Our job is to Push Your Buttons

Religion and Reality --- Faith and Reason --- Reality and Religion

Religion

A
Button Pusher's Paradise

So You Think We're Crazy

Well, You Just Might Be Right

But before you leave this website,

we invite you to take note of a few things .

Definition: To push one's buttons means to produce an emotional response in someone, usually a negative response such as anger or fear.

Ten Reasons Why We've Pushed Your Buttons

1) Our job is to wake people up -- to kick butt -- to "shake the tree" -- to "upset the apple cart" -- to "spill the beans" -- to demonstrate that life is not what we've been led to believe it is by those who claim to know!° If we don't push any of your buttons, we haven't done our job.

2) Almost every major change on the planet has come from people who were considered, eccentric, outsiders, "on the edge," ° or even trouble makers or crazy people.

3) In an insane society a sane person would be considered crazy. Any judgment of someone else is simply a matter of perspective. Because everybody considers their perspective to be normal, it's always the other guy who is deviant and strange.

The bottom line is that nobody is wrong. Everybody is right, but only partially right. The missing pieces commonly lead people to draw erroneous conclusions.° The inaccurate conclusion, in turn, often precipitate some very dysfunctional behaviors.

4) Even though you're certain that you're right, you just might be wrong. Have you ever been wrong? While you were being wrong, did you know that you were being wrong? Is it possible that you are wrong about something right now?

5) We've spent years studying and creating the projects, the proposals, and the concepts presented on our websites. You can't expect to understand all of it without considerable study.

6) Even if some of what The Reasonables Team has to offer is wrong, ignoring the majority of it which is correct could be a very costly oversight on your part.

7) If you pass judgment on us based on what you believe and/or on reading only what you agree with, and/or on instructions not to read or listen to anything that is contrary to your religion, then you're stuck in a dysfunctional belief system.

8) If you believe that you already know all there is to know about any of the topic discussed on our websites, then you're the one who's crazy.

9) Society is on a fast track to political, economic, social, religious, and environmental disaster. If you don't wake up, now, you could wind up facing considerable grief and misery. Your complacency could even cost you your life.

10) You have been and still are making critical, irreversible life-altering decisions based on false, incomplete, and/or intentionally deceptive information. To see some easy-to-understand example of this, readers are directed to the page titled: Some Alternate Perspectives° and the page titled: The Rapture.°

11) Our job is to expose readers to ideas, proposals, and possibilities that are new to most people -- to examine the status quo in the light of any new information available -- to show that there's much in the universe that is as yet, still unknown -- and to allow those who choose not to listen to remain as they are.

NOTE: Apparently we can't count, either because the above list contains not ten, but eleven items. Readers can look at the eleventh item as our bonus gift or as evidence that we really are crazy. We'd prefer to call ourselves "The ultimate whistle blowers." The next section below will tell you why.

Expansion of Consciousness ...

Humanity Is Under Siege
by a Huge Expansion of Consciousness.

What Used to Work Is No Longer Working:

All you have to do to know this is true is to look around you. Notice the shape humanity is in and the condition of spaceship Earth. Most humans are living miserable lives at the survival level. Collectively we have altered our Earthly environment to the degree that to continue our present, collective behavior is guaranteed disaster.° We have two choices, change or die. And if you believe that the religiously inspired fairytale called The Rapture° is going to save you, you are in for a deep shock and a rude awakening. Consider The Reasonables Program -- Finding God By Faith And By Reason as your wakeup call.

Welcome to the Cosmic Titanic:

Whether you choose to admit it or not, we live in very dysfunctional, political, religious, social, environmental, and economic structures. The vast majority of our collective human behaviors are not sustainable. Behaviors such as unbridled population growth, wanton environmental destruction, indiscriminate pollution, et cetera, are leading us down the pathway to a massive and rather sudden population reduction.

On a global level, we are all riding a Cosmic version of the Titanic. Symbolically speaking, we are traveling at full speed, in the dark, in iceberg-filled waters, with the captain and all the officers asleep in their cozy little cabins of illusion. And what have they inspired us to do while they sleep? Spend our time and energy fighting over the deck chairs. Why do we fight instead of cooperate? Because most of us live our lives as mindless sheep, simply following someone else's instructions.

