Roughly all religious testimonies where someone actually claims to have come into contact with a primary source or ’God’ is the same. And I can say that because I’ve heard many testimonies in my life, and I’ve noticed the pattern.

Essentially, the person hits some hard times or some significant event leaves the person with no other option than to give up or surrender.

What happens next is where they make their mistake, because no one really knows what they’re surrendering to, but they sure would like to know.

Usually, they believe they are surrendering to God, and what God is to a desperate individual largely depends on what a person already believes God to be.

And that’s the problem. "God" is a word that carries with it certain baggage, and the word entails different things depending on the context. I’m pretty sure ancient Greeks, when in similar circumstances, petitioned with all their heart to Zeus or even Poseidon. If Hurricane Katrina occurred in ancient Greece, for example, people would’ve been praying their hearts out to Poseidon.

The person who first converted me claimed to have had God speak to him, and so he picked up the Bible and became caught up with its mythos. If you believe the Bible is true, then of course you will wind up believing that the picture that it paints is true. This becomes obvious in the choice of words people use.

A very common thing to say, something that I’ve said myself, is that "The Bible tells us that _________ (fill in the blank) is true" or "Jesus tells us (through the Bible) that __________ (fill in the blank) is true."

The entire statement is built on the assumption that the Bible is true.
I can’t say that I have personally met God, but I have met religion. My brush with religion is largely the experience that most people have. I really don’t think most people who profess to be religious really buy into their own religion. They try to, but they don’t really believe it. This is because most people do not meet face-to-face with a primary source, and are thus prone to doubt. And this is a good thing.

Most people have never seen a convincing miracle. Instead, they are religious because of some perceived social pressure, and thus become religious because of a secondary source.

This secondary source is extremely common and powerful. Church is, after all, important to certain families; it’s culturally important in certain regions; and sometimes it’s just a fun place to hang out. Most people go to church to be around other people.

The trick to not get into this mess, is to not make the first mistake of assuming that religion must be true. When you’ve managed to surrender and you feel that blissful feeling that everything will be okay, don’t run to the Bible or the Koran for answers. While I don’t doubt that when one manages to totally surrender, there is a feeling of bliss and vivid awareness of some sort of presence, we should quickly understand that this is a feeling that people of all religions have felt.

The first mistake comes when the individual gives this feeling of presence a name and subscribes to a background story that simply isn’t true.

And to you people who have never felt the primary source, it would behoove you to be more skeptical toward such claims.

Just an Infidel: My Deconversion Story

I guess I'm an atheist in respect to religion, but not necessarily to God.

Sure, I'm still open to the idea of a God or gods existing, but I know that the concept of God could not be accurately presented from any of the religions we have at our disposal. A personal God as espoused by our holiest books is something I have come to reject. I've even witnessed spiritual phenomena during the course of my life, some might even say supernatural, but fortunately I abstained from attributing these incidents to a specific religion, which is a mistake many people have done.

I grew up in a Catholic home; Filipino Catholics. Most people have heard of the zeal of Filipino Catholics, some of whom will actually go to such lengths as nailing themselves to a cross! I haven't seen such acts in person, but often at a Filipino funeral, someone will lug a huge cross down the church aisle just to get their point across. My mother, however, wasn't steeped in this tradition, and so I wasn't raised by the zealots of the Catholic faith, rather just the moderates.

Later on in my life, at about 14, my father, who is an American of British ancestry (since before the Revolutionary War) converted to Protestant Christianity, and it was through my father that I became acquainted with it as well. The brand of Protestantism that he converted to was Pentecostalism, known for preachers laying their hands on babbling parishioners speaking in tongues, falling onto the ground, and writhing in religious ecstasy.

My first experience with the "laying on the hands" occurred during a youth group session. At the end of his sermon, the youth pastor asked us to come up to the altar and be prayed for. It wasn't long until he began speaking in tongues and tapping people's foreheads. Naturally (or perhaps supernaturally), these normal, boisterous teenagers, began falling down and twitching like epilepsy victims.

I'd also gone up there to pray, but was a bit perplexed by the odd happenings going on around me, though I had heard about this in prior meetings. When the youth pastor started praying over me, I thought I felt a tremor in my knees.

He then laid his hand on my forehead and blew out a blast of hot air at me. I opened my eyes and looked at him, and he gave me a genuine look of surprise and took a step back. He approached me again and repeated the whole thing all over again. I didn't know what to do, because I didn't really feel like I had to fall down, and he stopped after that, moving on to someone more versed at what to do.

Admittedly, I almost passed out because of his breath, which reeked of halitosis and garlic. We eventually left this church because they began putting too much emphasis on speaking tongues, and were beginning to claim those who don't speak tongues will go to hell. "It's becoming too much like a cult," said my father.

So, we went on to another church that was part of a mainstream Pentecostal denomination, and it was called Calvary Assembly of God. As I had already been acquainted with the intensities of Pentecostal Christianity, all the erratic behaviors I encountered at Calvary were taken in stride. I really "grew in the Lord" at Calvary, became baptized, and began reading the Bible regularly. I was often found with my nose in the Bible, reading as much as I could of it.

I gained some great friends, and we regularly went on field trips, ranging from huge multi-church winter camps up in Lake Arrowhead, or surf trips with the youth group down in San Onofre. We'd become politically active and were involved in numerous pro-life protests and even one anti-gay counter-protest.

We'd regularly witness to complete strangers as well, as the Bible suggested we profess the Good News to all.

It wasn't until my junior year in high school that the first doubts crept in, and by this time I had moved to Lakewood, but would still try to attend church in Lomita as much I could.

None the less, there was a physical barrier of distance between me and the church I had grown to love. My parents divorced, I took my first hit from a joint, I had sex for the first time, got drunk, and other taboos were occurring regularly.

After committing or witnessing each sin, hellfire and damnation still seemed as far away as ever, and yet doing these things actually brought me closer to people, sex of course with my girlfriend at the time, and smoking and drinking with my friends, most of whom I am still in contact with today.

That said, I never really doubted the divinity of Jesus Christ at this time. Rather, it was the doctrine of sin that I began to doubt. How can these behaviors be evil? They were fun, they brought camaraderie, and sex brought on, for me at least, an emotional maturity that I couldn't have had should I have remained a virgin.

Another crack to my system of beliefs occurred while I was in the Navy. While overseas, spinning laps around the Persian Gulf in a brand new, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, I would sit on the fantail (or the rear of the ship) and ask myself the old chestnut, "Why was I here?"

