An article I recently read: “Pastors will test Matthew Shepard Act by ‘inciting hate crimes’”

Personally, I’m not sure how I feel about “hate crime” legislation. It feels too much like “thought crime”.

Case1: Al is beaten to death by a couple of thugs.
Case 2: Ben is beaten to death by a couple of thugs.

Both are horrific crimes. Both should be punished. Should one be punished more or less severely than another?

Especially if the difference between them is that the thugs in Case 1 had on their minds a hatred for Al because he was gay while the ones in Case 2 hated Ben because he owned them money? Should we base crime and punishment on what people think as opposed to only what they do?

Homophobia is stupid, no question. But at risk of making a slippery-slope fallacy, if we punish an identical crime more severely because of homophobia in one’s mind, will the next logical progression be to punish people because they believe unAmerican things? Should shoplifter 1 be punished more severely than shoplifter 2 because 1 also purused anarchist Web sites?

I don’t know. Gay-bashers are scum, ignoramuses. But I’m deeply uncomfortable with thought-crime.

That said, people who INCITE crime are themselves scummy criminals because of what they do. A preacher has a right (*shudder*) to say homophobic things. Free speech protects all, mainly the marginalized and non-majority speech. No matter how stupid the speech may be. But if a preacher knowingly says hateful things that involve suggesting or implying violence, knowing that as influential religious leaders there will be influenceable followers that hear that hate-mongering–that’s like shouting “fire” in a crowded theater (no, much worse) and is not protected speech. It’s a criminal act.

And if these scummy, hate-filled, arrogant, disgusting preachers go ahead and do what they’re planning, they should absolutely be arrested and tried for inciting violence and criminal acts.

In honor of Guy Fawkes Day this Nov. 5th (Wiki link)* are a couple of links for light reading:

A recent musing of mine on anarchy and democracy: link

An excellent (and scary-sad) collection from Classically Liberal of examples of police state abuse and misconduct.

* Like most things in postmodern culture, this topic is well filled with contradictions. Guy Fawkes, for example, was not truly an anarchist (as far as I can tell). He, along with his cohorts, were simply p.o.ed that Catholics were being descriminated by the Protestant British government and decided to get rid of it, hoping to establish a Catholic-friendly one. (*sigh* what, religious violence again!?)

Guy Fawkes ironically became a symbol of later anrchistic movements despite his basically being just a religious terrorist.

Guy Fawkes was also appropriated by the British cultural hegemony as a symbol of celebrating the God-protected and ordained rule of proper British royalty. (Much like how Hitler propagandized his surviving the Valkyrie assassination attempt as a sign that God protected his divinely ordained Third Reich. [I may have just Godwined myself, but it just goes to show that anyone and everyone can and does invoke God's favor when things go well for them.])

And now there’s this Anonymous group appropriating Guy Fawkes to protest Scientology. Interestingly, as this is a quasi-religious fight, this may actually be a more “appropriate” use of Guy’s image… if not for the fact that what they’re really doing is using the image created by the film “V for Vendetta”. They’ve taken an image crafted for entertainment consumption, based on a hyperreality of an appropriated image, of a man whose purpose has been fictionalized by one group and celebrated for it’s failure by another group for ideological justification…

Ow. Jean Baudrillard is probably laughing in his grave over this a-historical postmodern pastiche! (I think I see a scholarly paper in this!)

They Might Be Giants - Science Is Real

A few days ago, Rebecca over at Skepchicks posted a post featuring some videos of songs from They Might Be Giant’s new album: Here Comes Science. It’s a kid’s album (that can be thoroughly enjoyed by adults!) extolling the many and varied benefits of science.

The first YouTube video she posted is for the album’s opening song: “Science is Real”. My initial feeling is of delight as I’ve always loved They Might Be Giants, and their wonderful nerdiness. I love that they want to pass their own love for science on to kids. While all the songs on the album appear to be fun tunes about some aspect of science, upon giving the opening song, “Science is Real,” a second thought, I find it extremely sad that they have to actually put a song on the album that has to purport the reality of science. That we live in a culture that has to constantly be explained to that science is reality. It’s very depressing.

Reminds of how I found out, just today, that there’s a compelling and critically better-than-average film being released this month that dramatizes a bit of Charles Darwin’s life, his marriage, his family, at the time of his writing On the Origin of Species. It has big name actors, and is a major film, not an indie flick (nothing wrong with indie flicks! But there’s a point here…), but no one in the U.S. wants to distribute it to theaters here. Because of the “controversial nature” of Darwin and evolution. (::face palm::)

Here’s a movie that’s all set to be released and enjoyed around the world, but here in this “modern” country where we just barely beat Turkey and have a ways to go before we reach Latvia for the number of people to accept the reality of evolution, we can’t see it because the subject is Charles Darwin. It’s not even a documentary, it’s not made to be “challenging” or controversial, it’s not written or filmed to be a polemic…it’s just a drama about a famous man and his personal life during the time he did something to make him famous. But Ooohh NOooo! It has to do with an aspect of science which has stood the test of time and testing for 150+ years, but the conservative evangelicals in our country have such a loud, strident, and pernicious voice (which has made us a laughing-stock for the rest of the world that’s not controlled by an Islamic regime) that film distributors are leery of releasing an otherwise completely non-controversial film here.

