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We stand for human beings using our reason and keeping public policy reasonable. We stand for a complete separation of Church and State, as the United States Constitution requires. We stand for tolerance for all Faiths in the private, spiritual domain, and for our human intelligence, our logic and our reason to determine what policy our government must take at this critical time in history. We understand that we need to use our minds, and the scientific method, to form a public policy that is aligned with Natural Law, so we can live in harmony with, and as part of, our environment.
Currently, in 2021, we humans face our most difficult and our most critical, vital trial. We face a horrible overpopulation and pollution crisis that is producing: a lowered quality of life for all humankind and all life; mass extinction of species; a dangerous militarization by many of the nations on Earth; a fundamentalist religious growth that is destroying freedom for all people and endangering our future; and more.
We ask all people, everywhere, to remember that there is no conflict between Reason and Faith, between Science and Religion. As Jesus Christ said "Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's, and give to God what is God's". This means very clearly that Faith and Religion belong in the private, the spiritual realm, while Reason and Science must determine what our governmental and public policy must be. As the wonderful fresco by Raphael, above, shows, In Aristotle's Cosmology, each of these four elements (earth, water, fire and air) had a weight. Earth was the heaviest, water less so, and air and fire the lightest. According to Aristotle the lighter substances moved away from the center of the universe and the heaver elements settled into the center. Aristotle, with his four-elements theory, held that all change on Earth was owing to motions of the heavens. Both Aristotle and Plato, like the Catholic Church more than a thousand years later, believed that the Earth was the center of the Universe.
In Rafael's fresco, an elderly Plato stands at the left, pointing his finger to the sky. Beside him is his student Aristotle. In a display of superb foreshortening, Aristotle reaches his right arm directly out toward the viewer. Each man holds a copy of their books in their left hand—Timaeus for Plato and Nicomachean Ethics for Aristotle. Plato’s gesture toward the sky is thought to indicate his Theory of Forms. This philosophy argues that the “real” world is not the physical one, but instead a spiritual realm of ideas filled with abstract concepts and ideas. The physical realm, for Plato, is merely the material, imperfect things we see and interact with on a daily basis. Interestingly, some people believe that Raphael used Leonardo da Vinci’s face for Plato, based on similarities from his self-portrait. Conversely, Aristotle’s hand is a visual representation of his belief that knowledge comes from experience. Empiricism, as it is known, theorizes that humans must have concrete evidence to support their ideas and is very much grounded in the physical Earth-bound world.
In Alexandria, Egypt, in the third century b.c., Aristarchus of Samos, a student of the Aristotelian Strato of Lampsacus (?-270? b.c.), calculated the relative distances of the Sun, Earth, and Moon from one another by measuring the Moon-Earth-Sun angle as it changed through the various phases of the Moon. His observations and calculations showed that that Sun was about 20 times the moon's distance from the Earth, and that the Sun was much larger than the Earth or Moon. His method was sound, but his primitive instruments impaired his results. In fact, the Sun is about 390 times the Moon's distance from the Earth. He further reasoned that since the sun is so large and so far away, it must also be proportionately greater in weight.Aristarchus's correct conclusions that the Sun is larger and more massive than the Earth, and so distant, led him to suppose that the universe is heliocentric. He was the first major thinker to suggest such a theory and to support it with empirical data. His book, On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon, survives, but all his writings on heliocentrism are lost. Thus his heliocentric theory is not known in detail, and is only known at all through reports by Archimedes (287?-212 b.c.) in the third century b.c. and Plutarch in the second century a.d.
Science proved both Plato and Aristotle wrong, (although Aristotle came much closer to scientific truth than Plato) and this is one of the greatest errors of the Catholic Church, and of Religion in general, in all of history. We are not singling out the Catholic Church for wrongdoing here, rather we are using a classic case of religious wrongdoing that harmed, not only Copernicus and Galileo who correctly understood that the Earth revolved around the Sun, but all of humanity which suffered a dark and evil period of censorship, darkness, and repression on Earth; to make our point that similar erronious religious edicts and beliefs by Christianity, Catholicism, Islam and Judiasm (to name just a few of the current major religions which are harming freedom, quality of life, and our chances of survival by clinging to ancient doctrine created by fallible humans - not by Jesus or other actual religious figureheads, but by the religions' administrative and political leaders who came later), are causing us great harm; and that it is time for these religions to change, so that we humans may survive as a civilization, and so that our quality of life can remain high and indeed improve, and so that other beautiful forms of life may survive with us on this beautiful planet Earth, our Home, and the natural habitat for all of us, all species on Earth.
