A good friend of mine posted a comment to my Lost Tomb of Jesus writing which sparked the following response. I decided to put my response on the front page of the blog so everyone understands not only my motives for that post but also understands why I am writing so much about religion. This friend of mine is a devote Christian, but more importantly, a very good human being. While I do not like to talk about religion in person, I enjoy writing about it. I find religion is not a good topic to converse with people because religious beliefs are tightly woven into their being and I don’t want to challenge their faith; it can be damaging to friendships. However, I will challenge MY beliefs, which is what I do on this blog.

Let me first give you a little background about me. I was raised Catholic. Many of my early years were spent in service to the Church as either as an altar boy, choir or doing the readings during mass. I was a staunch Republican for many years and used to believe Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of my lifetime. But I started questioning things about 2003. So I decided to wipe away all of my beliefs and learn new ideas. If these new things led me to where I was then that would be proof I was on the right path but if they led in another direction then I was prepared to follow the new course.

The reason for this new approach was I saw inaccuracies within our system of government; contradictions and hypocrisy within my religion. Prayer and going to Church left me with an empty feeling; I felt as though I was wasting my time doing both. I also felt that taking action was better than prayer because at least I was working on fixing a problem. I saw people believing in religions and government but not knowing why they believed, or even worse, believing in outright deceptions.

Since August, 2005 I have been on a mission to find the ultimate truth through the most intelligent minds of our time and their research. The only way to do this is to wipe the slate clean and relearn everything. This blog is the result of this research and the primary outlet for it. This is also why I selected the name "Neutrality" because I now consider myself a "true neutral". We must have balance in life, too much of a good thing is not a good thing. In the absence of evil within a society, portions of the good will then become evil (this is also known as chaos theory). So there is no such thing as a "good" society.

During this research, I have read selected works by Stephen Hawkins (very hard to read this guy), Carl Sagan, the Founding Fathers, and watched many documentaries about a host of topics. This research has proven one thing to me; we cannot give up our search for God just yet. The scientific discoveries of the past ten years are fascinating and deserve recognition.

I find it hard to believe most fundamentalists disregard the most brilliant minds of our generation because they uncover something which contradicts old traditions. I thought humanity was supposed to constantly be learning new things and adapting these new discoveries to life. Even animals use their intelligence and discovery to influence their behavior, but some people within our species do not practice good intellectual behavior. In their narrow minds, tradition is more important than truth.

This research has also been the root to uncovering many other false beliefs I had about government. I have also uncovered many negative traits within our society which our leadership has ignored. Even worse, I found most of the leaders of our nation to be corrupt and working on their own agenda instead of what is right for all of us.

There are many inaccuracies in the Bible but I am not a fundamentalist, so I can still give merit while accepting these inaccuracies. For example, do I believe the universe was created in seven days? No way and I find it hard to believe there are people who still do. But this does not tarnish Jesus’ image for me. I don’t cut the entire tree down because of a bad branch. I cut the bad branch and likewise will just disregard this bad text as an oversight by ignorant men.

I am not sure if the tomb of Jesus reportedly found by the Discovery Channel documentary is the actual tomb of Jesus but I believe it is possible. I believe just admitting this I have taken an incredible leap forward to possibly finding God. It is possible man created Christianity (he certainly had motive for this deception), so that means the true God might still be waiting for us to discover Him; at least this possibility exists. I cannot bury my head in the sand and ignore science, my intelligence, or other people’s intelligence just because these new ideas clash with unproven theories or writings of men over 2,000 years ago.

When I read the Old Testament, I see men of power struggling to control other people and using fear as a weapon to gain control. It’s obvious. So I struggle with my own intelligence telling me this versus my conservative upbringing. Every day I give less validity to the roots of my upbringing because those are not based on fact but on tradition. I am searching for the truth even though it might break many paradigms within my life. It is very difficult to start with a clean slate but this is what I must do in order to obtain my goal of ultimate truth.

I am not sure where this will lead me but I am willing to take the journey and follow the road in which the evidence leads regardless of the conflicts with old traditions. When I finally reach my destination, I’ll let you know, but until then, enjoy the ride.

