On Shame

Of the list of sins ignored by the church, gluttony is not in my top 10.  My list would include not judging those outside the church, owning a home, getting a divorce, ignoring the old testament, or lying about everything, like the compliation of the old testament, the mythologies therein, their borrowed nature, the authors of the new testament, you know..

Just about everything.

Also, the use of Genesis 3 points out that they were lacking in something, namely contentment, before ‘sin’ entered the world. Ergo, Eden was not perfect, there was already discontent, there were already problems. Also, this was before they knew ‘right’ from ‘wrong,’ casting further doubt on any reason why they should have been expected to know it’s wrong to be dissatisfied as a prisoner of ignorance. Of course since it is a myth shoved in next to genesis 1 where there’ no adam and eve, it makes sense.

Facts vs Magic

Meanwhile fact and evolution explain our indulgence to excess; we were molded in a time where we died in our 20s, and everything was scarce. We are programmed to take as much as we can when it’s available. This was the most effective strategy for our species’ survival, and it makes sense to see barely-non-cave-men and women gorging themselves on something our brains simply tell us to do and gives us endorphins as a reward for previously-rare and important nutrients (sugars and fats) or sexual opportunities.

Meanwhile the article promises that if you content yourself with an imaginary relationship, you will gain happiness and somehow quit being human. This is the great lie of Christianity: that somehow by way of a magical invisible spirit, you can cease to have human desires. Yet we see pastor after pastor repressing these desires and exploding in headlines as sexual miscreants completely opposed to their own words. Yes I’m sure they weren’t true scotsmen.

This only makes sense when the magic isn’t real.

The article says, “Is the desire for excess sinful?” Well.. see.. here’s where I have a big problem with this cult of evil that perpetuates mental slavery and should be fought with as much ferocity as any stalin, hitler, pol pot, or other massively evil thing: Being a human being, having natural tendencies, should never be something for shame.

Breathing should not be shamed. Being upset should not be shamed. Being tired should not be shamed. Being a child who sometimes goes against their parents’ words should not be shamed.

Sexual desire should not be shamed.

Wanting to eat an extra portion of food because our ancestors that didn’t died and didn’t pass on their genes should not be shamed.

Yet, the best way to perpetuate a snake oil plot like this is to make people ashamed repressed husks of their true humanity. And then sell them the lie that your shame will disappear if you just think magical thoughts about a murderous sadistic sociopath that invented hell just in case you don’t love him back. “You can be gluttonous! just be gluttonous about the right thing: thinking about God who loves you and will torture you forever if you don’t love him back teehee”

Only under christianity can a tyrant such as this be adored by so many willfully ignorant Stockholm victims, who look at their repressive dictator as salvation. It makes me sick. Thank you for the reminder today of how insane this cult really is, that can take normally intelligent and kind people and turn them into shaming repressed monsters.

Oftentimes, people are confused as to why I don’t believe at all, and one of the most basic reasons is due to the paucity of evidence for many of the events that are put forth as truth in the old testament.  One such event is the Exodus, and I feel it’s important to point out some information that the vast majority of historians and biblical scholars agree on: that every bit of researched archaeological evidence, textual criticism, and ancient history from surrounding peoples points that the Jews were never in Egypt, were Caanites, and invented the exodus as a story for national identity, much like the romans and the Romulus/Remus stories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus#Origins_of_the_Exodus_story

The wikipedia article has plenty of citations, but here are a few more:

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4191
“Israel itself did not exist until approximately 1100 BCE when various Semitic tribes joined in Canaan to form a single independent kingdom, at least 600 years after the completion of the last of Egypt’s large pyramids. Thus it is not possible for any Israelites to have been in Egypt at the time, either slave or free; as there was not yet any such thing as an Israelite.”

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Judaism/2004/12/Did-The-Exodus-Really-Happen.aspx?p=1
“Surveys of ancient settlements–pottery remains and so forth–make it clear that there simply was no great influx of people around the time of the Exodus (given variously as between 1500-1200 BCE). Therefore, not the wandering, but the arrival alerts us to the fact that the biblical Exodus is not a literal depiction.”

http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/41055/egypt-unveils-more-proof-that-jews-did-not-build-pyramids/
“No Jews built the pyramids because Jews didn’t exist at the period when the pyramids were built,” Mazar said.

So any findings about the ‘exodus’ are simply confirmation bias, since the event never even occurred. As for the chariot wheels:http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.kr/2008/05/coming-this-fall-exodus-conspiracy-dr.html

“Also, after 3,500 years of water flowing into the Red Sea and carrying sand and silt along with it, that’s the deepest that such a wheel has become buried? It looks like it’s barely beneath the sand. Why is this “gilded wheel” not covered by several feet of silt and sand after 3,500 years? “

I hope this helps shed some light on why some of us withhold our judgement on these stories! And feel free to respond with questions and objections!

If you want to watch a video summary of where the Israelites (and Yaheweh) actually came from, look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlnnWbkMlbg

This is the sort of insidious ignorance created by a death cult.

“Make no mistake, we are at war: an insane rebellion against our Creator God is the root cause of this murderous action.”

Religion has motivated countless murders and slaughters of innocents. If this is a religiously motivated act of terrorism, it will be due to some people’s belief in a creator god. The same one as Driscoll, in fact.  We can take the sentence and make sense of it by cutting it just so: “God is the root cause of this murderous action.”

“Sin makes no sense, is not rational, nor can be reasoned with.”

Of course not. It is an imaginary crime against an imaginary being with imaginary eternal consequences.  In point of fact, there are no eternal consequences for Christians, and eternal punishment for everyone believing the wrong mythology, meaning rapist/murderer/genocidists can gain eternal bliss, but if their victims curse god because of their perpetrator’s actions, they get eternal torment, under traditional orthodox theology.

