Mysticism, Superstition and Christianity

One of the things that Christians often say to reassure themselves and each other is that Christianity isn't an ordinary religion; that it's somehow special. Some even say that Christianity isn't a religion at all because of how fundamentally different it supposedly is from all over religions.

To those on the outside of the cult this claim seems utterly absurd. Christianity is one of three Abrahamic faiths built on the same foundation - JUDAISM. About two thirds of the Christian scriptures are actually older Jewish works with the New Testament only making up twenty-seven books of the Bible which has a total of sixty-six (some versions have more or less). Even within the New Testament constant reference is made to the Old Testament, so in what way do Christians contend that their religion is different, it's just Judaism plus a sprinkle of their own flavor.

Within this little extra portion the Christians have Jesus who is usually a big part of the argument that Christianity is different, because rather than getting into heaven on the merit of whether or not you do great things or are a good person Jesus offers his life and salvation even to the most wicked and fallen among us. This policy of vicarious redemption, this suspension of justice and wrath to save the wicked, is meant to make God seem more loving or merciful but actually it turns God's judgment into a complete joke.

God is said to be just and yet he is willing that a murderer get into Heaven for the act of accepting this sacrifice but not willing that someone who gives their whole life to helping others but dies without accepting should get in. Let's say there is a soldier in the second World War who happens to be a believing Jew but who has not accepted Christ and he gives his life fighting to free his brothers and sisters from the clutches of the Nazis and protects the entire free world with his sacrifice. This man who fought and died for the freedom and well being of others would go to Hell in most versions of Christianity for the mere act of not accepting the impossible tale of Jesus. In an ironic twist this Jewish man would be tortured for eternity for staying true to the version of Yahweh he was taught in the Jewish scriptures and rejecting the false Messiah Jesus Christ.

The idea that God shows preferential treatment only to those who grovel repentant at his feet and revokes mercy from any who don't no matter their character or actions makes Christianity absurdly unjust. Christians celebrate this, however, and look at it as one of the advantages of Christianity. Indeed this doctrine does help Christianity bring people in by taking advantage of the guilt of those in our society who have done something wrong. This is why prison evangelism is so strong and why conversions in prison are so common, because Christianity has made itself appealing to criminals.

But to those who aren't a part of the super secret club of Christianity the whole doctrine makes it repugnant and even more so when you consider the price, an innocent man's life. Christians claim to love Christ while in the same breath hoisting their sins gladly onto his shoulders so they can walk away without the burden of their guilt scot-free. If they truly knew Jesus and loved him would they not choose, instead, to take the punishment they deserved? In truth they love Jesus only because he did something for them, only because in his blood they are set free, and they happily WASH themselves in the blood of an innocent man.

Symbolism, Structure and Myth

Another point on which Christians insist is that their religion has better archaeology to back it up than any other. This is a heavily debatable point especially since no archaeologist has ever uncovered proof of the supernatural claims of any religion. So no religion stands on better footing when it comes to proving the reality of their supernatural claims.

Often we see Christian apologists like Lee Strobel, William Lane Craig, etc trying to make the historical case for Jesus as if it isn't enough to take it on faith as if there need be proof. Rather than own up to the fact that they believe it in spite of its absurd claims they attempt to establish, laughably, that the superstitious conjurations of their sacred texts are not just the writings of adherents and zealots but are historical accounts worth taking seriously.

Jesus, they say, isn't just a figure from their faith, but is a real historical figure who really performed magical miraculous deeds and really rose again. In doing this however Christians miss out on the big slam-dunk home-run aspect of their faith that makes them just another religion - the use of spooky superstitious horseshit and symbolism.

What makes the Gospels myth and not historical accounts is their use of symbolism, allegory, themes and story-telling techniques that seem at home in mythology but make no sense when taken out of context and reinterpreted to be literal truth. Take, for example, the arbitrary period that Jesus stays in the tomb.

Christians will say that it was three days, but Jesus died on Friday and was raised on Sunday, the real amount of time he was dead is one day, he simply "rose on the third day". Now if Jesus really was the son of God and really lived in real historical times what in the fuck was the point of staying dead for a day? What took Jesus so long to come back to life?

Now some might say, "he went down to Hell and redeemed souls who had died before he came" but this is actually a legend invented hundreds of years into Christianity it's not in the Gospels. The answer is symbolism and story structure. Think about the dynamics of what happens in the story. The Disciples are torn, beaten, Peter has cursed Christ before the cock crows, they are back in Jerusalem moping around. They believe Jesus is dead and buried. This is a low point in the story, it's a moment of doubt where no one knows what to believe anymore, and then, like the sun rising again after the darkest night, Jesus returns.

And the Gospels all tell it differently. John, the latest Gospel written, has Thomas still doubting until he sticks a finger in Jesus' wounds. The original version of Mark dramatically and mysteriously ends on a cliff-hangar where the women find the tomb empty, talk to an enigmatic man and then simply scatter in fear.

The story of the dying and rising hero is so common throughout ancient times and even today in our modern myths and stories we always have a moment where our heroes look beaten only to rise from the ashes.

What other reason can there be for the delay?

In fact why would Jesus need to have died at all, in reality the idea of washing in his blood is SYMBOLIC, it's a spiritual concept, not a physical one. The idea that this MUST BE a real retelling of the real adventures of a real flesh-and-blood savior is absurd and the idea that somehow the existence of these intricately woven pieces of mythology is evidence of a historical Jesus is highly questionable at best. That isn't to say no one ever existed to inspire some of the legends rather I am saying that Christians miss the forest for the trees.

Superstition is a sign of Humanity's Design

The Old Testament is riddled with superstitious rituals and absurd claims. Witches and necromancers are considered real things and there are strict rules for "ritual cleanliness" that, if not followed, can result in you being a target for the wrath of God himself. There are, of course, detailed instructions on how to butcher an animal and make it an offering for Yahweh, and how to sprinkle its blood and arrange its organs to best please God.

Why would this be part of your religion? If you indeed claim that this God of the Old Testament is the same one you serve why in the hell did he require such bizarre and barbaric things as animal sacrifices? Why does he bear such a striking resemblance to an invention of the human mind, a warlike plague-bringer who sits upon a throne and demands the smell of burning flesh to appease his anger - AND YOU THINK THIS BETTER than ancient pagan faiths? You think this superior?

There is only one description I can think of for such practices - superstition. The sort of thing that makes people throw salt over their shoulder or take care not to walk under a ladder - the idea that somehow the rules of reality are governed by unseen forces that can be appeased or manipulated through the use of ritual or magic. And the Old Testament claims that magic, curses, speaking to the dead and bringing the dead back to life are all possible even without God and any who do these dark things are to be put to death.

Even in the New Testament rituals like Communion are set up, a symbolic act of mock cannibalism where you take in a part of the savior's flesh and blood. Many sects of Christianity today have other rituals, such as baptism, and let's not forget that both Jews and Christians cut the foreskin off of their male children, an act of ritualistic mutilation.

The point of bringing all this up is to make Christians wonder whether or not there is any reason to take all this stuff literally or to consider it necessary to read the Bible as if it is a history book. Apologists work hard to make Christianity sound somewhat historical to help ease the doubts of believers who treat the existence of God and the salvation of Christ as intellectual matters rather than merely spiritual ones. But all of those attempts fail utterly when you bring up the bizarre superstitions of the Old and New Testament, the fact that so many stories are riddled with impossible feats and mythic heroes and told with structure, symbolism and lessons to the story.

The question is, at the center of this very man-made religion with so much superstition and mythology, at it's core, are you confident that there is actually a God there?

When I dug down and read between the lines I found Christianity to be an invention of mankind and I have yet to see any evidence that it's beliefs mean anything outside of what they mean to those who already believe. Christians are welcome to the spiritual aspects of their faith, as empty as they may seem to me, but when they start asserting that it is real beyond their own belief in it they will butt up against those outside the cult who see it for what it is.