And not just in the philosophical sense, but also in the social-political sense as well. This line of questioning led me into an inquiry that caused me to question one of the things I had taken granted for so long, and that was that America was an "innocent" country. In 1998, we were still bombing Iraq on a regular basis. It seems that the decade between the first Gulf War and the second was more like a siege than anything.

The United States prevented supplies from reaching the desert nation, and we enforced a no-fly zone, all the while bombing various targets while we were there. This notion of America as the best country or even an innocent one, actually goes hand in hand with my religiosity, as it is in fact a symptom of ethnocentrism. I've learned that the reason that I love America is not because it's the best country, it's just that it's the one I'm the most familiar with, and is the one I have always called home.

After I got out of the Navy, I attended Cypress Community College and it was there that I took my first philosophy class. This class fed some of my suspicions that began festering in the back of my mind. This is where my doubts about the Bible's validity and divinity of Jesus really began to manifest.

Initially, I was a militant agnostic, and was very hostile toward Christianity. It's very much the same as when I first became Christian and became very anti-secular, anti-"other religions", etc. There is an initial fanaticism that occurs each time a new belief sets in.

Around this time, my father went on to become a preacher, and my mother converted to Protestantism as well. My father and I get into some very interesting conversations at times, as one could imagine, but we always engage in these conversations with respect toward each other. We still have these conversations, often when we camp out in the desert.

I never completely gave up spirituality, and so I actually turned to eastern religions for a while. Buddhism in particular drew me in, though I did find Hinduism to be quite fascinating, too. However, Buddhism is steeped in alien mythology, and I decided to extract from it the things I thought made the most sense. Ironically, this is actually advice imparted from Siddhartha Gautama himself.

In Buddhism, for example, I thought much of the philosophy behind it was quite sound, such as Siddhartha's argument for extinguishing suffering. Meditation, too, is very practical, and can produce amazing spiritual insight. I have also learned through further Biblical research that the Old Testament is just influenced by numerous myths from Sumeria, Babylon, and Canaan, and that these myths were perpetuated by the Israelites, who had come out of these people.

If I were to sum up my personal belief, I'd say the concept of God is kind of like the mirrors placed in the upper corners of markets. They're not necessarily there to help store employees watch a theft; rather they are there to prevent the theft from happening.

When the shoplifter looks up at himself, he sees himself in a third person perspective, and the person he is seeing is a bad guy. Likewise, the concept of God is like an internal mirror.

This isn't even a new idea. Plato called it the form of the Good, Sigmund Freud called it a Super Ego, Christians and Jews call it Yahweh, and Muslims call it Allah. I just call it the "Ideal Self", which we strive to be like, and its standard is set largely by the society or culture we live in.

Similarly, there is a competing force, and this is our physical body's needs and desires. Plato might have called it natural urges, Freud called it the Id, Christians call it the Devil, and Muslims call it Shai'tan. I just call it the Animal Self.

The struggle between the two competing forces is basically the situation we are constantly in. I just drop the supernatural description and see it to be a natural part of being a social animal.

There's a reason there are mirrors high up in the corners of markets, and it's not necessarily what you think it is. They are there because they prevent crime.

No, it's not that they provide an angle that allows the store clerk to see a crime take place, and its not that they are one-way mirrors. When a potential thief sees himself in the mirror, he is more likely not to steal. He sees himself from a third person perspective, and the person he is seeing is the bad guy.

In one social psychology experiment, an experimenter put 150 candies on a table with a sign that said "Take one candy."

After an allotted period of time, and recording how many kids approached the candy bowl while hiding inside the house, the experimenter took the candy bowl and counted how many were taken. He then refilled the bowl with 150 candies but this time he put a mirror behind the bowl. After the allotted amount of time, he took the bowl and counted the candies again.

This experiment has been done repeatedly by psychology students all over the world, and every time the result is roughly the same. With the mirror there, children will usually take only one candy, and without the mirror, they will take more.

To answer the question, "What is God?" I'm going to say it is something of an internal mirror. Freud called it the Superego, Plato called it a Form, Christians call it YHWH, Muslims call it Allah. It is the ideal self, that perfect man or woman we would like to be, and sometimes we even actively strive to be like it.

While we were growing up, we pick up on various social norms like 'stealing is bad' and internalize it into our proper behavior. The social pressure that stems from this becomes our foundation for morality.

There is another force at work here that determines our behavior. Freud called it the Id, Plato might have called it 'natural urges', Christians call it the Devil, Muslims call it Shai'tan. I'll call it the Animal self. Having evolved from animals, we have much of the same basic urges that they do. We have the need for air, food, water, space, and sex. And if we don't get the right amount of these things, we suffer.

And so it is, that we are in a constant tug-of-war between these two things; our higher Ideal Self which proscribes what morality is, and the Animal Self which dictates our physical needs and desires.

Unfortunately, in the material realm, the realm of practicality, it is nearly impossible to be like the Ideal Self, and it is socially reprehensible to be like the Animal Self. Both are essential to our being, and so we find some kind of balance between the two extremes. The balance of the two, the actuality of what we are, has been called many things, but I will call it the Actual Self.

I would like to reiterate that there is nothing new that I'm proposing here. This has been noted many times throughout history and by people of conflicting beliefs. What might be different to you is applying these things to the question of what God is. There is a kind of universal experience that we all share just by virtue of living, thinking, remembering, and interpreting.

Collectively, this amounts to a certain expectation that is put on the individual, and this expectation is reinforced through parenting, by the school system, by our religions, philosophies, culture, and history.

God is the mirror that reflects the sum of all these mental constructions back at the self. God doesn't exist outside of our minds, He exists as a result of them. God is the mental reflection of all the things we think are Good; and His antithesis, call it the Devil, call it the Id, or call it the Animal Self, is the thing we don't want to accept as a part of our selves.

And so we demonize it. We don't want to see it in ourselves.

My suggestion is that we don't have to embrace the Animal Self, nor should we reject it. Rather, we should just understand the Animal Self and accept it. It is an inalienable part of who we are.

Most of us should know by now that the ancient Hebrews were pagans, and borrowed their concept of Yahweh from older gods like the Babylonian Marduk and the Sumerian El.

While the mythology of the Babylonians account for most of the worldview of the Hebrews, it is the Sumerian god El from which Yahweh (or YHWH) comes from. Briefly, El was Father of the Gods, Creator of Created Things, The Kindly, Kodesh. El wears bull horns on his helmet and resides at "the Source of Two Rivers" upon Mt. Lel.

