DangerousTalk

Yesterday, I talked about how Christians sometimes carpet bomb with arguments praying that at least one of them sticks. Today, I want to make a preemptive strike that can be used when a Christian starts their carpet bombing of piss poor arguments. Of course there are many more arguments than I can put into one blog, but these are some of the top arguments used and some pithy responses in the form on a letter:

Dear Christian,
In the beginning God did not create the universe, the Big Bang did. The evidence for this is almost as big as the universe itself. Asking what came before the Big Bang is like asking what is south of the south-pole. Space and time are linked and so before space there was no time. The design you think you see in the world is actually a result of your brain looking for patterns. The only design that actually exists is that which has come from a process called natural selection. People are not perfectly designed. Our balls (which are the most vulnerable part of our body) are located outside out body in a very vulnerable location. That seems to be a very poor design. Besides, these arguments don’t even attempt to prove your god, just a god and they fail miserably at that.

I know, I know, I will be singing a different tune when I am before your God and see that he will threaten me with eternal torture for not believing in him based on no valid evidence. It is probably a good bet to just say that I believe, but Pascal’s wager really wouldn’t be able to fool your god anyway, right? Besides, can’t we make that same wager for any god? You should be a Muslim and a Buddhist too, right? I know you think you are trying to save me from this horribly unjust eternal torture. If there was a bomb in your car and I knew about it, I would do everything I could to stop you from going inside. This means that I would actually show you some evidence for the bomb. Short of that, I doubt you would believe me especially if you drove the car a 1000 miles and nothing happened and I still insisted there was a bomb inside and that it could explode any minute… no one knows the time or the day.

The fact is that we all die my Christian friend. Life isn’t Super Mario Brothers and we don’t get free lives. Do you remember what happened before you were born? I have a feeling that is exactly what it is like after you are dead. This isn’t depressing! This is pretty cool, actually. It inspires us to live full lives because we know that life is short. I still look to the future and try to make the world a better place because I have friends and family that I care about. I want to make sure that the world is a better place for them and their children and their children’s children. Besides, who really wants to live forever anyway? Eternity is a long time and you are sure to get bored after a few billion years.

Why would you believe the Bible anyway, we don’t even have the original version. Besides, it was written by people who thought that the Earth was flat and that pi was exactly three. These guys owned slaves and considered women as property and you are relying on them to give your absolute truth? The so called prophecies in the Bible are bullshit. There are no such prophecies in the Old Testament, just ask any Hebrew scholar. Most of the so called prophecies aren’t even related to a messiah.

As for morality, I don’t think the Bible is a very good guide for that. Plus, the god of the Bible is a relativist. If the Bible provides such rock solid moral grounding, then why is it that so many so called Christians disagree on what is is moral and what is not? Besides, I really don’t think that if God came down and said that rape was moral, that it would be so. I think morality is based on human empathy and human compassion much more than it is based on the God of your Bible. Thank goodness for that, right? I mean the God of the Bible doesn’t actually condemn rape, in fact in many stories God seems to actually support the practice. What a jerk, I don’t think I would worship such a god even if he did exist.
In Reason,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Atheist

Filed under: Argument by Design, Car Bomb Argument, conversation, culture war, discussion, First Cause Argument, Preaching, Religion | 1,200 Comments »

A popular Christian strategy for winning converts is basically to see how any arguments they can bombard you with in as little time as possible. The idea is to carpet bomb their mark with lots of arguments with the hope that at least one of them will resonate with their mark.

On the off chance that these Christians get a well informed atheist, then they demand full answers to each of these arguments and turn each one into a fight. The thing is that these arguments are usually old arguments that we have all heard a million times. They range from the First Cause Argument, to the Moral Argument, to Pascal’s Wager, etc.

Sure, I can sit with a Christian all day long knocking down each of these arguments in turn, but at the end of the line they always fall back to faith anyway. My strategy is to point them in the direction for them to find the answers to these arguments on their own using the interwebs. I don’t even have to send them to an atheist website usually. Although, I have gone through a lot of trouble of debunking most of these arguments right here on Dangerous Talk and on my Examiner page in the Atheism 101 series. So I sometimes send them there first. But if they want a non-atheist site, I just send them to good old Wikipedia.

One idea I had was to create a short list of one or two line answers and to carpet bomb these types of Christians with the answers before they even ask the questions. I haven’t tried that yet but I will probably work on that list soon. If anyone has any short and pithy answers to the standard Christian questions, let me know.

Filed under: Argument by Design, atheism, conversation, culture war, discussion, First Cause Argument, god of the gaps, ignorance, Ontological Argument, prophecies, Religion, Religious Manipulation | 2 Comments »

Over the weekend, I went to the geek convention known as Wizard World. When we were leaving the convention there were a lot of people handing out fliers for their comics, art, bands, websites, etc. There was also a woman handing out religious pamphlets. I of course took one, but didn’t have the time to converse with her about it. The pamphlet is all about May 21st, 2011… the End of the World!

The flier is being distributed by Family Radio, a Christian ministry not affiliated with any church. I am actually pretty familiar with Family Radio. When I was in college, I used to sit in my friend Greg’s dorm room and listen to the group’s leader Harold Camping tell his followers that the End of the World is coming on September 23rd, 1994.

My friend Greg was a devout follower of Camping back then. He is still a pretty crazy Christian but at least can admit that Camping was wrong. But Camping knows how to milk a profitable enterprise when he sees one. So when the world didn’t end in 1994, he just switched the date. I don’t know how many dates he predicted the end of the world for, but his current one is May 21st 2011.

First the pamphlet assures the reader that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and that it is unchanged and that each and every word is original. This is of course not true. Even most fundamentalist Christians acknowledge that some insignificant words have changed. For the record, quite a lot of the Bible has changed, but that is beside the point. The pamphlet then goes on to state that “by careful study of the Bible we learn that in the year 4990 BC God brought a flood.” God told Noah that he would have seven days to escape the flood. Since a day to God is a thousand years to us, that means 7000 years. Then the calendar was off by a year so that means 7000 years after the flood would be 2011 AD. Camping does other bullshit calculations for the day and the month, but suffice to say that it really is fascinating bullshit.

It really does amaze me that even with Camping horrible track record that people still believe him. Camping makes millions with this stuff and has a small army of loyal believers in cities across the nation handing out these pamphlets. This shows the real power of religion and why I can say pretty definitively that all religions are false.

The mere fact that Harold Camping has been able to dupe so many people with such obvious bullshit time and time again shows just how easy it is to fool people. I bet this woman is not stupid either. She is probably a pretty smart lady. Yet she has been fooled so completely by such obvious bullshit. This is a microcosm of all religion; smart people being duped to believe some super retarded stuff.

Filed under: Biblical Scholarship, culture war, End of the World, Preaching, prophecies, Religion, the bible | 6 Comments »

Tomorrow (Saturday), I will be attending the Wizard World comic and sci-fi convention in Philadelphia. I attend this convention every year because I love sci-fi. This year I have learned the Stephen Baldwin will be at the convention. Stephen is the fundamentalist Christian Baldwin. So I thought I would write him a letter and hand it to him personally at the convention. I also hope to talk to him about his “extreme faith.” Here is the letter, feel free to offer suggested changed before Saturday:

Dear Stephen,
I understand that you are a bit of a spontaneous type of guy. You are not someone who does anything in half measure either. This is a great trait to have at times. But sometimes it isn’t such a great trait to have. Sometimes people ought to be thoughtful and look before they leap.

