Mixed Nuts 08

Mixed Nuts 2008

Email from 2008

What the Bible Says About Abortion

Religious indoctrination is child abuse

Palace Admits Prince Charles is Gay

Is Sex With Animals Always Wrong?

How to Win the Lottery without buying a ticket

Meatheads, Slobs and Pencil Necked Geeks

I was reading your blog Law of Nieche when you wrote,
"That should have read You use the words "I don't know" a lot. For such an intellect you're pretty clueless.
I am not a follower of anybody. I don't do following."
That quote was in response to a reader named Mathew Greenwood. I was wondering how a person cannot be a follower. Being that, since the very beginning of our lives we are fed ideas that are not our own, and led down paths that are not trodden by our choice, but by choices of our parents and people who influence us. Consequently, people cannot be their own leaders, they are led by more followers that have been following other followers and so on and so forth. I was wondering if you could elaborate on the thought that you are not a follower.

Jesse Miller

I meant that if I go the same way as somebody else that should not be interpreted as following them, especially not as following them blindly. If I find somebody knows the way I also head that way, or just as likely I have been going that way before I discovered others also heading that way. I don't blindly copy anybody in anything and I am prepared to learn from anybody. At work I pick up tips from watching all my colleagues working, I don't model myself on anybody but I pick up good ideas wherever I find them, including in the most unlikely places. I would guess that most do more copying than innovating, but all do some of both. The exceptional people we notice do enough innovating and are eclectic and discerning enough in their copying that they are seen as worthy of particular attention.

We are not impressed by people who seem to copy without understanding and without exercising some personal input. We mark down "copy cats" as being lesser mortals but we don't go to the other extreme and regard somebody who does everything different as being better than everybody else. There is an optimum amount of conformity, but the smarter, more talented (and unfortunately also the richer) people are the greater the degree of individuality/weirdness/innovation is both expected and tolerated. This of course can go to far, nobody is allowed to use up the weirdness quota of an entire nation. Michael Jackson take note.

Everybody follows in some part of their life, or at least also goes in the same direction as other people have gone. Things can be innovations to the individual while the same as another person has done before but not copied. Certain ideas are easier than others to come up with and they can come up as new many times. I don't imagine that every time a frog has been put down the back of a sister's dress this was as a result of remembering another boy telling what a good wheeze it was. Likewise I am sure that millions of people independently have the idea that all the world's different religions can't all be right and it is not that much of a stretch to imagine that they are all in fact wrong.
--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

Arshad Peeroo wrote:

You are trying to hide the golden fruits of the Islamic Golden Age! Shame on you!

What fruits are these how did mankind benefit from them and in what way was Islam rather than the free exchange of knowledge responsible for them?

Being the dominant religion in a culture which coincidentally is open-minded towards science does not make Islam responsible for any scientific breakthroughs any more than the weather or the diet of the people in question was responsible. Did Islam itself actually make any contribution? I suggest all the advances, which have been over-hyped by guilty westerners, were actually caused by the free exchange of information helped by a common language (Arabic) and an open-minded attitude to knowledge which is not a characteristic of Islam itself. Islam can be open-minded or closed-minded, peaceful or offensively pugnacious and genocidal. Muslims can build libraries or they can dynamite religious statues and deny the facts revealed by scientific research. Any Muslim golden age happened at least as much despite Islam rather than because of it.

The golden age, if it ever really existed, ended a long time ago. Islam hasn't been where it's at scientifically for more than five centuries. No religion helps science, the best a religion can ever do is not get in the way too much and provide a common language to communicate with across a wider area than the normal remit of kings and emperors. Now the world has English, the scientific method and the modern university system Islam has absolutely nothing to offer the future of mankind except despair and needless conflict.

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org

Martin

I could not find when I googled your site the following.

First, I don't share your belief system, but with that said

As we pass the anniversary what are your opinions on the Virginia Tech murders or other murders on the college/high school scene? I mean, does it really matter in Darwin's system of Survival of the fittest?

