Season of Advent
The Nativity Story
Hollywood (New Line Cinema) did a great job in making the birth of Jesus come alive on screen.
Advent is a season observed in Christian churches as a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas. The term is an anglicized version of the Latin word adventus, meaning "coming" and is marked by a spirit of expectation, of anticipation, of preparation, of longing. There is a yearning for deliverance from the evils of the world, first expressed by Israelite slaves in Egypt as they cried out from their bitter oppression of 400 years. It is the cry of Cambodians and those who have experienced the tyranny of injustice in a world under the curse of sin, and yet who have hope of deliverance by a God who has heard the cries of the oppressed and brought deliverance in the person of Jesus. Advent starts on the fourth Sunday before December 25, which this year falls on Sunday, December 2. (Gleaned from Wikipedia and Dennis Bratcher).
(My favorite Advent song)
TAMAR
(who committed incest with her father-in-law Judah)
RUTH
(a Moabite widow of the then-most-despised-race of the Jews)
(2nd Advent Sunday, 9 Dec. 2012)
GLEANING
is a Jewish tradition of providing for the poor - whom Yale theologian
Nick Wolterstorff called "the Quartet of the Vulnerable" -- the orphans,
the widows, the oppressed, the alien.
The
Hebrew word for "kinsman-redeemer" (or "guardian-redeemer") is a legal term for one who has the
obligation to redeem a relative in serious difficulty (see Leviticus
25: 25-55). I
have translated "kinsman-redeemer" as
«សាច់ញាតិ-អ្នកសង្គ្រោះ» as currently in the KSV 2005 it goes by varying
descriptive phrases. I have also changed to the correct spelling of ឲ្យ (from អោយ, which is incorrect)
- Theary C. Seng
More at:
27 comments:
you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures. Once again, we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: "Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being." Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible. (23)”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever.”
― Sam Harris
“Theology is ignorance with wings.”
― Sam Harris
“We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.”
― Sam Harris
“It is time we admitted, from kings and presidents on down, that there is no evidence that any of our books was authored by the Creator of the universe. The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology. To rely on such a document as the basis for our worldview-however heroic the efforts of redactors- is to repudiate two thousand years of civilizing insights that the human mind has only just begun to inscribe upon itself through secular politics and scientific culture. We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself.”
― Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
“We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.”
― Sam Harris
“We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God’s teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father’s doorstep (Deuteronomy 22:13-21).”
― Sam Harris
12:57 PM
Anonymous said...
“You are using your own moral intuitions to authenticate the wisdom of the Bible - and then, in the next moment, you assert that we human beings cannot possibly rely upon our own intuitions to rightly guide us in the world.”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
“Every one of the world's "great" religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain -- from cosmology to psychology to economics -- has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture.
Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music.”
― Sam Harris
“Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings.”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
“Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that
certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him.
Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other
over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything --
anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous
than the world we are living in. ”
― Sam Harris
1:19 PM
Anonymous said...
“People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power. The only thing we should respect in a person’s faith is his desire for a better life in this world; we need never have respected his certainty that one awaits him in the next.”
― Sam Harris
“Are you really surprised by the endurance of religion? What ideology is likely to be more durable than one that conforms, at every turn, to our powers of wishful thinking? Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe. The methodology isn't perfect, and the history of science is riddled with abject failures of scientific objectivity. But that is just the point-these have been failures of science, discovered and corrected by-what, religion? No, by good science.”
― Sam Harris
“A kernel of truth lurks at the heart of religion, because spiritual experience, ethical behavior, and strong communities are essential for human happiness. And yet our religious traditions are intellectually defunct and politically ruinous. While spiritual experience is clearly a natural propensity of the human mind, we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it.”
― Sam Harris
“The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for being a Christian are.”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
1:21 PM
Anonymous said...
“A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. The human embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all. It is worth remembered, in this context, that when a person's brain has died, we currently deem it acceptable to harvest his organs (provided he has donated them for this purpose) and bury him in the ground. If it is acceptable to treat a person whose brain has died as something less than a human being, it should be acceptable to treat a blastocyst as such. If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulties than killing a human blastocyst.
