Loved the one about coveting your neighbor’s ass.

For more about Space Moose, see Wikipedia.

A lot of Catholics have been complaining about Benedict 16’s utterly immoral statement, and, on one hand, one can’t fault them for it: it just shows that they still have some sense of morality, that they’re not mindless robots obeying “Dear Leader”.

On the other hand… do those Catholics (and Christians in general) know their own religion at all? Why are they surprised? Why aren’t them just nodding because, well, the Pope is Catholic and he’s just stated a Catholic / Christian position?

People, the basis of your religion is that this life is just a test! That one shouldn’t “love this world”. Earthly suffering is immaterial; the only thing that matters is whether you’re “saved” or not. If unspeakable suffering leads one to God / Jesus and therefore that person is saved, to a Christian that’s perfectly OK; in fact, one couldn’t ask for more.

If God exists as they think, and is absolutely against all forms of contraceptives / sex not for reproduction as they think, then better for someone to suffer horribly and die of Aids, with a chance of going to heaven, than to live a long, healthy, happy life and end up in hell with certainty. This is only logical, if one accepts their premises. Which, of course, I don’t, what with being an atheist and everything.

Christianity is a life-hating death cult.

The environmental movement is consumed with trying to preserve the planet forever. But we know that isn’t in God’s plan.

The earth we inhabit is not a permanent planet. It is, frankly, a disposable planet—it is going to have a very short life. It’s been around six thousand years or so—that’s all—and it may last a few thousand more. And then the Lord is going to destroy it.

I’ve told environmentalists that if they think humanity is wrecking the planet, wait until they see what Jesus does to it.

– John McArthur, Evangelicalism and the Environmental Movement

From the article:

Pastor Byrd says the sign is not meant to be racial or political but rather to make people think.  “His name is so close to Osama I have a feeling he might be Islamic therefore he doesn’t recognize Christ,” Pastor Byrd said.

and:

Pastor Byrd told News Channel 7 he would ask his congregation to vote on whether to keep the sign.  They voted unanimously to keep the sign up Sunday night.

Jonesville Church of God does not have any African American members.

You know what really infuriates me about this? Not that these assholes do this, but that it works. A good percentage of Americans probably “have a feeling” that Obama might be a Muslim, simply because of his name. How stupid can you get?

(via Friendly Atheist)

I, of course, agree with Christopher on virtually everything he says, except for his support of the Iraq war — although he presents his case for it very well here, I still think it was the wrong thing to do, was done for all the wrong reasons (oil for Halliburton, and getting the US in a war frenzy so it’s “unpatriotic” to criticize the administration), and was done as badly as it could.

But, on the subject of religion, listening to Christopher’s wit is an intellectual delicacy, not to mention very, very funny.

Get the torrent here. Or look for it on YouTube.

From Rep. Davis’ bigoted outburst about atheists, one part “jumped at me”, and I knew at the time (a few days ago) that I would have to dissect that point. That part is, of course, this post’s title.

If you follow, logically, from a correct premise, you will likely arrive at correct conclusions. However, if the premise itself is wrong, then the best logic in the world will still end up with a wrong conclusion… but it’s interesting to analyze those occurrences. This is one of them.

Rep. Davis, when she said that sentence, was being bigoted and ignorant, sure, not to mention hateful and full of “righteous anger”. However, there was something else there, something else you can hear in her voice. Fear.

And, from her original premise, she has every reason both to be afraid and to hate atheists. Because something very, very precious is at stake: the fate of eternal souls.

I’ve talked about this before, but most people — believers and otherwise — have never really thought about the concept of hell, or eternal torture. Or are simply unable to grasp it in its entirety, because humans have not evolved — nor have they ever needed to, for their survival, so it makes sense — to deal with concepts such as infinity. The worst part of “eternal torture” isn’t “torture”, but “eternal”. Even mere eternal boredom, without any active torture, is a fate inconceivably horrible, to an extent our minds aren’t capable of imagining. There is no crime on Earth, which is necessarily finite, that warrants such a fate — and this is why I believe the doctrine of hell makes the Christian god supremely evil, more sadistic than the world’s most sadistic sadist, and I wonder why more people don’t see it. Cultural indoctrination, I guess.

But, even without fully grasping the concept of eternal torture, Christians know very well  — even if sometimes just instinctually — that it’s something to be avoided at all costs, something worse than anything that can happen to us on Earth.

