Objectivity to Christianity.

Something I wrote elsewhere about using the Outsider Test of Faith:

Mostly I'm pointing it out because it of the Outsider Test of Faith. I'm currently reading the Christian Delusion which is everything critics claimed the God delusion should be. A scholarly work that deals with the nuances of Christian faith by experts in their fields. It's the best thing I've read. (yes the sentence ended there). -- But, it is a really good set of points that certainty is an emotion and that humans are well primed toward biases. We emotionally react to threatened beliefs, when we should let them rise or fall on their merits. And as children we believe whatever we're told. So simply telling children there is a God suffices to make them believers who defend the faith. But, it holds equally true for any faith. Especially in light of this we must, necessarily, strive to examine religion objectively. Because if you are a God who is intent on burning people forever in hell for failing to believe, you really should make your chosen religion able to be believed objectively. Such that you don't already have to be that religion, to believe that religion. That you could be compelled away from your current faith to the correct faith reliably by something. But, if we honestly look at the evidence and we can't find one religion that consistently wins (except perhaps Secular Humanism or Scientific/Naturalist Pantheism). If we try to use any metric objectively, we consistently find that every religion is true (which means the metric doesn't work) or we find that none of them are. This ultimately is a very serious problem for religion.

If what you use to believe your religion can be used to believe any religion, then you are necessarily treating your religion differently than you treat other people's religions, and since we can all agree other religions are false religions. Then what you are using to believe your religion can be used to believe false religions. -- It's a pretty critical problem for religion, but it's also a fairly new set of arguments so I might as well give them a whirl. After all, the logic is pretty inescapable, your religion should be different if it's right, so we should determine a way to figure this out. We have reliable methods for determining truth, and they determine your religion is false. We can use unreliable methods for determining truth, but they determine that all religions are true. -- And it's not really gotcha logic. Maybe there is a method of consistently determining truth, and only Christianity passes. As such, we would then be right to convert to Christianity. But, at a minimum we must look at religions the same way those not of that religion view them, and doing so reveals the same obvious flaws that are so apparent to everybody else. Asking one to accept talking reptiles, and talking donkeys, magical trees and worldwide floods is bad enough when you have your personal feelings of certainty to rely on, but when you need to do so objectively? It's laughable. If somebody-else's religion had those, Christians would point and laugh on a daily basis. -- So asking for objectivity, is actually rather damning to the faith.

I reply to some jackasses.

It's seems a sign of boredom a little bit like throwing my holy relics to the dogs. As I doubt anybody more than a couple people will see my reply to some aforementioned jackass buried deep on the interwebs I'll repost it here, upping that count by about 4.

I admonish you to start living a principled life. Stop using a Christian date to cash your checks and take a stand young man!

You are a parasite to living order. As the Soviet Union and China have shown us, when a parasite gets control of government, bad things happen. Only when a society is full of living philosophy can an Atheist flourish. The proof is in how the greatest Atheist thinkers have come from nations that have majority Christian populations and deep and rich histories of Christianity. There are no great Atheist thinkers coming from any other culture, even Atheist cultures!

... *grumble*

I've lived a very principled life for many many years. It's rather silly to admonish me to do such things. What do you think I do? I'll stop using BCE/CE dating systems when you stop using the names of pagan gods for the days of the week. This being Wotan's Day and really close to Thor's Day, that might be hard.

Atheist thinkers known to people in the west come from, typically, the west. As such the claim that only Christian cultures produce "thinkers" is rather silly because most cultures are going to be tainted with a good deal of Christian history. That said there are Salman Rushdie was born in a primarily Hindu culture Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes from a Muslim culture, Epicurus and some of the atheistic ancient Greeks came out of Pagan culture. On top of that, most of the major atheist thinkers throughout history and the history of opposition to religion finds its roots firmly in Enlightenment thinking.