We Have Two Choices:

Using another analogy to demonstrate common human behavior, most people play life in one of two modalities. Some people play life the same way football players play football -- constantly at odds with those who are not on their side, fighting in an endless win/lose war, while glorifying and making heroes of the most aggressive and the most violent. In this modality, winning is never enough. The same war must be fought over and over again, time after time, season after season, year after year, in an endless recycling of yesterday. Every time someone wins, someone else loses.

As an alternative, some people play life the way members of an orchestra play music.° The goal of each orchestra member is to function in mutual cooperation with every other member and create of a product that benefits everyone. In the case of an orchestra, the product is beautiful music which can be a blessing for a hundred people or a hundred million people. Regardless of how many people hear the music, there is no significant difference or cost to those in the orchestra, itself. There are no losers. Which way are you playing?

Denial is no longer an option.

Survival dictates that we think and act "outside-the-box" of conventional behavior. We cannot solve our collective, social problems with either "More of the Same" or "The Same Thing Harder." A new, mutually cooperative approaches to our collective social problems is required, and the sooner we wake up to this, the less painful the transition will be.

A New Approach:

Our present social, economic, political, religious, environmental, and education systems are simply not producing the results we want. Problems are rampant and a new approach to solving these problems is required. The Reasonables Programs proposes a radical and at the same time, a fully functional approach to problem solving. Step one is to acknowledge that we have a problem.

Con-Artist Heaven:

Not only is Religion -- A button Pushers Paradise, it's also con artist's heaven. See the page titled: The Rapture° and the page titled: Finding Wolves in Sheep's Clothing.

Truth Challenge ...

A Truth Challenge:

The N.V.P. team challenges you or anybody else to examine our websites and prove us wrong, either in website content or in the validity and the functionality of the projects and programs we offer.

To those of you who take issue with anything on our websites, please contact us° and provide us with proof that anything included on our websites is false, deceptive or misleading.

1) Be specific! Show us exactly where and how any of our program are dysfunctional. Expose any places where we make hard-to-believe claims that are not backed up by evidence. Tell us if you find us expressing misleading statements, ignoring vital truths, or offering unprovable beliefs as facts. Tell us if you find us doing anything immoral, unethical, deceptive, or hypocritical. Point out any flaws, errors or omissions.

2) If you don't like one or more of our transformational programs, offer a better solution; not a fairytale solution, but a solution that actually works.

3) Tell us clearly and specifically what you are doing to implement your proposed solution.

We will correct any errors or, if the issue is conflicting opinion, we will, at our discretion, make a public note of your contradicting opinion on our website.

Can you, and/or the people who pay your salary, or the leaders of the religion you practice make this same (or an equivalent) statement?

This challenge has been posted on one or more of our websites since April 9, 2002. To date we have received Nyet! Nay! No! None! Nada! Zero! Zippoooo...! challenges to the accuracy of the content of our websites or to the validity and the functionality of the projects and programs we offer.

The truth grows stronger in the light of open questioning while lies, including lies of omission,° wither and die in that same light. "Know the truth and the truth will set you free." Join us as we open minds, enliven hearts, and fill wallets.

Attacking Christianity Attacking Christianity ...

The Accusation that We
Are Attacking Christianity:

Some say we are attacking Christianity. Actually we are pointing out the hypocrisy, the lies of omission and the dysfunctional behavior of a small group of ultra-conservative Christian leaders.

We want to make a clear separation between the millions of loving, kind, well-meaning Christians and the minority of highly vocal, right-wing, Christian-extremist leaders. We honor and respect the multiple millions (both leaders and lay Christians) who follow their heart and honor the teachings of Jesus, but, unfortunately, not everybody is open and honest. Our objective is to bring awareness to the distinguish between those with honorable intentions and those few with very different intentions. (See the page titled: hidden agenda,° the page called Creating a Christian Theocracy in America,° and the page titled: The Rapture.°)

To Whom Do We Address Our Message?

