>> Christianity, Islam, the Jewish faith,
all monothesist religions teach
>> people that they are better than others and that only they are going
to
>> heaven. Religion may yet be the death of us all.
> .
>
> The type of religion you describe is an *effect* of a human
> consciouness disease.
>
> Were there no religion, humans would find another pretense
> to hate others and think that they are better.
>
> (i.e. racism, nationalism, etc.)
>
>
(e.g. not i.e.) http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/e.g.html
You are making a claim that in effect there is a defined amount of evil
action which much exist in the world which is shared about among the
available causes. A moment's thought would reveal this idea to be worth
less than a boil on a baboon's bum.
If you remove causes of conflict you will remove conflict, not shift
that necessary conflict on to be caused by something else.
If you imagine a group of GIs under fire from the Viet Cong you will
not expect to find them bickering among themselves about race, class
or accent. But neither will you expect them to be throwing grenades at
each other over those differences the moment the common enemy goes away.
Religion can act like the common enemy to unite people in a single struggle
but it is farcical to expect that the amount of grief religion causes
would be caused by some other factor because the quota of evil and murder
was not being fulfilled.
The history of mankind is a story of uniting into bigger and bigger
groups, spreading the definition of "us" ever wider and more
diffusely. Only a tiny handful of inner city gang members today have
a life of violence, insecurity and short life expectancy to compare with
that of our distant ancestors and primitive people today.
Just imagine a generic "tribesman". What is he carrying? A
spear and shield by any chance? Not some luxury consumer goods. When
you live in a small band attack and sudden death is an ever-present danger
not just "in times of war" but for your whole life and throughout
the entire life experience of every person you have ever met.
We have put aside differences and got on with not killing each other.
It is not true to suggest that violence, intolerance and hatred is a
pie of a fixed size. We have made that pie smaller. Getting rid of religion
could make that pie smaller still.
--
Martin Willett
> Jumping the gun just a bit, let me be the first
to greet you on the day we celebrate the nativity of Christ our lord..
>
> May all the blessings of the season be yours and your families in great
> abundance.
How are we meant to notice the difference?
Has Jesus brought peace and goodwill to all men here on Earth? Has he
even begun to make a difference for the better?
1 AD is just a meaningless year on a calendar. Nothing has changed since.
Or rather everything has changed but no changes can be pinned down to
coincide with the supposed birth, death or resurrection of Jesus.
Can anybody explain why a god needed to be made a man to be killed by
some men to placate the god's wrath with all men? If that god of theirs
is so all powerful, loving and merciful why didn't he just forgive everybody
directly without such a pantomime? And if you don't know the answer to
that one why do you think you have any answers worth considering?
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
There's really no point in trying to turn Christmas into something pagan
in the name of atheism. Atheists are not pagans. Pagans are superstitious
fruitcakes who have more invisible friends than Christians.
Christians stole the holidays, traditions, feasts and festivals and
amalgamated them all into Christmas. That much is fact. But there is
plenty in Christmas that has nothing to do with any myth about a god
who needed to be tortured to death in order to change his own mind. Nobody
needs a myth to have a party.
Atheists, not being pagans, are not the rightful owners of Christmas.
And the pagans that exist today are not the lineal descendants of real
pagans, they are hippies who bought into some romantic nonsense invented
in the nineteenth century so they don't own it either. The great midwinter
festival has always been the people's festival and it means as much or
as little as the people want it to mean. Christ is not the reason for
the season. The season is the reason for the festival and Christianity
is a jealous racket that steals and subverts everything it cannot ban.
Christianity spawns many killjoys and they have tried to ban Christmas
on several occasions. They have always failed. The people want to celebrate
and they do. The urge to celebrate with fires, feasting, decorations,
family, friends, revelry and of course copious quantities of alcohol
has nothing to do with the specious arguments propounded from pulpits.
People celebrate Christmas, the great winter festival, not the birth
of lickle baby Jesus among the baa-lambs.
Christmas is today being celebrated across the world by atheists, Jews,
Hindus and Muslims. We don't care what you think it means, we like a
good holiday and Christmas is the best of them all - because it has stolen
from them all. Christmas accretes new myths and traditions like a rolling
snowball and it is a rolling snowball that will not stop rolling and
nobody can stop it or turn it around. This thing is bigger than any of
us. You can't stop it. You can't turn it around. You can't deny it or
redefine it. Changing its name would be difficult and futile.
Nobody hears the Christ in Christmas any more than they hear the holy
in holiday or the Woden in Wednesday or the Thor in Thursday.
Have a happy atheist Christmas. Peace on Earth and goodwill to all men:
a sentiment nobody ever needs to get nailed to anything to promote.
http://mwillett.org/atheism/atheistchristmas.htm --
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
> For one thing pagan or atheist are the same, as
they both do not accept
> Jesus Christ as Lord and do not believe in the Christian faith.
> Everyone that is not a believer is a fruitcake if we are to call them
> anything but unbelievers.
Somebody needs to tell you that you don't have the right to define other
people's views for them. Pagans are not atheists, they believe in other
gods, at least many do. Some try to ride two horses and basically worship
spirits they don't believe exist: pity them, they're mixed up worse than
Episcopalians.
Anybody who thinks an atheist is somebody who doesn't believe in your
god, called rather unimaginatively "God", is mistaken. Atheists
don't believe in any gods. OK, there may be some lame ones that claim
the label but don't understand the concept, most of them grow out of
it.
There are thousands of non-existent gods, your god is not an exception.
Your god is only special to you. And believe it or not people who don't
believe in your god don't believe he's real or the creator of the universe
or their judge when they float down that corridor of light and/or answer
the final trump (you Christians often get a bit mixed up about that point
yourself). There is little that is as pathetic as watching a Christian
wave his non-existent god about and expecting non-believers to cower.
Don't you get it? If we believed what you believed we'd be stood beside
you. Atheists are not scared of your god for the same reason you're not
scared of the super-villains from a comic book. The Romans were not scared
of your god either, you don't believe that idea that the Romans killed
Christians because they knew Christians were right, do you? That is utterly
absurd. As absurd as the idea that Bush wants to kill Bin Laden because
Bush believes in Allah and his Prophet but follows Shaitan.