Embarrassing.

*sigh* Time to go back and watch some of those light-hearted, fun, toe-tapping songs by They Might Be Giants and get myself back in a good mood.

Brian of skeptoid.com recently posted a listener mail response episode. He makes good points, and you don’t have to have read/listened to his past episodes to get something out of this one:

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4169

The best part of the whole thing, though, is at the end when he summarizes thus:

“That’s what I think is the biggest tragedy of those who accept the supernatural: They’re missing out on the wonder of science. When you look at a 30-ton block of coral and conclude that magic must be the only way a single small man could have moved it, you have stopped trying to learn, and you miss out on a truly delightful and creative application of mechanics.

When you dismiss medical science because of its imperfections and turn instead to magic-based therapies, you abandon any meaningful understanding of how your own body actually works.

When you settle on a conspiracy theory as the explanation for what happens in world news, you effectively stop searching for other sources, and you miss out on the real causes and motivations that drive what happens in politics and economics.

The answer is to be more skeptical, and to require a higher standard for what you believe. Keep on thinking, keep on questioning….”

Well, when you really think about it…

Addendum: If it’s not too late, Facebook people: the original post is http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/2009/08/19/some-grey-bloke-jesus-and-me/ with the video that FB strips.

Huh, evidently this is my 1001st blog post. And to think when I first started this I thought I’d putter a few posts out and find no use for blogging. Guess my desire to “hear my own voice” is strong.

So, a couple of online articles have colluded to make me comment on the subject of Bible literacy:

• Oldest known Bible goes online
• Why a Real ‘Year of the Bible’ Would Horrify Its Sponsors

The first article discusses how the oldest known collection of books of the Bible, once part of a single collection which has since been pieced and parsed here and there, are coming back together as an online collection. What’s interesting about this is that it points up something most Christians don’t realize: There is no “original Bible.” This earliest collection was compiled 400 years after the last of the known gospels were written. Think about how long ago 400 years ago is from today…1600 AD. The Renaissance, more or less. From then to now is about the same amount of time that passed between the events depicted in the New Testament were supposed to happen and when the various and sundry stories were collected into one book.

Well, I’m fudging a little: It was about 350 years after the events that the more powerful and connected Christian leaders, who fought tooth and nail to eliminate many many of the less politically powerful Christian sects (like the Gnostics), got together under order of Emperor Constantine and decided what books, gospels, and epistles were to become “official” religious canon…because Constantine didn’t like all this bickering and fighting among the diverse orders of the religion he recently became a part of. Even by that time, 300+ years after Christ, the existing gospels and Pauline letters were copies of copies and passed around as individual documents. There is no original Bible, and more important, there is no original of any single document which makes up any of the Biblical books.

Not only that, but this article also discusses a topic very troubling to most Christians but is old hat to any Biblical scholar: The various gospels and letters have been changed and edited over time, so that what we have now in most Protestant and Catholic Bibles is not what was is depicted in Bibles 800 years ago and even more so what existed 1600+ years ago! One of the big examples is the ending to the Gospel of Mark (which is the earliest written gospel, on which Luke and Matthew are heavily based and even copied from). In the earliest known copy of that story, it ends with the women running away from what they encounter at the tomb and the Gospel saying they told no one of what they saw. Some decades later, a coda was added to make it fit more in line with some of the later “official” gospels like Luke.

Then, in that second article linked above, “Why a Real ‘Year of the Bible’ Would Horrify Its Sponsors,” we read a bit about how Christians today really have little idea what’s in this “Word of God” they revere:

A 2000 survey showed that even 60 percent of those chapter-and-verse-quoting Evangelicals thought Jesus was born in Jerusalem rather than Bethlehem. Similarly, a 2004 survey of high school students found that 17 percent thought “the road to Damascus” was where Jesus was crucified and 22 percent thought Moses was either one of Jesus’ 12 apostles or an Egyptian pharaoh or an angel.

When I was a kid and a teen, growing up Christian, I was encouraged to read and study certain very important verses. Sunday School, church camp, I encountered the same usual verses over and over, and invariably they were the verses involving God loving the world, Jesus is the one and only way, etc. Interestingly, I never encountered passages like these:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household.
Matthew 10:34-36 (RSV)

Or Matthew 12:46-50 in which Jesus ignores and refuses to recognize his own family. Or Matthew 5:18-19 and Luke 16:17 where Jesus tells his followers the old Law of Moses is the Word of God and none must break them. Which makes things awfully awkward for Christians who want to claim we don’t need to kill the married victims of rape (Deuteronomy 22:23-24), nor sell our virgin daughters to their rapists (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), nor sell daughters into sex slavery (Exodus 21:7-11), nor eat shrimp because they’re an “abomination” (Leviticus 11:9-12), nor kill our children if they disobey (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). Just to name a few of the hundreds of fun rules and laws God gave Moses and his other prophets.

