Making the News 8

>
> Strange religious beliefs, celebrating Christmas without Christ under the
> mythologized delusion that despite the evidence, they don't think that He
> lived.
>

Why do you need superstitious beliefs to take time off work when everybody else around you is doing so?

Would Christians like to make Christmas a time for Christians only, with everybody else staying at work and watching the parties with their noses pressed to the window? A very charitable attitude. "Peace on Earth. Goodwill to all men, except unbelievers, hell-bound sinning bastards that they are."

Christians hate the concept of the unholy holiday. Any attempts to institute secular holidays is greeted with dour resentment. Christians want the monopoly on everything good. Every pleasure has to be paid for in prayer: you must pray before a meal, go to church before you can have sex and you can only have time off on the Lord's Day and the birthday of Jesus. Screw that. I shall party when I choose.

Christmas is not a Christian invention it was stolen. Christianity put a Christian gloss on a set of various mid winter festivities because they couldn't suppress them. Rebranding is what religions do. Groves of Aphrodite become groves of the Virgin Mary. Celtic gods and goddesses become Irish saints. The name of a Germanic goddess becomes the name of the festival of the risen Christ. The Arabic Moon god is revered atop the dome of every mosque and the faithful come to worship at his old shrine in Mecca in the usurped name of Allah just as thousands of churches across Europe are built atop pagan temples and sites of worship. If religions can't suppress they usurp, and they are very jealous, and spiteful.

An organized superstition can't own a day or forbid outsiders from enjoying themselves. Run along and play with your nativity sets and I'll have a proper Christmas, I'll grant no more significance to the mangled first syllable in Christmas than I will to the one in Thursday or holiday.

There is no evidence for Jesus ever being alive. There is evidence of a Christian cult from around 37CE. It is not at all unknown for cults to exist without there ever having been a coherent historical figure at the centre of them, just do some basic research into cults and you will see this, there have been dozens of such cults started in the twentieth century. Yes, it was a cult, what the hell else do you think independent people who don't wear the myth-tinted glasses that are labelled "Holy land - Biblical times - Holy Saints and Martyrs - The Real Deal" should call it?

Not a single person, not even a Christian, wrote a single word about what Jesus might do before he died. Every single word written about Jesus is in the past tense. The earliest non-Christian author who mentions Jesus (Josephus) worked on hearsay because he wasn't even conceived until after Saul's conversion.

The religious only favour tolerance when they are in a minority or a fractured majority.

When they are in a majority and feel strong they are intolerant. Irish Catholics in England in the 1950s pleaded for tolerance because they felt they were victims while back home where they were in a majority they were extremely intolerant. Muslims scattered throughout a big European city call for tolerance, huddled together in one small town and they start demanding Sharia law.

The only religions that make a virtue of tolerance of other religions are Sikhism and Baha'i Faith and that is only because they were founded surrounded by big and powerful religions they had no chance of usurping. For most religions tolerance is just a tactic, a way to survive and grow until they become strong enough not to need it any longer.

Depending upon the defination of 'mythical', yes, mythical things can be proven not to exist. Some attempt to prove that Jesus never existed, ignoring all of the evidence.

Do we have any contemporary accounts, written by anybody at all, during the life of Jesus?

Do we have any accounts written by non-Christians who were alive at the same time as Jesus?

Do we have any more solid evidence for the life of Jesus than we have for the life of John Frum?

If there are supernatural forces that can get inside your head and talk to you, including one called The Great Deceiver who lives to lie to people then you really are totally screwed. There is no way that a mere human could tell whether a god was good or evil just by listening to the voice in their head. Especially considering the good voice apparently will sometimes ask you to sacrifice your own son, or his, or commit genocide.

If a deceiving spirit is out there how can you ever be sure you are not doing his bidding?

To suggest that you can "feel" the difference between a voice of good and a voice of evil is absurd as we have no way of feeling such simple things as mathematics or whether the Earth rotates around the Sun or vice versa. The human anatomy has no truth detecting organ.

The time is up for Rippie. There is a later church than The Last Church. The Church of Ultimate Naked Truth. Rippie has served his purpose, his penultimate church can now be dispensed with before it is built. Thanks Rippie, thanks for nothing.

The Ultimate Naked Truth is that we are born and we die. To understand this nobody has to build anything. Nobody has to ask for anybody to hand over any money. Nobody has to pretend to offer impractical prizes to gullible fools.

Churches are not buildings, still less are they sham ruins of buildings. Churches are groups of people with a common vision. In the Church of Ultimate Naked Truth there is no distortion of that vision.

Life is what you make it, not what you think it should be. Thinking about something cannot make it happen. In every race all competitors imagine themselves winning, when it is over you only listen to the winner. Picturing victory is not enough, you have to run faster than the others who also picture it. Only an idiot, or a truly honest man, would tell you he pictured and prayed for victory and ran in seventh. Losers remember their doubts, winners forget them.

Faith is not a moral strength it is the brute force of ignorance. Faith is ignoring doubt and contrary evidence, faith loops back on itself to justify its own crudity and hide its tracks from the conscience. Faith is lying to yourself, and lying again to say that it offers something better than the truth, better than that which is: that which ought to be. However comforting, however empowering, however expedient lying is lying and never good or ethical. And faith is lying. Truth does not require faith. That which is, is, no matter how much you screw up your eyes and pray to the big pink pixie in the sky, that which is is. Belief in truth requires no special effort of will. Anybody who claims otherwise is likely to be a charlatan.