Now, think about it. You believe that the most important thing in the world — to such an overwhelming degree that, compared to it, nothing else matters — is to avoid going to hell. Both for yourself, and for those people you care about — and, if you’re a “nice”, well-meaning person, for strangers as well. Nothing you can do or achieve or feel here on Earth is worth anything if you still end up in hell. So, to save yourself (and, later, others) form hell, anything goes. No amount of earthly suffering really means anything compared to it. No amount of ignorance, of lying, of manipulating, of causing suffering to yourself and others is significant. Taken to the logical conclusion, to condemn someone to hours, days, months, even a lifetime of suffering, is a moral act… as long as it prevents that someone from going to hell! Indeed, this was the belief of the Inquisition. Better to be tortured for days or weeks and repent, thus having a chance of being saved, than to lead a pleasant life and then be damned for all time. If you really believe that God sends people to hell, then anything that prevents that is moral… no matter the suffering it causes.

But this is not simply a matter of suffering. It’s also a matter of knowledge. Any knowledge or way of thinking that can lead one to doubt God is dangerous — indeed, more dangerous than anything in the world — and must be suppressed. Whether that knowledge is true or false is immaterial. Evolution may indeed be a fact, and it is compatible with liberal theism, but it can also lead to non-belief, and therefore its teaching must be opposed at all costs, regardless of its truth — simply because it may lead thousands, maybe millions of children to hell. And isn’t saving innocent children the most moral act one can perform?

Recall the preface in Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, where he wrote (emphasis mine):

I suspect – well, I am sure – that there are lots of people out there who have been brought up in some religion or other, are unhappy in it, don’t believe it, or are worried about the evils that are done in its name; people who feel vague yearnings to leave their parents’ religion and wish they could, but just don’t realize that leaving is an option. If you are one of them, this book is for you. It is intended to raise consciousness – raise consciousness to the fact that to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one. You can be an atheist who is happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled.

Therefore, to a believer like Davis, the mere existence of atheists — and, not only that, but happy, moral, fulfilled atheists — is a threat, one that may cause many people to question their faith, to realize that, yes, non-belief is an option, and doesn’t make you a monster. It may cause millions of innocent souls to end up in hell. Morally, shouldn’t that be fought with tooth and nail? The mere existence of atheists is already a threat that is filling hell with souls that might not have ended there otherwise. But vocal atheists? Publicly seen atheists? Atheists that don’t act like hedonists, who don’t have “horns”, or frighten people? How many are they condemning to eternal suffering?

If one believes that God sends non-believers to hell, then it only makes sense to do anything in your power — including oppressing, lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering — to stop any possible source of non-belief. Whether that source is a person or group, or a book, or an idea, or a philosophy, or a knowledge. Whether that source is itself moral, or is itself true. None of that matters. Hell is what matters.

In fact, why stop there? Yes, the Bible says “thou shalt not murder”, so one can assume that a murderer goes to hell. But what greater sacrifice is there than one’s soul? What is giving up your life for others (say, your children), compared with up giving your soul? What could be more moral, more heroic, more noble than sacrificing your afterlife for that of your children… by killing that soul-damning atheist who is making them, for the first time in their lives, doubt what you’ve taught then since birth?

Compared to that, what is disregarding the Constitution (man’s law… pfft.) and taking away the legal rights of an atheist? I’m sure Rep. Davis considers her bigoted actions to be absolutely moral, and probably won’t even understand what all the fuss is about. After all, she was doing it to save innocent souls… in her eyes, she should get a statue, or something.

I beg to differ.

Yes, the three main monotheistic religions have the same historical origins. Both Christianity and Islam claim to be extensions of Judaism, revere the same patriarchs (such as Moses or Abraham), but then add new claims, and refuse some of the original ones. I am not disputing this fact. Even the two newer religions’ holy books either include parts of the old one, or are inspired by it.

But having the same historical origin doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re the same religion, or that they worship the same god. Not when they claim that their god has completely different attributes — sometimes even opposing ones.

Think about it. Is God a being who needed the blood of his son (which is also himself) in order to forgive humanity for their sins? One religion says yes, the other two say no. And whether the answer is yes or no, it means God has a completely different character than he would have otherwise. Does he need blood, suffering and sacrifice in order to forgive? Or can he do it on his own? Is he the kind of being who believes that guilt can be passed from those responsible to an innocent, or is he not?

I can argue that a god who wants and needs a bloody sacrifice is very different from one who doesn’t. Unless God is schizophrenic, one can’t rationally argue that it’s the same god. Either he wants that, or he doesn’t — to say that he wants it from some of his believers and not from others is far too ridiculous. In other words, if Christianity is right about that facet of God, then Judaism and Islam must necessarily be wrong — and vice-versa.