See, I was like most Christians who only knew the John 3:16-type stuff of the Bible, until I was 17 or 18 and decided if I was going to be a good Christian, maybe even become an apologist or Biblical scholar, I should actually read the whole Bible. That’s when I read all about how God condones slavery and neither he nor Jesus (nor Paul for that matter) say a single word against owning people as property. In fact, women are property in the Bible from beginning to end, and owning slaves is fine for any good follower of Yahweh. I read how God sent bears to slaughter children who made fun of one of his prophet’s baldness (2 Kings 2:23-24) (not to mention the countless other instances in which God kills children en mass, such as the innocent first born of Egypt instead of giving Pharaoh a Paul-like Road to Damascus vision and change of heart), and the song of praise to God for killing children like this gem:

O daughter of Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall he be who requites you with what you have done to us! Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!
Psalm 137:8-9 (RSV)

Praise be to the God of Love and Forgiveness.

The long way ’round to my point is this: Actually reading the Bible started me in realizing that the Bible is nothing more than a collection of myth and history (most of it fabricated) of an ancient patriarchal and superstitious Bronze Age people who were a nomadic offshoot of Babylonian culture. Followed by the stories (mostly copied from various older Near/Middle Eastern myths [see mainly Mithra, Horus, Dionysus and Krishna]) about an existence-questionable cult leader who believed the world would end within his followers’ lifetime (Mark 8:39 to 9:1, Mark 13:30-33, Matthew 16:28, Matthew 24:34, Luke 9:26-27).

And the history of the religion, why it’s survived this long instead of going the way of countless other religions that sprang up in that teeny-tiny patch of dirt, aka: God’s Promised Land, is because a Roman Emperor decided he wanted to add another religion to his collection of religious beliefs, of which he had many, and thus gave Christianity political protection. Followed by another Roman Emperor (Theodosius I) who spread it across Europe, foisted upon Europeans at the point of a spear. When you’re forced to convert or die, the religion will tend to take hold.

Back to the original topic: most Christians have not a clue what’s in the Bible. Like the fundamentalist Republican Representative who wanted the Ten Commandments displayed in Congress, most Christians can’t even name them. Well, of course the problem there is that in the Bible, as opposed to the mass produced porcelain replicas you find at Christian gift shops, there was actually two different sets of Commandments given to Moses–the pre- and post-broken tablets. Evidently God changed his mind about some stuff in between. Oh, and neither set were actually ten of then, but who’s counting. Most people who check the box marked “Christian” on forms do so simply because that’s how they were raised to answer the question, and have maybe been armed with a verse or two and some nice stories about an Ark, a manger, and a cross. Most Christians have no clue about the actual blood-soaked, misogynist, psychopathic, stone-age level of morality and ethics found in the book they believe to be the Word of God.

Read the whole thing sometime, cover to cover, including the “boring bits.” It is, after all, the very Word of God, is it not? At the very least divinely inspired by the all-creator. If you believe this to be true, then shouldn’t you actually have read it over and over again? It’s the most important document ever compiled, if it is truly God’s history and instruction book to all of humanity. I guess the first step is deciding which version of the compilation of ancient scrolls and letters is the true God-intended “official” one….

Last week’s podcast/public TV show from Austin, The Atheist Experience, has a very interesting exchange with a caller to the program. (Interesting, for one reason, because he was very well-spoken and well-mannered and humble–unlike the show’s usual evangelical callers.) It’s show number 609 in the archives, and the call starts around 32 minutes in.

About 40 minutes into the show, they start talking about personal experience and revelation, and how revelation is inherently a personal experience and can not be transferable to other people. That is, one person’s experience is not proof that another person who has not had the same experience should believe them and take up their beliefs–especially the more extraordinary the experience. Test this: Pick any belief system you completely disagree with, whether it’s Islam, Wicca, fundamental Christianity, Hindu, whatever. Now imagine someone from that belief gave their testimony to you, very sincerely and emotionally, of their experience of communing with The Goddess, or Vishnu, or Krishna, or Mohammad, the Virgin Mary, etc. Would you just on the power of their telling of their personal experience, no matter how emotional and powerful it was for them, convince you to believe their religion? Didn’t think so.

That’s a little off the subject, but what the caller and the hosts began talking about was Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus and why he received a rare and unique vision to the exclusion of nearly everyone else in the world. The caller tried to offer that he thought it was because Paul was in a position to do the most good to spread Christianity at that time and place. But that raises the question: Why give that transcendent conversion experience to just Paul and not give it to everyone? Forget the middle-man, the books with contradictions and translation debates, the traveling prophets who’s stories are indistinguishable from mad ravings, and just make yourself known, truly known without question, to everyone.

The caller (you really should listen to the show; it’s quite good…but in case you don’t have that time, and I’d love to see some responses here…) suggested that perhaps God has a reason to stay distant, hidden for the most part, because the relationship he wants with us is more important than proving he really exists. That maybe removing that doubt would change or force the relationship.