Freedom of thought is not believing what you will, it is believing or not without needing to will. Freedom of thought is belief without An Act of Will. Believing what appears to be believable and being free to change your mind at any time, and change it back again. That is freedom of thought. Freedom of thought allows fluidity of thought, not congealing of thought.
--

>> The Church of Ultimate Naked Truth: The last church you'll ever need.
>
> Atheist builds church but claims Atheism is not a religion?
>
Churches are people. We have the internet, who needs a pile of old stones?

When somebody asks you what religion you are you can say none, the Church of Ultimate Naked Truth is not a religion. But if you need to make a particular impression you can say you belong to a church. It's useful. Also if somebody asks you to fill a form in about your religion you can use the church's initials.

To join the church just tell me you want to be a member. That's it. Unless you would like to be a bishop, in which case tell me where you would like to be bishop of.

>>> Remember: me: win(hopefully)/no win. You: lose/no win. No win comes into
>>> play if there is no almighty God.
>>> Best of luck.
>
>> You are trying to make out that your "win" is somehow likely or that your version of the afterlife and your judge of choice is the only possibility that exists.
>
> Yep, my guy is the only one that rose from the dead. All the "rest" never so
> much as moved one wooden finger.
>

The reason you believe that is that it was the belief of the last lot of psychopaths who beat the crap out of your ancestors. The religion wasn't more persuasive, the swords were.

Christianity has never, not once, conquered a mighty nation with a coherent religion and superior technology. Your religion is the bully religion, pushed by Roman legions, European kings and despots and the invading genocidal wave of settlers of the "New World". Christianity spread across the world slower than smallpox, whiskey and gin. Just a bit slower. But it followed the exact same path. Not once has Christianity been sucked into a nation by popular demand, it was always pushed, often at the point of a gun, often on a population bruised and battered by disease, war and the culture shock of meeting an advanced civilization that was, coincidentally, Christian.

There is nothing inherently superior about Christianity, it is just the brand of nonsense believed in by those who crushed the wills of your ancestors to maintain their own tribal superstitions.

Eric Brze wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 21:26:23 +0000, Martin Willett
> <mwillett.org@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Just be aware that choosing to believe something doesn't make it true. That goes whether one person chooses to believe it or everybody. Reality doesn't care about beliefs.
>
> No one is trying to make it true simply by believing in it. Faith in
> Jesus Christ is the belief in truth. It's the truth that will
> ultimately prove the belief. It's not the other way around.

Except that it won't. You will spend your entire life wanting something to be true which isn't true, your entire life will be wasted trying to give it a meaning it does not have rather than making a meaning for it which is real.

Faith is not a good thing, it is a cruel and evil self-deception. In any other sphere of human life what you call the virtue of faith would be called studied ignorance, bloody-mindedness, complacency, dereliction of duty to check and verify or gross professional misconduct. But the religious have transformed this character flaw into the prime indicator of moral worth: madness, collective madness.
--

> Atheism is a religion, a very fundie pious self serving judgemental holier
> than thou one.
>
> Now that's a fact.

That is simply not true. In my country atheism is extremely common and the vast majority of atheists are very laid back, as I was for more than twenty years. It is only when surrounded by oppressive religious people that atheists become at all animated. For 90% of the world's atheists there is nothing that flows from not believing in any gods. It is only in countries where religion is on the march that atheists become visible. Throughout Europe, Catholic and Protestant, religion is in retreat, society is becoming much more secular and atheists feel free to admit what they are and nobody gives a stuff.

America is different because America has that unique combination of a glorious secular past and a monstrous army of zealots trying to take the nation into the dark ages. American atheists have to either lie low or fight back and of course the American way of protesting is very assertive, arrogant and obnoxious.

If Americans spoke German I wouldn't have a website about atheism. It is because American Christians are so assertive, obnoxious, in-your-face and arrogant that I have fought back.

You might be in a position to attempt to browbeat a small and persecuted minority in your country but globally atheism, agnosticism and secularism are a force to be reckoned with. Go to any civilized country and take a look.

We are not organized, we are not focused but everybody knows we're there and it changes everything.

Your superstitious nonsense has no power over such people. When a significant chunk of the population, including the majority of those with a decent education, doesn't believe in fairies things are very different and the religious, divided among themselves as always, aren't so cocky.
--

> Some of the Creationist argue that the world is to complex to evolve from random events. This doesn't make sense. If the world was created by intelligent design, it would be far simpler and impossible to understand.
>
> Child birth requires a penis, sperm, ovum, vagina, and a uterus. What God would come up with that plan, fully grown people would just spring from the ground.
>
> The eye would be one solid piece and no one would figure out how it worked.
>
> Breathing, why would a God created entity require oxygen? Why would a God create elements in the first place.
>

You seem to be assuming that a creator god would be able to do magic and there wouldn't be rules he was bound by. If that was the case then yes an omnipotent god would have the opportunity to design a much simpler universe. Complexity argues strongly against the existence of an omnipotent designer. A universe created by a spirit capable of doing magic should be simple, perhaps wholly inexplicable and maybe quixotic on the macro scale.

