Do it to your Parishioners, but not to your Wife!

I ran across a guy from Miami today that has me in my usual state of "Saturday Morning Confusion."

Theologically, "Creciendo en Gracia," founded by Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda, is a "Cult of Christianity" based in Miami, Florida. (This term is used by a group or organization whose central teachings and/or practices are claimed to be biblical, but which are in fact un-biblical.)

Sociologically, "Creciendo en Gracia" has other cult-like elements as well, and that put a whole new light on what they are up to.

The once-inconspicuous sect called "Growing in Grace," which De Jesus founded 20 years ago, proclaims sin doesn't exist.

(Yea, O.K. I can see people buying into that!)

Church leaders say it’s gaining followers, and that 2007 donations have already exceeded the $2 million raised in 2006.

But, here is where I always get my head turned around by what people are willing to believe in!

(Remember my quote from the book "The plain truth about God-101." Tell people enough times, with enough conviction, and they will believe just about anything!)

"Growing in Grace" vaulted into the international media spotlight during the past two years after De Jesus declared himself the second coming of Jesus.

This guy wasn't content to lead everyone down the garden path about following Jesus, his ego and ambition got so big that he decided to become God himself.

Later, he added the title Anti-Christ to his portfolio because De Jesus has said his teachings supersede the teachings of the historical Jesus.

(Several countries have banned De Jesus, but his followers, like all religious blind sheep, stay with him.)

These guys who aspire to God-hood always succumb to earthly temptations and are eventually brought down by their own greed.

This preacher has used charitable donations to his ministry for personal expenses, paying $144,000 a year in alimony to his first wife and buying property in his and his relatives’ names. (Tsk, Tsk.)

Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda disclosed details of the previously secret financial workings of his church through sworn testimony last month in an increasingly nasty divorce from his second wife.

The revelations from the witness stand, which experts say suggest violations of federal law, prompted a Miami-Dade Circuit judge to send a transcript to federal prosecutors this month with a letter saying he was “ethically compelled” to bring it to their attention.

The U.S. attorney in Miami has confirmed opening an investigation.

Your "tell it like it is" scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Tune in tomorrow, I have a feeling this guy is pretty high on the list for our regular feature, "Asshole of the Week!"

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) at www.God-101.com

Roll them bones!

Well, the uproar over James Cameron's documentary about the burial place and ossuary of Jesus has started, just as I predicted last weekend.

Keep watching this story, it has the potential to put the "Shroud of Turin" thing to shame!"

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) www.God-101.com

Guest Post: Tim McGirk!

Brace yourself. James Cameron, the man who brought you "The Titanic" is back with another blockbuster.

This time, the ship he's sinking is Christianity.

In a new documentary, Producer Cameron and his director, Simcha Jacobovici, make the startling claim that Jesus wasn't resurrected --the cornerstone of Christian faith-- and that his burial cave has been discovered near Jerusalem.

And get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdalene.

(Gee, I wrote that in my book; "The plain truth about God-101" [what the church doesn't want you to know!] about six years ago!

And no, it's not a re-make of "The Da Vinci Code."

Let's go back 27 years, when Israeli construction workers were gouging out the foundations for a new building in the industrial park in the Talpiyot, a Jerusalem suburb. of Jerusalem.

The earth gave way, revealing a 2,000 year old cave with 10 stone caskets.

Archeologist's were summoned, and the stone caskets carted away for examination.

It took 20 years for experts to decipher the names on the ten tombs. They were: Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua.

Israel's prominent archaeologist Professor Amos Kloner didn't associate the crypt with the New Testament Jesus. His father, after all, was a humble carpenter who couldn't afford a luxury crypt for his family. And all were common Jewish names.

There was also this little inconvenience that a few miles away, in the old city of Jerusalem, Christians for centuries had been worshipping the empty tomb of Christ at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Christ's resurrection, after all, is the main foundation of the faith, proof that a boy born to a carpenter's wife in a manger is the Son of God.

