Adam and Eve

By Carl S ~

Here's the story: Once upon a time two humans, plus lions, tigers, spiders, flies, elephants, mosquitos, walruses, seals, horses, lambs, zebras, polar bears, and millions of beetles - in fact, all life forms, lived in harmony, in a place called The Garden of Eden. Every kind of fruit, vegetable, vegetation, including poisonous mushrooms, included.

Now - only two individuals were listed at that original prehistoric ZIP Code. They were, from the story, either teens or pre-teens, since neither one had sexual coupling yet. They were what my mother called "innocents." The story says, there was one single tree in that entire place on which there were fruits the couple were told by the Boss who made the garden, "Don't eat its fruit", so they went ahead and did it anyhow. They were warned beforehand that doing so would only bring problems. But, humans by nature are curious, and let's face it, these kids had NO knowledgeable reference points of just what "evil" and "death" meant. They were in effect, gullible and trusting. The Boss decided the consequences of this action.

So - the fruit tree was a frame-up, a.k.a., entrapment, with an agent in place to facilitate the entrapment, while the Boss watched from behind the bushes. If two kids like that wouldn't fall for it, nobody would. A slam dunk.

The story goes on that as a result of this disobedience, everybody had to get the hell out of Eden, never to go back in, and animals started eating each other, frequently making each other suffer and die, ever since. This is because the Boss decided, in his wisdom, this was the fairest punishment. Billions of humans have bought this story, so it CAN'T be silly, right?

Once out of Eden, now what? Survival, which depends on . . . curiosity, giving in to temptations, not being too trusting, being absolutely aware of dangers. And, the necessity to imitate Nature by lying and taking the risks of making the wrong choices. So, one of the consequences of expulsion from Eden is growing up and taking responsibility for one's actions, good or bad. Outside Eden there is freedom in all its awe and scariness. Outside of Eden is challenge, a sense of having the power of accomplishment. This is a "curse?" Is the Earth as experienced by the whole of mankind really a "vale of tears" after all?

Is an "Edenesque" place desirable, attainable, since many have endeavored to create one? Would it be a place fair to all? (Thomas Moore proposed Utopia; fair to only Christians. He burned heretics.) We ought to consider these questions with minds wide open; MILLIONS of lives have been destroyed in pursuit of an idealized Eden-paradise.

Let us propose something: That the faith, Hope, and Impetus driving "salvation" is really a desire to return to a state of Eden BEFORE the Fall; that to achieve this end, individuals are commanded to be "born AGAIN,” and become as little children, trusting and gullible. Uncurious. And, to never, never, disobey anything, anything the Boss says. The consequences are the rewards of getting back ALL the goodies of Eden/Heaven/Paradise/ a “New Earth” for persevering in this hamster tumbling wheel. But most of all, they'll enjoy the Presence of The Boss-Entrapper who tossed them out in the first place. They STILL TRUST him, with his repeated tricks and traps set on humans? Go figure.) This being born again and becoming as a little child is promoted to promise an Eden-relationship with the Boss even in the here and now, of peace and serenity as exemplified by holy men and women to be attainable. Even Mother Teresa's doubts are written off as transient.

Humans can no more return to Eden than a woman who has had intercourse can return to being a virgin - and most would never want to. We are told that as a consequence of disobedience, death was our fate rather than a previous eternal life in Eden. But, by following the aforementioned commandments, we will be rewarded with . . . Eternal Life!" For Christians, JESUS is the "way" back, the U-Turn who demands we become little children again.

Coming full round: The whole Eden story is so much nonsense. There never was a time or place free of pains, sufferings, of an utter perfection of Nature. Even "living Edens" aren't that way. By pointing this out, science becomes the enemy of salvation - beliefs. Evolution alone spoils the system by eliminating "Eden, Adam, Eve," in dealing with life as it always has been. You know, science in being Curious, giving in to temptation when one is told not to go there. By continually questioning claims without evidence to back them up.