I finally watched this movie last night but I cannot give a complete review on it because I fell asleep about 30 minutes in, but woke up just in time for the grand finale in the slaughter house. I fell asleep because it was not too good of a movie. It was not a documentary like Super Size Me but a drama which centered on a particular fast food restaurant and how damaging their business practices are to society. From the gathering of slave labor in Mexico to the eventual slaughter of thousands of animals, and everything in between; it was disturbing.

Here is where I am a hypocrite (everybody has one thing, right?) I hate the slaughtering of animals but yet I am addicted to meat. I love to barbeque over the open fire; steak is my favorite meal. I have seen what happens in a slaughter house and it truly disturbs me yet I cannot end my addiction to meat. Every once in a while I will eat only a salad if I’m not too hungry or have an upset stomach, but I am not truly satisfied until I eat meat. I have tried many times to change this behavior but I cannot do it.

First of all, you cannot humanely kill anything unless it is willing to die or suffering with little hope for survival. The two words ”humane” and “kill” are opposites and cannot be used together. Like "wet" and "dry" or "cold" and "hot"; you can’t be wet and dry at the same time. The only time “humane” and “kill” could ever belong together is, like I stated above, if the killing is being done to prevent suffering. I'm not a hypocrite about this either; if I was suffering with little or no hope of survival I would welcome death.

Unlike most people, I am not scared of death, just the pain and suffering which would come before it. Death to me is like the big sleep. Now, finally, I can get some much needed rest.

I do not understand how somebody can work in a slaughter house. I could not work in an environment in which I am surrounded with death and suffering. It would take a toll on me. I guess the horrifying thing would be if you just accepted it, or even worse, if you pulled the trigger but it didn’t bother you. Like a serial killer. I guess we need people like this in our world after all.

The West is the only society in the world which hunts on a full stomach. If I was starving then maybe I could kill an animal and eat it. I am lucky I have never been so hungry as to have thoughts of killing for food.

Maybe it is just that in my mind, life is so precious, such a beautiful thing that every creature should have the right to live without the fear of being murdered. The only time you should lose this right is if you are a predator who kills innocent people/creatures for pleasure. Then I have no mercy for you at all.

On a positive note, we are planning our vacation for the spring. It will be Virginia this year. We will be flying into Norfolk on 4/13 for another adventure. Nightly photos will be posted if I am lucky enough to stay in a hotel with Internet access. From relaxing on the beach to visiting historic locations, Virginia seems to have a variety of things to do. Also, I am trying to find some haunted locations for us to explore.

I have been a Netflix customer for almost two years now. For the most part I am very happy with them but every once in a while I notice it takes them longer than usual to deliver the next movie to me. I am one of those people who turn movies over very fast. Well one of my friends found an article about Netflix explaining how they intentionally hold back the next movie for people like me.

It’s obvious they hold movies back because it shouldn’t take 5 days to get a movie from the city I live in. Also they will intentionally send a movie from a distant city when the movie is in stock locally. I know this because it took me 5 days to receive a movie from Seattle. When it arrived damaged I reported it the same day and received another copy the next day from a St. Louis location. Well why didn’t they just send the movie from St. Louis in the first place?

If you haven’t noticed, I have a personality disorder in which I hunger for efficiency. So I decided to find another movie service to compare with Netflix to find the best one available.

Well I couldn’t resist the temptation to join Blockbuster and compare the two services. The first advantage for Blockbuster is you can take your finished movies to the nearest Blockbuster outlet and exchange them for movies within the store (even new releases) so you are never without a movie. I did this last night and it is a very sweet deal. I got three new releases for the movies I sent back.

Movie selection is important to me but both seem to have movies the other does not have but they all have the newest movie releases, so this area is a tie. Availability is another key issue; do they have enough copies of new releases so there are no long waits? So far Netflix is winning this battle as every movie in my Netflix queue is in stock but several within the Blockbuster queue are in a “very long wait” status. But I will not count a movie as “late” until its time is up and I am waiting. Right now the “very long wait” movies are far down the queue. The final test will be speed. Both queues have 50 movies in them, so the first to delivery all of them will be the winner.

I’ll keep you posted on the results but if you are looking for a good movie service, both are very good. The upper hand right now goes to Blockbuster because I can get movies in the local stores while I am waiting for the next movie to be delivered. Also I doubt many of you want to see that Coney Island documentary, so the selection and the availability of harder to find titles will be something only a few will even consider.