“He does so, not by acts of military might or zealous terror, but by swallowing the curse like a bitter pill.”

Some pastors are ignorant liars. Others are willfully ignorant liars, and these are the more morally compromised ones. Mark driscoll knows full well that God (in the literal biblical sense) ordered mass slaughters of Amalekites, Caananites, the entire human race due to flooding, used the babylonians, persians, and assyrians to enact ‘justice’ by slaughtering innocents, and generally made a great bloody mess of things with glee and schoolgirl giddiness that sociopaths have wet dreams about. Yahweh, after being adopted from the Caananite El, was a ceaseless machination of impetulant murderous destruction out of petty jealousy and impotence from his pride, yet Driscoll has the moral paucity to say that this god does not act this way. And we best not forget gentle Jesus, who promises exact excruciating pain on his enemies, with his angels creating a winepress of death.  What a disturbingly incorrect notion of peace.

“He bears the full blast of God’s wrath against all the powers of hell aligned against us.”

Ironically, it was the mythical theology set forth by the Israelites  who required sacrifice, coupled with the mystery cults of the day that bestowed salvation on individual followers through Passions and rising, that enacted this death cult’s existence.  Also, aren’t we talking about the Almighty Creator of the universe that is capable of suspending physics and creating universes through his words? Oh, no, he’s incapable of changing his own rules, correcting his own mistakes, or having the foresight to realize that creating humans with the proclivity to ‘sin’ would mean they would ‘sin.’  What a pathetic idiot for a god this is; I had more planning ability when I was 4, visiting the bathroom without taking a dump my pants.

It’s a good thing he’s in charge and not me. I would have forgiven people who try to do good through empathy, and stopped rapists and murderers and suicide bombers, and not required willful ignorance and ‘faith’ to guarantee relief from eternal conscious torment. I wouldn’t write a book filled with contradictions, loopholes, and stories that have no archaeological evidence, borrow verbatim from other mythologies in the surrounding area, and were written down (or fabricated out of thin air and hallucination) hundreds of years after the fact. I would have provided some logical shred of my existence, instead of operating in a constant state of incompatibility to the law of noncontradiction, bestowing free will on humans to mess up my perfect plan, while maintaining full power over everything, existing as 3 and 1 at the same time, and telling my followers to slaughter everything that comes in their path, remaining unchanging, and change my mind by requesting everyone turn the other cheek, sending spirits of lies to prophets, deliberately hardening Pharaoh’s heart in order to slaughter a few children.

What god doesn’t like infanticide? Not the Abramic one!  I guess that’s the difference between me and God. I don’t like slaughtering children for my perverted egomaniacal masturbation.

“Because our Creator is for shalom, he is against anything that attempts to destroy it.”

It would seem this creator has a bipolar identity crisis, as His M.O. seems to be slaughter everything he’s jealous of.  Again, changing his mind like a whining child is par for the course.

“And though we may not fully understand why God allowed this senseless bombing, we do know, unquestionably, that he cares and his covenantal commitment will not diminished by the flailing death rattle of evil in any form.”

God allowed it because God doesn’t exist.  No being worthy of being called a god would allow the sort of wanton death and destruction we see, unless he were incapable of stopping it, unaware of the evil, or was actually an evil, malevolent, capricious, sadistic fuck of a being.

“Let us grieve and mourn for the weeping city of Boston. But let us do so with hope, knowing Jesus is Lord of creation and the great physician of every wound.”

And this, my friends, is the reason I hate people like Mark Driscoll and the fitlth that spouts from his ignorant, undeserving mind.  Let’s grieve, but forget about that grief; let’s remain blissfully ignorant to the reality that is screaming at us in the face, that there are people and cultures and human beings who, for whatever reason, want to engage in these unempathetic acts of slaughter.  Don’t lets figure out what’s causing this sort of death;

Let’s just look forward to our own slaughter, and the slaughter of those sinful humans around us, for the beginning of their eternal torment, with glee!

As all the other death cults of the world do.

The irony of this undertaking is that the Christian scriptures do not provide a sensible basis for the abolition of slavery. They never have, and in the schema of modern fundamentalism they never will, as the scriptures cannot be altered. The only way to make sense of abolition is through metaphoric reinterpretation, cherry picking, and wanton disrespect for the text of the scriptures, all of which run contrary to an interpretation of the scriptures as the revealed truth of God.

To explain this point, I turn to Dr. Richard Furman, who was the founder of Furman University and the first president of the Southern Baptist convention. The convention was originally formed over this theological point, and he gives a very strong defense of slavery itself:

“…for the right of holding slaves is clearly established by the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example. In the Old Testament, the Isrealites were directed to purchase their bond-men and bond-maids of the Heathen nations; except they were of the Canaanites, for these were to be destroyed. And it is declared, that the persons purchased were to be their “bond-men forever;” and an “inheritance for them and their children.” They were not to go out free in the year of jubilee, as the Hebrews, who had been purchased, were: the line being clearly drawn between them.*[See Leviticus XXV. 44, 45, 46, &c.] In example, they are presented to our view as existing in the families of the Hebrews as servants, or slaves, born in the house, or bought with money: so that the children born of slaves are here considered slaves as well as their parents. And to this well known state of things, as to its reason and order, as well as to special privileges, St. Paul appears to refer, when he says, “But I was free born.”
p8]
“…[Had the holding of slaves been a moral evil, it cannot be supposed, that the inspired Apostles, who feared not the faces of men, and were ready to lay down their lives in the cause of their God, would have tolerated it, for a moment, in the Christian Church. If they had done so on a principle of accommodation, in cases where the masters remained heathen, to avoid offences and civil commotion; yet, surely, where both master and servant were Christian, as in the case before us, they would have enforced the law of Christ, and required, that the master should liberate his slave in the first instance. But, instead of this, they let the relationship remain untouched, as being lawful and right, and insist on the relative duties.