>
>> Christians stole the holidays, traditions, feasts and festivals and
>> amalgamated them all into Christmas. That much is fact. But there is
>> plenty in Christmas that has nothing to do with any myth about a god
who
>> needed to be tortured to death in order to change his own mind. Nobody
>> needs a myth to have a party.
>
> Then God made the earth and all so all the holidays and stuff belong to
> God, the pagan and unbelievers stole the holidays that the Christans
> only took back or reclaimed, big differance. The much is fact. Then
> the birth of Christ the Lord is not a myth and God is not a pagan god.
> Then mankind should of been the ones tortured as mankind did sin, and
> because God so loved you all he let Himself in Christ take you
> punishment and your tortures so you would not have to face them at your
> death. Then you are correct NO ONE needs a myth to have a party.
These are empty and worthless claims that only people who decide in
advance not to question (as if that was a good thing) can actually accept.
>> Atheists, not being pagans, are not the rightful owners of
Christmas.
>
> God is the rightful owner of all days as well as Christmas, which means
> "Service to Christ".
Point made. More than five billion people disagree with you and you
are hardly likely to come up with anything approaching a coherent argument
so let's just agree to differ shall we?
>
>> And the pagans that exist today are not the lineal descendants of real
>> pagans, they are hippies who bought into some romantic nonsense invented
>> in the nineteenth century so they don't own it either. The great
>
> You think you know it all, but you don't, pagans are just as pagan
> today as they always was. Then Hippies and such do not have gods to
> worship, they worship themselves and think they have the freedom from
> all things but in the end are just sorrowful sinners as are the
> atheist.
But I bet they have a happier time than you do. They don't have to pretend
to be happy or be seen as a sinner.
>
>> midwinter festival has always been the people's festival and it means
as
>> much or as little as the people want it to mean. Christ is not the
>> reason for the season. The season is the reason for the festival and
>> Christianity is a jealous racket that steals and subverts everything
it
>> cannot ban.
>
> To the believer Christ IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON! It doesn't matter
> what a pagan or atheist think, as it has nothing to do with
> unbelievers. Midwinter, nowinter, etc, mean nothing and has nothing
> to do with God or Christmas. Then you do have a point Christmas has
> been made by the public a racket and subverts everything. The big fat
> man in the red suit really has nothing to do with Christmas, I dare say
> the atheist store keeper just loves it and wants to cash in on anything
> he can, which makes Christmas a mockery today.
>
For most children these days it is the little baby in the stable that
has nothing to do with the real spirit of Christmas.
Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all men also has nothing to do with Jesus.
Religion divides people. A happy secular Christmas unites them.
>
>> Christianity spawns many killjoys and they have tried to ban Christmas
>> on several occasions. They have always failed. The people want to
>> celebrate and they do. The urge to celebrate with fires, feasting,
>> decorations, family, friends, revelry and of course copious quantities
>> of alcohol has nothing to do with the specious arguments propounded
from
>> pulpits. People celebrate Christmas, the great winter festival, not
the
>> birth of lickle baby Jesus among the baa-lambs.
>
> You do have a point here, the world non-christians have made a dollar
> on the day, and get drunk having fun, but care nothing about the Christ
> or the true meaning of Christmas.
The true spirit of Christmas is the fun and the goodwill,
not dwelling on the mythical significance of something that if it happened
at all was nothing like the way it is portrayed.
The Jesus story spoils Christmas, divides people, gives people a reason
to sneer and jeer. Keep that stuff where it belongs, in churches attended
by consenting adults and drop the nonsense about pretending that Santa
Claus is real and Christmas will be more fun for everybody.
If your explanation of why we should be good is so convincing why do
you have to cram it into children before their critical faculties develop?
Manners, ethics, marriage, family life and morals don't require lies
to bolster and justify them, surely? They don't in my family.
>
> Sorry got to run, it almost time for the family to join in our
> Chirstmas dinner with the children and such to thank God that Christ
> did come so all my enjoy the day, even the atheist the Jew the Musilm
> even the pagans.
>
> God bless, and He does them that love Him.
>
> Raymond Knapp
>
> Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all on earth.
>
Including secularists?
By the way the name of our planet is a proper noun: Earth. Every truck
stop, creek, hillock and ghost town demands and receives a capital letter
so please extend the same courtesy to our home planet.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
>
> Certianly he does, people have done it for ages, atheists like to try
> to tell Christians what they believe too (although it's rare to find
> two Christians who believe exactly the same things).
>
>
> The shoes on the other foot, pagans used to call Christian "atheists"
> because we believe in only one Diety...which is not true either, we
> believe all the gods exist, Paul told us they do, but we worship only
> One.
What makes Paul an authority, his own claim to have seen an image of
Jesus? Why does that differ from the claims of Joseph Smith, Mohamed,
David Koresh, Sun Myung Moon or Adolf Hitler?
>
> They may not understand "your" definition, but your definition
is
> historically new, as an analogy, you might call the other atheists
> "Traditional atheists" and the definition atheists put forth in
these
> groups, you could call "Fundamentalist atheism."
The word and the concept of atheism predates the melding of Hebrew tribal
culture with European civilization. Atheism has always implied the denial
of all and any gods. The word for somebody who doesn't believe in your
specific religion is infidel. I am not an infidel, I do not doubt your
god in particular. I don't discriminate, I treat all gods as the same
thing: inventions of the human imagination.
>
>> There are thousands of non-existent gods, your god is not an exception.
>
> There you go making unfounded assertions.
>
> The word "god," and the words it is used to translate, include
not
> only dieties, angels (a word meaning "messenger"), and idols,
but also
> is applied to kings and warriors - therefore:
>
> number 1: you have no proof there are no
dieties (remember, you made
> the assertion) and
> number 2: there certainly is proof that there are messengers,
> statues, kings and warriors in the world, thus there is proof that
> thousands of gods do exist.
>
> Terrell
What are dieties? They sound like an inferior low calorie equivalent
of Pringles.
Deity: a postulated preternatural being.
