Sacrifice is Now the American Policy of Washington

Someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more

The Christian religion demands "sacrifice", obedience to the "commandments" given through a supernatural entity to its adherents, and a "selflessness" which was given the name--by the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte--of "altruism."

It is not metaphysically natural for men to operate in a psychological structure-of-mind that commits them to these things. Yet, this is also the structure-of-mind we are being groomed to live by under the Obama administration.

As Michelle O explained, "The truth is, [ ] someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more." James Lewis American Thinker

Sacrifice has become the purview of the government.

First, "sacrifice" must necessarily mean giving up something of greater value for something of lesser value, else it could not be sacrificial. For example, to give a tithing to your church is not a sacrifice if you think the work of the church is worth your money. It is only when you think your money could be used better elsewhere, but you are psychologically coerced by the culture of the church to give your money to them, that this act would be a sacrifice.

If we are expected to sacrifice part of our pie to someone who wants a piece of the pie that is not his/hers, we are expected to acquiesce. We are mandated by the Federal government to be our brother's keeper. This gives us little or no personal fiscal resources with which to protect ourselves. Now we must count on the government to take from our neighbors in order to give to us, after taking from us to give to another neighbor.

Second, commandments are impossible to follow to the letter and in spirit, one-hundred percent of the time. Commandments were made to be broken--so that Christians would have a "cross" of their own to bear. Such "crosses" are called by many names, one of which is the "original sin" of being "only" a human who cannot be perfect, but needs salvation.

In order to follow the commandments one-hundred percent of the time would take sacrifices that mere humans are not prepared to make. To "love thy neighbor as thy self" even when every thing your neighbor believes in and stands for would destroy every thing you believe in and everything you stand for--most certainly is impossible for mere humans to accomplish. Tell me how an American can love Osama bin Laden as he loves himself.

Ask yourself what kind of God would command you to love bin Laden. What God would ask that you altruistically not kill a man who is raping your wife? The New King James Version changed "thou shalt not kill" to "“You shall not murder", yet since the time of King James or before it was "kill." Manslaughter which is killing, however, is not murder. But it is killing. Manslaughter is often accidental, so the only reason the NKJV does not say "You shall not commit manslaughter" is because sometimes it isn't done on purpose; but you still go to prison for it.

What God would "visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children"?

I had a conversation with a group of men a few years ago, and one man who had been a failure all his life at nearly everything he tried, said with an air of resignation that he had "sacrificed his whole life."

At that moment it was not clear just what he meant. Someone who knew him much better than I challenged him.

"You have not!" said the man. "You don't know what it means to sacrifice, or you would have been successful by now."

The first man replied, "You are wrong. It is because I sacrificed that I failed. I sacrificed a good job with a good employer for the whim of starting up my own business when I had no aptitude for business. I sacrificed my marriage for a one-night stand. I sacrificed my health by getting drunk every night before going home, and it put me in the hospital with cirrhosis of the liver. I sacrificed my college education when I quit because the leftist teaching of the university pissed me off. One liberal philosophy teacher actually said I would grow out of the beliefs I had at the time. The problem is, I never outgrew those beliefs. I believe in them more strongly than I did then. But I sacrificed them, too, by not living up to them."

"Well," said the second man, "that isn't what I meant by 'sacrifice.' I mean you didn't try hard enough by giving up the things that would have made you a success."

"And I still say you're wrong," said the first man. "If I had given up what was necessary to be successful, that wouldn't have been sacrificing anything, it would only have been paying the proper price for the things I valued. Instead, I paid too little, and the sacrifice was getting nothing at all in return for what I did pay.

"The ultimate payment is my failure. All those years that I had a good job, all those years that I had wonderful wife are water under the bridge. I didn't do anything to put them in the bank. I robbed the bank. And now here I sit without any retirement, living from food stamps, taking temporary jobs because with my work history I can't get anything else considering the hard economic times we're in.

"Do you see what I'm saying?" he asked. We could all hear the regret in his voice, the self-judgment, and the recognition that he had finally learned the meaning of the word "sacrifice."

"If I had not done the wrong things, if I had not fallen short of doing what needed to be done at all the important moments in my life, I wouldn't feel as if I just want to cry over spilt milk right now. There wouldn't be any spilt milk. I'd have a refrigerator full of it, instead of a pocket full of food stamps.

"Do you understand me now? I didn't pay enough for the things I wanted. That was the sacrifice--losing the things I had because I didn't want to pay the piper what he was worth. The things I wanted were worth more than I was willing to pay. That is sacrificial. I sacrificed myself by being cheap."div align="justify">If the life you want is more important than love, it's no sacrifice. If living anywhere with the one you love is more important, THAT is no sacrifice.