Here’s where it starts to get good. (Go listen.) The host then suggests if you received a letter that said, “I love you; I want you to love me,” from someone you don’t know…would you love that person? To love and adore another requires that you know that other person. (He, and I agree, suggests that love and adoration also should be earned, not demanded.) You can’t even begin to have a relationship with someone if the other person doesn’t even know you exist. By revealing yourself to a handful (at the very best, currently 1.5 billion out of 6.5 billion–but how many of that 1.5B have actually “known” God and how many just check the box “Christian” on the census form?) you don’t put everyone on an equal ground, the same chance to know you. That’s at best shortsighted and thoughtless, and at worst a clear sign that “loving the world” is not a factor in this deity’s interests.

Just revealing one’s self, unambiguously, to the entire planet, would not force people to truly love you and have respect for and adoration for you any more than a thug who reveals himself from around your curtains and shows you he’s capable of killing you at his whim would elicit respect and adoration for him either. This God would still have to deal with people who honestly love him, those who only say they do to avoid the threat of hell, and those who feel that he’s unworthy of respect even though he’s shown to exist. (For example, it’s one thing for me to find out (a) God really exists–but if it was really Yahweh/El from the Old and New Testaments who existed who I found out really was real, there’s no way I’d worship and love that blood-thirsty, deceptive, callous, racist, sexist, amoral psychopath. The best he’d get out of me is the kind of “Yeah, OK, whatever you say, man–just don’t pull the trigger” you’d get if a deranged psycho had a gun to my head.)

Anyway, what is it for an all-powerful everything creator to give everyone a road to Damascus experience? At least that’d eliminate the grand majority of the world for the last 2,000-6,000 years from having died never having even heard of Jesus/Yahweh/Elohim/etc. and thus not even having the opportunity to have that relationship this God evidently so desperately wants–if you believe, say, Ray Comfort.

So my iPhone is in the process of updating to the latest software, 3.0. It failed the first time because I’m doing it through a Windows XP install within a Linux virtualbox, and I wasn’t paying attention to the USB status. So it had to restore and now I’m anticipating my application data will be lost (like my budget record). Oh well, I’ll soon have copy-n-paste and that’s a good thing.

So, now that it’s summer, I’ve still almost completely ignored this blog. But, I spend most of my social e-media time on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/liamrw) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/mechphisto), I don’t feel compelled to write articles on here even though I have tons of saved links and news items and others’ blog content I want to comment on. Darn you short attention span time wasters!!

Anyway, so, the iPhone is updating, I just finished re-planting some cilantro and Greek oregano into a new window-box planter…thought I’d at least get one interesting item I’d like to share out of the way today.

“vjack” over at Atheist Revolution has a recent post entitled: “Did Jesus Abolish the Old Testiment.” It starts with a question he received from one of his readers, that goes in part like this:

…why Christians cherry pick from the bible. I brought up stuff from the old testament, like women not being allowed to dress fancy in church. His response was, “That’s mosaic law and we are under a new law now.” I didn’t know how to respond to this. What would you say?

vjack’s response I think is incredibly reasoned and thought-provoking. Well, OK, not to me at this moment, I have to be honest. Because his response, which I agree with 100%, is a response I came up with on my own (and so do many many many former Christians) while I (1.) first read the Bible in its entirety around age 17 or 18, and (2.) once again a few years ago when I was working through those questions and issues that actually reading the Bible sparked so many years earlier.

It’s not a bad thing, and I mean no negative intent, when I say vjack’s response is not interesting to me…in fact, I mean it as both matter of fact and a complement. See…I was reminded of something this week as my wife and I watched Richard Dawkins’ “The Root of All Evil?“, and part way through we started discussing liberal/non-fundamentalist Christianity and the atheist response. And I gave answers and opinions and analysis which were kernels of understanding I came to on my own a few to several years ago, wrapped with wording and terms and nuance gained from other freethinkers I’ve since read who also deal with the same issues and questions. Then, when we continued to watch the documentary, my words were virtually echoed back to me by Dawkins.

Agnosticism and atheism have been on an upswing lately, people have started coming out and talking about it, and not being ashamed or afraid of being non-believers. It’s almost like a fad in appearance. But it’s not new by a long shot. Ancient Greeks wrote about doubt regarding the gods their contemporaries worshiped, including questions like: “Does [god] command what is moral because [he] decides what it morality; or does [he] do so because morality is absolute and [he's] simply relaying the message? If the former, then morality is still relative…believers have simply shifted the responsibility up one level. If the later, then what is the need for [god] as a middle-man if morality is absolute and universal?” For example.

Then there’s Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius. And after that slews of freethinkers (at least, those not murdered by Christians during the Dark Ages), to Spinoza and Bertrand Russell, and now Hitchens and Dennett and John W. Loftus, who basically have been saying the same things for centuries regarding God(s), belief without evidence, religion. Because let’s face it: atheism is the final point of critical thinking for any person of any culture, any background, former religion or belief system. Any individual, anyone, can come to atheism on their own through thinking through the questions and thinking critically about the supposed answers. The reasons for non-belief don”t change through the ages (like religions constantly do in order to survive in changing and evolving cultures). Atheism doesn’t require any books, tomes, scrolls, or prophets. No figures of authority, no priests or rabbis. No spiritual revelation from any of the over 2,000 gods humans have created.

