Probably my favorite pop science series in the last few years is “Through the Wormhole” narrated by Morgan Freeman which examines the latest scientific theories and boldly relates them to questions of religion and spirituality.

One of my favorite segments in the series is “Through the Wormhole, Is There a Creator?”  The whole series is really a cannot miss if you are curious about the universe around you.

One theorist who claims he knows where  the concept of God comes from was proposed by neurologist Dr. Michael Persinger.   He claims he can demonstrate God is created in the human mind, actually he claims to know particularly where in the human brain.  He uses a devise called the “God Helmet” which stimulates parts of the brain using electro-magnatism no more powerful than a blow drier.  He theorizes that if you stimulate an area on the right side of the brain in the mesiobasal temporal lobes that it creates a sense of God.  According to his studies subjects wear the helmet under sensory deprivation conditions and they frequently reports  “mystical experiences and altered states”.

Dr. Persinger demonstrated this devise on a college student on the show.  When the student’s EEG appeared to exhibit psuedo-delta waves she started to fell a presence in the room and reported different several out of body experiences.  She claimed that there were five entities floating around her.  She had an sesation where she was floating above her body and looking down on herself.  An experience she did not like was the appearance of flames around her.  After the experience she was really quite awed and relaxed after looking nervous going into the experiment.

Her experiences made me think of two cases I had heard about before in my experience.  Anyone who has heard people talking about near death experiences has heard them relate similar out of body experience.  Was Moses burning bush literally a figment of his unconscious imagination?  Was the first question that came to my mind.

Being a chemist by training I also wonder if psychotropic drugs like peyote can interact with this portion of the brain and that’s the source of their halucinagenic effects.

Dr. Persinger claims 80% of subjects experience some kind of “presence” in the room and about 1% of patients say they saw God herself.

Dr. Persinger hypothesizes that this presence most subjects experience is our sense of God, similar to our conscious feelings of self as sentient beings.  He thinks since we are the one species on the planet who really knows what the consequences of death are that activity in this part of the brain is a sort of a survival mechanism that helps us deal emotionally with our own demise.

Michelle Bachmann must have her own personal “God Helmet” or possible uses a blow drier far too frequently to form that perfect “Helmet Head” hairdo.  I really don’t know.  But on Friday June 1st she received a calling from God to run for the GOP nomination.

Michele Bachmann: “God Calling on Me to Run”

The Minnesota congresswoman said she received a “calling” to enter the 2012 presidential race. She spoke in an interview with Iowa Public Television on Friday.

“Well, every decision that I make, I pray about, as does my husband, and I can tell you, yes, I’ve had that calling and that tugging on my heart that this is the right thing to do,” Bachmann said.

Bachmann says she experienced a similar type of spiritual guidance in 2006 when she ran for Congress from Minnesota.

“God then called me to run for the United States Congress. And I thought, what in the world would that be for? And my husband said, “You need to do this,” Bachmann said at The Living Word Christian Center, a megachurch in Minnesota, during her campaign.

Personally if Michelle Bachmann’s God is so cruel that they want to take away affordable healthcare.  I don’t have much time for that God.

 

 

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agrippa
Member
agrippa

I figure that God ( if there is a god) will “know his own”. I have no idea at all what God is thinking; I do not know his intentions. I do know that there are people who affect to know both. They do have a right to that affectation.

choicelady
Member

Indeed – so long as they do not insist that God tells them what YOU should do.

KillgoreTrout
Member

Interesting article, KQ. Maybe Bachman ate the wrong type of mushroom accidentally. Maybe too much hot sauce at Taco Bell?
Whenever someone says they know what god wants, I immediately become suspicious of that person’s motivations. Like god telling bush he wanted bush to invade Iraq.

About hallucinations caused by psychotropic drugs, I have heard a neuroscientist’s explanation and it made sense to me. There is a process in the brain called “sensory gating.” It filters out external stimuli that is not necessary for our daily bodily functions. It is also what helps us maintain our sanity. When the sensory gating process breaks down, like when a person takes LSD, external stimuli that is normally blocked, gets let in. That’s why people have reported “seeing music,” or “hearing light.” An acid trip is really a form of temporary insanity. Too much external stimuli that we normally don’t experience.