Perhaps you think that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blastocyst is to be found in the latter's potential to become a fully developed human being. But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being, given our recent advances in genetic engineering. Every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings. (30)”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
“According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.”
― Sam Harris
“In the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise.”
― Sam Harris
“The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics.”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
“It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.”
― Sam Harris
1:22 PM
Anonymous said...
“When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't. Religion is one area of our lives where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies.”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
“What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.”
― Sam Harris
“Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.”
― Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
“Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral - that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more "moral" energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year. (25)”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
“Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn’t care to, or he doesn’t exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.
The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion.
Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion. Thoughts like, “this might be all part of God’s plan,” or “there are no accidents in life,” or “everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves” - these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous. They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings. It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this.”
― Sam Harris
1:23 PM
Anonymous said...
I would like to thank Sam Harris, Nietsche, stephen hawking, galileo, aristotleCopernicus, Kelper,, and the early scientists, etc. For speaking the truth about the non-existent of god. It is so sad that for the past 500 years so many intellectuals were killed by this religion.
2:06 PM
Gleaning was done in Cambodia before the combine machines.
Gleaning is a provision in the Torah by God for the poor, widow and the have nots. The people of God were commanded not to cut the corners of their fields nor pick up the dropped heads of grain. But to leave them for the poor, widows and have nots. This applied to fruit trees also. They are not to pick them clean but to leave some for the poor, widows and have nots.
“Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings.”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
So the tradgety in Cambodia was caused by Christian beliefs according to this Sam Harris robot?
Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity.
The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.
Albert Einstein, The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press, 1954
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787
The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814
"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Mahatma Gandhi
Sam Harris keep your opinion to yourself you're an atheism/communism all killing people without mercy so your opinion of. Christianity is wrong or you don't like so I don't liar your opinion as well keep it to yourself ok!?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. [Carl Sagan]
Such reports persist and proliferate because they sell. And they sell, I think, because there are so many of us who want so badly to be jolted out of our humdrum lives, to rekindle that sense of wonder we remember from childhood, and also, for a few of the stories, to be able, really and truly, to believe--in Someone older, smarter, and wiser who is looking out for us. Faith is clearly not enough for many people. They crave hard evidence, scientific proof. They long for the scientific seal of approval, but are unwilling to put up with the rigorous standards of evidence that impart credibility to that seal. [Carl Sagan]
The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity. [Carl Sagan]
**********************************
You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe. [Dr. Arroway in Carl Sagan's Contact (New York: Pocket Books, 1985
**********************************
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism. [Carl Sagan, Contact, pg 244]
What I'm saying is, if God wanted to send us a message, and ancient writings were the only way he could think of doing it, he could have done a better job. [Dr. Arroway in Carl Sagan's Contact (New York: Pocket Books, 1985), p. 164.]
Anything you don't understand, Mr. Rankin, you attribute to God. God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it. [Dr. Arroway in Carl Sagan's Contact (New York: Pocket Books, 1985), p. 166.]
14.My faith is strong I don't need proofs, but every time a new fact comes along it simply confirms my faith. [Palmer Joss in Carl Sagan's Contact (New York: Pocket Books, 1985), p. 172.]
The devil surely is mad! He knows that he has only a short time left until he will be thrown into a bottomless pit for a thousand years.
Once this is come to pass, Sam Harris, Hawkins, and many of these liars will be no more. But for now, thy are thorns in flesh of those have to put up with them before the Millenial Reign of King
Yeshua.
At the name of Yeshua every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Yeshua is Lord to the glory of God!
15.You see, the religious people -- most of them -- really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would've listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition. [Sol Hadden in Carl Sagan's Contact (New York: Pocket Books, 1985), p. 285.]