El also had a wife named Asherah, who was considered the Queen of Heaven.

In the Bible, we see that Yahweh (the Hebrew's adaptation of El or Elohim) actually had a wife named Asherah. I'm pretty sure that much of the Hebrew's earlier history was lost or forbidden after the reforms of King Hezekiah and King Josiah.

But there are still parts of the Bible that allude to Asherah, especially in complaints from reformist "prophets" like the author of Jeremiah or in the historical accounts of 2 Kings. For instance, the "high places" or "groves" were places where Asherah was specifically worshipped, and she is referred to as the "Queen of Heaven".Check out these Bible verses: Jer. 7:17-18Jer. 44:17Deut. 16:212 Kings 18:4 .

It's strange to think of Yahweh being married. Isn't it?

We can also see how later reforms actually eliminated one earlier concept of god and replaced it with another. First it was the Sumerians and Babylonians, then it was the Hebrews, then it was the reforms of the kings Hezekiah and Josiah, later the various sects that formed out of Judaism, Christianity and its myriad of sects, and finally Islam.

People create and mold the concept of God to suit their needs, political or otherwise, and so religion is forever changing.

I'd like to continue with my argument. Let's examine the flood myth in Genesis. Did you know that there are actually two flood myths being told at the same time? Together, they contradict each other, but when separated they turn into a coherent story.

In one version (J), God instructs Noah to take into the ark two of each unclean animal, and seven pairs of "clean" animals, for a sacrifice after the flood (Gen. 7:3). It says that the flood was caused by rain alone, and it rains for 40 days and nights. Noah then lets a dove out three times to look for land. First, it returns unable to find land. Second, it comes back with an olive leaf, and on the third try it doesn't come back (Gen. 8:8-12).

In the other version (P), God tells Noah to take two of each kind of animal, whether clean or unclean, onto the ark (Gen. 6:19-20). This version was probably a much older version of the flood myth. The cause of the flood is much more grandiose in this one as well, because the "windows of heaven" and the "fountains of the deep" are broken up (Gen. 7:11) ... and the flood lasts 150 days (Gen. 7:24). After the flood, Noah simply sends a raven to look for dry land (Gen. 8:7).

The first version I mentioned is based off a flood myth called "Atrahasis" (the cuneiform tablet above), and the second is based on "Enuma elish". At the end of "Atrahasis", the gods are attracted by the sweet smell of sacrifice and resolve to never again destroy humanity. Now look at Gen. 8:21. There are actually many variants of the flood myth that predate the Biblical account. The Epic of Gilgamesh is written about 100 years before the Bible's account (1100 BCE); Atrahasis has the most parallels with the Biblical account and is dated at about 1640 BCE; and Sumerian Eridu Genesis which dates back 3000 years BCE.

The second version of the flood is based off of the worldview of the "Enuma elish." This is evident because of the idea of heaven's windows opening and the opening of the deep. There was a fairly popular concept amongst ancient people that there was a solid firmament that separated chaos from the Earth. In fact, if we read the Genesis creation account you could see that there is mention of it, and that particular section of the creation account is based on the worldview provided by Enuma elish. Here is an interesting drawing of this firmament concept:

In "Enuma elish", Marduk sets his bow in the sky as a sign that the world order is established. Now look at Gen. 9:12-17, where God (El) sets his bow in the sky. The difference in these two versions is that the bow in "Enuma elish" is the star Sirius, and in Genesis it is a rainbow. However, in both stories the placement of both in the sky marks the final establishment of the earth as a settled place.

1. Enuma elish - http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm
2. Atrahasis - Lambert W.G. and Millard, A.R. Atrahasis; the Babylonian Story of the Flood, 1999.
3. http://www.livius.org/fa-fn/flood/flood2-t.html (of interest is the chart at the bottom).

Here's why I think the God of the Bible doesn't exist. And I'll just focus on one thing. The mythicist position.

The Bible is based off of older mythologies. For instance, and I get this from Tim Callahan's book Secret Origins of the Bible, the Israelites started off as pagans. According to Callahan, the ancient Israelites believed in many of the same gods as the Egyptians and the Canaanites.But as time went on, the mythologies conglomerated and began to be reinterpreted.

We forget that the writing of the Bible spans approximately 1600 years. The Israelites were never a great nation, though they make claims to that in the Bible. It is exactly this reason (that the Bible was written over 1600 years), that there are so many contradictions and inaccuracies in the Bible. Now, people may object to this claim but any reader would see that it takes a certain amount of mental gymnastics and semantic hoop-jumping to make it seem like the Bible isn't contradictory or inaccurate.

But really, it's the story of a cultural transition, from ancient pagan traditions borrowed from neighboring cultures to the consolidation of those into one God. El Elyon, translated as "Most High God", for example, was used by "Melchizedek (above left), the Canaanite priest-king of Salem who sacrificed to him on Abraham's behalf. Christian apologists say that Melchizedek sacrificed to god of the Jews, however that can not be true because "El Elyon" was a god worshipped by the Canaanites. Apparently, apologists later just said El Elyon was a reference to Yahweh.

El (pictured at right) was a sky god, creator and the grey-bearded patriarch of the Canaanite gods." (from Tim Callahan's Secret Origins of the Bible). You know the archaic image we all have of the bearded man in the clouds? That is El.

But it's not just the Old Testament that is full of ancient mythology, the story of Jesus himself is reminiscent of ancient gods, mirroring elements of stories like Osiris-Dionysus, and others.

The point of my argument is this:

1. Christians base their worldview on the Bible, claiming that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God.

2. Almost all Bible stories, but especially Old Testament ones like the Fall of Man and the Flood Myth are derived from the mythology of surrounding cultures at the time.

3. The New Testament needs these older myths to make sense out of Jesus Christ's death, because the Son of God died for the sins of mankind, who were cursed to be in a sinful state since the Fall of Man.

4. So, the Christian worldview has its foundations built upon old myths.

The Israelites started off as pagans. According to Biblical scholar Tim Callahan, the ancient Israelites believed in many of the gods as the Egyptians and the Canaanites.

But as time goes on, the Bible began to be reinterpreted. It is very easy when looking at the Bible to think it was all written at roughly the same time. We forget that the writing of the Bible spans approximately 1600 years. The Israelites were never a great nation, though they make claims to that in the Bible.