If you are a Christian and by some chance you stumbled upon this I'd ask that you do research. Read your Bible and study where it came from, how it was put together, how much it was changed and what it actually says. Don't take my word for it but also don't swallow down what some apologist or pastor says without questioning it. Remember that doubt is not something to be feared and no God worth a damn would ever punish you for it.

The Lack of an Answer

One of the most commonly and openly committed logical fallacies that Christian apologists love to engage in is the use of mystery or the unexplained to propose that God is the best or only explanation that makes any sense. Often times they will steep a subject in it's own complexity and play up the intricate inter-workings or causes and effects that would have had to all come together to make this thing happen... so there must be some form of God, some agency, some purpose to it all.

This tendency to read agency into things is one of the foundations of superstition and therefore serves as a psychological crux propping up all of religion. The mysteries that apologists often exploit are those that human beings most desperately want answered. Where did we come from? What is the origin of the Universe? What is the meaning of our lives? Are we just here or do we have a higher purpose? And, if it is all by natural processes, how can that be so?

That last bit of question begging, asking HOW all this could happen by natural processes, is often the most plaintive of the questions, pulling at the hearts of everyone. Everyone wants to believe they were special and no one seems willing to accept the idea that natural processes can be responsible for everything.

Yet enduring mysteries, even ones that seem insoluble and without resolution, are not a call to invent something spooky or, even worse, to cower beneath the shadow of something spooky that ancient people invented thousands and thousands of years ago. It is utterly human to want to fill in those mysteries and even to invoke agency to do so but it is also ignorant and it is even more ignorant to merely choose whatever supernatural agent happens to have been handed to us by our parents or the society around us.

The fact that children most typically have the religion of their parents and that religious denominations are cut almost as hard as political and geographical borders is a telling one indeed. It says that many people share the psychological need or desire for a creator or some sort of superstition but it also shows how misguided they are to put their faith in the cults of the past.

And this brings in another fallacy, the idea that these ancient schools of superstition (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc) are somehow MORE likely to be true because they endured thousands of years. Of course they've changed and evolved a great deal in that time and the beliefs of believers are not only vastly different today than they were five hundred or even a hundred years ago but there are so many varieties of belief even within those religions. Sects diverging like a thousand splinters from a bolt of lightning all with varying beliefs but all with the certainty that they understand the answer to the mystery better than the others.

We all understand, at least those of us outside the cult do, that something like Scientology is a load of shit, absolutely devoid of facts at its very core - an exploitative cult with bizarre ideas about ancient galactic empires and brainwashed alien spirits. But in the same breath people will praise the unseen hand of the Jewish God - a warlike plague-bringer who, sometime in the early 1st century, dispatched a constituent part of himself into the womb of a teenage virgin so that this incarnated divine child could set up a new more merciful covenant with humanity and then, through a blood-magic ritual of atonement where he dies and returns to life, save at least some of us from the wrath we all deserved because two ancient people in a garden somewhere took bad dietary advice from a talking snake. For some reason we can all tell Scientology is bullshit but as a society we give something as old and big as Christianity a free pass to be as full of magical mumbo-jumbo as is possibly imaginable.

Feel free to use this quote:

So when someone appeals to mystery in a talk about apologetics, when they appeal to the vastness of the Cosmos, when they start talking about the "improbability" of it all coming together just so and then they run and hide beneath some Middle Eastern deity who murders children, supports slavery and brings down horrid plagues on the heads of any who displease him their reasoning is flawed. They have forgotten the very mystery they were just praising and instead invested in some horseshit humanity made up to fill in the gaps. This is why it's called a God of the Gaps argument.

This came up earlier this year when I was discussing internet celebrity Joshua Feuerstein and his absurd 100,000 dollar challenge to disprove God, the good pastor Josh makes a great appeal to mystery where he draws a circle and then puts a dot at the center. Our knowledge of the Universe is the dot and the circle, more or less, is the rest of what's OUT THERE, all of the UNKNOWN Cosmic goings on. The problem is that Josh's answer to this isn't to be inclusive. He's not asking people to become New Age gurus who accept and cannibalize different parts of all religions to build one big UBER religion, he wants you to abandon the idea of the mystery of the Cosmos immediately after you've agreed to it and agree to his bullshit theology. He only wants you to acknowledge that HIS God and only his God might be out there and, because you can't disprove it, that you're a moron for disbelieving as strongly as you do.

The problem isn't that Josh's God is impossible or is definitely not out there, it's that Josh's God is no more likely to be out there than any of the other shit human beings have believed in since the dawn of superstition. Josh isn't actually open to the vastly weird Cosmic intelligences, gods or not, that might be out there. He isn't interested in talking about Bleebblarp from the Irulian Galaxy Cluster who is an almost omnipotent psychic being that can bend time and space however he sees fit. Josh doesn't want to find out and isn't open to finding out that a group of super-intelligent interdimensional bunny rabbits were contracted by an even smarter more intelligent being called Marvin the Space Penguin to build our Universe.

Apologists making these arguments aren't open to the mystery actually being answered, they want to shove their already existing beliefs into the gap they've just opened. This is part of the proof that apologetics is just verbal masturbation, or a verbal circle-jerk. Christians making other Christians feel reassured that they aren't wrong by fallaciously appealing to mystery or complexity and making sure their God sorta kinda could maybe work as an explanation if you squint real hard, clap your hands and say "I do believe in fairies".

Part of being open-minded is admitting that you could be wrong. I openly do this, I openly admit Gods could be out there. All kinds of weird shit could be out there and I want to know if it is but faith, superstition, they're a hindrance not a help, they're far more likely to close a mind than open it. The lack of an answer is not proof that your answer is the only one and sticking an even bigger mystery into an existing one does not help.

Author's Note:

Okay so this was a very off the cuff and spontaneous post but Hubpages (where I do most of my writing) has redesigned their site to look like shit, removed feedback features that are fundamental to the site and has basically shit the bed 100%. Chances are you (who am I addressing this to? No one reads this shit) will be seeing more posts here and over on my Bible study blog: fuckthebible,wordpress.com

If All The World Forgot Your God He Would Not Be Remembered

This religion thing really holds us back and the older I get the harder it is to see religion as a positive influence in any way. It really is a shame because religion provides people with a sense of community, of greater identity and destiny and can also help prompt people to give to charitable causes and get more involved with their fellow human beings. However religion also tends to hi-jack your identity and establish itself as an indispensable cornerstone not just of your individual life but of human civilization and society as a whole.


Religion takes certain functions that a normal secular community organization might perform. It feeds the hungry, gives money to causes, organizes community wide events, etc etc. So when it is pointed out that the ideas at the heart of religion, the doctrines and claims made about supernatural phenomenon, are actually false or at the very least unfalsifiable, people use the positive functions that religion has adopted as a shield.


And it works both ways. For when churches and sects of Christianity fail to properly execute these borrowed parts of society people will claim that religion isn't really ABOUT ALL THAT and is really about the message of Jesus' love. For example let's say a Mega Church Televangelist asks his congregation for money and uses that money on opulent hotel suites, private jets and high end prostitutes. When the transgressing Televangelist is at last discovered in his sin the excuse is that “not all churches are like that” and that “no true Christian behaves that way. This person is just in it for the money!”


Thus religion can shield itself from any ugly truth by being a chameleon, or more accurately a Chimera. This is why there are so many thousands of differing views, sects and denominations of the Christian faith, because over the years Christianity has developed a flavor for almost anyone. Hell there are even Christian Atheists, a term that seems an oxymoron at first glance.


The Catholic Church is a great example of religion hiding behind just how fiercely it is embedded into society and the collective consciousness.


The Catholic Church was once the authority on what people were allowed to believe. As many nations had officially adopted Catholicism there were times in European history where questioning and speaking against the Orthodoxy of the Church was punishable by death. Galileo, whose famous observations definitively overturned centuries of false geocentric dogma, was a victim of this very tyranny. The Christian faith, as a whole, not just in regards to the Catholics, made it quite clear that the average believer was not allowed to engage in free thinking when it came to their beliefs. While theologians often questioned and decided in committee various points of doctrine questioning whatever they ordained orthodox was not allowed.


