Natural Wonder Fellowship

One of my favorite irreverent comic strips just made me LOL. It was just too precious not to share. I have nothing to add to its message, hahaha. Well done, author! I just discovered that it apparently needs a few more words in order to show the "labels" and the 'share' icon on the top right of the piece as you read it. So, Author said this comic was originally published December, about 10 years ago. I wasn't reading his (or her) strip then, so it was all new and funny all over again to me. I love the implementation of the irony meter! Seems to need repair quite often though.   (hmm, okay that didn't seem to make a difference -- sorry IDK why it's being weird; but now you can see why I prefer to have more control over the software that runs my sites. It's coming along, slowly. Oh, ok good! That's enough extra words for it to display properly, jeez!)

Truth is hard to come by these days. Truth is not dependent on how you look at things, truth is pretty absolute based on fact or reality. Yet jo urnalists are being attacked by the President of the United States for reporting truth that Mr. President doesn't want you to know. Journalists are being jailed or worse in several Middle Eastern countries for reporting truths their governments do not want told. This war on truth began years ago, but has really taken off since Trump coined (or at least popularized) the "fake news" label.  There is no such thing as "alternative facts" in spite of what Ms. Conway would like you to believe. Excluding the often capitalized "Truth" of spiritual or fundamental "reality", truth is "the body of real things, events, and facts; actuality" according to Merriam-Webster, or "a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like" according to Dictionary dot com, or "all

How dare they?! That's basically what Christian leaders are beginning to say. In a pre-Christmas speech, the pope told some 20,000 pilgrims and tourists gathered in St Peter’s Square in Vatican City: “Even we Christians, who are also the people of God, risk becoming worldly and losing our identity, ‘paganising’ the Christian style.” This commentary piece from 22 Dec 2018 lays out a lot of the reasons people are seeking spiritualism outside the confines of church dogma  ( http://indiafacts.org/pagan-revival-why-it-is-a-nightmare-for-christianity/ ). I found it quite informative; well worth reading. The Catholic Pope  seems to be on a crusade against paganism – the original and vibrant indigenous religions across the planet that Christians tried to destroy in the centuries past.  It seems to me that the organized churches might want to address their own dirty laundry before seeking to blame outside influences for their declining membership. The movement away from the confines

All peoples of the northern hemisphere celebrate a winter holiday around this time of the year. Through the centuries and among cultures, it is called different things and celebrated in different ways, but all involve love, thanks, rejoicing, possibly token gift-giving, feasting, and partying. As  religions began solidifying from the stories and myths created by our ancestors, they had to incorporate the existing sky watchers' knowledge. Besides, who doesn't like a good party in the depths of winter darkness. It isn't even really mid-winter; it is the beginning of the coldest days of the year, BUT it also marks the beginning of the "return of the sun". The days finally become a bit longer as the sunrise is a bit earlier; the darkness becomes a bit shorter. As I posted on a ministers' board on December 21, 2018 " Happy Solstice!! Whether you realize it or not, in the northern hemisphere, the sun will be getting slightly closer and rising a smidge earl

Humans consider ourselves superior to all other life forms on the planet. We alone have created skyscrapers, literature, medicine, courting, burial, and religious rituals, complex math, and have even begun to study and learn the universe itself. We have established communities and law, farming, transportation systems, central heating and air conditioning, and indoor plumbing. We expect our fellows to follow our moral code of right, wrong, love, empathy, compassion. We are so pompous, so ignorant. We really think we're "all that", but we are physical hosts for millions of organisms within our own guts. They live, thrive, and multiply without knowing or caring they are in a "superior" species. They live their lives in the warm, moist, airless darkness they've evolved to inhabit. Only as side benefit, does their day-to-day activities help us digest and absorb nutrients from our food and eliminate our own bodily waste. (Please, before you start spouting "

This is my first post directly addressing critical thinking skills. As a very young child, you know very little. Instinct alone tells you when you're uncomfortable (whether hungry, hurting, wet, cold); this isn't really synonymous with knowing anything. You must rely on your "elders" (even if that only means your older siblings) to keep you safe, warm, fed, clothed, protected.  Relatively quickly, you grow and become mobile, curious, inventive, observant; children as young as 15 months understand gravity's effect on a dropped object, and are confused if it doesn't hit the ground. As they learn to crawl, before they even learn to walk, they instinctively will stop at the top of the stairs. All parents have experienced that heart-stopping moment when the crawling "baby" is headed full-throttle towards the down stairway and rush to "save" them. If you didn't reach them "in time", they have almost always plunked themselves on th