It is exactly this reason that the Bible was written over 1600 years, that there are so many contradictions and inaccuracies in the Bible. Now, people may object to this claim but any reader would see that it takes a certain amount of mental gymnastics and semantic hoop-jumping to make it seem like the Bible isn't contradictory or inaccurate.

But really, it's the story of a cultural transition, from ancient pagan traditions borrowed from neighboring cultures to the consolidation of those into one God.

El Elyon, translated as "Most High God", for example, was used by "Melchizedek, the Canaanite priest-king of Salem who sacrificed to him on Abraham's behalf. El was a sky god, creator and the grey-bearded patriarch of the Canaanite gods." (from Callahan's Secret Origins of the Bible).
You know the archaic image we all have of the bearded man in the clouds? That is El.

In Isaiah 14:12, it says, "How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!"

Gary Lenaire, a former Christian musician from the band Tourniquet, wrote in his book An Infidel Maninfesto, "In Hebrew, Day Star and Dawn are Helal and Shahar. Helal and Shahar were originally Canaanite (pagan) gods, not Satan." Satan is the common reinterpretation that many Christians have today. I imagine Lenaire got this information from Callahan's book as well.

The Jewish people adopted many ancient pagan stories, including the snake tricking the woman in the garden story (Lenaire). That story predates Genesis.

Even the name the Jewish people adopted for their God Yahweh (YHWH or YWVH) was borrowed from other people. Yahweh is the unspeakable name of God, or the Tetragrammaton. Yah was one of the gods worshipped by the Arameans (Callahan), another culture neighboring the ancient Israelites. And Yahweh was originally a part of one of the Canaanite pagan pantheon and worshipped by Canaanite tribes other than the Jews (Callahan).

It makes sense that the Jews would adopt these names into their culture because the Jewish culture was a mixture of many tribes and cultures over many centuries. All the demon and angel names, the names of gods, are from Canaanite, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, and Persian deities (Lenaire).

I thought I'd post this just for the discussion (or disgustion?) value.When I think of cult members (i.e. Moonies, Heaven's Gate, Manson, "Satanic" cults, etc.), two words come to mind: Crazy Fanatics.

The first Christians were, of course, members of a cult, and because of that, I see them as crazy fanatics. And by "crazy fanatics", I mean the guy who would stand on a raised platform outside Jerusalem surrounded by his own feces as a testament to the Lord; or people who would mutilate themselves (usually their genitals) because they thought they sinned (or in the case Aebbe's nuns, to preserve their chastity); or never wash themselves because it was copying the infidels' practice of bathing, or chanting "to kill a Muslim is to do God's will" to passers by.

I would include the Apostles themselves in this group, as they may very well have encouraged this behavior. This was how the early Christians operated. Sure, there may have been some sane ones, kind of like there were some sane Branched Davidians who got out of the compound when they had a chance, but in the end they were your average cult members, like the Mithraists or cult of Isis who'd bathe in blood (washing away sins from the blood of the Lamb sound familiar?).

How can anyone doubt that these people would die for their faith? That's what faith does. It makes it easier to die.

Some early Christians even practiced forms of cannibalism, apparently taking literally "eat of my flesh and drink my blood". This tidbit of information I gleaned from a book called Among the Cannibal Christians by Earl Lee. And don't give me the Protestant copout excuse, "Communion is symbolism, it's just a cracker and some juice!"

Catholics and Orthodox, the descendents of the first church, literally think that eating the bread and drinking the wine is eating flesh and blood ... LITERALLY. Where'd they get that from?

Apparently, the church was formed early enough that there were people who knew the Apostles and these people could just ask them.

"Is this literally the flesh and blood of Jesus?"

And the Apostle's would say, "Yes. This is literally the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ."

I've given it some thought. Religion, as presented through any holy text, interprets the universe in a similar manner that comic books also present their own universes.

I think arguing within the context of a particular religion is only valid within the universe created by theologians (or religion's authors), not outside in the real world. If I try to say something that is contrary to or alien to what is understood by Christians, for example, it isn't really understood and/or I am corrected by a restatement of that religion. For instance, I might say that there are contradictions in the Bible. The response would be, "Well, you gotta look at the context of the whole thing."

It's kind of like people that study Dungeons and Dragons, Star Trek or Star Wars. If I asked "If Anakin Skywalker, or even Luke Skywalker, were supposed to bring balance to the force, why is it that they only left it either in darkness (Episode 3) or in light (Episode 6), instead of there being an actual balance?"

The reply I'll get when I actually ask this question might be, "If you would've read the books that go along with the Star Wars series, you would've seen that it was actually the son of Leia and Han Solo that would bring balance to the force." Wow! And apparently, this is true, and that's what I mean. Religion is kind of like a comic book or an alternate universe that was created by people, and then others get into it and contribute more to it.

Sooner or later, the people in charge (or the original storywriters) have to authorize certain people who can contribute to the universe (this is what George Lucas did with a few authors of Star Wars books, this is what the Pope had to do when the Catholic Church had to choose which books to keep in the New Testament, and which to throw out).

Anyhow, the difference between religion or a comic book universe is that the barrier that we have to distinguish fiction from reality isn't there anymore. These religions were created so long ago, during a time in which people really were able to believe these things, that of course stories like the Flood were widely accepted then.

Today, however, we have scientific evidence to deter any new religions (though maybe not cults) from appearing again, but we're still stuck with the same old ones. Why? Because they predate modern scientific methods. And because these religion predate modern scientific methods, we are left with the lingering doubt of each religion: "What if they are true?"

Ever hear of Plato's allegory in the cave? To sum it up, imagine that from birth you and some other people lived in a cave with your head and neck restrained by chains so that you are forced to look at the wall in front of you.

Imagine that there is a fire behind you and people walk by carrying different shapes, the shadows of which are cast on the wall in front of you. To you, this would be reality and you would think the shadows are real.

Imagine, after 20 years, you are unchained and brought up to the light for the first time in your life. You would be almost blinded, confused, but eventually your eyes will adjust and you will come to understand your situation.

How would you feel if you were taken back down into the cave again. Would you feel bad about any others who live in the cave and not experienced the light? Would you be able to come back to the position where you occupied before, that the world is shadows and flickering light? If you tried to convince the other people in the cave that there is another world out there of blinding light, would they believe you, having never experienced the things that you tell them?

In this context, Plato, in the allegory of the cave, is talking about the relationship between knowledge and ignorance.