With this in mind, it is no surprise that you became a born-again Christian. Becoming a born-again Christian is a spontaneous conversion process. It generally happens when people are in an emotional state or when they have hit rock bottom. It rarely occurs through a long and thoughtful process. Leaving religion on the other hand does often take such a long and thoughtful process.

Stephen, I want to start you on that journey. Now I know that your gut reaction is to dismiss me right off the bat. That is perfectly natural and most atheists experienced the same gut reaction when they were religious. If you really have the one and only Truth, you should not have a problem examining that Truth in the light of reason. In fact, you should welcome sure an examination to further prove to me and more importantly to yourself that your faith is justified. So let’s begin.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Bible is not inerrant. As someone who grew up Jewish, I attended years of Hebrew School and learned all about how the Jews were slaves in Egypt and God helped them through the Exodus. This is often cited by many as historical and yet it never happened. The Jews were never slaves in Egypt and the Exodus never happened. If one of the “historical” and more believable stories in the Bible is a myth, it is a good bet that Genesis and some of the other less believable stories are almost certainly not true.

So let’s turn to the New Testament since after all, Paul tells us that the entirety of Christianity really does rest of the historical truth of the resurrection of Jesus. Interestingly enough, there is no real evidence outside of the Bible that Jesus even existed. The Bible of course has changed over time significantly sometimes even for political reasons. For example, the parable of “he who is without sin” was added much later to the Bible. The Gabriel Scrolls also show that there was an earlier draft to the Jesus myth based around someone named Simon.

But I digress; what about God? Well, let me put it this way. If I were God, I would have written the Bible to paint me in a more friendly and favorable light. Let’s face facts. The God as described in the Bible is a real jerk. All I have to do is open up my Bible to any page and see God smiting someone for something… or at least ordering the smiting of someone for something. Jesus is even worse with his massage of eternal punishment in Hell for those who don’t believe in him. I mean what kind of loving deity gives that kind of ultimatum? The insecure and immoral kind I guess.

This brings me to the big Ten Commandments. These are God’s Commandments. The most important top ten things God does NOT want you to do. Some of them make sense (but those actually predate the Bible). Some are very tribal and dated. Needless to say, there commandments were so important that God actually physically set them in stone (although like Joseph Smith’s Golden Plates they are no where to be found). Notice what laws God didn’t think were that important. There is nothing about slavery or rape and nothing about the rights of women or treating people with dignity. But there is a law against working on Saturdays. Guess what Stephen? I am here at this Wizard World convention for pleasure but you are working on this Sabbath Day. I know you fancy yourself as Job and everything, but even Job followed the Ten Commandments. According to the Bible, I would be well within my rights to stone you to death right now.

Don’t worry, I don’t believe in that sort of thing. I’m an atheist. The way I see it, morality is a human construct and it is both relativistic and absolutist. Morality is principle based and based on human empathy and compassion. Human beings are still learning about morality. While it can sometimes be hard to figure out what is right, it is often easier to discover what is wrong and for the record, stoning people for working on the Sabbath Day is wrong. Sorry God, score one for human beings.

Sure it would be nice to have an easy list of “thou” and “thou nots” but life isn’t always easy. There are no rules set in stone for us to follow. Morality is a journey Stephen, just like life. Your journey has taken you to extreme faith and now I hope that you will start your journey to extreme reason. Faith can’t be tested or verified by definition, but reason can be. This is why both you and I use reason every day. It is time to use reason and think deeply about faith. I encourage you to search the internet and learn more. You can start on my website where I write a daily blog discussing religion, DangerousTalk.net. Search the category drop down menu for articles on various topics.

I wish you and your family well and I hope to see you in Bio-Dome 2: The Eye of Braxis soon.
In Reason,
-Staks Rosch

Filed under: conversation, de-conversion, faith, Preaching, Religion | 1 Comment »

Science and religion have pretty much always been in conflict. Both claim to be a means of determining knowledge and yet it is only through science that such a claim can be verified.

It really is amazingly ignorant of fundamentalist religious people to tell us through a computer that science is based on faith or that science is just another religion or that religion is better at determining truth. The fact is that ALL religious people use science EVERYDAY (even the Amish). Religion simply put is not a valid method for determining knowledge or truth. If it were, then religious people would not need to rely on science.

There are some people who claim that both science and religion focus on different types of knowledge (non-overlapping magisteria). This is their way of taking advantage of science while still believing in their ridiculous religious superstitions. This is of course bullshit. When religion makes claims about the world those claims can be tested using science. If they want to simply say “God” then they can escape the scrutiny of science, but the moment they say “God Exists” they are making a claim about the natural world and such claims can be tested through science. If any supernatural being acts or exists even in part in the natural world, then the claim is no longer non-overlapping.

For thousands of years, religion (Christianity) has done everything it could to stop people from using science because they wanted the monopoly on determining truth. This way they can make up any truth they wanted and there would be no way of testing their claims. But religion simply doesn’t have the predictive power and the ability to test and verify claims that science has. So religion realized they could not beat science. If you can’t beat them, claim that there is no conflict and continue to make stuff up.

Recently, Stephen Hawking recently stated, “There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.” PZ Myers added to that quote by stating, that “science works, and every charlatan in every church dreams of hitching a ride on its record.”

Religion is losing this culture war.

Filed under: Alternative Worldview, anti-intellectualism, culture war, Decline of Religion, god of the gaps, Religion, science, truth | 11 Comments »

Yesterday, I spent my blogging time writing up my Examiner article (because they pay the bills… well, not really… so contribute bitches). In any case, the article was about Helen Thomas’s remarks and the misunderstanding that followed.

I am not going to defend Helen Thomas here; I leave that to the Examiner article. But I do want to talk about a few of the conversations I had on this subject with various Jews and Gentiles. It seems that whenever someone criticizes a political issue related to Israel, Jew groups are quick to yell “antisemitism.” Sometimes there actually is antisemitism and sometimes there really isn’t.

It is my view that when people misuse and overuse terms like antisemitism, bigotry, racist, and/or rape they are weakening those terms. Those terms have specific and serious meanings. There are real people out there who really out to be labeled with those terms, but we can’t simply label anyone we disagree with, with those terms.

The label of “Jewish” has two distinct meanings which are often confused. In one sense, the term refers to a religion and in another sense it refers to an ethnicity. Thousands of years ago there was an ethnic tribe of nomads called Jews. Everyone in that tribe believed in a bunch of made-up bullshit. Today, there are people who are descendant from that tribe and so they are Jewish. Someone them still believe that made-up bullshit and some of them don’t. Some people who are not descendant from that tribe believe the made-up bullshit too.

The point is that being Jewish has two distinct meanings. One is religious while the other is ethnic. I think it is perfectly fair and justified to criticize and ridicule the religious ideas of Judaism. I don’t however, think it is fair or justified to criticize or ridicule someone because of their ethnicity. We can change our ideas (whether political or religious) we can’t go back in time and change who we are descendant from. We can’t change our ethnicity.