There was once a time when everybody believed in God and the Church ran everything, it was called the Dark Ages. If democracy and secularism and Enlightenment freedoms were the result of Christian thought, why didn't they arise during the dark ages? Today in Europe there are a number of quite secular countries that are majority atheist and have the highest standards of living in Europe. Denmark, Sweden, etc score the lowest rates of violent crime, the lowest rates of infant mortality, the highest rankings as far as happiness, and some of the lowest numbers in religiosity. Likewise the United States has some of the highest infant mortality, the highest violent crime rate, the lowest levels of education, some terrible societal happiness scores and the highest religiosity. And even between individual states we find that the states with the highest religiosity have the highest infant mortality, the lowest education, and the highest crime rates. Much of history and social science seems to tell us that religion doesn't go hand in hand with happier people or healthier people. In fact, it seems rather clearly as if the more atheistic peoples of the world might have better idea of how best to live as a functional society.

There do seem to be some ways to live that are notably better and more conducive to good people than others. It may be true that putting women in burkas and preventing them from leaving the house without a male escort might lead to a more peaceful society, but I don't think it will, and I think that such things could be measured and quantified and some people may not have good things to say about the topic. We don't listen to the Taliban on subjects like genetic engineering or quantum physics because generally we don't think they have any good ideas on the subject. Likewise they may well not have good ideas when it comes to suggestions on how best to live as a happy healthy people, and furthermore it seems that the suggestions of religion might well be equally problematic and not conducive to living a good life, after all people who live according to the Bible seem to do notably worse than those who try to live a good life and do right by their fellow man.

To wit, it might be a bit of a better world if you weren't a jackass. And somehow I tend to think that you feel it's your prerogative to be a jackass because of religion, because certainly living a good life and doing right by your fellow man would notably exclude being a jackass.

I wish there was some easy job that involved detailed replies requiring a lot of information about a lot of different things to give snarky replies to jackasses on the internet. Somehow I think I'd be better off building super-intelligent robots to do my bidding. That's just my fall back plan for now.

Why I'm not a Christian.

There have been a number of good essays with this same title. In this time honored tradition, I offer the following snide paragraph.

Your delusional belief that you can telepathically communicate with a first-century wish-granting Jewish zombie man-god-ghost thing who took on human form in order to sacrifice Himself to Himself to give Himself permission to forgive His creations' children for His creations having eaten His magical fruit from His magical tree in His magical garden, after several failed attempts to murder them all, just isn't my bag. I'm sorry, but I'm not in the market for new beliefs and if I were, I'd find some respectable ones and not something that sounds batshit crazy.

Edward Current finds a Dark Sided person on Youtube.

He's not a christiAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

Darksided!



* In case your exceedingly dense (or lazy, or just off your game), that's Edward Current's page.

The Rapture and You.

According to the general theories put forth by your average Adventists (believers in the second advent, return of Jesus, rapture) Jesus will appear over Jerusalem and shall stay fixed in the sky. As the world turns he will take his faithful up in what is to be called the rapture. This is typically because the general picture given of the rapture suggests a flat earth where Jesus just floats in the sky and everybody gets sucked up towards him. Given a spherical planet this doesn't work so well.

Now, as an evil vile atheist, I will not be taken. However, you are like Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future and not very good at thinking 4th dimensionally. We live in the information age. Jerusalem is GMT +2 whereas I live in a GMT -8 time zone and thus have a 10 hour difference. So given that I probably am not going to be cut off from the biggest news story in human history for 10 hours it seems likely that I will hear about this astoundingly precise prediction made by religious idiots hours prior to Jesus floating over my location. I will have a number of hours to convert to what would, at that time, be a nearly undeniable statement of fact.

So don't worry about my soul Christians, I'll be sure to convert when there's ample evidence and regardless that I think you're utterly idiotic beliefs are absolutely false. I'll be sure to convert with a few hours to spare making you look utterly stupid for wasting your entire life when I'd only have wasted a couple hours of my time.

Sharon Stone in hot water for not being Christian.

If you say that China got hit with a massive earth quake because of Karma they get scorn. If you said that God was punishing China for homosexuals or China was being punished for their human rights violations. If you said that God was punishing China for their treatments of Christians. If you said anything stupid from a Christian point of view it would be overlooked. Make no mistake, Sharon Stone's comment was just as probably less stupid than say Hulk Hogan's statement to his son (doing time for drunk driving and ending up putting somebody in a vegetative state) that the person he injured was evil and God was punishing him via your drunk driving. They are in similar veins.