The existence of a designer subject to rules throws up two objections. Postulating a designer to explain the existence of complexity requires you to explain how the designer was created, where his knowledge, experience, wisdom and motivation came from and the existence of rules which bind the designer brings up the question of where the rules came from. The designer hypothesis falls flat on its face and Occam's Razor should rule it out.

> You can replace 'drugs' with the pretentious aura that is created inside any
> 'house of god' which is what worshippers tend to call it.
>
> The intention is the same - to bend the mind.
>
> I remember our village church with it's incense burner going flat out. A
> enormous bible stood there open on a page high up on the pulpit and as a kid I
> had the impression the priest was some kind of holy magician. As soon as we
> walked in we spoke in whispers and never dare we crack a joke or smile during
> the service, or we would have been flogged by our adoring parents afterwards !
>
> Try all the other religions and the same, or very similar things will be
> found.
>
> We homo sapiens are good at using the freak brains that the evolutionary
> process provided us with,
> are were not !?
>
>

>
> Well that is why there are so many atheists,
> since we get no kudos at all
> seeing our fellow men groveling to mythological stories
>

Seeing people praying, genuflecting, crossing themselves, slashing their heads with swords, hacking bits and pieces off their children's genitals, hanging weights from hooks driven into their skin, sending large donations to televangelists or living in hovels and building huge temples covered with gold - it's so embarrassing to belong to the same species.
--

If there really was a god:-

There would be one man for every woman and she wouldn't have to kiss any frogs or divorce any violent slimeballs.

Man would freely choose to be good without being scared witless by horror stories.

God would not have to have his words translated by a tiny handful of bearded wide-eyed locust munchers or slimeballs with a colour-coordinated fleet of Rolls Royces and communes full of zombies.

It wouldn't rain on the just and the unjust. It would only rain at night, two hours after the bars had closed.

The Church of Ultimate Naked Truth: The last church you'll ever need.

Are you looking for a convenient truth? Are you looking for a convenient church that places no obligations upon you? Are you fed up of tithes and ranting preachers telling you what to think? Are you an atheist living in a state that regards atheism as worse than donkey-fiddling and sniffing the girls' bicycle seats?

Maybe the Church of Ultimate Naked Truth is what you need. It is a church you can belong to, and nothing more. We don't care if never set foot in a church because we haven't bothered to build any. How could we have church buildings without begging for money, and who likes churches who beg for money? Relax. Spend your money as you see fit. The Church of Ultimate Naked Truth does not need your money. And we aren't after your soul either. For two good reasons. Firstly membership of the Church of Ultimate Naked Truth lasts for life and not one second longer and secondly because you haven't got one. If you think you have a soul and you have a mind and you have a spirit and you have a body, what ARE you? The ultimate naked truth is this: you live, you die. Get over it. You are your mind in your body and that's the only place your mind is ever going to be. With such a basic belief there isn't very far to take religion is there? And that's a bad thing? Pah!

Free yourself from guilt. Stop beating yourself up over your lack of faith, it is not faith that drives the world but doubt. Doubt is good. Don't have faith, verify. The unknown is not full of precious mysteries to savour and keep pet mythical creatures like gods and ghosts, the unknown is a vast ocean full of enchanting islands to explore and there's no prospect of running short of adventure any time soon.

Truth needs no liars as champions. The truth is not convenient. Neither is it stubborn. It is simple. You live, you die. Get used to it.

You may wonder why you exist and why the world around you is so ripe for life. That answer is simple, you have to exist in a world ripe for life in order to ask the question and if you were in another place or in a different more hostile universe you couldn't ask the question. Unless you postulate the chances of your existence as infinitely improbable (in which case you may well prove yourself out of existence) it is inevitable that you do exist in one of the few hugely but finitely improbable slots of potential existence. Your existence is only remarkable because you're there to remark on it and think yourself special. In contrast the existence of a being with the mind and power to create a finely tuned universe from a standing start with no history or experience but with wisdom and, miraculously, human emotions and characteristics, is surely unlikely beyond calculation. Flat out impossible. Postulating something infinitely unlikely and complicated to explain something of finite complication isn't much of an explanation. However unlikely your existence is and however complicated the explanation is there must be one because you're there. (I assume).

Elementary my dear, once you have disposed of the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth.

Believing in a wise creator god who waits invisibly behind a cloud until you have lead your brief mortal life before judging you and possibly punishing you for ever doesn't make much sense. It is no wonder that conventional religions use faith, you are hardly likely to swallow such a crock without some exercise of those swallowing muscles. Truth needs no lies, no liars and no mental tricks. Science doesn't care if you don't believe. Neither does the Church of Ultimate Naked Truth.