Have I ever claimed I can prove there are no gods? Of course not. I
stated my beliefs. If you want to prove me wrong you demonstrate that
some gods exist. Gods have been defined in such a way that they will
not be able to be disproved. When gods are challenged they seem to hide.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
How many people who now get AIDS are obeying all
the teachings of the Church? In Sub-Saharan (a weasel word meaning
black) Africa HIV is being spread principally by men being promiscuous
or using prostitutes. Many of the victims of AIDS are women who
have been faithful, and their children who are orphaned. Promiscuity
and using prostitutes has been against the teachings of the Church
since before they stitched the back cover on the Bible. Why assume
that men will start obeying a rule they have been systematically
breaking for centuries? If a fear of eternal damnation in hell
(which many of these men do believe in) is not keeping them chaste
why assume that a stiff talking-to by a priest will make a difference
now?
No religious or governmental regime has ever managed to get
men to stop using prostitutes, even when the pox was killing
men and women in the most gruesome ways imaginable right in front
of them. Expecting anything different to happen now is simply
absurd and an abdication of responsibility. Preaching a message
and praying that it is obeyed despite knowing that such an eventuality
is entirely unprecedented in the history of our species in this
case amounts to mass murder, or perhaps Mass murder. |
 |
The only way to tackle this issue responsibly is to recognise that preaching
to people isn't going to stop men from using prostitutes. The use of
prostitutes will never be eliminated but efforts can be made to reduce
the demand for them, to arrange the labour market in such a way as it
reduces the number of men living apart from their wives, to make the
use of prostitutes less socially acceptable and to give the women more
alternative opportunities. Then, accepting that prostitution will happen
no matter what you say or do damage limitation is essential and this
should be in the form of condoms. Using prostitutes is not a legitimate
form of procreation for men or gods. Allowing and indeed encouraging
the use of condoms outside marriage, in prostitution, adultery and fornication
has to be the way. If fornication is a sin, fornication without taking
precautions against sexually transmitted diseases and the begetting of
unwanted bastards is surely a worse form of it.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
>> There had long been, and still is, a pagan
celebration on the solstice
>> (usually December 21). The early Christian church, in its efforts to
try
>> to supplaint everyone and everything non-Christian, put their own holiday
>> near the date.
>>
>> A logical examination, it has been said many times, makes the assumption
>> that December 25th is Jesus' birthday completely fall apart, however.
>> Mainly the fact that shepherd most certainly did NOT watch their flocks
at
>> night at that time of year!
>>
>> Brad
>
> Is Christianity based mo more myths like this?
>
The entire edifice is a myth, and transparently so. You only have to
allow yourself your usual sceptical observer's toolkit, you know, intellectual
tools you use on statements your boss, or Osama Bin Laden or the politicians
or political commentators you love to hate make, or indeed the scepticism
you already use on religions you don't want to believe in.
Faith gives bullshit a Teflon coating and
a diamond-hard shine. You just have to allow your brain not to kick in
with the ready-made platitudes and be ready as it slams those guilt torpedoes
into your kidneys when you do.
If you look at your own religion as if it was the religion of some foreign
and/or long-dead fools you will see a lot more there than you have ever
noticed before. The ancient Hebrews (not your tribe I'll bet) had ancient
tribal myths which look similar to tribal myths of other tribes and yet
they are all fundamentally incompatible as all claim on the basis of
simply being the statements of the revered ancestors, to be true. You
are aren't even being cowed by your own ancestors, who the church has
taught you to revile as nasty heathens. How sad is that? Your church
has stolen your culture and taught you to despise it and honour one that
is just as nasty and bloodthirsty and mistaken but is foreign.
The tribes that the Christian Church has managed to thoroughly stomp
on have childish myths nobody takes seriously, tribal myths of tribes
the Church hasn't managed to crush apparently have to be given lip service
and you have to pretend they are really worshipping the same same god,
even if they worship one with a lot more bodies and arms than the one
you're used to.
Anybody who fancies himself as a Christian scholar owes it to himself
to study the religious ideas of Europe and the Middle East in the time
since Alexander, to see Christianity in context rather than to assume
that the rest of the world was full of savages. Seen in that context
Christianity looks like an apple tree in a fruit orchard whereas the
church would like you to see it as an apple tree in a thorn thicket.
That whole Hellenic world was awash with godmen who were born of virgins,
did miracles, told parables, cured lepers, raised the dead, told stories
of catching great hauls of fish whose numbers were significant to those
with eyes to see and ears to hear. These godmen redeemed the world by
their unjustified persecution and deaths, visited and returned from the
underworld and were followed by people who ate symbolic meals of bread
and wine and baptised each other with water and wind or sometimes fire.
Of course the main difference is that in most of the religions of that
time only the rubes were expected to believe the stories were literally
true. The priests and the inner circle were much too smart for this.
They had ears to hear and eyes to see. The Roman Church burned away whatever
inner mysteries Christianity had developed in its first few centuries.
Burned away as in burned the books and the authors and the readers and
those who passed by a little too slowly and might have heard something
that might have been profound, but probably wasn't.
Seek out information for yourself. Read book about this period. Finding
fair-minded authors who are interested in this period is rare, most are
obsessed with proving Christianity right or wrong, but a few can be found
that are impartial enough to be worth reading. The trick is to research
what else they write about, if they only write about issues directly
connected with Christianity and/or Judaism you should dismiss them as
likely to be biased. People with fair and enquiring minds would also
show an interest in the other cultures and religions of the time.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
sinner_saint wrote:
> I have seen objective proof of God in my short life and still you do
> not believe. What would it take for you to believe? What if I healed a
> blind man, would you then believe?
>
Do we get to select the blind man? Assuming you say yes I ask you to
cure David Blunkett. Not
because he deserves a miracle cure but simply because if he did have
a miracle cure it would rapidly become public knowledge
Is tomorrow a good day for you? I'm sure David would be cool with that.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
>> What is the deal with Scientology and
Mormonism? Are these religions
>> meant to be a joke? Run of the mill Xtianity wasn't ridiculous enough?
>
> remember it's easier to convince others of something if you truly
> believe it yourself...and it's likely that the founders of S&M were
> indeed loony enough to believe they were spouting "truth"....not
only
> are there gullible people on the recieving end of religion, but also on
> the spouting end of it.
>
It doesn't matter whether the first person in the chain (Joseph Smith,
L Ron Hubbard, Saint Paul etc.)
believes in it or not. What matters is whether the second generation
believe it. Naturally charlatan/nutcase founder is going to appoint the
brightest most capable person who believes his bullshit fully as his
successor, appointing somebody who knows it to be bullshit would be a
sure recipe for failure.