ADONAI
Member

I’ve never understood the combination of GOD and politics in America. Ever since the first day I sat down to read the Bible I was struck at how everything in book was so in contrast with religion I knew.

Sundays were full of preachers on TV in their “mega churches”, pronouncing their authority and leading huge congregations in public prayer. Yet, here was this book, the same one those preachers were carrying in their hand, telling me not to do that stuff.

I would see people praying for wealth, or favors, and other personal things and, again, here was this book, the same one they were carrying in their hands, telling me not to do this stuff.

I saw politician and preachers shaking hands. Politicians claiming GOD had told them to “save America” by running for public office. Preachers looking to serve the call of money and fame of public office. And, again, I was reading this book, the same one they place their hands on to swear an oath, telling me not to do these things.

When did GOD become so concerned with earthly politics? You either do good works, or you don’t. You will be judged by your works, not by your faith.

kesmarn
Admin

There’s another, more under-the-radar, but very large chunk of religion that is the precise opposite of the TV preachers you saw, Adonai.

It’s under the radar, it’s often very local, it’s very quiet. It’s a bit more like the real thing, though.

Its believers are seldom wealthy, flashy or running for office — unless it’s a local one where the responsibility level is as high as the pay is low.

Its congregations may be smaller, not so well dressed, and may be driving beaters. But they’re more likely to be working in soup kitchens, donating blood, helping with tornado cleanup and running homeless shelters.

They’re Lutherans, Mennonites, Methodists, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, and Episcopalians and they all have one thing in common.

Quiet altruism.

No publicity. Whatsa matter with ’em?

choicelady
Member

kes – those are indeed my folks. Every day they do something to make life better for others. The very thing Glenn Beck said was horrific – social justice – is precisely what we are instructed to do. A friend and colleague, Rita Nakashima Brock, wrote a super (though hard going) book, “Saving Paradis” in which she noted that before Charlemagne, Christianity was primarily focused on bringing paradise on earth. The divisions of people into “good and bad” came with elevation of The Passion of the Christ – will you die with Him or deny Him. It led to massive divisions we’ve dealt with until now. Inclusion, ecumenism, interfaith understanding all have their roots in the original forms of the Abrahamic and other faiths.

But the strains of “worthy and unworthy”, of True Christians vs. everyone else, persist among the fundamentalists. It dovetails very neatly with capitalism and Social Darwinism. So Adonai – what you see in the way of materialism is their “evidence” of being The Chosen: God will bestow great material gifts upon you if you are born again, accept Him, and bend your will to Jesus (as interpreted through a preacher or politicians who purport to be his intermediaries).

That notion of material “signs of salvation” began with Calvinist predestination but has become the province of the fundamentalists while the successors of the Calvinists have moved to social justice, back to the original millennium purposes and teachings.

So when you see 3 a.m. preachers promise you a condo in Florida and a Mer-SAY-deez Benz at God’s hands, you see the strain of sheep-and-goats divisiveness that has become the most rampant tool of capitalism in the 21st century. For the downtrodden whom capitalism has broken, this promise is all they have left.

The single biggest religious movement in America is the ‘walk aways’ from fundamentalism. You can be told only so often that you are poor or outcast because you are sinful before something snaps. There are millions living with broken hearts and broken spirits and broken dreams because of this pernicious alliance of rapacious capitalism and God’s little helpers.

kesmarn
Admin

“[B]ringing paradise on earth.” That’s a great phrase, c’lady.

The words: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” are not so much a request made to Big Daddy and they are an invitation — even a summons — to us to bring that heavenly kingdom into the here and now.

That does mean us, as you’ve said, c’lady. Heavenly conditions aren’t just going to flutter down to earth from the hands of Celestial Santa. We have to work at it. We have to partner with the Big Guy — not just be passive children with a list of “wantee-wantees.”

No wonder the fundies run a mile from that kind of religion. After all, shouldn’t you be able to pay someone else to do all that salvation work for you?

Isn’t that the ultimate out-sourcing? Let those migrants sweat, work, march and pray while you lounge in the jacuzzi that is concrete proof of how much God loves you. You betcha.

choicelady
Member

Lovely – out-sourced salvation! I think that’s precisely their goal. YOU convert, be born again, and I get another run on the ladder to heaven.