In whichever state we are in, we have become adapted to it and view everything as "reality" from that perspective. No one has knowledge of the state they are in, except when they are in the process of changing it. Another element that Plato introduces is the concept that there is only one way that one can become knowledgeable, as it is impossible to become more ignorant short of brain damage.

I am here, and right now I feel like those in the cave. I think I know what's going on. If someone were to argue with me about an arbitrary subject like the existence of a specific God like Allah or Jehovah, I am confident that I can hold my own. If someone debates politics with me, I have confidence that my position is more reasonable. Most of the time, this is how I feel. However, being in the cave and being in the light are relative positions. After all, it is quite possible I'll experience some enlightenment or acquire new knowledge that will further illuminate my mind.

The acquiring of new knowledge or the experience of a bizarre revelation or a great idea is the only time where a difference is perceived. The new wrinkle in the brain is the same thing as suddenly walking into the light, a mixture of wonder and confusion, followed briefly by the sensation of understanding and wonder.

However, after we become accustomed to this and adopt the new bit of knowledge to the library in our brain, we revert back into the normal condition until the next revelation. But what happens if I am put in the position which I held before the revelation, or around people that believed what I once did?

For instance, I used to belong to a particular religion. After a Philosophy class, I was imbued with knowledge that enlightened me and led me away from this religion. It was simple logic that showed to me that the belief in specific gods was problematic, especially if the God is all-powerful and all-knowing. Now I don't believe that and it has become second nature to do so.

When I am around people of this religious group, I feel alienated and almost sympathetic for them, because to me it is a delusion that they are living with. I even try to explain it to them. This is like the man who saw the light being led back down to the cave again. It is impossible to get back into the same state of mind because a new bit of knowledge had been acquired, mainly that there is an entirely different world out there. And the people whom I try to explain things to, think I am crazy and delusional.

Someone may say that it is possible to know the objective truth, and if we happen to know that truth, we would always be in the right. I'd argue that by saying that we wouldn't really know, because to think we have knowledge is a state that we always occupy until new knowledge comes by and ruins the thought. So, it is best to keep an open mind and heart, and hear out the various explanations of truth, and adopt only those things that ring true.

So, in essence we are all living in Plato's cave, and if we study and seek knowledge always, we will continuously be enlightening ourselves. If we stay where we are intellectually and don't seek knowledge and truth, it will be as if we are in the cave again. I'm not saying that we will become more ignorant, but that we won't become more knowledgeable.

Bernadette Roberts is a Catholic nun who has reached a state that she calls No-self."

Roberts said in her book; The Experience of No Self, the moment this happened it felt like a great blowing out, an intense outward leap of the "living flame within". She felt the awesome presence of God, like a feeling of ecstasy. However, after this union with God both the experience of God and the experience of self fell away. In her words, after that blowing out, the world seems "dull" in comparison.

What I got out of reading her book, is that most people's experience of God, the common way that they "feel" God's presence, is really the sense of their desire for God; but not God itself (ding an sich). When our sense of self vanishes, so to does God the concept, the thing of which we desire, dissipate. As a Christian, this was her interpretation of the events. And I'd recommend reading her book, though it is a very rare find indeed.

Buddhists report something very similar when they reach Enlightenment; and so to do Hindus. In fact, Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) described his experience under the Bodhi tree in a very similar way as Roberts' attainment of No-Self. It's not a coincidence that mystics in general, of all religions, experience the same thing but refer to it with different words.

When these individual people describe this universal experience, which Sigmund Freud called "the oceanic feeling", they can only describe it in the religion and culture that they are familiar with.

Bernadette Roberts was a Catholic nun, and Siddhartha came out of Hinduism and was starting something different.

Our minds are limited only to the symbols and language it has at its disposal to make sense of the world around it and what it is perceiving. It can only compare its experiences with what it already knows.

I don't care if you're an Apologist, a Flat Earther, a scientist, a Protestant or Catholic, Muslim cleric, or Hindu shaman. We all operate with the same mechanism inside our brain.

We sense side effects of the world around us (light, sound, etc.) and we interpret these things against what we already know.

If it's agreeable, it is incorporated into our system of knowledge. And if not, we either find ways to work around the information in order to continue believing what we believe, or we might change our beliefs, or we'll simply pass it off as nonsense.

This is, of course, unavoidable, but it helps to know that this process is always going on. Our mind is the great Editor; continuously dropping inconsistencies in order to have things fit together.

While stilling the mind and the ego is something that only a few people have done, even these people can only interpret that experience from their own frame of reference.

What is the significance of this? It means that while we can share the same experiences in any religion, we cannot help but interpret that experience as meaning something that confirms our beliefs.

I've got a gripe that I'd like to address.

A few times my in-laws and/or relatives have tried to preach to me. They are used to the type of people who just sit there and nod their heads in agreement, or the majority of people who simply ignore them.

But that's not what I do.

I tell them what I believe, and I believe that their ideas are false and are detrimental to society. I have thought long and hard on my own philosophies in life, and I'm not shy about voicing them. Don't get me wrong, I listen to them. But all too often it is like listening to a skipped CD, the same thing over and over again.

As the wise ones say, "You've got to have faith" is something people tell you so you will believe what they are going to say next.

It seems that because I'm willing to stand up for my own beliefs and oppose their's, I've been labeled by a few of my most pious family members as the Lord of Darkness. Well, they don't call me the "Lord of Darkness", they call me things like "El Diablo" or "The Devil".

Sure, they're my in-laws, and I guess traditionally in-laws aren't always the greatest relatives in the world, but that still makes me feel uncomfortable when I'm around them. It kind of sucks being forced (which I am compelled to do) to pretend being nice to someone (an in-law) who nicknames you El Diablo.

Some of the smiles and hugs given to me, I am sure, have been blessed with holy water and anointing oil. The nickname "El Diablo" would be cool if I really was some bad @$$, but they call me that because

a) I'm not Christian

b) I am able to state why I'm not a Christian, and

c) I can tell them why they shouldn't be one either.

The funny thing is they won't say, "You're the Devil" to me. They say it when I'm not around and then other people tell me what they say. Sometimes, when I am around, they'll say it in hushed tones, and I can definitely hear those. But being somewhat understanding of their position, having been there myself, I simply turn the other cheek. Basically, I just let it slide.
Well, the funniest story of something like that occurring happened last October, and it takes the form of a short and humorous tale:

It was Halloween. The same night that the Celts thought spirits of the dead can enter the realm of the living. I didn't see these spirits as I was stuck in traffic, trying to head to Riverside so I can be with my daughter on her first trick-or-treating adventure. I was, ironically enough, dressed like the devil. Well, I just had horns on and that's it (but they were really cool horns).