I don't know whether Joseph Smith believed his nonsense or not but I
would be gobsmacked if the leaders of the Mormon church in 1900 and since
believed that the tales they were telling were simply made up. You don't
get promoted in any organization unless you believe its core values and
story.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
> I've been looking for a genderless word for God.
How about Master Intelligence?
>
Mistress intelligence?
Words have gender gods have sex. (See Greek statuary for details)
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
> Turn away from the Rebellion.
> The gospel does not change.
> The Lord clearly showed
> the Biblical way of salvation
> thru the Protestant Reformers.
> We are saved by placing ALL our trust
> on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation.
> The true gospel will not cause you
> to place any trust whatsoever
> no matter how small that may seem
> in yourself, your resolve, your efforts,
> or your church for your salvation.
>
The Protestant Reformers? Right. So God tells the Old Testament
Prophets what the score is and they don't get it right so he rapes* a
virgin and becomes flesh so men can kill him to placate his own wrath
against them. Then he gets gospel writers to write gospels. Then he gets
a committee of the Church of Rome to throw out most of them and for good
measure burn them and those holding them. He then tells his Church to
slam the back cover shut on the Bible, for all time. But still people
get it wrong so he has to inspire Protestant Reformers. With capital
letters.
One thing you have to conclude about this God dude, he isn't omniscient,
omnipotent or unchanging, is he? If he was unchanging he wouldn't have
changed from demanding lots of burnt goats and lots of slaughter to the
wishy-washy character Jesus refers to. He wouldn't have changed from
demanding adulterers stoned to "his" new policy of getting
them to divorce and declare themselves born again and forgiven.
He doesn't seem to very good at picking prophets and clergy, does he?
How can the Church of Rome get it right over the choice of books of the
Bible then get it wrong about most of the stuff since then? That doesn't
make sense. If God can work through His Church at one time why not for
all time? Why does God or the Holy Spirit find his true audience in smaller
and smaller splits off the Protestant main channel? It's like a mighty
river meandering around and then splitting off into smaller and smaller
channels in a delta, or is it going to terminate in a foetid swamp?
In two hundred years there may be a couple of million churches each
with a dozen members, each convinced that only their congregation is
following the one and only True Path to the One True God and they are
the only people who are saved and the only people who can be moral.
God has been seen fighting for and against every European and American
power, for and against slavery, for and against civil rights, for and
against homosexual rights, for and against the ecological movement, for
and against every sporting club, side or team. I struggle to think of
any cause that he has not been drafted in to support, oppose or often
both.
And no doubt you're sure you're on his side.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
* If a teacher having an affair with a student otherwise old enough
to give consent is seen as as abuse of the unequal power relationship,
as is sex between a human and an animal how can a god and a mortal
having sex under any circumstances be anything other than rape?
At any time we may hear that the bird flu virus
has mutated and become a threat to humans, with the possibility of
vulnerable people failing to survive it.
But what produces this deadly mutation? Does it
have the hand of God behind it, making it an example of intelligent
design, or is it a random mutation as the virus evolves? Or is there
a third explanation?
For me the answer is simple, even though I don't
know the biological processes involved: the virus evolves. Its effect
on humans is just an unlucky outcome.
VIrusses quicky mutate, because they are not
cells. Cells are much more stable.
Do you have AAAAAANYYYYYYYYY prove, that virusses,
sponanously change into cells and become more complex live-forms?
(Except from infecting existing cells and merging
with the existing DNA of cells )
Has anybody claimed viruses spontaneously change into cells?
A bird flu virus could mutate spontaneously into a form that could pass
from human to human, it could exchange genetic material with a flu virus
which is already endemic in humans or a different virus could become
either more deadly or more contagious or even both. Or none of the above
could happen this decade. But it is a virtual certainty that at some
stage a new deadly virus will sweep across the planet with the potential
to kill large numbers of people. It is overdue, we have been lucky for
longer than we have a right to expect.
New diseases do spring up from time to time. The most deadly of diseases
seem to spring out of nowhere, kill millions who are susceptible and
then vanish. Killing the host is a bad strategy for a disease, any disease
which kills most of those who contact it is likely to be short lived.
Over time diseases tend to become less severe. Just think about syphilis,
when the (insert name of hated enemy nation here) pox first emerged it
killed people horribly with hideous deformities. By the nineteenth century
a syphilis infection could be carried for years without too many obvious
signs and it was only in the final stages when the victim went mad that
people were sure they had it. Nowadays syphilis is even less acute, which
means it is far more likely to be spread to the unwary than a disease
that causes the flesh to fall from the body within months of the first
infection.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
One of my cow-orkers thinks the "Blue Laws" (no
stores open on Sundays, period) need to be reinstated and enforced
because of the rampant secularism in this country.
He doesn't even go to church; it's mostly because
he doesn't want to work on Sundays.
Why should religious idiots be the only people who get to have a proper
day off with everybody else each week?
I have never had a job which didn't involve 7 day a week working but
likewise Sunday has always been a day of shorter hours. That's great.
In Britain most shops are limited to 6 hours of trading on Sundays, a
nice happy medium between the convenience of weekend shopping and retail
workers having some time at home with the whole family.
Keep Sunday special, but not that special.
I once spent a week in Wales one Sunday. Everything was shut: shops,
pubs, thighs, everything. Now there's dull for you boyo.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
ministernotes@yahoo.com wrote:
> ...You talk about bullshit religious stories.
Well Mr Martin Willett,
> many
> of us realize that our time spent here upon earth with Satan and his
> bottom dweller followers---will be the dumbest time or existence to
> befall
> upon us.
>
> Just about the only thing that makes life here upon earth with your
> kind
> worth it, is having children and seeing them grow.
>
> Now Mr Martin Willett dot org, why don't you and your people simply go
> and be unto yourselves, simply go somewhere where you all can dwell
> according to your own laws, and therefore we would no longer have to
> listen to your kind crying about the time of your graves...
>
There is nowhere to go that is habitable and isn't inhabited. Why should
we go anywhere? Leaving home and stealing somebody else's land isn't
done these days. It isn't moral. It never was. It is evil.