What’s that you say? ME change my ways? How shocking! I’m born again. I can do anything I want. Look at Newt…

choicelady
Member

KQ – can’t reply below, so I’ll do it “above”.

This is the absolute truth, told to me by a reliable witness. In Colorado Springs at the Focus on the Family HQ, they bring families worried about their “dearly departed” to scan the “skies” for his or her soul’s progress to Heaven. FOTF personnel “locate” the soul with blips on a giant screen – beep, beep, beep, beepbeepbeep as it ASCENDS or B-e-e-p, B-e-e-p as it DESCENDS. To get the soul to Heaven, for a MERE $5000 the FOTF folks will bring in “prayer warriors” to pray the soul up. Oh! Not working? Well, for mere $10K more, MORE prayer warriors.

And people, desperate to get their loved one to Heaven, PAY it. My friend who was present a couple of times in that auditorium SAW people shell out as much as $25K for this “service”. He was horrified, but these desperate people BELIEVED it.

We wonder how they get so rich, those FOTF dudes? Well, this is part of it.

Wonder how much the beeping technician gets…

I am NOT making this up. It’s the new indulgences project.

whatsthatsound
Member

c-lady, that “beep your loved one to heaven” story just about beats everything!!

KillgoreTrout
Member

“Christianity was primarily focused on bringing paradise on earth.” CL, in this instance, what is meant by “paradise?” I’ve always found that term to be a bit ambiguous. I’m not being a smart-ass here, I honestly want to know what these pre-Charlemagne Christians meant by the word “paradise.”

About the materialist fundies, “The Family,” in DC actually preaches the total opposite of what Christ taught. They teach their minions that Christ actually favors those who gather wealth and power. Pretty screwed up huh! It is tailor made teaching to keep the less fortunate on the same team with the obscenely wealthy, so they will hope upon hope that they too will become wealthy and powerful. Talk about the old carrot and stick.

zampano
Member
zampano

Great question. I’ve wondered that too, and my personal view is this: since “paradise”, etymologically, simply means a garden, and an enclosed garden at that … in earlier times it presumably represented a place of plenty (at least in terms of nourishment) as well as a place of calm and shelter. In that respect, it is a place that meets all our fundamental needs, and where all the toil and danger associated with meeting those needs in earlier times are excluded. So it’s not difficult to imagine how the notion of being comfortably provided with all our basic needs could evolve into a more materialistic view in the modern age, as those basic needs came to be taken for granted. What a pity it seems so unattainable as to have become a mythological / religious concept.
Couldn’t agree more with your “carrot and stick” theory

KillgoreTrout
Member

Thanks for your thoughtful reply zampano! I think you are absolutely correct that far too many take for granted their basic needs. When people have their basic needs, they are relatively civil and rarely commit crimes. But when those needs are missing, more primal instincts start to surface.
We in America, at least the majority of us, have it made compared to many other places in the world. We do indeed often take our lot in life for granted. But then, we live in a very materialistic society, where wealth is seen as the measure of a person.
I haven’t seen you here before, and would like to welcome you to the Planet. Judging by your reply, this seems the type of site that you would enjoy. Glad to meet you.

choicelady
Member

To KT above and zampzno and kes below:

Paradise was a world of generous equality with enough to provide self sufficiency for all. It was a world of harmony, of peace. It looked to the common good, not to building hierarchies.

KT – The Family are as you describe, and so is the entire New Apostolic Reform movement (also once known as The Latter Rain and several other names.) They believe in absolute hierarchies based on “jesus plus nothing” – and IMHO, the NOTHING is what prevails with them. Power for the few, subservience for the rest of us, bending our will to theirs. The Divine Right of Capitalists. You’ve clearly read the book – you are entirely correct in your assumptions.

