Florida city decides to rename Old Dixie highway to President Barack Obama highway. Oh this will not go over well.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

Old Dixie Highway is no more in Riviera Beach, Fla. Instead, motorists are driving on President Barack Obama Highway. 

Riviera Beach officials renamed the portion of the highway in their city limits, and the new sign carrying the name of the nation’s first black president went up Thursday. Old Dixie, officials said, paid homage to an era that glorified slavery. 

The name was “symbolic of racism, symbolic of the Klan, symbolic of cross burnings, and today we are stepping up to a new day, a new era,” Riviera Beach Mayor Thomas Masters told WPTV on Thursday.

One elderly lady claims to have seen a cross burning on this same highway. Some how I think she might get the opportunity to see another one.

But this is a good thing.

After all I it is well past time for Florida to start moving into the future and leave behind their racist past. I mean screw those old racists anyhow.

Having said that I hope the city has invested in a whole lot of back up "President Barack Obama highway" street signs, because you just KNOW the first dozen or so are going to be vandalized or stolen.

After all, this IS Florida.

Forget those newfangled religions of the Bronze Age, some in Greece are going old school. REALLY old school.

Courtesy of Public Radio International:

Along with a few thousand others, he (Exsekias Trivoulides)is taking part in the Prometheia festival, which celebrates the ancient Greek hero Prometheus, who helped humans by stealing fire from the gods. 

It's the most important annual festival for followers of The Return of the Hellenes — a movement trying to bring back the religion, values, philosophy and way of life of ancient Greece, more than 16 centuries after it was replaced by Christianity. 

These people consider Greece to be a country under Christian occupation. 

"People want to identify with something in the past — where they came from — so as to know where they are going," Trivoulides said. "If you don't know your past, you don't have a future. 

"It's going back to the roots. It makes me feel the continuation through the millennia." 

Well I am sure that the Greek Christian community is open minded and understanding enough to respect the idea of others embracing their heritage and returning to the roots of their culture.

In 2007, an official of the Orthodox Church described them as, "a handful of miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion." 

Or not. You know that is EXACTLY my opinion of  Christianity.

Personally I love the idea of people discarding Christianity in favor of searching for the faith that it trampled beneath its feet, before usurping its festivals, holidays, and traditions and absorbing them like a giant religion gobbling amoeba.

To be honest there is NO more reason to put your faith in the God of Christianity than there was to place it with Athena, or Poseidon, or Aphrodite.

Besides there was a time BEFORE monotheism, when all societies believed in in polytheism. And before that in Animism and Spritism.

And yes that includes the Jews. For those who doubt that fact I suggest you watch this.
 (Warning the video can shake the very foundation of a person's faith.)

Remember mythology is only religion that has been cast aside in favor of a shiny new system of faith.

An homage to the light that science now shines on the universe around us, and a look back at the darkness from which we emerged.

"It was science that brought us out of the darkness, and showed us what we needed to know. That opened our eyes to reality. That gave us everything the gods denied us."

And yet today science and education are under constant attack. NOT because they are failing to do their jobs, but because they are doing it too well.

We owe it to our children, our country, and our species to constantly learn and discover, so that we may someday truly understand from whence we came, and to where we are going.

A final thought for tonight.

And if I may add:

You have free will, use it.

You possess the most highly developed brain on the planet, take advantage of that.

You are the product of your ancestors greatest hopes and dreams, make them proud.

And do not forget that the next generation is looking to us for guidance, don't let them down.