Religion established that to question the truths it put forth was taboo, forbidden, and might get you killed or at the very least run out of town and cast out of society. Religion is thus made an intimate part of people's lives and their base of knowledge, so that questioning its truths was seen as more perverse and foolish than even questioning mathematics or logic. Whatever you believe, the truths of religion were above that, they were sacred.


I personally take offense to the idea that any idea can be sacred. In point of fact I hold that the only sacred truth is that no truth is sacred. Sacred here meaning above reproach or above disposal. We should be ready, at all times, to throw out utterly any truth shown to be false and to only adopt new truths tentatively and with an understanding that they might be temporary.


So when people say that we cannot or should not tear down the Catholic Church for their organized and merciless cover-up of institutionalized child molestation I can only assume that they are operating from the point of view that the Catholic Church represents core sacred truths that must be defended. But I find it insulting that those in power at the Vatican hide behind the centuries of mind-control they have instilled in the poor folks of Europe and the Americas to get away with their sinister criminal enterprise.


Make no mistake about it that the Catholic Church is, and always has been, a Criminal Organization designed to procure opulence, wealth, and influence. That last piece may seem like a rather minor one, influence, but it is actually the main currency that the Catholic Church uses to buy its immunity from both public scrutiny and international outrage.


By embedding itself so deeply in people's identities and lives religion assures that although the ideas at its core are untrue and often rotten that it will be defended and believed in for centuries to come. And yes despite moderate announcements to the contrary religious truths are often rotten to the core. If the Bible were not widely believed before being read, that is to say if an ordinary morally decent person were able to mature first and then encounter the Bible and read it, there would be no one on planet Earth defending the Bible as some source of truth, moral or otherwise.


The older I get the more it disgusts me to have to be discussing this stuff in the twenty-first century when our thinking should have gone far beyond the minor desert god El/Yahweh about whom ancient peoples in the Middle East wrote legends and stories. Allegories and fables with lessons and morals long outdated and lacking in use for modern humans as anything other than literary curiosities and mythological vestiges of when people were foolish enough to hold things as sacred or self-evident.


We are better than this as a species and as a culture. We will not move forward until we strip away the respect and protection that has been given to religious ideas under the guise of protecting people's feelings. Hell Churches are often exempt from TAXES! Although it is an uphill battle that will likely see little progress in any of our lifetimes I think it is necessary if the human race is to have any hope of moving on from this planet and making our destiny a positive one. We must emphasize that while it is your right and your “choice” to believe whatever you want that you live in a society of other beings who must interact with you and if your beliefs and superstitions continue to get in the way of normal progress, of scientific inquiry, of education, of social equality like gay marriage and LGBT rights you will not be unopposed.


Far from sacred religious ideas are often the most suspect, most superstitious and most often disproved. Just as the geocentric model was overturned by Galileo. Just as the idea that disease was caused by evil spirits was replaced by Germ Theory. Just as the magical spoken incantation that created life in Genesis has been overturned. We should not defend or leave un-assailed ideas that assert themselves as sacred. All ideas are open to scrutiny, and the fact that religious ideas resist this openness is a telling sign that those that laid the framework of religion and those that maintain that framework, the Apologists, Popes and Preachers, in some way know that it's all bullshit.



We will stop you, one day, from poisoning the minds of generation after generation and helping to squander the hopes of the entire human race. And this goes for all fundamental and supposedly sacred truths of politics as well, for politics is just as damaging and is holding us back just as much as religion is, if not more... but that is a discussion for another time and perhaps a different blog entirely...

Authors Note:

Okay so I haven't done a post here in a few years but I plan to start doing them semi-regularly, whenever I have something to say about Christianity or atheism that doesn't really fit for a hub on hubpages. By the way that's where I've been for anyone reading this or discovering this blog today I do most of my writing about atheism/theism on http://titen-sxull.hubpages.com/

Also I didn't draw any fun MS Paint stuff for this one, which used to be my MO on this blog way back in the day. So here's one I did recently for hubpages, just threw it together, it has no correlation to the post above:

Stay tuned for more ramblings in the future...

Why is Your God Real?

This idea was rolling around in my head for a little while now and I finally decided to put it to paper, digital paper I guess. There have been a great many gods and goddesses, deities existed in almost every ancient culture and there are still many deities who are believed in today. Most gods that man has believed in are no longer believed in. The Greek Gods are the easiest example I can give of a pantheon that simply isn't believed in anymore. Oh I suppose if you looked hard enough you could find a handful of crazy people still clinging to their beliefs in Athena, and maybe even a few who pretend to believe for tradition sake but the vast majority of people understand that the Greek gods simply aren't real. So my question is, what makes your God real? What makes Yahweh anymore real than Zeus? What makes Allah more real than Odin?

I understand that the phrase "more real" probably doesn't make a lot of sense but you get the idea I hope. Why is it that Jesus is seen as being real while so many other gods are tossed right out as being absurd or silly?

Yahweh Versus Zeus

Which one of these gods do you think is more likely to exist? If you answered Yahweh I would have to tell you that you're wrong, in my opinion of course. Think about it for a moment, Zeus isn't all powerful, he isn't the God who created the entire Universe and he doesn't necessarily love everyone on Earth. He's sometimes a total douche, he comes down to Earth to seduce mortal women and he throws lightning around. Zeus isn't the perfect all knowing creator of the Universe as Yahweh is believed to be. In my mind this makes Zeus far more plausible. After all Zeus is just an ultra-powerful human being, essentially anyway, he makes lightning and is in charge of things on Mount Olympus. The Christian God on the other hand is blown all out of proportion, being essentially infinite in power, love and everything else. Yahweh is limitless, Zeus is limited, so really who is more likely to exist?



Now obviously I don't believe that Yahweh or Zeus actually exist, at least I've never encountered any compelling evidence for either of them. So the question is what makes Yahweh real and Zeus fictional? Is it the fact that the Greek religion was co-opted by the Romans who then adopted Christianity as their empire collapsed? Obviously people drifted out of belief in Zeus and into belief in the Christian God but it seems clear that whether either deity actually existed had little bearing on the shifting beliefs. They used to spread Christ at the point of a sword with conquering armies bringing Jesus to indigenous peoples by force. If native peoples in Europe hadn't been forced into conversion would the gods of these ancient peoples have survived? Would we all be praying to Odin and avoiding the mischievous Loki? Would it be Thor's wrath that caused Hurricane Katrina instead of Yahweh's?

The Lack of Evidence

I could sit here and compare gods and goddesses all day and break down their characteristics or I could get right to the point. There's no evidence for any of these deities and many of the same arguments theists use today to prove their god have been in use for centuries or even longer. So why is it that we feel so comfortable calling Zeus imaginary but the moment someone calls Yahweh imaginary people get up in arms about it? Simply because Yahweh and Allah are the mainstream delusions of the day doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to come right out and say it. I understand the desire to be as agnostic as possible and to veer away from the arrogance that sometimes comes with Strong-Atheist territory but if these modern Gods are as indistinguishable from the imaginary as Zeus why shouldn't we say so? Of course they MIGHT exist, the possibility, however remote, is still there.

This is why I propose the invention of a new term, Approximately Imaginary, the term refers to things like fairies, mermaids, Bigfoot, ghosts, greys, goblins and gods and all manner of things that are indistinguishable from the imaginary. This way we can still be sort of sensitive to the fragile feelings of the theists while still explaining that as far as we know, and to a good degree of certainty, these things simply do not exist. We must leave room for doubt of course as there is always a possibility that one of these things exists but as far as we know they are imaginary, thus they are approximately imaginary. They are imaginary to the best of our knowledge and human knowledge as a whole.

The Question Remains

So to the theists the question remains. What is it that sets your god or gods apart from the ancient gods who have all gone into obscurity and are firmly considered mythical. Do you not see the hypocrisy in claiming your God is real while denouncing and attacking other Gods as false ones who do not exist? You have no evidence that your own God is more valid than the Hindu gods or the Norse gods or the Aztec gods.