The term “anti-Semitic” refers to ethnicity, NOT religious or political beliefs and/or opinions. Questioning whether or not Israel (as a political state) should exist is not necessarily anti-Semitic. Nor is it anti-Semitic to question whether or not God really did give a patch of worthless desert to a tribe of bronze-aged sheep herders.

I’m sorry, but religious and political Jews can’t hind behind the cloak of antisemitism to hide from criticism. There are real anti-Semitic people out there. As an ethnic Jew, I have seen it. Racism is wrong regardless of what the race is. Those who believe all Arabs are anti-Semitic are just as racist as those who believe all Jews are aliens from another planet leading the Illuminati in their evil plot to take over the world (Yes, I have met those people and they really believe that).

Filed under: culture war, ignorance, jews, journalism, language, Orthodox Judaism, Religion, Religious Manipulation | 4 Comments »

Recently, I have been telling a lot of Christians and atheists alike that I have heard so many arguments both for and against religion, that it seems like I have heard them all. I have even told some people how excited I would get if I actually heard a new argument. Today I heard a new argument and I am fucking excited.

The argument I heard is actually from a fellow atheist (it seems creative thinking is on our side today). So I want to thank Dusty Smith from the Cult of Dusty for introducing a new argument against religion. It is what I am going to call the Socialized Religion Argument. Dusty points out that the tax-exempt status of religions in America actually amount to Socialized Religion. Many fundamentalist Christians are part of the Christian Right which has demonized socialism. So by supporting the tax-exempt status of religion, these teabaggers, libertarians, conservatives, social conservatives, and all around Republicans are supporting socialism.

Dusty also claims that the tax-exempt status of religion is a direct attack on God. If God is all powerful, then he should be able to provide enough money so that the Churches can pay taxes and still spread their message effectively. I think these are some great new arguments and pretty obvious ones at that. I really don’t know why I haven’t heard them before. Watch Dusty’s video about this subject:

Filed under: Capitalism, church/state, culture war, Religion | 2 Comments »

The Bible (or any Holy Book, really) seems to be open to lots of various interpretations. Frequently when I point out a particular issue I have with the Bible to a Christian they will inform me that I am interpreting it incorrectly. If I take a liberal view of the Bible, the fundamentalists say I am interpreting it wrong and if I take a more fundamentalist view, then the progressive Christians make that claim. The way I see it, there are only two ways to interpret the Bible, a reasonable interpretations or an unreasonable interpretation.

What do I mean by “reasonable” and “unreasonable” in this context? I mean that if the average person were to read through the Bible, they would have good reason to support a particular interpretation. On the other hand, an unreasonable interpretation requires some form of mental gymnastics and manipulation of the text in order to reach the interpretation in question.

Let’s take Matthew 10:34 as an example: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword” Frequently Christians tell me that this doesn’t actually mean that Jesus is advocating violence or hostility. They then continue to hold the position that Jesus was a “Prince of Peace.” The claim is that this is a metaphor, which it clearly is. It would be unreasonable to assume that Jesus was actually wielding a sword. But a reasonable interpretation is that the metaphor of a sword represents violence or at the very least hostility. The fact that the character of Jesus explicitly states that he is not coming to bring peace, makes the interpretation that he is the Prince of Peace an unreasonable interpretation.

You know people are making unreasonable interpretations of the Bible when there are books out there called, “What Jesus Meant.” The fact is that the Bible is a straight up book. Sure, the reader should know something about the times it was written in, the various target audiences, and the themes with each book. But there really is no need for Biblical scholars with decades of learning the mental gymnastics needed to make some bizarre interpretation. There is no need for volumes of books telling us the proper way to understand it. The Bible should be understood on its own (especially if it had a divine author).

So yes, the Bible is open to some interpretation, but there are reasonable interpretations and unreasonable interpretations. Most Christians have the latter.

Filed under: context, language, Real Christians, Religion, the bible | 2 Comments »

It is my view that the Christian belief system is a corrupting force to society to individual humanity. This is not a criticism of people who are Christian necessarily, but it is a criticism of the system of belief that such people subscribe to. This system of belief has taken on a life of its own and that life is a corrupting force to humanity and to human society.

I am not alone in this view, author Daniel Ray even wrote a book on this very topic called, “The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture.” My argument is that the Christian belief system indoctrinates the young, preys on people’s fears and insecurities, and seeks to convert people at moments of emotional weakness. Once people have been corrupted by this system, they preach a message that ALL people are evil and need to be saved through vicarious blood redemption. If one is not a believer, they are told that they will be tortured for all eternity. This terrorism then causes the convert to push the corruption onto those he or she loves in order to “save” them for eternal torture. This spreads the corruption further.

Some people see such corruption as a good thing citing positive life changes and various good works that particular Christians do in the name of their religion. After all, the system can only be considered a system of corruption if it is bad, right? Not exactly, the system is corrupt if it causes humanity to deteriorate systematically.

Humans are defined as Rational Animal and the Christian system of belief causes rationality to deteriorate. Christianity teaches at best that faith trumps reason and in many cases that reason is worthless. But what do these terms mean? The Bible defines faith as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. In other words faith is wishful thinking without evidence. Reason on the other side of the spectrum is thinking based on evidence and informed judgment. The Christian belief system pushes the idea that humans are not rational animals. At best, we would be faithful animals to God, but in many cases, humans aren’t even considered animals at all. This in my view is a corruption of what it means to be human.

As for the corruption of society, that is more complicated. It is easy for me to point out the various atrocities and negative affects that Christianity as a system of belief is responsible for. I can talk about events and attitudes in the past and even talk about what is going on right now in the present with fundamentalist believers and even some mainstream attitudes and empathies, but Christians will quickly point out a few of the good things that they do in the name of their religion. They will insist that we make a Santa Claus style list to see if Christianity is naughty or nice. I welcome such a list since I think the naughty far out weighs the nice. But that isn’t really the point. Christians can do whatever they like and call that Christianity. But does the system of belief push those attitudes and activities or is it the growing secular and humanistic movement that has forced Christians to re-interpret their system of belief in order for that system to continue its corruption?

The strength of the Christian system of belief is ironically enough evolution. The system has evolved in to the roles of the good cop and the bad cop in order to continue spreading its corruptive force. It is not humans that are the corrupt evil sinners, but rather the Christian system of belief which is corrupt and evil. We must fight that system.

Filed under: Car Bomb Argument, culture war, Evils of Christianity, god of the gaps, good cop-bad cop, Most Dangerous Religion, Religion, Religious Manipulation | 1 Comment »

I am a pretty outspoken atheist and I criticize religion often and in some cases extremely harshly. I generally argue against particular religious ideas and lines of “reasoning” rather than arguing behavior (although I do argue against some behavior of particular religious people or groups of people from time to time). Often when I present a particularly strong criticism, a religious person will come along and inform me that, “Religion must have hurt you on a personal level.” The truth is; it hasn’t.

While I was certainly a religious believer at one point in my life, it was never a particularly dominant force in my life. Leaving religion wasn’t all that hurtful for me. My parents, family, and friends may not have congratulated me, but they certainly didn’t ostracize or disown me.