[p9]
In proving this subject justifiable by Scriptural authority, its morality is also proved; for the Divine Law never sanctions immoral actions.

[p10]
The Christian golden rule, of doing to others, as we would they should do to us, has been urged as an unanswerable argument against holding slaves. But surely this rule is never to be urged against that order of things, which the Divine government has established; nor do our desires become a standard to us, under this rule, unless they have a due regard to justice, propriety and the general good.

“…Magistrates, husbands, and fathers, have proved tyrants. This does not prove, that magistracy, the husband’s right to govern, and parental authority, are unlawful and wicked. The individual who abuses his authority, and acts with cruelty, must answer for it at the Divine tribunal; and civil authority should interpose to prevent or punish it; but neither civil nor ecclesiastical authority can consistently interfere with the possession and legitimate exercise of a right given by the Divine Law.”

http://eweb.furman.edu/~benson/docs/rcd-fmn1.htm

I will also quickly note that Exodus 21 gives instructions for selling daughters into sex slavery, the very thing that is being railed against.

If any Christians are offended, I praise them for recognizing such a despicable stance for what it is. Please, I implore them to understand that I am not the object of your offense. I am not the culprit in their anger.

I am a mirror of Christian beliefs, Christian scriptures, and what the Christian God has said according to holy texts.

Every Christian I know is better than this, and is capable of making a better moral judgement than God or Richard Furman, and I can only hope that more Christians will realize the other ways that god has been terribly, terribly wrong.

I’m not creating a straw man, and I’m not misrepresenting Christianity at all: I am pointing it out for what it truly is, and the reason Christians are offended is simply because they are better than their God.

And the truth is, they wish I weren’t right.

But what if the picture was simply the production of a clever Photoshop worker? We know that almost every picture coming to us is manipulated or altered in some way, whether to increase breast size, give men a bigger six pack, or smooth away scars or hair.  We accept that these are not truthful representations of reality.

Image from the Photoshop Troll (Click Picture to Drive Traffic)

Likewise other people, objects, and unbelievable realities can be achieved through a few mouse-clicks. A family photo was set in space with an astronaut added in the above picture from the PhotoshopTroll.    It is incredibly straightforward to doctor a picture via Facebook’s repository of photos to create the aforementioned adultery photograph.

Reliability is Proportional to Content

From this example, it is not so much the message that is important; it is whether or not the message is true.  In the case of our imaginary photoshop image, the message has a credible object that lends to its belief: Bill’s wife.

Yet the message’s truth does not depend entirely on the message itself; the fidelity, or the resemblance to reality, depends on external factors as well.  If we were in Bill’s shoes, we would want to know the answers to questions like:

• Where was the picture taken?
• When was the picture taken?
• Was this a digital photograph that could have been doctored?
• Who are the other people in the photograph?
• Who gave Bill the photograph?

We can also ask internal questions relevant to the content of the message to determine if it is a reliable message:

• Who are the other men in the photograph?
• Is there any evidence of doctoring of the photograph?
• Is the location a likely location that is plausible?

All these questions may not be at the forefront of Bill’s mind when he sees the photograph, but they are immensely important to the truth of the claim presented.  Thereby, the reliability of the message is proportionally important to its content.  As the implausibility of content increase, so should the reliability of the message and the message-bearer.

Religious Texts: Incredible Content with No Reliability

The claim that a theistic, intervening, acting God exists is an incomparably more incredible notion than that Bill’s wife cheated on him.  Some would point out that cultures across time have continually created, invented, and worshipped god, but this no more proves that it is a credible claim than that if Bill believed his wife was cheating on him without the photograph.  The key is comparing the content of the claim (an intervening God exists) to the reliability of the method making the claim.

Snake-Oil Salesmen

As an example, we can think of dozens of examples of people who promised great wealth, health, or happiness at some expense.  Perhaps a miraculous wonder-drug, or a tarot card session, or any number of things that most rational people would not accept.  We can also go to a used car lot and be informed of seemingly miraculous properties of used cars.  Go to any political body on any day and you will find people with an agenda to sell you on some idea that actually benefits them more than you.

Agendas are everywhere, and it is unwise to recognize that people who say they speak on behalf of God are any different than those who speak on behalf of “Energy,” the body politick, or the car with 170,000 miles on it that won’t die for another 100,000.  Pastors have a need to retain members in their flocks, both for sustenance and for the mutual encouragement necessary to believe incredible claims.  This is not to say that they may believe it, but that throughout the ages, many, many people have spoken on behalf of God to (consciously or subconsciously) further their own means.

In the case of the pastor, many people treat their pastor’s claims as absolute truth, while in other areas of inquiry they treat claims with overly-arrogant skepticism. The claim to hear the voice and know the mind of God should meet an almost unachievable burden of proof before they should be believed, and yet it is not.

Holy Texts: Photoshopped Pictures

When talking about intervening Gods, most people refer to ones that are described by various holy texts that have existed throughout the ages: the Bible, the Enuma Elish, the Vedas, the Qu’ran, etc.  Many of these texts posit god-claims, that if true, should create extremely immense reaction from their acceptance.  Yet all too often people fail to look at the core facts about transmission.