The phrase has been oft repeated that theists are atheists to all gods but their own and my question is, WHY? There are gods that we all agree are approximately imaginary - which God isn't imaginary? Please understand that I don't mean we should simply label all gods imaginary but if a god doesn't have evidence supporting its existence than what else can we truly call it and why should we believe in it? Theists - What makes your God real and all the others fakes?

Santa and God: The Nature of Belief

For most adults the Holiday season is a stressful one, most of us are clamoring, shopping and are forced to spend time with family members we ordinarily wouldn't need to interact with. For children, however, it is a very magical time and for small children it marks the arrival of Santa Claus aka Saint Nick, aka Chris Cringle, aka, you get the picture. Santa is a magical being who grants good little boys and girls gifts on Christmas. There aren't many adults who actually believe in Santa, instead superstition of another kind takes the place of the Santa story for many adults.



Sometimes people ask me why I, as an atheist, like to poke fun at religious beliefs - in particular those of the Christian faith. Why not just leave well enough alone? I reply, "Wouldn't you poke fun at an adult who still believed in Santa?"

Some are likely to be offended by comparing belief in God to belief in Santa but I'm going to show that there is no real difference in the fundamental nature of the belief and that God and Santa have an awful lot in common.

The Santa Comparison:

God is a supernatural being.

Santa is a supernatural being.

God lives in Heaven but when we look up into space we don't see him or any evidence of him.

Santa lives at the North Pole but when we look at the North Pole we don't see him or any evidence of him.

God has supernatural helpers called angels.

Santa has supernatural helpers called elves.

God takes Elijah to Heaven in a flying fiery chariot.

Santa delivers presents in a flying sleigh.

God punishes the wicked for their misdeeds and rewards the righteous. He knows the inner workings of your mind and knows everything you do and say.

Santa punishes the naughty for their misdeeds and rewards the nice. He sees you when you're sleeping and knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good.

God can be prayed to in order to gain things. Ask and you shall receive.

Santa can be written to in letters. Ask and you shall receive.

God must be believed on Faith.

Santa must be believed on Faith.

God is offered money and was, at one time, offered animal sacrifices.

Santa is offered milk and cookies.

God can be in all places at once.

Santa can visit all houses in one night.

You get the idea, the similarities are numerous. Why is it that as we grow up a belief in Santa is discarded but the belief in God is not? Obviously both beliefs are similar in nature and both are irrational. They are not based in evidence but in faith. So why is faith in Santa, at a certain age, deemed absurd but Faith in God not?



We would ridicule a grown man or woman who sincerely retained a belief in Santa Claus yet MANY actually revere and respect people who hold strong belief in God. Why? Surely the story of Santa brings hope, as does the story of God and Jesus but hope is not a good reason to believe the story is true. The fear of punishment is also not a good reason. If I disbelieve in Santa I might get coal in my stocking, if I disbelieve in God I might go to Hell but surely the threat of punishment isn't a good reason to accept an irrational belief. If, for instance, I was told aliens would probe me if I decided not to exist in them I wouldn't be justified to start believing in aliens. Fear is a tool of ignorance, to sway people in believing something when there is no good reason for them to do so, it is an appeal to emotion and a basal emotion at that.


[ The only real difference between Yahweh and Santa is that Santa is far more benevolent and doesn't murder children (at least as far as we know). ]

The Santa story contains many supernatural and unbelievable elements and when faced with these adults rightfully make the distinction that the story is made up. One of the main reasons why a belief in Santa is discarded but a belief in God embraced is because of conditioning. After a certain age retaining a belief in Santa is something to be ridiculed and shunned by society but in many places around the world the more tenaciously you cling to faith in God the more respect you gain in the community. If your parents instill you with religious beliefs they will likely offer positive reinforcement, congratulating you when you say a prayer, take Communion or get baptized and shunning you when you question, rebel or do something contrary to the beliefs. This positive reinforcement for an irrational belief cannot be a good thing and is, in my mind, a form of brainwashing. It should be desired to stop believing all irrational things or at least to eliminate as many irrational and unfounded beliefs as possible.

Conclusion:

So this Holiday season what will you be celebrating? Which irrational belief about a magical being will you be believing? The one about a guy born of a virgin or the one about an elf and a flying sleigh? Both are absurd and I for one won't be believing either of them. I urge you to take my advice... this Holiday season USE REASON and leave childish beliefs behind.

Responsibility for Sin

Sometimes when I am in a discussion with a Christian theist they decide to tell me why it is they think I'm an atheist. You see to some reason is meaningless, faith is everything, so no one could ever have a REASON to reject religion or disbelieve in their particular sky-man. Faith is meant to trump reason, in fact it says so in the Bible.

"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete. " - 2nd Corinthians 10:5-6

So Christians are meant to take captive their thoughts, and demolish any attempt at argument or reasoning with, apparently, blind obedience. Anyway, back to the main point, I've had Christians tell me that I became an atheist to shirk my responsibility to God. The reason I've rejected theistic claims, they tell me, is because I don't want to be held accountable for my actions. Apparently I want to sin so badly that I pretend God doesn't exist so that I can sin behind his back but, according to them, I still believe in this God and indeed "know" he exists. This is a sort of defense mechanism for Christians because they don't want to believe that someone could actually leave the faith and stop believing in God. After all if someone is vulnerable to losing their faith than so are THEY and any amount of doubt in their beliefs is unacceptable. Remember that they have to take every thought captive, if a stray thought or doubt exists it must be "demolished".



I feel that there is massive hypocrisy in these sorts of claims because the entire Christian religion is actually based around losing responsibility for your sins. If I actually wanted to shirk responsibility for my actions I would REMAIN A CHRISTIAN AT ALL COSTS. After all Christians believe that all one needs to do to have ANY deed or sin forgiven (save blaspheming the Holy Spirit) is ask Jesus for forgiveness. The religion is based on Christ, an innocent man, DYING FOR YOUR SINS. Jesus takes your sin from you and many denominations teach that you leave your sins and burdens and pick up the "Cross". A Christian can commit a murder and all they need do for forgiveness is ask Jesus, they don't believe that any actual consequences or judgment from God are in order, once Jesus is accepted and forgiveness is asked for you get a clean slate.

As an atheist, I, on the other hand, understand that I am responsible for my actions in the here and now within society. I know that if I act like a douche chances are people won't like me and that if I do something seriously wrong (like theft, murder, etc) I will go to prison for it. I know that I will be punished here and now in this life for my misdeeds. Now it is important to note that not the entire Christian theology supports irresponsibility for sins, in fact Jesus himself TEACHES RESPONSIBILITY FOR ONE'S OWN ACTIONS. This sort of contradiction should be enough to make your brain explode if you're a Christian and its one of the main reasons that, even when I was a Christian myself, I began to question the truthfulness of the Bible.

Jesus's Teachings:

The foremost example of Jesus teaching about responsibility for your sins is the principle of reaping and sowing. If you do bad things than bad things will happen to you, if you sow good into the world you will reap good back. This makes you responsible for your actions because if you do something bad you will face consequences here and now, not in some far off afterlife. This idea has been compared to Karma in Eastern Philosophy although the two are not entirely alike. Here's another verse where Jesus talks about paying attention to your own sins:

" 1 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye." - Matthew 7:1-5



So Jesus says do not judge and pay attention to your own flaws, not the flaws in people you see around you. Does this sound like a guy who wants to remove the speck from your eye? Or does it sound like he wants YOU to be responsible for yourself? You see this teaching contradicts what Christianity later became and the ideas that became prevalent within it. How on Earth can I be responsible for my sin AND have it instantly forgiven and avoid punishment? My own hypothesis is that the entire idea of Jesus dying FOR YOUR SINS is a fabrication although it is difficult to tell what is fact and what is fiction in the Jesus story.