I never had a particularly religious girlfriend who cruelly left me over religion. I never lost a job over religion nor have any religious people attacked me (although I have gotten a few death threats after being vocal).

No, religion hasn’t personally hurt me in any direct way. As a thinking individual, I have studied various religions and think the narrative of most are ridiculous. I think the ideas that religion presents are often poor at best. But I would be lying if I said that my criticism of religion is isolated merely to insufficient reasoning.

The fact is that religion hurts us all. Religion hasn’t hurt me on a personal level, but on a cultural level and on a societal level religion has hurt me and everyone else. I need not even open a history book to see the destructive influences of religion. Whether it is gay rights, opposition to comprehensive sex education, opposition to stem cell research, etc. religion affects us all.

Should we bother to open up that history book, we would see that religious thinking (i.e. belief on faith alone and belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of the creator of the universe) was responsible for the Dark Ages, the Inquisition, the Crusades, witch trials, strong arguments in favor of slavery and against women’s rights, and many more atrocities. So yeah, these things hurt.

The claim that a vocal atheist must have been hurt personally is an attempt to devalue the criticism so that the criticism can be ignored. The reasoning is that the atheist’s criticism is based solely on his or her personal anger and not on any real merit. The fact is that one can be angry and have valid arguments. But in my case, it isn’t a personal issue it is an issue driven by the merit alone.

Filed under: church/state, conversation, culture war, People of Reason, Personal, Religion, Religious Manipulation | 4 Comments »

It occurred to me recently that perhaps the Christian “get out of stoning free” card might actually have a theological weakness. When asked why Christians no longer stone people for working on a Saturday, the response is usually that Jesus forgave sin an abolished the old law with his “new covenant.” Theologically speaking that is at best only half right.

I say “Theologically speaking” because in reality it is all make believe and doesn’t make any real sense. But within the context of the narrative (i.e. The Bible) there ought to be some sense of consistency. Even though there really isn’t any internal consistency, theologians continue to fake it.

The idea is that since Jesus forgives sin (for those who believe), believers can sin but try not to because it is God’s desire that they don’t. But should they sin, they would not have to pay the penalty of being tortured for all eternity in Hell like everyone else because their sins have already been forgiven. The problem with this line of thought is that the term “sin” is being used synonymously with the term “wrongdoing” and yet the two are not the same… theologically speaking.

Sin is generally defined as something displeasing to God or some kind of spiritual separation from God. For example, God put the Ten Commandments (a list of “thou shall not” rules) in stone. These are things that displease God and so they are all sins. While some of them amount to wrongdoing, not all of them do. Thou shall not murder can rightfully be considered wrongdoing, but thou shall not have any others Gods before the Lord God is merely a sin. On the opposite side of the spectrum, rape is considered wrongdoing, but there is no place in the Bible in which it is stated that rape displeases God. So while rape is wrongdoing, it is not a sin.

The main difference is that wrongdoing is a crime against other people while sin is just something that displeases God. It can’t even be considered wrongdoing against God since you can do something displeasing to someone without doing them wrong.

Where does this leave us? Well, theologically speaking, wrongdoing is not a sin. God only seems concerned with sin and not wrongdoing. Rape is wrongdoing, but not a sin. So there should be nothing stopping Christians from going around and raping people.

Also according to the theology, Jesus didn’t abolish the old laws at all. He just came to forgive the old sins. “The Law” should still be in affect. While the law is considered God’s law (i.e. sin) it is also man’s law (i.e. wrongdoing) and so Jesus’s new covenant does nothing to abolish that part of the law.

Filed under: Law, Religion, sin | No Comments »

For many young Christians, the belief in the literal resurrection of Jesus has become their primary justification for belief in the entire Christian system. One argument they use in particular is that they don’t believe that the apostles would have died for a lie.

These particular Christians often tell me how many of the apostles and early Christians were tortured for spreading the Christian belief and who in their right mind would die for a lie? Who indeed? Let’s look at this for a moment. First, aside from the Biblical account there is no evidence that any of the apostles actually did die for a lie. In fact, there is no real evidence that Jesus even existed. But that is another story for another day.

Let’s for the sake of argument grant that Jesus did exist and that the apostles actually did “die for a lie” even though there is no evidence to suggest this is actually true. Why would someone do such a thing? I can actually think of quite a few reasons and even some examples. For many people, there are some things more important than one’s own life. There are causes that we take up that we sometimes consider greater than ourselves. If one is in the military during a time of war for example, if captured by the enemy and tortured to reveal a hidden base a soldier might lie about it even sacrificing his or her own life to protect others or the cause.

A parent might lie under torture to save the life of a child or sometimes people might lie to save the life of others. In a social/political movement, people might lie under torture to protect the integrity of the movement. So if Jesus was real and was flipping over tables and telling everyone that the Hebrews had it all wrong and that no one should be following the Old Testament laws any more, this might be considered some kind of social, political, and religious movement. It would be a cause that some people might consider greater than themselves and if tortured might even die for a lie. In fact, if the charismatic leader of such a movement did die and the movement started to fall apart, it might be in the best interest of some of the new leaders to lie. They might tell their followers that the leader isn’t really dead and has in fact resurrected from the dead. They might even claim that the leader of the movement is so powerful that death itself couldn’t stop him from accomplishing the mission.

Now in the 21st Century, one might think such a lie would be laughable and certainly not believed, but the fact is that there are many current cults in the world with charismatic leaders that have their followers believe just these types of things. Back two thousand years ago before science and critical thinking really dominated society, even more people would be willing to believe in magical tales from charismatic leaders.

So even if Jesus was a real person and even if the apostles really were tortured, that still doesn’t prove that they must have told the truth while being tortured. It is extremely likely that they would have died for a lie.

Still, there is of course another possibility too. They might have actually believed the lie. They could have simply been bat-shit crazy. I know religious people are never crazy, right? Lol. I am sure it would be impossible to find any religious zealot so convinced by some obviously ridiculous story that they wouldn’t be willing to die confessing that it was true. I bet I could even find someone willing to die rather than denounce that Elvis is still alive. This would not be good evidence for Elvis’s immortality.

Filed under: delusion, Die for a Lie, Religion | 2 Comments »

Often times I get a lot of e-mails from Christians who are eager to prove their God. These particular Christians tend to be fundamentalists and seem to be under the impression that I must have never heard any arguments for their position and have never really heard the story of Jesus. These particular Christians tend to be either young or recent converts.

Whenever I get into one of these conversations, I am always reminded of my phrase that my favorite philosophy professor in grad school used to use. My professor would frequently share some of his old papers with us and before he did, he used to hedge the paper’s introduction by telling us that he wrote the paper, “in the enthusiasm of youth” and then proceeded to let us know that it, “probably wasn’t very good.” It was always of course brilliant but his modestly was genuine.

It is important to note that there is some genuine merit to my professor introduction. When we are young and enthusiastic, we tend to be less contemplative and more combative. We tend to be less open to other people’s reasoning and other people’s points of view.

I do find this with many Christians and even some of my fellow atheists. But most of the time even young atheists have put a great deal of time and contemplation into their positions. One of the main differences between theist and atheist is that people tend to be raised dogmatically with religion and/or convert to a religion suddenly. Most atheists on the other hand tend to take a journey from belief to non-belief. That journey is often long, hard, and contemplative.

