Stepford Heaven?

'The Stepford Wives' is a novel by Ira Levin in which the women in a suburban town are all unusually subservient to their husbands, with a sinister twist.

And if we look at the Christian Bible we find this claim about Heaven:

Revelation 21:4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away.

Now, for Christians who also believe that unredeemed 'sinners' will be put into Eternal torment in Hell this raises the specter of someone (say a parent) having a dearly loved one (such as a child) suffering eternal torment in Hell while they are without mourning or sorrow or tears for their loved one.

This is why I sometimes refer to Christian Biblical Heaven as Stepford Heaven.

Why a Good Person MUST Vote for Same-Sex Marriage

re: Why a Good Person Can Vote against Same-Sex Marriage
Changing the definition of marriage is bad for society.
By Dennis Prager

[Note: a more appropriate name is gender-neutral marriage, as there is a spectrum of gender expression at the biological level as well as gender and sexual identity at the personal level]

Prager dissembles when he accuses both sides of not addressing the questions of the other side, yet he first creates a strawman of the "proponents question" (which he also incorrectly assumes is a singular question) and then fails to even adequately address that.

Prager ignores critical questions such as the constitutionality under the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment; he ignores that marriage in the United States has been repeatedly found to be an Individual Right, a personal right founded on the rights of privacy (to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects), association, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Prager ignores that the foundation of our Rights are the understanding that sometimes Individual liberty is greater than societal concerns, the societal interest has to be legally 'Compelling'.

Prager argues that the comparison to anti-miscegenation laws (against mixed race marriages) is unfair, because "Because racial differences are insignificant and gender differences are hugely significant" which is just flabbergastingly backwards, read it again carefully. Mixed races CAN marry because their differences are 'insignificant' but only opposite-sex marriages are allowed because 'gender differences are hugely significant'. I think it is safe to say that logic isn't his strong point.

Prager's "Opposition to racism was advocated by every great moral thinker" is a blatant lie & slap in the face to those who suffered under some 1400 years** of Christian slave owners.

** For how many years were Christians slave owners?

Do we count back to the time of Paul when he returns the slave Onesimus to his Master Philemon, the wealthy Christian?
Should we begin the count after the imposition of Christianity on Rome under Constantine (~312CE)?
And when should our count end? We could pick the Emancipation Proclamation 1863 (but that didn't end Christian slave ownership).
Or should we use 1902, when the Rev. and Mrs. Hunter died, having never told their slaves about the Civil War or that Lincoln had freed them.
Or should we use 1981, when Mauritania became the last country in the world to abolish slavery.
Or should we continue the count to this day because people are still kept in slavery, despite it being illegal?

I don't care how you count it, it was many hundreds of years. And yes, to their individual credit, a few Christians through the years tried to argue that Slavery was wrong, but they did so against their own Bible and were largely unsuccessful as a result. And in the 19th Century it also true that many Christians came to the side of the abolition of Slavery (as did secular thinkers and activists of the period such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B Anthony, Ernestine Louise Rose, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, and Robert Ingersoll). But it is also undeniable that the Christians of the time were slavers and argued strenuously against the abolition of the institution and committed much violence against the African slaves in their care.

Biblical slavery also cannot be excused as mere indentured servitude (which it ALSO has, but only for the fellow Israelites, not foreign slaves):
Leviticus 25:46 foreign slaves are yours forever
Exodus 21:20-21 slaves are property & can be beaten

Let's look at the type of equality offered in the Bible. In Exodus 21:12 we see that if you 'Murder' (the Hebrew word for 'Murder' is not the same as the word for 'kill', you may 'kill' in self-defense or when ordered by God such as carrying out God's Law; while 'murder' pertains to killing an innocent party) someone it says you are to be put to death (Hebrew: מוּת (muth), put to death). However, in Exodus 21:20-21, when a slave, who is your property, is beaten to death there is to be נָקַם (naqam) Avenged for כָּ֫סֶפ (keseph) Silver (a fine is to be paid).

Also, in Genesis 9:25-27 Noah says, of his own youngest son, 'Cursed be Canaan' and condemns his family line to be the lowest of slaves to the lines of his brothers, Shem and Japheth. This will resurface as a command to commit genocide against the seven nations in Deuteronomy 7:1 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou

Our own Declaration of Independence reads 'all men are created equal' yet we institutionalized slavery. Because, as the Rev. Fuller would later argue against the abolition of slavery "What God sanctioned in the Old Testament, and permitted in the New, cannot be a sin".

Prager asks "Second, if opposition to same-sex marriage is as immoral as racism, why did no great moral thinker, in all of history, ever advocate male-male or female-female marriage?" This is nothing but an appeal to tradition, as vapid as the SAME appeal to tradition many Christian slavers made "If slavery is immoral, why didn't God or Jesus speak out against it; why has it been around for so long...". These appeals ring empty and false.

If we look back through history we actually find numerous cases of same-sex marriages "thirteen out of the first fourteen Roman Emperors held to be bisexual or exclusively homosexual". It wasn't until after Christianity came into the culture that this practice was outlawed, followed shortly by the fall of Rome (and Gibbon attributes this fall, in part, to the rise of Christianity). So Prager's thesis here fails on the facts.

Prager argues "To argue that opposition to same-sex marriage is immoral is to argue that every moral thinker, and every religion and social movement in the history of mankind prior to the last 20 years in America and Europe was immoral", haven't these societies failed in just about every other way possible anyway? People considered Menarche (a young girl's first period) the proper 'Age of consent' for ages, know we know that this is not an appropriate age and that forcing these young women into sexual intercourse and marriage at young ages does them lifelong emotional damage. Slavery was tolerated and often praised ("oh look at us, we're saving the poor savages from themselves and giving them a proper 'Christian' education". Wars of aggression, deceitful politics, ... how haven't these societies failed? But it's one thing to fail out of our ignorance - the past we know of, the last 6000 years or so - has plainly been a long, painful, slow crawl out of ignorance with many missteps along the way. That's not an excuse to PURPOSEFULLY perpetrate another.

Prager says "the question is whether redefining marriage in the most radical way ever conceived", other people getting married doesn't affect your marriage in the slightest and I think I've shown that this is a plainly false claim because same-sex marriages very clearly existed in our past.

Prager then goes into a slippery slope argument about how there is a war on gender "render meaningless the man-woman distinction". I'm sorry but this is just pathetic.

Goes on to say "those who, for religious or other reasons, wish to retain the man-woman definition of marriage will be legally and morally as isolated as racists are today", utter hogwash. I'm a father of a wonderful son and two guys getting married doesn't affect me in the slightest.

In conclusion Prager repeats himself, "There are reasons no moral thinker in history ever advocated same-sex marriage"... Well, Mr. Prager, the great moral thinkers of our age disagree with you.

So I now ask, is it 'good for society' when bigotry is allowed to define loving relationships for other individuals?

The Value Of Atheism

The following tweet was put out by Adam Baldwin the other day (note: he frequently deletes his tweets so the reference is no longer valid):

@adamsbaldwinAdam Baldwin

What have #atheists ever accomplished with their #atheism that would make their#atheist opinions worthy of respect?

http://twitter.com/adamsbaldwin/status/11173114775863296


Adam Baldwin put out the challenge above asking essentially, what did atheism ever do for humanity. Of course, he worded it in a very negative and sophistic way.

My response is as follows:

The value of atheism is that it is a rejection of the FALSE religious claims of just cause for genocide, genital mutilation, stoning to death, torture, and hate (etc). Atheism itself (the rejection of theism) provides ABSOLUTELY NO BASIS for such obviously abhorrent actions.

So, you might ask, how does a secular person justify 'morality'. The answer is: EXACTLY THE SAME WAY EVERY OTHER SINGLE PERSON HAS EVER DONE SO.

You learned your fundamental moral behaviors LONG before you knew anything about the details of the bible (and, in fact, a lucky few among us do not have any poisonous religious claims polluting their mind yet they are moral beings as well). You ALREADY knew it was wrong to hurt others because you FELT it. And the few people who don't feel this way are the psychopaths and sociopaths in the world. It has NEVER been demonstrated that a non-belief in god is correlated with a lack of empathy in any way. On the other hand, religious up-bringings HAVE been shown to have PTSD-like effects on children.

We humans have 'mirror' neurons which enable us to virtually experience what others actually experience. When you see someone else harmed you (tend to) imagine that you feel what they are feeling (unless you are mentally damaged). This is the underlying basis of our empathic drive and forms the fundamental basis for our sense of morality. Neuroscience is making incredible progress in this area of research.