It’s easy to find more examples. Take hell, for instance. To me, with my human imagination, I cannot imagine something worse, more terrible, than the idea of eternal punishment. Can you even grasp the meaning of “eternal”? Human minds can’t quite conceive of it. Even eternal boredom, without any actual, active torture, would be a fate infinitely worse than any kind of finite torture inflicted on Earth by the worst imaginable sadist. It also follows that there can be possibly no crime — even hypothetically — that warrants such a punishment. No finite action, no finite crime or “sin” is ever deserving of an eternal anything — much less eternal torture. It follows that a god who does inflict such a fate on even one sentient being would be more unjust, more sadistic, more evil than our minds can conceive of.

Yet, of the three monotheisms, two say God is that evil. The other one says otherwise (there is no hell in Judaism, and the Old Testament says several times that death is final). Can “more evil than we can conceive” be the same as otherwise? Either God is the ultimate sadist, or he isn’t; it’s absurd to claim that Jewish sinners die a final death, but Christians and Muslims go to a lake of fire and burn for eternity. If that was so, then either God was insane, or we’d have to be talking about two very different gods.

I could go on. Does God have a favorite group, a “chosen people”? One religion says he does, and therefore doesn’t actively attempt to recruit outside of it. The other two say differently.

I’m not claiming that there are three different gods, each one worshipped by its own religion. In fact, I don’t believe that even one exists (what with being an atheist and all). My point is that the three monotheisms worship vastly different gods, with vastly different personalities and desires. They can’t all be right, of course. In fact, even if one was right, the other two would have to be abysmally wrong — worshipping not just a slightly different variant of the same god, but one with completely different (and often opposite) traits. Despite the historical origins, whatever the three main religions worship these days can’t possibly be considered the same god — unless, of course, God is the ultimate case of multiple personality disorder.

If I was a religious person, I would consider creationism nothing less than blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer who has created that whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of misleading mankind?

– Arthur C. Clarke

(seen on Life Without Faith, in a post about Clarke’s recent death)

Source: Cectic

Besides the obvious child abuse shown in the comic — and yes, telling a child about hell is child abuse, no matter how you put it –, I find the mother in the comic morally repugnant for another reason: cowardice. She is unwilling to take responsibility for her actions, and doesn’t come out and say “obey me, or I’ll punish you.” Instead, she has to invoke an external, supernatural entity who will punish the child for disobedience — and when one fails, she comes up with another… one which, sadly, most people don’t outgrow before they’re 5 years old, unlike the former. She’s such a coward that she lies just so that the child doesn’t see her as a source of discipline and therefore never resents her. Never mind that parents should be a source of discipline; it’s their responsibility, after all, what with being parents and everything.

Christopher Hitchens: You had a marvelous quotation from Francis Collins, the genome pioneer, who said, while mountaineering one day, he was so overcome by the landscape, and then went down on his knees and accepted Jesus Christ. A complete non sequitur.

Indeed it is. One doesn’t follow from the other, unless you already had some nasty preconceptions.

Much like C.S. Lewis did before, Francis Collins doesn’t realize that the idea that some god exists (because he’s looking at something which seems to imply some form of design) does not mean Christianity — or any other particular religion — is true.

Why is it that supposed atheists or agnostics, when they have an experience like that, never “accept” the “truth” of a less common religion where they live? Why wasn’t Collins convinced of the “truth” of Islam, Judaism or Hinduism, from watching that beautiful landscape?

Because of his background, I’d say. Much like many Westerners, Collins was probably brought up to believe that religion means Christianity (regardless of whether its claims are true or not), and that then there are some other creeds out there, mostly weird, exotic beliefs. Therefore, a sudden realization that “yes, there is a god!”, to him, must necessarily mean “Christianity is true”. In other words, “there is a god” is synonym with “God incarnated as a human 2000 years ago and sacrificed himself to himself in order to change his own mind about damning us all”.

Needless to say, it takes a pretty warped mind to not only move from one to the other, but to see no problem with doing so.

This was suggested by a comment on Pharyngula. Imagine this nightmarish (but possible… yikes!) scenario:

1. McCain picks Huckabee has his running mate. Possible, because of the next point…
2. Huckabee gets McCain the evangelical / Christian extremist vote McCain probably wouldn’t get on his own (as he isn’t enough of a nutcase for most of the Religious Right — he even accepts evolution, by golly!).
3. Due to 2., McCain / Huckabee win the election (yikes again!).
4. A short time later, McCain dies (possible, as he’s already quite old).
5. President Huckabee… need I say any more? Christian States of America, creationism taught in schools exclusively, the Constitution rewritten to conform to the Bible. Next stop: “causing” the second coming of Jesus (read: Armageddon).