I will stay right where I am, which probably isn't where you assume
me to be.
> http://www.ministernotes.com
Is that website or a "How to spot bad web design" example
page?
>
> There was a day that included Grace be unto all men, but then now it
> be changed to ignorance unto all men, all affliction is preferred,
> still come
> together to hear the word, but remember that evil appeared and cut your
>
> heart and that is all you have heard, so we all know the Bible and its
> word,
> perhaps my calling is to establish your body spiritually.
>
>
> When you really think about it, we all dwell here in the body or flesh,
> and we
> all know-- that are of age to know that we won't always have our
> bodies...
>
I do not dwell in my flesh. I am my flesh. You are your flesh. The idea
that the universe is made up of two fundamentally different sorts of
stuff is so old hat and does not fit the evidence.
Evil is an adjective. There is no such material as evil. There is no
force of evil. Adjectives don't need supernatural anthropomorphic personifications
in order to exist. There no more needs be a force for evil than there
need be a force for lilac or beige or brittle or limp. The same goes
for morality and goodness. Such things will exist in any complicated
world whether somebody sets about specifying, designing or creating them
or not.
Capital letters don't scare me. Neither do old myths told by Bronze
Age shysters and imposed on my ancestors by force. I am free. I have
the power to think for myself and your demons and sky pixies and burning
sulphurous pits have no hold on me.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
What do you call people who died for a lost cause? Name a martyr who
stood up to the Christian steamroller, anywhere.
How many kamikaze do you think Hirohito knew by name? What about his
son?
What do you call people that just die?
How does dying prove anything?
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
> Moorish Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance?
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Recent research paints a new picture of the debt that we owe to
> Arabic/Islamic mathematics. Certainly many of the ideas which were
> previously thought to have been brilliant new conceptions due to
> European mathematicians of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth
> centuries are now known to have been developed by Arabic/Islamic
> mathematicians around four centuries earlier. In many respects the
> mathematics studied today is far closer in style to that of the
> Moorish/Islamic contribution than to that of the Greeks.
>
> Link below contains a detailed list of Moorish mathematicians and their
> contributions.
> http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Arabs.html
What about the link to great Moorish achievements in engineering and
industry?
Great mathematics, wonderful tools, so sharp, so clean - so
utterly unused.
http://mwillett.org/atheism/islamicgoldenage.htm
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
>
>> How do Christians manage to get away with it? They claim snowflakes
>> and kittens are too complicated to exist by themselves and so must
>> have a designer, an argument that cannot be dismissed as unreasonable,
>> it is a possibility that cannot simply be written off out of hand.
>> When atheists do dismiss all possibilities and cut off discussions
>> they can appear dogmatic and closed minded.
Then do not dismiss the possibilities out of hand, and
do not cut off discussions. Simply tell the truth: that there is no evidence
for these things and therefore no reason to believe in them.
You will, obviously, be given the stock response
that there is no evidence AGAINST these things either. This, of course,
is true - but it does not affect your reasoned decision not to believe.
At this point, you can simply point out - politely, ideally - that
the conversation has run its course and that there is nothing more
to be said. Because there *is* nothing more to be said: one who does
not believe cannot be made to believe - but one who DOES believe sees
evidence everywhere, and could not be persuaded that it is not there.
Nothing here requires confrontation, or aggression,
or sarcasm, or abuse, or preaching and sermonising either point of
view - which is how most conversations about religion end up when they
continue on past this point (and I do not pretend that I have not been
involved in a fair few of them myself).
>> I do not believe in a
>> creator or intelligent designer, but it is a hypothesis that I do not
>> discard as being utterly impossible, it deserves to be considered and
>> passed down to future generations as an educational footnote along
>> with the Loch Ness Monster, flying saucers and the Yeti as something
>> unlikely to be true, awaiting some reasonable evidence. Giving it more
>> than five minutes of classroom discussion in a student's entire
>> educational career is utterly ridiculous, as absurd as having a school
>> trip to find Atlantis.
Very reasonable. I would go further, though, in
that - barring those choosing to study comparative religion (religion
being a major part of human history and therefore being worthy of study)
- even five minutes is too much. I would not expect a school to teach
any child of mine about the Loch Ness Monster.
>> Maybe there is a designer of the universe, I don't believe
it but I am
>> not arrogant enough to say it cannot be true why should anybody expect
>> such a force to make itself imperfectly known to particular people all
>> in historical connection with each other? Why should the gift of the
ability to hear God only develop in people who have already been
>> taught who God is? How come Buddhist monks, Hindu fakirs or whirling
>> dervishes never tune in to Jesus but alcoholic deadbeat sons of
>> Republican politicians do?
>>
>> How come the face of Mary appears in tortillas but not chapattis?
Who is to say that any of these are genuine religious
experiences? And, moreover, who is to say that rejecting these as genuine
religious experiences proves there is no God or gods?
Of course none of them are genuine religious experiences, don't be silly.
>> Tribal people all over the world the world have myths which
everybody knows are fictional
An important point about 'myth': myths are not
truth, and in most cultures were never intended to be viewed as truth.
They are simply stories that *contain* truth - such as morality tales.
However, it is a modern tendency to assume that
'not true' necessarily means 'a lie'. Ancient peoples may not have
viewed 'myth' in quite such a black-or-white way.
Well then they are wrong. A story that feel like it is true or should
be true or illustrates truth better than truth itself is still a lie.
Truth needs no myths and any form of parable-telling or myth weaving
that leads the audience to treat the myth or parable as in any way true
is damaging.
Even fiction that sets out to tell a moral story can be damaging. "It
makes you think, doesn't it?" is not a good enough excuse to condone
deliberate falsehoods. I recently saw my daughter perform in a play of
To Kill a Mockingbird and it was deeply moving, but it was fiction, the
character of Tom Robinson was written to appear solid and simple, Bob
Ewell was written to be a cardboard cut-out racist. It made me think
alright, but it made me think what I was meant to think. Real life doesn't
do that. Real life has no scriptwriter and no agenda.
In contrast many religious stories are made up in every single detail,
with nowhere near as well written or rounded characters and people are
told to believe them literally. It is literalism that is the biggest
curse the Hebrew people have inflicted on the world.