Sacrifice means to give up what is more valuable for what is less; otherwise the word has no moral meaning.

On this basis I argue that Jesus' death was no "sacrifice" because the saving of souls was more important than one man's life. But there is another aspect: Jesus is believed by many to be God himself incarnate, meaning he knew he couldn't die anyway, so giving up his carnate life on the cross turns out to be a big cosmic joke played on humanity--it was no sacrifice, it was sleight of hand.

Yet, the Catholic church takes this stance:

"On account of the remarkable and unique coincidence of the priest, victim, and acceptor of the sacrifice, a first question arises as to whether Christ was victim and priest according to His Divine or according to His human nature. On the basis of the dogma of the hypostatic union the only answer is: although the God-Man or the Logos Himself was at once both priest and victim, He was both, not according to His Divine nature, but through the function of His humanity." [emphasis added] Catholic Encyclopedia

This means that it is even important for the Church to sacrifice the "dogma of the hypostatic union" of Jesus being God himself--for the lesser value of Jesus being a man.

It means nothing if God was sacrificed. God cannot die. Jesus was said to have been dead for three days before he was bodily taken to heaven. This dogma is necessary to convince us that upon death we no longer must bear the burden of being "just a man," but will, as did Jesus, be ressurected into a union of hypostasis with God. In other words, to achieve this blessed union we must live the sacrifice of being mere mortals first.

It is not a sacrifice to be mortal, to be man, to be animal.

"I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction." Ayn Rand; Anthem [emphasis added]

If your marriage is more important to you than a fling with someone you discover and have a passion for, it is no sacrifice to forego the fling.

Into the boundary

Of each married man

Sweet deceit comes calling

And negativity lands

Cold cold heart

Hard done by you

Some things look better baby

Just passing through

And it's no sacrifice

Just a simple word

It's two hearts living

In two separate worlds

Elton John

The "sweet deceit" of giving up a piece of your pie so that others can have what is yours is the deceit of Christian brotherhood transformed into social policy. So, why does everyone ask if we are willing to sacrifice this or that, for this or that?

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC.
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM,
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger ©,
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra ©, and
The Metaphysical Naturalist ©,
are the educational arms of the LLC and are:
© 2008-2009 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®
mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

The Semantic Problem With a Church Full of Atheists

The Semantics
"Atheism is not a religion in the sense that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are," states a religious site.i This site is about "tolerance," but it actively sells Christian literature, promoting religion containing a deity.

Atheism by definition contains no deity.
That a religious site can state that atheism is not religious in the same sense as deified religions are religious, presupposes and confirms the conviction that atheism is a different kind of religion.

"[A]n Atheist's belief system is confined to one factor: the existence or non-existence of a deity.”ii But this idea belies the fact that atheism is the distinctive lack of any belief in a deity. Atheists will say they do not believe a deity exists; not, that they believe a deity does not exist.

Yet in a strange apparition in the English language, one statement may be substituted for the other, usually without this distinction making any difference in the purpose of the statement.
“I don't believe there is a table in that room,” can mean the same as “I believe there is no table in that room.”

But about that table there is no belief “system.” No one has to go through the process of deciding on the merits of whether tables exist before making either statement. But about God that process of systematizing one's beliefs is inherent in the subject. It requires many more processes of logic—and religious faith—before one has a belief “system” about God. So the distinction about “believing no god exists,” versus “not believing a god exists” is more than a slip of the English language.

It should not be presumed that when an atheist says he “believes there is no god,” that he means it. A belief that there is no god really defines the agnostic. But for the atheist, who by definition cannot have any belief about a deity, that slip of the tongue is only a slip of the tongue. If he has thought about this oddity in the English language, he will argue against you when you point out his “belief.” Otherwise, he will agree, not having seen the error in the semantics.

There is a large distinction to be made in this semantic difference. You can choose to believe that something exists. On the other hand, you may have a total lack of belief in that same thing without making the attempt not to believe. I for one make no active attempt to disbelieve in Santa or the tooth fairy. This is not because I set out to disbelieve, but because I set out to use my faculty of Reason, which will not allow me the suspension of disbeliefiii which is automatic to every person when he/she hears a new theory or other idea. The suspension of disbelief as a phrase is usually applied to fiction or drama; but drama does not need to be fiction, and my disbelief is no longer suspended when I hear ideas that do not conform to my Reason.