The authors of the texts are largely unknown, especially in the case of the Bible.  There were as many as 5-6 different author groups within the Pentatuch alone! Investigative textual criticism, coupled with archaeology, has completely overturned the intelligibility of the notion that Moses wrote the entire Pentatuch as one contiguous document.  The facts instead point to different people with different agendas and conceptions of god, one in which God is all-powerful, all-knowing and unchanging.  However this same God is surprised and angry when things happen exactly as he should have known, and then he changes his mind.  These passages were written in different eras with different authors.

Then we can look to the gospels, whose authorship is anonymous.  Recall the earlier point about snake-oil salesmen; we need only to note that the “Gospel according to Matthew” appears on nearly every bible published today, yet it has been known for centuries that the authorship was anonymous.

When there is a patent lie on every bible published, we should question the reliability of the text.

Additionally, when we see contradictions with the virgin birth or things that appear to be legend, we should begin to doubt the truth and validity of the message, especially when one considers that an all-powerful god would not be so easily befuddled by humans getting his message wrong.  Yet we consistently see contradictions and problems within the bible itself, as well as problems in the transmission.

The Quran does not get off as easily either.  It was written after Mohammad’s death based on the memorization of various verses and sayings.  Unfortunately each of those scribes who memorized the words of the holiest book had competing and conflicting ideas over what was said. This resulted in several versions circulating, which were ultimately collected, some of which were destroyed, in order to make the ‘coherent’ document that exists today.

However, this message still suffers from many of the same problems, with an all knowing god becoming jealous, enraged, or surprised by something he, by all counts, should have seen coming.  There are numerous events that are reported that are not supported by archaeology or other external documents.  There are also fantastical claims contained therein, as well as in the Hadith, that should shake our reliability of the claims made.

Extraordinary Evidence

Whenever we investigate any claim, we should first look at the source and reliability of the message behind the claim.  In the case of Bill, he could have an extremely incorrect but justified belief that his spouse was an adulterer, yet if it is shown to be a photoshopped picture, he would have a very different response (and probably a different object for his anger).  It is here that I rest my case; I believe that each of the holy documents are photoshopped images of truth; that there may be a few real things, but that the unreliability of the message outweighs the content, especially when the content is so implausible as to render it nearly unintelligible.

Everyone is talking about the murder of 26 children and teachers thanks to, what seems to be, a mentally unstable 20-year-old.  And yet in the wake of this indescribable tragedy, Christians have no shortage of hatred and blame to go around:

We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools.  Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage? …We don’t have a crime problem, a gun problem or even a violence problem. What we have is a sin problem.

…the murders of Newtown are a warning to me — and you. Not a warning to see our schools as defenseless, but to see our souls as depraved. To see our need for a Savior. To humble ourselves in repentance for the God-diminishing bitterness of our hearts. To turn to Christ in desperate need, and to treasure his forgiveness, his transforming, and his friendship.

[We]  insist that the sovereignty of God and the doctrines of grace be taught and expounded publicly to all men. These doctrines of grace were well summed up by John Calvin in his 5 points of Calvinism: Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints.

We’re not talking about a base human passion like you and I might feel… it’s simply God’s fixed determination to punish the wicked in Hell for their sins. Because he can. Because he’s God. Because he’s sovereign…

I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that’s what’s going on.

Christians know that this is the result of sin and the horrifying effects of The Fall. Every answer for this evil must affirm the reality and power of sin. The sinfulness of sin is never more clearly revealed than when we look into the heart of a crime like this and see the hatred toward God that precedes the murderous hatred he poured out on his little victims.

So now I will pour out my fury on them, consuming them with the fire of my anger. I will heap on their heads the full penalty for all their sins. I, the Sovereign LORD, have spoken!”

Seven quotes: One from the bible.  Two from John Piper and Albert Mohler, two prominent evangelical leaders.  Mohler is the president of Southeastern Seminary, Piper is one of the post prolific, desired speakers of the Christian movement today. One from Mike Huckabee, a former pastor and republican primary candidate, and another from James Dobson, founder of focus on the family.  Two from Westboro Baptist Church‘s about me section and an interview.

Can you tell the difference? No? Because there isn’t any.  I’ll say it again.

There is no theological difference between Westboro baptist’s theology and Piper’s, Mohler’s, or Huckabee’s, or Dobson’s. They all agree that wanton death is our fault and God’s punishment.

The only difference is that Westboro Baptist chooses to speak their vitriol at the funeral, while the pastors expound on the hatred of God towards our human race on their blogs and websites.  Some might say that this connotes the difference between speaking in hate and love, and yet no words or ideas are changed: America is punished because we embrace non-christian values like equality, fairness, and contraception.

This is nothing new, however.  During hurricane sandy, dozens of pastors across the nation (and westboro) blamed the wanton destruction on America’s support of gay rights and growing atheism, conveniently ignoring the landlocked Scandinavian countries’ lack of Christians and hurricanes.  Westboro, like the pastors, cheered for God’s judgement coming to fruition.  This is a meme, it is not going away, and it is manifestly Christian.

If these are the Fundamentalists, the Fundamentals are Wrong

The doctrines of total depravity and original sin are foundational to most of Protestant theology: that we are awful creatures (because of something that wasn’t our fault) and we deserve any bad that comes to us.  Such a foundation results in the sort of hate-speech and victim-blaming that we see here from across the board.  The solution, Jesus, creates a loophole and a stockholm-syndrome style death cycle in which one’s condemner (God/Jesus) is also one’s salvation (God/Jesus).

For those that ignore this dissonance long enough it can result in happiness to an extent, as was true in my case, but results in the sort of mindset we see in the quotations above: humans deserve suffering. Innocents deserve suffering.  If pressed, every Christian above would say not only that the slaughtered children deserved death, but that there are more than a few likely suffering eternity in Hell right now.