>> Why do so many people assume that if the world they see could
be considered the work of an Intelligent Designer that automatically
>> there is only one candidate for that job?
If we assume for a moment that there is a Creator,
then the person who created the universe was The Person Who Created
The Universe. There is no other candidate - but that is all that can
be said. After that, it is ALL speculation, Christian or not.
Quite. That's the Leap of Faith they
make. They leap from 'let us posit a creator with intelligence' to and
he is obviously the God our ancestors were told to believe in, wasn't
he? There is no logical justification for that leap at all. If the universe
requires a designer (I don't believe it does) all we can say about that
designer is that he/she/it/they must be significantly smarter than any
people we know about.
There is no reason to assume that the putative designer has a plan for
us or cares about our lives, will grant us eternal life, needs our belief,
communicated to long dead old men, has any laws for us or is even still
around still less can we deduce which tribe if any he really wants to
win in a genocidal battle in the Levant.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
>>> Who is to say that any of these are
genuine religious experiences? And, moreover, who is to say that rejecting
these as genuine
>>> religious experiences proves there is no God or gods?
>>>
>> Of course none of them are genuine religious experiences,
don't be
>> silly.
>
> So you say - those who experience them might well
disagree with you. But the question remains: even if we dismiss any such experience,
does that show that there can be no God or gods?
Gods cannot be disproved. You can show they are self-contradictory propositions
but a god that created the universe can ceate logic in his own image
too so even that is futile. You can demand that a particular god smites
you (which I have done) http://mwillett.org/SMITECAM.htm and when he
doesn't that apparently proves he is real and either pissed off but patient
or forgiving. If you challenge other gods that "the real one" is
meant to be jealous of to smite you then somehow exactly the same lack
of evidence proves that the other god doesn't exist and that the real
one is still patient or forgiving. It seems the point of evidence is
to confirm that the faithful are right, not that they need it.
>
> As I said, a believer will invariably reply to the true statement that there
is no proof for God by pointing out that there is no proof against God. I would
expect a person's willingness to accept that as reasonable or to reject it as
irrational to bear a strong relationship to their tendency to be religious.
>
There is no proof against the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
or the Invisible Pink Unicorn either. While we know who made them up,
when and why apparently that isn't seen as a knockdown argument against
the Book of Mormon or the tosh invented by L Ron Hubbard, still less
about the religions invented by St Paul or Muhammad.
>> Well then they are wrong. A story that feel like it is true
or should
>> be true or illustrates truth better than truth itself is still a lie.
>> Truth needs no myths and any form of parable-telling or myth weaving
>> that leads the audience to treat the myth or parable as in any way
>> true is damaging.
>
> As I said, in our culture, 'not true' is invariably considered to equal
'lie'.
>
> However, even in our culture, there are myths that serve us in positive
ways, even though they are not necessarily true. Books, films, TV programmes,
plays and drama... These things can be thoughtful and thought-provoking - but
they are not necessarily 'true'. Where they are fiction, we recognise them as
such, and, if we take lessons from them, we take them in the appropriate context.
They are simply food for thought, and not necessarily instructions as to how
we should live.
>
> Unless they are based on true events (and even then, they are usually fairly
loose interpretations), these productions are not intended to be taken by their
audience as being literally true - but neither, I believe, were most myths. I
hesitate to use the perfectly good word 'parable', because I fear it will be
jumped on as 'evidence' that I am trying to preach a Christian message - but
the point remains that, sometimes, a story can simply be an illustration of a
moral message, or a challenge to think about something.
>
>
>> Even fiction that sets out to tell a moral story can be damaging. "It
makes you think, doesn't it?" is not a good enough excuse to condone deliberate
falsehoods. I recently saw my daughter perform in a play of
>> To Kill a Mockingbird and it was deeply moving, but it was fiction,
>> the character of Tom Robinson was written to appear solid and simple,
>> Bob Ewell was written to be a cardboard cut-out racist. It made me
>> think alright, but it made me think what I was meant to think. Real
>> life doesn't do that. Real life has no scriptwriter and no agenda.
>
> But if the play made you think, and if you found it moving (not to mention
that, hopefully, you were proud of your daughter), then it served a purpose.
It does not matter whether you think you thought what the scriptwriter or the
director intended for you to think. The same can be said of all art: certainly
the artist may have a specific aim in mind when creating it - but what message
the audience might take from it is not under the artist's control. But that does
not negate the value of the art - but the artist themselves might judge their
success or failure on whether or not their audience received the message they
were trying to transmit.
Writers deliberately try to make a particular point by the way they
tell it and whose angle they use to describe what happens. Have you ever
seen the film Entrapment? Imagine how easily it would have been possible
to retell and re-shoot that story so you detested those arrogant and
selfish thieves rather than look upon them as glamorous adventurers.
Just imagine retelling the old testament in such a way as it portray
the ancient Hebrews as a bunch of deceitful bloodthirsty superstitious
and genocidal primitive savages who didn't even know how to smelt iron.
Hang on, hasn't somebody done that already?
>
> Even in myth, as societies change, we might not necessarily see the merit
in the values that the stories describe - but even so, we can acknowledge their
significance to societies before us, and perhaps we may still gain *something*
from reading them.
>
>
>> In contrast many religious stories are made up in every
single detail,
>> with nowhere near as well written or rounded characters and people are
>> told to believe them literally. It is literalism that is the biggest
curse the Hebrew people have inflicted on the world.
>
> I would agree - inappropriate literalism is the problem with religion. The
fact that some people believe in things that you or I might not believe is *not*
a problem in most cases. Even some literalism is relatively harmless: a person
who believes in the intelligent creation of the universe does nothing wrong,
and causes no difficulty for anyone (except possibly themselves). But a person
who takes literally Bible commands to coerce others into that belief *does* cause
trouble, and *should* be opposed.
>
> Condemning someone purely because they believe in something we do not believe
in would be equally unjust, and should also be opposed.
Believing that the entire universe was made for the benefit of man and
that the end of the world (a good thing, apparently) was due any day
now has to be seen as a bad thing for the rest of the world, especially
when the man with his finger on the 'nookular' button believes that corrosive
shit.
>> Quite. That's the Leap of Faith they make. They leap from
'let us
>> posit a creator with intelligence' to and he is obviously the God our
ancestors were told to believe in, wasn't he? There is no logical justification
for that leap at all.