Hitler Table Talks, real but mostly a hoax.

If you've been kicking around a while on a number of different fronts you'll run into quotes contending to show that Hitler was an atheist and hated Christianity and therefore the Holocaust not the fault of Christians who pretty well established the wellspring of antisemitic hate floating around since the middle ages.

Well, the most commonly referenced work (by commonly referenced I'm talking ad nauseum) is Hitler Table Talks. Which include such bombshells as:

* "The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.... Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse.... ...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.... Christianity the liar.... We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State."
* "The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."
* "Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.... .... When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease."

Clearly, one should have little doubt of Hitler's atheism and hatred for Christianity! And the only issue that I can raise is that it's pretty much all lies and a hoax.

I strongly recommend Richard Carriers work on the subject from the 2002 November issue of Freethought Today: On the Trail of Bogus Quotes.

Sadly, due to the brilliance of Carrier I'm hardpressed to summarize his statements better than he, so here's a few choice quotes. Though I recommend reading the original article and, if so, inclined his piece in German History Studies.

"For example, one oft-repeated quote comes from 13 December 1941: "But Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery" (Stevens and Cameron's English, again matching Genoud's French verbatim). But the original German says, "Christianity teaches 'transubstantiation,' which is the maddest thing ever concocted by a human mind in its delusions, a mockery of all that is godly." The difference in meaning here is radical, and again shows how Genoud (hence the Trevor-Roper translation) has distorted Hitler's criticism of one form of Christianity (which implies he believed there was a true Christianity) into a thoroughly anti-Christian sentiment."

The reason why the quotes appear to be a caricature of what right wing Christians might *want* Hitler to say... because that's pretty much what they are!

Stevens and Cameron are certainly guilty of some shameful incompetence, if not outright dishonesty. Nor does Trevor-Roper have much of an excuse. But the real culprit is François Genoud. David Irving tells how Genoud attempted to hoax him in the 1970s with a forgery of "Hitler's Last Testament."7 Genoud even confessed the forgery to Irving, declaring in his defense, "But it's just what Hitler would have said, isn't it?" He was evidently willing to perpetrate a hoax, thinking it permissible to fabricate the words of Hitler if it was what he believed Hitler "would have said." His motives for doctoring the Table Talk may be unfathomable. Genoud was a very strange man with a colorful history: a Swiss banker and Nazi spy who laundered money for the Third Reich, a self-professed neo-Nazi even up to his suicide in 1996 (though, stranger still, he never supported the holocaust), a voracious purchaser and profiteer of Nazi archives, and an admitted financer of terrorists

Sure, Hitler may have not been anti-Christian (although he did disagree with some dogmas and some church practices / who doesn't?) but 'it's just what Hitler would have said, isn't it?'

I am often astounding what a small amount of scratching can do to key pieces of evidence for commonly repeated Christian claims. This is probably more due to the fact that they become "key" when there aren't other sources saying the same thing and with general or common claims there should be many independent sources for the information at hand. However, it's odd to see how aptly lies are bought hook line and sinker. I suppose it's hard to avoid believing false things ever. Still, some people don't even try.

Sherri Shepherd: Nothing predates Christianity.

Lets see:
Christianity started ~2000 years ago. The universe is ~14,000,000,000 years old so lets say about 14 billion years predated Christianity. That's only, 99.999999% of the history of the universe. So, lets just call it close enough.

Whoopi's comment: "Not on paper." is actually great. I had to chuckle at that one.

Prediction: Christian Gay Rights Movement

In the future, Christians will be arguing that Christianity was responsible for the success of the Gay Rights Movement (after it's successful).

In the past, it was common to find bigotry against gays for their sexual orientation and many people derided it as a "choice". However, some good and pious Christians stood up to this bigotry, and through a lot of struggle and hard work secured the rights of homosexuals. You see, without Christian love and tolerance, and the Christian understanding that all people are created equal in God's eyes this injustice would still exist today! Just as Christianity stood up against the supporters of slavery during the abolitionist movement and launched the civil rights movement, Christians are, through their faith in God and the expectations of the Almighty, compelled to fight injustice. - Faith head circa 2030.