Religious belief requires revelation. For example: it is impossible for a person to become a Christian without coming into contact with the Bible or another Christian (who uses the Bible). A book that requires stores and libraries full of books to try to interpret it, explain it, rationalize the contradictions and inherent issues in order to bolster a person’s belief in it. Atheism only requires one’s working brain to come to the same conclusions freethinkers have been coming to for millennia.

And so, some years ago I would have found vjack’s response thoroughly interesting and informative. Now, it’s old hat. But, that’s a good thing. It continues to show that for 2000 years the same arguments hold up and continue to be inadequately answered by the believer.

That said, seriously, read vjack’s response. It may be old hat to me, but it’s a good read! And, he has some fantastic links toward the end of his post to some resources which pose issues that demand response from the believer.

Also, some of the comments on vjack’s post are great as well. Some annoying or just plain worthless. But some, like this one, poignant and well-said:

The question is, why do you follow a different law? And, if you are supposed to follow a law that contradicts what is in the old testament, why even have the old testament in the first place? It is obvious that it simply creates confusion, so why not simply publish a version of the bible that is only the new testament and use that at church?

The reality is that no believer knows exactly what they are supposed to believe or follow, which is why they pray for guidance. Given that, if one has that kind of access to a deity, why would they need the bible in the first place? Couldn’t you just ask for guidance and go from there? Or, does this deity only answer some of the time, and how do you know when your god or gods is/are answering? You see, there are endless questions, none of which have answers that are going to (1) satisfy the skeptic, and (2) convince a believer otherwise. I guess the best that I hope for is that they begin to try to actually answer these questions honestly with themselves, which is how I became a skeptic in the first place. That eventually led me to atheism, although I realize that doesn’t happen with everyone.
(TDG)

If you’re someone who believes in the holiness of Easter, you don’t want to read something that critiques the holiday this weekend–don’t; it’ll be a buzzkill. But, if you are interested in looking at the story of Easter with an open mind, interested in its reasons and rationale, and don’t mind looking at the story with a critical eye, come on back on Monday! It’ll still be here.

The issue of Salvation is arguably the most important aspect of the religion of Christianity–a cornerstone. The foundation, I would think. For, if the issue of the accuracy and validity of Salvation through Jesus is undermined, the very basis in belief in Christianity falls apart (from a religious standpoint. Nothing stopping someone from “believing” in Christianity from a philosophical standpoint…but why would you, when Christianity is rife with intolerance and cult-like attitudes and demands, and illogic? And I’m not just talking about Christianity today, but the very stuff printed in red in the NT).

It’s this issue of Salvation that really first made me question full-time and turned my corner from ultra-liberal Christian to Deist. (Like that’s incentive for the believer to keep reading!) My actual beginning of questioning started circa 1988 when I actually read the Bible for myself, but this issue of the logic of Salvation began somewhere around 2001-ish. And it went pretty much like this:

1. Why was it necessary for God to demand a blood-soaked human sacrifice to forgive sins? Can’t he just…forgive?

2. Wait. If Jesus is all man and all God, is God incarnate, then, he knew from the beginning the “sacrifice” was going to happen. And he had to have known, after all, he supposedly prophesised it, that he was going to rise a couple of days later and ascend into Heaven and return to the Godhead. So, technically, what did he sacrifice? What did he give up? He basically just gave up a weekend and indeed had a painful death. But, he got his life back anyway and returned to being God. Is that really a sacrifice?!

3. Who’s really responsible for sin anyway? I mean, did God not create humanity and all humanity was capable of? At the very least, isn’t God omniscient (all-knowing), so he had to have known before creation what was going to happen to humanity and the world–filled with perdition and death and destruction and “sin.” And since God’s the one with all the power and knowledge, isn’t it ultimately his responsibility for there being sin and evil in the world?
To let billions suffer cruelty, disease, cancer, for the mistake of one man is like if I had a young child, not even aware of the difference between right and wrong and so unable to understand that it’s “wrong” to disobey, did something I told him not to. So I punish him severely by…cutting off his arm. Then, decades later, he visits me with his family. I go up to his own granddaughter, and I cut off her arm. My excuse is it’s because her grandfather once disobeyed me. Would I be just and loving and merciful, worthy of worship?

4. Wait, I haven’t believed in Adam and Eve since I was a child. From whence did “evil” come from, then? If it is supposedly the work of a Satan or something, does that mean God’s not capable of thwarting him? Or is he not interested? Is the excuse “Well, humans made their choice, that’s free will,” really the excuse of an all-loving and merciful “father”? Is the command “You have free will, do as you want–but if you don’t do what I want, I’ll torture you forever” really a gift?! Is free will at gunpoint still free will? Would I be considered a “good, loving, just, merciful” person if I saw a rape-murder in progress, and I had the ability to stop it, but I did nothing, and my excuse was “Well, the rapist made his decision, it’s his free will”?