The Requirement of Faith:

One of the more insulting aspects of Christianity is the requirement that we believe on Faith alone. Numerous times in the New Testament we are told that salvation is by faith (and through "Grace"). We must "believe" in Jesus. Rather than actually earning Salvation by being a good person Christianity establishes the idea that we're all worthless lousy sinners and that everyone, from Hitler to Gandhi, has to believe in Jesus on Faith alone to be forgiven. Which one do you have a better chance of seeing in Heaven in the Bible is true? If you answered this guy you'd be right:



The requirement of faith is another part of Christian theology that helps remove responsibility for ones own sin. As long as you show some remorse and ask for forgiveness and BELIEVE you will be cleansed of sin, no punishment required. Some Christians still do believe that God punishes you for sinning, perhaps he makes your wife leave you or lets your car break down, any bad circumstances that crop up are often chalked up to God. Even if you're living your life right and have all the faith in the world when bad stuff comes along it can often be claimed that God is "testing you". Remember Job? Apparently God can mess with you even if you've done nothing wrong... God has a habit of blaming those who are not to blame. Adam and Eve in the Garden, the First Born of Egypt killed for the sins of the Pharaoh and now Jesus tortured brutally despite being entirely innocent. That's right, that's how great of a Father God is, he had his own son brutally murdered rather than punishing those who were actually sinning.




Conclusions:

I'm still not entirely sure why some Christians won't accept the idea that I actually left their religion behind but it really grinds my gears when they claim I'm trying to avoid responsibility for my actions. I'm already responsible for my actions and so are you, we're responsible to each other and society at large, no magic man in the sky required.

Demoralization

To My Fellow Atheists and Agnostics

Have you ever had a conversation with a theist that was so intellectually frustrating it made you feel terrible? So bad that you actually felt physically ill and mentally demoralized? Have you spent countless hours with Christian friends and family members trying to crack their unyielding beliefs with simple sound logic only to be blocked by a closed-mind? Sometimes it can feel futile and pointless to even speak to those people. It takes an emotional toll whether those discussions take place in purpose or on the internet and even if you're trying to remove emotion it can be near impossible because of the closed-mindedness of some theists. I've felt that way, I feel that way a lot. Tonight I almost gave up because of a discussion (one of many) with my Father in which I tried to convince him that the Bible was not the Word of God. We spent some three-four hours discussing it but he didn't listen to a word I said and kept retreating back to the Bible. It was demoralizing and it made me want to stop blogging about and discussing religion with anyone, especially fundamentalists but I remembered that I am not alone. I remembered that unlike the theists who believe God is with them there are actual people who have my back - my fellow atheists and agnostics. Even those I don't know and have never spoken to have helped me innumerable times giving me access to logical arguments and well reasoned positions with which to refute blind faith.

The thing is that I used to be a Fundamentalist, at least I was raised as one. Perhaps I never bought into it all as hardcore as some have but I certainly believed the Bible was the Word of God (at least until I read it in its entirety). I used to be a Creationist as well. So while we all may get frustrated and feel demoralized and alone I want you to remember that the message does get through to some. Healthy skepticism and reason can seep in to even the most religious of minds. There are many other atheists who were believers and we cannot allow ourselves to be demoralized and sent back to being an unheard minority plagued by Dark Age rumors about our morality. It is bad enough as it is now but we cannot allow it to get worse for us when we are so far from equal. Tell people you're an atheist and some will look at you funny and treat you differently. That's not the way it should be but that is the way it is and it can only get worse if we do not speak up and be heard.

We must also be careful about being dogmatic or closed-minded ourselves. We must agree that if someone were to prove God with solid evidence we would believe it. Even if we are open-minded Christians and other theists will still say we are blind to the truth, that is fine as long as we do not live up to the lies they tell about us.

So I won't stop blogging about religion and fundamentalist Christianity and Creationism. I won't stop discussing it. I won't be silenced merely because of closed-minded individuals and will continue to find those few who are open to being reasoned with. You can't win all your "battles". Hopefully those few will find my blog or my hubpages hubs or my other discussions online and begin to question what they've been taught the way I did. We cannot allow ignorance and belief without evidence to get a free pass. They surely can co-exist alongside atheism but there will always be our counter-arguments. Right now the voice of faith is far louder than our own but they cannot drown out reason forever, they can, however, silence us and demoralize us if we allow it. Take it from me, a walking example that those beliefs can be broken - Don't give up! Know that there are others like you out there.


Many atheists out there know frustration

Satan and the Origin of Evil

This week we're going to be talking about the arch-enemy of the God of the Bible, namely, Satan. Now I am aware that there are many different interpretations of Satan's role in Christian mythology. Some see him as the same as Lucifer and the Devil while others view them as separate entities. Some also claim that Satan has been given dominion over the Earth in order to test humanity. I'm going to be focusing primarily on the more mainstream view of Satan as God's antithesis and the source of all Evil.



The Origins of Evil

Back when I was a Christian I always asked this question every chance I got but I never received a satisfying answer. Many brought up the story of Lucifer as it appears in the Old Testament, however some historians believe the verses in Isaiah talking about Lucifer might refer to a Babylonian King. Regardless it is generally believed that Lucifer/Satan was an angel who was God's second in command. One day he becomes full of pride, Ezekiel 28:15 describes it this way:

15 You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.

It is from these verses, along with those in Isaiah 14, that originate the idea that Satan was the serpent in the garden. Both Chapters say that Lucifer was there in the Garden of Eden however they do not make the claim that he was the snake. In fact in both accounts the Garden is mentioned BEFORE Lucifer's fall from grace and Genesis identifies the serpent DIRECTLY as a snake. It seems apparent that, in fact, Lucifer was there AS AN ANGEL in the Garden but people love a good scapegoat and blaming a talking snake makes Christianity out to be even more silly than it already is.

So where does Evil come from exactly? If God is ALL POWERFUL, if he begins with ALL POWER and is good than where exactly does evil come in? Do they really expect us to believe that evil comes from the Free Will that God gave us? So God decides to give people free will AND that creates the ability for good and bad decisions but rather than pre-program us to know good from evil God leaves Adam and Eve without anyway of discerning the two. God is responsible for the creation of evil IF evil did indeed stem from free will and original sin. But then, that's just it, an All Powerful being inherits All Responsibility for everything.

The only way to reconcile this problem, when I was a Christian, was for me to believe that Evil always existed in some form. I borrowed this idea from Taoism, I believed that God was Yin and Evil was Yang and that Evil could attach itself to people like Satan or anyone else. Not only did this help me hold onto my beliefs but it also took away a defense that I HATED people using - THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT. Even as a Christian I hated when people scape-goated the devil for their own behavior, or blamed him for essentially ANY viewpoint that didn't cram itself into their narrow-minded views. Rock and Roll - that's of the Devil. Liberals - that's of the Devil. Any religion other than Christianity - that's the Devil deceiving people. This of course leads me to my next point.



The Devil is Powerless?

Even if Satan existed he would be entirely powerless. This goes back to that All Power = All Responsibility point I made earlier. Surely Satan is not equal in power to God, two beings cannot both have infinite power can they? So if God IS All Powerful and Satan is not than how exactly does Satan plan on doing anything without God's express permission? The only way Satan can mess with anyone or do anything is if God has given him free will and power. It would seem to me that if an angel rebels against you and you damn them you would remove essentially ALL of their power, leave them with free will if you must but don't allow them supernatural powers and demonic cunning.

So did God make another mistake in letting Lucifer retain his powers? Well not if you ask some Christians because some believe Satan is here to test us. There is scriptural evidence to support this the most glaring of which is Job. In Job Satan asks for permission from God to take everything Job has away to TEST Job's loyalty to God. God regrets this in the third verse of the second chapter and admits that there was no good reason to do it (another Godly mistake).

Personally I think the first choice here is the only one that makes sense. Believing that God unleashes Satan to test people just makes God out to be a total dick. In truth it seems Satan is Lex Luthor to God's Superman, essentially harmless. (I am aware that Lex Luthor does pose a threat to Superman, the point here is that Lex Luthor in a fair fight, without Kryptonite, would get his ass kicked by Superman every time without fail).

Another thing to ponder: Read your Bible, how many people does Satan kill? How many people does God kill? How many does God throw into a lake of fire in agony? How many does Satan throw in there?

