

While the black church still maintains a strong influence on black culture and politics, its influence has been divided by more secular systems that emerged after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

“After the tragic assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the church was being challenged by the black power movement, particularly the Black Panthers, who thought that, to quote Marx, the embrace of Christianity was the opiate of the people. But more and more secular African Americans ran for public office. And why was that possible? Well, at one time, the way to emerge as a leader in the black community was through the church. It was like going to the role at the Harvard Business School to Wall Street,” Gates explained. “But ... all that started to change in the late 1960s with affirmative action. The church was the funnel to broader roles of leadership within the black community. But those institutions that enabled leadership diversified because the larger society opened up in the late '60s and the 1970s. Why — out of goodwill? No, because of the demands made by black people right after the murder of Martin Luther King.”

The PBS series is featuring renowned participants such as media executive and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey; singer, songwriter, producer and philanthropist John Legend; singer and actress Jennifer Hudson; Presiding Bishop Michael Curry of The Episcopal Church; gospel legends Yolanda Adams, Pastor Shirley Caesar and BeBe Winans; civil rights leaders the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. William Barber II; scholar Cornel West; and others.

“Our series is a riveting and systematic exploration of the myriad ways in which African Americans have worshipped God in their own images, and continue to do so today, from the plantation and prayer houses, to camp meetings and store-front structures, to mosques and mega-churches," Gates said in a statement. "This is the story and song our ancestors bequeathed to us, and it comes at a time in our country when the very things they struggled and died for — faith and freedom, justice and equality, democracy and grace — all are on the line. No social institution in the black community is more central and important than the black church.”

Read more:https://www.christianpost.com/news/gates-black-people-didnt-embrace-christianity-to-get-to-heaven.html

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At its best, biblical religion is about reversal and transformation — the most resonant of messages for Black people in a white-supremacist America. “Never confuse position with power,” the Rev. Otis Moss III, a Chicago pastor born in 1970, says in Gates’s epigraph. “Pharaoh had a position, but Moses had the power. Herod had a position, but John had the power. The cross had a position, but Jesus had the power. Lincoln had a position, but Douglass had the power. Woodrow Wilson had a position, but Ida B. Wells had the power. George Wallace had a position, but Rosa Parks had the power. Lyndon Baines Johnson had a position, but Martin Luther King had the power. We have the power. Don’t you ever forget.” Moss’s homiletic riff is rooted in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus, too, used antithesis to urge listeners to build a new and better world.

The summons to close the gap between profession and practice, between love and hate, between freedom and slavery, lies at the heart of the troubled American journey. Framing the challenge to white Americans with fearlessness and clarity, Frederick Douglass said: “You profess to believe ‘that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth’ and hath commanded all men, everywhere, to love one another; yet you notoriously hate (and glory in your hatred) all men whose skins are not colored like your own.” As Gates puts it, religious appeals, then, “gave them the moral authority to turn the mirror of religion back on their masters and to indict the nation for its original sin of allowing their enslavement to build up that ‘city upon a hill.’”

Read more:https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/books/review/henry-louis-gates-jr-the-black-church.html

Gus is a rabid atheist...

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By Gus Leonisky at 22 Feb 2021 - 9:24am
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loony ham...

On the fifth anniversary of the Ark Encounter, which features a 510-foot-long wooden Noah’s ark, founder Ken Ham has announced the expansion of the Bible-themed attraction in Kentucky by building a Tower of Babel attraction on the park’s grounds.

“Next year, we will start fundraising for a Tower of Babel attraction that we hope to open in three or four years, where among other things we will help people understand what genetics research and the Bible say about the origin of all the people groups around the world,” Ham, the CEO and founder of the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum, says on the website of the Answers in Genesis ministry.

“I can assure you: it will be a fascinating, eye-opening attraction,” he continues.

Ham says the expansion of the theme park’s grounds in Northern Kentucky will also include “an exceptionally well-done scale model of what Jerusalem may have looked like at the time of Christ,” which should be ready sometime in 2022.

He adds, “Also, for children we’ll create a themed carousel for them to ride, hopefully to open by next summer. These are just a few of the things we will be adding to our 800-acre property.”

The $100 million Ark Encounter is seeing record crowds. The attendance is returning to pre-pandemic levels with up to 7,000 visitors on Saturdays.

“Our research shows that over 92% of those who visit our attractions are coming from outside Kentucky,” Ham shared. “These guests of ours are bringing dollars that would not normally be spent in this state. What an opportunity for local businesses to capitalize on this phenomenon.”

Previously, the Ark Encounter said on its website that it would use Babel to explain the origin of the different languages and people groups.

“We will have an excellent teaching tool in the form of a very detailed Babel diorama. All of these figures and designs were meticulously designed, 3D printed, and hand-painted in order to present a realistic view of what it might have looked like as these people went about ignoring God’s command and building a tower that reached into the heavens,” it said.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/ark-encounter-to-build-expansion-featuring-tower-of-babel.html

Ken Ham is a loony Australian who is so bothered by scientific knowledge that he ignores it entirely. But credit where credit's due, on the scale of entertaining delusions Ken scores a 5 out of ten for being persistent at fake "reproduction" since the blither won't even reach the dizzying heights reached by Sir Branson... The fictitious height in the fictitious bible of the fictitious tower is not even measured in fictitious cubits nor quantum Qubits.... Yes I know it's all about making Tax-Free moneys, while believing — and promoting — crap for naive customers...

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