Paradies, of course, is unobtainable, but even after Charlemagne lifted up the sheep/goats to an imperial dicta and after the end of feudalism, people in the majority still operated under the guideance of “moral economy” rules – controls against exploitation, preservation of producers’ rights, community standards on prices and access to markets or establishing productive facilities, preservation of the poor – these persisted for over 600 years including in the new colonies of North America. The protections for the poor for the producer for the consumer, for balances between the wealthy and not wealthy were forcibly removed by increasingly centralized laws to promote capitalism. Capitalism likely would NOT have arisen with its emphasis on individualism without the new fallback to “evidence” of Calvin’s predestinational salvation. That “evidence” was grounded almost entirely in material gain. For more ecclesiastical history than I can offer – or that you’d wish to have – the belief in material rewards as evidence of salvation shifted FROM Calvinists TO evangelicals and pentecostals. The Calvinists and their Protestant ilk moved toward social justice work and away from concern for personal salvation of massive accumulations of wealth to prove it.

The idea of paradise is both individual and collective – it is simply a world you make better by the work of your presence in it. A world that is harmony between self and others. Oh that we might perceive it that way today.

KillgoreTrout
Member

Thank you much CL. That was a very good comment and really did answer my question, quite well in fact.
I hate to say this, but I think mankind in general has not evolved enough yet to be rid of basic, primal instincts such as greed and aggression. I know that many, many have, but I think far too many have not. Sad.

choicelady
Member

KT- Having to reply ABOVE, once again:

People are and likely always will be flawed. Pursuit of the “bright, shiny objects” has been THE thing leading us astray (I think sex is actually second on the hit parade). What makes a difference is a national or at least local ethos about for whom the bright shiny things exist. A few of us? Most of us? All of us?

E.P. Thompson, culling minute records of work in craft households, noted that prior to capitalism c. mid-18th C., craftspeople and artisans (there were almost no wage workers before industrial capitalism) worked far LESS time per week than anyone would today because they knew what they could produce, how long it would take, they controlled the price within the local ‘moral economic’ price limits, and worked for sufficiency, NOT for excess material gain. Amazing.

I did a similar cull of 17th-late 18th-century colonial New England work records (diaries and record books of weavers, shingle makers, farmers, and shoe makers among others) and found that was the same. People worked for sufficiency, not for wealth. They also held land in common (‘the commons’) and treated much of the natural world in ways that were similar to those of indigenous people: no over-farming, over-fishing, etc. They did have private property, but it was the basis mostly of economic responsibility to maintain oneself and one’s family, not to amass huge amounts to get rich. There were hugely rich people – they’d more or less come to the colonies rich. But the ‘middling sort’ were pretty happy to STAY in the middle, and the poor were far less immiserated than they would be in the industrial, wage-earning age. The rhythms of economic life were patient and far less demanding than we now are. It was not idylic, but it did afford a far greater freedom and equality than we believe from what the 19th-century rapacious capitalism has fed us.

They did believe they had a responsibility to make the world better for themselves, their children, and the community as a whole. They pursued the moral economic principles to help bring paradise on earth – where want was barely known, where freedom was paramount, and where consideration for others’ equity was an embedded moral good made manifest in every aspect of their lives. That ain’t half bad as a road to paradise. We could and should learn a lot from those practices.

zampano
Member
zampano

Really enjoying your well considered comments here. Thanks!

AlphaBitch
Member
AlphaBitch

“You will be judged by your works, not by your faith.” herein is a principle struggle in Christianity; James (the BROTHER – yes brother – of Jesus vs. Paul, who never met, never studied under Jesus and who said faith alone was sufficient.) Guess which got more play in the Bible?

I’m much more into James, and even read an almost 900 page book called “James, the Brother of Jesus”. Fascinating, and even supposes a theory that the thereto unknown Stephen murdered by Paul for his supposedly heretical ways was perhaps James, guilty only of standing up to and contradicting Paul as to what Jesus “meant”.

texliberal
Guest
texliberal

Real buzz down here that Rick Perry will run for the Republican nomination. If he does and wins the general I’ll be in that crowd cheering for Texas to secede. You think W was bad, you ain’t seen nothin. Wait until he tries to privatize the interstate highway system.

ADONAI
Member

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”

(Matthew 6:1)

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

(Matthew 7:21-23)

texliberal
Guest
texliberal

(Proverbs 11:29)

” He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool servant to the wise.”

choicelady
Member

As the Semi-Official Representative of Some Kind of Faith Community (the SOROSKOFC) for The Planet, may I say – I have no idea.

