Tag Archives: christianity

Selling Religion

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Some people have said that the Ten Commandments represent the crown achievement of morals. Obviously, these people are mistaken. The majority of Christians, after a short, perhaps brutal discussion will agree that the commandments could have dramatically improved humanity had, for example, the first two commandments (I am the Lord, and Don’t blaspheme) been thou shalt have no slaves and thou shalt treat men and women as your equal instead.

So why aren’t they? Is God a moral lightweight? Why did the Ten Commands fall short? Believers say that the Commandments reflect the time that they were created; they were a political compromise. Had they been phrased more ethically aggressively – for example had they held imperatives to abolish slavery and institute gender equality – that would have prevented the belief from spreading. It was important to first get the people into your belief; afterwards you could then improve the standard, making everyone more moral.

Indeed, forcing men to give up slaves and treat former property (women) as their equal is a hard sell. From a political view, this makes sense. Creating a more moderate code of conduct would increase the likelihood of acceptance, and raising the bar afterwards is a sensible approach to improve society.

Yet that doesn’t make sense in a religious frame of reference. The very context of how the commandments were given, as narrated in the Bible (in Exodus) makes it abundantly clear that God could have demanded anything from his followers. Let’s look at this through the eyes of one of the Israelites in Exodus:

I had just witnessed God’s might first hand – a few days ago he parted the sea to let me through; then he drowned the entirety of Egypt’s army. That’s powerful stuff. So, I’d do my best to get on His good side. What’s that you say? He’s uncool with me selling my daughter into slavery and treating my wives as property? No worries, he’s bossman; I’ll play ball! After all, those were also pretty nasty plagues he visited upon that Pharaoh guy a couple weeks back. So, hell yeah, I’ll release my sex slaves and be nice to women. Hey, I see reason in the form of vastly superior might…

Arguing that after such a display of might it would have been politically unwise to demand ethical conduct from your subjects doesn’t make sense. God had just proven beyond any doubt that he was willing to enforce his word. Arguing that God tempered his commandments so more people found them palpable makes sense only under two assumptions: the story never happened, and you assume that God would not enforce his commandments – the very story that presents the commandments be damned.

Therefore, if you argue that the Ten Commandments reflect the time they were issued you also argue that there is no god to back them up. You admit that you have to sell your belief on the merits of the rules, not the might of your deity. Plus: hoping to increase the standard after the fact may work in modern day democracies. It doesn’t work in theocracies that rely on written scripture – scripture that can’t be changed after it was written. After all, the Ten Commandments haven’t changed much in three thousand years (except changing thou shalt not murder to not kill and don’t covet thy neighbor’s wives to wife, singular).

So this is what it comes down to: the Ten Commandments are not divinely inspired. They are a simpleton’s sales pitch.

I’m with stupid

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If there is one expression that makes me gag in disbelief at the sheer amount of pompous, delusional self-aggrandizement then it would be

having a personal relationship with god.

First, what should we think of a person who claims to have a relationship with a deity? Doesn’t that immediately disqualify them from any further discourse? If someone in earnestly tells you a god is their personal friend, they are conceited jackasses, or are playing with only half a deck of cards. Probably both.

Just what goes through the mind of someone who feels they have to tell you something like this? It’s the ultimate name-dropping – is it even possible to appear more desperate in seeking attention? Just by itself, personal relationship with god is such a cringe-inducing, pathetic statement that I have difficulties hiding my contempt, and I usually have to avert my eyes.

Have you ever paused to think what this person, in all honesty is trying to tell you – what they have convinced themselves of, and what they want you to believe: that they regularly converse with a super-being; that this being not only exists, but that it takes their moronic views [Note: if you are a super being, all human thoughts are moronic by default – its intelligence would see past all our petty self interests and there would be nothing interesting we could contribute in an exchange of ideas with it] serious – and that this being offers personal insight, solace, and advice.

It gets worse: if we were to allow for all this to be true, we’d have to contend with the fact that even though these people regularly converse with a super-being, all advice and information they receive is stupid, ordinary, and banal: not one believer with a personal relationship to their god has ever shown to have supernatural understanding of, or brilliant insight into anything. So this super-being is either not very smart, or deliberately feeding its counterpart bad information. Which means that you have a personal relationship with an über-prankster, a being that continually has jokes on your account.

So, just by looking at the record we know that bragging about a personal relationship with gods is a sure way to get you and your god ridiculed – for good, documented reason.