>> Can you really see a difference between "laws of nature" which Bentham is against, and "Real natural laws (and rights)"?
>>
>> The quote clearly shows that he thinks the entire concept of laws of nature a.k.a. natural laws is wrong-headed, that no such things exist until laws are created. Laws create rights, they don't reveal them.
>
> I think this is somewhat simplistic. Yes there are "legal rights" which only exist based on laws, but before thare are laws there are principles like fairness or 'natural justice' which cause us to see for example that the brutal murder of a child is wrong, or the subjugation and exploitation of women. In my view this sense of natural justice evolves from our nature as highly intelligent, empathic social animals.
>

So you seem to be saying that rights don't exist until laws create them and that we create laws because we feel obligations. Animals don't have rights that we deny, we think we owe them some obligations, although we often differ on the details. What exists before laws create rights exist not in the agent who gets the rights but in the minds of those who would create the law.

For an animal to have rights before a law exists would require some authority to insert them and something to contain them. That is superstitious nonsense. (On stilts).

Rights begin as a sense of duty in the minds of beings capable of negotiating agreements, co-operating and recognizing breaches of agreements. Duties come first. The decision to accept a duty, a decision that accepting such a duty is reasonable and should be agreed by all is the second step. Framing a law follows. The final step is implementing the law. At no time before the final step does a right exist. Laws create rights, they don't reveal them.

Bentham was against those who proclaimed rights that people did not recognize and I think he was right to do so. A right which is not recognized is like the sound of no hands clapping. To create a right you have to get people to accept a duty, bleating on about rights that won't exist until you have won the debate is futile or counter-productive. And if people will not accept the duty then the right will not exist.
--

Michael Rippie wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 12:57:29 +0000, Martin Willett
> <mwillett.org@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> Faith is meant to be good, although they never explain why.
>
> Because a man with no faith is a man with no hope.

Bollocks. I have plenty of hopes. I don't have to know any particular thing to be able to hope.

The fact that I believe my life to be finite does not make me devoid of hope. And believing that your life is infinite does not make it so.

>
>> The faithful believe in God and do what God wants and are moral and happy.
>
> Just because a man has faith or hope does not mean they are happy or
> believe in any doctrine. But a man with hope and faith is more likely
> to have the tools to change things for the better.
>

>> Not being happy, not being moral and not believing in God are all lumped together in WILLETT'S mind.
>
> Knowing the spirit that is god does not bring with it any guarantees
> of life after this life or any reward different from anyone else. All
> Share the same fate...........Saint or sinner ..............

And that's a great message to inspire people to action: you will live forever meaning this life is an insignificant droplet of spittle compared to the ocean of eternity after your death, so don't sweat it baby go with the flow because whatever you do the result is the same. You can build a fake ruined church and save humanity from organized religion or fleece a charity, fuck a dog and murder the US marshals sent to arrest you, either way your ultimate fate is the same.

>>> There is nothing a person can do that separates them from God.
>>> What you do not learn in life, you will in death.
>> Don't count on it.
>
> Well when I was dead I ask about that and the spirit said it's true.
> The Bible also says it is true. And logic says it is true. God does
> not lose anyone.

Your story is quite unremarkable and does not require any supernatural beliefs to explain.

Several days later you awake in a different hospital with a memory of a dream about Jesus and God.

You ask what happened and are told you had a massive heart attack and you had to be shocked to restart your heart. Ten shocks. The stilling of a heart is not death. Those ten shocks would have been in close sequence. Your heart would not have been stopped long enough for your dream to have taken place while you were lying there without a heartbeat. Your dreams could have happened any time over the next several days lying sedated in a hospital bed. Dreaming, not dead. Not even a little bit dead.

A religious man of erratic but powerful opinions thinks (with excellent justification) that he is dying, his last conscious thought is pain and collapse. He is in a drugged sleep for many hours, even days. What would you expect him to dream about? Purple bunny rabbits? Wheel of Fortune? Or perhaps, just perhaps, he might think about going to meet Jesus. What do you think?

I assume you are old enough to grasp the concept that dreams are the product of your own imagination and not the theatre of demons.
--

>>>>> There is nothing a person can do that separates them from God.
>>>>> What you do not learn in life, you will in death.
>>>> Don't count on it.
>>> Well when I was dead I ask about that and the spirit said it's true.
>>> The Bible also says it is true. And logic says it is true. God does
>>> not lose anyone.
>> Rippie, you were not dead. Your existence here today demonstrates that.
>
> How are you defining dead? Are you referring to the 1st death or the second?

Flat-line. Heart stopped beating for two, maybe three minutes. His dream of Jesus and "the Force" probably didn't happen until two days later. He describes "events" in dreams which would have taken longer than this period of hectic activity.

His is a very convenient definition of dead. He wants to believe he was dead for a long time, but he woke up several days later in a hospital bed, not a hospital morgue. His period of no heart output was well within the time that would not give rise to worries about brain damage. That came later. He has subsequently had several strokes.

Why do I spend so much time and effort dealing with an utterly pathetic character? Everybody can see that Michael Rippie is a joke, not a great spiritual leader.

In a way Rippie is a representative of all that is so thoroughly despicable in organized religion. He claims to be the cure for his own disease. Like so many US politicians he runs on the platform of being the alternative, he bad-mouths preachers as politicians bad-mouth politicians and yet he is clearly what he wants people to despise. The only way in which Rippie is not a preacher is that nobody is listening to him. He represents all the vices of the preacher: he lies, he distorts and he tries to raise money for dubious causes in order to claim his expenses in preaching his gospel.