For two and a half hours I pressed on through the highways, the sky darkened and the landscape changed from urban to hilly to rural. Obviously, I didn't make it in time to be there for my daughter, and I was really bummed out because she was the main reason for my trek.
My wife informed her mother (in the recent past I've had a few "debates" with her mother, and she wound up getting really angry) before I got there that, "Andy's the Devil." My wife meant, of course, my costume.

And her mom said, "I know ... you're getting tired of his shit, too?"

My wife looked at her mom and said, "I mean his costume. He's dressed as the devil."

I thought that was pretty funny.

There's a reason there are mirrors high up in the corners of markets, and it's not necessarily what you think it is. They are there because they prevent crime.

No, it's not that they provide an angle that allows the store clerk to see a crime take place, and its not that they are one-way mirrors. When a potential thief sees himself in the mirror, he is more likely not to steal. He sees himself from a third person perspective, and the person he is seeing is the bad guy.

In one social psychology experiment, an experimenter put 150 candies on a table with a sign that said "Take one candy."

After an allotted period of time, and recording how many kids approached the candy bowl while hiding inside the house, the experimenter took the candy bowl and counted how many were taken. He then refilled the bowl with 150 candies but this time he put a mirror behind the bowl. After the allotted amount of time, he took the bowl and counted the candies again.

This experiment has been done repeatedly by psychology students all over the world, and every time the result is roughly the same. With the mirror there, children will usually take only one candy, and without the mirror, they will take more.

To answer the question, "What is God?" I'm going to say it is something of an internal mirror. Freud called it the Superego, Plato called it a Form, Christians call it YHWH, Muslims call it Allah. It is the ideal self, that perfect man or woman we would like to be, and sometimes we even actively strive to be like it.

While we were growing up, we pick up on various social norms like 'stealing is bad' and internalize it into our proper behavior. The social pressure that stems from this becomes our foundation for morality.

There is another force at work here that determines our behavior. Freud called it the Id, Plato might have called it 'natural urges', Christians call it the Devil, Muslims call it Shai'tan. I'll call it the Animal self. Having evolved from animals, we have much of the same basic urges that they do. We have the need for air, food, water, space, and sex. And if we don't get the right amount of these things, we suffer.

And so it is, that we are in a constant tug-of-war between these two things; our higher Ideal Self which proscribes what morality is, and the Animal Self which dictates our physical needs and desires.

Unfortunately, in the material realm, the realm of practicality, it is nearly impossible to be like the Ideal Self, and it is socially reprehensible to be like the Animal Self. Both are essential to our being, and so we find some kind of balance between the two extremes. The balance of the two, the actuality of what we are, has been called many things. But I will call it the Actual Self.

I would like to reiterate that there is nothing new that I'm proposing here. This has been noted many times throughout history and by people of conflicting beliefs. What might be different to you is applying these things to the question of what God is. There is a kind of universal experience that we all share just by virtue of living, thinking, remembering, and interpreting. Collectively, this amounts to a certain expectation that is put on the individual, and this expectation is reinforced through parenting, by the school system, by our religions, philosophies, culture, and history.

God is the mirror that reflects the sum of all these mental constructions back at the self. God doesn't exist outside of our minds, He exists as a result of them. God is the mental reflection of all the things we think are Good; and His antithesis, call it the Devil, call it the Id, or call it the Animal Self, is the thing we don't want to accept as a part of our selves. And so we demonize it. We don't want to see it in ourselves.

My suggestion is that we don't have to embrace the Animal Self, nor should we reject it. Rather, we should just understand the Animal Self and accept it. It is an inalienable part of who we are.

* Just so you know, I am influenced by philosophers like Sam Harris, Simon Blackburn, Plato, and as far as historical materialism goes (but not communism) ... Karl Marx.

I've been having an ongoing discussion with someone about creationism. He thinks it is a valid scientific theory that can replace evolution. After a while, I realized that he doesn't know what evolution is. Here is the tail end of that conversation. Tell me what you think.

Creationist writes:
I have no problem with adaptation, THIS NOT PROOF OF EVOLUTION. This old trick is called equivication, and the writing of dawkins is full of it. (i mean that on more than one level too) He shows some examples of adaption, then goes on to qualify it with evolution. This IS NOT science, its clever guerilla ontonlogy.

The kind of adaptaion that he assumes can occur, where lizards grow feathers and wings, is evolution, the praying mantis species that can develop wings (it being a part of its natrural design, like adaption) and then lose them again through subsequent generations, is adaption, the kind of thinking needed to proove, monkeys to man is unprovven EVOLUTION THEORY.

I am surprised you haven't noted the difference, and therefore have realised that perhaps we better qualify semantics before every discussion, i thought we had (or are you just applying the same strategys as these authors you seem to admire??) been through this in the past.

Scam responds:

Well, I think I see the problem here ... or at least one of them. It is the word "theory". If a scientist acquires a large body of data, and if this data coheres with a working theory ... than the theory is a working and highly probable theory.

If I drop a penny a million times, and it actually drops to the ground. I can conclude that there is some sort of force that pulls things toward the Earth. I can then go about measuring different ways in which that force pulls different weighted objects, etc.

I can put all that data, including the simple dropping a coin a thousand times, into a working theory of gravity. It might change, mind you. Maybe some other, more sophisticated scientist, will discover that all matter can bend space around it and this curvature is what causes things to fall toward it.

Likewise, a naturalist notices that humans can create new species via domestification. If you look at a banana, for example, you'd find it indistinguishable from a wild banana ... which is full of seeds, hard to eat, etc. It took maybe hundreds of years to cultivate a banana so that it can reliably produce the type that we are familiar with today. The guy's arm hair in the above picture is also quite fitting for the explanation I am going to make.

If humans can cause this radical change in animals and plants to make them useful for humans ... than ... in a natural way, animals and plants unknowingly change over time to adapt to different climates and environments. I think you can agree with me that nature is much more grander than man is.

And though the workings of nature in general are not at all similar to the purposes of a single species like man ... it does follow that nature could still bring about these changes, and we can see its effects through natural section. Natural selection is generally agreed upon by all people, even by creationists, who like to call it microevolution.