>
> No, that is true - but then religion, like love, is something that logic
cannot necessarily tackle adequately.
Love can be explained very easily with logic. Read How the Mind
Works by Steven Pinker. Love is no mystical paradox it makes perfect
rational sense to commit to a partner to an irrational degree as being
the best way to secure the future of families in stressful times.
And understanding how it works doesn't stop it working.
>> If the universe requires a designer (I don't believe it does)
>
> And I do not believe that it *requires* one or that it has one - but I cannot
see that as *evidence* that it does not have one.
>
>
>> all we can say about that designer
>> is that he/she/it/they must be significantly smarter than any people
>> we know about.
>
> Undoubtedly.
And a designer smarter than we are is a significantly harder thing to
explain than the existence of a wonderful but simple universe following
its own laws. Before there was space, time, energy or matter there was,
well, a human-like entity with wisdom without experience and a need to
create a universe full of people who had to believe in him so he could
reward or torture them at the end of their brief lives. That is not an
explanation, it's a cosmic-scale bad joke.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
>> Jesus is either an avatar of a god or he is an ancient dead
foreign man thoroughly enmeshed in myth. We really don't need to make
a choice on that issue in order to decide that doing what he would do
is probably not the best possible guide to sensible or moral behaviour:
we are neither gods, nor dead, nor myths, nor founders of a new religion.
Well, you're certainly not a god, not dead, not a myth,
nor founder of a new religion. But one day you WILL be dead.
Wrong I'm afraid. I am the founder of a new religion. OK, I was bored,
these things happen.
http://mwillett.org/church-of-ultimate-naked-truth.htm
You have up until that moment to change your position.
Best of luck.
Why do you assume I give any of your beliefs a special place in my mind?
You poor deluded man. I am not afraid of your bogeyman. I do not believe
in disembodied souls. I have no silly superstitious beliefs at all. You
and your hellfire to me are as scary as a six year old girl with plastic
fangs. You just look faintly ridiculous.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
>> There are people who don't know anything about the Hebrew
tribal god and his nemesis
The Devil is not the nemesis of the 'Hebrew tribal god'.
The Devil is a New Testament concept. The Old Testament God was capable
of His own evil and did not require a devil.
Wasn't the jealous Hebrew god with the fried goat fetish meant to be
the father of Jesus?
Of course in the beginning there is no devil or Satan or Lucifer or
Beelzebub or whatever you want to call him, just a snake which could
talk that God pulled the legs off. The unchanging God changes all the
time. He could be elsewhere in the Garden and not notice the original
sin happening but now apparently he can see into the minds of a hundred
million boys simultaneously and knows what they're thinking. That's a
bit inconsistent. He can do anything, create galaxies (or the illusion
of galaxies) one day and then a thousand years later he can't defeat
chariots of iron.
He told people to stone adulterers and Sabbath breakers to death one
century and now he calls lesbians to be priests. It's almost as if God
changes according to the way that people think. Maybe one day people
won't think about him at all.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
Any kid who read Kipling's Just-So stories should recognise
what this is: How the Leopard Got his Spots, How the Snake Lost his Legs,
etc.
Most cultures are sensible about their myths, it is Hebrew culture that
became excessively and perversely literal. What use is a myth when people
try to believe it is history or science? Believing myth as literally
true is a tremendous intellectual own-goal, it is hardly surprising that
when Christianity arrived in Rome the Empire ground to a halt within
a single lifetime and civilization went into a thousand year decline
we are still paying the price for.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
The idea of the Serpent being Satan is retrospective
continuity. I understand that the serpent or snake was a very important
symbol in Mesopotamian mythology, and finds his way into Genesis from
older stories.
Many people have difficulty with the obvious truth that Genesis was
a writing down (once they had the technology) of pre-existing myths and
stories which have been influenced by other stories in the same region.
Of course originally the serpent was just a talking animal, and nobody
questions why animals could talk in stories of the ancestor's times.
People are always willing to believe that different rules of physics,
chemistry, biology and human emotion existed if you are prepared to go
back more than a couple of hundred years. Later the serpent doesn't fit
with the new philosophies so he is glossed over (gloss: verb, to write
a glossary, twisting the interpretation of a pre-existing text) to appear
to be the nemesis of Yahweh: Satan the evil almost-but-quite god who
has power to make those who don't believe in the right god do evil.
>> Wasn't the jealous Hebrew god with the fried goat fetish meant to be
the father of Jesus?
>
> Do you really expect an honest conversation
> when all you show is hate?
What do you expect me to show, respect? I will respect the religious
when they stop calling me a hell-bound heathen sinner, a kafir, a fool
or a dupe of their god's pet. When religious people respect atheism and
atheists then I will respect them in equal measure.
Religion is just a hobby. It does not deserve any more respect or legal
protection than sky-diving or stamp collecting. When it is laughable
I will laugh.
I do not hate believers just the lies they tell to each other, especially
those lies they tell about those people who do not share their delusions.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
> Jesus was a rebellious Jew who was given the mission
to show us the
> real truth, the real way, and the real life in the real God who is all
> good and never evil. If you can look at his life from this bigger
> picture, you would not make those stupid remarks. The old Jewish way
> was the way of blood sacrifice. It was wrong and evil. It had nothing
> to do with the living God, but everything to do with the god of death
> and destruction - the Devil in disguise.
Wasn't Jesus meant to have been the blood sacrifice that atoned for
all the sins of man committed and yet to be committed? Utter tosh. A
god sacrifices an avatar of himself (to himself?) in order to stop himself
punishing us for the sins we have committed and he can foresee us committing.
Please feel free to babble like a baboon at this point.
The Christian story does not even begin to make sense.
Sacrificing animals to a sky god makes no sense. That unchanging sky
god [is] then getting bored of these sacrifices doesn't make sense. Him
allowing himself to be killed as a sacrifice to end all sacrifices, as
he doesn't like them any more is simply insane.
Christianity has only ever been transmitted from rich, advanced and
militarily powerful nations to weak and primitive nations. Is it any
bloody wonder that it has never managed to flow against the tide of human
history? Could you imagine turning up as a poor, shoeless and stinking
monk in the court of a great emperor and getting your "good news" listened
to?