When confronted over his behaviour he has no compunction in lying, denying his wrongdoing, claiming he isn't contradicting himself, claiming he has a right to quote material that expresses the truth as he sees it and he was in no way trying to suggest that he wrote it. All lies, and transparently so. The arrogance of the man is breathtaking. I am shocked by the way he can lie and cheat and yet pretend he is a great man, a great mind, a great spirit, a thoroughly moral man, a man of God, a man full of The Force, a gentle and kind man, a forgiving man, no threat to anybody, a meek servant of the Spirit of Christ and the saviour of mankind from the scourge of the false religion of Christianity and the curse of churches and preachers raised from the dead by God himself to do His Will on Earth living in The Mind of Christ. And Tonopah, Nevada.

Piedmont wrote:
> Michael Rippie wrote:
>> I was not sure what I was doing was right so I spoke this prayer.
>> "God if what I am doing is not the truth kill me now for I had rather
>> be dead than an offence to the truth." I have never had a prayer go
>> unanswered so I fully expected to be terminated if I was not walking
>> in the truth.
>>
>> On the third night I had a heart attack. It was 29 miles to
>> the hospital but instead of calling an ambulance I got in my truck and
>> began driving myself to the hospital. I made it to the hospital, walked in the emergency room then lay
>> down on the table and passed out dead of heart attack. The nurse
>> told me later they had to hit me ten times with the shock paddle
>> to get me going again. I ask her if I should have called the ambulance
>> instead of driving myself. She said if I had called the ambulance I
>> would have been dead permanently.
>> In death I was met by a spirit called Christ. Hand in hand we began
>> to walk until we were in the presents of the Spirit mistakenly called
>> God. I ask the spirit for my judgment and it said, " I do not judge
>> you neither do they judge you. You are to judge only yourself and
>> there by come to the knowledge of The Truth of all things. Now go
>> back and do what you will do with out fear." I slammed into my body like a freight train picking up a car and
>> woke up in Reno NV. at St. Mary's Hospital, 280 miles from where I
>> started. Several days had passed.
>>
>> In the mind of Christ
>> Michael
>>
>> .
>> Michael@thelastchurch.org
>> alt.religion/the-last-church
>> Http://www.thelastchurch.org
>> http://cafepress.com/the_last_church
>>
>> A preacher is the blind leading the blind.
> I assume that you have read the book titled, "Life After Life" by Raymond Moody? I reviewed your web (www.thelastchurch.org) site, it contains some interesting ideas, some I agree with, some I disagree with. I think you should study the Baha'i teachings too. Maybe start out with a book titled, "God Speaks Again" which is available on Amazon.com, and download the software titled, "Ocean" available for free download at, http://bahai-education.org/ocean/
>
> There is glaring contradiction with what you preach to what you do, since we are the last church, our own bodies, why are you wanting to build a building. Seems like you straying way off track? Plus, as with all professional preachers which you say are not needed, why is that you are aligning your ideas with money making ventures such as asking for donations just as any professional preacher does?

Of course there is no need for anybody to build a last church monument even if you believe in his crazy ideas. It just gives him an excuse to handle money, at least it would if anybody was stupid enough to send him any. The fact that it is clearly a con is demonstrated by the fact that he does not even attempt to make even the vaguest suggestion as to when, where or how this monument is to built.

You will never recruit Rippie into any kind of religious movement, he would be jealous of anybody else running anything, even God.
--

People can be taken in by the words Rippie steals and passes off as his own. He quotes from the Bible all the time, giving chapter and verse, he also mixes in stuff from non-canonical works and artificial scripture, sometimes giving verse numbers to give the impression the stuff is biblical when it isn't. Beyond that he simply steals whole chapter-length chunks of text from websites and other sources without giving any hint that he is not the original author or what the original source is.

Nobody is taken in by the stuff that Rippie writes himself. The man is an illiterate jerk.

How is a trusting innocent to know that Rippie didn't write that impressive 3,000 word essay that he signed his name to? He is deliberately confusing and he tries to communicate in riddles to build up an impression of a deep-thinking spiritual man. It requires an effort to coax him to reveal the sneer behind the seer.

I am not sure of anything. I don't lie to myself to tell myself I know stuff. I ask questions to get answers, not to give the impression of being a thinker.

I am referring to the Michael Rippie who will build the last church, ten years ago, somewhere, that people will be murdered in. That one. The one who was raised from the dead by the holy trinity of The Force, Jesus and Yoda to lead Christians to the truth.

>> You can not know the spirit that is God until you know your own
>> spirit. To follow Christ is not giving up yourself. Christ says,
>> "When you can make two into one you have entered my domain.
>
> Where did you get that? I know Christ said one can not serve two
> masters. I never heard anything about making two into one. As far as I
> know, there is only one who is the Lord in my heart, there is no
> other. That is why I have to give up my sinful self in order to follow
> the Lord.
>

He pulled it out of his arse. It is what Rippie does. He steals stuff other people have written and passes it off as his own, he invents quotations from Jesus and he distorts your words in replies - often months after the original post.

On newsgroups it occurs many times, as people quote and pull apart posts made by its author, Michael Edward Rippie.