This is Christianity, without the mask of smiles and hypocrisy that encompass the church’s sleazy tweed-jacket veneer: We all deserve death and eternal suffering at the hands of God for His mistakes. When this idea is a fundamental pillar, hate speech and victim blaming should be the only reasonable expectation.

Hate Speech

Because tens of thousands of people are uncomfortable with Christianity carried to its logical conclusion, many seek to censor and destroy the messengers.  I think this is manifestly bad idea and counterproductive.  Westboro Baptist gives an indescribably accurate personification of the hatred, vitrol, and insanity that is the Triune Christian God, and thus I am manifestly thankful that people are both offended by their speech and seek to flee from it.

I just wish people were actually honest about the source of their frustration: they want to shoot the messenger but ignore the message, when the message is the infinitely more depraved of the two.  In their interview with Russell Brand, Brand points out that “we’re not making this up,” is their motto; This is true for every evangelical I know of, and it is manifestly ignorant to state that God doesn’t have hatred, contempt, and genocidal tendencies based on any sort of reading of the bible.

I say infinitely because if anyone believes in the doctrines of hell, or of salvation contingent on belief, then they by default believe that people deserve it because God.  If not, that person can only be willfully ignorant.  And yet people respect this message?  This is evil in its purest form.

The problem with deeming Westboro as an official hate group, besides that it simply gives them a bigger sounding board, creates an even bigger problem: is all of Christianity hate-speech? Should people like Albert Mohler or John Piper be condemned as hatemongers for pointing out exactly the same theological conclusions shared by Westboro Baptist?

I don’t think so.  However hateful it might seem, it is simply the result of a delusion that is fully grown in all cases.  What should happen is people should loudly point out this parallel and shed their delusion. One can only hope that some good will come from this tragedy: that people will shed their psychopathic God and embrace humanism, love, and reality.

No one is stopping anyone from saying merry Christmas or even putting up Christmas trees. This ‘pushing around’ thing is nonsense. In 7 states, atheists cannot be elected to office, in one, their testimony in court isn’t valid. The last president who was not explicitly christian was ___________. This is simply a manufactured persecution complex; you have mistaken freedom of religion with always getting what you want.

All the ACLU, FFRF, and secularists the nation over want is to stop government endorsement one religion over another. That’s all. That just means either no Jesus-Is-The-Only-Way displays on taxpayer-funded land, or equal representation for all people. Recently one town government denied a pastafarian display next to the nativity; this is a clear example of endorsing one group’s religious beliefs over another’s, even if pastafarianism is a tongue-in-cheek parody of other religions, the fact that it does not receive equal representation amounts to government picking one religion over others. Certainly “there’s probably no god” displays don’t receive equal representation in any case where it’s been at all possible.

God is not out of our schools/work/public. Government-forced prayer is gone, but no one is stopping any human being from praying. This is an manufactured crime with imaginary victims. Churches exist as tax free institutions, break the law by endorsing candidates, proselytize, spend millions on political advertisements, endorse political groups, and more. If anything, I think that this sort of politicking should be reigned in, but this is a country that allows the free exercise of religion, and thus I must respect that (and i would fight to defend that exercise if it were ever actually in jeopardy).

To say that God is punishing a nation with death because the government isn’t forcing religion enough insults both God and the constitution. It is also incredibly ignorant of weather patterns, global warming, and the predictions of thousands of forecasters and meteorologists who accurately predicted the path and existence of the storm.

Furthermore, america is much more christian than norway, sweden, estonia, or the czech republic, and yet God isn’t sending hurricanes at these countries. Maybe because several of them are landlocked, so either god is not omnipotent, god doesn’t care, or the world looks exactly like it would if God didn’t exist. Just a thought.

Blaming terrorism and school shootings on madeline murray o’hare instead of the actual terrorists (who are oftentimes religious, or explicitly Christian: The Klu Klux Klan, Westboro Baptist, the Army of God, Eric Rudolph, etc.) is simply trying to scapegoat and stretch something that isn’t there. There have always been sociopaths, and moving away from “DEMONZ POSSESION” and towards medication has actually improved the condition of these people. Yet another falsehood.

Every psychological assessment done so far shows that assaulting a child is worse for them. Since that time, we have gained more and more knowledge about what does and doesn’t work. Turns out spanking doesn’t work.

Dr Spock’s child didn’t commit suicide. Please quit spreading lies, it doesn’t become anyone.

By all counts, people are more moral than ever before in the US. Crime is down, violent crime is down, white collar crime is down, prison populations are shrinking. Again, lying isn’t very becoming. Just because kids aren’t homophobic bigots anymore doesn’t mean they’ve lost their morals, as much as people realizing that hating someone because of their skin color have lost theirs.

I’ll talk about God’s supposed existence anytime, anyplace, where it’s appropriate. However, proselytizing and condemning people to hell in the workplace is not an appropriate time.

Responding to idiotic mush circulating on facebook, rife with false claims, lies, logical fallacies, misattributed quotes, and seething with ignorance, is.

Funny how the only way Christians can seem to feel better about themselves these days is to manufacture lies to tell each other about how bad they have it in the US, all the while ignoring the commands of Jesus to love the poor, sell all their possessions, love the outcast, help those in need, and pursue truth.

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Very insightful and very true….Take a second to read this:
Apparently the White House referred to Christmas Trees as “Holiday Trees” for the first time this year which prompted CBS presenter, Ben Stein, to present this piece which I would like to share with you. I think it applies just as much to many countries as it does to America . . .

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejewelled trees, Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are, Christmas trees.

It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, “Merry Christmas” to me. I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a crib, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren’t allowed to worship God? I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it’s not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her: “How could God let something like this happen?” (regarding Hurricane Katrina). Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said: “I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?”