Theology Non-Rule #9: Whenever there is a group of secular people supporting a cause and a few secular minded Christians in opposition to the more religious Bible believing Christians, if the secular group is shown to be correct this is a Christian victory for morality. This shows Christianity is just, tolerant, and the source of all morality.

Modern Christianity

Oddly funny. Oddly true.

Atheists seem to focus more on the quality of religion still being false and completely undermining science, reason and rationality. Sometimes we overlook exactly how pathetic mainstream Christianity is.



There is something really hollow about religion, where the newer bits don't care they just want to be paid. And you can't exactly say they should focus on the real bits, because there are no real bits.

I hope this is an FBI pedophile sting...

It's basically a site offering teenagers for certain prices, ranging from 50k to 3k (apparently the girl for 3k is a foster kid, damaged and about to be booted out of the system). With shockingly good testimonials...

“I was SO scared getting married so young, but my husband is an okay guy and I am SO proud that because of me my parents were able to get their first brand-new car and take the trip they always wanted to. I couldn’t have done it without your site!"

—Katrina K., married at 14

Who could argue with that!

For the low low price of 27k,

Sarah calls herself a Goth but we insisted she not dress in black for this photo. She reads and writes a lot of depressing poetry and it takes a lot to get her nose out of a book. She says she’s an Old Soul in a new young body and she’s already been married lots of times and she might die again tomorrow so why wait?

Who could refuse!?

Sathya Sai Baba, Magical Guru.

Sathya Sai Baba is a spiritual leader in India. He has several million followers, literally millions (~5 million). His last birthday they threw a party for him and a million people showed up. In any event, he performs miracles which can be attested to by thousands of people. We aren't talking about in a book that you get several generations later, we are talking about direct attributions of miracles similar to those attributed to Jesus, walking on water, healing the sick, raising the dead.

Now, a lot is made of the claims that if the Bible was a perfect representation of what was original written, that the work was not fiction, that there were contemporary figures to corroborate the existence of the figure, and that perhaps there were ways to verify these claims that then we would be correct to believe. I don't think that holds. For example, there is video of Sai Baba's miracles...


How can you be underwhelmed? What do you mean you saw him palm it the whole time? This is absolute proof, the kind many skeptics requested for the likes of Jesus. Why can you never be happy!



Hm?

Nobody has all the answers, so screw those answers you do have!

As if anybody needs all the answers, and as if having actual answers isn't something I should care about. Nothing's perfect so any degrees of correctness should be whitewashed. Sure, I have very valid and well evidenced reasons for believing what I believe, but since I don't know everything, I might as well be chucked into the same basket as people who think the universe was created a couple thousand years after the Egyptians were first brewing beer and that they can telepathically communicate with a first century wishgranting Jewish zombie.

Christinanity!

Understanding Christianity.

Perhaps one of the most clear and concise videos I've come across.

Christian nation? Why not white nation?

The argument goes that the United States was founded as a Christian Nation, by Christians for Christians and anybody who disagrees can just shut the fuck up. However, a lot of the founding father's were deists. They honestly had to be. They were going against the king, God's chosen ruler, and that's not something good Christians do. It was about half a dozen presidents before we hit a real Christian. However, if the logic still holds here, might I offer a stronger argument?

The United States was founded as a White Nation. All of the founding fathers have been white. All of the presidents have been white. Rather than demanding religious freedom for all religions in the constitution, which goes against the Christian Nation idea, it was rather clearly spelled out that the freedoms only extended to whites.

Why is it that this nation is a Christian nation, but not also an English-Speaking, White, Male nation? Certainly those who demand white supremacy quite often advocate Christian supremacy as well. Everything old is new again.

We are also seeing the exact same arguments recrafted from the ashes of the interracial marriage debates rehashed in the gay marriage debates. Oh, if God wanted the races to marry they would have put them on the same continents, and God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve.

It should also be noted, that since God has no logical foundations, one can just trot the character out as a walking fallacy. With a fallacy you can prove everything (which is why they are worthless). With faith, all things are possible. With God, all things are possible. So having your personal fallacy ready and willing, with built in taboo of criticism no less, one can provide an argument for indefensible bigotry.