If we are to accept geology, chemistry, astronomy, and physics ... and we should, we should at least come to the conclusion that the universe is, if I remember correctly, something like 18 billion years old, and that the Earth has been around for at least a couple billion years. Please note that these facts are agreed upon by all sciences. Fossils of creatures show up fairly recently at a few hundreds of million years and these are fairly simple single-celled organisms.

But as we look at more recent times in the geologic column the animals generally get more complex because of environmental changes, etc.

Everyone accepts the idea of natural selection, because it has been noted and recorded within the past few hundred years. Almost everyone, but most importantly scientists, also accept that life started a few hundred million years ago because of a uniform location in the geologic column.

It is only plausible to connect the two and say that natural selection also occurred hundreds of millions of years ago. During that HUGE span of time, natural selection has naturally created the animals that we are familiar with today.

We need only look at the fossils we've been able to collect, those few creatures that died in conditions that preserved their remains over the years, and we can see their relation to creatures that exist today.

A lot of people don't like gangsta rap, and to tell you the truth, neither do I.

However, the real reason we hate it is because it actually reminds us of our society.What do we think about when it comes to gangsta rap? What is our most common criticism of gangsta rap?
It's the degradation of women with the 'bitches' and 'hos' comments, it's the love of money and objects, it's violence from one individual ego to another, and to make it worse, almost all of the gangsta rappers are black. Let me spell this out real carefully.

Our nation was founded upon some really obvious injustices. We live in a patriarchal society, where men are taken more seriously than women and are generally thought of (and officially are) the authoritarians in society. All our presidents have been men up to this point, fathers stereotypically "bring home the bacon", "a man's home is his castle", you know what I mean. We live in a society dominated by men.

The gangsta rapper reflects this with his lyrics, relegating all women to mere 'bitches' and 'hos'.We live in a capitalist society, where money is god. We get all worked up about our cars (are they clean, what kind of cars, etc.), our homes, and acquiring STUFF. Shopping is a favorite pasttime because the goal is to GET MORE STUFF. We are very materialist, just like the gangsta rapper.We worship the individual.

Somehow the concept of "I" becomes more important than we. I can think of numerous examples of one person not liking another simply because some trivial ego conflict ("There's just something about him that I don't like"). In that way, we too are like gangsta rappers. (Let's shoot this guy because he lives over there). Not to mention that we also live in a culture of violence, where there is a tendency to believe that "might makes right".

What makes it worse, however, is that gangsta rappers are black. Another fundamental institution this country was founded on is racism. You see, it's not just WHAT these rappers are saying that is so repulsive (and it is), it's also WHO they are.

If you think about it, gangsta rappers are just a reflection of a white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy (thank you bell hooks), and they are black.

Writing movie reviews is, for a journalism student interested in politics, like dying; you have to deal with it eventually, but you just don’t look forward to it. That said, I saw a political documentary called The Peacekeepers that captivated my interest.

The Peacekeepers is one of those films that coerce us into second guessing some of the beliefs we may have held for a long time.

For instance, what do we think about when we think of the United Nations? To be honest, I used to think the same thing that is the prevailing opinion now. I used to think the United Nations is a defunct organization, and that it outlasted its usefulness sometime between World War 2 and the end of the Cold War. That’s what I used to think until I learned why it’s a defunct organization, and that it is actually the fault of member states, not the organization itself.

Packed into 83 minutes, The Peacekeepers offers us insight on why people in the U.S. would think the UN is defunct, and also how the U.S. helps make the organization defunct. The story behind it is also gripping enough to keep a person interested.

What the movie does is give insight as to how the UN Peacekeepers operate, specifically in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and their UN mission there called MONUC. Told from the UN’s perspective, we get the impression that no one really wants to help the Congo, but when people do, great things can happen.

What is also evident is the reluctance of First World countries to help out in what is deemed a “failed country”. The US is reluctant to give even financial support to help out a people in a “developing country”, mainly because there will be no return or benefit to the U.S.

France volunteers their services, but only for three months, and declared that the warlords have been “disarmed” just as they leave. They weren’t, but the French said it anyway.

Instead, UN peacekeeping in the Congo is done by other Third World countries like Uraguay, India, and Pakistan.

I think what the film is insinuating is that it’s really the fault of member states that the UN mission could fail. After all, member states are the ones who provide financial and military assistance for these missions. If there is no cooperation, then there will be no success.

The after effects of the massacres, while saddening, drive home the point of what not helping does. It’s like when someone sees an accident on the freeway, but just drives by thinking someone else will help.

At the same time, I think it shows some naivety on the parts of the UN and the western world. We tend to live in a bubble that says the way of the world is supposed to work in a certain way. Take, for example, the way warring tribes in that section of the world do battle. Actually, they fight like all primitive cultures, from ancient Europe to Africa to the Americas. The fighting is opportunistic, involving killing and/or enslaving helpless villagers and lots of evading other people who are armed.

And when you come across another force that is well-armed, depending on the sophistication of the forces, they just simply run to the hills and hide until they can come out again. Really, the whole goal is to make money, not necessarily for some higher cause like nationalism.

In the mid-1880’s, European colonizers all the way in Berlin carved Africa up into neat regions called the Congo and Angola, etc. The problem is that these Europeans didn’t take into account the hundreds of tribes consisting of millions of people that often intersected with each other.

This is part of the reason why Ugandan troops and other troops from neighboring countries were to be found right there in the heart of the Congo, fighting the way they probably always have done, and to try to find ways to profit. Seeing the film, you’d notice that money and profit is the driving force for the fighting around the region of Irunduti, which has a number of natural resources like gold and mines.

It is too bad that the history of the Congo was not taken into account, as I think it would’ve added more perspective to an already engaging story, which is one of misunderstanding, apathy, and politics.

In the first Matrix, there seems to be a running consensus that Neo is supposed to be like Jesus Christ; He is going to save the world. I would have to disagree with that theory. Neo differs from the legend of Jesus in that he starts off as a criminal, becomes enlightened, and then seeks to enlighten everyone else. Jesus starts off perfect, remains perfect, and then dies to save everyone. Rather, I’d like to suggest that the movie represents something much larger in scope.

First, let me describe some of the similarities between Jesus and Neo. Jesus was supposed to have been prophesied, as Neo was too. Jesus was a catalyst in human history, as is Neo. People look to Jesus as a great hope. As is apparent by the reactions of people Neo encounters, the same for is true for him. And of course there is Trinity, of which Christianity is known for. Note here that Trinity is not Neo.

