“I love you”
Words…
Meaningless, just simple, plain
But in pure truth, spoken
Just the same
“I love you”
Words that cannot near describe
The feelings held inside
The thoughts that drive this mind
Control its every mood
“I love you”
Said the fool
I love you
With my eyes
That sees your image
In everything I do
With my mind
That holds nothing- if not you
With my heart
With my soul
With every breath I breathe,
“I love you”
…Believe!
Still falling . . .
floating free
motionless spinning
within her gravity
My black hole heart
devours both moon and stars
I absorb her light
and am left empty
Darkness approaching
Eclipse beginning
The solstice of my sadness
Rotates on its axis
Your eyes
which first held me captivated
where I stood.
Your smile
to dazzle the sun
and warm every corner of my soul.
Your voice
like a sparkling mountain stream
which flows into my heart.
Your hair
about which I dreamed
cascading into my face
as you leaned over me.
Your hands
whose caress I crave
to hold my face
in their tenderness.
Your arms
I long to have around my neck
as you pull me close
to your warmth.
Most of all
everything you are
changed the way I feel about my life.
I l**e you.
What Is A Freethinker?
free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.
No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.
How do freethinkers know what is true?
Clarence Darrow once noted, “I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.”
Freethinkers are naturalistic. Truth is the degree to which a statement corresponds with reality. Reality is limited to that which is directly perceivable through our natural senses or indirectly ascertained through the proper use of reason.
Reason is a tool of critical thought that limits the truth of a statement according to the strict tests of the scientific method. For a statement to be considered true it must be testable (what evidence or repeatable experiments confirm it?), falsifiable (what, in theory, would disconfirm it, and have all attempts to disprove it failed?), parsimonious (is it the simplest explanation, requiring the fewest assumptions?), and logical (is it free of contradictions, non sequiturs, or irrelevant ad hominem character attacks?).
Do freethinkers have a basis for morality?
There is no great mystery to morality. Most freethinkers employ the simple yardsticks of reason and kindness. As author Barbara Walker notes: “What is moral is simply what does not hurt others. Kindness . . . sums up everything.”
Most freethinkers are humanists, basing morality on human needs, not imagined “cosmic absolutes.” This also embraces a respect for our planet, including the other animals, and feminist principles of equality.
Moral dilemmas involve a conflict of values, requiring a careful use of reason to weigh the outcomes. Freethinkers argue that religion promotes a dangerous and inadequate “morality” based on blind obedience, unexamined ultimatums, and “pie-in-the-sky” rewards of heaven or gruesome threats of hell. Freethinkers try to base actions on their consequences to real, living human beings.
Do freethinkers have meaning in life?
Freethinkers know that meaning must originate in a mind. Since the universe is mindless and the cosmos does not care, you must care, if you wish to have purpose. Individuals are free to choose, within the limits of humanistic morality.
Some freethinkers find meaning in human compassion, social progress, the beauty of humanity (art, music, literature), personal happiness, pleasure, joy, love, and the advancement of knowledge.
Doesn’t the complexity of life require a designer?
The complexity of life requires an explanation. Darwin’s theory of evolution, with cumulative nonrandom natural selection “designing” for billions of years, has provided the explanation. A “Divine Designer” is no answer because the complexity of such a creature would be subject to the same scrutiny itself.
Even a child knows to ask: “If God made everything, then who made God?”
Freethinkers recognize that there is much chaos, ugliness and pain in the universe for which any explanation of origins must also account.
Why are freethinkers opposed to religion?
Freethinkers are convinced that religious claims have not withstood the tests of reason. Not only is there nothing to be gained by believing an untruth, but there is everything to lose when we sacrifice the indispensable tool of reason on the altar of superstition.
Most freethinkers consider religion to be not only untrue, but harmful. It has been used to justify war, slavery, sexism, racism, homophobia, mutilations, intolerance, and oppression of minorities. The totalitarianism of religious absolutes chokes progress.
Hasn’t religion done tremendous good in the world?
Many religionists are good people–but they would be good anyway.
Religion does not have a monopoly on good deeds. Most modern social and moral progress has been made by people free from religion–including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Charles Darwin, Margaret Sanger, Albert Einstein, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, H. L. Mencken, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, Luther Burbank and many others who have enriched humanity.
Most religions have consistently resisted progress–including the abolition of slavery; women’s right to vote and choose contraception and abortion; medical developments such as the use of anesthesia; scientific understanding of the heliocentric solar system and evolution, and the American principle of state/church separation.
Do freethinkers have a particular political persuasion?
No, freethought is a philosophical, not a political, position. Freethought today embraces adherents of virtually all political persuasions, including capitalists, libertarians, socialists, communists, Republicans, Democrats, liberals and conservatives. There is no philosophical connection, for example, between atheism and communism. Some freethinkers, such as Adam Smith and Ayn Rand, were staunch capitalists; and there have been communistic groups which were deeply religious, such as the early Christian church.
North American freethinkers agree in their support of state/church separation.
Is atheism/humanism a religion?