Secondly, humans have the ability to share our ideas as a collective group. Through various agreements (implicit and explicit) we have established rules for social order that result in mutual support and protection of groups that we identify with (and to our great collective misfortune, also leads to conflicts with groups that we do NOT identify with).

Finally, because we are able to observe, reason, and make determinations for our individual and collective well-being (e.g., I'm hungry, I need to eat -- or my family is hungry, I need to hunt) we are also able to make similar determinations about our behaviors and their consequences in other areas of life.

Go back 10,000 years and imagine that you are a stranger entering a village and you start acting erratically (yelling, jumping around, acting unusual, foaming at the mouth, etc). The villagers might well kill you in self-defense.

It's not immoral to act strangely and yet people would have KNOWN not to do it. They don't need a 'god' to tell them how others are going to react to things.

You don't have to actually DO a thing to make a fairly good assessment of this result and adjust your behavior accordingly, if you are familiar with the customs and culture.

The problem you immediately run into when you try to use the Bible to justify some kind of absolute moral foundation is that #1 the 'laws' for people clearly changed over time (don't eat pig, ok to eat pig -- cut off foreskin, don't cut off foreskin -- god commanded slavery in the OT, slavery tolerated in the NT, and now is slavery moral or immoral?) and #2 the rules for 'God' are obviously different than those for men, if moral law was ABSOLUTE it would, by definition, apply equally. Yet, it is said to be immoral to commit murder but it's ok to commit murder if God orders it as he did of Abraham, as he did at Jericho, as he did to the many tribes, as he did of the first born of Egypt, and as he did of nearly the entirety of creation in the Flood.

Some final thoughts...

Do you think it's morally ok to CUT OFF a womans entire clitoris? Some religions^[Islam] claim that you must, how do you propose to prove them wrong? Does the Bible say you can't do that? It ORDERS the followers of Judaism to cut off part of the male penis so obviously god doesn't think too poorly of such practices and he utterly fails to mention any prohibition on doing this to women.

And Slavery existed in Jesus' time but he never spoke out clearly and condemned it. And the Bible was used for thousands of years to Justify slavery and the poor treatment of jewish people. Only very recently (historically speaking) did religious leaders FINALLY grow a fucking conscious and help to speak out against slavery.

These issues just show the complete ridiculousness of religious claims. Unless you can overcome all those objections then you have no basis to claim the superiority of religious claims.

I don't think it's moral/ethical to cut ANYTHING off any infant (unless there is a clear and established medical need). That goes for foreskins, clitorises, extra fingers or toes (unless they present a medical danger), penis on a hermaphrodite, or ANYTHING else [see also Circumcision]

Addendum: I would like to add here, that by rejecting rigidly, closed-minded claims of religion immense progress has been made in the sciences while the Catholic Church was busying burning scientists like Giordano Bruno at the stake and imprisoning Galileo Galilei. The Church had an odd love/hate relationship with scientists, they were sometimes supporters of those who would stay within their strict bounds. But it is that very factor of an a priori boundary of inquiry that is at the heart of the problem and when you compound that with a bloodthirsty penchant for the most extreme forms of torture you can imagine for those who dared think for themselves then yes, I do find fault. How many Popes in a row ordered murder and torture be done in Christ's name? And is even ONE acceptable? Imagine if an atheist organization existed today that had tortured people for 1000 years? Would ANY organization get away with that other than a religious one?

So I say those who have rejected these false religious beliefs have indeed done many wonderful things for mankind as a product of that rejection, or to use Baldwin's phrase "with their atheism". AND they didn't do it out of fear or bribery.

Living Without God

What living without belief in a god means to me...

I didn't stop being generous when I stopped believing in Santa

It means that I value human compassion. There will be no redemption in the distant future. Each and every person needs to be responsible for improving our collective well-being. People are abused and murdered every day and we have to work to improve this situation. Those who survive the abuses heaped on them do not generally end up being better or stronger people for it, far too often they end up continuing the cycle of abuse and they need our help and compassion; first and foremost in prevention.

It means that I cannot rely on the non-existent supernatural to make everything right at some nebulous point in the future. Therefore I must take my share of responsibility for how things are now and how things will be in the future.

Where do morals come from if not from god? They come from human behavior processed by human thought. This answer should be obvious. But without god there can be no absolute right or wrong? Wrong, there is no absolute right or wrong with god. The god of the bible tried to get people to murder their own children. The god of the bible ordered the slaughter of every man, woman, and child at Jericho (Josuha 6). The god of the bible directly Murdered all the first-born of Egypt, including innocent infants. The god of the bible Murdered every man, woman, and innocent child on the planet (except Noah's family) as part of the flood. Doesn't any of that seem wrong to you? If so, why is your innate sense of right & wrong better than gods supposedly is?

There are better ways to deal with our problems.

If the Christian god existed, he has allowed billions of children to be subjected to abusive parents (emotionally and physically) and then proposes to punish those children with eternal torment once they grow up to be less than ideal human beings? Doesn't that just seem wrong to you?

Consider the alternative, that we are animals who are slowly gaining greater cognitive abilities and we're now able to look back at our history and see the evils which we have propagated on our own. We are now capable of doing better but you have to take steps to be responsible for yourself and not scapegoat your own failings onto some mythical Christ.

And we are collectively guilty today for not immediately putting a stop to many of the evils that continue. Some will take longer but there are many things that we could end today if we all say, we're just not going to take it any more (cue rock music).

For example, it is not acceptable to stone people to death. It is not acceptable to put anyone to death, however horrible of a person they have been they are a product of our own collective failure to take action. I do not propose they be allowed to roam around free, but it is just not right to kill another human being unless it is absolutely necessary to prevent them from causing immediate harm.

500 million people live in abject poverty, without access to acceptably clean water, food, and shelter. and some 3 billion people live in unacceptable conditions that no human should have to endure.

15 million children die every year of starvation but for the cost of only ten Stealth bombers, every single child that starved to death over the past 10 years could have been saved. But these children will continue to suffer and die, every year, day in and day out, until we all stand up and say 'no more'.

Another major issue we face today is that the population growth rate is alarming (despite these problems which cause unacceptable levels of suffering and death). As we begin to fix the deplorable conditions our brothers and sisters are forced to live under we must gain control over our own reproduction rates. We have to be responsible and educate people so they can make better choices for themselves and others. And under these circumstances it is morally detestable to continue to preach this nonsense that god gets irate if you use a condom (or other forms of birth control).

I would love to see a world where abortions are not necessary but human-kind has not reached that level. If you are "pro-life" and want to end abortions then you need to go about it the right way.

First and foremost, by ensuring those who are alive and suffering have proper food and health care. If you cannot do that then you are not pro-life, you are just pro-suffering.

Secondly, you need to ensure that every child has a safe and happy home to grow up in with loving parents. And you need to accomplish this with compassion, not by forcibly removing children from their parents and shoving them into foster homes where they are abused further. If you want to "fix" a broken family move in with them and show them a better way. If that is too much of your time to bother with then you are part of the problem. Our current system of child protective services in the US is utterly broken and it wreaks havoc on everyone it touches. It is not based on compassion for the child although it pretends to be so. And through the rest of the world... well, we have a lot of work ahead of us.

It is irresponsible to assume there is supernatural safety net that awaits us. This is nothing more than a boorish excuse for inaction. So please, wake up and take some action to make the world a better place.

John Marco Allegro

This is a post to discuss John Marco Allego's book, "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross" [and related topics] as a carry over from a thread started on So You Had A Personal Experience.

Background:

John Marco Allegro, wiki
John Marco Allegro, home page (deceased)
Judith Anne Brown, article and Book Review
interview with Van Kooten & De Bie


Reply To: Original Comment

The Holy See had a "great distaste" for the ideas of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Giordano Bruno. Is your distaste so certain and absolute that you would burn people to death - as theirs was? And yet, the Holy See was wrong and the distasteful ideas eventually won out.

You Want Answers?

@markmobley writes:

http://www.tweetdeck.com/twitter/markmobley/~0bFda>> I have answered your questions. Answer some of mine. If materialism is true, where did the material for the Big Bang come from? What about the space that the Universe occupies? Francis Crick thought aliens planted single-cell creatures because naked evolution is so unlikely. That takes a bit of faith, right?