I have found only one other person use that phrase, David LaChapelle, who was briefly under Rippie's spell, to the extent of using the same signature "In the Mind of Christ" and much of the same erratically spiritual but anti-establishment theology.

While David LaChapelle makes grammatical and spelling errors he makes far too few to be considered Michael Rippie posting under another name. However it is crystal clear that there is no other source for this "quotation" than the imagination of that shameless liar Michael Rippie.

Ah. Apologies. At least partial apologies. He didn't simply make it up, he paraphrased it or misquoted it from a non-canonical gospel, the Gospel of Thomas. However he did not ever quote that as his source.

For two and a half years I have been calling Rippie a liar and showing how he has lied and providing evidence. If anybody wants to check out that evidence please do. I have nothing to hide. Yes I don't like the guy, and I don't hide that from anybody but that is only because of what he does.

Just check the guy out for yourself and you will see who is the pathological liar and who is the pathological defender of truth and honesty.

All my posts are logged and archived. Rippie sets his so they will not be archived because he knows he will lie and he doesn't want to be easily caught out. But you can easily see his distortions if you go to alt.religion.the-last-church with a newsreader that covers that intellectual backwater.

> I have never claimed to be the author of something I did not right.
> Willett has a mental problem. I guess I will have to look it up for
> him again but I be he can fine it faster than I.

The word is write. and find. When did you last have a check-up on your brain function?

You constantly post material you have stolen and simply add your signature to the bottom. That is claiming you wrote it. If you make no hint that what follows is a quotation the implication is that you have written it yourself. Even you are not stupid enough not to understand this.

See this link for Rippie caught with his pants down plagiarizing the writings of a man who had met him several years before:

More evidence of Rippie plagiarism, stealing text from a Playboy magazine article from 1973:

>> But once we've learned enough to know that they're prone to dishonesty, aren't we entitled to call them out on it?

>
> NO you are not entitled to judge anyone but yourself. You Can not condemn another with out condemning yourself.
> If you want to point the finger, point it at yourself and tell
> us why and what faults you find with yourself.
>

A lying bastard who would con money from a fake African charity would say that, wouldn't he?

Rippie thinks he has already died, met God and been told to carry on because God is happy with what he's doing. That is the mind-set that leads to atrocities. In the crusades the Pope forgave the sins of crusaders, both those they had committed and those they were surely about to commit. The crusaders went off and acted on that idea. The Muslim world is still pissed off about how they acted centuries later.

Rippie is a liar and a squirming toad of a man but he has some basic sincerity, he sincerely believes he is right to lie in his own cause and that his own cause justifies his actions. There does not appear to be any way that he can be shamed into stopping. You can't shame a liar who is proud of his lies.

I can't shame him but I can at least follow him and make sure that anybody who sees his words (sometimes they actually are his words) sees a challenge to them.

>> and simply add your signature to the bottom. That is claiming you wrote it.
>
> This computer puts a tag on everything. That doesn't mean
> the computer wrote nor does it mean I wrote it. Many people
> use these and don't sign it at all. Just because you want to make a claim does not make it fact.
> There is no reason for you to care anyway.
> I know why you are here and what you are trying to do. You can lie
> to yourself but not to me. I don't care if you are here but I will
> make you read the spirit of Christ as long as you are and I will use
> you to work for the spirit you hate.
> You can no longer claim to be atheist. They don't care enough
> to read what they don't believe. As long as you crosspost to that
> group I will make you preach to them until they killfile you.
>
That is a lame excuse Michael. You have every opportunity to declare where you have found material. You do understand the concept of chapter and verse because if what you posts comes from the regular Bible you give book name, chapter and verse. If it comes from non-canonical books you often give chapter and verse without the book name. If it comes from somebody you don't like you clearly state who wrote it (or who wrote the stuff before you changed it) but if somebody else wrote something well and you agree with it you make no effort at all to show where it came from.
--

You see Michael, not only am I good at this, much better than you could ever dream of being, I'm also getting better.

>> but if somebody else wrote something well and you agree with it you make no effort at all to show where it came from.
>
> The truth all comes from the same place. It can not be owned.

Something else that would not hold up in any court is your claim to have been the author of of an original poem which you wrote in 1962 and registered a copyright for in 1985:

A bell is not a bell until you ring it.
A song is not a song until you sing it.
Love in your heart wasn't put there to stay.
Love isn't love until you give it away.
Author,
Michael Edward Rippie

But if you ever tried to do anything with that copyright I am fairly sure that those people working for the estate of Oscar Hammerstein II would have a thing or two to say to you, considering Hammerstein, who died in 1960 incorporated the following verse in The Sound of Music:

The Sound of Music has been playing around the world since 1959. In the movie version they left out the first verse of the song Sixteen Going On Seventeen - Reprise, but it is regularly used in the stage version.

Rippie paid for a registered copyright on "his poem" in 1985, claiming he wrote it in 1962 (at other times he claims other dates of "authorship"). Rippie was born in 1946 and Oscar Hammerstein wrote the original lyric in 1959, apparently stealing (and of course improving) this deleted verse from a Texas newspaper poetry competion that Rippie entered in 1961, a year after Hammerstein had died.

Michael Rippie is a stranger to the truth. He doesn't even live in the same time zone.