Neo isn’t like Jesus because from the beginning, Neo is something of an outlaw. He hacks into computers, searching for someone named Morpheus and learns of the Matrix. He later learns that the world he has come to know is false, and now he seeks to “free people’s minds”.
I think the Matrix itself represents the whole of human society, and the agents are the governments, corporations, or other power brokers of the world who wish to keep the status quo intact, they are the ones that serve to benefit from a population that doesn’t know there’s another world. I am also going to suggest that the characters on board the hover ship Nebuchadnezzar represent various religions and philosophies of the world.
Mouse, for example, represents ethical egoism and perhaps nihilism. In response to jokes about him being a digital pimp, Mouse says, “To deny our own impulses, is to deny the very thing that makes us human.”

Mouse is the first main character to die in the film and I think this is representative of weaknesses in both ethical egoism and nihilism. Obviously, denying one’s impulses is probably what separates us from the animals and defines us as humans. His death is interesting, too. A wall forms around him and he is trapped, caught by surprise as he is gazing at the woman in the red dress (his own creation, by the way) and is systematically blown away by the police. A fitting death for a nihilist, perhaps even a likely one. It can possibly be seen as a symbolic statement against philosophies like nihilism; even with a wall around you the world (even if it is a fake one) will do you in.

Without wanting to get into further detail about other lesser characters, let me discuss the major ones instead and what they mean to each other. Morpheus, in Greek mythology, is the god of dreams and sleep. I think he represents just that, he is like a gateway to another world. Morpheus is the one who got Trinity to reach the real world, and of course Neo. Morpheus himself doesn’t represent a religion; he is more like a gateway. In the movie, the agents capture him and they try to hack into him because he holds the password keys to Zion, the last human city. What the agents did was akin to attacking a castle. They were trying to open the gateway to their enemy, the pesky folk who threaten the way of life they provided to the masses.

Trinity represents Christianity, a religion based on the belief that one man was God. Perhaps what the movie is suggesting is that Jesus Christ himself was enlightened, becoming aware of the real world, but the religion that followed him lost touch with that. This losing touch with Jesus’ enlightenment is the downfall of Christianity. In the second movie Trinity dies, but is resurrected, and then she dies again in the third one for a final time. Of course, her name itself is the give away, as the Trinity is one of the hallmarks of Christianity.

Finally, Neo represents a philosophy/religion that did not lose touch with what its founder came to realize; that the entirety of the world is One. I am speaking of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. True, later versions of Buddhism may have become slightly scrambled versions of what Siddhartha originally said, but they nonetheless remained true to the path of enlightenment. Perhaps that’s why Neo’s name can be unscrambled (or re-scrambled) to read One. It’s also important to note that Buddhism is considered both a philosophy and a religion.
I think the choice of Buddhism is significant, because Buddha represents the complete freedom of the mind, and that is why he is able to do so much in the Matrix. His death in the first Matrix symbolizes not Jesus’ resurrection, but Siddhartha’s own moment of enlightenment, being that they both discover that they are One.

I think the later movies in the Matrix series, and even his death, seek to prove Buddha’s view that everything is One, or that they are all part of one thing. We see that Neo can exercise his abilities in the real world, and that the agents are able to exist in the real world, too, albeit in the guise of another person. It appears that the Matrix and the real world are also one.
In conclusion, the Matrix is a movie about how various religions and philosophies duke it out in the battle to get “free minds”. We get glimpses of some of the major religions and philosophies in the characters of the movie, but for some reason the storywriter seems to prefer Buddhism.

Of course, I can’t deny the fact that there are many variations on how a movie like the Matrix can be interpreted.

An interview with Jacquie Sullivan, founder of In God We Trust - America, Inc.

Bakersfield has long been considered "the buckle of California's Bible Belt." Back in 2002, Bakerfield became the spearment of a movement to place the national motto "In God We Trust" in California city halls.

Jacquie Sullivan is a city councilmember for the city of Bakersfield, CA, and also founder of In God We Trust, - America, Inc. She received her inspiration to start this movement back in 2001, while listening to a Christian radio station's news report about people on the East Coast protesting the placement of religious symbols on government buidings. That's when it hit her. "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good," said Sullivan in an interview, quoting Genesis 50:20 of the Bible.

"If they're trying to remove God on the East Coast, I'm going to work to put God up on the West Coast," explained Sullivan in an interview. Her goal is to eventually have every city hall in place "In God We Trust" on their walls.

Sullivan said this mission was a patriotic duty. "It's good for our country ... I decided to take up the challenge."

After all city halls have been taken care of, Sullivan feels the next important step is public schools. Sullivan made reference to an older U.S. flag that also had the words "In God We Trust" on it, and suggested that putting this flag on school administrative buildings would be the next goal for IGWT-A. "It would promote patriotism in our schools," explained Sullivan.

Sullivan said that her group's effort is to "retain our country's identity ... the national motto is a symbol of patriotism, it shows that we are a country whose faith is very important to its citizens."

The national motto "In God We Trust" was adopted in 1956 during the infamous McCarthy Era as a reaction to communism. Many people incorrectly link atheism to communism, and so the decision was made to adopt "In God We Trust" as a national motto and also to place it on coinage. "In God We Trust" replaced "E Pluribus Unum", a Latin phrase meaning, "Out of many, one." On a side note, the phrase "Mind your business" was printed on coins around the time of the framing of the Constitution.

Sullivan also talked a little about IGWT's strategy on how they'll get city halls to place the motto. It's an approach that plays on the ease of passing resolutions at the local level.

First, just one city councilmember has to hear about it and bring it up as an agenda item. Second, because most people in the U.S. believe in God, and because the majority rules, it is almost guaranteed to be passed at the local level. And finally, all it tkaes at the local level is for themajority of city council members to agree. Unlike state or federal assemblies and senates, city councils have fewer people to act as an obstacle. City council range in numbers from five to nine; compare that to numbers in the state assembly, senate or the federal House of Representatives and Senate.

Sullivan didn't have much to say about opposing viewpoints, except that, "Those opposing are the most vocal. There are many more in favor then against ... 85 percent of Americans believe in God."

"The majority rules," Sullivan added, "we've lost ground but this is a nation of believers, it is important for our country to be bold about this issue."

Sullivan finished up with some remarks about the separation of church and state. "The separation is intended to keep the state out of the church; not the church out of the state ... the Constitution gives us freedom of religion, not freedom from religion."

Do you think that "In God We Trust" is appropriate for display on public buildings?