But film-makers Cameron and Jacobovici claim to have amassed evidence through DNA tests, archaeological evidence and Biblical studies, that the 10 coffins belong to Jesus and his family.

Ever the showman, (Why does this remind me of the impresario in another movie,"King Kong", whose hubris blinds him to the dangers of an angry and very large ape?) Cameron is holding a New York press conference on Monday at which he will reveal that three of the coffins are supposedly those of Jesus of Nazareth, his mother Mary, and Mary Magdalene.

News about the film, which will be shown soon on Discovery Channel, Britain's Channel 4, Canada's Vision, and Israel's Channel 8, has been a hot blog topic in the Middle East (check out a personal favorite: Israelity Bites)

In the Holy Land, Biblical Archeology is a dangerous profession. This 90-minute documentary is bound to outrage Christians and stir up a titanic debate between believers and skeptics. Stay tuned.
--Tim McGirk/Jerusalem

In spite of what McGirk said in his post, Bar-Ilan University Prof. Amos Kloner, the Jerusalem District archaeologist who officially oversaw the work at the tomb in 1980 and has published detailed findings on its contents, on Saturday night dismissed the claims. "It makes a great story for a TV film," he told The Jerusalem Post. "But it's impossible. It's nonsense."

Kloner, who said he was interviewed for the new film but has not seen it, said the names found on the ossuaries were common, and he added that "Jesus, son of Joseph" inscriptions had been found on several other ossuaries over the years.

The only thing for sure about this documentary is that it's going to get a lot of publicity. Of course, that was the whole point, wasn't it?

Your "show me" scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) www.God-101.com

Pascal's Wager, or "That's all there is because there ain't no more!"

Although I am not an Atheist, nor will I ever be, the arguments put forth here by J.L. Mackie have very valid points and are some of the reasons I have gone on a spiritual quest while at the same time ranting against the church.

** Pascal's Wager: "It is safer to believe in God, even if there is no definitive proof that God exists!"

Pascal's call for us not to consider the evidence but to simply believe on prudential grounds fails.

Once the full range of such possibilities is taken into account, Pascal's argument from comparative expectations falls to the ground. The cultivation of non-rational belief is not even practically reasonable.

This is a call for the rejection of Pascal's wager. A call for all of us to use our reason to decide whether the central claims of Christianity are true or false. It is also a reminder that our choices have a moral dimension that cannot be ignored.

We have seen that many important details about Jesus' life given in the gospels are either false or historically suspect. The balance of evidence, far from being inconclusive, shows that the major teachings and claims of Christianity are false.

These parts show that one of the main assumptions of Pascal's wager, that we cannot know the truth or falsity or religious claims and are thus forced to make a wager, is false.

As we have mentioned above, there is a moral dimension to Pascal's wager. We have seen that Christianity, in all its forms - Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Protestantism and the Fringe Churches - has inflicted tremendous harm on civilization.

When one makes a wager to believe, then one becomes morally responsible for the propagation of suffering that Christianity have been bringing and will continue to bring upon the world.

The Roman Catholic Church continues its horrible track record of bringing misery to its followers and to non-Catholics. It's illogical stance on contraception leads to millions of unwanted pregnancies and, indirectly, to many thousands maternal and infant deaths.

It also means that poor third world countries with Catholic majorities, such as the Philippines and Brazil, continue to be burdened by overpopulation, poverty, hunger and disease.

It is widely recognized that the opposition of the Catholic Church to the use of condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS is at least partially responsible for the high rate of new infections in Africa and elsewhere.

Its irrational position on this has led to the pronouncement that if a husband infected with HIV/AIDS wants a normal conjugal relationship with his wife, he should do so without a condom. Life takes a back seat to theological nonsense.

The moribund structure of the Church also allows for the horrendously high number of sex abuse committed by its clergy on innocent young Catholics. The recently departed pope, John Paul II bears a huge responsibility for this continuing infliction of suffering on humankind.

The Fundamentalist Protestant churches inflict their own brand of horror on the world. With scientific creationism and intelligent design creationism, they are trying to bring science, and the world, back into the dark ages where faith and ignorance reign supreme.