AdLib – I like your balance totally. The 1.5 million people who belong to the organization for which I work, a hefty portion of the Protestant community we represent, all have very different ideas about God. We do NOT have different ideas about science. It has a method, it looks to explanations of how the universe works, and we accept it without reservation. God? Not so universal. Science does not undermine the basic precept that there is Something Bigger than our own selves, but how we see that is as different as the individuals.

Is it the collective consciousness of all people – that amazing facility humans have to come together to make something wonderful occur? Is it grounded in the feelings of awe that science and every other positive human force inspires in us? Does God live in all the things that we do that are NOT essential for the maintenance of biological existence – art, music, philosophy, altruism, compassion, and so forth?

If there is Another outside of ourselves, it still does not have to exist as an anthropomorphic being. If God answers prayers, I’d be surprised, but the capacity to draw on that larger spirituality for sustenance, especially in times of grief and danger, gives grounding to those in turmoil that they are connected to at least hope and possibilities, and that’s quite a lot. If God is simply drawing on our OWN capacities for expanded engagement with life, that’s fine. Expanded consciousness is pretty darned miraculous in and of itself.

What bothers me about Bachmann’s God is its reduction to a cranky Santa Claus – having a list and checking it twice – culling the “good” and the “bad” based on Bachmann’s values, not God’s.(That’s pretty clear since her dicta on values doesn’t actually show up anywhere but the GOP platform).

The fundamentalist Dominionists, of which she is a leading light, have taken the God concept backwards to pure superstition and political sledgehammer. They have even reverted to polytheism – “my God is better than your God” – that creeps me out. It’s only moments until someone whips out Baal again.

I think the evidence that God comes from within rather than from without lies less in the God Helmet than it does in this phenomenon – God exists precisely at the level of one’s own ability to connect or not with other people. Your sense of God is as big as you are and no greater. If you are stingy, selfish, and mean, surprise! So is your idea of God.

It doesn’t matter what you think about God. It does matter what you DO about it. When having a specific view of God becomes a weapon against others and a device to create and maintain fundamental inequality, then democracy and humanity are in big trouble. God as a political tool just does not advance us at all.

audadvnc
Member
audadvnc

I had a spiritual experience the other day, while singing old Sacred Harp spirituals with a group of dear friends – it was like we had brought an outpost of heaven to our little group. It felt real to me, so it’s hard for me to say someone else’s experience is not valid.

OTOH, I think Michelle Bachmann is batty.

kesmarn
Admin

Sacred Harp spirituals are totally amazing, aud, and I can really understand the feeling you and your friends had while singing them. That sort of God seems very real and wonderful to me.

choicelady
Member

Oh indeed! Lovely stuff there in Sacred Harp!

And she IS batty.

You’re right on both counts!

whatsthatsound
Member

Well, God said to Batshit, “you’d better run”,
Batshit say, “You must be puttin’ me on!”
God say “no”,
Babs say “what?”
God say, “Babs, you can do what you want,
but let Me assure you that you are The One”
so Babs say, “God, how can this election be won?”
He said, “Have it out on Highway 61”

AdLib
Admin

Nailed it!

Buddy McCue
Member

I also think that this “God Helmet” neither proves nor disproves the existence of God.

There’s probably an area of the brain that one could electrically stimulate to cause a person to see an apple on a table before them.

Does that mean that apples do or do not exist in reality? It’s easy to see that stimulating the brain in this way doesn’t provide any conclusive evidence.

whatsthatsound
Member

Exactly. It’s like saying you know how a computer works, so you consider that particular machine the creator of the internet. It’s just “making up” all the information that passes through it via the internet, which in actuality doesn’t exist outside it. Nice try.

Buddy McCue
Member

WTS – That’s a good analogy (although I have to admit that I had to read it more than once to get it.)

whatsthatsound
Member

Thanks, Buddy. I probably could have worded it better, but I’m glad you appreciated it. 🙂

choicelady
Member

Bingo! That’s GREAT! Makes the point very clearly!

Khirad
Member

One could also argue, for the sake of it, that God created us with that faculty to fully know Him.