It takes no faith to say "I don't know", we don't know - so what? If I don't know the Higgs energy does that imply God? There have been a billion things we didn't know before that we know now—we used to think gods shook the earth & moved the planets. if you must postulate a god then at least have the honesty to hold it to the same standard of evidence that you demand of evolution. And admit that postulating god does nothing but beg the question and explains absolutely nothing what-so-ever. For, if the universe/metaverse requires a 'god' to create it, how much more necessary is some meta-god to create that god. And if the buck has to stop somewhere then don't invent a useless placeholder for it until evidence demands it. You have NOT established the necessity - all you have is a vast ignorance of the true nature of the universe (ignorance that we all share) And if believers stopped at an abstract god that would be one thing but oh NO, that isn't good enough. it's the god that is on THEIR side in war, that tells them others must die for masturbation or other crocked-up-shit they want to pretend is immoral so they can control the lives of others in ways they have no legitimate business doing.

What do Theologians and Pokeologists have in common?

Response to: http://www.truefreethinker.com/articles/fundamentalist-theologian-asks-%E2%80%9Cwhy-won%E2%80%99t-god-heal-amputees%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Cwhy-does-god-hate-amputee

In this article, Mr. "FreeThinker" declares the author of Why Won't God Heal Amputees a theologian. It always amuses me when religious people use terms like "Religion", "Faith", or "Theologian" in a derogatory sense. I recommend a diet higher in irony.

First, a theologian is merely one who is trained in theology.

Just as someone studying Pokemon cannot study actual Pokemon (because they don't exist), the theologian studies written stories about God, the history of such pursuits, and philosophies (written or oral) about the presumed nature of God (all things which DO exist). As far as I am aware nobody has actually studied God directly. Many theologians, as a result of this study, find that the claims are simply too weak to support a belief in said 'god'. So being a theologian, in no way, implies belief in the claims - any more than studying Pokemon would imply a belief in actual Pokemon.

Strong religeous convictions

Found on: http://deepakchopra.com/2011/07/the-american-melting-pot-atheists-keep-out/
"those who had the courage to travel to new lands,mostly didso on the back of strong religeous convictions"

Let's not forget that "strong religious convictions" includes Columbus, Ponce de Leon, Panfilo de Narvaez, Hernan Cortés, Francisco Pizarro... all Christians, all well-known murders and enslavers of uncountable numbers of indigenous people.

Dr. Michael McDonnel wrote in The 'Conquest' of the Americas:
conquistadors regarded plunder, slaves, and tribute as the just desserts for their efforts in forcing pagans to accept Christianity and Spanish rule. After all, the conquistadors did scrupulously adhere to the Spanish law of conquest by reading the requerimiento, which ordered defiant Indians to immediately accept Spanish rule and Christian conversion, or face punishment in a “just war”. The requerimiento announced that “The resultant deaths and damages shall be your fault, and not the monarch’s or mine or the soldiers”. Attending witnesses and a notary usually certified in writing that the requerimiento had been read and ignored by the usually uncomprehending Indians, thus justifying the death and destruction that so often followed.

But I Had A Personal Experience!

Why we cannot rely solely on individual memory to document events.

Remarkable false memories By Daniel Simons

I myself have personally had some pretty amazing experiences and witnessed amazing phenomena as products of meditation (and on occasion, medication). I have SEEN a golden, radiant book with letters of fire burning onto the pages (meditation), I have seen images of the future that have subsequently come to pass (lucid dreaming, meditation), and I have been 'miraculously' saved from physical harm (reality). Be they coincidences, hallucinations, lucky guesses, or who knows, maybe even some quantum process that we don't understand yet. But not a SINGLE one of those experiences is evidence for something supernatural or a soul. The dreaming brain is perfectly capable of generating PROFOUNDLY meaningful and deep, rich experiences that are indistinguishable from reality to the observer. I know this because I practiced at it for many years.

The Modern Secular Movement and YOU

It has been suggested that some atheists are only about making others feel insecure and unhappy. And while it is impossible to speak for all atheists (because we are an extremely individualized and varied group, beyond lacking a belief in a god) I will explain my views.

For one, I really don't believe that this is the primary motivation of the modern secular movement at all, even if there are a few mean spirited people out there. There are plentiful examples of mean-spirited believers. Just go look at a list of Hate Groups (e.g., Southern Poverty Law Center: Ideology) and you will find plenty of hate groups based on religious tenants. I don't see a single group on that list that claims to or even appears to hate others simply out of their lack of belief in a god.

So, while some atheists may be openly hostile towards some religious beliefs, they do so on an individual basis -- whereas, there are ample sources of hate speech in the religious texts of every major religion. Atheism does not command, on pain of eternal torment for disobeying god, that someone sacrifice their own child (as god did with Abraham), that parents should stone their children to death, that because god has given us a parcel of land we must commit genocide and infanticide against every resident of that land that stands in our way, or that we should stone our wives to death if we find they are not a virgin. But the bible contains all of these things.

And while I'm glad that not every member of these groups do these disgusting things (any more; if the bible is accurate people USED to do them), the fact is that they are still used by others to fuel hatred. The fact that many religious adherents ignore or make excuses for these things doesn't make the resulting problems go away.

Can you imagine if atheists had a book that said to go out and murder people like the bible does? The hypocrisy and double-standards are just at ridiculous levels.

Most outspoken atheists are simply about protecting our rights and, in some cases, simply doing what IS right. Atheists generally take issue, not with someones private beliefs (again, I'm sure there would be an occasional exception), but primarily with their actions.

Far too many 'believers' want to use their beliefs as an excuse to deny rights to people they simply don't like or don't respect (most often lately, women, children, and gay people). They have spent billions of dollars fighting against scientific education in the schools (because they know what happens when children are well educated - they know what it means that 93% of the National Academy of Science members do not believe in a god). They have spent billions fighting against gay rights. They have spent billions brainwashing people to fear condoms (not just teaching the 'virtues' of abstinence but actually telling people that "Condoms CAUSE Aids") which has resulted in millions of people suffering and dying, primarily in parts of Africa (which is compounded there by other, unfounded, magical beliefs). They don't just try to help the poor -- they preach that being poor is a virtue, and they trade their help for allegiance to a flawed and evil doctrine. This is called exploitation.

Just compare the typical Atheistic billboards "You know it's a myth", "Millions are good without god", etc with these:

http://www.dailyscroll.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/billboard_smaller.jpg

http://thevillageheathen.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/atheist_billboard.jpg

http://friendlyatheist.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/atheism-is-wonderful.jpg

http://friendlyatheist.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/christianbillboard.jpg

One claims that non-belief is Treason! They are suggesting we should be put to death because we find the idea of their child-murdering, slavery-endorsing, misogynistic god offensive to our sensibilities of decent behavior.

To me, there really is no comparison between those who are merely being outspoken against religion and the religious treatment of others (just look at the many wars fought between different 'Christian' factions - much less what they have done through history to non-believers and those of other faiths). I don't mean to only pick on Christians (the other major religions are absolutely no better), but they are the sect I know best because I live in the south and have to deal with their hatred, prejudice and nonsense on a daily basis.

They then parade around as if their faith is something to be proud of and I am not allowed to speak freely out of fear for my life and job because I have chosen not to believe things without substantive cause. For example:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/it_must_be_tough_to_be_an_athe.php

If you don't face this kind of bigotry on a daily basis then maybe you don't understand what others are going through, but I assure you it happens, frequently.

So, if someone seems too aggressive or outspoken on the subject maybe you should wonder what their reasons must be to have reached that point? I personally do not care what others choose to believe in private, but I do care about how they decide to practice it when it impacts my life.

To Be Humble Before God? Or just Humble

This post arose out of a twitter discussion related to faith-based beliefs and being humble...

I know enough to know there are billions of things I don't know and many more that I cannot know. I know enough to know that a skeptical position is usually more correct that one constructed of unsupportable beliefs. And I know that even well-supported propositions can still be wrong in light of future evidence.

I know enough to be able to read scientific papers and make some little sense out of them so that I can evaluate the truth value of claims.

I know enough to know that I should NOT mutilate a child's genitals out of my own ignorance. Or murder people because someone burned a book.

Humble absolutely! Which, for me, includes a rejection of religious dogma as the tripe that it is. It is the claims of religions that utterly fail at being humble.

"I KNOW the mind and WILL of god and you will do as I say - murder your first born child (Genesis 22), commit genocide against the nations who occupy this land that you just happen to want (Deutronomy 7), scapegoat your sin by this human sacrifice of 'my only begotten son' (2 Corinthians 5, et.al.), subjugate women, don't allow them to speak (1 Timothy 2), beat your child into submission 'spare the rod, spoil the child' (Deuteronomy 21:18-21), believe Genesis even I give absolutely not a single technical detail that creation happened exactly like this"

Is this your idea of Humble?

The bible fails the humble test AND it fails every scientific test of its supernatural claims (prayer, etc) AND it fails the history test (no contemporaneous historians cover Jesus or the MANY claims of the bible like saints rising from the dead, all NT books written far too late, not even eye-witness accounts, etc).