It would seem to me if things really do not matter here and each man's opinion is right to himself, and we really only end up in the box at the end of the day, is there any reason for outrage at countries who take life for whatever reason?

It seems to me that it wouldn't matter would it? If the drunk driver is exercising his right to drink and drive and crosses the center line & takes the lives of your wife and children, it would seem to me nothing more than bad luck and in the end you're not to judge his opinions about drinking/driving because you're not any different than he? Right?

Is this what is meant by survival of the fittest?

And if in the end we just all end up in a box in the ground, why don't more folks who espouse this philosophy get on the media after reports of this stuff and let people know it really doesn't matter their loved one is dead because it was bound to happen anyways, whether by angry student, careless drinker, someone wanting sex & then taking a life or old age. What difference does it make right?

Sincerely

Mike

Survival of the fittest is the way things are, not how I want them to be. I have no more reason to excuse and justify the survival of the fittest than I or you need to excuse and justify the properties of chlorine gas, the erosive powers of the sea or the current weather. I exist because of the survival of the fittest but my existence also required the End Permian extinction crisis, the End Cretaceous extinction crisis, the Norman Conquest, the Black Death, the industrial revolution and two world wars. I don't have to think that such upheavals are A Good Thing simply because such upheavals were necessary for me to exist. I have no doubt that if any of those events had not taken place I would not be alive*. I certainly don't have to want more such upheavals in the future.

Believing that evolution has happened does not require anybody to believe that evolution is A Good Thing or something to be encouraged. A lot of atheists get this wrong too, partly because they are not as smart as they would like to think they are and partly because of Christian disinformation. I do not see evolution as something to be encouraged, promoted or gloried in. Evolution is simply a fact. There is no automatic ought from this is. Personally I would be quite happy if evolution stopped dead right now. I do not regard myself as having any duty to evolution or the future or to my genes. I will not just step aside and let a new species take over my world. I do not think I owe my genes any favours. My interests are not their interests. I am a person, a sentient being not a collection of genes. I didn't free myself from the grip of myths and gods to tie myself up up in the imaginary bounds of cunning dumb chemicals.

No matter how much you, me or anybody else would like to wish meaning into life there is no meaning. Life is what you make of it. You don't have to make your life meaningful in a way somebody else has chosen for you, whether that person is your father, your tribal elder or your god. If that doesn't seem satisfying to you the universe doesn't give a flying fuck, the universe does not exist to satisfy you. No, not even if you really believe with every fibre of your being that it does make sense and the universe was made specifically to test your soul for suitability to spend time with the creator. Personal beliefs do not change reality, either for you or for anybody else. All observation positions offer views which are equally valid but there is only one truth and belief does not change reality. Reality is not relative, it is invariant.

I can make a moral judgement between different actions. Drunk driving is wrong because it puts other people under significant risk. I would prefer to live in a world in which nobody drove drunk rather than one in which everybody did, even if that means I can't do it. It's an easy concept to grasp. I would prefer a world of nobody stealing, nobody lying and nobody killing without a very good reason. It is unreasonable to make myself an exception, it is unreasonable for anybody to be an exception. Universal rules work, they don't need an absolute law giver. Ways of getting along evolve easily between people who have had experience of getting on with other people, the more experience you have (the more civilized you are) the easier it is to develop better ways of getting along without seriously inconveniencing others. My own guiding principle, when I have the time to apply it, is utilitarianism: the greatest good to the greatest number, a principle which has no need to assume or deny any gods in order to work.

Whether we could ever have got where we are now without religion matters not one jot, we are here, we are experienced at civilization and politics and law and morals and ethics. Whether religion was a vital piece of scaffolding or a parasitic entity entwining itself around the law and morality the way right wing arseholes entwine themselves around national symbols does not matter. Religion is not now needed to give us any insights into the behaviours we should be encouraging or denigrating. We can function in a world of laws and universal rights very easily without any recourse to beliefs in superstition, magic or gods. In fact belief in magic gets in the way and causes division and dissent where none need be.