Without proper guidance from you, your children may grow up thinking the wrong thing. You will want to ensure they don't have access to alternative points of view to pollute their minds. You want to discourage them from asking questions and seeking answers for themselves.  Addendum 2019/01/02 - I just fell across this one today - to me a perfect example of keeping your children's minds closed by "protecting them" from other ideas: "Our pastor is a true man of God. He has been preaching strong from the pulpit on worldly living, such as music and dress, but it doesn’t appear to be penetrating the people’s lives. Only one or two show up for soul winning. Even the youth pastor and teachers and deacons don’t participate. The youth pastor does not preach separation from the world. Most if not all of the youth in the church are worldly and are being fed CCM and secular music at home. There is no dress code and it seems the clothes are getting worse and worse. I am afr

Freedom of religion applies to all of us. To believe in one or many or no gods is a basic human right. A common misconception is that non-believers are a threat to religious faith, although I'm not sure how historically that has been the case. From my research, it's most often being one group of believers trying to convert or eliminate another group of believers, or a government entity trying to eliminate all religious beliefs.  The secularists want to keep religion out of government for the good of all people. To have a state mandated religion harms everyone. When the majority's religious doctrines worm their way into the law of the land, how easy will it be for the next majority to enforce their belief system on you? For instance, Nepal had been a Hindi monarchy until about 10yrs ago when the monarchy was abolished in 2008, after the country was declared a secular republic in 2007. As a new "republic", the official government stance still strongly associates a

It seems we go through this every year, usually twice a year really. 'Christmas' and 'Easter' are declared by some to be high religious holidays uniquely representative of only their beliefs. We'll just stick to 'Christmas' for this post. Since before humans could write our ancestors wandered in fairly small groups. They lived off the land, possibly stopping for periods to live in caves or other natural shelters. Knowledge of the natural cycle of the seasons, the migrations of the herds was critical to their survival. They noticed and wondered at the movement of the "stars" (actually the planets) and the life-giving sun.  Our ancient ancestors survived to establish agriculture, and animal husbandry communities. They were still very dependent on the seasons. Various sun worshiping cults were also developed. It is from these ancient myths and rituals the Jewish and Christian doctrines eventually (over several hundred years) emerged.  Birth

In reading, re-reading, and pondering the Bible over the years, I have many questions on many aspects of it. We were raised in a Lutheran household and made to attend Sunday school each week. I didn't mind; I thought of it like school; I enjoyed learning new things (and still do). Somehow what I was learning had to make sense though. I asked a lot of questions (and still do that, too). We even occasionally casually discussed spirituality and gods and religion at home - my parents were "what did you learn today?" interested, in both our public school and religious teachings. If I asked a question they or my older sister couldn't answer, they usually said "ask the teacher" (whether church or school topic). I clearly remember disrupting the class because I didn't understand why Hamlet said to Ophelia "get thee to a nunnery"; isn't that where nuns live? why would he say that? what did he mean? Side note: a quick internet search engine today sho

The word 'atheist' itself is misleading and should not even be necessary in our vernacular. We don't have a word for someone who doesn't believe in fairies, dragons, Santa Claus, leprechauns, the Easter Bunny, or Bigfoot. Until fairly recently here in the U.S. a common saying for an unexpected or surprise occurrence was a 'Black Swan event', until someone in Australia said black swans are quite common there. Misinformation doesn't become fact simply because it's repeated many times, believed by many people, or the doubters are shouted down (or worse). Atheist description in 'No Religion' post on a ministers' blog I recently read mis-stated the atheists' stance - they do not reject god, only say that there is  no proof for god (or other supernaturals ).  We're all born atheists, until we are indoctrinated by our family, friends, and so on; the fortunate few who were born into an atheist home or who managed to overcome the dogma f

Our Constitution clearly establishes the notion that religious beliefs have no place in our laws or government. Our "founding fathers" were of several different beliefs and were aware of the problems caused by religious dissension among the populace, as well as as a result of a "state" sanctioned "official religion". Wanting to avoid that in our new republic, the founders made no reference to deity in drafting our Constitution. The law of the land must apply to all people, of all beliefs and no beliefs at all -- paraphrased from Thomas Jefferson, John F Kennedy, Barack Obama, probably others.   What strikes me as funny is how the über-religious in the US fight to tear down the wall of separation, not realizing that they are weakening themselves. What stands between their religion being dominant and, say, Muslims? This is one of the many problems with having religion intertwined with government. As long as it's your religion, hurray. But see those guys

Welcome to Natural Wonder Fellowship  We hope to provide food for thought in a friendly, non-intimidating atmosphere. We will not tolerate bullying. We want to encourage thinking for yourself rationally, logically, so you can make informed decisions. This applies to all matters of your life, from evaluating the mystery chemicals shown on the ingredients list,  to the doublespeak spouted by politicians and news outlets, to the fast-talking sales rep trying to get you to sign for that loan, to the dogma spouted by various "religious groups". There will be much about 'religion', since I feel the fervor professed by many 'believers' is a detriment to us all. Politicians wave their 'religious credentials' (whether real or not) like a red cape before a bull, to rile-up their audience, to blind their listeners to the true naked power grab these politicians are attempting.  (As an aside here, know that "bull-fighting" is violent blatant animal abu