The Demons:

Not only do Christians believe in Satan but most also believe that Satan's got helpers. Demons are generally considered evil spirits, they are fallen angels that also rebelled against God. Hmm... One has to wonder, if God is so good why people who decide to rebel against him? Maybe he was letting angelic children die of cancer and AIDS, you know, the kind of stuff he still does today despite being All Powerful.

So these demons ALSO have supernatural powers and supposedly can even possess the bodies of the living. Aside from a few extreme cases these "possessions" usually only manifest themselves in symptoms of mental illness - meaning they aren't actual possessions. There are a handful of severe of unexplained cases of "demonic" possession however I think any explanation is better than invoking the boogeyman. Demons were, at one time, the explanation for a wide array of physical illnesses as well as mental illnesses. Luckily superstitious beliefs like this are on the decline and amazingly as the beliefs decline so do the reports of demonic possession, its almost as if people are getting the correct diagnosis and treatment from medical science.

Demons are meant to be able to tempt people as well, meaning those dirty thoughts you've been having about your daughter's high school age friend's upcoming slumber party might just be demons in your head. Demons are also a great scapegoat for superstitious believers, it is amazing how we humans will shirk responsibility for actions ANY WAY WE CAN.



Conclusions:

While the Bible is unclear on the subject of Satan and the Origin of Evil people still have strong personal beliefs on the matter. Whatever you believe about Satan (I think he's fictional personally) it seems clear to me that Satan should not be blamed for your own personal actions. Please remember that this is the 21st Century and while your first instinct might be to be superstitious it would be wise to employ logic and reason before leaping to the conclusion that Satan was involved.

That's all for this week, thanks for reading.

Public Prayer is Anti-Christ

Many people are familiar with prayer. Prayer is the practice of invoking the supernatural using words. Much like an incantation or invocation it is designed to call upon a deity or being in order to communicate with them or ask for divine intervention for yourself or others. For anyone who's ever been a Christian or attended Church prayer is a very common thing within the context of a church service. The first thing I want to talk about this week is this practice of praying in public whether it be at the start of a church service or before the opening pitch of a baseball game.

Public Prayer was once far more commonplace than it is today. Thanks to advances in the Separation of Church and State most school and sport functions are now forbidden from offering up religiously specific prayers though some do still provide moments of silence for any so inclined to offer their own prayers. The Christian Fundamentalists here in the USA have taken offense to the banning of public prayer in schools and other institutions. The banning of prayer and Bible reading in schools actually came from an Atheist group and Christians have been on the war path ever since.

What many Christians seem to forget is that Jesus, the guy their ENTIRE RELIGION IS BASED ON, is actually against prayer in public. Scriptural evidence of Jesus' distaste for Public Prayer can be found in Matthew Chapter 6 just before Jesus gives his disciples his most famous prayer, the Lord's Prayer. Matthew 6:5-8 reads as follows:

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him."

Not only does Jesus tell his disciples to shut themselves away from the world when praying but he expresses extremely negative opinions of those sects which pray in public. From the babbling pagans to those who pray in the Synagogue. Jesus seems to understand the petty nature of public prayer and how people who pray in public end up more worried about APPEARING pious and SEEMING righteous. They are more concerned with their appearances and other people's opinions than with actually seeking God.




Another thing I'd like to mention is Jesus' use of the word babbling. The Amplified Bible says those that multiply words, or repeat the same words. In my opinion Jesus is likely talking about CHANTING, though I am certainly no theologian. Chanting and repetitious prayers are used in Catholicism and other forms of Christianity. The other thing that Jesus might be referencing is what is now known as speaking in tongues, also called Glossalalia. While most people believe that speaking in tongues is only a Christian phenomenon it has actually been observed in numerous religions and was well known even before Christianity (seriously, you can google it). The version of it commonly practiced today, which is essentially the spouting of gibberish repeatedly (often accompanied by writhing around on the floor) is not necessarily the same as that which was described in the Bible. The version of it spoken of Biblically is often said to give the speaker the ability to speak in any or all languages... not merely gibberish. So could Jesus have been speaking of a pagan version of Glossalalia?


Conclusion:

It seems clear that modern day prayer taking place in Church services or anywhere else in public bears a close resemblance to the sort of prayer Jesus’ disliked. Keep this in mind the next time some moron says he/she wants there to be a national day of prayer or makes a stupid comment about how things would be better if prayer were back in schools. Also remember that nowhere and at no time does Jesus EVER tell them to pray to him so the next time you hear someone praying directly to Jesus remember they are doing it wrong.

Does Prayer Work?

Prayer is an attempt at making telepathic contact with a magical being in order to gain something for yourself or others. As such it is wholly faith based and every study that has ever looked into prayer has found it ineffective at doing, well, anything.

Many people take the stance that prayer is harmless and that if people want to believe that prayer assists them than they should be able to. While I agree that the right to Freedom of Religion is paramount to a free society I am also aware that prayer isn’t always harmless. In fact prayer can be deadly. There are numerous cases, both here in the Western world and abroad, of parents withholding medical care from their child in order to pursue supernatural alternatives. This is negligent, abusive and downright stupid behavior that can often lead to the child’s death from a disorder or disease that is entirely treatable by medical science.

So while praying that you get that promotion or meet the right girl may be harmless the attitudes prayer and religion in general can nurture can be quite dangerous. Another aspect of prayer that is detrimental is the Evangelist Conmen who pretend to do healings. In demonstrations eerily mirroring a scene from the Disney movie Pete’s Dragon these snake oil salesmen pretend they can cure everything from slight discomfort to cancer. A recent viral video showed one of these serpents pretending her could replace a woman’s plastic hip with a new hip replacement merely by pressing on her forehead and demanding Jesus to heal her.

Which is, of course, another issue with prayer. Treating Jesus like a celestial genie hardly seems right especially when he supposedly died for your sins. Then again Jesus himself admits that if you ask it shall be given to you. So then the effectiveness of prayer is meant to be, according to Christ 100% which leads to Christians coming up with rationalizations when their prayers go unanswered. False promises that lead to the Christian involved believing themselves to not have enough faith to get what they want or need or that the cure for their Mother’s cancer wasn’t part of God’s Will.

Here’s an experiment to see if prayer works: Walk into a graveyard. Nearly everyone you see in there, before their death, had people praying for them. You can claim it was “just their time” or that it was God’s will for them to die despite prayer however Jesus said ask and you shall receive, he also said the disciples would be able to raise the dead after he left. John 3:!6 also says that those who believe in Christ will have eternal life... Yet every year more and more people, many times while still young and having their lives ahead of them die even when being prayed for.




Conclusion and Wrap Up:

Prayer is a solution for nothing and does little aside from stimulating false hope. Here’s a suggestion instead of prayer - try to succeed on your own and lean on your fellow human beings because supernatural men in the sky aren’t going to help you. I know this comes as a surprise to most but even if gods exist I highly doubt they’re all that interested in us mortals and our back surgery or inability to get over our last girlfriend.

I leave you with one of my favorite phrases from before I was an atheist: “God helps those that help themselves” - my translation: “Stop sitting on your ass waiting for gods and messiahs and start making your life and this world a better place on your own.”

Does Yahweh Drive a Sports Car?

This week we’re going to talk about one of the more peculiar characteristics of the Biblical God as depicted in numerous verses in the Bible - his insecurity and desire to be worshiped.




Many Christians today believe that when they sing a hymn of praise God is up in Heaven listening and enjoying himself. In this way music is much like the smell of burning flesh that, in Old Testament animal sacrifices, God was also pleased with. God enjoys being worshiped so much that worshiping any other deity will get you sent straight to Hell.

You see God, much like a vain and insecure girlfriend, is very jealous. In fact not only does God admit that he is jealous in Exodus 34:14 but Jealous is actually his NAME. Exodus 20:5, a few chapters earlier, God again admits he’s jealous. This is also the verse where he claims that he will visit the sins of the Father’s onto the sons until the fourth generation.

So he’s jealous enough to punish anyone serving another deity and vengeful enough to punish the sins of a Father by bringing down wrath on future generations. So one has to wonder… Where are the qualities that are worthy of praise exactly? How insecure is this guy that he needs constant worship and must brutally punish any defectors to other faiths?