In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed? [Carl Sagan, Cosmos, page 257]
24.Many statements about God are confidently made by theologians on grounds that today at least sound specious. Thomas Aquinas claimed to prove that God cannot make another God, or commit suicide, or make a man without a soul, or even make a triangle whose interior angles do not equal 180 degrees. But Bolyai and Lobachevsky were able to accomplish this last feat (on a curved surface) in the nineteenth century, and they were not even approximately gods. [Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain]
So is this how this person address the wounds of his Khmer people by trying to destroy the evidence of God?
I say you win, but in the End you will have no defence against the Judge of the earth. God doesn't need anyone to defend himself because he knows Carl Sagan is mere man and is dead. If Sagan could send a message back to the living he would say, "Stop my lying, I was wrong."
This person who is plastering this comment section is forming at the mouth!
Once I saw Seng Theary right tit on surya subedi `s elbow on a picture. There was the wish of god, but is not the uncle`s HO.
This is the part of the 10 commandement of the communist.
*******LOL*******
If one wishes to form a true estimate of the full grandeur of religion, one must keep in mind what it undertakes to do for men. It gives them information about the source and origin of the universe, it assures them of protection and final happiness amid the changing vicissitudes of life, and it guides their thoughts and motions by means of precepts which are backed by the whole force of its authority.
SIGMUND FREUD, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
SIGMUND FREUD, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.
SIGMUND FREUD, The Future of an Illusion
At bottom God is nothing more than an exalted father.
SIGMUND FREUD, Totem and Taboo
In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable.
SIGMUND FREUD, The Future of an Illusion
Buddhism does not accept a theory of God, or a creator. According to Buddhism, one's
own actions are the creator, ultimately. Some people say that, from a certain angle,
Buddhism is not a religion but rather a science of mind.
Dalai Lama
The gods too are fond of a joke.
Aristotle
Religion is like going out to dinner with friends. Everyone may order something different, but
everyone can still sit at the same table.
Dalai Lama
The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to
reform itself a little by way of example.
Mark Twain
My belief is that the truth is a truth until you organize it, and then becomes a lie. I don't
think that Jesus was teaching Christianity. Jesus was teaching kindness, love, concern, and
peace. What I tell people is don't be Christian, be Christ-like. Don't be Buddhist, be
Buddha-like.
Wayne Dyer
God has no religion.
Mahatma Gandhi
I give great thanks to God that he has created a Dalai Lama. Do you really think, as some
have argued, that God will be saying: You know, that guy, the Dalai Lama, is not bad. What a
pity he's not a Christian? I don't think that is the case - because, you see, God is not a
Christian.
Desmond Tutu
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
Abraham Lincoln
I don't need to go to church. I respect churches because of the sacredness that's been put on
them over the years by people who do believe. But I think a lot of bad things have happened in
the name of the church and in the name of Christ. Therefore I shy away from church, and as
Donovan once said, "I go to my own church in my own temple once a day." We're all God. I'm
not a god or the God, but we're all God and we're all potentially divine - and potentially evil. We
all have everything within us and the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh and within us, and if you look
hard enough you'll see it.
John Lennon
Christians talk as though goodness was their idea but good behavior doesn't have any
religious origin. Our prisons are filled with the devout.
Andy Rooney
To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of
Jesus himself.
Thomas Jefferson
The person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church
teaches.
Thomas Aquinas
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
Jonathan Swift
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
Friedrich Nietzsche
11:30am,
Cause and condition; fact and value.
1:54pm..
Whats your point son? You gave all the quotes and i like the last one..lol
Most Cambodian pastors end up stealing others property....and curse at their parents....and Morman are poligymist....and child molestation....
If you want to make a change, you need to go back rewrite everything of every book. I think you are stupid and dump, Theary. I hardly said that words to other, but I will not hesitate to say it to you.
O Come O Come Now Teary Virgin Theary
vibrator is out of power now...ooopsy
Ms. Theary is not virgin, because she smokes cigar.
2:49PM,
The answer is in you!
Kristinamurti
Seng Theaary,
The determinant of a 3x3 matrix A is
|A| =a11 a12 a13
a21 a22 a23
a31 a32 a33
= a11(a22a33 − a32a23) − a12(a21a33 − a31a23) + a13(a21a32 − a31a22)
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