Humans can no more return to Eden than a woman who has had intercourse can return to being a virgin - and most would never want to. Worshippers ought not to waste their lives trying to please such a fickle Boss- Entrapper and be so sure about that Eden thing. They can't be guaranteed that their Eden/Heaven/Paradise will not just be another place where they'll slip up just ONCE (and they will), and here we go again!!! So, they shouldn't be too anxious for this world we DO have to end, in order to get there. `

There are choices in living which are, frankly, gambles. What makes life itself a tragedy is when it's wagered on superstitions.

The real 'born again' story

By Muse77 


In 2005, I was a deaconess in a small full gospel church, my husband was head deacon and together we did bible studies for couples and I was part of the music team. That year, my husband fell in love with his secretary and left me and our three kids, then 14, 7 and 18 months. As you can imagine, this was a very painful time in my life, but the worst was yet to come. My pastors talked to my husband and came to me, convinced his wandering ways were my fault for being a rebellious 'Jezebel' and that I should immediately submit to counselling and prayer ministry (read that, deliverance ministry). At that time I was desperate to save my marriage and I did submit, for a while. When the humiliation grew to be too much, I started bucking the system, only to be told I was in rebellion and that I needed to be 'under their authority' if I had any hope of being 'spiritually well' and saving my marriage. My husband had refused counselling, seeing through their motives and he left the church for good. Between the heartbreak over a broken marriage and the emotional beating I was taking at the pastors' hands, death seemed a better option. But I had three kids to look out for, so I summoned all the courage I could and left the church and the all the friends I loved in that church, behind.

The pastors warned the congregation not to associate with me because of my so called 'rebellion' so I didn't hear from them. At all. My dearest friends abandoned me because they were afraid to go against the pastors' wishes. It was indeed an especially lonely time in my life. I did, after some time, join another church where my children and I found some healing. I was even coaxed into music ministry and found some satisfaction in that for several years. What was the turning point for me? Pastors who still wanted to manipulate and control for one. Inconsistencies in what the church claimed to believe and what they lived out day by day. And then, meeting a man who was not a Christian but who is the sweetest, kindest and funniest person I have ever met. He respected my faith, but when we had discussions about Christianity, he would ask me questions that I could not answer. I mean, I could give out pat answers as I'd been coached to in church, but those answers sounded totally non credible as I tried to explain them. He encouraged me to think more deeply, to think for myself. I think every Christian has had their share of doubts and questions that their religion does not answer satisfactorily. And I began to question, why doesn't the church have solid answers......?

The lack of logical answers and the plethora of ministers who crave recognition or who are greedy or power hungry are the main reasons I left mainline Christianity and the church. That and the criticism and judgmentalism that goes with it. The 'we are better than you because we have Jesus' club. Who needs it? The hypocrisy is untenable for me any more.

So where am I in my faith? I am not sure. I'm slowly piecing together a new life on a daily basis. I'm happier not living on a steady diet of guilt and condemnation. I like owning myself again. Though it's been hard, I've tried to come to a place of forgiveness towards the Christian community. If they knew better, they would do better.....at least, I hope that is true. It's been a blessing to come across the testimonials here. It is comforting to know, I'm not the only one.

The Realization

By an ex-christian ~(anonymous author)

I have been very spiritual all my life but something about the churches and their teachings (having experience in both Protestant and Catholic churches) seemed to me to always preach action in the name of god or Jesus - not being good because it was the right thing to do.

Newborn child, seconds after birth. The umbilical cord has not yet been cut. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For instance, just a few months before I realized I could no longer, in good conscience, remain a believer I had gone through RCIA at my local Catholic Church. Near the end of the course, during Lent, we all had to talk about the sacrifices we were going to make. Some people gave up smoking, some gave up coffee, some swearing. I gave up my hair, which I saw as a vanity. When it was my turn to "reveal" my sacrifice, my hair, I admitted I had gone a step further and donated it to Wigs for Kids. I asked what good was a sacrifice if it didn't benefit someone else? I went on to mention that if you gave up candy or coffee or something like that that cost money, why not donate that money to a soup kitchen or something that would help others? I was instructed that the sacrifice itself was enough, god didn't expect any more than that or some words to that effect. That really bothered me, but I continued on in the class.