All you have on the side of "God" is the argument from ignorance. "Well, you don't know how it started so let's believe in God" and oh my GOD did they ever - what happened after 'Christians' got in power in the 4th century? Was it all peace and love? - I don't think so. And we only JUST get the Christians to stop murdering everyone and then Islam comes along to take it's place.

There are some spectacular 'secular' failures as well but I suspect only for lack of numbers and technology on the part of the earlier Christians (maybe it's a GOOD thing they were so anti-science for so long).

So evil people will do evil things - but non-belief doesn't COMMAND that you commit genocide after genocide as is clearly in the bible.

And I'm not saying that religion CAUSES evil - only that it has CLEARLY supported them in some cases and not just allowed but COMMANDED some pretty horrible things to go on.

Hilter (who was no atheist) and Stalin (raised with religion, but later turned savage and brutal - of course, he was abused by his father which doesn't generally create happy adults) were certainly horrible people and did horrible things. But they didn't do those things BECAUSE they rejected some god-claim.

And more importantly, where are they now? But (for example) Catholicism does horrible things and is allowed, not just to continue but is ACCEPTED. THAT is why religion is more dangerous to me.

The neo-Nazi's and KKK still exist in small pockets - but imagine if they were widely accepted! That is EXACTLY how I feel about the major religions. They are just as revolting to me. Doing a few things to try to make up for the evil you have done doesn't cut it for me - that goes for the KKK, the Holy See, and Hamas equally in my book.

You just don't get to buy your way out of your past crimes.

I could care less if there is some unknowable/unknown power that created the universe. The Humble position is leave the unknown as the unknown - not pretend to know some answer that clearly has it's origins in blood, superstition, and ignorance.

Basis in Fact

The fundamental reason that I do not believe in the existence of a god lies in the fact that evidence for the existence of a god has not been forthcoming while there are many facts which argue against the existence of a god.

First, I admit that I am fairly ignorant about many of the specific claims that non-christian religions make about their god or gods. I used to be a christian and I have read more on christianity than I have any other religion so I have much more of a background in that area. So the majority of my arguments focus on that aspect of belief.

However, I have made at least some effort to know a little bit about these other religions. In all cases, the people of that religion or belief system have the burden of proof and I have not found any such proof forthcoming, nor do I find the claims to be credible on their face, and I have, in fact, found many fraudulent claims.

For example, in India there are many claims of miracles and many claims that such-and-such is a Guru who can produce vibhuti (sacred ash), who can levitate, who can produce objects from 'thin air', etc. Most often, these claims are not even allowed to be evaluated by outsiders by the guru's handlers, but when they have been tested they have been shown to be fraudulent. Most of them are not even good stage magicians. With many of them I can look at the video and SEE the slight-of-hand being used (I'm an amateur prestidigitateur myself). They aren't even trying very hard because they don't have to - the people WANT to believe and they see a miracle where I only see a scammer, a liar, and a cheat.

I do believe that people have certain types of deeply, and personally meaningful experiences as a result of either meditation or natural occurrence of these states of consciousness. However, there is absolutely no evidence that these experiences are anything other than brain states. For example, no amount of meditation has given us the mass of the Higgs particle.

Sure, these can be states conducive to creativity but nothing more than that is evidenced in thousands of years of practice.

Most christian claims of miracles are even worse. Found a job? MIRACLE! Pull some miners out of a Cave? MIRACLE! Doctor cures your cancer despite it seeming to be terminal initially? MIRACLE! Everything perceived as good is magically and automatically a MIRACLE!, no matter how much humans had to work and toil to accomplish something. And yet, nothing truly miraculous ever actually occurs - it is always within expected, normal statistical probability. This is Confirmation Bias and it does nothing to establish that some supernatural event is actually taking place.

So I dismiss these claims of miracles until something truly miraculous can be proven. You can read more in my entry But I Had A Personal Experience. If you can prove a miracle then please contact the James Randi foundation and claim your million dollar prize and THEN I will be willing to consider that your claim is valid. Until then, you can save your breath. I don't care that you found your lost dog, were cured of cancer by sneezing, survived a 30,000 foot fall, or any other ridiculous claim.

I similarly dismiss your claims that Prayer works. It's been studied (See Intercessory Prayer) and failed.

What about claims about the bible? Here are my issues with the Bible:

#1 The bible contains sections which are absolutely abhorrent to ANY sense of right and wrong and only a diseased mind can forgive them. God commands genocides and infanticides. No good god would order men to slaughter babies, period. And if you excuse this in your mind then you are sick and mentally deficient. And it undeniably does so, those people who deny the bible is commanding genocides are also clearly borderline insane.

God killing all the first-born of Egypt and god killing everyone in the flood are examples of these unimaginably abhorrent acts. The Old Testament is a tribute to a god of genocide and slavery. I cannot imagine a better book for what kind of god to REJECT than the Old Testament and the New Testament does not redeem this evil god that fails to clearly speak out against Slavery, or for equal rights for all, women are still spoken of as property and told to submit to their husbands and keep silent, and parents are told to beat their children for their own good.

Only diseased and immoral men would come up with such stories, attribute them to a god, and claim to be righteous for supporting them. The same goes for the idea of stoning people to death for things like dishonoring your Father and Mother.

#2 The bible was written 30-60 years AFTER the supposed events and there are no eye-witness accounts. Paul wasn't an eye-witness - he had a vision. The Gospel authors are anonymous and only attributed by Tradition, not by evidence of fact. For example, Luke explicitly admits he's not an eyewitness:

1 Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled[a] among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us

#3 The bible has been redacted and modified and there is not a single original autograph remaining where we can verify what it originally said. Textual criticism that argues the copies we have are fairly accurate is wrong because it denies the documented fact that the early stewards of the church destroyed everything they could find that contradicted what they wished the documents to say and they murdered people who disagreed with them. You do not get to tamper with the evidence to such extremes, with 1800 years of terrorism - and then claim things were not tampered with. I do not trust them, not even one tiny bit.

The Protestant branches of this abhorrent system are no less guilty. They did not protest to the church having tortured and murdered innocent people. They protested at being held to a standard of good works for salvation -- they prefered to just claim you love Jesus and you are magically saved by faith. That's hardly a ringing endorsement for a new religious movement.

And Martin Luther, after earlier attempts to peacefully convert the Jews to Christianity, turned towards being a violent racist against Jewish peoples who wrote in Concerning the Jews and Their Lies:

That we should set fire to their synagogues and schools, and what cannot be burnt should be covered over with earth, that no man may ever discover a stone or brick of it-we are to do this for the glory of our Lord and Christianity. Burn all their houses and lodge them in stables like gypsies, in order that they may know they are not lords in this land, but in captivity and misery. Burn all their prayer-books and Talmuds, forbid the Rabbis under pain of death to give instruction, deny Jews the rights of protection on the highways, for they have no business with the land. Being neither lords, farmers not merchants, nor anything of the kind, they are to remain at home: you Lords shall not and cannot protect them, unless you would take part in their abomination. Put a flail, axe, mattock or spindle in the hands of every young and strong Jew or Jewess and compel them to do manual labor

#4 There is not a SINGLE contemporaneous historical account that would support the claims about Jesus described in the bible. The FIRST historical MENTION of Jesus appears in Testimonium Flavianum, written 60 YEARS too late and even then shows strong evidence of having been tampered with. We've no doubt that Christians existed, it is their Christ that seems to be lacking in all evidence.

But Josephus goes on at some length about Judas of Galilee - and actually attributes several events to Judas of Galilee, which are claimed of Jesus in the bible. It seems very likely that the bible authors stole those events in order to give their false Jesus some historical basis.

There are some common Myths:

#1 Myth: People wouldn't die for a false belief? Then Islam must be the truth ALSO? This myth is so blatantly wrong it's not even funny.

#2 Myth: Finely Tuned Universe - This claim is based on false assumptions and ZERO evidence. Victor Stenger (Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Hawaii) ran simulations with varied physical parameters and found the claims of Fine Tuning to be false:  Is The Universe Fine-Tuned For Us?

And even if Stenger's results are wrong, everyone is basing these assumptions on models that we KNOW are flawed. Quantum Mechanics and Relativity have not been unified, therefore no extrapolations can be presumed to be valid. We can propose hypotheses and test them within our present limits but without a fully validated model we CAN NOT trust such extrapolations.

I also reject the validity of Black Holes on this basis and there is a LOT of evidence for them - but it is inconclusive. We know there are super-massive objects, that is an observable fact. But we do not know that those objects are 100% accurately modeled by our present equations - we only know things seem to fit to the limit of our current ability to measure.