In light of recent events… terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbour as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said okay.

Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with ‘WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.’

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit.

If not, then just discard it…. no one will know you did. But if you discard this thought process, don’t sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

My Best Regards, Honestly and respectfully,

Ben Stein

What do you do with all this evolutionary stuff? Could you write a future topic on Coffee Shop atheist to comment on what you do with evidence against old earth & evolution? Some things I have in mind are the mosaic species; the seemingly sudden appearance of man in the fossil record; the folding of old rock layers; the source of comets; the discovery of T-rex blood vessels; vertical fossils; the thickness of topsoil; and the thickness of seafloor sediment. You could probably ask the same from me, and it would be fair. Thanks much!

My thoughts are below, tailored as a personalized response.

I Can’t Convince You

Hey sexy man. I wanted to respond to this but I’ve been swamped and couldn’t get away long enough for a good response to what you asked.

I guess first off, I want to confess I’m not as knowledgeable about evolution or geology as say, history of the bible, psychology, or theology, and those fields’ implications for Christianity. I.e. I don’t know enough about it to be able to deal with specific creationist (i’m assuming here) claims about ‘problems’ with evolution.

But evolution isn’t a theological issue; it’s a scientific one.  It is like quantum mechanics, interharmonics, magnetic fields generated by 4GHz switching cycles [Steve is a fellow electrical engineer].  It is about what we know concretely about biology, geology, chemistry, and reality.  It technically has nothing to do with God at all, which is why I am less concerned with it.  It’s true, yesterday today and tomorrow, and says nothing one way or the other about God, but does say a bit about some of the books He is reported to have authored.

To that end, I guess I can give a more general mindset, because I know even if I try, I can’t convince you that evolution is true or false. You’re an extremely smart guy, which has benefits and problems: you can believe you are 100% correct about something, can come up with creative solutions to any new ‘facts’ that might change your way of thinking, and based on past experience, you’ve generally been correct.

So I don’t really want to ‘argue’ for evolution; you have to do the research for yourself. I can explain why I think it’s true, and why Creationism ultimately fails to pass the test for being an honest method of inquiry.

Evolution 101

For evolution to be true, there are two facts that have to be true, and nothing more:

• Random genetic mutation occurs
• Some random genetic mutation leads some reproducing cells or groups of cells to have a better chance at either survival or reproduction (known as natural selection and sexual selection).

That’s it, that’s all that’s required. Everything else is extraneous. The Macro/Micro misinterpretation is irrelevant. If it happens on a small scale, it happens on a large scale.   Geology, fossils, DNA, everything else is just fluff.  So the question is, are these two facts true, always?

The answer is yes, and we have proof.  These to facts have been observed in people’s lifetimes. My favorite examples are a group of lizards that evolved completely new necks and digestive abilities in a few decades after being introduced to a non-native island, or the nylon-eating bacteria that have evolved recently (Nylon was not invented until WW2).  A final example takes the form of an experiment conducted by Richard Lenski, a researcher who undertook a 20-year long experiment in which E. Coli, after 30,000+ generations, developed the ability to process citrate.  It morphed to adapt to a new climate.  The comedy involves an attempt by Conservapedia to dismiss the results using attempts at logical fallacies and deliberate misinterpretation, but was met with a clear, strongly worded response by Lenski.

In addition to this, the genetic makeup of a species and its ancestors can be used to corroborate the claims of Evolution.  Whenever a new species or bone or somesuch is found, we can use the information about it to determine where it fits in the tree of extant species.  To see some of these examples, google “Dna Evidence Evolution” and see what comes up.  One article from Sciencedirect presents the genetic sequencing of the human genome in the context of fossilized evidence, and presents a tremendous amount of information to exacerbate the linkage.  There are hundreds of thousands more like it, and more produced every day.

Creationist Claim: T-Rex Blood

As far as the above claims, these seem like specific claims trying to pick holes in the theory. There’s a really cool website, TalkOrigins.com, that has an index of creationist claims and well-laid out layperson-style explanation of the claim and responses.

For example, the T-rex blood vessel article has 6 citations, a link to the original article, and there is even a lengthy response article in the FAQ!

The dispute comes mainly from the overemphasis of the claims made, and is made clear by the quote (from that previous link) below:

“They have clearly stated they could not even assert that there were residual blood products, but Wieland falsely claimed Schweitzer asserted there were actual cells. The lack of permineralization (the infilling of the intravascular spaces with minerals, and recrystalization of the bone mineral itself) is the reason that Schweitzer could loosely refer to the bone as “not completely fossilized” in The Real Jurassic Park. Wieland grossly exaggerates this as “unfossilized”. [1997: pg. 42]

Schweitzer and Staedter (1997) is most charitably characterized as a dumbed down version of the scientific publications published the same year (Schweitzer, et al. 1997A, B, C). Schweitzer, et al., “Heme compounds in dinosaur Trabecular bone” (1997A) gives us a straight forward data presentation,and concludes that there were heme, and hemoglobin protein fragments sufficiently well preserved in a small portion of a particularly well preserved bone from which they could produce an immunological response in rats. There is no indication that there were “blood cells” found in the bone…”

Basically, what AiG and Wieland did was read into a single article, the watered-down, pop-science version of a journal paper, and conflated ‘cells’ with ‘residue,’ which is patently dishonest. This is, in my experience, par for the course when people seek to disprove evolution.