In short we call on all Religion, worldwide, to cease and desist calling for increased population growth, to cease and desist outlawing contraception, and to stop claiming that religious political and administrative leaders are infallible. (Clearly they are humans and as such, are fallible. People do make mistakes, after all.) Thus we call on the Catholic Church to nullify their belief in the "Infallibility of the Pope". Thus we call on all Christian and Catholic religions (and all others which are against contraception) to cease and desist on any anti-contraception speech or rules or laws. Jesus never said anything against contraception. Churches' edicts against contraception are responsible for both unwanted children, and thus many abortions, and for human overpopulation - which is lowering the quality of life for humans, driving other species to extinction and threatening our very survival. Every few hundred or thousand years religions do change, and now is the time for another major change in religion. Let us, as reasonable people of faith, embrace this change, knowing that God gave us reason and minds to use.
Overpopulation is the root cause of war, disease, famine, and extinction of species - and it must be stopped. Thus we also call on Judiasm and Islam to stop overpopulating the Earth with a "population war" - erroniously thinking that the more believers, the stronger the religion. The Old Testament's "Go forth and procreate" actually refers to all species multiplying their numbers on Earth. It was meant for a time when the Earth was sparsely populated. God would never say such a thing in this overpopulated age today!
- Genesis 1:22 - And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
- Genesis 9:7 - And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.
- Genesis 9:1 - And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.
These lines above are not meant for modern humans and are not meant for the modern age, and Jews and Christians have been using them to justify a horrible and continuing overpopulation that is killing off all species except humans, and which, if left unchecked, will surely kill most of us off, too. It must be stopped. People must learn to separate Church and State. Governments must stop using thousand-year-old words from religious texts to justify bad public policy. It is literally killing us and all other species on earth. This cannot be allowed to continue.
Doesn't the Old testament also say not to build your houses one on top of the other? By violating this, as we have been for millenia, we are overpopulating the Earth. How easy it is for religious and political leaders (who quite often are neither truly wise nor intelligent, and who are quite often corrupt) to pick and choose quotes from their religious texts as they please - choosing go forth and multiply, but not prohibiting apartment buildings and skyscrapers.
Doesn't the Koran say that the end of the world is very near when Nations are competing to build the tallest buildings? Haven't many countries been doing exactly this for decades now? Especially Muslim countries?
This gets to the heart of the matter. Good people, reasonable people like ourselves, do not seek the end of the world. We strongly believe that government MUST do everything in its power to prevent the end of the world from happening. We love life, and planet Earth, wih all of its wonderous flora and fauna; its marvelous species of plants and animals. Its oceans, lakes, rivers and streams. Its mountains, meadows, forests, prairies, coastlines, beaches, islands, deserts and valleys. We do not want to see the Book of Revelations come true on Earth; neither do we seek the Paradise that Islam seeks to happen here on Earth. Only crazy religious fanatics desire the end of the world, and we demand that government stop listening to them - that the separation of Church and State be strictly enforced, and right away, because the end of our civilization is indeed drawing ever nearer due to overpopulation and pollution.
It is perhaps time to deny the fanatically religious access to weapons, since they do not act in a reasonable manner and since they actually desire the end of the world! Doing so would make the world a safer place for the rest of us.
We take to task Turkey and their horrible president Erdogan and his policy of encouraging population growth by erroniously claiming that muslim women have a religious duty to have a lot of children. His very words are a crime against humanity, as well as a crime against the planet and all other species. Nowhere did Mohammad encourage more than one or two children per couple - and one to two children per couple is all the world can afford. We call on Islam and Judiasm, Christianity and Catholicism, Hinduism and all religions to recognize that there is a severe overpopulation problem on planet Earth, and to encourage one to two children families - for the survival of us all.
We also call for an end to this disastrous idea that because the Old Testament contains the words that God gave dominion over the Earth and all its creatures to Man; that such words give humans the right to overpopulate the planet and drive other species into extinction - the most horrible of crimes - to kill off an entire species. First of all we repeat once again that a reasonable person does not believe in the words of the Old Testament - which were written two thousand years ago and were not meant for the modern age, nor for modern man. Secondly, such words mean the exact opposite of how they have been hertofore interpreted - they connotate an immense responsibility that Man has to shepherd, protect and care for all the other species on the planet.
Indeed we have only recently come to understand that planet Earth itself is a giant organism which is in a kind of balance - of temperate middle zones along with freezing poles, and of the symbiosis, cooperation and interdependance of millions of different species - all of which play an important role in making the Earth a beautiful natural world where God's and Nature's creatures and creations live together in a harmonic balance. We can no longer allow wrongful and harmful religious beliefs and edicts to harm this balance - because our survival is now at stake.
Thank you for your thoughts and prayers on this and on helping religion to change, slow as it does; as it must, for us all to survive.
God Bless.
Sites We Love:
Unalienable Rights For All .Men
There Is Nothing Higher Than The Truth .Science
Sticks And Stones May Break My Bones But Names Will Never Hurt Me .com
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