The desire to prove that atheists cannot be moral is obscene. Do you really want atheists to be immoral? Would that make you happy? You are doing your children a grave disservice by teaching them that the only reason anybody is ever good is because they believe in a magic man up in the sky who will beat the shit out of them when they get out of school if they don't behave. What happens to children given that message? They believe it! They think it makes sense. Of course they only believe part of it, not the stuff about the magic man in the sky, just the bit about not believing in that magic making them free from any moral law and therefore expected to be bad. You are setting up your children to be object lessons of how not to behave. The choice is made stark: believe in the sky pixie or go away from our nice town, dress in black, take any drugs you want, listen to loud "Satanic" music, drink blood and sacrifice virgins to the god false Darwin and go to hell. When they decide they don't believe in hell or God and you think that alone makes them evil what possible reason have they got to refrain from acting the way you have been begging them to act? Well, none that you have given them. Most atheists don't go crazy. Only a tiny handful do things which are seriously bad. Atheists are over represented among Nobel Prize winners, professors, MENSA members and billionaires but under-represented in prisons.

If you teach morality within a framework of myth and bullshit you are doing horrendous damage to the future of our species. There are sound reasons to be moral which do not rely on the spy camera in the sky and making people believe celestial justice for their own good (and to keep the buggers in line). Being moral makes you feel better about yourself, it gives you a reasonable and justified pride in your own self. Being good feels good. Being good is a reward in itself. It is not necessary for anybody to posit the existence of a god to be able to define good behaviour and to give good reasons to avoid bad behaviour. Modern laws are not based on the Ten Commandments they are based on secular values which are far more widely agreed on than any religious dogma. Murder, theft and perjury are crimes in all jurisdictions I am aware of and yet bad mouthing your mother, adultery, speaking the name of a god and seething a kid in its mother's milk and wanting a television as big as your neighbour has got are not against the law even in Alabama.

My beliefs in regard to the Virginia Tech shooting? Simple: killing people is wrong. For killing people ever to be right requires extraordinary circumstances which cannot ever exist only in the mind of the killer. Anybody who kills or tries to kill somebody for a reason which only makes sense inside their own head should be locked away to protect the public, and if that is not possible then lethal force can be used to stop them. That goes for Virginia Tech and for Old Father Abraham as well. People should be granted the (convenient fiction of) the right to life. We have a duty to ensure that people don't go around killing other people because we appreciate the benefits of living in a community in which murder is rare. Even in big cities in ugly states like Texas people are significantly safer than the vast majority of our species have ever been and we stand a much lower chance of being murdered by a member of own own species than our nearest relatives the (other) chimpanzees do. Civilization makes people safer, not religion, and in civilization religion, superstition and the belief in the soul as a defenceless hostage held by the gods to keep people fearful and toeing the line is expendable.
--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

* If the second world war didn't happen my parents might still have married but I have to consider the strong probability that their lives would have been sufficiently different for them not to have given just that sperm and that egg the chance to get together in 1962. They might have had a different child instead of me a few months earlier or later. By the same reasoning the first world war would inevitably have spread enough ripples through time by 1934 to prevent the conception of my parents even if it didn't stop both sets of grandparents meeting up and marrying. Nothing that did happen was caused to happen by the future. The future does not suck. Stercus accidit.

Erica wrote:

Uhm, since when is it manly to let a color rule your life?

Seriously. If a guy is too worried about seeming pussy-whipped or gay if he walks a dog with a pink leash, he is obviously being controlled by a color and the way his culture sees the color. Fearing a color is really pathetic.

Way to be a REAL homosexual.

Erica is usually a woman's name in my country. What does a woman know about how to be a man? Your tone comes across as patronizing to me as George W Bush telling a poor black woman what it means to be poor, black or female. You haven't a clue. Where are your scars?

Women have it easy because they have choices. There are many ways you can be a person and female, you really have to go a hell of a long way to go too far and even too far is recoverable. Being masculine in comparison is a tightrope, the slightest slip and you are punished. If you have a name which is sexually ambiguous it can be fun if you're a girl but it is a living hell for a boy. By all means call your daughter Sam or Jo or Robin, it won't cause them any trouble but if you call your son Jocelyn or Evelyn he won't thank you for it. Or Marion (we called the dog Duke) or Shirley.