Yet that is only half of what makes the expression so fundamentally stupid. Let’s say that we agree that the person claiming to have a relationship with god is not stark raving mad. This means that they tacitly agree that it’s more likely to have a relationship with a pet rock than an entity that nobody ever saw or could be proven to exist. A pet rock you can at least hold in your hand – but it would never answer to any kind of interaction. Yet, any sane relationship requires interaction from both sides. What would you think about a person who earnestly tells you they have a relationship with a rock? Wouldn’t you think them at least a bit pitiful?

What, then, would you think of a person who tells you that they have a relationship with a pet rock that you can’t see, touch, feel or otherwise detect?

But it’s the personal bit, the utter ridiculousness of the insinuation that the relationship is based on personal exchange that makes it such a tragically pathetic proposition, so impossible to accept. Because, let’s face it, it’s not personal until the object of your relationship responds to your individual communication, in ways curtailed to you. Everyone knows that when gods talk to you, you have gone mad. So again, there is tacit agreement that, clinical cases aside, in this ‘personal relationship’ the other side has never, ever, responded. And yet these people call it a personal relationship.

So why are they doing it? Pompous self-importance perhaps. Trying to impress the easily impressed probably. In many cases, they have been told this idiocy by other believers – and repeat it now in vain hope that if they say it often enough they would someday believe it themselves.

Just sad.

Humble Belief?

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You should be more humble.

It’s really convincing when Christians play that card – usually after they humbly assert that their faith is the only true one, that their god created the entire universe, that I’ll be going to hell because I don’t love that god, and that I’m arrogant for not believing their preposterous scripture.

But tell me – who is the humble one here: He who admits that ‘I don’t know if there is a god’ – or the person who states that ‘I know for fact that this is god, and he wants you to exactly do that‘?

Tell me, dear Christian: when was the last time you heard your priest say ‘maybe there is a god’ or ‘perhaps Jesus wants you to love thine neighbor’? I certainly never did when I went to church. All I ever heard were assertions: god did this, said that, performed this miracle, and made people go there. None of that was ever accompanied by a cautionary ‘maybe’ or humble ‘perhaps’. It was always stated as fact. Do you really think being that arrogant qualifies as being humble? Then why are you accusing atheists, who are doing none of the above, as being arrogant?

Ricky Gervais once observed that it is revealing that atheists are never accosted by ‘hateful satanists’ for not believing in their demon. It’s always the ‘loving Christians’ who insult me for not believing in their god.

Because, seemingly, being insulting is the new humble.

Of Unicorns

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Many Christians are somewhat irritated when atheists bring up Unicorns. Atheists do that mostly to show that in general, logic can’t prove a negative: the fact that atheists can’t disprove god’s existence is not proof of his existence; the way to show this to the believer is to ask them to disprove the existence of unicorns.

Because everyone knows that unicorns don’t exist.

Except that Isaiah 34:7 does mention unicorns.

Well, believers usually don’t know that fact either.

Merry Christmas to all

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I’m off to celebrate Christmas. Yup – the believers don’t get it, my godson doesn’t care as long as his loot quota is filled – but everyone agrees that it’s Christmas, so that’s what we celebrate.

So Merry Christmas! to everyone – to my heathen, pagan, unbelieving and believing friends.

And especially Merry Christmas! to my jewish friends! I can see you grinning from here!

Enjoy!

Commie Constitution

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Everyone’s favorite right-wingnut Rick Santorum, on his way to establish a christian theocracy in the USA, went on record in a conference call with this:

The word ‘separation of church and state’ is not in the U.S. Constitution, but it was in the constitution of the former Soviet Union.

Oh, those godless commie bastards! First, separation of church and state is not one, but five words. But that’s immaterial. In truly Monty Pythonesque manner Rick has proven before that he can’t be trusted to be able to count to three, much less above that exalted number. Five is right out.

Surprisingly, Rick, you are right – to a point: the US Constitution uses the words ‘wall of separation between church and state’ instead – in the First Amendment. For someone who allegedly wants to protect the Constitution, Santorum shows a remarkable lack of knowledge about what’s actually in it.

Well, in that he’s on par with most of his fellow devout Christians who profess to live by the Bible, yet have no idea of what it contains.

Christian Love

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Muslims will tell you that their’s is the religion of peace. And Christians state that Christianity is the religion of love. In both cases, we’ll have to take their claims with a few rather large grains of salt.

Since it’s currently no challenge to disprove the ‘peace’ thing, let’s look at Christian ‘love’:

Many devout christians tell me that I have to let Jesus into my heart – by which they mean that I have to believe their preposterous claptrap and behave in their homophobic, misogynic ways. If I believe in Jesus, so they say, I’ll be saved and go to heaven when I die. If I don’t, I’ll go to hell.

