From the category archives:
Religion
Spring 2010 Organic House Mix
Some of my recent mixes have pushed a little more progressive…even trancey…and the wife wasn’t feelin’ it. So I was inspired by this lovely spring weather to put together an organic house mix that the wife can get behind. It gets a little more deep and minimal in the middle…but I tried to resist the temptation to take it progressive. For me, this set has a ton of tracks that are tough not to like…house music fan or not. Enjoy!
Download the mix now.
- Ananda Project featuring Gaelle Addison - Cascades of Colour (Wamdue Black Mix) [King Street Sounds]
- Miguel Migs - The Night [Naked Music]
- Straight Radiohed - DJ WHO vs. Radiohead [White]
- Hardrive/Masters at Work - Deep Inside [UMM]
- Lovetronic - You are Love (Si Brad’s Payback Vocal) [Naked Music]
- Andy Caldwell featuring Omega - I Can’t Wait [OM]
- Miguel Migs - Surrender [Naked Music]
- Bart B More - Finally featuring Oliver Twist (Original Mix) [Tiger]
- Andreas Heiszenberger - Perfect Moment [Brut!]
- Hardrive 2000/Masters at Work featuring Lynae - Never Forget (When You Touch Me) [Strictly Rhythm]
- Naked Music NYC - If I Fall (Miguel Mig’s Deluxe Soul Dub) [OM]
- Blue Six - Pure (Original) [Naked Music]
- Kaskade - Sweet Love [OM}
- Naked Music NYC - It's Love (Wamdue Dream Dub) [OM]
- Aphex Twin - Xtal [Apollo]
Stephen Fry skewers the Catholic Church at intelligence2. Wow.
The Intelligence² Debate - Stephen Fry (Unedited)
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So, the Archdiocese of Washington would rather stop helping the poor than acknowledge gays as people.
Wow. Just read an appalling article in the post. Here is an excerpt:
In a surprisingly bold and seemingly unbiblical move, the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington is threatening to discontinue its social support for nearly 70,000 people — including a third of Washington’s homeless — because of its opposition to a proposed same-sex marriage bill.
Under the proposed bill, according to a story by Post reporters Tim Craig and Michelle Boorstein, religious organizations would not be required to perform same-sex weddings, “but they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.”
So, in order to make a point…and in my opinion, a hate filled point…the Archdiocese of Washington would rather NOT help the poor. Uh, what? Are you kidding me? Didn’t Jesus hang out with lepers and prostitutes? Didn’t he talk about loving your neighbor as yourself?
This position seems to me to be antithetical to Christianity. Granted, I am no biblical scholar…but I did have 12 years of Catholic education.
This is the kind of thing that has turned me against organized religion. Rather than opening our minds and promoting love, too often it closes minds and promotes division. I have a exceedingly difficult time thinking that God doesn’t love everyone — gays, Muslims, drug addicts, atheists — the whole lot. We’re all God’s children. And to think that one subset of us is somehow superior than another seems crazy…very Levite-oriented. And we know how Jesus felt about those doods.
If this doesn’t send a message about underlying hate, I don’t know what does. Love people. LOVE. That is what Jesus was about. He alleviated suffering. Not withheld it to make a point.
Un-frickin-real.
Isn’t religion supposed to help you get over the fear of dying?
If so, then why are self-reported religious people disproportionately using life-supporting technologies when they have no chance of recovery?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/03/18/cancer.God.religion/index.html
Sounds like nothing but plain old fear to me. Guess these people aren’t as sure as they claim to be.
Godlessness is the new Communism.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/30/dole.ad/index.html
CNN reports on a really shitty ad put out by Elizabeth Dole, whose North Carolina Senate seat is being threatened by Kay Hagan, in which she calls Hagan “godless”. Kinda reminds me of McCarthy’s witch hunt in the 50s. We were afraid of the communists so everyone he didn’t like was a communist. Now we’re afraid of Muslims (and the end of days), so everyone we don’t like is now godless or (perhaps worse) Muslim.
In the 30-second ad, a narrator says that a leader of the Godless Americans Political Action Committee recently held a “secret fundraiser” for Hagan.