#3 Myth: First Cause - Again, logic alone cannot prove reality as it does not, itself, provide facts. Logical conclusions must be based on factual observations. These types of arguments are all based on pure assumptions and if Quantum Mechanics and Relativity have taught us anything about the universe it is that our classical assumptions are wrong.

So, no miracles, no prayer, no personal experiences, no bible that is trustworthy, No empirical evidence supporting any logical arguments, and evidence that the early church was bloodthirsty and violent (Inquisitions, Indulgences, Crusades, Wars, Torture, Racism, Murder, Destruction of Contrary Evidence).

There are probably a thousand other reasons I have rejected theistic claims.

Epistemically speaking, Science does not prove propositions to be true but rather demonstrates which claims are false. The problem with the god-proposition is that it cannot even be formulated in a scientifically-valid, falsifiable form - because the fact is, nobody knows a single fact about god - they only have their own wishful thinking projected onto an idea.

Life and Death and Twitter

An All Too Typical Twitter Conversation

[I trimmed out the extra RT text but left the content intact]

I started with a blanket statement/conversation starter (not to anyone specific)...

ColdDimSum: Anyone who eats meat OR vegetables is NOT #prolife

littlebytesnews: anyone who aborts human beings is #prodeath!!

ColdDimSum: That we are ALL "pro-death" to some degree was the very point of my tweet - YOU murder living beings every day of your life

littlebytesnews: at least I don't kill my unborn/human fetus like #prochoice does #prolife

(hello brickwall)

ColdDimSum: Do you value a single-celled zygote over an adult chimpanzee?

littlebytesnews: #prolife A human zygote=human being.not a "potential"or "possible"human being.It's an actual human being! http://bit.ly/f2dd1e

(hello brickwall)

ColdDimSum: nice how you dishonestly avoid the question

littlebytesnews: UR question was ignorant&cld not be answered;so I gave U facts #prolife re:zygote [ Yes, that is literal: http://twitter.com/littlebytesnews/status/50268988797763584 ]

(hello brickwall)

But I propose to give my answers here anyway, despite the apparent impossibility of the task.

A living chimpanzee has a brain, has feelings, feels pain, and feels something akin to love. It is only the ugliest sort of ignorance and arrogance that could lead someone to a conclusion that chimpanzees (and other even remotely intelligent animals) do not possess these qualities to various degrees. They are at least on par with human infants.

A single-celled zygote is no more an ACTUAL human being than any other single Living Cell in your body. Every living cell in your body has the Capacity to become a fully formed human being in the right environment (with cloning technology this is not just theoretical). Human being-ness is an Emergent property of a very large collection of cells. Surprisingly (to some) we didn't know these facts 2000 years ago. I base this claim on the fact that we COULD clone a human being from those cells which makes them POTENTIAL humans in exactly the same way that a zygote is a POTENTIAL human being. There is just no way you can reasonably describe a single-cell as having the property of humanness JUST because it has human DNA. And citing some ignorant twit Ph.D. who went to a Catholic university back to me does NOTHING to convince me otherwise.

Without a functioning brain (which a single-cell does not possess, last I checked) you are nothing but a pile of meat and bones (or fatty acids, osseous tissue, and minerals if you prefer). If you want to posit that a soul exists then I must ask that you provide SOME level of demonstration of this claim beyond mere assertion and appeals to antiquity or popularity.

So, to me, the answer is fairly straight-forward and obvious. A living, breathing, thinking Chimpanzee has greater value than a single-celled zygote which has value on par with ANY other single cell in your body and no more. That it is a "unique combination of DNA" bestows upon it no greater inherent value either as one or several mutations in any of your trillions of cells ALSO gives it a "unique combination of DNA" - and some of those combinations could potentially save millions of people from cancer if we knew their secret, but they die, unsung and unrecognized by the trillions upon trillions every day.

-

Now, on the greater questions of the death penalty and abortions, I feel these are extremely complicated issues with no easy answers; despite claims of simplicity by some, but I will take a crack at it.

Death Penalty FOR YOU

It has been said that the best way towards any doctrine of fairness is by putting yourself in the worst of every position. If you wish to have a death penalty imagine first that YOU are the falsely accused, all the evidence is stacked against you even though you KNOW you are innocent, but you are convicted anyway and put to death. Would you still support the death penalty at that moment? I suspect that the VAST majority of people, if ACTUALLY placed in that situation would withdraw their support. A few would not, to whom I say bravo for being a complete dumbass - but hey, you would still have your pseudo-integrity (however wrongly directed it was) for the few minutes before you died.

Our ability to put ourselves in such imagined situations is the basis of human Empathy and Compassion. BOTH of which work against our sense of Justice and Fairness but (thanks to evolution) works for the human species as a whole.

I am frequently surprised (in the way we are surprised when people behave EXACTLY as they have behaved a million times before) by the number of so called "Pro-Lifers" who are "Pro-Death-Penalty" (putting aside the cognitive dissonance those people must endure).

To ease any further suspense, I'm anti-death penalty. But life is complicated and horrible things happen and we have to deal with them somehow.

Is locking someone up for their entire life MORE compassionate than killing them? I wouldn't want to answer for someone else. So... why don't we ask them? Let them decide, if they cannot take being locked up maybe we shouldn't stop them from ending their own life (hopefully in some non-gruesome and painful way)? Maybe they aren't mentally competent to make such choices? I don't know - hard questions. But we don't even try to answer them, we brush it aside and ignore it.

I have more thoughts here which come to down to how we understand Free Will (or our probable lack thereof) but I'll save those for another time.

Abortion

Deciding when a human life begins is not a scientific question, nor a philosophical one. The universe could care less, we are one big "happy" quantum field, fluctuating endlessly (or not). There is no I and YOU, there only is. There is no life contrasted with non-life - it's all part of one universe. Categories like "life" are concepts that only apply to the human realm of experience. These are based on ancient abilities of categorization that served us well fighting to survive but have no inherent concrete ontology in the real world.

We cannot even DEFINE life. Maybe it's this or that, except in that case. The definition is so obscurely watered down that it has no meaning. We know it when we see it (but mostly we completely fail to see it).

But because of our limited human experience and demands for Justice, Fairness, laws and standards of behavior (all GOOD things for human societies mind you) it IS an important question ethically speaking. So I will here attempt a summing up of my possibly paradoxical positions (please pardon the preponderance of alliteration).

Alas, I'm bound to offend both pro-life and pro-choice with my thoughts here so expect this to be as messy as the question itself.

#1 I am AGAINST the forced taking of ANY life, however tiny or BACTERIAL! Shocking isn't it?

Why do YOU, dear reader, (or I) have ANY more right to live than the bacterium on my desk? You don't, not really. And yet, you/we take the life of the bacterium without even NOTICING its existence.

You simply cannot justify any other position either scientifically nor philosophically - LIFE is LIFE and it is either worth preservation or it is not. All human life could die off in an accident and some distant descendant of that lone bacterium could be the ONLY hope for repopulating the Earth. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.

#2 But! Alas, I MUST take life in order to live, I must eat, my cells die, I step on bugs, I protect myself - this is clearly in conflict with #1 (Jainists probably come the closest to honoring #1 properly -- but if everyone was a Jainists human beings would quickly cease to exist). There is obviously a huge tension between #1 and #2 that we must resolve based on our best knowledge and judgement. Fortunately, this IS where science can inform our decisions because science IS the process WE have created which we have found to be the most reliable road to accurate knowledge - if we found a better way, that way would become part of science! (as it has over the past many thousands of years).

#3 There is an apparent hierarchy to life: As best we know, bacteria and other single-celled entities do not have a full experience of the world as we do; but they DO sense the world around them, and respond to it, and form memories, and seek out food, and "shy" away from danger. I am willing to be shown to be wrong about this -- if single-celled entities do have a first-class conscious experience of the world then it would WRONG to kill them. But you have to demonstrate that this is the case and the FACT is, that the only expression of consciousness that we KNOW is that which emerges from fairly complex brains.

Above the bacteria are the simple multi-cellular animals and plants. They also do not seem to have a conscious experience of the world, I feel very little regret at eating some vegetable matter although I do wonder about it and I take the time to think about it.

Above that are the simpler animals, they seem fully conscious of the world - chickens, cows, pigs. All are extremely alive in the SAME WAY humans are alive - but not to the same extent (I think, again, willing to be wrong). But I do feel these animals should be treated humanely and not tortured. And I hope some day we can find ways to avoid killing these animals.