Because atheists have to re-learn critical thinking skills and have usually spent a great deal of contemplative thought into why they don’t believe, the “enthusiasm of youth” doesn’t overtake them nearly as often as it does Christians. The fact is that we live in a world dominated by theism and most atheists either group up in a theistic home or in a community of theistic belief. Most atheists spent the enthusiasm of their youth as theists.

Filed under: conversation, ignorance, missionaries, Preaching, Religion | No Comments »

Christians often tell me that as an atheist I must believe in nothing. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Atheism refers to what I don’t believe in, but doesn’t say anything about I do believe in. So when asked, tell them that I believe in Star Wars.

Today is Star Wars Day. On May 25th 1977, Star Wars first hit the big screen. The Star Wars Saga was created as a modern mythology. George Lucas worked with Joseph Campbell to create a new story using the mythical themes of the past. Unlike other religious believers, I am well aware that my Holy Book or in this case Holy Films are fiction. Although, I think a Christian would have a hard time proving that Darth Vader didn’t actually live a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

The fiction however tells a story which can inspire and teach us about the world around us. The Jedi are the guardians of peace and justice and we can learn a lot from how they live their lives and contrast that with how the Sith live their lives. Star Wars is a story of empires and rebellions, of love and loss, good and evil, and the rise and fall of people on a moral and personal level.

I take my Star Wars very seriously. Still, one big difference between my belief in Star Wars and the various religions in the world is that one need not believe on insufficient reasons. I can recognize that the Force is make-believe and yet still believe in the symbolism of the Force in the context of the story and how that can translate to reality.

May the Force be with you!

Filed under: Alternative Worldview, humanism, Star wars | 1 Comment »

Usually I discuss religion with Christians since Christianity is the majority religion in America however from time to time I get drawn into a conversation/debate with someone from one of the other Abrahamic religions. Interestingly enough, the arguments aren’t any different.

Last year for example, I got into a pretty lengthy religious conversation with my extremely Jewish cousin on facebook. He is closer to the orthodox side of Judaism and his main arguments in favor of his position were the First Cause Argument, the Argument by Design, The Moralistic Argument, etc. I didn’t really have to even know all that much about Orthodox Judaism to completely destroy his arguments and argue against his religious ideas.

More recently, I started to have a dialog with a few moderate Muslims. I have to confess right off the bat that I have not read the Koran and have no idea what it actually said. All I know is what I have heard from well respected atheists and I will for the sake of argument assume that they are wrong about what the Koran actually says.

According to the moderate Muslims, the Koran is all about piece and no one should ever do violence. I haven’t read the Koran so they might be right, but it does seem that a whole lot of Muslims missed that part when they advocate killing people over cartoons or any criticism of the Islamic religion. The Funny thing is that I hear Christians tell me that the Bible is all about piece too. If moderate to liberal Christians are to be believed Jesus was the first flower child and was a peace loving hippy.

Unlike the Koran, I have actually read the Bible and know full well that while there is a few passages that support the idea that Christianity is a religion of peace, most of the Bible is chocked full of hate and violence. Jesus himself states that he was not a peaceful person and his actions and attitudes confirm that.

With that in mind, I was able to tell my new Muslim friends that while I haven’t read the Koran, I strongly suspect that it is much like the Bible in that respect. I am sure there are some passages that talk about peace and love, but my guess is that most of the book is probably willed with hate and violence.

Without even reading the Koran or knowing much about Islam, I am pretty sure that I can address most of the arguments in favor of that religion and present arguments against it. The same is also true of Orthodox Judaism; because at the end of the day, all these bronze-aged religions are essentially the same. The details may change a little bit here or there, but the content of the religions are almost identical. The stories are all ridiculous and there is not one shred of evidence for any of it.

Filed under: conversation, discussion, islam, Religion, Religious Manipulation | 1 Comment »

One of the big advantages that religion has over the greater atheist/Humanist community is money. Christians are used to supporting and funding the propagation of their message. Many Christians even donate “their last dollar” to further “God’s Work.” In this world, money talks and so we need to start tithing for reason.

In the free market of ideas, there is little doubt that atheist and Humanist ideas are vastly superior to religious ideas. Religious people know it too and that is why it has become such a social taboo to criticize religion. This means that we can actually win this culture war if we can get our ideas out there. It is all about marketing and campaigning. That of course takes money.

Atheist Nexus is the largest atheist social networking site with over 16 thousand members and for the last few months they have been trying to raise $5000 for site upgrades. If it were Christian Nexus they would have that in an hour. It isn’t the fact that there are simply more Christians either. Christians would donate to Christian sites and projects because they believe that money helps God (as if a God needed money). The point is that atheists have a cause worth fighting for too. We are fighting for reason. If we can’t spread reason and present our criticisms of religion to the public, the consequences are felt not in some afterlife, but in this one, here and now.

There are lots of atheist organizations, blogs (like this one), radio shows, youtube channels, etc. that are struggling for funds needed to get the message of reason out there. There are atheist authors (aside from the big four) struggling to get their books read or even on bookshelves. We have to support each other.

I am calling for all people of reason to set aside at least 5% and hopefully 10% of our incomes to help fund atheist projects, websites, organizations, etc. Normal organization dues don’t count. If we all start funding each other, we will see a rise is visibility of positive atheism and a rise in atheists. But money talks and right now we are being outspent about a billion to one. Please help to spread this message.

Filed under: atheism, culture war, Decline of Religion, humanism, People of Reason, Preaching | 3 Comments »

That’s right bitches, it is Everyone Draw Mohammad Day. I love this holiday. It is right up there with Everyone Blasphemy Jesus Day. Seriously though, I have already written my take on this subject for the Examiner (because they pay more). So check out my article on why it is Immoral to criticize Draw Mohammad Day.

Filed under: Blasphemy, censorship, culture war, Current Events, free speech, image of god, islam, Religion | 1 Comment »

There are many movies about war and films like Platoon, Apocalypse Now, and Full Metal Jacket are among the finest fiction Hollywood has produced dealing with the subject. Severe Clear is not just a film about war; it is a war on film.

Before I get too far into this review, I have something that needs to be disclosed. The writer and director of this film, Kristian Fraga is an old childhood friend of mine. I’ve known him from kindergarten through high school. He has always wanted to be a directed (although I would have thought he would have made a sci-fi film rather than a war film).

Severe Clear is a real life look at the beginnings of the Iraq War (which is still going on) from a Marine who was there at the beginning and on the front line. First Lieutenant Michael Scotti, while deployed in Iraq, took his video camera with him into battle and into the long hot days of sitting around.

His story is real and the images on the screen are real. The dead bodies don’t walk off the set when the camera is turned off. “They say in war bad things happen, ain’t that the mother fucking truth!”

Fraga does a great job in not going into the politics of this war, but the war is what it is and so even trying not to get political, the politics is there nonetheless. It is interesting to see First Lieutenant Scotti’s honest motivation in regard to the war. It was also interesting to see his excitement at finding what he thought were the weapons of mass destruction and his disappointment later when he revealed that they weren’t that massive after all.