Paranoia? Tell me why any of the above is impossible… if you can.

Like before, just click on the picture above to go to the source, download or watch the 2-hour video, and so on.

Also like before, I’m going to post and comment on one of my favorite parts of the discussion between the “four horsemen of atheism”.

Daniel Dennett: Right. And you know this, what you just said Christopher, actually, I think, strikes terror, it strikes anxiety, in a lot of religious hearts. Because it just hasn’t been brought home to them that this move of theirs is just off-limits. It’s not the game. You can’t do that. And they’ve been taught all their lives that you can do that – this is a legitimate way of conducting a discussion. And here, suddenly we’re just telling them “I’m sorry, that is not a move in this game”. In fact it is a disqualifying move.

[..]

Christopher Hitchens: Adumbrate the move for me a bit, if you would, or for us. Perhaps only for me. Say what you think that move is.

Dennett: Somebody plays the faith card.

Hitchens: Yes.

Dennett: They say look, I am a Christian and we Christians, we just have to believe this and that’s it. At which point, I guess the polite way of saying it is well, okay, if that’s true you’ll just have to excuse yourself from the discussion because you’ve declared yourself incompetent to proceed with an open mind. Now…

Hitchens: That’s what I hoped. That’s what I hoped you were saying.

Dennett: …if you really can’t defend your view, then sorry, you can’t put it forward. We’re not going to let you play the faith card. Now if you want to defend what your holy book says, in terms that we can appreciate, fine. But because it says it in the holy book, that just doesn’t cut any ice at all. And if you think it does, that’s just arrogant. It is a bullying move and we’re just not going to accept it.

Sam Harris: And it’s a move that they don’t accept when done in the name of another faith.

Dennett: Exactly.

In other words: saying “we just have to believe it and that’s it” is not a rational argument, or a grown-up argument. Nor is saying “it is true, because it says so in my holy book”. Those are appeals to emotion or to authority, which are childish arguments that have no place in an adult, rational discussion… and which believers wouldn’t accept from believers of other faiths, anyway. Those arguments are the equivalent of a child’s “but I wannaaaaaa!!!!”. They only “work” because religion and religious beliefs are still unnaturally and unjustifiably respected.

Incidentally, Dennett’s “Now if you want to defend what your holy book says, in terms that we can appreciate, fine” reminds me of Barack Obama’s “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all”.

In other words — and even though Obama is himself a Christian — both are saying that childish arguments, such as appeals to authority or emotions, just won’t do in real life. This is probably shocking to many believers, who are used to, and comfortable with, their immaturity of beliefs and arguments. It probably explains why Christians cry “we’re being oppressed!” merely for not being allowed to oppress others anymore… after all, they’re suddenly losing a right privilege they’ve had for centuries, when they were so powerful that they were able to act like spoiled children, both in terms of arguments and of actions. Suddenly being told to grow up and act like adults — for the first time in centuries — probably feels like “oppression” to them…

Source: By The Book Comics

I won’t insult your intelligence by talking about what’s wrong with this picture…

But… what about the people of other religions? And what about atheists? Why isn’t their life absolutely miserable (or at least noticeably worse), since they don’t have a deity taking care of them and answering their prayers?

Consider this likely example: a Christian comes down with a flu. He prays to God to get better, and, after a couple of days, he does. “Thank you, God, for healing me! Praise the Lord!”, and so on.

Meanwhile, the atheist next door gets the flu at the same time, and, coincidence of coincidences, also gets better at the same time.

What happened here? Did God require prayer and faith from the believer, but not from the atheist?

Or is the believer just projecting supernatural explanations onto something that happened naturally?

If prayer worked, if God intervened due to prayer, then either unbelievers would remain sick forever, or, at least, believers would get better much more quickly. I would say that a miracle — a direct intervention by the omnipotent creator of the universe — should be pretty easy to distinguish from a natural occurrence. Yet we don’t see the impossible happening to believers. We don’t even see the beneficial possible happen sooner, or more often. In fact, everything happens just like it would if…

…there was no God at all.

The idea is that, supposedly, praying for things to happen, for the object of your desire to “fall in your lap” by magic doesn’t work. Instead, you’re supposed to try, and try hard, and then God will help you.

While I believe that telling people to, pardon the expression, “move their asses”, instead of just sitting in prayer and waiting for things to happen, is a good piece of advice, I wonder why more people — including believers — don’t notice the obvious dishonesty implicit in it.