Later that year my husband and I found ourselves pregnant with a surprise (my youngest child was already 9 years old). I finally was able to come to terms with a new pregnancy at 40 (it took weeks!), and time flew by. When the delivery day came, I was in the admissions waiting area having contractions along with a really non-religious epiphany. What kind of god would punish a woman for such a divine event by cursing her with unbearable pain during labor? Not a very good god and not one I wanted to have anything to do with. I realized at that moment that nature and nature only causes the pain we feel during childbirth. It was simply the result of a large object passing through a narrow opening, nothing more, nothing less. At that point, god became anathema to me.

It's been about a decade since that time and I've never felt freer - freer to be a good person just because it's the right thing to do; freer to help not just those who believe as I do, but anyone who needs it; freer to learn about other belief systems... I've realized that NO ONE can know the right truth for another. Life and life experience shapes that... I've realized how destructive the christian religion, in particular, has been to other cultures - converting then deserting people who, once they've lost their own way, suffer in poverty and misery following a god who won't help them.

I've discovered more in this time, too much to list here, so I'll shut up now - thank you for listening!

The Buddha Explaining Existence of God

The Buddha Explaining Existence of God

Buddha entered a village. A man asked him as he was entering the village, "Does God exist?" He said, "No, absolutely no."

In the afternoon another man came and he asked, "Does God exist?" And he said, "Yes, absolutely yes."

In the evening a third man came and he asked, "Does God exist?" Buddha closed his eyes and remained utterly silent. The man also closed his eyes. Something transpired in that silence. After a few minutes the man touched Buddha's feet, bowed down, paid his respects and said, "You are the first man who has answered my question."

Now, Buddha's attendant, Ananda, was very much puzzled: "In the morning he said no, in the afternoon he said yes, in the evening he did not answer at all. What is the matter? What is really the truth?"

So when Buddha was going to sleep, Ananda said, "First you answer me; otherwise I will not be able to sleep. You have to be a little more compassionate towards me too. I have been with you the whole day. Those three people don't know about the other answers, but I have heard all the three answers. What about me? I am troubled."

Buddha said, "I was not talking to you at all! You had not asked, I had not answered YOU. The first man who came was a theist, the second man who came was an atheist, the third man who came was an agnostic. My answer had nothing to do with God, my answer had something to do with the questioner. I was answering the questioner; it was absolutely unconcerned with God.

"The person who believes in God, I will say no to him because I want him to drop his idea of God, I want him to be free of his idea of God -- which is borrowed. He has not experienced. If he had experienced he would not have asked me; there would have been no need.

"The person who believed in God, he was trying to find confirmation for his belief from me. I was not going to say yes to him -- I am not going to confirm anybody's belief. I had to say no, I had to deny, just to destroy his belief, because all beliefs are barriers to knowing the truth. Theist or atheist, all beliefs, Hindu or Christian or Mohammedan, all beliefs are barriers.

"And the person with whom I remained silent was the right inquirer. He had no belief, hence there was no question of destroying anything. I kept silent. That was my message to him: Be silent and know. Don't ask, there is no need to ask. It is not a question which can be answered. It is not an inquiry but a quest, a thirst. Be silent and know.

I had answered him also; through my silence I gave him the message and he immediately followed it -- he also became silent. I closed my eyes, he closed his eyes; I looked in, he looked in, and then something transpired. That's why he was so much overwhelmed, he felt so much gratitude, for the simple reason that I did not give him any intellectual answer. He had not come for any intellectual answer; intellectual answers are available very cheap. He needed something existential -- he needed a taste. I gave him a taste.

Only Christians go to heaven ??? Read this real story and find out the truth !

By Cacti ~

Misery. That is the word I use to describe my childhood. Sheer, awful misery. I lived in a house where I was tormented by an abusive stepfather who had it out for girls. My mother has three daughters, of which, I am the youngest. We got in trouble (and beaten) for the simplest things. We cleaned the kitchen, and he'd sit in there and watch us, waiting for one of us to screw up(i.e. miss a small spot while scrubbing) so he could "set us straight". We couldn't go to the bathroom after 9pm. We weren't even allowed to laugh. We all felt as though we walked on eggshells; our world was fragile. My mother would come to our rescue when things got too bad.

