Achmed the dead killer question

Achmed the Dead Terrorist is an incredibly funny routine by world-famous ventriloquist Jeff Dunham. Achmed’s catchline is ‘I Kiiiiiiiiill you!’

That sketch reminds me of another funny routine, which – out of kindness – we should abstain from pulling on religious people (unless they seriously annoy us).

Ask a devout believer ‘would you kill me if your god commands it?’

Then either enjoy the uncomfortable silence while the poor believer tries to find a suitably equivocal answer – or run like hell (ha, ha) if the answer is an unflinching ‘Yes’: you just met a sociopath, or a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, which is pretty much the same.

Asking this isn’t nice because it poses a dilemma for the believer – who is usually a good person: a morally sound person would answer straight: ‘No. Killing is evil.’ Morally good, but devout believers try to wiggle out of this because it opens them up for questions of morality: if you refuse a command from your god you place your own moral compass above that of your deity. Plus, it acknowledges that you have your own moral – a moral that now significantly diverges from your god. That ripping sound? That’s either the pages from the bible or the fabric of the faithful’s worldview.

The equivocal answer is usually ‘if god commands it, it must be good. Therefore you must be evil, and I would be justified in killing you’ or ‘God would not command what is evil, so he would not command me to kill you’.

But these answers are also not helpful: the Bible tells the story where Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his son. Isaac wasn’t evil, yet God told Abraham to kill him – God was testing Abraham’s faith. We therefore have a precent. So, would you kill me if He commanded it?

A ‘Yes’ opens the hapless believer up for the meanest question:
How do you know it is God who is commanding you to kill, not some voice in your head or, perhaps, Satan? How do you differentiate between a voice you want to hear (God’s) and one you hope not to hear (Insanity, Satan’s)? How do you tell the difference between Insanity and God?

And again, would you obey?

The Christian Eskimo

Christians don’t get tired of touting their moral superiority, and use that as convenient justification for proselytizing. They assert that spreading their belief is the best thing they can do to other people, that it is a moral thing to do.

In ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’, Annie Dillard writes:

Eskimo: ‘If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?’

Priest: ‘No, not if you did not know.’

Eskimo: ‘Then why did you tell me?’

The above quote exposes in just three short lines the lie that lies behind the belief that proselytizing is moral. If the priest didn’t tell the Eskimo (I’ll skip the ‘Inuit’ politically correctness BS) about god and sin, he would have lived happily, and – supposing that god existed – after his death would not have gone to hell. But now, after the Eskimo gained that knowledge, he now has to change his life to worship a god in order to not be tortured after death for all eternity. Objectively, the life of the Eskimo has become worse. The priest has done something immoral: he significantly lessened the Eskimo’s quality of life, needlessly adding to his worries and fears.

If any Christian believed in what they were saying about Hell and Sin and whatnot, they would be careful not to spread this dangerous message, lest they ruin someone’s life. But they do. Why? Two likely scenarios: They either don’t believe their own religious claptrap, or they want as many of those carefree, happier people go down with them.

Moral my ass.

Professor Strangelove

The bible tells the story where the Israelites, after vanquishing the Medianites, murder all male children, and all non-virgin women. They then take all virgins (Numeri 31:35 boasts that their number was 32’000) as their (sex) slaves. A little later, after again being victorious – this time against the Canaanites – the Israelites kill all survivors: women, boys, girls, even infants.

No-one in their right mind would argue today that these are morally defensible acts.

Enter Professor William Lane Craig. He argues – in writing – that the wholesale slaughter of infants, women and children was essentially their salvation, not murder. Not content with spouting this horrifyingly twisted madness, he then goes on to argue that the massacre was hardest on the Israelites who had to murder all these defenseless, terrorized people.

This is, by the way, the same professor who argues that without a god there would be no objective morals. Color me immoral, but I want nothing of this celestial morality.

What bothers me most, though, is that Craig is by no means stupid. In fact, he’s much more intelligent than you and me combined. If someone this smart can rationalize away religious terror, mayhem and murder, we don’t need to explain why stupid people do it.