To a girl the term boyish can often be a form of compliment, to a boy any suggestion of being girlish in any way is an incitement to fight.

Men don't have the same choices as women. A woman can shave her head, or have a tight cropped haircut and wear clothes deliberately tailored to fit a body of the opposite sex and still be seen as sexy. If a man, or worse, a boy, has long hair there is the constant danger of being taken for a girl, which is an excruciatingly awful thing to happen to a teenager. Shudder. Fortunately now I am too tall to face this problem very often and it would challenge the world's greatest make-up artists to make my face look more female than male. I could now wear long hair, a pony-tail, beads, even a kaftan without the risk of being taken for a woman. But I'd need to be divorced or widowed first, and I'd probably grow a beard, just to be sure.

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

First not as a christian but as a Catholic I wonder do you think it is ok to mutilate a poor young girls body in some islamic rite , someones right? Is it your peoples right to cut and destroy a girls body that was designed by God and by God alone? Do you think youcan justify what these muslim dogs do to these poor girls as holy and the works of this purely unholy muslim demon muhomad as good do you really think this is what our good and mercifull God wanted. If you think this is right and holy than you and your silly little sect and youre silly little muslim ideas will only bring you to an unholy end and the only victins are the poor girls and women you destroy not you because you are not victims but willing butchers who will and deserve to burn! May you learn your sin while suffer you nasty dogs!

Are you suffering under the delusion that I am Catholic or in favour of genital mutilation of any form? Why? I haven't exactly been reticent about declaring my beliefs.

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

Jane De Vries wrote:

Knowing that narcissist's are never effected by constructive criticism, I thought I'd say it anyway. You are an extremely insecure person, normal men are not rude, but kind. I feel sorry for you, always trying to prove yourself. I'd ask you to rewrite Lee Strobel's book in your concise way, but it would probably be so full of you, it would be a complete bore. Anyway, the Holy Spirit convicts men of their sins, opening their eyes to salvation, not you. But you probably think you're God, probably not, you are God, right? Your black & white picture looks full of evil and poison, YUK!!!!!

Your comprehension of the Bible is probably as poor as your comprehension of my words.

I am not Kush K. I have not written that article and to get my email address you will have had to ignore my statement at the bottom of this page

"Note to Christians: The above review was written By Kush K. He read the book. I have no intention of debating this book or reading it so stop sending me emails about it. OK?"

and then gone to this page which contains the lines

" Check carefully who wrote what you are responding to. The author's name should be clearly displayed at the top of the page. Only if no author is specified can you conclude that I (Martin Willett) wrote it. There is a visual clue that works across the whole site, only my words appear as black on white, other writers' words appear in different colour combinations."

which links to this page which contains this

"Lee Strobel

I have never read anything the bloke wrote, and I have no intention of starting now.

I didn't write that review. I have no intention of reading the book because I read the review.

Subject closed.

Can I be any clearer?"

and then you will have seen a reminder to go back and check again before you send anything. But you didn't. Is that because you just know what's right without ever having to check or read or think about anything?

In what way would you consider your actions to be Christian? They are typical of dozens of Christians before you who have done exactly the same: blindly hit out making spurious assertions and personal attacks and showing no evidence at all of understanding context, authorship or motivation, often combined with stinging personal attacks based upon appearance (and possibly also race). Congratulations, you do your mythical founder high praise by your actions.
--

Martin Willett

author of most of the other 699 pages at

http://mwillett.org/

You're still full of yourself. I bet you love to hear yourself talk. See how blind you are to comments regardless. A big steel plate is wrapped around your head and has effected your brain. Your picture is evil and dark. That's OK too, because you are powerless to stand against Almighty God, who has already done away with your schemes. Live life to the fullest now, because unless Jesus rules in your heart, you have no future, except on this repulsive earth. You have your reward's here. Narrow minded to say the least. You probably hate women, and love yourself, justifiable.