First, there’s the unconscious realization of a fact: miracles don’t happen. At least true miracles in the “magical” sense. Much like the way people pray for a disease to “get better” (which can happen) but not for a limb to grow back (which can’t), most believers, these days, when they think of miracles, they think about approximations of Jesus’ (Caucasian!) face in slices of pizza, finding a lucky parking space in a crowded place, or someone changing their mind to their advantage. Not “biblical-like” miracles. So, since they know “magic” doesn’t work, they teach that you have to try, and only then will God help you. In other words, first you make sure it’s naturally possible, and only then do you ask God — who is supposedly all-powerful — for it.

Second, this is an utterly unfair double standard. If you succeed, it was God’s doing. Praise the Lord! If you fail, however, either “God has a better plan”, or, more often, it was simply your fault. God automatically gets the credit for any successes, but not the blame for any failures. Like always, anyone would spot the obvious unfairness of it… if we weren’t talking about religion, a subject that prevents most otherwise rational people from spotting parallels, contradictions, or errors of logic in general. (we’re talking about minds, after all, that find no problem in the “God exists because the Bible says so; the Bible is true because it’s the word of God” statement…)

To condemn this as bigoted and repulsive would be redundant, since others — even some Christians — have already done so. Therefore, I’ll address this question: is Christianity to blame for this, considering that most Christians don’t actually agree with such first-century bigoted “morals”?

I believe that, yes, Christianity is to blame.

Consider the facts:

1. the Bible includes that passage. And it’s in the New Testament, after Jesus, so one can’t use the old “oh, that’s in the OT, Jesus changed all the rules” excuse which allows Christians to ignore the prohibition on eating shrimp or wearing mixed fabric, but to believe homosexuality is still an “abomination”.
2. many denominations, and therefore many believers, believe (and teach) that the Bible is 100% true, and the literal word of God. (think about why they refuse to accept the fact of evolution: it’s not because it disproves God (it doesn’t), but because it means that Genesis isn’t literally true.)

Now, Christians could have changed the Bible. It’s not like they didn’t do it often in the first couple of centuries after Jesus, after all. Or they could have left that passage in there, but with a warning that it corresponds to Paul’s bigotry, not to what God actually wants. More liberal church leaders could actually denounce that passage as unjust and incompatible with a “god of love”. Or, like some other denominations do, simply accept that the Bible had many authors, many of its parts are parables or myths, and it was a product of its time, not to mention that it was edited often in the beginning, so it’s quite possible that someone inserted his own beliefs and agenda in it — which at the time would almost surely include bigotry.

But no. They still insist that the Bible is the literal word of God, 100% accurate, and so on. Which means God is a sexist bigot. And they’re OK with that.

If Christianity says “this book is 100% true”, and that book includes sexism, then Christianity is sexist, and is to blame for the sexism it causes.

Consider her description:

I am going to kill myself in 90 days. What else should i say? This blog is not a cry for help or even to get attention. It’s simply a public record of my last 90 days in existence. I’m not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to? I mean, as an atheist I feel life has no greater purpose. My generation has had no great depression, no great war and our biggest obstacle is beating Halo 3.

“… as an atheist I feel life has no greater purpose”? Gee, that sounds just like what theists love to say about atheists… and what atheists either don’t say, or say literally; in other words, the lack of a “greater” purpose just means that we don’t have someone telling us what to do, so we have to (responsibility! scary!) decide for ourselves, come up with a purpose on our own.

Quoting Shnakepup:

Expect “Jane” to start laying the nihilism and hedonism on thick, all the while spouting off about how pointless it all is. Then, closer to the due date, we’ll see more and more posts featuring Jane reconsidering her godless, wasteful existence , and pondering if maybe there’s something more. Cue religious friend who sets her straight on the lie of atheism, and who tells her all the church has to offer in it’s place. Instead of killing herself on Day 90, we’ll see her changing her mind and deciding to live her life with Jesus! Warm fuzzy music plays and everybody learns a valuable lesson.

Indeed. Now, I wonder… as an atheist, I would never do something like this (say, “faking” a deconversion). Why? Because it would be dishonest, and the same love of truth that makes me an atheist prevents me from even considering something like this. The belief in “saving souls” for brownie points in heaven, even if you have to cheat, lie, and hurt people to do it, is, apparently, something very typical in evangelical Christianity.

EDIT: it was just an experiment, after all. Either that, or they aborted it because they can’t follow their plan to talk about the emptiness of atheism for 3 months and then “find Jesus” on day 90, because we were on to them on day 4. Nothing to see here, folks.

… I have, naturally, to invoke Monty Python.