To Whom We DO NOT Speak:

1) We DO NOT speak to the closed-minded people who claim to already know all there is to know about God.
(See Ecclesiastes 11:5, 1 Corinthians 2:14, and Ecclesiastes 3:11)°

2) We DO NOT speak to those who ignore major significant Biblical passages such as the three mentioned above and Genesis 2:7, John 14:12, Psalms 82:6, Luke 17:21, and Ecclesiastes 3:19. (See the page titled: Relevant Biblical Passages.)°

3) We DO NOT speak to the ultra-conservative fundamentalist leaders and followers in every religion who will never question their beliefs.

4) We DO NOT speak to those to whom Jesus was referring when He said, "Give not that which is holy onto the dogs, and cast not your pearls before swine. . ." (Matthew 7:6)

5) We DO NOT speak to those who worship a God so weak that he needs human help to punish the unfaithful.

6) We DO NOT speak to those who think God has ordered then to use violence against non-believers.

To Whom We Speak:

1) We speak to the millions of devout religious followers who have accepted as fact and never questioned the veracity of all the stories being put out by their ultra-conservative religious leaders.

2) We speak to the millions more who are not devout followers of any particular religion -- people who have no idea what’s really going on in the ultra-conservative religious communities and who, if they knew, would be appalled at the antics of the ultra-conservative religious leaders.

3) We speak to the millions of impressionable young people who are in the process of claiming their own personhood -- young people who are still listening to others and questioning what we call reality -- young people who are deeply troubled by the world they see and wish it were different -- young people who are desperate for adult role models to emulate.

For Whom Do We Speak and on Who's Authority

We speak for the plants, the birds and the animals; for the whales, the seals and the eagles; for the children and grand children as yet unborn; and for the billions of humans on this planet who have no spokesperson. We speak for the ignorant, the unschooled and the naive. We speak for Planet Earth as a living being and for the 1.7 million species that share it with us. That is for whom we speak!

AND

We speak for the truth which knows no authority other than itself.

Let My Country Awake

Where the mind is without fear

and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been

broken up into fragments

by narrow domestic walls; ...

Where the clear stream of reason

has not lost its way into the

dreary desert sand of dead habit; ...

Into that heaven of freedom,

my Father, let my country awake.

From a poem in Gitanjali:

Rabindranath Tagore
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1913

hypocrisy hypocrisy ...

The Issue of Hypocrisy:

Some say we are hypocrites because we respond in kind to those who would, if given the opportunity, would control our lives based on their personal religious beliefs. Readers are directed to the page titled: Hypocrisy.

Pivotal Moment In Your Life Pivotal Moment In Your Life ...

You are once again
at a pivotal moment in your life.

The choice you are about to make, regardless of which option you choose,
will impact your life beyond your wildest belief.

Choice One -- go elsewhere --- Goodbye`

Choice Two -- Continue reading on this site --- The Project Content List

Some Related Web Pages

The Lunatic Fringe

The Critical Decision

Will You Help Us Help
Your Children, and Your Grandchildren?

1) Become One of Our Team Members:° Join us as we become one of the most potent forces in the fast-growing community of dedicated individuals and organizations working diligently to reverse Global Climate Change.

2) We are looking for maps, drawings and other depictions of well known objects seen in the year 2099 that will, if the ice caps continue to melt at the present rate, be under about forty feet of ocean water. (For example, a picture of New York harbor with the water forty feet deeper.)
If you are a source or can connect us to a source, please call us immediately at: 1-818-727-0727 1-800-488-9930.

3) There are at least a dozen ways you can participate in resolving these two major problems. Please see the page titled: How You Can Help Us Help You.°

4) Your financial support would be tremendously helpful to us in finding, and/or creating these graphic depictions. Please go to our donations page.°

Your Financial Support

Our work cannot continue without your financial support. To those of you who are and/or have supported our work, we are extremely grateful. For those of you who are willing to assist us financially by sending money or items of value that we can use or sell, please see our Donations Page.°

How You Can Help Us Help You° hy°

A list of several ways you can participate.

Why Your Donations Are Important° wy°

How and Where to Send your Donations° ha°

The God of Faith & Reason

Finding God
By Faith And By Reason

Site -- 10 --- Religion and Reality

Page -- So You Think We're Crazy

http://www.religionandreality.com/04-push-button.html

http://www.religionandreality.com/04-push-button.html#TruthChallenge

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