If you find this Earth repulsive kindly fuck off and leave it to those of us who are not expecting anything else. If you believe suicide is a sin please volunteer for the riskiest thing you can think of, how about a nude protest march on Mecca to tell them where they're going wrong? Preach the gospel there. Witness! Get yourself "martyred" as quickly as possible, please. It's what the apostles would have done.

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

Why am I not surprised by your generous poison coming out of whatever. I actually feel sorry for you. Someone with your capacities puts a dark reflection in this world. Anyway, stick to your own kind, I'm sure you're a survivor.

Anne Gedert wrote:

Good evening.

Just a quick hypothetical question.

Let’s pretend just for a moment…. that upon your death you actually got to stand in front of

God and you found God to be very favorable (to your liking), would you want to be with God?

Because you had found him to be favorable and likeable, would he be anything like you?

Just curious.

That would depend enormously on what kind of an existence I had and what kind of only-god-called-God I was dealing with. I suppose I would judge him on my morals and see if he measures up. Judging him on the basis of what I can remember of the Bible wouldn't be very sensible, that character clearly illustrates the pitfalls of multiple authorship over a fiction franchise that has been prolonged way beyond the original concept. I would be looking for a better historian.

If heaven contained me and I got the option to choose to hang out with God it would be an extremely strange form of afterlife. Wouldn't he be rather busy with all his billions of believers and devotees fawning over him and scientists interrogating him? It would probably be completely ghastly hanging out with the kind of people or souls who would want to be hanging out with God. Can you imagine both the quantity of hangers-on and the dreadful company they would be? I have always found fans, groupies and sycophants to be extremely tedious company, but religiously inclined sycophants would surely be in a league of their own. If it was a full bodily resurrection the place would be knee-deep in vomit. Just imagine tens of thousands of ignorant octogenarian priests and nuns fawning over him and cashing in on a the supposed rewards of a lifetime of rough woollen underwear, self-flagellation, leper-kissing and cold showers. Come to think about it heaven seems like the last place I'd want to spend eternity, not because of God, but because of his friends.
--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

You sound like a man who is incapable of conceptualizing a life that is not viewed from a human perspective.

The way you describe a spiritual life sounds a lot like going to a shopping mall (people acting like people).

Have you ever considered the possibility that a spiritual life would be different than life on earth?

And that the limitations and hang-ups of humanity might not exist there.

I don't believe in spirits. At all. I think the whole idea is fictional and a total waste of everybody's time.
--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

I bet your wife has a secret longing/sorrow that you'll never really
understand (that is if she's still following Jesus as you had written
On your web-site). I'm sure she really loves you and would want to see you
be with you, too, in heaven. You probably think her sorrow and longing is
foolish. If she's been able to "detach" from your atheism, I wonder how she
did it?

What do you gain personally, by atheism evangelism?
What's in it for you? In a sense, isn't atheism just another
"religion" trying to get converts?

I would like to know more about the 12-year old you
(the father of the man).
Did the 12-year old really dictate the thoughts of the grown up you?
Does the 12-year old, who didn't hear from God when he called out,
miss the part about "faith" ?

From what I understand of 12 year olds, they're children and they
Don't think like adults. Most people grow out of that and are able to
Conceptualize things that are deeper than the eye can see.
Mathematicians, explorers in science and physics and microbiology
Would have never discovered the depth of their sciences
Without being able to imagine what cannot be seen. They just knew
It was there (the "secrets" in their science that was to be discovered).

They had "faith" that something existed and from that point they
Just needed to prove it. Is it "proof" that you seek ?
Then just look at a simple blade of grass and the amazing miracle
Of it's existence. Stand back from that and try to tell yourself
That that happened by "accident".

Here's what we learned in grade school:
Everything is comprised of matter.
Before the "bang" there was "matter".
But out of the nothingness, how did the initial "matter" get there?
No one can explain it.
Who can account for the Matter.

Nothingness---> Matter--->bang ---> universe

Faith in "God" is a choice, not of ignorance, but of observation.
He exists, and all creation has his signature on it.
To the opened-minded thinker, it's just simply obvious.

