Did you know that Pornography Causes Brain Damage?
It’s neuroscience. There are lots of reports on it.
The brain compensates for the over indulgence of a porn addict by creating less dopamine receptors in his brain.
The result is that it takes more to arouse him.
Addicts go from soft porn, to hard porn, to eventually things like rape porn, bestiality, child porn, etc.
To compensate for less dopamine receptors in their brain, they start to wire in their “aggression drive” into their “sex drive” and start doing things like choking, spitting, slapping, bondage, etc, to get aroused.
That is why the path of pornography has created many rapists and even serial killers.
The sodomites, the homos, they do all their filthy acts in the dark of night where no one can see them. When you get these perverts on their own, they flee like cockroaches, like the roaches they are, the vermin scum, the pedophiles that they are.
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If you’re making your son, for example, dress up as a woman and go dance at a sodomite bar, that’s hip, that’s cool, that’s trendy. But if you just believe the Bible, and you take your kid to church, that’s child abuse, right?
— Baptist Dave 1611, an unnamed Air Force Airman on his YouTube videos
This unnamed airman sure sounds like a follower of IFB homophobe Steven Anderson. For those who don’t speak IFB, 1611 stands for the 1611 King James Bible — the preferred translation of homophobes everywhere.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Arthur Ivey, 59, is being held at Gadsden County jail with no bond. Ivey is a preacher at Friendship Primitive Baptist Church.
On Jan. 3, according to court documents, three children went to a child welfare facility and said they were touched by Ivey inappropriately.
Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office investigators responded to the alleged sexual battery of the three minors. Each child was interviewed and asked to recount the assaults.
At least one of the children said the assaults had gone on for nearly two years, court documents say.
After being read his Miranda Rights, Ivey told deputies he “wrestled” with the children which could have resulted in him “unintentionally touching the children inappropriately.”
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Last Friday, Phillip Stallings, a Fundamentalist Calvinist and the founder of the Biblical Flat Earth Society, was arrested and charged with 56 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. ABC-11 reports:
A Durham man faces 56 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor after officials found him in possession of child pornography.
During a joint investigation by the Durham County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Department of Homeland Security, officials found 40-year-old Phillip Stephen Stallings downloaded media that involved minors engaging in sexual activities.
He was arrested on Wednesday and charged with 28 counts of second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor and 28 counts of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor.
He was also served with outstanding warrants for financial card theft and cyberstalking.
Stallings was booked into the Durham County Detention Center.
On Thursday, the judge raised his secured bond to $500,000.
Stallings was arrested at his home Wednesday morning by Durham County deputies as part of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security investigation.
“[It’s] part of an investigation across the nation right now for possession of child pornography and creation of child pornography,” Durham County Assistant District Attorney Kendra Montgomery-Blinn said during a brief court hearing Thursday morning. “They had information that Mr. Stallings was sharing his materials on a social media platform.”
Authorities searched his computer and found sexually explicit images, Montgomery-Blinn said. The search is ongoing, and more charges could be filed, she added.
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A judge raised Stallings’ bond from $341,000 to $500,000 because of the number of charges against him and the nature of the charges. If Stallings posts bond, he is prohibited from any contact with children and from using any computers or other devices that would allow him to collect any photos or videos.
Stallings was convicted of several offenses between 1996 and 2008, including assault on a female, false imprisonment, credit card fraud, theft, assault on an officer and impaired driving, according to state Department of Public Safety records.
According to Stallings’ personal website, he is a “reformed Christian Apologist, Theonomist, Kinist and a former seminary student.” In a March 2016 post, Stallings cryptically wrote:
I have sinned. Even more, I have sinned online regarding my actions towards others in private messages. I have never denied my sin in acting disgracefully online. The sinful and wicked actions I committed are without question a horrible blight upon the name of Christ, the Church, and were harmful to the families and those that are my brothers and sisters in the Lord.
One thing became clear to me when I was not able to reach the ones I had offended and twas to make a public statement regarding this. This is now offered to those that were hurt and offended by my sinful actions and should serve as a public statement that I have openly acknowledged my sin. I openly confess that my actions were sinful and sincerely would ask for those that were offended by me for their forgiveness. Ultimately, I have sinned against God and I am ashamed of how I have acted towards Him.
While there is little I can do today regarding my past wickedness outside of this public apology, I can admit it was wrong and sincerely ask for forgiveness. I have repented and I need your prayers for me going forward. My life is not over and I wish to only do that which is right now. That is all I can do and hope that for those that have been offended by me, you will read this, forgive me, and seek to pray for me.