And finally there are the higher animals, dolphins, chimps, great apes, and humans. These all have highly evolved brains and I think ALL are deserving of the highest levels of protections in our society against being murdered (although I think that "wild" animals should be allowed to live "wild", and I don't think we owe ALL animals the same level of medical care in the way that we owe it to our fellow humans).

Whether this hierarchy is right or wrong all of us implicitly follow the above system to some degree or another (again, save the Jainists who do their best). So, we make excuses (I said it would be paradoxic).

[As an aside, I find the idea of Medical care as a capitalist enterprise to be one of the most foul experiments we have undertaken as a society, but I digress]

#4 I am a realist and pragmatist. It is with great care and thought (and an eye on all too recent History) that I posit that abortion being illegal is ethically WRONG because it creates suffering in a way that it being legal simply does not. While I would personally wish to see the NEED for abortions drop to zero, I am equally sure that this can only be accomplished if all the HUMANS involved are willing to put forth the Empathy and Compassion required to make that happen - and fighting to make abortions ILLEGAL is NOT a step down that road.

As long as 10-15 MILLION children starve to death every year it makes no sense for abortion to be illegal. Click on the link and look at EACH picture and make sure you damn well understand what "pro-life" entails. And now imagine that being 30 million children starving to death each year. How is that "pro-life"? That's just pro-suffering because you are selfish.

Neither is Adoption a solution as much as the anti-choicers might wish it to be so - in fact it is more of a problem than a solution to anything. Many children are simply NOT adopted and even when they are, adopted children are often treated unequally, and, in far too many cases, end up abused. The success stories only highlight the human tragedy of the failures. The system is already strained past the breaking point.

The only logical conclusion is that making abortion illegal INCREASES human suffering.

If you want to REDUCE abortions then reduce the CONDITIONS which cause them - and we're back to Empathy and Compassion.

And finally, returning to our doctrine of fairness above - would I want to be aborted? Or be born unwanted, uncared for, abused, and left to die by a society of people who fight for the rights of the fetus but would deny basic human services of food, shelter, and health care to anyone who cannot "pull their own weight the lazy bums"? Yes, I would.

And if you want me to change my answer, littlebytesnews, then I suggest you FIRST work to make this a world worthy of living in rather than hoping that some magical sky daddy will make it all better in the afterlife.

THAT SAID, I do think there is a point, past which an abortion doesn't make sense unless it is medically necessary (a condition which should be defined by medical professionals WITHOUT ignorant interference from religious nut jobs).

I don't propose to define exactly when that point is, but I do believe that medical science is best positioned to INFORM us on that decision (not make it for us) and NO, your ONE ignorant little catholic Ph.D. nut job writing a non-professional, non-scientific paper PURPORTING to be "science" in a pseudo-science biased, self-proclaimed "journal" does not count. Let's just look at the unbiased reporting the old "International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy" littlebytesnews tried to cite at me. Wow, just wow. Maybe, try one of these journals next time PAIS International Peer Reviewed Journals List.

Biblical Commentary On The Pro-Life Movement

Because so many pro-"life"/non-thinkers seem to be associated with biblically based religions (at least around my neck of the woods) I thought I would share some "Pro-Life" bible passages with you as I did with littlebytesnews:

How many infants did Joshua slaughter with a sword at Jericho? Joshua 6
How many infants were murdered in revenge of Amalek? 1 Samuel 15:2-3
How many infants drowned in the Flood when your god got pissy? Genesis 6:1-9:17
How many children has god had torn into by bears? 2 Kings 2:23-24
How many infants & children has god had slain? Jeremiah 50:21-22
How many first-born infants died in Egypt so god could show off? Exodus 12:29-30
How many women were murdered, accused of being a witch? Exodus 22:17
How many children were stoned to death for breaking OT rules? Leviticus 20:9
How many people have been murdered because the bible commands it? 2 Chronicles 15:12-13

So, dear Christians, please do try to justify the biblical murder of hundreds to thousands of infants, children and women. Justify the action of INFANTS being hacked to pieces with a sword in Jericho and throughout the seven nations. Show me how Christian and moral infanticide is.

Misc References:

Chimpanzees: Our sister species

Evidence of chimps' intelligence grows

chimpanzee (primate), Intelligence, Britannica Online Encyclopedia

The evolution of thought: evolutionary origins of great ape intelligence By Anne E. Russon, David R. Begun

Nim: A Chimpanzee Who Learned Sign Language By Herbert S. Terrace

The brain-life theory: towards a consistent biological definition of humanness

Brain birth and personal identity

Having a life versus being alive

Do you REALLY believe everything in the Bible?

Are you guilty of Cherry Picking the bible?

• Why believe in a biblical god that ordered Abraham to murder his own son?

• Why believe in a biblical god that orders genocide at Jericho in Joshua 6 and orders the genocide of the nations of Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, AND Jebusites "the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them...nor shew mercy unto them" in Deuteronomy 7?

• Why believe in a biblical god that murders all the first born of Egypt (which would have included suckling babies who could not have done anything wrong) -- and if they were GOING to do bad things in the future then why would God have created such an existence where he would later have to murder them?

• Why believe in a biblical god that fails so badly at creation that he must wipe out nearly all of creation, causing untold amounts of suffering of humans and animals, in a massive flood -- which he then regrets and promises never to do it again by having sunlight refract as per the laws of physics that surely already existed?

• Why believe in a biblical god that allowed his alleged church to rule for 1500 years (until the Protestant Reformation) committing atrocity after atrocity: murdering, raping, enslaving, torturing and selling passage into heaven for obscene profits to the church? A Religion which even turned on itself, resulting in escalating violence over what in reality boils down to money -- who would get the money, the control, and the power.

The Crusades and Inquisitions were not accidental byproducts of the Christian belief system, they were CAUSED by it. If you TRULY, FULLY and HONESTLY believe that someones eternal soul is on the line in this life why would you NOT go to ANY lengths, including torturing to death, that person in order to save them? You would be a committing a sin if you failed to do absolutely everything you could to save them. Wouldn't you?

History speaks extremely clearly on the false claims of religion.

If religious people would stop at 'love one another' that would be fine, but they don't. They pretend to know the mind and will of the universe and use it to abuse and control others and THAT is what makes religious beliefs dangerous and often evil.

Indoctrinated!

Once a child has been indoctrinated into a religion, their eventual deconversion is usually the result of some combination of:

#1 studying the whole bible, including the horrible things like the slaughter of infants on gods order (joshua 6), genocides, infanticides, etc. There are so many disgusting justifications that it requires supernatural credulity to swallow it. Only a desperate or indoctrinated mind will do so.

For some perspective on this (assuming you are Christian) think about how you feel towards the claims about the Qur'an (or writings about Zeus, etc). I feel *exactly* the way about your claims about your bible.

#2 an intensive study of modern sciences (history, physics, cosmology, biology, chemistry, etc) and a comparison of the depth and details of scientific knowledge verses the extremely sketchy and often erroneous accounts in the bible. It is clear that the authors of the Bible knew absolutely nothing more than would have been expected from their respective time periods. Do NOT fall into the trap of thinking ancient people stupid, they lacked certain tools and knowledge that we build upon today but many of them were extremely intelligent even if they were limited by their cultures. Also, don't fall into the trap of believing "All Ancient People Thought X" because that is just as false about ancient people as it is about people today. Not all ancient people believed the earth was flat, many understood very well that it was round and had even given a very good estimate for the circumference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes circa 240 BCE) and they had made extremely detailed observations of the sky for centuries.

#3 a comparative study of religions including the some 3000 different sects of "christian" beliefs (if even the most devout "Christians" cannot agree on key doctrines like transubstantiation, then what validity is there in the bible?)

#4 the flat out errors, insane claims, and conflicting stories that require extensive apologist justifications to prevent the more critical from outright revolt.

#5 studying the history of Christianity and how utterly evil and corrupted the entire church was for a 1500+ years of being in power. Yuck

#6 complete lack of contemporaneous, eye-witness evidence for Jesus. Not even the "gospels" are eye-witness accounts, nor were they written in the time of Jesus but some 30 years later. Nor are any of the outrageous claims of events documented by any historians (e.g., the claimed multitude of Saints rising from the dead).

#7 the complete failure of prayer, 1 Kings 18, and other specific claims of the bible

From a purely intellectual/logical view I cannot understand how sane, rational, and reasonably well-educated persons can look at the facts and not reject the claims of Christianity (Although I do understand it from an evolutionary, sociological, cultural and psychological standpoint).

I can kind of understand the feeling that there is some kind of "god" in a deistic or pantheistic sense, but such claims are ultimately not justifiable because they cannot be distinguished from the null hypothesis.

