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Sunday School is offered by most protestant churches to provide lessons to children regarding doctrines of Christianity. Although I do not know for sure, I believe that all or most other religions also have methods of indoctrinating children whose parents are believers in the specific faith of that particular sect, cult, or denomination.
I would like to perform an experiment and offer on this blog a series of Sunday School lessons pointing out and illustrating my personal views on various events that are meaningful and supposedly important in Bible History.
At no time will I knowingly impugn the integrity of those who call themselves believers in God. I am NOT an atheist; I am a skeptic in the face of Christian dogma, and yet I lean toward the concept of Intelligent Design of some sort.
Since my 70-plus years of being a biological life form with a thinking mind has indicated to me that everything except natural objects such as trees, rocks, stars, etc. had a designer and a maker, that everything made by mankind was intelligently designed and built by human beings. So, to me, it stands to reason that everything else in the universe 'not' fashioned by human-kind would also have a designer.
This hypothetical designer would necessarily be an entity (or FORCE?) so incredibly beyond the mere five senses of humans, so unimaginable that a human being could never conceive of its true makeup, its actual state of existence, or physical non-existence.
But my thinking mind tells me that the stuff taught to children in Christian Sunday Schools are ignorantly presented untruths, ancient stories, myths, fables, and parables, originally designed to control the actions of rebellious children and keep them in line.
The Catholic Church, it seems, is even worse.
So . . .
If all goes smoothly, the first lesson might appear on this blog tomorrow.
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HISTORICAL CLIP
On this date, February 8, 1949, Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty, the highest Catholic official in Hungary, was convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment by the Communist People's Court. Outraged observers in Western Europe and the United States condemned both the trial and Mindszenty's conviction as "perversions" and "lynchings."
Cardinal Mindszenty at his trial in 1949
In December 1973, at the age of 81, Mindszenty was stripped of his titles by the Pope, who declared the Hungarian cardinal's seat officially vacated, but refused to fill the seat while Mindszenty was still alive. Mindszenty died on May 6, 1975, at the age of 83, in exile in Vienna.Mindszenty is widely admired in modern-day Hungary, and no one denies his courage in opposing the Nazi and Nyilas gangs, or his resolve in confinement... However, Mindszenty is seen as the archetypal figure of "clerical reaction" by his critics. He continued to use the feudal title of prince-primate (hercegprímás) even after the use of nobility, peerage and royal titulature were entirely outlawed by the 1946 parliament. His aristocratic attitudes and continued claims for compensation against nationalization of vast range of pre–World War II church-owned farmlands supposedly alienated large groups of the Hungarian society, which was composed of a majority of agricultural workers at the time.
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WORD FOR TODAY
pomposity [pahm-PAHS-uh-tee]
noun
1. vain or ostentatious display of dignity or importance
2. the quality of being pompous
3. ostentatiously lofty style, language, etc.
4. a pompous action, remark, etc.
pompous and puffed up with vanity.
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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Born Feb. 8, 1931
Died Sep 30, 1955
Died Sep 30, 1955
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon of teenage disillusionment, as expressed in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark. The other two roles that defined his stardom were as loner Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955), and as the surly ranch hand, Jett Rink, in Giant (1956). Dean's enduring fame and popularity rests on his performances in only these three films, all leading roles. His premature death in a car crash cemented his legendary status.
Dean was the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and remains the only actor to have had two posthumous acting nominations. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Dean the 18th best male movie star on their AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list.
Born Feb. 8, 1925
Died Jun 27, 2001
Died Jun 27, 2001
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts (for which he won the 1955 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award), Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger (for which he won the 1973 Best Actor Academy Award), The Out-of-Towners, The China Syndrome, Missing (for which he won 'Best Actor' at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival), Glengarry Glen Ross, Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men.
Born Feb. 8, 1922
Died Feb. 3, 1996
Died Feb. 3, 1996
Audrey Meadows was an American actress best known for her role as the deadpan housewife Alice Kramden on the 1950s American television comedy The Honeymooners.
Born Feb. 8, 1940
Age: 72 years old
Edward James Martin "Ted" Koppel is a British-born American broadcast journalist, best known as the anchor for Nightline from the program's inception in 1980 until his retirement in late 2005. After leaving Nightline, Koppel worked as managing editor for the Discovery Channel before resigning in 2008. Koppel is currently a senior news analyst for National Public Radio and contributing analyst to BBC World News America, and contributes to the new NBC News prime time newsmagazine Rock Center with Brian Williams.
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Anyone who thinks they're important is usually just a pompous moron who can't deal with his or her own pathetic insignificance and the fact that what they do is meaningless and inconsequential.
--William Thomas
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