In Revelations 4 there is talk of four living creatures which continuously bow down and worship God. In fact that is all they seem to do is Worship. Revelations 4:6-9

“… In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. 7The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle. 8Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come." 9Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever …“

This can’t be right can it? According to Christians this is the same God who sent the Israelites to slaughter the Amalekite children. The same one who drowned thousands of innocent children in the Great Flood and decided to punish the first born in Egypt instead of the Pharaoh who was actually to blame.




This is the same deity who’s best plan to save humanity was to get his own son to become a man and perform miracles before being brutally killed as a sacrifice for humanity’s sin BUT leave no evidence behind and require people to believe the story without any evidence in order to be saved. My point - The God of the Bible deserves no praise. He’s a bumbling, angry, jealous tyrant who is repeatedly described as jealous and sitting on a throne with a crown. This regal personification no doubt came in handy when European Kings wanted to claim divine right to rule.

I have established throughout the posts of this blog that Yahweh is anything BUT deserving of praise and yet he demands it by not only outlawing other religions but also outlawing graven images. Along with requiring praise OR ELSE the God of the Bible also sets up plenty of draconian and immoral rules. You can’t eat certain things, you can’t wear certain types of fabric and all sorts of people deserved to be stoned to death for various offenses. Even working on the Sabbath was punishable by death. But then Jesus breaks that rule in the Gospels. So God can’t even conform to his own rules, even in human form… I guess it makes sense when Romans 2:11 says: “For there is no respect of persons with God.”

So God demands worship and gives us no respect? Or is the King James Version wrong in using the word respect (it is a different word in other translations)… But then if a different word should be used isn’t this a translation error? And that wouldn’t happen in a flawless and infallible book. Fundamentalism doesn’t work, taking the Bible literally doesn’t work.

Yahweh is apparently insecure about the size of his… you know… or maybe he doesn’t have one. That explains why many think Heaven will just be one big praise-fest singing the glories of God… For eternity. Thanks but no thanks.

BONUS POST - NEW AGE NONSENSE

I spend a lot of time picking on the Bible and Biblical Literalism but I’d like to spend a few paragraphs talking about something that is equally invalid as a belief - New Age. New Age beliefs come in all shapes and sizes this is because there is no underlying core belief system here. New Age is a misnomer, what you actually have is a combination of old beliefs put together into new combinations based on what ideas appeal to a person or, as I’ve heard people say, RESONATE. What resonates is basically whatever supernatural elements sound best.

Not a fan of Heaven? No problem, reincarnation works too. Want Heaven anyway? No problem, New Age beliefs are flexible that way. Make up your own version of Heaven if you want. New Age means essentially anything goes. New Age beliefs, I feel, as best summed up by this line of dialogue from the film Ghost Busters:

Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full-trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster, and the theory of Atlantis?

New Age beliefs thrive on pseudoscientific ideas being propagated into pop culture and they also thrive on your laziness in doing research. That is why these ideas are reduced to buzz-words and vague ideas, so that a belief in them can be picked up and put down depending upon your mood. This is becoming very common amongst people who leave mainstream religion behind or never really become in depth. Rather than move toward more secular logic based beliefs they head off toward a fringe of “pick what you like” beliefs.




While certainly preferable to something like fundamentalist Christianity these New Age beliefs have no real basis and reality. Any amount of scientific research will quickly overturn these ideas. Unfortunately the internet has become crowded with sites in support of these pseudoscientific ideas and New Age, unlike atheism, is selling itself at a much faster rate. This is because New Age provides all the positives of a mainstream religion, like a sense of friendship and community as well as the prospect of an after-life, without the negatives - such as church services, obscenely strict moral codes and the chance of eternal punishment.

I think that with time the debate will be won by reason and skepticism but for now the American public, as they lose their mainstream faith, will turn to these fringe concepts for comfort.
The Negative Aspects of New Age -

One of the primary negative aspects of New Age is the fringe belief known as the 2012 Doomsday. While some New Agers reject the event as a Doomsday and claim it will be a time of spiritual ascension thousands of others claim it will be the End of the World. The 2012 Doomsday has become popular within mainstream media as a source for movies, religious propaganda and endless amounts of money made from pseudoscience. The issue here is that con-men are spreading genuine fear about something which has been repeatedly debunked since the early 90s.

You can find more info on 2012 debunked on a great many websites so I won't go into why it's BS here.

See you next week.

The Story of Lot

Warning: The following contains some mention of sexual acts. Reader discretion is advised.

This may seem like an odd title to those unfamiliar with their Bibles but many of us who were raised Christians recognized Lot as the name of Abraham’s Nephew. Abraham, of course, was the guy who made a famous land deal with Yahweh officially establishing a certain area as a promised land. Abraham is also famous for being a notorious bad Father but then again if he was taking lessons from Yahweh one can understand (See: Yahweh is a Bad Father).

Lot spends some time hiking around the wilderness with Abraham and they have some good times together eventually accumulating such massive herds of livestock that they begin bumping heads. In order to avoid any rivalries Lot decides to head off and pitch his tent at Sodom in Genesis 13. Now at first this seems like a good decision, the last thing Lot wants is any bad blood with his Uncle Abraham but in Chapter 19 of Genesis things go bad.

You see Sodom and Gomorrah are apparently the modern day equivalent of Las Vegas and Amsterdam, they are places of sin… or more aptly put places of pleasure and free will. Yahweh, as we have established in previous posts, hates it when we use our free will to do anything he deems bad. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah, at least according to the Bible, are so sinful that they will rape anything that moves which is bad news for a man making a living primarily as a herder of sheep.

So God sends two angels to warn Lot of the impending destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Apparently angels are pretty hot because immediately a group of angry and very aroused citizens emerge from the city hoping to sleep with the angels. One has to wonder why Lot has not moved away before since, as we are about to see, he has two daughters who are apparently virgins and desperate to get some. Apparently the night-life in this cities had Lot pitching a tent… if you know what I mean. Yeah bad joke, I know…

So here is the first amazingly sexist and horrific part of the story, Lot decides he wants to protect the anal sanctity of these perfect strangers he has just met (the ones set to warn him) so what does he do… Does he

A) Get some sort of weapon
B) Allow himself to be raped
C) Take his family and GTFO
D) Offer his virgin daughters to be raped

If you answered D you are correct. Yep, that’s Lot’s attempt to save the angels from being sodomized:

“ 6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7 and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof." - Genesis 19:6-8






Take my daughters, violate them in whatever way you wish, just don’t harm these two random dudes who I just met because they are under my roof… The real reason: Women are second class citizens. Thankfully the angels lead them away from the angry rape-mob just as the Shock and Awe begins.

I’ve had plenty of fundamentalists defend this story claiming that those living in Sodom and Gomorrah deserved to die for their sins and while rape certainly is a heinous crime I think that offering your daughters up to be raped by a random angry mob is at least EQUAL to the crime of those committing the rape. So Lot was still righteous enough to be saved even after offering his daughters? Does Yahweh also consider women second class citizens? I think the next part of the story PROVES beyond a shadow of a doubt that he does, or that at least the writers of the Bible want us to think he does.

The next part is the escape with the angels in which Lot’s wife, having empathy for those being brutally murdered behind them in a fiery act of wrath, turns around to look back. Now she is warned not to look back but she’s not as heartless as the rest of them and so she does look back. Instantly she is turned into a pillar of salt… simply for sympathy, empathy, for thinking that some in the city deserved mercy…perhaps even it was simply pity. Whatever the emotions going through her head she sure learned her lesson, except that she was transformed into salt and probably sent straight to Hell and therefore did not learn her lesson. So what is the lesson WE are meant to learn from the story? Is it one about not looking back to sin after we have escape it? The one I take away from it is that Yahweh is quicker to judge women than men. Lot, after all, offered his daughters to be raped brutally by criminals and was SPARED by God while Lot’s wife merely looked back to the cities as they were destroyed and was instantaneously killed.