Meanwhile, Mike's (our stepfather) own son, Jared, was never touched. Jared wasn't yelled at. Jared didn't have to keep his room spotless. In fact, my oldest sister, Amber, had to clean Jared's room for him.

Then we moved. There was a church right up the road, so my mother thought it would be nice to start attending it. At first, we only went on Sunday mornings. As time went by, we started spending an usual amount of time in church. The teachings scared me. They taught us that everything that Mike was doing to us was actually a good thing. The man was, after all, the head of the household. Women were worthless.

Mike, with his abusiveness validated, upped the anti. He became even more hateful towards us. My mother, however, began to let it happen. We had lost her to God. She had been convinced that her place was not to protect us, it was to serve her husband and thus, serve the Lord. Our hearts were completely broken, and lives that had already been unnecessarily rough at times, grew to be so much worse than we ever thought they could be.

All of us girls were religious at first. We would sing songs with the choir and pay attention in Sunday School. The teachings, however, quickly became nonsense to me. I had too many questions. I didn't understand why so many things were considered evil. I didn't understand why we were to express so much hate and intolerance. It hurt me to know that all of the people surrounding me were actually wishing for the world to end. They were wishing that people all over the planet would die and go to hell. It tore my innocent heart in two, and I didn't even understand why.

Everything was just so backwards to me. God was supposed to love everyone, yet he was willing to let the majority of people burn forever in hell because they didn't believe in him. He thought we all needed to die because the devil tricked Eve into tempting Adam with an apple. He thought that Lot was a good guy for letting his daughters get raped instead of two angels when the angels visited Sodom and Gomorrah. He persecuted Job until he had absolutely nothing left just to prove a point to the devil. God quickly became evil in my eyes, yet I still believed in him.

My mother was completely taken over by her faith. She changed so much in such a short amount of time that she was barely recognizable to me. Everytime we did something bad, she would pull us aside and whisper to us "I don't think you're saved. Do you want to go to Hell?" Being children as we were, it was terrifying. God was, after all, an angry god, as she so often reminded us. Apparently, he was not above letting children burn in hell forever for something as minor as misbehaving in the grocery store. Not that I thought that was stooping low, after his other offenses.

When I was ten, my sister got into a fight with my stepfather, and was kicked out of the house in short order. She was just fourteen years old. After Amber left, the focus started to shift towards my other sister, Kristin. Kristin moved out as soon as she turned fourteen. I was the only one left. I found myself keeping to myself more often than not. I would stay in my room, at war with my thoughts on what I did so wrong that god would decide that I am worthless. Why was I doomed to be nothing but a slave to a man, who, from my experiences, would beat my future children and treat me like a doormat? Why was it good for me to behave that way?

Out of my siblings, I was the most compliant, so I stayed in that hell for the longest. However, since the magic number was fourteen, Mike decided that I needed to go then too. He came upstairs and beat the absolute crap out of me. He kicked my ribs and bruised them. He hit me in the face and my nose was bloody. He hit me across the arms with a belt and I had huge welts all over them. He, in this ass-backwards Bible Belt town, went completely unpunished when my own father tried to press charges. The sheriff actually told us that there were more laws to protect animals than there were to protect girls my age in my town. I stayed silent.

After moving in with my father, things calmed down. I switched schools, and started over. I had a lot of time to think about what I had just gotten out of. I had escaped a life of thinking that reading Harry Potter would send you straight to hell. I had avoided thinking that my place was by the side of a savage man with a serious beef with woman. I had come out of it, but not unscathed. My heart was deeply bitter, and the wonderful memories I was supposed to have of my childhood were all but nonexistent. I still believed in God, however. I clung to hope that he wasn't as bad as the bible said he was. I still prayed on occasion.