The day to day struggles of soldiers is something we don’t see in other war movies. Scotti talks about the boredom, the bacteria, the smells, the difficulty in just going to the bathroom, and most troubling of all the time to think. Add those to the lack of body armor, ineffective tarps, defective equipment, and the lack of ability to understand the natives and we get a glimpse of the troubles of war. The good guys don’t always hit their targets and the bad guys can be almost anyone.

There were some key moments of particular interest to me. The first was when a higher ranking officer informed his men that they would be anointed with oil as some sort of religious warrior custom. It did not seem voluntary and it did seem highly unconstitutional. Another example of the military pushing religion.

There was an incident in which a little girl was killed and that seemed very genuine and really brought home the reality of war; namely the obvious that in war people die. This also was brought to the forefront when during a firefight, a Marine died. There was no time to grieve of the field of battle and all that could be said was that his brains were poring out. When I saw that scene, I thought of that man’s family and friends and how his death was treated so trivially, not because the soldiers were being disrespectful, but because there was no time and they were in shock.

Severe Clear is real war. It is raw and in your face. It is not for the queasy. If you want to know what war is like without actually being in one, too bad that ain’t going to happen. But this movie is the closest thing you’re going to get.

Go to severeclearthemovie.com for cities & showtimes and for more information about the DVD

Filed under: church/state, death, journalism, Politics, Preaching | 17 Comments »

When most people think of sports, they think of baseball, football, basketball, tennis, etc. But my sport of choice has always been politics and if politics is a sport, then tomorrow’s the playoffs.

Because I won the election for minority election inspector by one vote, I have to sit at the polling station from 6am to 9pm tomorrow. So there will be no daily blog tomorrow.

This year is a big primary year for me in my area of the nation. The biggest race going on is between recent Democrat Arlen Specter and my current congressman Joe Sestak. When I went to DC to lobby against the Broadcast Decency Bill a number of years ago, I got to meet with Specter’s legislative aids and talk to his staff. I really like Specter (even when he was Republican) and I really think he should be rewarded for switching sides to send a message to other Republicans who might be thinking the same thing. On the other hand, I have met Sestak a few times now and while I think he is a little bit of a dick in person, I think he will play less politics and vote for the progressive values that I support more genuinely and without having his arm twisted to do it. So I am supporting Sestak in that race, but if my horse loses, it isn’t a big deal.

There is also a much contested Governor primary going on. I think there are at least four Democratic candidates running. There is the guy with the money, the guy that everyone likes personally, the Al Sharpton candidate, and the strong progressive. As it turns out, the strong progressive candidate is actually someone I am friendly with and who was a guest on my radio show back in the day. He is also the candidate who probably has the least chance of winning tomorrow. Still, I strongly support Joe Hoeffel and if any of you are in Pennsylvania, you should vote for him too. My prediction is that money will win the day and Dan Onorato will be the candidate.

Since congressman Sestak is running for Senate, his congressional seat is up for grabs. There are I think three Democrats running for that spot, but two of them have no chance at all. Bryan Lentz pretty much has the lock in that primary race. I met Bryan a while back and he seems like a good guy. The real question is; can he win in the general election.

I think these primary races are important to the whole nation. The Senate race is of course important because it is he Senate. The Governor primary race is important because it tells us how politics works. Does money really trump everything? We’ll find out.

Filed under: Political Activism, Politics | 2 Comments »

One of the issues that I have with the Christian system of belief is that it is very pessimistic. The attitude that it encourages is an attitude of distrust and fear. While none of this speaks to the truth value of the claims, I really don’t think it is a useful system either. At the core, Christianity sees all humans as evil sinners as opposed to Humanism which sees people as a work in progress making progress.

When people are convinced that they are inherently evil sinners, it makes it easier to do things they know are morally wrong. We are all sinner after all, so what is one more sin? The thief believes everyone steals. Also, if we see other people as evil sinners right from the start, then we act distrustful of others. This makes people paranoid and fearful and prevents people from giving others the benefit of the doubt. This line of thinking often causes Christians to assume the worst in others rather than try to understand where others are coming from.

By contrast, when we view people as evolving and progressing, we are working toward being better people and so we treat others as working toward that goal as well. We also are inspired to be the best we can be because we are working toward that progress. We treat other people as people of value right from the start.

Christians often try to flip this around by claiming that they view human beings as specially created by God and that atheists believe that we are just animals. But the problem is that Humanists don’t think animals are absent of value. This again shows the pessimistic side of Christianity.

Humans are animals, but we are rational animals and because we have the ability to reason, we can reason that we have value. Our value comes from our ability to reason, because we are living beings, and because we are the ones doing the valuing.

The “we were created special” argument is hollow since the Christian believe claims that human beings fucked it all up. The blame is on us and as a result of our infraction, everyone is considered to be evil sinners intrinsically. So really the Christian argument is that we “were” created special, but now we are all just evil sinners and it is all our fault. Again the glass is half empty and Christianity presents a pessimistic view of humanity as a whole and people individually while Humanism presents the view that we are all learning, evolving, and progressing.

Filed under: humanism, People of Reason, Preaching, Projection, Religion, sin | 1 Comment »

The other day I was behind a car that had a bumper sticker that stated, “Real Men Love Jesus” among other bumper stickers that were sufficiently fundamentalist Christian. Well, I guess I am not a real man according to that Christians. Oh well.

The thing is that this bumper sticker brings up a few issues. First, I thought fundamentalist Christians hate homosexuality and yet here this guy goes telling everyone about his gay relationship with Jesus. Seriously though, I think it is an arrogant way of devaluing other people and so I was surprised when I saw the same bumper sticker among others on a progressive’s car later that same day.

As a biological fact, whether one loves Jesus, doesn’t love Jesus, or doesn’t even accept the existence of Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with one’s gender. For the record, neither does loving people of the same gender or of the opposite gender. A more accurate bumper sticker should read, “Real Men Have XY Chromosomes.”

Also, I want to mention that outstanding PR campaign that Jesus has. The reason why both the right wing and the lift wing Christians sport this bumper sticker is because they all think of Jesus as a model of morality. But any full read of the New Testament shows that Jesus is far from that model.

There is no doubt that there are some positive things that the character of Jesus as portrayed in the Bible has said, but most Christians are not aware of or quickly dismiss all the really horrible things that Jesus said. I blogged about this before so I won’t repeat it in this blog entry.

The point is that if the claim of the bumper sticker is taken figuratively to mean that loving Jesus is macho (in a good way), I think it goes in the wrong direction. The positive macho trait of being a protector and a gentleman clearly supports taking issue with many of the claims, opinions, and attitudes of the character of Jesus as he is portrayed in the Bible.

Filed under: culture war, Preaching, Religion, wwjd | 18 Comments »

A common theme that I run into when discussing religion with Christians (particularly fundamentalist Christians), is that they will often bring up old arguments which have long since been refuted as if they are some new revelation. These Christians often boast about how knowledgeable and thoughtful they are and yet they don’t seem to realize that they are using an argument that is hundreds of years old and in some cases even thousands of years old and has been long refuted.

