In the alley of facbook

Words in the alleys of Facebook:

O God
please save me from your believers!!
_ ?? _

you all laugh at me because I am different
but I laugh at you
because you all are the same!!
_ ??_

Common sense is not so common.
_Voltaire_

Antidote of democracy:
If it is a democracy
I choose to be a dictator!!
_ :)(:_

The first quote I ever heard associated with Voltaire was on a tape recorded in a prison by an old flame of mine Who said I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it?
She had correctly predicted how her plea for freedom would be perceived. I stumbled onto a book in the attic The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers [Will Durant] and carried it around like a bible until the paperback fell apart. Voltaire may have been instrumental in the rewrite of the term Anno Domini is Medieval Latin, translated as In the year of the Lord, and as in the year of our Lord to the common era. Most of my life I have been criticized for dwelling on the past . Some say the US constitution was heavily influence by the French revolution . Many historians give poets credit for inspiring people to think freely. Before her death my old flame made me aware that laws can represent freedom

The first was a Parisian saying I translated it awhile ago.
I agree with what you saying

"On January 31, 1915, Thomas Merton was born in Prades,-Orientales, France, to Owen Merton, a New Zealand painter active in Europe and the United States, and Ruth Jenkins, an American Quaker and artist. In the " The Seven Storey Mountain a 1948 autobiography of Thomas Merton he actually mentioned one of my Great uncles . In the early days of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani which is a Trappist monastery near Bardstown, Kentucky in Nelson County most of the monks came there from France sometime after the revolution. Ironically one of my great uncles died in France during WW1. I think Merton would have looked at the first quote with humor and an open mind in spite of his choice to spend the greater part of his life inside the walls of a monastery seeking freedom

That is the point: the irony
the quote has no problem with God. its problem however is with the believers.

There is a saying that one day they asked Karl Marks about marksizm , he said:: O gosh I am Marks but I am not a Marksist.

The problem is when the pagans become the believer
while they are still pagans .

We are on the same page for sure.

That I always knew

It is not about religions or pagan, it is about hypocrisy.

the guy is pleading to God to save him from his believers, not from the pagans.

Alright. Now I got it

Ddavidd,
Please, remember to edit your previous post rather than double post.

Okay, I do that all the time but for this thread I did not think it is going to go that far and be short of space.
but sure .

I watched a very disturbing movie last night called Incendies that demonstrated how religion can be abused to the point it undermines compassion. Not that this abuse is limited to any part of the world

8 years ago I turned Mormon ((latter-day saint))
For few years I did not miss even one Sunday. Until a young woman came to me and complained that she had an appointment with elders at 8 o'clock Sunday in the library. She was a single mother; she left her boy with the neighbor and got in the bus. It was winter -27 centigrade
The library, she realized, do not open until 10 in Sundays. And that part of town there is no coffee shop in that early in Sundays.
So the elders arrived and they refused to give her a ride ~~ even it was them who made that wrong appointment.~~ because they are not allowed to have a single woman in the car. So they left her regardless of all her moaning.
The bus come every two-hour in that part of town in Sunday. She had to WALK back home in -27 cold.
I confronted the elders. I said weren't you afraid she might have heart attack or something. They said we were, but we are more afraid of God.
since then I never stepped in that church again

"He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked.
The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin.
And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.
The freest song comes not through bars and wires.
And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn."
Gibran

So I confronted the president of the church and he said something that he should not have said it to me. well he did not really know me.
He said even though the act seems cruel, it is justified because what if people saw a young woman getting in a Mormon vehicle, what would they think??

I am a fan of Karen Armstrong

http://www.ted.com/talks/karen_armstrong_makes_her_ted_prize_wish_the_charter_for_compassion.html

"People want to be religious, says scholar Karen Armstrong; we should help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help build a Charter for Compassion -- to restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious doctrine.
Karen Armstrong is a provocative, original thinker on the role of religion in the modern world."

I was searching for the link above, which was very interesting. I came across this ::
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nYZuu939pb8#at=14
that blown my mind. It is totally a transcendental experience!!
fate is a Swiss watch: the randomness , is well planted!!