Quit being so gay!

This is in response to this video on Think Atheist: http://bit.ly/icTg8g

Right off the bat they make a classic argument from ignorance (how did you get here, very ignorant question given current levels of scientific understandings of physics, chemistry, abiogenesis and evolution) and they fail to discuss these very well-known scientific answers so they are flat out lying to people.

They then go to the Special Pleading for God because the universe couldn't have come from nothing (but God apparently can).

"No basis for right or wrong" is an unsupported position. We clearly do and since they cannot claim any knowledge coming from an actual "god" this is not a valid argument.

Cancer risk has NOTHING to do with being gay (correlation is not causation). Not all gay people engage in anal intercourse and many straight people do. Furthermore, it has more to do with viral and bacterial risks (ever heard of a condom?)

And it completely IGNORES the heterosexual risk factors associated with biblically sanctioned sexual activity even between completely monogamous partners. In biblical times ANAL sex would have been VASTLY safer than vaginal sex due to risk of death due to pregnancy (it's not as bad now thanks to modern medicine but even today pregnancy carries some pretty serious risks to health).

http://www.ajcn.org/content/72/1/241S.full

As recently as 1910-20 in the USA the maternal mortality rate was ~900/100,000 pregnancies! Almost 1 in 1000 women DIED from biblically sanctioned sex. If God hates anal sex he must REALLY hate vaginal sex (and apparently blames Eve for everything).

BIBLE RIOTS: When Christians Killed Each Other Over Religion in Public Schools

BIBLE RIOTS: When Christians Killed Each Other Over Religion in Public Schools

Something that most people today seem to forget is the extreme levels that Catholic-Protestant sectarian violence reached. Not just here in the US but in different areas all over the world.

An Atheist Viewpoint: Creationists: Still Lying After All These Years.

An Atheist Viewpoint: Creationists: Still Lying After All These Years.

A very nice start on a list of Creationist frauds and lies.

What About God

Let me be really clear here, I don't have a problem with the CONCEPT of a 'god' existing (if a 'god' exists fine -- prove it without resorting to lies, frauds, etc), but I DEMAND proof of EVERYTHING I choose to believe in -- ESPECIALLY when those things have large or profound impacts on my life. And I live as good of a life as I can, the existence or non-existence of a god has no bearing on me. I'm not perfect by any stretch but neither are any Christians and I would say I'm better than most.

Arguments that say life is too complex to just happen because of the nature of 'physics' are ridiculous because they propose that some infinitely complex and powerful agency JUST exists. They just make the problem WORSE, not better [and yes, Kalam, blah blah blah -- mental masturbation and nothing more, you cannot prove reality through logic - the axioms you use in logic are based on our imperfect OBSERVATIONS of reality]. I do believe that with extremely CAREFUL application of the scientific method we can EEK out semi-reliable knowledge of our world. But it is absolutely fraught with pitfalls.

The history of the texts used in the bible show that they are absolutely frauds, there are NO eyewitness accounts and absolutely NO contemporaneous accounts. The Testimonium Flavianum entry on Jesus is fairly clearly fraudulent and even if it wasn't it was written FAR too late and doesn't claim first hand knowledge. Where are the entries by Historians on the THOUSANDS of "Saints" risen from the dead? ZILCH. It is a LIE, a fake, and a fraud. At BEST, some of these people had ecstatic experiences and with their limited goat-herding knowledge they believed them.

For example, there is a lot of evidence that Judas of Galilee existed during this time period -- and absolutely ZERO evidence that the Jesus/Yeshua character of the bible existed. Absolutely ZERO. And interestingly, many of the things attributed to Jesus are DOCUMENTED by historians to actions of Judas of Galilee.

The synoptic gospels are all written 30+ years AFTER the alleged time of Jesus, they are all anonymous and ONLY by tradition attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. NONE are eye-witness accounts. Paul NEVER met Jesus, only claimed he saw him in what was essentially a vision. The earliest quotations from what we now call Matthew and Mark are NOTHING like the modern texts. There are THOUSANDS of errors/differences in the different versions of copies we have. We have NOT A SINGLE original autograph of ANY biblical text. We have only copies of copies of copies of copies. Yeah they are kinda sorta, mostly similar -- but then there are HUGE issues in the gospel accounts. See this video for just a FEW examples: David Fitzgerald Skepticon 3 "Examining the Existence of a Historical Jesus" (youtube).

[even if the texts CLAIMED to be eyewitness accounts there is no evidence they actually are because of the dates written]

So textually, the bible is an absolute mess. And even the more honest of the hardcore biblical scholars ADMIT that the accounts of Jesus are clearly false.

"The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth and died to give his work its final consecration never existed."
Albert Schweitzer(1875-1965, Nobel Prize 1952), Ph.D, Christian theologian and Dean of Theological College of Saint Thomas at the University of Strasburg
The Quest of the Historical Jesus: First Complete Edition, trans. W. Montgomery, et al., ed. John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), page 478
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/

And in some cases critical passages have clearly been added to the texts later (e.g., in 2 Peter).

And claims it has been faithfully transmitted? COME ON! There are THOUSANDS of Christian sects who disagree with each other over what the passages even mean. Which ONE of those THOUSANDS have it right in every regard? Even if one of them had the right of it there would be absolutely no way to know. They disagree on MAJOR issues -- do we have Free Will or not? How do you get to Heaven? Etc It's just utterly ridiculous to suppose anything has been faithfully transmitted.

And then we come to the actual history of the 'Christian' church itself. After 1800 years of slavery, abuse, torture, murder, selling of indulgences (and yes, I know what indulgences are), misogyny, prejudice, suppression of valid scientific knowledge that was viewed as in conflict with the claims of the church, utter destruction of native CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE... it is absolutely filthy and disgusting to me to even SUGGEST that these filthy, disgustingly evil BASTARDS have anything to do with God in any way, shape or form. And they were the SOLE arbiters of 'God' for 1500 years, until the Protestant reformation -- and do not be confused, that did NOT fix anything what-so-ever so don't tell me you follow some protestant branch and that makes everything ok -- it doesn't. Every dollar you give them is a dollar spent in hatred of mankind. They should be WIPED from the face of the earth forever (peacefully I hope -- I'm not an advocate of violence).

So all we're left with is a nice metaphor and a FEW little bits of clear thinking from the bronze age like "turn the other cheek" and "love thy neighbor" (things I almost NEVER see any christian practicing). And these FEW nice little bits are utterly washed out by all the absolutely VILE and DISGUSTING parts of the bible (god COMMANDS genocide after genocide after genocide after genocide, COMMANDS infanticide, COMMITS genocide and infanticide, etc) -- that is NO God that I wish to be associated with, it's disgusting, vile and evil nonsense. The bible says "By their fruit you will recognize them" and you have to be fucking blind not to see the evil fruits of the Christian religion.

Deut 7: When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them...nor shew mercy unto them

And for WHAT crime are the children to be put to death? Allegedly because their parents were committing child sacrifices -- do you fail to see the ignorance of this claim?


There are certainly many very GOOD people who just happen to have fallen for the Christian lies. They are lied to so I don't hold them directly responsible but their money certainly goes to support many agendas that I view as absolutely EVIL.

Whatever you might think about God the use of the Church to deny GOVERNMENT RIGHTS GRANTED EQUALLY TO ALL (e.g., gay marriage) is absolutely DISGUSTING.

For all those reasons (and more, as you see I have MANY thoughts on the Christian religion -- my position is NOT unconsidered) I will NEVER support any Christian church (maybe if Jesus or God comes and talks me into it and even they will have a difficult time). There are MOUNTAINS of evidence they are frauds, evil, liars, and corrupted. No. Thank. You.


I see no evidence for God in the general sense, other than it seems to make some people feel better to think that others will suffer in eternal torment for their sins while the person being comforted invariable will spend their eternity in heaven, DESPITE their own sins.