Does anybody really believe that Michael Rippie could really have written that "original poem" (when he was sixteen, going on seventeen) registered a copyright on it twenty three years later and Oscar Hammerstein copied it, getting the grammar wrong, three years before Rippie wrote it "originally"?

Can anybody ever take anything the man says as being even faintly credible? The man is a proven liar and self-publicizing charlatan, see the famous "Rippie's levitating rock":

>> A lying bastard who would con money from a fake African charity would say that, wouldn't he?
>
> Who are you that condemns a village in Africa ravaged by aids as a
> con when you know they are not?

A village in Africa ravaged by AIDS? No, your website shows a photograph of a school that just happens to have the words Last Church written on it, so you have set up a page angling for money to make you look like a great man of charity rather than a sad old man who has been forlornly trying to raise money for over a decade ostensibly to build a fake ruined church that was built in 1997 and people will be killed in at some unspecified time in the future.

Your page makes no mention of AIDS or how you intend to help.

Your page mentions starvation, the pictures show happy healthy children who look neither in need or help nor in receipt of foreign charity.

The Last Church of God and His Christ founded in Malawi by Jordan Msumba and Ben Ngemela has no connection whatsoever with Michael Rippie except that Rippie spotted the photo with the words "The Last Church" on a school that somebody else had built. It has always been an African church run by Africans with African resources.

For Rippie to be using photographs of a school run by this church is sickening. He is clearly trying to make out that he has been this church's benefactor for a long time and his charity efforts and his Last Church built the school.

For years he has been making out that he is trying to raise money to build a worthless and useless pile of stones, somewhere unspecified, that he says elsewhere was built in 1997, again place unspecified. He offers a motorbike and a gyrocopter as prizes for the big donors. That is the man Rippie is: a self-aggrandizing religious nutter.

Whether there really is an Edward Lweganwa, a teacher in Tanzania who is connected to this church or whether he is a chancer looking to fleece gullible religious Americans and he mistook Rippie for a rich man I do not know but I am quite sure that Rippie is the last person any African church should be relying on to be their North American contact.

Edward Lweganwa does seem to be real, his telephone number is Tanzanian (but not from Mwanza) but on the downside he did not reveal himself to be connected to the church until he guessed who I was and he was clearly sitting in front of a computer when he answered as I heard a familiar "incoming email" sound in the background. Therefore the hypothesis that Rippie is being targeted as a sucker in a scam is still a possibility, and quite a delicious irony. It would almost be enough to convince me of the existence of karma.

I am sure there is no shortage of worthwhile and well-organized charities out there for people to donate to if they want to help African AIDS orphans without stroking the grotesquely contorted ego of Michael Rippie in the process.

>>>> You can not know the spirit that is God until you know your own
>>>> spirit. To follow Christ is not giving up yourself. Christ says,
>>>> "When you can make two into one you have entered my domain.
>>> Where did you get that?
>> Comes from the Bible 1857 before it was removed.
>
> Who removed what in 1857?

Quite. What a nutter. You do know that the standard English Bible, the King James Version, was written in 1611.

It included an apocrypha comprising:

1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Rest of Esther, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremy, Song of the Three Children, Story of Susanna, The Idol Bel and the Dragon, Prayer of Manasses, 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees

Since 1827 (not 1857) it became common to leave these out, because they were shit, even by Biblical standards. The King James Version never contained any of the weirder gospels that Rippie plunders such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of the Holy Twelve, the Urantia Book and the Gospel of What Jesus Told Me Last Week in my Kitchen over Waffles.

Rippie is obviously aware that "some material was removed from the Bible" in the nineteenth century and automatically assumed that this has to have been the bits with all the truths in that the nasty church doesn't want anybody to read, which of course must be the only bits worth reading and must therefore correspond to his own thoughts. He seems to assume that these are Christian, (New Testament) texts, but they are not. Another triumph of faith and ignorance over checking out the facts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon

>> The Last Church of God and His Christ founded in Malawi by Jordan Msumba
>
> The Last Church of God has nothing to do with The Last Church.

Should I tell Edward that? [Oh, I just did.]

[quote from Edward Lweganwa]

The brief church's history is:
The first founder is Rev.Jordan Nsumba 1922 whom
brought the church from Malawi to Tanzania.He later
Died and His vice Razaro Buchafu Jonh became the the
fisrt Arch Bishop For "The Last church of God
Tanzania" and this is the name of this Church.
Unfortunately Razaro Died since 1991.The current Arch
Bishop is REV.Japhet Wanzaghi Nyerere.
In short,This Church was officialy registerd in
Tanzania since 13th Dec 1969 under the societies Rules
of 1954.It's Reg.No.is So.5049.
It's a christian and spiritual church as well.

Michel is my penpal friend whom not yet told me any
thing about life but is showing me the way to get
assistances(sponsorship) from any body particular you
whom we share common spiritual history.
In fact Rippie has assisted me alot up to the point of
knowing you.
Welcome To Tanzania.The church now is having 9
Dioceses.
[end quote]

I think you can understand why I thought he was you, he is just as illiterate as you. How can this guy be a teacher? Or the secretary for a church?

