Upon being told I am blind to Jesus...

The problem is that looking objectively at all the evidence is the same as being blind to it all. There's no difference between the evidence for Christianity, and the evidence we'd expect to see if Christianity is false. After all, we can agree that other religions are false religions, and all of them have testimonials and first person experiences. So if Christianity were false, we'd expect it to have exactly what you claim it has. Being blind and being in a room with absolutely no light at all are very similar experiences.

There's no serious difference between Christianity and what we can agree are false other religions. Which is to say that Christianity has no evidence in its favor and considering things like blood sacrifice, and demigod adventures, the sins of ancestors, and fairy tales which are found in Christianity but should not be found in a true religion. Because they make no sense as a matter of reality, God no more needs a dying and rising savior son to be blood sacrificed to himself for propitiation for the sins of the ancestors than God needs a spaceship made of string cheese, but these are things we should expect of a religion that was invented in a mix of cultures obsessed with primitive blood sacrifice and that was hugely in love with the wacky adventures of the sons of gods.

We have no reason to suppose Christianity is any more true than any of the agreed upon false religions, and we have many reasons to suppose that it was simply invented by people between 1800-2000 years ago or so.

Quotes: Richard Carrier.

"God needs blood to fix the universe, but only his own blood had enough magical power to do it, so he gave himself a body and then killed it." - Richard Carrier.

Eddie Izzard: Dinosaurs and Jesus

Did you know that that Jesus idol people worship is really Satan?

I didn't either. That was the impression I got from this video when I could hear it over my own laughter (thankfully it doesn't need the sound so you can laugh your ass off without missing any segment).

Jesus Christ: Wrong For America

I'm certainly voting for the other guy.

If you lack evidence for Santa Claus, you lack evidence he danced a jig.

I recently encountered some speculation about Jesus getting married, living through the crucifixion (via swoon theory) few kids and other things. In response I made a point I've made several other times concerning this sort of in depth speculation.


There is no evidence that a historical Jesus existed at all. I've done enough research to know the sources are exceedingly poor in that regard so I know, by default, that this in depth speculation is a crock of shit.

Allow me an analogy. There is absolutely no good evidence for the existence of big foot. We have no good skeletons, no poop, no hairs, nothing to suggest that there even is a big foot. No matter what qualifications you have, if you are speculating on the mating habits of big foot, the social hierarchy, food preference, etc. ... you are talking out of your ass.

The fact that there is no good evidence that something even exists in the first place, precludes a good evidentiary standing on which significantly more in depth speculation might rest. If you lack good evidence for Santa Claus, you lack good evidence Santa Claus dancing a jig.

Oprah Denies Christ

I only wish she wasn't advocating for something just as dumb.



He followers need to follow one master. You cannot serve God and serve Oprah.
The closing line, "it's not religious" is classic.

Barack Obama... he's bigger than Jesus.

We know from bare statistics and clear proclamations that John Lennon (and the Beatles) were bigger than Jesus. Now, we're starting to get evidence that Barack Obama is bigger than Lennon. We can tell this because Julia Sweeney replaced her "Imagine No Religion" bumper sticker with a Barack Obama sticker, as she noted on her blog on April 15th.

Clearly by the transitive property if John Lennon > Jesus and Barack Obama > John Lennon therefore Barack Obama > Jesus.

In other news, Julia Sweeney has a blog... and it's remarkably good.

Ah, the comments sections well worth the fodder...

Rosanna of Juliannie's blog (which as far as I can tell is completely lifeless). Posted a comment on my copy of Jesus Loves the Little Zygotes by Frank Zindler.

Well... lets see what the crazy fairy left us!

Jesus WAS a zygote. God (Jesus) was a human embryo. He placed himself in the hands of humans whom he loved so much that even though he loved them they killed him because they would have no other king but Caesar.

A zygote is a single cell made of two gametes. Unless Jesus was a massive fertilized egg, this is funny. People would have no other king but Caesar. Caesar was an emperor and there were plenty of kings. Finally, most of the Jesus story is probably fiction.

Pontius Pilate knew Jesus was innocent and places a sign above Jesus on the cross that read "King of the Jews" but the Jews told Pilate to write "Jesus SAID 'I am the king of the Jews'" and Pilate said "I have written what I have written." Pilate knew who Jesus was, but even he valued the opinion of the people more than doing what was right.

That's not a part of the original text. And where it is, that part of the gospel makes no sense at all. Everybody is acting out of character for no apparent reason. If you were a trouble-maker you get nailed to a stick for everybody to see what happens to trouble makers. You stay on that stick until you're good and rotted. You don't get a trial, you don't get some vote to let a prisoner go, you don't get any of that. - You get nailed to a stick, and if anybody else is around they get nailed to a stick too! If nailing you to a stick could get people to see that you don't fuck with the Romans, you got nailed to a stick.

So Jesus (God) died. God knows all about death and suffering. And he established his church that we can now collect as a family and do something and work together. But as you can see we still have the free choice to say no and do bad things, further making the world a worse place than we made it with the original sin. Sin has cosmic effects, primarily death. Diseases are death at small scale: cells die first, then the whole body. But sin first kills the spirit.

Why? Why couldn't all powerful God have come to a different conclusion as to what to do given the situation? Some creation of God acted in a way God didn't approve of, even though God should of known exactly how they would have acted, and thus their children (I know not how this is fair) are cursed for their wrongdoings. God find that this is unfair and in order to fix the problem God sacrifices himself to himself in order to create a loophole in his set of rules?