On the other hand... (and let me know if you cannot use Google and need citations for any of these, I will be happy to supply them but this is already very long)

• There is LOTS of evidence that very complex chemistry happens, even in outer space!
• There is LOTS of evidence that every chemical needed for life to "happen" (and I reject using the word "by chance" here unless you can demonstrate anything in the universe is truly Random -- things happen by laws of physics -- we don't understand those ultimate laws of physics and we may never fully understand them -- but we observe consistently that things happen according to rules and not by Will).
• There is LOTS of evidence that these chemicals CAN hit a point where they being to self-replicate -- even WITHOUT the complex arrangement we have today.
• There is LOTS of evidence that these self-replicating molecules will TEND towards self-replicating RNA and with the right proteins available RNA is converted into DNA
• There is LOTS of evidence that these self-replicating RNA and DNA molecules CHANGE over time in various ways that explain ALL the variations we see today
• There is LOTS of evidence that this happened only once on earth (the possible alternative is that it happened several times but in extremely similar ways)
• There is LOTS of evidence that this CANNOT HAPPEN TODAY BECAUSE THE CHEMISTRY HAS BEEN UTTERLY CHANGED BY EARLIER LIFE -- well it could happen today but the changes are MUCH closer to zero than they were 4 billion years ago
• There is LOTS of evidence that this process involved clay, geothermal vents, ice, lipid vesicles, etc
• There is OBSERVED cases of a single-celled organism evolving multi-cellular forms -- OBSERVED, we SAW this happen
• There is LOTS of evidence in DNA that things have evolved from form to form over billions of years
• There is LOTS of evidence in fossils that MATCH the DNA evidence - the timelines MATCH, the types of mutations MATCH, the rate of mutation MATCHES

There is so much evidence for abiogenesis and evolution that it is almost inconceivable that the theory is incorrect. It is POSSIBLE that it is incorrect and MANY details are yet to be worked out, but I seriously question your credulity at believing these moronic ID/Creation people who have almost NO evidence that matches their claims. And when they stick their necks out and make a claim like the flagellum being irreducible complex they get TORN TO PIECES by the science.

There are hundreds of thousands of HARDCORE scientific, published, PEER REVIEWED papers on these topics that examine in great detail EVERY aspect we have the funds and time to investigate and they ALL align in one direction and it sure isn't Creation.

More importantly -- it is UTTERLY unimportant to me if evolutionary theory is correct or not -- science will progress, we observe, we learn more. Science has NOTHING to prove to me or you because it is YOUR OWN CLAIMS that are in question and YOUR CLAIMS are extremely lacking ANY evidence or support. I don't need science, or evolution, or abiogenesis, or physics, or the Big Bang, or ANYTHING else to REJECT your claims as ridiculous, unsupported, and UNdemonstrated.

And yes, I am 'angry' about the atrocities committed by the Christian churches over the years (and YOU should be too) -- the actions of individual Christians are on their own head -- but the church as a whole is responsible for actions commanded by the church leadership over the years in dogma, deed, Edict or order.

For just a FEW examples: Edict of Milan, Pope Innocent III said "the Jews, by their own guilt, are consigned to perpetual servitude because they crucified the Lord...As slaves rejected by God, in whose death they wickedly conspire, they shall by the effect of this very action, recognize themselves as the slaves of those whom Christ's death set free...", Roman Catholic Papal bull, "Cum nimis absurdum" which required Jews in Vatican controlled lands to wear badges, and be confined to ghettos, Catholic Christians who massacred of Jews in Nemirov, Polonnoye, Tulchin, Volhynia, Bar, Lvov, Crusades, Inquisitions, LIES about condoms in Africa resulting in massive unnecessary suffering and death, fighting against human rights (e.g., gay marriage), promoting poverty and suffering and the oppression of women, etc.

This is an off the cuff rant so I apologize for any errors in the text, feel free to note any corrections or make fun of me.

Christian/Atheist pre-discussion questionnaire

Christian/Atheist pre-discussion questionnaire:

Atheist:

Do you disbelieve in a god? [Y]/N
Do you believe that No God exists with 100% Certainty? Y/[N]

Why? [check all that apply]
[X] rejection of undemonstrated claims, parsimonious epistemology
[X] rejection of fallacious arguments [especially the argument from ignorance]
[X] specific claims demonstrated to be false
[X] Other ________________________ (see my blog, iron chariots, rationalwiki, index of creationist claims)


Christian:

How are we to be saved? [multiple choice]
[ ] Grace Pre-destined
[ ] Grace Free Will
[ ] Actions
[ ] Faith
[ ] Accepting Jesus as Lord
[ ] Baptism
[ ] Other _____________________

Baptism Is?
[ ] Means Of Salvation
[ ] Outward Expression Of Inward Change
[ ] Obedience To God
[ ] Other _____________________

Baptism is accomplished by?
[ ] Aspersion
[ ] Affusion
[ ] Immersion
[ ] Submersion
[ ] Other _____________________

Please list your special Apparel requirements:

Please list your special age/belief restrictions:

Do you have to be changed into an ass for Baptism or is human form acceptable [see Apuleius]? Y/N

What are the sacraments? [check all that apply]
[ ] Baptism
[ ] Confirmation
[ ] Cannabis (e.g., Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church)
[ ] Blessing of Children
[ ] Lord's Supper
[ ] Marriage
[ ] Celestial Marriage
[ ] Endowment
[ ] Administration to the sick
[ ] Ordination to the Priesthood
[ ] Masturbation (just seeing if you are paying attention)
[ ] Ordination to the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthoods
[ ] Evangelist's blessing
[ ] ALL actions are sacraments
[ ] NO actions are sacraments
[ ] sacraments are FORBIDDEN
[ ] sacraments are symbolic only but allowed

Glossolalia is?
[ ] the work of the devil
[ ] The spirit of the Lord speaking through you
[ ] The confused and random firing of neurons in the brain's speech area, often brought on by drugs or rhythmic swaying, chanting and dancing
[ ] sometimes sign of mental health issues


You can drink poison and be bitten by snakes and be unaffected? Y/N

You can light bull meat that is soaking in water on fire through prayer (1 Kings 18)? Y/N

Through faith and prayer you can:
[ ] command mountains to throw themselves into the sea
[ ] command trees to throw themselves into the sea
[ ] wilt fig trees
[ ] nothing shall be impossible
[ ] cause ill patients, who know they are being prayed for, to suffer depression and fare worse when their health fails to improve

Children should be?
[ ] Seen and Not Heard
[ ] Stoned to death if they speak back to their parents too much or don't follow 'Gods' ways
[ ] spoiled if not beaten regularly
[ ] Eaten by their own disobedient parents in the end times
[ ] Treated like humans

If you believe god has ordered you to sacrifice your own child, you should?
[ ] Seek psychological help immediately
[ ] No Really! Seek psychological help immediately
[ ] saddle up your donkey and chop some wood

Causing the death of innocent children, is?
[ ] Always bad and evil
[ ] Not Always Bad (first born of Egypt, Jericho, seven tribes, Noah's flood)
[ ] Only ok for God because he has the right to take a human life any time he wants, but this isn't a relative morality standard, morals are absolute

Women should be?
[ ] treated as equals
[ ] silent and not try to teach
[ ] kept barefoot and pregnant because they are vessels of procreation

I know God is real because?
[ ] everything is evidence of God
[ ] the bible tells me he is real
[ ] I saw God/spoke with God (personal revelation) w/medication (includes cases of illness, near-death, extreme pain/suffering, emotional distress, drug use, etc)
[ ] I saw God/spoke with God (personal revelation) wo/medication or other effects
[ ] I lied about the above question because I don't want to look like a kook

Isaac is saved from sacrifice by?
[ ] God's Grace
[ ] Abraham's Faith

God commanded the the seven nations (Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, aHivites, & Jebusites) to be "utterly destroyed" and shown no mercy because?
[ ] They were in the way
[ ] They occupied the lands promised to Gods chosen people
[ ] They sacrificed children to their God and, unlike with Abraham, God couldn't stop them himself (I have evidence of this)
[ ] They sacrificed children to their God and, unlike with Abraham, God couldn't stop them himself (I have NO evidence of this)
[ ] They sacrificed children to their God for which the punishment should be having all your children slain (God has a sense of Irony)
[ ] Other ______________________


Holy Communion is?
[ ] Silly Catholic ritual
[ ] Literal Body and Blood Of Christ
[ ] Symbol Of Christ's Body and Blood

The Bible is?
[ ] inerrant for all time
[ ] inerrant only in the originals
[ ] inerrant in spirit, but requires proper interpretation, which requires faith
[ ] inerrant but have become corrupted
[ ] not inerrant, but useful for knowing God

Jesus was?
[ ] an actual person
[ ] an ideal

Jesus is?
[ ] A man
[ ] A prophet
[ ] Son of God
[ ] God himself in the form of Jesus

Genesis is?
[ ] Real Science!(tm) Joe Cienkowski
[ ] A slightly metaphorical story about the Real Events which reveal God to us
[ ] A colorful creation myth which draws from Gilgamesh and other pre-biblical sources

Historical information from the Bible is?
[ ] all 100% true and accurate
[ ] mostly true and accurate
[ ] some true, some made up - hard to tell the difference

I could go on and on -- it would be amusing to put together a comprehensive set some day but it could take YEARS of work.

Add your own in the comments!