If so, read on; if not, stop reading now.
Archive for the ‘christianity’ Category
Want to have nightmares tonight?
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008More on the Dawkins / Hitchens / Dennett / Harris discussion (part 2): the immaturity of religious arguments
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
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…
More Christian double standards
Friday, February 29th, 2008
Source: By The Book Comics
I won’t insult your intelligence by talking about what’s wrong with this picture… 
More on the efficacy of prayer
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Like I wrote before, Christians don’t pray for truly impossible things, because, I’d guess, deep inside they know that “magic doesn’t work”. They pray for possible things, and, if they happen, they feel good about it, call it a “miracle”, feel blessed (after all, the supreme being of the universe just took a personal interest in them!), and it reinforces their faith. When they don’t happen, either “God has a plan”, or, most likely, they simply forget about it. It’s called “counting the hits and ignoring the misses”.
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.
"God helps those who help themselves"
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008I’m sure you have heard this post’s title before.
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…)
Is Christianity to blame for Bible-inspired sexism?
Friday, February 15th, 2008Seen on Friendly Atheist: a female referee was forbidden to ref a boys’ high school basketball game because it would mean putting her in a position of authority over males. Which, according to the Bible, is a big no-no.
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:
- 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”.
- 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.
90 day Jane
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008Like Hemant and Shnakepup, I am convinced that the latest idiocy, “90 day Jane“, is nothing but another dishonest attempt by the religious to fight the “rise of eeeeevil atheism”.
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.
Presidential Candidates and Evolution
Monday, January 14th, 2008Alonzo and vjack have already blogged in more detail about this, so, as there’s really nothing to add to them in a serious way…
… 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?
Pope: "Atheism has led to the greatest forms of cruelty…"
Thursday, December 13th, 2007
Source: MattBors.com
"The Fred Phelps of 1000 BC" :)
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007A commenter to a post called The Church of Hate at Pharyngula wrote:
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.
Hitchens on Genesis
Thursday, December 6th, 2007Here 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”
Does anyone ACTUALLY "hate God"?
Thursday, December 6th, 2007Do 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.
Subscribe to this blog