Now, some people — even non-creationists (a.k.a. people who don’t ignore evidence just because it contradicts a book written by Bronze Age desert nomads who could only imagine supernatural explanations for anything they didn’t know, and who thought the world was just a few generations old) are saying that people will be electing a president, not a biologist, so the candidates’ stance on evolution doesn’t really matter.

In other words, they’re free to believe in something really absurd, ignoring all the evidence to the contrary, but “otherwise, they’re perfectly all right”.

Remember the classic mattress sketch?

Groom: Er yes. We’d like to buy a bed…a double bed…about fifty pounds?
Verity: Oh no, I’m afraid not, sir. Our cheapest bed is eight hundred pounds, sir.
Groom: Eight hundred pounds!
Lambert: Or, er, perhaps I should have explained. Mr Verity does tend to exaggerate, so every figure he gives you will be ten times too high. Otherwise he’s perfectly all right, perfectly ha, ha, ha.

and, later,

Verity: Lambert! Will you show these twenty good people the, er, dog kennels, please?
Lambert: Mm? Certainly.
Groom: Dog kennel? No, no, no, mattresses, mattresses!
Verity: Oh no, no you have to say dog kennel to Mr Lambert because if you say mattress he puts a bag over his head. I should have explained. Apart from that he’s really all right.

See what I mean? It’s not “really all right”. In at least one thing, they’re showing that they’re either a) completely nuts, or b) cowardly pandering to those who are. They’re unwilling to think critically, to consider the available evidence, and to ask the experts on the subject… or they’re dishonest, cowardly, and devoid of any integrity.

And you want those guys to run your country?

Source: MattBors.com

Deuteronomy orders that disobedient children be taken to the city gate and stoned to death.

Sounds pretty drastic and these days that would get you a long jail sentence.

What struck me as odd, no one has ever found piles of tiny bones at the gates of ancient Jewish cities. Nor AFAIK, has anyone ever done anything like this.

My best guess. When whoever was writing Deuteronomy was frothing at the mouth and ranting and raving, the average Israeli just shrugged their shoulders, said what a nutcase, and ignored him. Maybe he was the Fred Phelps of 1000 BC.

For some reason, I loved it.

Here again one sees the gigantic man-made fallacy that informs our “Genesis” story. How can it be proven in one paragraph that this book was written by ignorant men and not by any god? Because man is given “dominion” over all beasts, fowl and fish. But no dinosaurs or plesiosaurs or pterodactyls are specified, because the authors did not know of their existence, let alone of their supposedly special and immediate creation. Nor are any marsupials mentioned, because Australia — the next candidate after Mesoamerica for a new ‘Eden’ — was not on any known map. Most important, in Genesis man is not awarded dominion over germs and bacteria because the existence of these necessary yet dangerous fellow creatures was not known or understood. And if it had been known or understood, it would at once have become apparent that these forms of life had “dominion” over us, and would continue to enjoy it uncontested until the priests had been elbowed aside and medical research at last given an opportunity.

– Christopher Hitchens, “god is not Great”

Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?
I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.

- Psalm 139:21-22 (King James Version)

No, wait! I’m not going to use those verses in the way you are probably thinking (the Bible incites hatred, etc.).

That would be too easy.

Instead, I’ll address the “them… that hate thee” part. As this post’s title says, does anyone actually hate God (“God” meaning, here, the Judeo-Christian one)?

Now, theists are fond of saying that atheists hate God (which a simply dictionary definition would correct — hello!? we don’t believe there is one!?), or that we know, deep inside, that God exists, but are too arrogant to submit (which is actually insulting — how would they like to be told that they don’t really believe in their God, but enjoy too much being seen as “highly moral”?), but I’m not talking about those obvious errors. No, I’m talking about Really. Hating. God.

That concept presupposes that one does believe in God (and, again, I’m talking about the monotheistic, all-powerful Judeo-Christian creator deity people worship and pray to, not about any form of deism or pantheism), but, somehow, for some reason, hates him.

Does that make any sense? I find that very contradictory, not to mention potentially suicidal: so you believe that this omnipotent being is holding all the cards, can do whatever he pleases with you, including damning you for eternity… but he just wants to be loved, worshipped and believed in… you do believe he exists, and yet you hate him?

Now, my question, both to atheists and to those without the “a”… do you think that there are actually people like that? That someone, out there, actually “hates God”?

Thinking about it, I can imagine a few possibilities. A believer who gets the short end of the stick, so to say, might temporarily hate and curse God for the current injustice — without disbelieving for an instant. But that would probably pass soon, and he’d feel guilty and ashamed afterwards.

