I'd like to point out to Thom that I attended a Catholic school for seven years, obliged to sit/stand/kneel in a pew six mornings a week--and it didn't turn me into a religious fundamentalist. One thing I noted that seemed out-of-order was that every month at confession time, you always felt pressure to confess to something because you would feel the odd-fish out if you were the only person who sat in the back. For me, it was the same thing every month: I lied three times, swore to my parents twice, and took the Lord's name in vain once. I was a sinner against the world, even if I didn't alaways know why. I learned to be a liberal in Catholic school.

@ DRichards,

As Hebrew whose ancestors spilled out onto Texan soil when we came to this country AND then blew outta that heck-hole . . . I am offended beyond all belief by the idea of . . . WAIT! You are correct! Then Israel would have an oil-bearing nation.

Holding something sacred doesn't mean it's religious per se, but that you hold something dear, with much respect and reverence.

Thom,

I respect Henry Louis (Skip) Gates, but your description of what happened doesn't match any of the descriptions I've heard. The version you told lacks most of the details. Here's are the details from the fullest version I read.

I think that Gates was returning from a trip out of town. He was driven by a professional driver. When he got home, he found that is front door was jammed. He and the driver went around and entered through a back door and then were trying to unjam the front door. The police say they got a call from a neighbor who reported seeing two men (she might have said two black men) breaking into Gates home.

What happened when the police arrived is in dispute. The driver had left, so the police only found Gates there. The police claim he refused show identification and became abusive. Gates claims that they refused to accept his ID as proof that he was in his home.

My inclination is to believe Gates based on what I know of him and the fact that I've never had any bad run-ins with him, whereas I've had a few unpleasant experiences with the police. But I wasn't there.

However, the reality is certainly more complex than your description of the incident which sounded like the police went to Gates home and arrested him for being inside his own home. Another detail is that I read the he doesn't own the home, it's provided for him by the Harvard University, where he works.

Thom, you could post the blue dog bad guys on your twitter one at a time with links to their contact page.

Yhom put the cart before the horse there. It's the other way around--

The USA and Germany seem similar not because Germany is like America, but because a huge number of Germans immigrated to the USA!

Also the German culture (with large quantities of capital from Germany) has (rather under the radar perhaps) sculpted a number of other nations as well, most noteably Argentina and other Latin American countries and Israel (via the huge influx of German Zionists).

I love all Thom does, and I learn so much from him; but on rare occassion he telescopes history or makes a boo-boo that makes me realize it's a big deal to get history straight even for winners like Thom.

I am disappointed that Thom Hartmann lets stand all the comments of his israeli apologist, ethnic-cleansing advocating. GUEST

He says nothing about ONGOING theft of land, water and every other resource that rightfully belongs to the indigenous Palestinian people and the destruction of their mosques and historic property.

SORRY, re-posting because first post didn't make sense.

It's about money, too.

By now, the Palestinians have very little.

An unfair match. And those who set up an unfair match and take advantage of one cannot be trusted.

The Israelis fit the bill and have become exploiters by choice.

Quark,

I’m impressed you went though most of the ancient history section of the library as a kid. I was mainly into playing sports. I can only remember reading three books as a kid.

I don’t know if your comment about Akhenaten was just sharing of information or if it was in reference to my comment about Thom saying that Tim (the caller) had studied comparative religion, whereas I said it was more likely that got his information from Afrocentrism.

I probably learned about Akhenaten at a later age than you did. However, I believe that his religious beliefs are often misunderstood and that Tim was incorrect in repeating that misunderstanding.

Akhenaten didn’t invent monotheism and wasn’t a monotheist. Monotheism is the belief in one god and the denial of the existence of any other gods. Akhenaten didn’t deny the existence of other gods. He minimized the importance of the other Egyptian gods and elevated Aten to being the most important god, and he worshipped and glorified Aten.

It’s a somewhat complex story that can be viewed many ways. But to claim that Akhenaten invented monotheism (which I’ve challenged above) doesn’t take into account that his religious views were abandoned after his death and Egypt returned to it’s more polytheistic practices. It’s unlikely that Jewish monotheism grew from Akhenatens religious beliefs. After his death, his name and image were removed from most places. He remained unknown for several thousand years.

Egyptology is really complicated and takes study and concentration to understand. Part of the difficulty is that a particular person or god can be known by several different names and that there often are different versions of the same name.

For instance, Akhenaten was Amenhotep IV before he decided that Aten should be the main god. Then he changed his name to Akhenaten. Amenhotep means Amun is satisfied and Akhenaten means Effective spirit of Aten. (Obviously I looked these up.) So his name change indicates a change of favorite god.

This brings up something that may be nothing. It depends on whether I heard and understood Thom correctly.

I thought that Thom said to Tim that Akhenaten worshiped the sun god Amen and that’s related to the fact that Christians and Jews say “Amen” at the end of a prayer. I’m not sure that Thom said that, but it would fit in with context of the conversation. It’s true that Akhenaten worshipped the sun god, but that was Aten, that’s why he changed his name to Akhenaten. Amun was the god of air and breath. JPenley challenges the Amen (Egyptian god) to amen (as an affirmation) at the end of a prayer connection on a linguistic basis in a post above.

I had an interesting thought while writing this post. The first commandment is essentially, “I am the Lord your God… you shall have no other gods before me.” “No other gods”; I wonder if that’s an indication that early Jews didn’t deny the existence of other gods, but like Akhenaten elevated their favorite god (whose name can’t be spelled or pronounced) above the others. The Exodus story does have the Jews worshipping a golden bull when Moses was up on Mount Sinai. When ancient nations warred, it was often assumed that the god of the winning side was more powerful than the god of the losing side.

I didn’t mean to spend so much space on that part, but thoughts were flowing.

Here’s why I wrote that I thought it was more likely that Tim’s opinions were informed by Afrocentrism than by the study of comparative religion. A deep study of comparative religion is fairly rare among any group, but a casual or deep study of Afrocentrism is very common among African-Americans of certain generations and is probably growing more popular over time.

The African origins of humankind and the view that Ancient Egypt, which they most popularly refer to as Kemet, as a black African nation from which all modern knowledge, i.e., philosophy, religion, mathematics, science, developed and was spread around the world are basic tenets of Afrocentrism. So when I hear an African-American man call the show and mention the African origins of the human race and Egypt, I assume he’s familiar with Afrocentrism.

Thom, on the other hand, who has devoted a lot of time to the study of religion and spirituality, assumes the caller has studied comparative religion.

I could be wrong, but I’m pretty confident that if we knew Tim’s reading list or where he got his information from, I’d be proven right.