At least I imagine that’s what the argument would be.

audadvnc
Member
audadvnc

That’s the essence of the Gnostic heresy, that the Church fathers have been attempting to stamp out for 2000 years. Why? Because, if you can talk directly to God, who needs a Pope, or clergy?

choicelady
Member

Precisely. Clergy are useful as rabbis – teachers – and a source of comfort in times of travail, but most would tell you they are instruments of wisdom, not the origins of it. Those who think they are the latter are deeply scary.

AdLib
Admin

Agreed, I mentioned this below as well.

Those who appreciate the scientific process (Republicans mostly excluded) would never assert an ancillary assumption from a scientific conclusion.

As you demonstrated with your analogy, a theory about the cause of a perception is wholly unrelated to the existence of that which is being perceived.

I could look down a desert road and see a mirage of water in the road. Proving that was a mirage would not then prove that water doesn’t exist nor that it has never rained in the desert and water has never been on that road.

On the scientific side, it’s incumbent on those who seek the truth not to overreach past that which can be directly proven or disproven. On the faith side, it’s incumbent upon those who seek the truth not to reject scientific theories because they may not affirm all of one’s beliefs.

Science can’t prove or disprove the existence of anything that transcends the physical universe. So science can’t and isn’t designed to be able to prove or disprove the existence of God.

That being the case, scientific theories can always co-exist harmoniously with one’s faith, even if there is a disagreement over cause and effect with regards to perception.

jkkFL
Guest

Have we determined with certainty that there is any brain matter under the hair?
If KQ can dispute the knowledge of the existence of God, I must dispute the existence of a brain in Michele Bachmann.

Khirad
Member

Speaking of people who talk to god.

Pat Robertson: God Won’t Let Ahmadinejad Start Armageddon
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/pat-robertson-iran-ahmedinejad/2011/03/01/id/387953?s=al&promo_code=BC76-1

In the midst of so much superstitious crazy, there was actually a sober kernel of coherent logic (as much as there can be in this worldview) in there.

Namely, how would the supreme “Christian” God allow an infidel like Ahmadinejad to blow up the world?

choicelady
Member

Robertson thinks HE is the one to blow up the world. God told him so…

jkkFL
Guest

LOL! Agree, c’lady!

whatsthatsound
Member

God told Michelle Bachmann to have her campaign out on Highway 61.

Buddy McCue
Member

I suppose that Bachmann COULD have responded like Abraham did in the song, by saying “Man, you must be puttin’ me on.”

Assuming for the moment that she really did hear the voice of God, has she stopped to think that God could be setting her up to lose? The article that KQuark linked to says that “only 7% of those polled said they would support Bachmann for the Republican nomination.”

whatsthatsound
Member

Bruce Springsteen told me I was “born to run”.

He’s God in some parts.

AdLib
Admin

Forrest Gump was told to run.

Gandalf told Frodo to run.

In every other action movie, the hero yells “RUN!!” to the supporting characters just before an explosion goes off.

God works in mysterious ways.

But his donations to PACs have to be declared.

SallyT
Member

WTS, Steppenwolf told me I was Born To Be Wild.

texliberal
Guest
texliberal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftqumRF9Sh4

We seem to never learn, Aimee Semple McPherson and I believe some of her Four-Square churches are still around.

AdLib
Admin

Psst…add the letter “v” after the “http” in a YouTube link and our software will automatically embed the video.

texliberal
Guest
texliberal

OK

Chernynkaya
Member

Great comparison. She was quite the huckstress, faked a kidnapping and everything, when it turned out she was having a liaison with her beau. Her Foresquare Church is still here in L.A and it’s right near where my grandma lived when I was very young. Actually, her parishioners were the very poor, and of course, they are the most generous.

AdLib
Admin

She was a real piece of work, pretty scary how big her following was at one time.

Tex has a point, she really was a forerunner to Palin and Bachmann.

Chernynkaya
Member

In the phony department, absolutely, but at least she was eloquent. The funny thing is to me is how many people say these women were beautiful. I’m not seeing it.

AdLib
Admin

Ditto! I look at Palin and Bachmann and see nothing authentically resembling sexuality, just the aura of greed, for wealth, celebrity and power.