The only other possibility I can imagine is a Satanist — not a member of LaVey‘s “Church of Satan”, who wouldn’t actually believe in God (or Satan) as entities, or a Black Metal fan, or an atheist who enjoyed annoying believers. No, a real Satanist, who believed God and the Devil were real, but somehow identified more with ol’ Lucifer than with Yahweh, and chose the former’s side. Of course, unless that person believed the Bible to be his enemy’s “propaganda”, he’d know that his side was destined to lose… but, who knows, maybe some people are like that.

To conclude: I’ve never heard someone say anything like “I believe in God, but I hate him”. But I’d like to hear your thoughts. Have you ever met or known of someone like that?

EDIT: and, please, no semantic games, such as “everyone who does X hates God”. I’m talking about conscious belief and hatred.

The President of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. Now, if he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ludicrous or more offensive.

— Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation

Try it yourself: the Church Sign Generator!

You can’t make stuff like this up (any emphasis is mine):

A black conservative Christian pastor of an evangelical megachurch has vowed to take over Microsoft by packing it with new shareholders who will vote against the company’s policy of championing gay rights.

He told Microsoft executives at a shareholders’ meeting last week that he would be their “worst nightmare” if they continued to defy him.

Antioch Bible Church attracts around 3,500 worshippers for its services and Mr Hutcherson is a powerful figure in the Christian conservative movement.

And…

An advocate of a “biblical stance” against divorce and homosexuality, Mr Hutcherson, 55, is asking millions of evangelical activists, as well as Orthodox Jewish and other allies, to buy up Microsoft shares and demand a return to traditional values.

Microsoft, he declares, will be just the first company targeted in an escalation of the culture wars between evangelicals and corporate America.

“There are 256 Fortune 500 companies alone pouring millions upon millions of dollars into pushing the homosexual agenda,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

“I consider myself a warrior for Christ. Microsoft don’t scare me. I got God with me.

Not to mention, of course…

“I told them that you need to work with me or we will put a firestorm on you like you have never seen in you life because I am your worst nightmare. I am a black man with a righteous cause with a whole host of powerful white people behind me.”

Mr Hutcherson’s office is decorated with the heads of deer, elk and a buffalo – “when I run into animals, I kill them and bring them home and eat them” – as well as invitations to the White House and signed pictures of himself with President George W. Bush.

It boggles the mind. Any sane mind, that is. I’m sure there are those out there to whom this is perfectly normal…

Consider the three Abrahamic religions. What do they have in common?

First, they tell you how the universe / world began, using a story that was clearly the best thing that some primitive desert nomads or shepherds could come up with. Most “sophisticated” believers, these days, don’t take those stories literally, and accept evolution, an old earth, heliocentrism, a huge universe, a round earth, and so on. Only American fundies and Muslims seem to take those stories literally, no matter the opposing evidence; they probably believe their god put that evidence there as “a test of their faith”.

Then, the religions give believers some rules:

1- the first kind are rules that, while not terribly original, are, in general, a good idea. Don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t kill someone just because you feel like it, and so on.

2- then come the laws that can be annoying to follow, but it’s not the end of the world. Don’t eat that type of food, don’t wear this, wear that, do this on that day of the year, and so on. As I said, these can be annoying (for instance, what if you’re forbidden to eat your favorite food?), but most believers can live with them and obey them.

3- finally, there are the “harder” rules. Kill people who do this. Kill people who do that. Stone to death those who don’t do this. Or those who do that on a particular day of the week. Fight tooth and nail against the “enemies of God / the faith”. In fact, giving your life for that is the greatest thing you can do, and with the greatest reward.

Now, it should be obvious that a “moderate”, as usually described, is someone who follows just 1 and 2, while an “extremist” follows 3 as well.

But… how can the latter be called an “extremist”? Doesn’t the term imply that he is distorting his religion, or using it as an excuse for something unrelated, or adding something to it? To me, it does. But that’s not the case at all…

… it’s the moderates who are distorting religion, by removing things from it! Either because they don’t want to end up in prison or dead, or because their morality has evolved beyond those of the holy books’ writers, and so they recognize the immorality of those parts of their religion, but are nonetheless incapable of applying that judgment to the rest.

Are Bin Laden, or the 9/11 hijackers, or American abortion clinic bombers, “extremists”? Not at all, in my opinion — unless you call call a man who pays his taxes in full “an extremist taxpayer”. They’re simply not ignoring the unpleasant parts of their faith. They’re the only devout believers out there.