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Stallings doesn’t mention what it was that he was sorry for. I will leave it to readers to make their own conclusions about Stallings’ “sins.”
I am sure your heart yearns to stop the holocaust of abortion, the dismembering and burning alive of living babies in the womb.
However, I think that the devil, who is the mastermind behind abortion, has hoodwinked those of us who say we are prolife. The devil, who comes to “rob, kill, and destroy,” hates life. His plan goes beyond abortion. The trio he uses to rob, kill, and destroy are contraception, sterilization, and abortion. His first aim is to eradicate life before it is born. Abortion is his back-up plan.
Statistics tells us that clinic abortions are decreasing, but the aborting and stopping of life is increasing. Americans are now being introduced to “mail-to-your-home abortion pills” so mothers can freely annihilate their babies.
The American Life League states that “Using formulas based on the way the birth control pill works, pharmacy experts project that about 14 million chemical abortions occur in the United States each year.” That’s more babies killed through the Pill, and its various associated methods, than through abortion!
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The devil does not have the power to give life. He cannot give conception. And therefore, He seeks to undermine God’s power to give life. We, as God’s people of life must be truly pro-life. We must think pro-life. We must have God’s mind about pro-life. If we have the mindset to stop life by our own decision, or the pill, or other contraceptive devices, that’s not pro-life. It’s pro-choice.
Evangelicalism is inherently Fundamentalist, both theologically and socially. (Please see Are Evangelicals Fundamentalists?) Evangelicals who say they aren’t Fundamentalists either don’t understand Fundamentalism or are Evangelical-in-name-only. I know more than a few people who are liberal theologically, yet they continue to attend Evangelical churches. Family connections, comfort, familiarity, and worship style are often given as reasons why they remain. I even know a few atheists who go to church on Sundays. Strange, from my perspective, but each to his own, right?
Christian Fundamentalism affects every aspect of our lives, regardless of whether we are believers. Fundamentalists currently have the ear of President Trump and can be found holding cabinet level seats in his administration. Fundamentalists regularly come to the White House to pray for Trump, reminding him that he is God’s super-sexy chosen one. Most U.S. people believe the Christian God created the universe, and many of them believe the earth and all therein was created 6,023 years ago. A majority of people believe the Bible is a supernatural book written by God. Worse yet, many people believe the stories of the Old and New Testaments really happened. Never mind the fact that there is no evidence for stories such as the flood or the exodus, and no evidence outside of the Bible for the supernatural claims found in the New Testament. Despite these facts, millions and millions of Evangelicals believe the stories of the Bible are true; that the Bible is an inspired, inerrant, infallible text. Simply put, ignorance abounds.
There is only one cure — besides death — for Christian Fundamentalism: knowledge. And therein lies the problem. Evangelicals aren’t known for their Einstein-like intellectual prowess. Evangelicals are encouraged to just read the Bible and select Christian books that reinforce their beliefs. Questions and doubts are drowned in the sea of faith. Congregants are warned about how Satan uses doubt to lead people astray. People such as myself are tools of Satan, pawns of the Evil One. How dare we cause people to question and doubt!
In a post earlier today, I mentioned the YouTube video lectures of Yale University professor, Dr. Christine Hayes. As I listened to her lectures, I found myself saying, man, if only I had heard these things when I was training for the ministry at Midwestern Baptist College; if only I had stumbled upon these things as a pastor. Unfortunately, I was sheltered from any and all knowledge that challenged or rebutted Christian Fundamentalism, that called into question my beliefs. Of course, my pastors and professors knew that if I was exposed to non-Evangelical theology and history, it would likely lead to either unbelief or the adoption of liberal Christian beliefs. So, they hid the truth from me.
You can’t argue Christian Fundamentalists out of their beliefs. Deeply rooted in faith, it is almost impossible to get Evangelicals to question their system of belief. The only thing I know to do is encourage them to read non-Evangelical books and blogs and listen to videos that challenge the fundamentals of their faith.
The books of Dr. Bart Ehrman, a renowned New Testament scholar, are a good starting place:
Want to gain a good understanding of the Old Testament? Try Dr. Christine Hayes’ free course, Introduction to the Old Testament. Over 20 hours in length, this course will literally destroy everything you were taught by Evangelical pastors and professors about the Old Testament.
Converting Christian Fundamentalists requires exposing them to authors, writers, and speakers who challenge their sincerely held beliefs. Arguing with them and getting into shit-throwing Twitter battles is a waste of time. It might feel good to put them in their place, but if our goal is to make the world a better place, then we are going to have to evangelize Evangelicals with the gospel of reason and truth — one person at a time.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Although the result in The American Legion v. American Humanist Association case was entirely predictable, reading it still left me stunned. The case involves a dispute over whether a local government in the state of Maryland can tax its citizenry in order to maintain an overtly Christian World War I memorial.