5. Same question, related to the innocents. Is it the work of a just and loving and merciful father to have every generation of human (not to mention animals) suffer this supposed evil that is another’s responsibility? If Adam was real, why is it just that children get raped by the parents that are supposed to protect them, why do millions die needlessly from starvation, why is there torture and insanity, because of the actions of one man and woman? Is that just and merciful and loving? And if it’s the work of an adversary that has infiltrated God’s Earth, isn’t it his responsibility to put a stop to an evil doer who’s causing great harm to his children?

6. If this is what we have to be saved from–how does that work exactly? How does God’s murder/suicide of Jesus actually change the rules about eternal punishment/reward that he set up in the first place? Why can’t God just change the rules? Heck, he’s God–we wouldn’t even have to know he changed them, he could just fill us with gratitude for the change and there’d be no need for a blood-lusted murder worshiping aspect to the religion, that doesn’t make sense.

7. (This one was my big kicker for my weakening belief…) And, so if Jesus is indeed the one and only way to Salvation, why would a loving and just God give that method such an incredibly inefficient and cruel method of transmittal. That is: All people are destined for eternal punishment (by God’s will). But to avoid that, you have to believe in Jesus. But the only way to know about Jesus is to have another human tell you about him. He was introduced to a handful of humans in a tiny speck of land in a planet that already had millions all over the world. And humans have to transmit the Good News by hand and mouth around the world, thus making sure that countless billions of people will live and die and presumably burn in hell because of the bad luck of being born in a time and place where a human didn’t reach them with a Bible. In fact, today, 2000 years later, there’s an estimated billion people alive who have not even heard of Jesus and will die having not. And this is the result of “For God so loved the world”?!

It would be like my having a big family, and I told one of my children, “When you all sleep, if you don’t wear a hat to bed, I’m going to kill you. All you children and grandchildren…everyone. But, I’m only telling my plan to you, and now you are responsible to go tell everyone else. Oh, by the way, I love you.”

At this point in my reasoning, which took a couple of years to really develop and for me to fully understand, I realized the God of Christianity simply did not exist. It’s impossible. Not to say maybe a god didn’t exist–I was still too much a believer…in something…to completely eschew the supernatural, but it was impossible for the God of the Bible as an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving and merciful creature to possibly exist. And this is where I got on my own, before I read any books on the subject, before I listened to podcasts, before I even knew the “new atheists” existed.

It was later, though, when I found out that everything about Jesus came from earlier myths from Egypt and the near and middle east. Everything, including every aspect of the nativity, and every aspect of the Easter story–all borrowed from existing myth. Look up Mithra and Osiris and Dionysus, just to name a few.

So, I end on this note from Lee Randolf’s blog post: As You Celebrate The Horror of Easter

- The principle that all of us have done things so egregious to warrant the death penalty is itself egregious. Name one thing that you have done that you should be put to death for.

(For the Facebook users: This is a post from my blog getting auto-noted to Facebook, which cuts off any images or videos in the transfer.)

Continuing my surge of quick, browser-tab cleaning posts…. (and thesis work procrastinating…)

BoingBoing (yeah, love that site…too bad I’m still banned) recently posted an article about this video:

Fake People Tell Fake Stories About The Threat Of Gay Marriage

Seriously? Get a load of how over-wrought and concerned these actors (yes, actors) are in their description of how the evil tentacles of the Gay Agenda are threatening to take away the rights of oh-so-tolerant Christian fundamentalist who only want to protect the Sanctity of Marriage®. Gahkh!

Meanwhile, the extremely faithful and religious “Quiverful” Christians have probably a better understanding of the traditions of marriage than anyone today (no irony). To them, marriage is nothing more a means of moving property (including the wimins) from one man to another, and to procreate herds. Friendly Atheist has been reporting on recent reporting on these faithful keepers of the traditions of marriage:

Scary Excerpt from Quiverfull: Part 2

“I never told her ‘I love you,’ and I never told her she was beautiful,” explains Peter, “two things that I thought would insert an emotional flutter, an emotional element. I wanted to withhold before I made a commitment.”

and from another excerpt:

When godly people stop having children, we are wasting the godly seed. So today, we are facing a very, very serious threat: the threat of Islam. They are outnumbering us seven to one. And there’s eight million Islamics here in America. When you think of Osama Bin Laden, he is one of fifty-three children. He has twenty-seven himself. So between him and his father, they’ve fathered eighty children. What about his fifty-two brothers and sisters? How many have they fathered? Say they’ve only fathered or mothered twenty each — less than him — but in the thousands when you think of their grandchildren, who would now be having children today.

When I talk to parents today and ask how many grandchildren they have, they tell me, “Oh, we have two! Isn’t it wonderful?” “Two?” Is that going to impact the world? Two? When you get someone like, say, Osama Bin Laden, for example, he’s just representative of so many Islamics, well, you see how they’re populating.

Now that’s the kind of sanctified traditional outlook of marriage that makes my marriage stronger! Not that evil gay marriage that’s only about love and devotion–hat’s the kind of marriage that threatens mine. (Now you can read irony.)