[another quote]
> Has he given you a gyrocopter or a motorbike?
I was looking the way to get those Motorbikes shown on
the Website of the last church.give me altenative now.
More over,The last church in Tanzania wishes
international assistances to raise the spiritual
Ministries.Amen.
[end quote]

[more]
Yes SIR Martin,I would also like to know:Who are you
in "The Last Church" of The USA?And How are going to
assist your fellows in Christ in Tanzania branch? Do
you know Michael Rippie of USA?
[end quote]

He's got to be a second rate scam artist, taken in by a third rate scam artist!

>
>> Whether there really is an Edward Lweganwa, a teacher in Tanzania who is connected to this church or whether he is a chancer looking to fleece gullible religious Americans and he mistook Rippie for a rich man I do not know
>
> And that is what you know about everything. (YOU DO NOT KNOW)
> Yet you are more than willing to slander.
>
>> Edward Lweganwa does seem to be real, his telephone number is Tanzanian (but not from Mwanza) but on the downside he did not reveal himself to
> Yes I told him who you were and what to expect. There is no need for
> him to waste time on you.
>

Or you.

Scam artist or church leader he isn't getting any money from you, is he?

>> I think you can understand why I thought he was you, he is just as illiterate as you. How can this guy be a teacher? Or the secretary for a church?
>
> Yet He is smarter than you.
>> [another quote]
>> The last church in Tanzania wishes
>> international assistances to raise the spiritual
>> Ministries.Amen.
>> [end quote]
>>
>> [more]
>> Yes SIR Martin,I would also like to know:Who are you
>> in "The Last Church" of The USA?And How are going to
>> assist your fellows in Christ in Tanzania branch? Do
>> you know Michael Rippie of USA?
>> [end quote]
>>
>
> Do something more useful. I need a wholesale contact
> for used Shipping containers 40 foot long. They must sell
> for $1500. or less, delivered to Goldfield.

What for? Nobody has read your page. It cannot be working either for helping the Africans, or for making you rich or even for appearing to promote your brand image because *nobody is visiting*.

He is a con-man who thinks you are a rich American fool he can con into sending him money. You think association with a "charitable cause" (however badly defined) makes you look like a good man.

Hang on. What am I doing here? I should let the two of you string each other along for years, that way neither of you has the time to be conning the innocent.
--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

Michael Rippie wrote:
> http://www.thelastchurch.org is not available in the Wayback Machine.
> Michael@thelastchurch.org
> alt.religion/the-last-church
> Http://www.thelastchurch.org
> http://cafepress.com/the_last_church
>
> A preacher is the blind leading the blind.

Ashamed?

Blocked Site Error.

http://thelastchurch.org is not available in the Wayback Machine. Try another request or click here to see if the page is available, live, on the Web.

Honest people don't cover their tracks. Honest people don't hide from the light. Honest people have nothing to fear from their past.

What were you most ashamed of? The stolen pornographic images? The atrocious spelling? The crazy claim to have been given permission to host a Grateful Dead album track in MP3 format on your website before the world wide web was invented? The slagging off of Christians and Christianity? So much to be embarrassed by.

Or was it the promotion of child pornography? The call to legalize slavery? That video of you and the butternut squash? Your message of support for the Muslim martyrs of 9/11?

Hiding your tracks cuts both ways. Whenever anything is hidden people get to wondering why it is hidden and sometimes they can imagine worse things than that which you are trying to hide.

I find honesty is the best policy. We're very different in that way, aren't we?

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

Michael Rippie wrote:
> On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 07:33:31 +0000, Martin Willett
> <mwillett.org@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
> A bell is not bell until you ring it
> A song is not a song until you sing it
> And love in your heart wasn't put there to stay
> Love isn't love..until you give it away
>
> Michael Rippie
> 1952
> Michael@thelastchurch.org
> alt.religion/the-last-church
> Http://www.thelastchurch.org
> http://cafepress.com/the_last_church
>
> A preacher is the blind leading the blind.

Rippie, you were born in 1946. Are you seriously suggesting that Oscar Hammerstein II stole a poem written by a SIX YEAR OLD boy to put in the score of The Sound of Music six or seven years later?

You have finally flipped your lid and destroyed every last trace of credibility. When you registered your worthless copyright in that badly transliterated verse in 1985 you at least were almost credible in dating it as 1962, when you were sixteen, going on seventeen.

This comes on top of you backdating your faked permission to house an album track from the Grateful Dead in MP3 format on your website several months before the world's first website was created.
--
Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

A bell is no bell 'til you ring it
A song is no song 'til you sing it
And love in your heart wasn't put there to stay
Love isn't love... 'Til you give it away

Oscar Hammerstein II

Atheism \| Politics \| Memes \| Mind \| Matters \| Interact \| Feedback \| Email \| Links \| Search \| Debate \| Home
© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.	mwillett.org: Debate Unlimited

Making the News 8

If there really was a god:-

You are entering The Twilight Zone

It's all Rippie from here to the bottom...

Making the News | Making the News 2 | Making the News 3 | Making the News 4

Making the News 5 | Making the News 6 | Making the News 7 | Making the News 8

Atheism | Politics | Memes | Mind | Matters | Interact | Feedback | Email | Links | Search | Debate | Home

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

mwillett.org: Debate Unlimited