If there are only religious arguments for something, then there are no good arguments for it.

Lightning strikes graven image. Read nothing into it.

A lightning bolt flew from the sky and struck a large statue of Jesus and wrecked the statue. Read absolutely nothing into it. It was just lightning. Had rains drowned somebody, that's God's attack against people's tolerance of homosexuals. Had some metal rusted and dripped down, that's Jesus bleeding. But, lightning, pfft that just happens.

Been-a-dick, still-a-dick... Pope Benidict points out all non-catholics are non-Christians.

It's about time. Unless you're Catholic, you're going to hell.

Water and Slaughter...

I propose a new plan to save the souls of the innocent. It does, admittedly, sound a little odd, but hear me out. Due to the corruption of our culture, one must realize that it is hard for a child growing up in today's culture to escape sin completely. However, it is well known that newborn infants have not known sin and are, at the time of their births slated for heaven. The solution should be obvious. We should baptize newly born infants into the Christian faith, then bash their heads in with a hammer.

I know that my plan of 'water and slaughter', may on the surface seem like splashing a bit of water on a kid then brutally murdering it. However, it is saving the souls of these poor infants. It might be even better to save them earlier. I assume one can baptize embryos if one has direct access.

We should thusly create massive batches of embryos, just enough so that they get their souls, baptize them and put them into the furnace.

Then there is the question of who will bell the cat? Certainly murder is a sin and whomever wields the hammer gets raped by Satan. Now, atheists are already damned but typically they have a moral compass which ignores the Bible. Abortion doctors only care about women and their health and most would oppose 4th trimester abortion. I don't think anybody has understood the brilliance of this plan since Andrea Yates sent her otherwise soon-to-be-damaged children on an express bus to heaven (as any Christian would freely admit). This is why, I nominate Andrea Yates. She is currently in prison, and firmly believes herself doomed to hell (hence the reason it wasn't a sacrifice for her to kill her children). She'd otherwise spend her life in prison, and we could certainly give her better accommodations and she could do a lot of good and spare the Fire to some innocents.

Muslim Apologetics

I have a theory that due to the lack of enlightenment thinking Muslim Apologetics are downright absurd. Within the intellectual centers of the west religious arguments evolve to side track the obvious objections to them for example if you look at the first cause argument, you'll notice some subtle difference with the older versions. Anything that exists, has a cause. The universe exists. Ergo, the universe has a cause. That cause is God. This has become "began to exist" rather than exists. And exists has become within spacetime (so that God excluded from spacetime can exist). The principle problem is that the premises are flawed, it commits the fallacy of composition, and any exemption for God could also let the universe slip through.

Also, there are attempts to shift this cause onto an Eternal Cause (this causeless God), a role tailor made for God as a planned loophole in the universe designed to allow God to slip through but ready made to close up and prevent the universe itself from slipping through this absurd hole. And even with proponents capitalizing the job description in deference to the eventual job holder (though they are certainly taking applications, they swear). They still don't answer anything, but it at least takes a couple thoughts to realize this.

It is this sort of evolutionary progress in apologetics which make much of Christian Apologetics in absurd nonsense but evolved beyond the point where a simple belly laugh is a sound refutation. Muslim Apologetics have developed in a bubble. In a sterilized room of faith-belief, and is extremely vulnerable to even the simplest of logics.

Why don't Christians cite Wernher von Braun more often...

I understand why people cite that Newton quote (paraphrasing): "I'm too tired to bother to actually solve the N-body problem and develop perturbation theory and instead will force people to wait another century for Laplace, so I'm just going to say that God makes the planets stay in orbit."


But, why not Wernher von Braun? Here was a rather famous scientist who was unabashed about religion: "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death."...*...

Sure, he was a nazi and a stupid one at that. Nature does know extinction. In fact, most species are extinct. The idea that because our matter isn't created or destroyed that we, as the complex organization of matter we are, are immortal is just stupid beyond belief (though apparently not beyond belief). I'd love to see this quite more often.