What goes around comes around. Blah blah blah blah blah.

The idea of karma presents itself as a method of inviting "good" into ones life by expelling "good" into the cosmic void. It takes cosmic forces to gather your "good" and "bad", but whatever plant you raise will present you with a yield or harvest of earned rewards.

Whatever.

If there truly was a way to gain a cosmic reward, for good or ill, it would present itself most assuredly in the immediate and horrible deaths of practically everybody on earth! Nearly everyone has done something that would cause the flow of "bad karma", inviting sure disaster.

It is difficult to believe that there are still adherents to the old agricultural belief in reincarnation. Yet, they appear to be everywhere!

The belief in reincarnation assumes that a person's thought processes are governed by supernatural forces independent of the material body.

Understand this. If there was such a thing as a soul, or "spirit", and there was no need for a material brain to govern thought and feeling, then why would we have one? If we could leave our material bodies and somehow transmit our thoughts into another body, then why bother living a miserable life? Why not just self-destruct and try for a better life?

When I was young, I was absolutely horrified at the idea that someone would see me undressed. For so many years, even the thought of using a public bathroom unnerved me. I just knew that someone was going to walk in and see me, and I was terrified.

This was because I had, at the time, bought into the ideas of christian shame that dominate in our culture. If it had not been for christianity, it would not have mattered to me at all. I would not have even thought about it.

Likewise, when I was young and at my best, I was terrified of getting into a relationship. I just knew that getting into a relationship would lead to having sex, which christianity taught me would send my soul to perish in hell.

Why is it that there are always outbreaks of bacterial-borne diseases coming from fast-food restaurants? I will tell you why. It is because they are filthy.

The people who serve fast-food really don't care about their customers. They are merely trying to get a paycheck. So when the boss says "this is fast-food, you have to move fast!", any thought other than speed goes ouot the window. Dishes get rinsed really quickly instead of being washed. Time is not taken to wash hands. Food gets undercooked.

What about state and federal health regulations? Like they matter! Health inspectors call before they come, do quick run throughs, and are not very thorough. Besides, they work for the government. Government is more concerned with governing then protecting you or your health.

The christian model of salvation has, for all of christian history, been about man's defiance of god's will and a hero-saviour that appeases that god's wrath over this defiance. It is relatively simplistic, and straightforward. The god was a parent who issued directives at man the child, the child defiantly disobeyed the father-god's directive, and god smacked the child for disobedience. The father-god has been smacking the child-man ever since. Then one day the parent-god sends a special child-man down and smacks him around for a bit. This child-man gets smacked around in order to stop god from smacking around his brothers. Therefore, all you have to do is to believe that this special child-man existed and put your faith in that special child-man and father-god will stop smacking you around.

Recently, the place where I work had difficulty with the city trash pickup people. The driver of the truck had to dump the trash twice because they failed to pick it up earlier in the week when they were scheduled to. He made my boss sign a paper saying that he would pay extra for that additional dump.

So, basically, because the city waste management (http://www.wm.com/) missed a scheduled and payed-for pickup, my workplace was supposed to give them more?

In light of the fact that there are no competing trash pickup services, the city has a monopoly on this, we are forced to use their services. Thus, they are able to utilyse this as a means to extort more money from businesses in this manner.

I have two sisters, and my family is very close. I speak with my sisters constantly, and we all stay in contact with our parents. Whenever I am speaking out against christianity in their presence, I am told that I am disrespecting them and their beliefs. In many instances, merely making a statement that vaguely refers to religiousity is enough to provoke them.

Now, I totally respect my sisters because, well, they are my sisters. Disrespect for religion and religious-born ideologies does not equal disrespect of the person. Yet they seem to suggest that if I say that christianity destroyed civilisation and we are still trying to recover, that is not the same thing as making a direct attack on someone's person!

There is a legend about a group of Islamic traders that traveled to Africa and met with a tribal chief. The traders were given a warm welcome and stayed with the tribe for many weeks. When they were preparing to leave, the invited the chief to tour their ship. Once aboard the ship, the traders proceeded to confine the chief, abducting him and selling him in the slave trade back home.

The king learned all he could from his slave masters, then escaped and made his way back to his people in Africa. Upon his return, he taught his people about Islam, read to them from a copy of the Koran that he brought with him, and converted his tribal nation.

It is just so bloody stinking ridiculous!

Atheist like to pretend that they are, by and large, the most persecuted minority group around today. In fact, it is brought up repeatedly as a mantra of sorts, that atheist are the last grouping of people to whom it is considered acceptable to persecute.

This is, of course, wholly untrue.

Thing is, there are other groups who are far more ostracised and persecuted than atheists. In some cases, they are far more numerous, and yet there is no end to the social stigma and heavy weight of political and social persecution towards some of them.

It doesn't matter what form of oppression it is, the inevitable consequence of oppression is aggression. The "firm hand" of parental control will cause children to become very angry, which leads to teenage and adult aggression. Oppression from ideological or religious systems leads to misdirected aggressive tendencies. Political and legislative oppression leads to criminal or political aggression.

It is all a matter of personality. Certain personalities hold tendencies towards directing their aggression in a positive manner, and yet others just flail about.

There are many psychological conferences regarding childhood violence. It isn't the violence in movies or television that cause children to lash out violently, it is the oppressive tendencies in the community around them. Television and movie violence did not cause the rise of Al Capone and the gang wars of the prohibition era, it was government oppression.