Which really paints a nice picture of their religions…

The onus is not on the atheist to demonstrate the non-existence of the invisible unicorn in the room, and we cannot be accused of undue confidence in our disbelief. The devout churchgoer recites the Nicene Creed weekly, enumerating a detailed and precise list of things he positively believes, with no more evidence than supports the unicorn. Now that’s overconfidence. By contrast, the atheist says the humble thing: of all the millions of possible entities that one might imagine, I believe only in those for which there is evidence – trombones, pelicans and electrons, say, but not unicorns or leprechauns, not Thor with his hammer, not Ganesh the elephant god, not the Holy Ghost.

Lovely.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Now, I perfectly understand that, if natural science isn’t among your interests, then the fact that the world around you seems so complex, sometimes so beautiful, and “just made for us”, the fact that there is both a) a universe, and b) life, can be interpreted as evidence of a creator deity. As I said, this is understandable.

What isn’t understandable is to see all that as proof of Christianity. Why not Islam? Judaism? Hinduism? Native American creation myths? How on earth does the fact that the universe exists become evidence that, for instance, there was a Jew called Jesus about 2000 years ago who was the son of the Old Testament god and “died for our sins”? How does one follow the other?

Lewis is guilty of the same error as Pascal when the latter invented his famous wager: “it’s Christianity or nothing”. It’s a pity when you can’t see further than the limits of your own education and traditions…

(inspired by vjack’s post, and a little of Peter David)

One of the theists’ arguments goes like this: “science explains 95% of it, but the Bible explains 100%! The Bible is obviously superior!”.

The problem is that the Bible doesn’t actually explain anything! Every “explanation” is either magical, or requires something else that is unexplained — and, often, by definition unexplainable. Furthermore, a lot of the available evidence contradicts the Bible’s claims: no, there was never a worldwide flood. No, it wouldn’t be possible for the Ark to carry all those animals. No, the universe isn’t just 6000 years old. No, species weren’t created as they are. And so on.

A variant of that claim (PZ mentions it here) is to say that, since science explains only 95% of something, to trust in science requires faith… and, not only that, it requires as much faith as the religionists’ explanation. What they don’t understand is that those 95% have survived every available evidence so far, while many “scientific” claims in the Bible have been disproved long ago — and only the most willingly blind continue to believe them. The Bible’s claims remind me of Chico (not Groucho, as many people mistakenly believe) Marx’s “who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”, or of that claim from an ancient church father, that he would believe black is white if the church told him so.

The other claim by theists (especially creationists) is this: “science explains just 95% of it? Then the remaining 5% are obviously an act of God, and science will never be able to explain them! This proves God exists!”

Next year, that field of science advances another 1%, and you can guess exactly how the theists’ claim will change… and how they will scream it with as much certainty as the year before.

Jesus’ last words on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” hardly seem like the words of a man who planned it that way. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure there is something wrong here.

Indeed.

Excerpt:

KH: Do you have time for a few questions, today, Lord?

GOD: Son, time has no effect on me. I created it. I am always here to help you and guide you in any area of your life. Go ahead with your questions, son.

KH: These last seven months in prison have been rather difficult for me, Lord. In fact, in the last month, I’ve been in five different facilities.

GOD: I know, son. I’ve been with you the entire time (Hebrews 13:5).

KH: Thanks, Lord. I felt your presence many times. But there were other times that I was very sad and lonely.

GOD: I know, son. I saw your tears. I was there, but you were too busy acting like Jonah. You were more concerned about your own problems than the future of those men around you. You need to work on that.

KH: I’m sorry, Lord. You are right.

GOD: I am always right. Go ahead with your questions.

KH: Well God, yesterday was especially hard. I couldn’t sleep the night before because I expected them to call me at 3:30 a.m. to pack up for the bus ride up here to South Carolina.

GOD: I know, son. I was right there with you. I heard your prayers throughout that long night. We had sweet fellowship, didn’t we? Thank you for loving me and talking with me.

KH: Thanks for being there and for listening, Lord.

GOD: I’m always there and always listening, son.

KH: Lord, I asked you to let me sleep, because I knew the next day would be hard and I would need my strength. Why didn’t you let me sleep, Lord?

GOD: I did, son. You slept great from 3:00 – 4:45 a.m. Who do you think it was that made the guard forget to call you at 3:30? Didn’t you wake up refreshed at 4:45 and even comment on how hard you slept and how good you felt?

KH: Yes, Lord, now that you remind me, I did sleep real hard and woke up feeling great.

Seen on Pharyngula.

Take the Dante’s Divine Comedy Inferno Test

“Lustful”? Moi?