My disbelief is not the same as belief in the opposite of what I cannot disbelieve. I cannot believe in the opposite of Santa or the tooth fairy; but I can find a disbelief in them. The mind cannot believe in the opposite of anything that does not exist.
But god exists as a concept, if not as a real god, for all persons in all cultures, in all languages. Therefore, the contrary at least, if not the outright opposite of “god”, is Metaphysical Naturalism. In such a theory there can be, for the atheist and others, a belief in the system inherent in that concept.

The Atheist in A Church
It is hard for many to believe that an atheist can feel any spiritual needs—but we do. Not all of call it “spiritual.” Not all atheists can find a reason to call what they find within their consciousness a “spirit” or a “soul.” Some will loudly proclaim that no such thing exists, because as part of their system of belief such an admission would be contradictory to atheism itself.
Yet many atheists have no problem identifying the soul within them.

“My hands . . . My spirit . . . My sky . . . My forest . . . This earth of mine. . . .
“This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest,” wrote Ayn Rand, in her novelette Anthem. “I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet. For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone. Let each man keep his temple untouched and undefiled. Then let him join hands with others if he wishes, but only beyond his holy threshold. This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before! And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I.' ” iv

In many of my previous and unattributed blogs I used much the same language to describe the incredible feeling within my bosom when I look at the sunrise or the sunset; at the faun, who was born in my backyard, and the doe who I kept fed with corn and carrots all winter while I watched her belly growing; and at the million people gathered in my former hometown to watch the fireworks. Of course, I could not see all the million-plus; I could see only a few thousands at a time as I walked from park to parking lot and from one block to another through public and private areas full of people sitting on blankets or in chairs.

But I knew that million-plus was there because the city said so every year and to know that many people could gather in one general area with peace and goodwill toward all others because it was the Fourth of July is something one can feel the spirit of. That begs the question: one “feels” it where?

My answer is that it is felt in the soul.
An assemblage of like-minded people, whether assembled in a building or in cyberspace, with perhaps hundreds or thousands all reading the same blog at the same time—or at separate times—has been defined as a church by many famous accounts.

But there is controversy about the origin of the word religion.
“The derivation of the word 'religion' has been a matter of dispute from ancient times. Not even today is it a closed question.”v

It is surprising to me that such an admission comes from a religious encyclopedia, but I have always found this volume to be objective in its reporting.
It agrees with other authorities that the word is often attributed to relegare, which Cicero defined as “to treat carefully.” It states that this is not the Catholic definition, but admits it is not “a closed question.”

If one acceptable definition of religion is “to treat carefully,” then it can be said with confidence that many atheists have treated the subject of the nature of the supernatural with utmost consideration for everything contained in the idea.
It will be the purpose of the Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists to “treat carefully” these ideas of god, of nature, of naturalism, of supernaturalism, and most specifically of the nature of Man himself, and to describe the “system of belief” that admits of nothing supernatural in the origin of existence nor of anything within existence itself.
And that assemblage of ideas into a system “treated carefully” is already admitted by other accounts than this one to be a religion and a church.

A System of Carefully Treated Beliefs
The website for the World Union of Deists defines a "cult" as "an embracing of unreasonable beliefs by a group of people. Based on this definition, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all cults because their members suspend their God-given reason in order to believe or accept the unreasonable dogmas and teachings such as God giving real estate as a gift to the Jews, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus and Mohammed among many more false and unreasonable claims."vi

An atheist finds the Deist to be as "embracing of unreasonable beliefs" as any other religion is embracing; the Deist is a dyed-in-the-wool theist who believes in God. It is, however, as difficult to call Deism a "religion" as it is to call atheism "religion." Religions are generally defined as an organized practice of rituals such as prayer, kneeling, genuflecting, etc. Neither the Deist nor the atheist practices such rituals. Yet Deism believes in a supreme deity; atheism does not.
And there is the crux of the definition. An atheist's belief system is that there is no deity in which to place one's belief; rather, that since nothing exists in which to place one's belief, that no belief exists. Can a church be a place for people for whom no beliefs exist?
The very word atheism implies that no theism exists in that system. But does that mean that no theology exists in it?

If the church is a conceptual entity existing previously to, or in place of, a building in which an assemblage examines beliefs, then the conclusion from specious reasoning that the universe and the existence in which it exists is eternal and not of supernatural origin, is a belief, and where ever that belief is “treated carefully” or used in a heated debate, a church exists.

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism (tm), which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

Address on file

i http://www.religioustolerance.org/atheist1.htm
ii ibid
iii The temporary acceptance as believable of events or characters that would ordinarily be seen as incredible. [C]oined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817... http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/suspension-of-disbelief.html
iv http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/anthem/complete.html Edited for this blog text.
v http://www.newadvent.org/
vi http://www.deism.com/deism_defined.htm