It’s like The Emperor’s New Clothes, the GOP minions gaze at them as if they’re beautiful and the rest of us see cynical, mercenary pit bulls with lipstick as they’ve already admitted they are.

audadvnc
Member
audadvnc

I’ve seen that look in the faces of high powered sales women (particularly the ones involved in multilevel marketing scams) – the Face of Ambition.

jkkFL
Guest

@audadvnc-
Greed makes one Very Ugly!

audadvnc
Member
audadvnc

Reminds me of the spokesperson for the Video Toaster, Kiki Stockhammer. Somewhere around 1992 I attended a 3 day NewTek training seminar where Kiki was the featured speaker. What a lizard – she looked like she ate traveling sales executives for breakfast.

Then NewTek fell apart, and then Play Inc fell apart. She went from high rolling geek diva to has-been in a heartbeat.

But she had t&a going for her, and those eyes – same as Sarah and Michelle. Go look –

http://amigairc.amigarevolution.com/kiki.html

kesmarn
Admin

This being Holy Toledo, we had a mayoral candidate in the last election (well actually she’s been in several elections) who was also called by God to run for office.

God was feeling frugal that year, apparently, because she had next to nothing in the way of campaign funding. So she was compelled to use her personal station wagon as her primary means of advertising. She mounted a big sign on top of it and used a bullhorn to announce her campaign platform to the various neighborhoods she drove through.

Her platform consisted of pretty much one plank. But it was a good one. She planned to install a gigantic ferris wheel on the river bank and turn Toledo into the tourist attraction of the rust belt. She said we were all sitting on a gold mine and just didn’t know it, but that God had revealed it to her.

God not only told her to run; he assured her she would win. So when late election night rolled around and the media announced that she had come in dead last with only 300 votes, she did what any God-fearing woman would do.

She demanded a re-count.

Just in case you think I’m making this all up:

[imgcomment image[/img]

SallyT
Member

I had a friend once who said God told her she was sitting on a Gold Mine. She became a hooker.

kesmarn
Admin

Not knowing exactly what Opal’s background was, Sally, I can’t say for sure where she got the phrase. 😉

AdLib
Admin

God must be pissed off, this is especially embarrassing when the candidate you’re supporting loses AND you’re omnipotent.

kesmarn
Admin

Opal’s theory was that there must have been a small box with 200,000 overlooked ballots in it somewhere down there at election headquarters, AdLib. Purely an innocent oversight.

I wonder if she’s genetically related to Harold Camping.

AdLib
Admin

She and Camping may have had adjoining rooms at the asylum.

To Opal and when Bachmann drops out after losing everywhere but possibly IA, I’d love to send them the clip of Edward G. Robinson in The Ten Commandments, “Myah, where’s your god now?!”

Chernynkaya
Member

“Oh Moses, Moses, Moses!” Worst. Acting. EVER. But Edward G. was the best.

AdLib
Admin

Actually, I love his films, his role in Ten Commandments was cheesy but fun.

Little Caesar, Key Largo, Double Indemnity, etc., all great films and his performances were iconic.

kesmarn
Admin

I can’t remember. Did he have a cigar in the corner of his mouth when he said that?

AdLib
Admin

“Myah, I’m taking the gold and your god, ya get me?! You ain’t so tough! C’mon boys, let’s scram Egypt!”

choicelady
Member

The ballots must be in Wisconsin…

AdLib
Admin

Wonderful and intriguing, KQ! Also, love the Bachmann graphic!

As an ancillary issue, I’ve read about studies that have found that a condition called sleep paralysis is often the cause of people having waking hallucinations in bed where they experience being visited by aliens, ghosts, etc.

I wonder if this condition stimulates the same section of the brain you describe above.

Scientifically speaking, demystifying the physiological reasons that some people may have certain feelings or experiences is not proving or disproving any beliefs of course.

In the case of Bachmann though, and most politicians, I think the frequent statement of getting Jesus’ or God’s endorsement (see: Bush and Huckabee too) for their political candidacy is just cynical manipulation. I don’t think any of these people believe it, they may feel entitled or superior but I would suggest that it reflects spite towards religion to hijack God into becoming one’s own campaign manager.

As for God supporting Bachmann, I think it’s clear he’s already making campaign donations to Obama for 2012…the Ryan budget and the 2012 GOP field to name a couple.