It will probably reach 80 degrees today in St. Louis. Gorgeous weather calls for an open window to let in the fresh air and sunshine. So that’s what I did, but after about 5 minutes a pungent odor bitch slaps my nostrils. Well, I didn’t eat bean burritos for lunch, there was no garbage in the office refrigerator, I checked my shoes to make sure I didn't step in dog shit on the way into my office. Where o where was the stench coming from?

Well some mental giant decides to spread horse shit and a mulch mixture all over campus, with a huge steaming pile right under my windows. Everything smells like shit! My clothes smell like shit! My computer smells like shit! My pen smells like shit!

I decided to take a break from the stench and leave for lunch. I pull up to the Best Buy on Hanley open my door and the stench hits me again. Then I notice they spread the same mixture from hell all over their tree pods in which I parked under a tree. To make matters worse before I noticed I stepped right into it. So now I have shit all over my shoes. My car smells like shit! My new DVD smells like shit!!

It is really necessary to spread shit all over the place in the springtime when everyone is opening their windows? Can't this be done in the winter or summer when all windows are closed? What in the hell are they growing at Best Buy anyway which requires so much nutrition to be put into the soil? I don’t see any farmland at school either?

This is probably one of the differences between a big city like New York and a hick town like St. Louis. I don’t think New Yorkers cover their land with shit in the springtime but for some reason St. Louisans are required to partake in this ritual. It must be some ancient, pagan, St. Louis, horse shit spreading cult. I can’t figure out what it could be if not that. These same horse shit spreading cultists are probably the same idiots who disagree with daylight savings time. Because, you know, too much sun is a bad thing. Freakin' idiots!!

In a stunning revelation, FBI Director Robert Mueller claims the FBI has misused the Patriot Act to collect information on American citizens. This is exactly why we need an uncompromised system of checks and balances, regardless of the circumstances. The Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act and a host of other laws sought and passed by the Bush Administration have blatantly disregarded this important system for “our protection”. Yea, right!! If you believe that nonsense I've got a bridge to sell you.

I disagree completely with people who want to limit our society for our “protection” because the potential for abuse is too great. Our government simple cannot control itself when the rights of people are disregarded. I cannot understand how so many people can support the aforementioned laws. There too many ignorant people who have blind faith in false prophets and other nonsense. Stop making this issue about politics and start making it about human rights.

Within Bush’s presidency we have sanctioned torturing, allowed unmonitored snooping into the private sector, imprisoned people indefinitely thus suspending habeas corpus, and created laws in direct conflict with one of the most important documents every written by man (the Constitution). Why has the Bush Administration and their supporters shredded the Bill of Rights like a piece of junk mail, while at the same time put so much effort into an Iraqi Constitution? I will never figure this out.

I’m sure we’ll hear more bullshit from the Right about how the liberal media is causing trouble again. I have news for you fundamentalist assholes. Just because someone reports on issues like this, does not make them liberal.

Why can’t we stop what is happening to our country?

I don’t know how many of you watched this documentary on the Discovery Channel last Sunday but I would advise you to see it. The filmmakers think they have found the bones of Jesus and his entire family including his wife Mary Magdalene and one of their children.

The evidence, although it will never be 100%, is very compelling and the dramatizations were very good at illustrating how Jesus’ life might have looked. I really don’t want to speak for the film or try to summarize it but I would really advise you to see it.

Is this evidence the Bible was written by man and NOT God? It is very evident if you read the Bible, many of the stories just don’t make sense. If you logically think about the decisions made by the key characters or the archaic laws they followed and then apply those same ideas to people and situations today, you will realize just how ridiculous they sound.

So Jesus had to be killed to pay for OUR sins. Why? Why again must there be bloodshed to please God? If He is a loving God as people suggest, then why can't He just forgive us? Why is death always required to please Him? Imagine if my father wanted me killed because he did not like our neighbor’s lifestyle. This is the same reasoning the God in the Bible uses to sacrifice His son. Does that make sense to anybody else because I’m not seeing it?

What if Jesus never called himself a God like the Bible suggests? What if man put those words into his mouth and changed the Gospels to adhere to those ideas? I believe Jesus was a rebel trying to change the government and trying to show how ridiculous the pagan religions where. He was probably also preaching how the Jewish God in the Old Testament (then an unknown term “Old Testament God”) was just as bad as the pagan Gods. This angered the rabbi’s in the synagogues. A logical person can now conclude that Jesus was probably killed because of negative speeches about the Jewish rabbi’s (who were very powerful) God and the corrupt leadership in government.