(For the Facebook users: This is a post from my blog getting auto-noted to Facebook, which cuts off any images or videos in the transfer.)

So, a week ago my wife’s Sunday School discussed atheism. I wanted to tell the teacher that I’m an atheist and would love to be available to answer questions and dispel any myths about atheism–but he didn’t get my message in time. So, I sat quietly and listened. And sure, as expected, I heard some of the usual comments: Remarks that atheists don’t believe anything, followed by requisite jokes about not believing in chairs or traffic. Comments that they must be joyless and wallow in hopelessness and despair.

I suppose some atheists do, sure. But so do some Christians. Some Christians really take the Christian message of worhlessness and born in sinfulness to heart, and it affects their entire self-image and their behavior. But in general, atheists aren’t any less happy than anyone else in general. Maybe….

Yesterday I attended a MeetUp of some local atheists and freethinkers at a cafe. While the topic of conversation was more in my interest, I found by and large most people there to be just as, if not more, snide and cynical and negative than a usual gathering of Christians. It was actually very annoying. How many times can we complain about the same things over and over. (Well, I guess the honest response would be as long as they keep trying to get Creationism in public schools and creating faith-based government initiatives and exclude non-believers from the social forum. So long non-believers continue to be the most hated people in the country–then groups of non-believers will continue to be negative and whiny and defensively arrogant.)

What I found really surprising about the Sunday School meeting, was that after the initial pre-class joking and offhand comments, when the discussion turned serious, there was a lot of honest questioning and curiosity over what atheists think and how they got there. (Granted, this was a Methodist group which tend to be pretty liberal and open-minded. If it were, say, a Southern Baptist church, I wouldn’t even think about mentioning my atheism. I seriously believe that if anyone had found out at the Promise Keepers rally I attended a few years ago that I was a non-believer, I’d have been roughed up and brutally thrown out. The hate-speech against atheists, socialists, and feminists (in that order) all that weekend was scary! Anyway, back to moderate Methodists….)

I chose to remain silent at the Sunday School meeting because I wanted people to be able to speak freely, but I so wanted to speak up and offer insight. They really seemed curious about the topic and I think most of them would have been polite in listening to me and interested. I doubt I’d deconvert anyone, but I think I could have good discussions with them.

On the other hand, the group of “free thinkers” yesterday, I don’t think they’d welcome any kind of dialogue. In fact, one person spoke of wondering if any Christians may have the idea of “infiltrating” their group. I actually did speak up and say I would welcome a Christian, as I think it’s absolutely vital they see what we’re really about, and we can have an open and honest dialog with them and we can work together. But I don’t think my sentiments were well received.

I hate to say that this group was stereotypical elitist and arrogant atheists, but they kind of were. And it was a downer. A disappointment. I don’t know. I know during the first year or two of my honest acceptance of my non-belief I was very outspoken (to certain people) and very vitriolic. Heck, my blog shows a record of it! In fact, there are some instances where I still get fired up and upset and blog some flame about religion. But that gets it out of my system. Perhaps for these people, living as we do in a community where everyone is assumed to be a church-goin’ Christian and the culture is geared for that, when given the opportunity to commune with like minded persecuted ultra-minority, it’s time to vent and find solidarity in shared anger and righteous arrogance.

I can understand that, and even support it to some degree. But, it’s also very wearying, being that negative. I have to say, what the people talk about at the Sunday School and Bible study make me cringe on the inside and beat my imaginary head against an imaginary wall, I much prefer the happy and upbeat joyfulness of the Christians. If only I can be around a group of freethinkers and atheists who talk about non-theist stuff, but with the same positivism and good naturedness of the believers. (Again, this is a liberal Methodist group…I’ve been to some Baptist groups where the arrogance and self-righteous indignation and vitriol was as bad as the atheists’.)

Does this make me miss being a believer? I’d be lyin’ if I said it didn’t. Oh, I’m not about to throw in my reasoned de-belief in favor of community; but I can see why some non-believers, like Robert M. Price, continue to enjoy church and the ritual and the ceremony. I still find church services to be too much for me: the mindless ritual, the blood-soaked death worship, the abdication of personal worth and value, the painful cognitive dissonance and the veneration of ancient myth…I hurts, I tells ya. But I still really like the people. I’d like to spend more time with them. And you know, when it does come out that I’m an atheist, then maybe they will have gotten to like me as well, and I can be a force for cooperation and understanding.

I just wish more in the atheist community could be as positive and upbeat. Maybe when they’re not constantly being bonbarded by the cultural message of their (our) forced elimination….

Related links:

• What is the Future of Atheism?
• What Happens When Atheism is the Norm Instead of the Exception?
• Do You Fit the Atheist “Stereotype”?

Update: Oh, I didn’t see this when I posted this article, but this link is great and perfectly related:

• Atheist Arrogance

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Last blog for the night. It’s a long one, but, of course, worth it.

