Thanksgiving 2021

A good cult delivers on its promises. A good cult nourishes the needs of its members, has transparency and integrity, and creates provisions for challenging its leadership openly. A good cult expands the freedoms and well-being of its members rather than limits them. –Philip Zimbardo

“Arrange your life in such a way that you don’t make choices based on fear of God, instead of love of God.” ― Shannon L. Alder

A few thoughts for Thanksgiving day…

The whole basis of the Armstrong churches is one of removing all joy from life. These are the people who filled the heads of children with horrors of seeing their parents tortured then hanged from meat-hooks. There is no joy, or love, nor kindness in the entire movement that is ever expounded from the pulpit. Only threats and punishment from some fictional god who has more in common with Hitler or Stalin.

“Coercion in the name of God
is a not love”

The Armstrong based cults immerse themselves in clever hyperbole, not realizing that they place God into a corner as obsolete and outmoded and, in place burn incense to the idol of mammon. They have been fairly successful in their efforts to snatch away the keys to the kingdom from everyone. That just goes to show what can be done with a little greed, a complete lack of scruples, and the help of a bunch of incompetent kleptocrats.

If you were to unpack and analyze the philosophical assumptions behind the Armstrong Churches, you would see that the more strepitant the communication, the more perspicuous the message. Anyone who as been part of the ACOG’s should realize that there is no excuse for the innumerable errors of fact, the slovenly research, the historical ineptitude, the internal contradictions, and the various half-truths, untruths, and gussied-up truths that litter every one of its essays from the first word to the last.

Sociologists refer to the phenomenon of increased devotion to an infantile, intolerant religion at the very hour of its destruction by external evidence as “cognitive dissonance”.

Let them laugh off my research and arguments and forever maintain their current course. Their dogmatism, unregenerate indecencies, and, offensive blasphemies against anything good and decent is like a two-bit huckster conning us into sawing off the very tree limbs upon which we’re sitting. In the end it is you who will suffer.

Now for a uplifting lesson…

A professor of philosophy walked into her lecture hall with a glass of water in hand. The hall was filled with antsy students who were eager to finish up class before heading home for Thanksgiving break. As she wound her way through the aisles, the professor raised the glass of water where everyone could see it; most of the students anticipated the predictable “half empty or half full” question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: “How heavy is this water?”

The students all went completely silent for a moment as they started thinking it through, then began calling out answers ranging from eight to 20 ounces. One astute student asked, “Does the glass matter?”

The professor replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter; it depends on how long I hold the glass filled with water. If I hold it all up for a minute or two, it’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, my arm will probably start to ache. If I continue to hold it for a day, my arm will go numb and feel paralyzed. The weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.”

She continued, “The stress and worries that you carry around in life are like that glass of water. Think on them for a minute or so and nothing happens… keep thinking about them for a bit longer, and they begin to hurt. And, if you think about them and hold them up all day long, you will feel paralyzed—incapable of doing anything.”

Thanksgiving is a time of letting go. The longer we focus on what is truly important in life, the more we can find enjoyment in those who really matter.