The ad then shows members of the group, which promotes rights for atheists and the separation of church and state, declaring that neither God nor Jesus exists.
“Godless Americans and Kay Hagan,” the ad continues. “She hid from cameras. Took ‘Godless’ money. What did Kay Hagan promise in return?”
The ad ends with a picture of Hagan and a voice that sounds like hers declaring, “There is no God.”
Kinda reminds me of the time when I was told by a bunch of blue haired old ladies that I was unfit to be my nephew’s Godfather because I currently didn’t attend church. Although they were fine with the drug addicts and welfare recipients who were around the table with me…because they lied and said that they went to church every week.
So it’s ok to fuck up your life and the lives of others every day, but as long as you go to church on Sunday (or at least pretend like you do), then you are a better person than someone who leads a good life but wants to explore the meaning of life and a relationship with God on their own.
It’s funny. It feels as if, somehow, we’re slipping into the dark ages.
The problem, to me, isn’t that people are religious. God bless em. Seriously. But its so arbitrary. I mean, Christian God is different that Allah which is different (maybe) from YHWY. I mean, why can’t we all be right? Why can’t we all be expressing the same longing for order and meaning? Aren’t we all looking for the ultimate truth.
If people disagree, then how in the hell can it be “ultimate”? Truth is truth.
I really, really hope that we move away from this era of me against you into an era of us.
Catholics offer victims of sex abuse a garden.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/23/churchabuse.garden/index.html
Thanks. You stole my innocence, ravaged my faith in God, and essentially ruined my life. A garden seems appropriate.
By the way, I wasn’t sexually abused…but I am deeply offended by the hypocracy of the Catholic church…well most churches to be honest. Pharisses and Levites.
Does the mind go on after the brain stops functioning? And why I’m not sure it does.
I just read an interesting but, to me, profoundly flawed article in Scientific American (wow, did I actually say that). The article Never Say Die: Why We Can’t Imagine Death, by Jesse Bering talks about how it is impossible to rationalize inexistance because we can never actually experience inexistance while existant. In other words, when we die, there is nothing. And since we can never experience nothing while we are conscious then we’ve evolved these myths of an afterlife of some sort.
The problems, however, start in the first paragraph where Bering assumes
After all, the brain is like any other organ: a part of our physical body. And the mind is what the brain does—it’s more a verb than it is a noun. Why do we wonder where our mind goes when the body is dead? Shouldn’t it be obvious that the mind is dead, too?
The assertion that the mind is what the brain does is wildly assumptive. I’m not trying to break all flaky, but isn’t it possible that the brain is how the mind does rather that what the mind does? Rick Strassman’s work on DMT, Ervin Laszlo (and others) thinking around the Akashic Field, and others put forth interesting thinking around this.
The bottom line though is that it is borderline irresponsible, in my view, to put forth such an overarching assumption - and that is what it is - in a supposed scientific forum.
Realistically, there is not data to support this…so on either side of the coin, we’re taking about faith.
One might think that based on my blog, that I’m a Godless Secular Humanist. I’m actually not. I just have a broader vision of what God is and my relationship to it. I tend to believe in, based on a hell of alot of observable patterns in nature, that cycles and patterns are one of the most, if not the most, fundamental aspect of the universe. Also, I tend to believe that universe is a closed system…in that ultimately we’re talking about infinity…and doesn’t infinity include everything. Everything to me is a closed system. How can you be outside of infinity? (If someone can educate me, I seriously would like to know. Frreal.)
Thus, if we live in a closed system and the first law of thermodynamics (the law of conservation of energy) is valid…
the law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another or transferred from one body to another, but the total amount of energy remains constant (the same)
…then one must conclude that death is not an end per se…but a transition. Where this transition leads is clearly a matter of faith. Hopefully, one day science will allow us to understand this.
The bottom line though is that I have a problem with basic idea of an “end”. By the way, new thinking in quantum gravity asserts that the unierse did not come from stasis (i.e. the big bang)…that it seems more like an oscillation (i.e. the big bounce). That sounds like the cycling of a closed system to me.