Now, let’s look at the endgame. Let’s say you accept Jesus, I don’t. You are now in heaven, I’m in hell. You’ll experience bliss and happiness, I’ll be eternally tortured. Now what does that tell us about your moral standard if you can be happy in heaven, fully knowing that I’m suffering in hell?

Pretty much the same that it tells us about Christianity.

Christian Taliban

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After praying for the death of President Obama, faithful Christian Pastor Steven Anderson is openly calling for the death of all gay people. In his tiny, hate-filled mind, and supported by the Old Testament (Levicitus 20:18), which, according to Christians all around the world has been superseded by Jesus, Anderson thinks that murdering all gays cures AIDS. In his sermon titled AIDS: the Judgement of God, Anderson pontificates:

And that, my friends, is the cure for AIDS. It was right there in the Bible all along — and they’re out spending billions of dollars in research and testing. It’s curable — right there. Because if you executed the homos like God recommends, you wouldn’t have all this AIDS running rampant.

Well, except of course for the heteros who also suffer from AIDS and who outnumber gays 10:1. But don’t mind them. Because – reasons! And God! Anyway, Anderson’s messages of love are legend. Besides praying for President Obama’s death, Anderson has also railed against women speaking in churches (Anderson is leaving money on the table – the New Testament forbids women to teach), lectured his parish on the lying ways of Jews (he may have channeled Martin Luther’s On the jew and his lies here), and stated that all LGBT people are pedophiles.

I’ve encountered this amount of raging, rampant homophobia only in repressed, closet gays. Let’s hope Anderson recognizes the wrong in his ways and comes out of the closet before he kills himself.

Crossed out

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Soccer Club Real Madrid are proud of their logo. It contains an image of the royal spanish crown. The crow itself is, well, crowned by a small christian cross. Real now has made the rare decision to remove the cross from the crown. Not to appease hordes of militant atheists that were offended by a religious symbol and demanded that it was removed, centuries of tradition be damned!

No, Real chose to remove the cross because they signed a lucrative deal with Abu Dhabi’s national bank. The streets of Madrid have been strangely calm – no reports of outraged Christians that demand putting Jesus back in Real yet.

There are a number take-aways here: many self-professed devout christians, so it would seem, are only christians as long as it’s financially favorable. Further, it is a fact that the religious intolerance of a muslim organization has led to the removal of the cross – which is rather ironic given Spain’s history with Islam.
Finally, it’s strange that christians have less objections when their holy symbol is removed to appease another religious group than when people demand it removed for humanity.

Then again, that’s exactly how religion works.

Islamsplainin’

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Sigh. If the cause weren’t so tragic, it would be high comedy: in the UK, Christian politicians are sniping at each other over the question who is the better Muslim. It’s like men explaining what women really think. So we have a veritable feast of Islamsplainin’ going on.

This particular incident, it seems, began when devout Christian and UK Premier David Cameron officially stated that the grisly murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby by fanatical muslims was a betrayal of Islam and of Britain’s Muslim communities.

Strangely, no-one cared about the fact that Cameron’s statement blatantly missed the point: the murder of anyone is a crass betrayal of human values; anything after that is only small fry; nobody gives a dam if it also betrays the values of the spotted owl society, or, for that matter, those of a religion.

Showing little wisdom (and no taste at all by trying to make political hay out of a murder), Lord Pearson of Rannoch took exception with Cameron’s silly statement – of course for all the wrong reasons. As the Guardian reports, the Lord thundered in feigned reighteousness

My lords, are the government aware that Fusilier Rigby’s murderers quoted 22 verses of the Qur’an to justify their atrocity? Therefore, is the prime minister accurate or helpful when he describes it as a betrayal of Islam?

Now, Lord Pearson, himself a Christian, deliberately overlooks the fact that his own scripture is overflowing with blood. I hate to quote your own book, Pearson:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

(and when is say hate I mean I really enjoy doing that)

Of course, it only took little time for the discussion to deteriorate into mud-slinging. Hilarity ensued when both sides of the house started calling each other the non-word of the century: Islamophobe. That word’s definition still is

A word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons

as it was so aptly summarized by Andrew Cummins. It’s a sure sign that you have lost the argument if you need to resort to that term.

The absurdity of the discussion is highlighted by the following megaton of stupidity, delivered free of charge by a UKIP spokesman:

Lord Pearson […] is talking about how Islamic scholars are constrained by the comprehension that the Qur’an is the perfect word of God unencumbered by human frailty, unlike the Bible. In contrast the apostles are human and like all human things are prone to error.

Which is of course news to the majority of Christians to whom the bible is the perfect word of God, not to mention believe in the pope’s inerrancy. Yeah, ‘my scripture beats your scripture’ has always been the most convincing argument evah!

The biggest joke: these Bozos run your country.