As far as the other problems,

• Sudden appearance of humans (CC100) has about 8 articles, discrediting most of the reports as completely false.
• Rock layers (CD510) can fold when heated or be deformed otherwise
• Comets (CE260,CE261): there are way more comets than just the ones that happen to come near the sun (these are exceptions), the Oort cloud and Kuiper belt exist and have been observed,
• Topsoil (CD620) is created and destroyed, and maintains an average level due to environmental factors
• Sedimentation (CD200) has about 12 articles.  One in particular about attempting to discredit the old earth with the amount of sediment is similar to the topsoil claim; it is in a transient state, so claims about the earth based on its age are completely irrelevant.

There is a big huge article that takes specific aim at Kent Hovind’s claims, and goes through a majority of them.  I’d love for you to check it out.  I hope you understand I’m not dismissing you or ignoring what you have to say by writing brief summaries, but go check them out for yourself.  I don’t know what you know, but I know you well enough that you can learn a thing or two.

On Creationism

Most commonly the arguments commit some sort of logical fallacy, whether equivocation (where a word has two meanings, such as “macroevolution” as defined and used by scientists or ‘macroevolution’ as defined and used by creationists. The other option is outright lying, such as repeated attacks on geological time measurement methods that aren’t used to date things the way creationists say they’re used (carbon/isometric/radiometric dating; problems with one don’t mean the others are flawed within their acceptable ranges)

As far as fossilization goes, as already discussed there is evidence in our own lifetime of evolution occurring, and genetics/DNA provide additional correlation. Fossils are the icing on the cake, and because of the very circumstantial conditions that must take place for fossilization to occur. Thus, it is a ‘miracle’ (a highly random possibility) that we have any fossils at all. To that end, finding some fossils out of order can be more easily explained as a fluke situation than something that undermines the whole theory of evolution.

Conclusion

I know there is much, much more here, and for every well-established truth about evolution or the age of the earth, there are a million misinterpretations of it from the creationist side.  But that’s just what they are: logical fallacies wrapped up as trying to prove some belief true.  That’s not how science or truth works.  You find the truth, then let the truth inform your beliefs, not the other way around.

Science constantly and continually corrects itself, and you can bet that if anyone had real, demonstrable, non-fallacious proof that some other mechanism besides evolution is the cause of speciation, they would win the Nobel Prize and go down as the most influential person in history.  But they haven’t.  All that has happened is various people have latched on to “God of the Gaps” theories, which many Christians think demeans God’s character.

What these arguments boil down to is “Science hasn’t explained this yet! Look! Look Here! Ignore the mountains of evidence and look here at this pothole!”  The weak nature of this claim is exacerbated when people are starting from the conclusion, rather than from the evidence.  If I start with, “I’m right that the earth is 6 KYa, and evolution is false,” I’m not mentally capable of skeptical, rational, iquiry.  I am only capable of tricking myself into believing what I want to believe.

So I urge you to look just at the evidence. Don’t look with an agenda, with a goal, with proving yourself right or wrong.  Just look. Stare. Look at your own bias: Is it making you treat the evidence unfairly? I know it did me!

Ultimately, if you value truth, you will have to admit that bias and agenda-seeking is not a good path to it, and that is the entirety of what people like Kent Hovind and Answers in Genesis do.  There is nothing honest about what they do, nor (with any amount of research) in the methodology they employ to attempt to convince others.  If you value beliefs, by all means, don’t go down this road.  However, I find that truth is much more palatable than mere belief, and much better at getting us to where we wish we could be.

There is no supporting archaeological evidence for Genesis or Exodus. The Pentateuch was ad-hoc, compiled after the events described, or otherwise edited centuries after initial creation. Yahweh grew out of a Canaanite pantheon tradition and monotheism was born out of political unrest and priest-led xenophobia rather than transcendent revealed information. Stories like the Flood and Creation were borrowed from Babylonian and Mesopotamian mythology but had a different featured people group.

The basic synopsis is a self-repressing homosexual male has convinced himself that metaphorically stabbing himself in the gut with a dull blade and hating who he is (but forgiven ‘cuz Jesus!) equates to hope and happiness.  His homosexuality and his coming-to-terms with it lies somewhere between Stockholm Syndrome and willful ignorance.  There is nothing else but to decompose this article, though I could simply cry and scream at the Christian mythology’s power to manipulate, kill, and destroy.  To that end, we can walk along the road to delusion and its consequences piece by piece.

Step 1: Ignore Cognitive Dissonance; Compartmentalize and Lie To Yourself

Saying “no” risks people thinking I’m another brainwashed fundamentalist in denial, suppressing my sexuality to please my parents, my pastor, my peers… I’ve heard arguments that try to reconcile Christianity and homosexual practice. As a Christian who experiences same-sex attraction, even I’m not convinced. The Bible is clear: homosexual practice is a sin.

Gay Teenager Tyler Clementi, Committed Suicide Due To Gay Bullying and Evangelicalism

Just because you can reconcile being celibate with your delusion doesn’t mean Tyler Clementi could.

The position on homosexuality in the bible is anything but clear, and declaring yourself the absolute authority on the 3 passing mentions of homosexuality (which are contextually mute on committed same-sex relationships) in the bible is pretty arrogant, especially for someone who is evidently untrained in biblical history, exegesis, Greek, Hebrew, or anything that might actually matter to the interpretation.  But good on you for knowing everything better than everyone else ever on the interpretation that happens to line up with the one you were indoctrinated to believe no matter how contra-reality it is.

Know what is crystal clear in the bible? Slavery.

However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you.  You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land.  You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT

As Sam Harris says, the bible got the easiest moral question of humanity wrong.  Why should we trust it on any other matter?

I haven’t given up hope that God can change those attractions. But I’m living in the reality that he has not, and he may not.