As far as diseases are concerned, I wonder why humans are the only creatures who cook their food.

This is remarkably a good question in a sea of stupid. If you were to name one quality of modern life that is nearly impossible to do without: cooking! As far as adaptations go cooking food is exceedingly important. Not only is it the best way to tenderize food it also pretty much opens up every other niche on the planet to human colonization. Cooking food is the best adaptations humans have. Some speculate that cooking is primarily responsible for humans position in the animal kingdom, and I tend to agree. If you watch Survivor, the first thing you do in camp is get a fire.

And the domestic animals who we feed cooked food to die also of the diseases that we have: arthritis, cancer, immune disorders.

Those diseases are common in animals well beyond their prime. Previously humans died far sooner than we do today. If you keep an animal alive in a domesticated fashion such as dogs or humans they will start to suffer these ailments having been spared from other things. If starving is off the table, there's few other things to get you.

Why do humans have long intestines with pockets in them, our stomachs produce light acid, while carnivores like dogs have intense acid that can separate flesh from bone and they have short intestines that are smooth so the meat they eat doesn't putrefy before it's eliminated.

Because humans cook their food. Some species of carnivores (carnivoria) can eat putrid meat, as in rotten meat which would easily kill a human. This is because they are evolutionarily adapted in a way to allow them to eat the food they do eat.

As a whole, we humans don't actually go along with natural law very well.

We have been domesticated for so long that it has had a major impact on our diet and our ability to consume food. Rather than forcing our jaws to eat raw meat (don't let a chimp bite your finger), or our stomachs to extract nutrients from hard things, we typically just cook all of our food making it fairly mushy and often tasty (though 'tasty' might be evolutionary preference for cooked food). The fact is, cooking and society are evolutionary products, they are not exceptions to nature.

Santa... Jesus... never forget.

Jesus Loves the Little Zygotes

As read on the 2 Feb 2008 edition of the Non-Prophets radio show, from Dial-an-Atheist Ohio by Frank Zindler. Transcribed by some guy.

Jesus loves the little zygotes
all the zygotes of the world.
Jesus loves them until they're born
then abandons them forlorn.
Jesus loves the little zygotes 'til they're born.

Jesus loves the little children
all the children of the world.
Jesus gives them heart defects
measles, mumps, and ringwormed necks.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Jesus lets their parents beat them,
bruise their bodies black and blue.
Jesus gives them birth defects,
scurvy, ticks, and palette clefts.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Jesus gives the children cancer.
Earaches, lice, and scabies too.
Bowel obstructions, altered lips,
blighted brains and twisted hips.
Extra chromosomes to help them when they pray.

Hallelujah.

Jesus gives the children acne.
AIDS and leprosy galore.
Germs and worms of every kind.
Things to make the children blind.
But he cannot give them smallpox anymore.

Scientists and unbelievers
wiped the pox right off the earth.
Jesus still gives gifts to kids,
broken nose and burnt eyelids.
But he cannot give them smallpox anymore.

Not literally true in every respect.

Giuliani: I believe it, but I do not believe it necessarily literally true in every respect. I think there are parts of the Bible that are interpretive. I think there are parts of the Bible that are allegorical. I think there are parts of the Bible that are, um, meant to be interpreted in a modern context. So, yes, I believe it. I think it's the greatest book ever written.

Ah, the biblical equivocation of metaphor.

Metaphors are figurative language and as such aren't considered true or false. Declaring the Bible to be metaphorical allows one to assert the truth of the book without defending it. Subsequently slipping back to the definition of true in the sense of reality after the calls to defend the Bible subside.

One gets to call the Bible true, without saying something crazy like the Bible is a crazy and nobody sane would believe that stuff. Or that sure you believe in Jesus but you don't believe in Adam and Eve, even though from the text it would appear Jesus believed in Adam and Eve and (according to original sin) Jesus died in order to clear the sin, because (according to Trinity) Jesus was unable to just forgive the grudge he was holding against all mankind without a little Sadomasochism. That's what we want in our first-century wish granting zombie Jews (who when properly telepathically give enough passion for issues will pull us into the sky and make us live in eternal bliss), we need one with bad problem solving skills! However, to say that the story of Adam and Eve is a metaphor just adds insult (some insults are true) to injury.

Jesus apparently, according to the story, is exactly like Christian martyrs*, in that, he died for a lie.

*not to suggest that there were many of these.

"Whom would Jesus vote for?" - What are you, stupid? Wait... yeah.

So there's a Nytimes article (bugmenot required) on the Evangelical Movement. I'm planning on reading it... I suppose, but there's an image:



Note the bumper sticker "Whom Would Jesus Vote For?" -- I'm astounded that anybody would try and and sound all grammatically correct using "whom" for a religious bumper sticker. Which is twice as odd in that it's wrong. "Who Would Jesus Vote For?" is correct. Jesus would vote for whom? For whom would Jesus vote? Who would Jesus vote for? If you vote the way Jesus votes, who would you vote for? For whom would you vote if you voted as Jesus would vote? -- 'Whom' is an object. 'Who' is a subject. Trying to sound all smart with the message made them wrong... go figure.

Whom cares?

Oh, and by the way Jesus is a Mexican name and most Latinos tend toward the Democrats.

Update: Hm. This is probably right.