For example, a Christian told me the other day that I should believe in God because if I a wrong, I will be tortured for all eternity in Hell, but if he is wrong nothing will happen. Perhaps this Christian didn’t realize that Pascal made the same observation and a quick Google search or a little critical thinking skill would show just how retarded an argument that was.

Other examples include the First Cause Argument, The Argument by Design, and others. What is wrong with these Christians that they think they have this new insight that no one has ever thought of before. Maybe they do have some new insight, but these old arguments aren’t that insight. Before one can think of new arguments, it helps to know the old arguments.

Then there are the Christians who do know the old arguments and try to dress them up as something new. “Maybe if we throw in some scientific terms we can slip the old First Cause argument through.” This is a popular strategy for some of the more academic minded Christians. Throwing in terms like “quantum physics” doesn’t magically make the First Cause argument valid again and asking about who designed the laws of physics doesn’t reinvent the Argument by Design.

Filed under: Argument by Design, conversation, discussion, First Cause Argument, God-Shaped Hole, ignorance, Judge God, Lord-Liar-Lunatic, Preaching, Religion | 1 Comment »

It is pretty common for Christians to claim that God is Truth. What they mean by this isn’t that God is simply a true, but rather that God is actually a synonym for Truth. In other words, to say that God is false would be like saying that the Bachelor is a married man. It simply doesn’t make sense.

So before a Christian can even entertain the possibility that God might not be true, he or she has to think of God as something separate from Truth. They have to realize that God is simply a proposition like any other claim.

Then, the Christian has to make a choice; are they more committed to the truth or to their God? It doesn’t even matter if to the Christian this is just a hypothetical question, as long as they can understand that it is a valid question and that God is not a synonym for Truth. It is only then that a Christian can even consider the possibility that God might be false.

Once they choose their loyalty, then the real fun can begin. Most Christians will go with Truth. Then they will tell you that while they value truth above God, God is true so they got it covered. This is where an atheist can bring up Anselm’s definition of God (that which nothing greater could be conceived). The Christian has put Truth above God and so God is no longer God. Also, now that the Christian acknowledges that Truth is more important than God, the atheist can start showing the flaws in the God of the Bible and in the evidence against the Bible.

If the Christian claims that their loyalty is to God above the Truth, then they have a whole new set of problems. Such a claim shows insecurity on the part of the Christian. It shows that they Christian doesn’t really care if God is true or not and therefore implies that they don’t really believe God is true or at the very least are just not secure in that view. This view implies that as long as God is useful, it doesn’t matter if he is true or not.

This view also opens up the door to make any claim and call it true because truth doesn’t really matter. All that really matters to the Christian in this case is the dogmatic belief in their God whether it is true or not. In other words, the Christian has admitted to being in a cult.

Filed under: conversation, discussion, Disproving God, god, Religion, truth | 1 Comment »

Last night, Obama made his pick for the replacement of Supreme Court Justice Paul Stevens. His pick is Elena Kagan, the current Solicitor General. Is it a good pick? Should we as atheists be supporting her?

Earlier today I wrote an article of the Examiner page talking about Elena Kagan’s record on church/state issues. It is mixed and she has a reputation of being a moderate. It is still too early to tell whether or not we as a community ought to support her. Many atheists will not support her simply because of politics. Believe it or not there are actually right wing Republican atheists who will not support any nominee Obama puts forward.

But for the more liberal minded atheists (which is most of us), I still a not convinced she is the right choice. It seems that Obama just wants the Republicans to vote for his pick so he can pat himself on the back for being bi-partisan.

As I wrote in the Examiner article, I fear she would reverse Judge Crabb’s position on the National Day of Prayer and rule against us on other issues of separation of church and state.

Please weigh in and let’s have the discussion.

Filed under: atheism, church/state, culture war, Current Events, Law, Obama, People of Reason, Politics, Religion | 18 Comments »

When it comes to morality, Christians often think that they have the monopoly on the topic. Interestingly enough, one of the biggest problems with Christian morality was actually introduced long before Christianity by Socrates and still remains unanswered by Christians today.

In Plato’s dialog Euthyphro, Socrates has a conversation with a young lawyer named Euthyphro who is about to prosecute his own father. Socrates decides that he would like to learn more about morality, so he asks the young Euthyphro about the topic. The dialog is summed up by a simple question that Socrates asks Euthyphro. “Is something pious (or good) because the Gods say so or do the Gods say so because it is pious (or good)?”

The significance of this question is whether or not God is the creator of morality or merely an arbiter of morality. If God is the creator of morality, then if God were to change his mind, morality would change with his opinion. This would basically mean that morality is relative to God’s whim merely. So the reason why murder is morally wrong has nothing to do with creating a safe and functional society, not harming other people, or any other rational justification. The only reason why murder would be morally wrong would be because God says so. This also means that anything that God decides is immoral would be so. Morality becomes completely arbitrary. God could decide that the color red was immoral and it would be the case.

If God simply knows what is moral better than we do and so he tells us what is good because of his superior knowledge, then it could be argued that we don’t really need God. We can figure out what is moral without God’s guidance. Plus, Christians don’t like the idea that God must then be subject to the laws of morality just like we are.

So where does hat leave us? For atheists this isn’t a problem at all. God neither creates nor interprets morality. Morality is a human construct to insure individual freedom, happiness, and security. We have empathy which allows us to put ourselves in the place of others. This translates to compassion and kindness. It is this combination of social and biological conditions which give rise to morality.

For the Christian, Euthyphro remains unanswered. Either morality has no rhyme or reason, relativistic to God’s whims, subjective to his will purely, and is completely arbitrary or God is relegated to the status of a middleman and even God’s actions can be judged by the same moral standards as our own in which case, God (as described in the Bible) has a lot to answer for.

Filed under: morality, Religion | 3 Comments »

Today is the day that the followers of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy decided to designate as the National Day of Prayer. Recently of course this federal endorsement of religion has been struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. But no one appears to have told the federal government or the religious right about this.

While the White House on behave of the religious right attempt to appeal the federal Judge’s decision on the obviously unconstitutional nature of endorsing… wait, let me quote the President on this one directly, “I call upon the citizens of our nation to pray, or otherwise give thanks, in accordance with their own faiths and consciences, for our many freedoms and blessings, and I invite all people of faith to join me in asking for God’s continued guidance, grace, and protection as we meet the challenges before us.”

If that isn’t a government endorsement of religion, then I couldn’t possible think of what would be. What surprises me is Obama was a Constitutional law professor. He should know better. Obama is doing the bidding of the religious right and even though he is doing exactly what they ask for they will still vote against him and call him a Muslim.

Law can’t really settle this issue obviously. We are going to have to solve this problem ourselves the same way Christians solved similar problems in the past. If you can’t beat them, join them. Many atheist groups have picked today to represent a National Day of Reason. This is a great idea, but it is not the only idea out there.

Last week, I wrote an Examiner article about this topic as introduced by the Washington Post: On Faith: National day of prayer and masturbation. That’s right, masturbation! I created a really call graphic for the article too. I am very proud of it.

The point is that we should create as many different alternatives to the Day of Prayer as we can and demand that the federal Government give us equal recognition. I think President Obama should have to make a statement addressing the National Day of Reason and the National Day of Masturbation. We require equal time as mandated by the Constitution. Congress can not elevate one religion over another. So let’s create multiple religions and create holidays on the same days as Christian holidays which are almost all in fact pagan holidays anyway.