I did have major problems forming in my mind regarding religion though. I was disgusted by the fact that every Christian in this area will tell you that "wanting for worldly goods and material possessions is a sin", yet the bible tries to bribe you into heaven with promises of your own personal mansion and streets paved with solid gold. I also can't understand why anyone would be interested in going to heaven in the first place. In heaven, we are doomed to sing praises to God that I personally don't care for. Heaven is supposed to be a happy place, but how can we be happy there? How could we smile and sing praises, knowing that our loved ones who refused to believe in the same, horrible crap that we did were burning below our feet?

Skip ahead in time, if you will, to the time I was twenty. I had married a man named Daniel, and on our honeymoon, I had conceived our first child, a boy. I had, at this point, already fallen into the trap of my mother's religion again. I mean, sheesh, I was married at twenty! I had met Daniel when I was eighteen, fresh out of high school, and from the point we started dating, my mother insisted we were living in sin. We were constantly pressured into getting married, and we finally gave in.

Seven months into my pregnancy, my son stopped kicking. I called everyone I knew to see if it was normal. Everyone confirmed that it was. I was told to pray about it. I waited. After twenty four hours, I broke down and went to the hospital. On January 2nd, 2009, the nurses told me that my son's heart had stopped beating. I gave birth to him on the 3rd. I had so many visitors it was unreal. Most of them told me the same things: That god needed an new angel in the fold, he was in a better place, and he probably had some awful, horrible disease or something, and god knew that and took him home early. I had a preacher come in and tell me that I shouldn't be mad at god. That he had gone through the same thing, god. He sent his son down to die for us, so he had buried his son too. I guess he thought that made everything ok then. He can take my child and get away with it because he killed his own child. Every ounce of faith I had left disappeared instantly.

I held my boy, and he was perfect.

I am now twenty-four years old. I am in the process of separating from my husband. I have a poor relationship with most of my family, as my mother converted the majority of them to baptists years ago. I feel like I can't be myself near them, that they will never know who I really am, and it breaks my heart. I'd be condemned by them all if they knew I've been an atheist for years and that I cringe every time they babble on incessantly about how great their god is. I will never have an open, honest relationship with any of them. How can I? I'd be disowned.

Perhaps one day, a few of them will open up their eyes. I don't have much hope that any of them will though. They are all too absorbed. Some of them are so far gone that I fear for their mental stability.

lifestyle

We live in modern times,
Where a child gets DVD rhymes,

Technology has moved way a head,
That video conferencing can be done even by sitting on a bed,

The world wants everything fast,
Be it food, commutation, painkillers or a good star cast!

We have reached a point where slow means backward,
Where are we running with so many machines forward?


If one feels a little sick he pops a pill,
Diseases of today jolts one with a big bill,

Years ago the people where stronger,
Years ago people lived more healthy and longer,

Life gets ruined in a fast pace,
As the body grows in an imbalanced base,

The more you want something quicker through a techno bite,
The more your immune system becomes weaker against a disease fight,

If you want to live healthy,
Then live simple even if you’re wealthy,

Use your body for household chores,
Don’t just entertain yourself outdoors,

Eat less and work more,
Don’t be rude by becoming an eye sore!

Lifestyle definition is not in purchasing big brands,
Lifestyle is being content, simple, enjoying even with dish washing hands,

Your lifestyle should give you joy and peace,
Your lifestyle should not be a symbol of your competition fees,

So make your lifestyle as simple as possible,
Work for the underprivileged being as a causable!!


By Manisha Belani

Raspberry PI : World cheapest computer is here : USD 35

Raspberry PI

This computer was created so that every student in the world can own a computer, here is the picture :

Here is the hardware spec :

ARM V6 700 MHz CPU

256 MB RAM

Micro SD Card slot

HDMI and TV out port

2 USB and 1 LAN

The processor is one that has power up many android smartphone. It has built in H264 HD video decoding capability.
This computer was meant to be connected to an ordinary TV or HDMI TV.
It has no hard disk but using micro SD card. Actually I am typing this blog using a system on thumb drive also.
It was powered by a micro USB input like most android phone in the market.
You may said the RAM is too small but I have been using Linux with 256 MB RAM before and it run a lot faster then Windows XP on 512 MB RAM and windows vista on 1 GB RAM !
The operating system will be GNU Linux