No. Atheism is not a belief. It is the “lack of belief” in god(s). Lack of faith requires no faith. Atheism is indeed based on a commitment to rationality, but that hardly qualifies it as a religion.
Freethinkers apply the term religion to belief systems which include a supernatural realm, deity, faith in “holy” writings and conformity to an absolute creed.
Secular humanism has no god, bible or savior. It is based on natural rational principles. It is flexible and relativistic–it is not a religion.
Why should I be happy to be a freethinker?
Freethought is reasonable. Freethought allows you to do your own thinking. A plurality of individuals thinking, free from restraints of orthodoxy, allows ideas to be tested, discarded or adopted.
Freethinkers see no pride in the blind maintenance of ancient superstitions or self-effacing prostration before divine tyrants known only through primitive “revelations.” Freethought is respectable. Freethought is truly free.
How can I support freethought?
Join the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., an association of freethinkers working to keep the state and church separate, and to educate the public about the views of nontheists. Founded in 1978, the Foundation takes legal action against First Amendment violations, speaks out for freethinkers through the media and university debates, prints freethought books and literature, and publishes Freethought Today, the only freethought newspaper in the United States.
Membership, which includes Freethought Today, is $40.00(U.S.)/individual and $50.00(U.S.)/household. Send your check to:
FFRF, Inc., PO Box 750, Madison WI 53701.
No one is going to listen to me until someone is back in the hospital OR there is a funeral to go to…Oh well…I tried…
I am NOT stupid…I know what fascism is and is not…My previous post was n article taken from The Guardian. The article was not meant to be anything close to a lengthy college paper on fascism…If you’ve done one then good for you…But don’t get so caught up in what all you know so much that you miss the point entirely…The POINT is that based on the STATED points alone fascism is NOT a form of government that Americans who believe in the constitution and the vision of the founding fathers would want…
Fascism is NOT a democracy In fact let me go even further and show you all an article by Dr. Lawrence Britt detailing the 14 points of fascism taken from his years of study of fascist regimes throughout history…see the attached file…
If you WANT to argue the ‘other’ side of fascism then fine…if you want to nitpick just to show your knowledge that’s fine too but do not act like i am stupid…Those who know me know that i do not argue a point unless i KNOW what i am arguing about…BUT my purpose HERE was to show how America is BECOMING a fascist nation…NOT to go into detail about the history and intricacies of what fascism is and is not…’nuff said…
I really Want You
by
James Blunt
Many prophets preach on bended knee
Many clerics wasted wine
Through those bloody sheets
On those cardboard streets
I have wasted time
Are there silver shores on paradise?
Can I come in from the cold?
I killed a man in a far away land
My enemy untold
I really want you to really want me
But I really don’t know if you can do that
I know you want to know what’s right
But I know it’s so hard for you to do that
And time’s running out as often it does
And often dictates that you can’t do that
If they can’t break this feeling inside
That’s burning up through my veins
I really want you
I really want you
I really want you now
No matter what I say or do
The message isn’t getting through
And you’re listening to the sound
Of my breaking heart
I really want you
I really want you
Is a poor man rich in solitude?
Or will mother earth complained
Did the beggar pray for a sunny day but
Lady luck for rain
They say a million people bow and scream
To an effigy of gold
As so life begin
And the ship we’re in
And history unfold
I really want you to really want me
But I really don’t know if you can do that (I really want you)
I know you want to know what’s right
But I know it’s so hard for you to do that (I really want you)
And time’s running out as often it does
And often dictates that you can’t do that
If they can’t break this feeling inside (now)
That’s burning up through my veins
I really want you
I really want you
I really want you now
No matter what I said or do
The message isn’t getting through
And you’re listening to the sound
Of my breaking heart
No matter what I said or do
The message isn’t getting through
And you’re listneing to the sound
Of my breaking heart
Untouchable Face
By
Ani DiFranco
think i’m going for a walk now
i feel a little unsteady
i don’t want nobody to follow me
‘cept maybe you
i could make you happy you know
if you weren’t already
i could do a lot of things
and i do
tell you the truth i prefer
the worst of you
too bad you had to have a better half
she’s not really my type
but i think you two are forever
and i hate to say it but
you’re perfect together
so fuck you
and your untouchable face
and fuck you
for existing in the first place
and who am i
that i should be vying for your touch
and who am i
i bet you can’t even tell me that much
two-thirty in the morning
and my gas tank will be empty soon
neon sign on the horizon
rubbing elbows with the moon
a safe haven of sleepless
where the deep fryer’s always on
radio is counting down
the top 20 country songs
and out on the porch the fly strip is
waving like a flag in the wind
y’know, i don’t look forward
to seeing you again soon
you’ll look like a photograph of yourself
taken from far far away
and i won’t know what to do
and i won’t know what to say
except fuck you…
i see you and i’m so perplexed
what was i thinking
what will i think of next
where can i hide
in the back room there’s a lamp
that hangs over the pool table
and when the fan is on it swings
gently side to side
there’s a changing constellation
of balls as we are playing
i see orion and say nothing
the only thing i can think of saying
is fuck you…