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
>> Hating something you don't believe exists is meaningless.
>
> Perhaps you could convince 'SheBlewHim' of that. He claims he does not believe
in the God he so theatrically hates.
I never have been able to get my head around people like that. I don't
believe in souls, spirits or gods, I know (as much as I ever know anything)
that they have all been invented. Hating Yahweh, Baal or Kali makes as
much sense as hating Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Emperor Palpatine or Count
Dracula. If they were real deciding whether I hated them would be appropriate,
as they are not I just enjoy the drama. Not that the Bible is great literature
or a thumping good story, even by the modest standards of George Lucas
and Ian Fleming.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
No, it wasn't me that cried foul. I'm a big boy, I can take it. It was
the meek and mild milksop Christian who objected to my tone. He presumably
wants to keep the shield of religious tolerance up high in front of his
face, allowing him to make a few unopposed jabs with the spear of righteous
indignation when he sees fit.
Note: there is a huge grin on face as I'm typing this, don't take it
so seriously. I don't hate Christians, I am just frustrated that I have
to share a planet with so many of them.
And my bed actually, come to that.
>> What use is a myth when people try to believe it is history
or science?
>
> Then you concede that myth can have a use, read appropriately?
It depends. If people know and fully understand that something is not
literally true but it helps illustrate a complicated and otherwise hard
to explain concept then yes it can have a value, as any simile, metaphor
or hypothetical model can. But if people literally believe there was
a Good Samaritan, an Ugly Duckling, a King Arthur or a Robin Hood then
they are wrong, there is a difference between learning from an analogy
and learning from a lie. Myths become especially corrosive when people
place the lessons learned from listening to retold lies ahead of the
direct experience of their own lives: warty-faced old women in real life
don't cook children in ovens after fattening them up on gingerbread,
at worst they smell of cabbage, mothballs and urine and burst your football
if it goes into their garden and scares their cat.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
>> Many people have difficulty with the obvious truth that Genesis
was a writing down (once they had the technology) of pre-existing myths
and stories which have been influenced by other stories in the same
>> region. Of course originally the serpent was just a talking animal,
>> and nobody questions why animals could talk in stories of the
>> ancestor's times. People are always willing to believe that different
>> rules of physics, chemistry, biology and human emotion existed if you
>> are prepared to go back more than a couple of hundred years.
Again, I suspect that you are perhaps a little
too willing to believe that people 'back then' were stupid, and believed
in talking animals. Many may have, but I suspect that for most these
myths were symbolic stories, not intended to be read as literal truth.
We have a problem with this idea today because,
from a modern point of view, if it says "he said" or "she
did" and it does not have credits at either end of it, or at least
a set of curtains to cover scene changes, we seem to assume it must
be intended as factual.
Of course they were not believed as literally true, the same as the
tales told by scout leaders around camp-fires are not believed as literally
true today although there are no obvious clues that they are to be taken
as fictional. Most people are plenty smart enough to get the picture
and who cares about the simpletons or has the energy to explain it to
them? Most people know the difference between history, myth (ancient,
modern, traditional, folk or urban), fiction, metaphor and simile. Always
have done too. Except, apparently, Jews and Christians. Why is this?
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
>> Wasn't Jesus meant to have been the blood sacrifice that atoned
for all the sins of man committed and yet to be committed?
>
> No he was not. Since Abraham God had been trying to teach
> the people not to kill their own children as a sacrifice to God.
>
>
But Abraham wasn't the last one, was he?
What about Exodus 22:29
Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and
of thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me.
Numbers 31:25-29
And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Take the sum of the prey
that was taken, both of man and of beast, thou, and Eleazar the priest,
and the chief fathers of the congregation: And divide the prey into
two parts; between them that took the war upon them, who went out to
battle, and between all the congregation: And levy a tribute unto the
Lord of the men of war which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred,
both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the
sheep: Take it of their half, and give it unto Eleazar the priest,
for an heave offering of the LORD.
Judges 11:29-40
Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah.... And Jephthah
vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver
the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever
cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in
peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD's, and I
will offer it up for a burnt offering. So Jephthah passed over unto
the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the LORD delivered
them into his hands.... And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house,
and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with
dances: and she was his only child.... And it came to pass, when he
saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou
hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me:
for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back. And
she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the
LORD, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth....
And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto
her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed.
2 Samuel 21:1, 8-9, 14
Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year
after year; and David enquired of the LORD. And the LORD answered,
It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites....
The king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she
bare unto Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Michal
the daughter of Saul ... And he delivered them into the hands of the
Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the LORD....And
after that God was intreated for the land.
1 Kings 13:2
And he cried against the altar in the word of the LORD, and said,
O altar, altar, thus saith the LORD; Behold, a child shall be born
unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer
the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's
bones shall be burnt upon thee.
2 Kings 23:20
And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there
upon the altars, and burned men's bones upon them.
That genocidal Hebrew god was a blood thirsty god whose only excuse
is the ultimate alibi: he wasn't and isn't there.
<Basso profondo voice over>
Imagine if you had an invisible friend.
Imagine he was a blood-thirsty psychopath and tyrant.
Imagine everybody you knew pretended they could see him too.
Welcome <fanfare> - to the Tribe of Israel.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
> I'm sure some people would say that telling the child the truth and
> making them cry is child abuse. But even with some afterlife belief,
> they're still gonna cry mostly likely, because they're gonna miss
> their pet or grandma or grandpa or whoever.
>
> I think it's better, like you said, that the parents go ahead and cry
> along with the child, showing them it's okay to be sad and cry. It's a
> normal and healthy part of the grieving process.
>
> The heaven myth or band-aid doesn't really help all that much from
> what I've observed when people lose loved ones. It's still painful
> even with that idea in the back of their minds.
>
And the other terrible thing about the afterlife hypothesis, getting
some jerk who doesn't know anything about the person who died speaking
at the funeral. In every funeral I have been to I start to ask myself
who has died, listening to the men in the dresses it seems the only death
that counts happened nearly two thousand years ago and nothing else matters.
It is only when the families and friends say a eulogy that you find
out about the person who has died and what they meant to other people.
The religion stuff is an insult to the dead and an insult to the intelligence
of the mourners.
--
Martin Willett
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