Now let’s fast forward 400 years later. When the Council of Nicaea put the Bible together under the demands of the Emperor Constantine, they decided to only to include Gospels which detailed Jesus as a divine being and not as a man. Is it possible they created a God when one did not exist? By putting words in Jesus’ mouth they can also validate the Old Testament God and please everybody.

Constantine’s motives where to save his kingdom which was splintering because of a religious revolution. He did not care which religion reigned supreme or which God was idolized just as long as he remained the emperor and was able to control the people again. The majority of the empire was Christian so he commissioned the Council of Nicaea to end the conflicts within the Christian faith. So this Council of Nicaea dubbed Jesus a God and included only the few Gospels which supported this. They did not include the majority of Gospels which wrote about Jesus as an ordinary man with a wife and child.

No group has been more discriminated against by organized religion than women. The pre-Christ pagans believed the way to heaven was by having sex with women. So, in essence, the women held the power for gaining entry in heaven. Well the men during this time wanted to change this, so the Council did not include anything which would give women power again over men. This is probably one of the reasons why Mary Magdalene was written as a whore instead of the wife of Christ, to eliminate any power she might have brought into Christianity. It also provided a perfect cover up to eliminate her relationship with Jesus. To ensure the pagan religions were forever destroyed and woman’s power along with it, thousands of women were slaughtered, labeled as witches, when their only crime was to believe in a different God (a non Christian God). Now the pagan religion was forever dead and man can now control entry into the afterlife.

When the Council of Nicaea ended, Christianity was now the official religion of Rome. The Roman armies enforced these new Gospels with an iron fist by killing all opposition and by burning any of the opposing Gospels. Now, finally, Constantine’s country was whole again.

Recently, I began reading the New King James Version of the Bible. I am surprised at how many times evil exists but has been twisted to be good. There are also many situations which don’t make any sense to a logical, intelligent human being. I am only as far as Numbers but I have already encountered several situations of outright evil. I’m talking Saddam Hussein evil. How can you justify cutting babies out of pregnant mothers and bashing them against rocks or throwing them off cliffs? How can you justify killing people for cursing their parents or not going to church on Sunday? Why did they have to kill animals or even people to please God? Already I’m three chapters into this book and it sounds like I’m reading a book about a devil.

I challenge all Christians to read the Bible from cover to cover with an open mind. Put yourself in the shoes of the people making the decisions and try to justify them as “good” decisions. Try to bring the situations into your world and see if they still make sense. Try to find other people in the news which made similar choices and see if they are remembered as tyrants or as saviors. These revelations will change you.

Most people who claim to be staunch conservative Christians probably have never read the Bible from cover to cover. They just listen to what others tell them and accept it as ultimate truth. That’s what happened to me when I was younger. I only read the Bible through the selected passages my priest selected for me or in a Catechism class. I never knew the horrors which existed until I started reading it unedited from cover to cover.

Is it possible one day we will soon have evidence proving how the religions of today are false and how we have not even begun to find God? If we have overwhelming evidence then what will happen? Will the religions try to save themselves by killing people again? I am still hoping to find God before I die but the outlook is grim with people believing in ancient traditions without questioning anything no matter how ridiculous. Traditions built on the motives of one man trying to protect his dictatorship.

How can we ever find the truth when religion is woven into our culture so tightly that even an atheist believes (without realizing) many religious traditions? We are baptized at birth and taught, even before we can think for ourselves, that Jesus is God. We are not given a chance to debate anything. What can you debate if everyone within your family circle is a devout Christian? They will surely threaten you for challenging the authority of the church. You are raised to conform, even though no one knows exactly what they are conforming with.

When a devout Christian actually reads the Bible they are usually so convinced it is the ultimate truth that their powers of observation and critical thinking are forever gone. So they convince themselves that killing non believers in the Old Testament days was a good thing. They will use ridiculous phrases like “God works in mysterious ways” or some other gibberish to justify the slaughtering and torturing of entire towns and villages. Who does the Old Testament God think he is anyway…….George Bush?