You’re not living in reality, since every study conducted with a modicum of science has found that ‘gay conversion’ is impossible, and two former founders of Exodus International, the largest gay-conversion-therapy group in the world, left the group and to this day speak out against it.  Again, step 1.

Step 2: Conflate Morality With Imaginary Friend Approval

Consent: the line for sexual morality. Not Imaginary Sky Jew’s follower’s writings.

However, being attracted to one person or another is not the same as raping or having sex sans consent.  And… if someone gives consent… It’s okay to have sex.  No morality involved.

You know what Jesus talked about a lot (at least as far as the gospel writers imagined him to)? Divorce and adultery.  You know what Jesus didn’t talk about? That’s right.  Homosexuality.

Gay Christians I know make a distinction between sexual sin and sexual attraction.  Why? Because they actually take the verses (the abundance of verses) where jesus talks about adultuery and meaningless sex seriously, and take Jesus non-mention of homosexuality and Paul’s mention of it in context of a orgy-rape Roman culture seriously.

They actually use the context of the bible to interpret the bible.

Meanwhile… Homo sex, hetero sex, multiple person sex.  It’s okay sex. You know why?

Because you don’t need an imaginary being’s consent.  You need the human being that you’re about to have sex with’s consent.  Homosexuality, and acting on it, are never and will never be a moral issue no matter how many ways you say “BUT I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE A CIRCLE IS A SQUARE.”  See step 1.

Step 3: Congratulate yourself for being better than everyone else because fuck them

They have slick campaigns, celebrity endorsements and flashy bumper stickers. One thing they don’t have is hope.

Yeah.  You know why so many have no hope? Because of evil humans like you, author, and evil humans that agree with you tell people they should be ashamed of something they can’t help.  They have no hope because you kill their hopes, and thus you kill them.  You create the culture that says “Its okay to hate fags; God hates fags.”  Your bible advocates their stoning to death, after all.  Of course people who are called to be more like God would hate gays more.

Of course Jesus, the one who said that not the least bit of the law would cease to apply (Matt 5:18), who came to bring division, advocated stoning children as more important than Pharasaic extra laws , oh and who plans of creating a winepress of blood (Rev 14) from the lives of his enemies? That guy?  Maybe the bullies and murderers are more like Jesus than not?

Plus, who are you to criticize someone else’s faith?  Remember that part about not knowing history, greek, hebrew, or having any theological training whatsoever?

Maybe you criticize on the basis of the Holy Spirit, the one that every Christian claims to have guiding their mind and theology?  That’s why every Christian agrees on the means for salvation, the results of salvation, the actions necessary for salvation, the requirements for salvation, whether homosexuality, slavery, women’s rights, faith healing, serpent handling, speaking in tongues, picketing funerals, whether showing pictures of aborted fetuses is good, condom use, and on the nature of Jesus Christ?

Wait.. No one agrees on any of that, or on almost any other topic that exists? Oh yeah… the holy spirit isn’t real.

Step 4: Create a Bigoted Atmosphere While Deluding Yourself That You’re Helping

How many people hear that God hates them because they’re gay? I’m sure you can rationalize it away (and in fact you did): “I still have a moral problem with lots of things that I do.” But guess what; homosexuality (see Step 2) isn’t a moral problem. It’s an identity, like your nose, hair color, or gender. Or your height.

It’s not immoral to be tall, just like it’s not immoral to be gay.

Meanwhile I’m glad that you have unanimously declared yourself to be the only person in possession of this elusive ‘hope’ you seem so fond of.  What hope is that? The hope to live in self denial for the rest of your life, to be ashamed of an unchangable God-given inadequacy that can only be salved by a Jesus, the very one who said you were broken in the first place?  To be stuck in a infinite abusive relationship with an totalitarian-father-also-son imaginary carpenter messiah born in 4 BC and 7 AD who resurrected 4 different ways on 2 different days with no contemporary evidence or mention other than a few historians commenting on a small fringe cult?

Some hope.  I’ll be over here where I don’t have to lie about reality, while you continue to cause death.

Step 5: Freedom.

I wish that I could individually talk to every delusional person one-on-one for 5 years to explain to them how the hodgepodge of mythology they believe in causes repression, self-hatred, warped self-identity, and piles of dead bodies whose corpses could build cities of grotesque tribute to human’s imaginary friends through the ages.

Religion is the cause, directly. The cause of gay suicides.  The cause of faith-healing deaths. The cause of holy wars. Belief and trust in one’s own (or more commonly a pastor’s/imam’s/guru’s/rabbi’s/shaman’s/priestesses/witch’s) imagination is the cause.

I wish I didn’t know, some days, what I know now.  I wish I was still an ignorant Christian who trusted the bible, trusted my savior, and said ‘his ways are higher’ when Catholic-exacerbated AIDS, Gay-Marriage Earthquakes, and other Christ-could-have-prevented mass-slaughters occurred.  ”They weren’t true believers,” I would say of the churches systematically convinced suicide-victim teens that they were evil in the sight of the lord.  And the teens’ faults for not going down the right path (victim blaming 101). “God has a plan” when hundreds of thousands died for no reason.  Now I know; there is only humanity, and all we can do is make the most of what we (know we) have.

So all I can do is plead. And cry, and hurt, and feel sorry for everyone that trusts this most ultimate of evils. We are the firstborn to consciousness in this little husk of dirt, and to teach our children, our family, or our friends that we should be ashamed of being exactly who we are is the beginning and end of an abusive, manipulative, emotional slavery the likes of which deserve the utmost contempt from every human being that has breathed air into their lungs.

My only hope is that Jesus’ answer to the call of the graveyard of mythology, where all gods go to die, were more in line with his own failed promises: “Behold, I am coming soon!”