There aren’t many things that I am sure of in life…I just don’t think that any person of reasonable intellect can be…but I feel pretty good about this idea of transition and connection in an afterlife. How?
It all goes back to the absolutely most profound experience of my life. It wasn’t at church. It wasn’t on top of a mountain. It wasn’t in a sweat lodge. It was in my bed about 5 years ago.
I was sleeping peacefully when I started dreaming. This dream was unlike anything that I’ve ever experienced. It’s funny, because I don’t remember the details…but I do remember the jist of it…and I do remember my deeply and profoundly visceral reaction to it.
Somehow, I was looking into this house where a woman seemed to be abducted and abused. She looked pretty bleak. It was her birthday. Not sure how, but I saw a cake on the table near her that had “Happy Birthday — Pet Name”. I don’t remember the pet name. And I don’t know how a captive could get a cake. But I do remember that it was what I had called this woman either before my death or in another life. I saw her look at the cake and begin to smile and cry at the same time. Somehow, at the very moment, I KNEW deeply and thoroughly that I was connected to this person. Uh, what?
Again, this isn’t logical…but I’ll be damned if it didn’t feel real. As real as anything that I’ve ever experienced. I’m serious.
Anyway, the point is that in that moment, for the first time ever, I felt that I had been “told something”. I had been given some sort of insight that truly leads me to believe that consciousness or life or whatever goes on. That we can be outside of or transcend time.
During this, I think that I was in sleep paralysis yet I was crazy lucid. As lucid as I had ever been. And when I was finally able to open my eyes, I was crying. Not sad crying. But crying. Frickin’ wierd. And all that I could do was reach over, kiss my wife, and hold her hand as she slept. Somehow, I knew that we were connected. More than now. That we’re all connected.
This experience is what drives my leaps of faith.
And its why I became open to ideas of consciousness and spirituality that are outside of the mainstream.
That shit was real son. 
I have changed alot in the last 15 years.
I used to think that this song was “cute” and “fun”. Now all of a sudden, Peter Pumpkinhead isn’t so funny.
Here are the words. Wow. Prophetic.
____
Peter pumpkinhead came to town
Spreading wisdom and cash around
Fed the starving and housed the poor
Showed the vatican what golds for
But he made too many enemies
Of the people who would keep us on our knees
Hooray for peter pumpkin
Wholl pray for peter pumpkinhead?
Oh my!
Peter pumpkinhead pulled them all
Emptied churches and shopping malls
Where he spoke, it would raise the roof
Peter pumpkinhead told the truth
But he made too many enemies…
Peter pumpkinhead put to shame
Governments who would slur his name
Plots and sex scandals failed outright
Peter merely said
Any kind of love is alright
But he made too many enemies…
Peter pumpkinhead was too good
Had him nailed to a chunk of wood
He died grinning on live tv
Hanging there he looked a lot like you
And an awful lot like me!
But he made too many enemies…
Hooray for peter pumpkin
Wholl pray for peter pumpkin
Hooray for peter pumpkinhead
Oh my oh my oh!
Doesnt it make you want to cry oh?
____
This would be a GREAT cover…if you really do it right…especially now. Note to self: Do not do it like the fucking Crash Test Dummies. Sorry Shifty. This shit needs to be called out. It’s a very karaoke performance. (TM Simon Cowell 2001-2008)
And the fucking “base lick”? Frreal. Dood.
Anyway. XTC might be my new old favorite band.
I’m listening to Dear God again right now.
Sarah Palin wants Alaska to seceed from the union.
Awesome. How in the hell can anyone say anything about Obama when this frickin’ woman believes that war is God’s plan and Alaska isn’t even truly America.
WTF!!!!
If McCain wins…and then he dies…which is a 50% chance given his age (actuarily)…then SHE BECOMES PRESIDENT. Imagine that.
Sarah Palin believes that the Iraq War is God’s plan.
Wow. I’m not sure that I want religious beliefs dictating our country’s foreign policy. Sounds a little like the Christian version of Islamic extremism to me. What’s the difference? We’re on this side of the fence?
NOT good enough.