Filed under: church/state, culture war, faith, Law, Obama, People of Reason, Political Activism, prayer, Religion | 2 Comments »

I love when Christians ask atheists questions that they should fucking know the answers to. I know they are all about their bronze-aged story book, but we live in the information age now. Now the one true God is Google.

Seriously, before Christians try to ask an atheist a question that he or she thinks will really stump us and turn us into a sheep for their zombie Shepard, they might want to Google their question first. The First Cause Argument, The Argument by Design, Pascal’s Wager, etc. have all been addressed by people hundreds and sometimes thousands of years ago. Hell, some of the answers predate the Christian religion all together.

What I like to do is to try to find new answers to some of these age old questions whenever I can. Sometimes even use the questions themselves as a tool to show just how ridiculous the Christian story really is.

I really do love answering these questions though and so whenever I find a YouTube video asking atheists questions, I try to go out of my way to answer them. Here is my most recent response to two Christians:

I once put up a video called “Stump the Atheist” but Christians couldn’t really follow the rules laid out in the video so I ended up deleting it. I might start that back up though.

Filed under: atheism, conversation, discussion, education, Religion | 5 Comments »

Muslims do this more than Christians, but I do hear it from Christians every now and then too. These believers tell me that they do what they do in order to bringing glory to their God. That seems like a pretty arrogant thing to claim when you think about it.

If God is so all-powerful, why does he need Christians and Muslims to bring glory to him? It would seem that such a deity wouldn’t need or even want glory. Glory is all about ego after all and ego is all about insecurity. So by claiming to bring glory to God, they are really just expressing the opinion that they believe their God is insecure.

Besides, how can evil sinning humans bring glory to the most perfect of all beings? Just as ants can’t bring glory to humans, the inferior can’t bring glory to the superior, no mere human could bring glory to an all-powerful God, right?

Of course, I think much more highly of humans than Christians and Muslims do. So I think the only glory a god can have must come from humans; humans being real and gods being imaginary. Still, it is pretty difficult to bring or receive glory to or from something that doesn’t actually exist.

Filed under: Glory to God, god, Religion | 3 Comments »

I tend to get a lot of e-mails from angry fundamentalist Christians. There is a particular type of e-mail that I get often. This type is usually short and usually informs me that the Christian will enjoy watching me being tortured or burning in Hell for all eternity.

This quick sentiment probably took the writer all of two seconds to write and yet it seems to actually put a lot on the table. First, it carries with it the typical Christian arrogance I have come to expect from fundamentalist believers and others. This Christian claims to know with absolute certainty that his or her world view is true and that anyone who doubts or questions it will be tortured for all eternity (which I hear is a pretty long time).

More importantly however this statement tells us a little bit about its Christian writer. I always find it interesting that these Christians could make such a statement and still consider themselves good and moral people.

These Christians are basically saying that they derive pleasure from watching the torture of other human beings. In fact, they seem to be suggesting that this pleasure is what they are most looking forward to in Heaven. They apparently can’t wait to sit up on the Jesus cloud and watch the eternal spectacle that is Hell. How long does it take to watch eternal tortures anyway? I would think that watching the eternal torture of others would take an eternity away from any other Heavenly activity.

How could anyone who takes joy out of genuine torture look themselves in the mirror and think of themselves as a good person? How could they think their God is good being for torturing or allowing the torturing of people for all eternity? This sort of gets into Christianity’s Problem of Evil but in a much more direct fashion.

The thing is that I wouldn’t want my worst enemies to be tortured for all eternity. I certainly wouldn’t want to watch anyone be tortured. Torture is a tool of dictators, terrorists, and George W. Bush. It isn’t something that any self-respecting deity ought to lower himself too. And any person who takes pleasure from the eternal torture of others really needs psychological help. This is what religion does to people.

Filed under: Evils of Christianity, hell, morality, Religion | 2 Comments »

You may have seen them on cars or t-shirts, the coexist message has become fairly popular with liberal Christians and other liberal religious people. On the surface, it sounds like a pretty cool movement, but I do have a few issues with it.

Have you seen this Bumper Sticker:

Each letter represents a different religion or idea. The “C” is for Islam, “o” for peace, “e” for gender equality, “x” for the Jews, “i” for Bah’ai, “s” for the eastern religions, and of course “T” for Jesus and Christianity.

First, there are a lot of groups not represented here. While I am all for gender equality, I am also for gender relations equality. There is nothing representing the gay community. What about atheism or at the very least Humanism? No representation for Scientology? Tom Cruise will sue you for that. What about the Hindu religion and the Satanists? So coexisting with the Bah’ai is okay, but not these other religions and non-religions?

Maybe I am reaching a little bit. Maybe the word “Coexist” just isn’t long enough to fit all that stuff. So I looked on Yahoo Answers to find what the full meaning of “Coexist” was. It turns out that someone asked this very question. Here is part of what DyLaN asks:

“The complete meaning of the coexist sticker?… If there is a deeper meaning like all religions should combine or all religions are wrong I would like to know before I stick it on my car because I go to a Christian school and I don’t want them all to think I’m an evolutionist or atheist.”

Well, of course DyLaN doesn’t want to coexist with atheists or people who actually accept the mountains of evidence in support of evolution.

The thing is, I don’t think that is all that far from the truth. It does seem like liberal theistic believers are the ones pushing this “coexist” movement and I can think of a few reasons why.

First, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe they really think that everyone should get along even those who disagree with their ideas. Fair enough. Maybe there are people out there who believe that. But does that mean that their ideas ought to be protected from criticism? I am all for coexisting with people who hold ridiculous ideas, but I still think I ought to inform them that their ideas and beliefs are ridiculous. I can think that their ideas are ridiculous without having to want to blow them off the face of the planet. I can coexist with them, but I would rather they realize how ridiculous their ideas and beliefs really are.

That brings me to the second reason for the coexist movement. It is a great way to shield ridiculous ideas and beliefs from criticism and make those who think those beliefs are ridiculous seem like bad guys for point it out. I think that might be why Scientology isn’t represented. Too many people think that the story of Xenu is ridiculous. No one wants to “coexist” with them.

This sets up the false dichotomy that one must either accept ridiculous ideas or believe that those with different ideas are evil and should be destroyed. Just because I think someone’s beliefs and ideas are ridiculous, doesn’t mean that I can’t coexist with them. But it also shouldn’t protect them from criticism. In the free market of ideas and beliefs, the best ideas are the ones that can stand up to criticism and not the ones who hide behind peace to protect certain beliefs from criticism in order to avoid competing in the free market of ideas.

Religion is dying and the religious know it. That is why they are doing everything they can to protect themselves from the inevitable. So take that Coexist Bumper Sticker off your car and put on a bumper sticker supporting critical thinking or something. Atheist bumper stickers and Humanist bumper stickers are great too. Maybe even a Dangerous Talk bumper sticker, hint hint.

Filed under: atheism, billboards, Coexist, conversation, culture war, Decline of Religion, free speech, Progressive Christians, Religion | 12 Comments »