… but because they are hard!

A believer once asked me why I was an atheist. He pointed out that it would be much easier to accept the love of god in my heart and live a life of contentment, knowing that I was going to be saved after I die.

He certainly has a point. Being an atheist isn’t easy. People are suspicious of you, assert that you have low moral standards, and seem compelled to bring up Hitler every other day. Your family is sometimes ostracized for not believing, and in some countries being an atheist can be dangerous, even lethal.

So why are we atheists?

We choose to be atheists. We choose to take responsibility for our actions, hold people accountable for what they do, and live our lives as ethical as possible.

We choose to be atheists and do all these things not because they are easy…

Religious Danegeld

In the 12th century the Northmen (also called Danes or Vikings) took to the sea and plundered all over Europe. In England and France, some monarchs thought it prudent to pay a tribute instead of being plundered. This tribute was called Danegeld. Needless to say, it didn’t work well, and only served to prolong the problem. In the end, they had to fight a larger, vastly richer, better equipped, and deadlier enemy.

Today the press censors itself in the hopes of not arousing the ire of muslims. People are denied freedom of speech for the same reason. Governments look the other way when religious people ignore human rights and shadow law is practiced. Those responsible once again believe that they are being prudent, that they are taking the safe approach.

They are not.

Instead of drawing a line in the sand, they try to placate the barbarians at the gate. This will not work. Whenever governments curtail fundamental rights in the ‘interest’ of peace with an aggressive, hostile, morally retarded religion, they are repeating past mistakes.

They are paying religious Danegeld.

A missed opportunity

I once heard someone telling his friend the story of the Boy who cried Wolf!, with the obvious conclusions about lying. In a surprising twist, his friend disagreed – the moral of the story, he countered, was obviously a different one: never to be caught in the same lie twice.

Instead of re-interpreting a known tale, I sometimes think how much better a tale could be if it ended differently.

The bible recounts the story where God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son. Priests praise this story as an example of complete Faith in the moral superiority of God.

What an opportunity missed. In a morally superior version of this story, Abraham would have told God to screw himself.

A bullet that changed the world?

On April 4th, 1968 a bullet cut short the live of Dr. Martin Luther King, whose dream transformed the US to a better nation.

Exactly one year ago today, a bullet tore through a child’s head, fired by a Taliban ‘fighter’. He wanted to murder 15 year old Malala for her crime of wanting to go to school.

Malala has a dream – a dream that few women in her part of the world would dare to dream. This dream, too, can transform our world into a better place.

The bullet did not kill Malala. But it extinguished her fear. It gave her purpose. The world noticed.

“The Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my friends too. They thought that the bullets would silence us. But they failed. And then, out of that silence came, thousands of voices. The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Malala, 16, speaking at the UN, July 12, 2013

Few people have the strength, ability, and courage to move the world. Malala dreams of a world where every woman can have the education she wants.

The world should listen when it’s now Malala who says: ‘I have a dream’.

Good, god-fearing citizens one sunny day in the US…

Here’s a picture of a bunch of devout, god-fearing and upstanding citizen who have gathered on a sunny Thursday in August 1959 to do good.

A pity that they are – by today’s standards – committing hate crime

Little Rock integration protest

If there is an image that documents the absurdity of a religion’s claim on absolute morals, it is this.

Image credit: US Library of Congress

“Please forgive me, we are not monsters.”

During the terrorist attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi (emphasis mine):

Elliott’s 35-year-old mother Amber was reportedly able to grab two more children – including a wounded 12-year-old boy whose mother had been murdered – before exiting the shopping mall and taking the children them [sic] to safety.

As the group turned to leave, the gunman allegedly called after them saying the jihadists only wanted to kill Kenyans and Americans, not Britons, pleaded with Amber to convert to Islam and begged “please forgive me, we are not monsters.”

Here’s a hint: if you need to say that, you usually are.