The fundamental irrationalism of this branch of Christianity has meant that many of the flock have been fleeced by TV evangelists, some of whose have sexual escapades comparable to the infamous Pope Alexander VI.

This irrationalism breeds belief in the efficacy of faith healing to the detriment, and death, of many. Needless to say, fundamentalism breeds intolerance.

The fundamentalists have joined forces with the Catholic Church in their absolutist opposition to abortion, leading the current fundamentalist leaning U.S. government to withhold funds from organizations that aid poor women in third world countries.

It has been estimated that almost 5,000 women needlessly die each year due to this misnamed "culture of life" policy.

This moral responsibility for all these also partially falls on the so-called liberal Christians. While this group of Christians may do little harm directly, they provide the raw material (in "lukewarm" believers who are already positively disposed towards Christianity) from which fundamentalism builds itself.

Furthermore by putting a "respectable" veneer on religious discourse, they prevent a much needed and long overdue logical, philosophical and scientific demolition of religious claims - since to even attempt to question religion per se is considered politically incorrect.

As Sam Harris rightly noted in his book The End of Faith:
Religious moderates are, in a large part, responsible for the religious conflict in our world, because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed.

It is time for liberal Christians to think through their belief system. Whether applying words which lose all sense of their normal meaning just to keep some semblance of the religious life, is really worth the harm they indirectly help inflict on the world.

Furthermore amidst all this proven negative effects of Christianity, it is hard to see if there is much good that comes out of it. Some believers have tried to argue that Christians lead healthier lives than non-Christians, but the studies cited have been shown to be seriously flawed.

Furthermore it is debatable whether Christianity actually makes a person moral. History seems to tell us otherwise. Many of the popes throughout history had been morally deficient human beings; so too were many of the church fathers, Protestant reformers and some modern evangelical preachers.

They preached intolerance and hate and sometimes actively encouraged the torture and murders of innocent people. Indeed recent sociological studies have shown that there is a negative correlation between religiosity and morality.

The world today, perhaps more than ever, is in need of our undivided, moral and rational, attention. The problems of the world, both natural and man-made are many: famine, floods, the greenhouse effect, the ozone hole and the irreversible extinction of countless species of plants and animals.

The only chance the world has is for humankind to understand that this world is all we have. Only we can solve the world's problems. The solutions for the problems of the world and for life in general are not to be found in Christianity.

Christianity is, in fact, part of the problem.

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) at; www.God-101.com
And the petition to have people mind their own business instead of yours at; http://www.petitiononline.com/moses/petition.html

Misplaced Anger - Misplaced Love

We often confuse the feeling of Christian "love" for someone with a feeling of:

1. Pity for them.
2. Humanitarianism- or a love of Mankind.
3. Altruism, or self denial, and
4. Sentimentalism or wanting to be with others.

** These concepts of “love" have been re-enforced over and over again in the Bible through one story or another.

What Jesus actually said was something much more basic and infinitely harder to achieve.

The historical Jesus did not urge us to love Mankind or to feel pity for someone else. He did not tell us to deny ourselves for someone else's sake, or flagellate ourselves, or even to enjoy another’s company!

What He did say was pure and simple and straight to the point, "Love one another.” This sort of love is not the altruistic love of Mankind, nor the possessive love for our mate, but rather something, that requires hard work, tenacity, and sacrifice.

It is easy to love your wife or husband, child or parent, but to love your neighbor (or stranger) is a task that is never ending and always requires effort. It is a love that seems to have no immediate benefit and therefore not practiced by many people.

However, in the long run, this is what will make Humanity rise up to its potential and approach what Jesus referred to as the "Kingdom of God.” (Father)

This was not something that is to be expected in the near, or far, future. Rather, it was a state of being that is present at this time, and only has to be observed and followed in order to achieve a state of Grace.

Allan W. Janssen is the author of the book "The Plain Truth About God-101" (What the church doesn't want you to know!)