It isn’t much longer into the story of Lot that things get even worse as far as the sexism goes. The angels leave Lot and his daughters and they hide in a cave. Here the daughters, apparently disappointed that they can’t get their orgy on, lament about how there’s no men around to carry on their Father’s lineage and with their Mother dead they decide to accept the responsibility. So Lot’s daughters, who for some twisted reason have a Daddy fetish, decide to get dear old Dad plastered as Hell and then have sex with him. Not only is this pretty gross it’s also odd considering the fact that a few verses ago Lot was ready to throw them to the crowd of criminals… Again, Women are Second Class Citizens. Then again what do you expect, after all Yahweh created woman from ribs and that was after he had paraded the animals before Adam and none of them were suitable “helpers” (whatever that means).



So both girls eventually conceive and their children go on to be the Father’s of enemy nations of the Israelites. So the incestuous acts are condemned BUT LOT OFFERING THEM AS RAPE BAIT ISN’T? And what’s the moral lesson here? I’m just baffled as to how this stuff remains in the modern Bible… I mean there are kids that read this book! It just goes to show you that committees on what makes it into the Bible shouldn’t have stopped centuries ago, they should have continued until today. My guess is if they had there would be two things in the Bible:

Love thy neighbor and the Golden Rule.

But then love thy neighbor would apply to Sodomites as well and we couldn’t have that could we? People would get the idea its okay to show sympathy to their fellow human when that person is overcome with disaster and bad fortune. Another thing is… What happened to the children of Sodom and Gomorrah? People who have sex as often as them probably have a lot of children, even if many were gay or bi-sexual surely for a city for flourish there must be procreation… And yet the Bible says nothing on the subject. And why not turn the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah away from their sins. If God was truly a God of mercy could he have not done such…

So we see that when taking the Bible literally, like many fundamentalists do, the stories just fall apart. Join me next week for more insights, interpretations and opinions on fundamentalism, Biblical literalism and theism in general. Until then I leave you with the Gospel of Titen:

Love everyone.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Now abides reason, logic and empathy and they’re all pretty awesome.
AND PARTY ON DUDES!

Double Stuffed Post!

Bear Attack in the Bible


That's right, this is a DOUBLE STUFFED POST. I'll be tackling two tough subjects today, so strap in and hold on.

First up on our roster of awesome is a heartwarming story from my favorite book of Fables (sorry Aesop) the Bible. The story takes us to the book of 2 Kings, Chapter 2. The events of this chapter happen soon after Elijah, a Prophet of the Lord, is taken up in a flying fiery Chariot into Tornado and lives. Elijah, according to Christian lore, never actually physically dies, being the only one besides Enoch to do so. Elisha, Elijah's friend and protege, has just inherited a "double portion" of Elijah's spirit... So in Star Wars talk Elisha has "become more powerful than you can possibly imagine". What is the first thing Elisha does? Why he heals a poisoned water supply... and the second thing? Well let's see what the Bible has to say. We'll be reading from the NIV translation:

2 Kings 2:23-24

'23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. '

So Elisha is insulted, they're calling him BALD and mocking him. Instead of verbally insulting them back Elisha decides it best to curse them and for some reason God goes along with this idea and sees fit to send two bears in to slaughter forty-two children. Once again Yahweh is a party to murdering children and his weapon of choice for the crime... bears. THIS IS THE JUST AND RIGHTEOUS GOD WE ARE MEANT TO BE WORSHIPING?



So what's the moral of the story? I suppose its about not making fun of bald people. The next time you see a baldy be sure to give them a wide berth and keep on the look-out for God's grizzly vengeance.


Misconceptions about Atheism (BONUS POST)

Few groups are more misrepresented than Atheists. The reason for this is simple, we're not a coherent group. While there are Atheist groups scattered across the world we still remain a massive minority and few Atheists speak out. Many keep it to themselves after they lose their faith. This is perfectly fine as Atheism does not require or even desire the spread of non-belief BUT it does lead to theists of various religious faiths being able to spread myths and rumors about Atheism that makes it sound like an untenable position.

The biggest myth is that Atheism means you believe there is absolutely no God. Many religious people and even some who aren't religious, mistakenly believe that Atheism is an outright rejection of the concept of deities. While there is a kind of Atheism that fits this description (known as Gnostic or Strong/Positive Atheism) most Atheists don't reject the possibility of God or even claim that there isn't one.

Atheism, at the base level, is a LACK of BELIEF in GODS. If you do not directly believe in any gods you are an Atheist but that doesn't mean you reject the possibility that a God exists. This definition also helps destroy another myth, that Atheism requires faith. The easiest way to answer this myth is to ask a question: Does not believing in Unicorns require faith?

Of course you don't need faith to disbelieve in Unicorns so why on Earth would you require faith to disbelieve in Gods? Faith is an assertion without evidence but Atheism, unless it is Gnostic Atheism, makes NO ASSERTION. A lack of belief in gods is different from an assertion that there are no gods.

Generally speaking there are four types of people:

Gnostic Theists - Believe in God(s) and claim to KNOW that God(s) exist
Gnostic Atheists - Disbelieve in God(s) and claim to KNOW that God(s) do not exist.

Agnostic Theists - Believe in God(s) but do not make a claim to KNOWLEDGE.
Agnostic Atheists - Disbelieve in God(s) but do not make a claim to KNOWLEDGE.

Many use the term Agnostic to describe themselves because they are afraid to admit they are atheists or because they have the wrong definition for atheism and agnosticism. One cannot be simply Agnostic, because that only describes whether you are making a claim to knowledge.

Another big myth put out there is that Atheism is a religion. Atheism is NOT a religion. Atheists are vastly different people, we have no unifying creed. We possess no sacred texts. We don't agree on political points, we have varying opinions on morality, etc. The only thing Atheists have in common is our disbelief in gods. You wouldn't claim that THEISM is a religion would you? You'd have to be downright stupid to claim that Theism is a religion, because theists can be Hindu, Muslim, Christian, etc.

If Atheism is a religion than:

Not playing football is a sport

and

Not collecting coins is a hobby

I'd rather not beat a dead horse so I'll move on to yet another myth about Atheists, the myth that we want to destroy or forbid religion. While it is true that many Atheists dislike religion and would prefer to live in a world where reason and logic - instead of faith and dogma - were the norm, it is also true that most Atheists are big supporters of Freedom of Religion. After all, it wouldn't be a very REASONable position to seek to disolve religion via tyranny. As vehemently opposed to religion as many of us feel we also feel that the rest of the world are free to form your own beliefs and opinions, as odd as they may seem to the rest of us.

The last major myth I want to talk about is one put forth mainly by Creationists. It is the myth that Science, in particular Evolution, is Atheistic. The idea is that in order to accept Evolution you must also accept Atheism. This is not the case. MOST Theists accept Evolution and the reason is obvious, the evidence POINTS toward Evolution. Gods or no gods Evolution is true. You see most people are invested in finding out the truth, to some extent at least and if the evidence points toward Evolution they are willing to accept that in favor of myth. This should only weaken their faith in myth and is entirely separate from their God... But not for most Creationists, myth has replaced their deity - the Bible is their God.

There's another silly myth that, now-a-days, is actually used mostly by Atheists as a joke to the dark times, before the internets, when Christianity didn't have nearly enough critics. That is that ATHEISTS EAT BABIES - NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM




For the record I, personally, am an Agnostic-Atheist. I don't believe in a god but I do not rule out the possibility of their existence. Until theists can meet their burden of proof and provide evidence that a deity exists I will remain an Atheist. In the meantime I will continue to present issues I have with the Bible in an attempt to show people the illogical and irrational nature of religious fundamentalism and faith in general. What is faith?

Well, without getting into a whole THIRD POST, Faith is a belief that is not accepted on the basis of evidence. Belief in gods, ghosts, fairies, aliens and Bigfoot all fall under faith categories. That isn't to say one can't ENTERTAIN the possibility of the existence of ANY of those but merely that in order to assert their existence one would have to believe via FAITH.

Thanks for reading and be sure to spread the word about this Blog's existence... and the evidence for the existence of this Blog, well, you've just read it.