With an objective Court, a decision recognizing that the state had no such coercive taxation power under the First Amendment would have been readily assured. After all, I am old enough to remember when the United States Supreme Court believed that government financially compelling free and independent individuals to endorse beliefs they find objectionable was always demeaning. When an individual’s objection to such forced extractions was not trivialized as the taking of mere offense, but a sacred objection against tyrannical government power. But, alas, that was the long-forgotten time of ….*checks notes*…. holy shit, just a year ago?
It is undeniably telling about the state of free conscience liberty that when faced with extending the same principles against forced extraction to non-religious or non-Christian citizens, the Court’s views on the issue abruptly changed. Nothing can excuse such blatantly different outcomes to the same objection, and no explanation other than outright religious bigotry against non-believers can explain the outcome in the Bladensburg cross case.
From the beginning of the Court’s plurality opinion, it becomes rather transparent that Justice Samuel Alito is seeking to diminish the objection of the non-believer against being forced to pay for a religious monument. According to Alito, the objection boils down to being merely offended at the sight of the monument. Moreover, in contrast, Justice Alito takes a great deal of time to elevate Christian moral objections regarding the views of the same monument. For example, Alito states that “[a] government that roams the land, tearing down monuments with religious symbolism and scrubbing away any reference to the divine will strike many as aggressively hostile to religion.”
Using Alito’s own logic here however begs the question: Why is a country that roams the land forcing people to pay for the erection and maintenance of religious monuments not seen as being aggressively hostile to non-religious people? More importantly, as noted by the dissent, tearing down these monuments is not the only solution. All the state of Maryland had to do to conform with First Amendment principles was stop forcing people to pay for the Christian monument and instead let the upkeep be maintained by willing donators. I will never understand why an insistence on willing participants was not enough to settle this case and that the only satisfactory outcome for the cross’s radical theocratic proponents was having the authority to force unwilling others to pay.
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In other words, according to the Court, the Latin Cross has transcended religion and become a secular symbol. This is literally the equivalent of saying that Jesus Christ is not a Christian figure, an idea so absurd that it becomes somewhat offensive that the Court would expect people paying attention to take this conclusion seriously.
Unfortunately, such a transparently biased outcome that favors Christianity at the expense of every other belief is becoming an all too familiar outcome, in a particularly dangerous time. As I have repeatedly stressed, we are in a unique moment in our history when a sizable portion of the population with whom religion plays no role lives alongside an equally sizable portion for whom religion plays a vital role. Disturbingly, the growth of a non-religious population that demands the same free conscience protections has come to be seen as a menacing threat to many religious people. It is now to the point that a religious zealot and bigot who just so happens to be the country’s former Attorney General can openly describe irreligious citizens as a dire threat to our country that must be stopped.
This is the two hundredth and twelfth installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is Christ Jesus by Deer Tick.
[Verse 1]
I woke up next to the king
He got up, gonna fix me something
And it made me sick
How I can’t trust him, no I can’t trust him
[Pre-Chorus]
Said the bottom of his belly
That’s where he would keep me
[Chorus 1]
Christ Jesus
As I’m floating
And you get a brick
And you drop it down on me
Christ Jesus
Have you seen us
We’re down on our hands and our knees
And tell us what’s the reason
[Verse 2]
Like a heart that’s hung in the sky
A hard-on when I die
And you passed away
And that horizon never came, no it never came
[Pre-Chorus]
It’s the time of the week
No one sees but me
[Chorus 2]
Christ Jesus
As I’m drowning
And I struggle to breathe
It’s your face I don’t see
Christ Jesus
Please don’t leave us
If in peace you’ll keep us
Well then you should have believed us
[Bridge]
Please let me inside
And hear out my desire
‘Cause soon I may die
Yes one day I will die
I’ll get eaten by the rust
You cremate and breathe the dust
And I’ll weaken your lungs
And I’ll bite off your tongue
[Chorus 3]
Christ Jesus
Please don’t leave us
Down on our hands and our knees
Or I’ll never believe, no
Christ Jesus
As I’m drowning
And I struggle to breathe
It’s your face I don’t see
The Sounds of Fundamentalism is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section. Let’s have some fun!
Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a video clip of Prophet Ed Citronnelli delivering a woman from the demon of oral sex. Be prepared for ejaculation. 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This is the two hundredth and eleventh installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is Origin of Species by Chris Smither.