John W. Loftus (studied under William Lane Craig [renown Christian apologist] and earned a Th.M. degree at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Author of Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity), had a debate with famous apologist David Wood. Bloging apologist Mary Jo Sharp criticized Loftus’ arguments in an article entitled: “Loftus-Wood Round Two: Another Failed Argument from Evil.”

So, Loftus has reviewed her criticisms and posted them on the site Debunking Christianity:

• Another Failed Christian Attempt to Explain Away Suffering: Mary Jo Sharp’s Review of the 2nd Loftus/Wood Debate

Loftus has written at length in his book, and in his articles on DC, on how suffering in the world undermines the existence of the Christian concept of God, makes him implausible at best. The above linked article en toto is very good, but below I’ve copied some of the best passages, ripped out of context and without permission. But, they’re arguments that really resonate with me and are the same criticisms I came up with myself years ago during my slow deconversion. They may make you think (if you daaarrre! Boooooo!)

I also find it very odd that in order to exonerate God they must explain the lack of his revealed goodness due to an “epistemic distance,” otherwise known as divine hiddenness. I find no satisfactory understanding for why God created in the first place such that he wanted any creatures to love him. Theists ask if God is to be blamed for creating this world and for wanting people who freely love him. Yes, most definitely yes, until or unless she can tell me why a supposedly reasonable triune completely self-fulfilled God wanted this in the first place (“grace” is not an answer at all); why libertarian free-will is such an important value to God when compared to the sufferings that have resulted from this so-called gift; whether human beings actually have free-will if God created us with our specific DNA and placed us within a specific environment (an environment that actually obstructs many people from receiving the gospel because of the “accidents of birth”); why God suspends some people’s free choices (i.e. Pharaoh) but not others; why God even cares to have free-willed people who love him, knowing full well the consequences for the billions of people who wind up in hell (the collateral damage), and why God will allow sinners in hell to retain their freedom but take it away from the saints in heaven (and who subsequently completes the sanctification process for these saints without their own free choices doing it).

…

But even if Wood’s concocted view is correct, he has merely pushed back the problem of evil before the Fall of humankind. Why didn’t God allow Satan into his direct immediate presence to see all of his power and love such that Satan would neither desire to rebel against him or think he could succeed? Because of this divine decision every person who suffers in this world and every person who will suffer for all eternity (along with Satan himself) will do so because God failed to show Satan his love and power. Apologists say God did this to show us his glory and grace, but then that’s using people for his own ends. This is the ethic of consequentialism, again. Why does God hide his love from his creatures, for instance, knowing it would cause such intense suffering? This theodicy sounds much more like an excuse for what God should have done than it offers anything by way of a reasonable justification for a so-called perfectly good God.

Given the suffering that resulted from Satan’s supposed rebellion, why didn’t God simply deal with him and put him down immediately? That’s what a good and reasonable ruler would do. Listen, does a perfectly good God want a peaceable kingdom, or not? A good ruler would not allow such an evil in his kingdom in the first place. Evil like that is to be eliminated as soon as possible by a good ruler. Too many innocents would be hurt if he didn’t do this immediately.

…

Listen, the argument from evil is only as forceful as the suffering that exists in this present world. If there was no intense suffering the argument would lose most of its force. If there was no suffering at all then it would have no force at all. I have struggled in life, although I have not experienced any prolonged intense suffering. I’ve always had good health, with enough food and money and friends to get by. So if my kinds of struggles are good enough to test me then why couldn’t everyone’s struggles be no more than mine? Why do some suffer for years and years, and a few commit suicide because of their sufferings? Do they need this suffering whereas I don’t? Not everyone suffers the same. Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths while others struggle with financial woes and health issues and the loss of loved ones throughout their whole short lives. Why?

…

Here is but another example of how Christians count the hits and ignore the misses. They do this with prayer too. If a prayer is answered they count that as a hit. If it’s not, they ignore it. With regard to the universe and its form they simply ignore the vast amount of natural evil in it, as I mentioned earlier. One cannot look at this universe objectively and come away believing in the omni-God Sharp believes if she takes into consideration all of the evidence of unintelligent design. At best one should be agnostic about what the evidence can lead us to think. Even if one is to conclude some divine entity created a “quantum wave fluctuation” we don’t have an explanation for where this divine being came from, nor whether he still exists, nor whether he is good, or all-powerful. For her to believe in God she must believe in a historically conditioned interpretation of a selected group of ancient anonymous superstitious writings. And we certainly cannot verify the claims of miracles by the historical method, especially as outsiders looking in. Those beliefs of hers are to be described simply as bizzaro!

…

I think the more power a person has then the more of an ethical obligation he has to alleviate suffering. If, for instance, a woman is being gang raped, no one would fault me if I didn’t physically try to stop them, for then I would be beaten up and perhaps killed along with her (although I would be held morally responsible if I didn’t call the police). But if I was Superman and did nothing then everyone would rightly fault me if I didn’t stop them. So since God supposedly has all power he is the most obligated to alleviate suffering in our world. Without a suffient explanation for these things I argue that it’s probable such an omni-God doesn’t exist. Wood has not made his case.