Any educated scientist will test his hypothesis before he
Draws his conclusion.
The 12-year old you did not get a response from God, or
So you recollect. Has the adult man you called
Out recently? Are you relying on the data collection of a
12-year old? Give it another try.
Call out to God again and see if he reveals himself to you.
If you say that you won't, than you really haven't
Scientifically come to your conclusion that God does not exist.
You may choose not to call out to God because of the
Danger that YOU MAY HEAR FROM HIM...then what?
But you may say, if God exists, then I don't have to call out
To him, he should call out to me. So tell God that, get honest.
You're proud and you do have a god in your life and it's you.
You serve you, and you worship you and your ideas.
We all have a god we serve.

Take away the Church, take away the bible, take away traditions,
And religiosity. Take away everyone else's ideas and conclusion about
"God". Humble yourself for a minute and call out to him.
That's the only scientific approach you can take.

I'm not telling you all of this for arguments sake.
I'm telling you this for a couple of reasons.
If you invite God into your life, nothing will change and EVERYTHING will
change. You don't understand, only because you don't have God
Living inside of you. God living inside of me is REAL.
I believe in a world that cannot be seen with my physical eyes.
It can only be seen with the eyes of my heart.
Isn't that curious to you?

A baby thinks the finest thing in the world is "milk", little
Do they know the taste of fruit, vegetables, SUGAR, etc.
Atheists have not tasted, that's all.

TASTE AND SEE THAT THE LORD IS GOOD.

I have never said that my wife was ever "following Jesus". You obviously don't know very much about the Church of England. People in the Church of England don't follow Jesus, they just know where lives and think he's a good chap. In our entire 19 and a half year history as a couple every single utterance she has made of a religious character would not comprise more than five minutes of speaking, including wedding and Christening vows. That puts her above average for the C of E.

I think you have a difficulty grasping a rather basic fact. I have never in my entire life imagined that I am a soul or a spirit. I have always understood that I am the activity in my brain. I don't live in a body, I don't have a body, I am a body. You may think that nobody could believe that but personal incredulity is a very weak argument against anything. I find the I-am-my-brain theory explains everything very neatly:

1] It explains why I have no memories of anything that happened before my birth and it explains why my earliest memories are rich in sensual information but poor in words and understanding.

2] It explains why Alzheimer's patients (like my father's second wife) seem to go away. The soul never complains that its brain doesn't work any longer. When the brain doesn't work any longer the person has gone, changed, never to be recovered.

3] It explains why people change when bits of their brain are damaged or removed in accidents or surgery.

4] It explains why drink, drugs, tiredness, hormones and senility affect the entire person. A tired brain makes a tired person, a drugged brain changes the person. The soul theory suggests this should not happen, it suggests the soul is unaffected by the material world because it is separate from it. Experience of anaesthetic, dreams, drink and drugs suggest otherwise.

I don't believe in the soul theory. I don't believe that spirituality or spirit actually means anything at all. It's all self-delusion.

Atheism is my hobby. Don't expect a better explanation for why I do it than you would get from somebody who collects beer mats or watches a particular film an excessive number of times. It gives me something to do, it's something I'm good at, when it comes to not believing in gods I'm world class. For more than twenty years being an atheist was just the answer to the question of what I believe. I didn't do anything about it. Even now my atheism is confined totally to the internet. I have spent the last four months working with a Catholic and he doesn't know I am an atheist. I haven't joined any organizations which ask for subscriptions. I haven't been to any meetings except to meet up with some of the people who hang out on my forum. I don't harangue people in real life, I actually avoid discussing religion more than most people do. My atheist activity is 99% online.

The 12 year old me did not dictate my views. Where did you drag that from? You're not the first Christian to make that charge. Why do you think that it makes any sense at all? I constantly examine my views and change them in the light of new information. Of course that doesn't mean I'm changing from one extreme to another several times each month but I wouldn't have any problems with doing that if the evidence I was aware of suggested I should do so. How old were you when you were first told about Jesus?

If any gods want to converse with me they should know where I live. I am not going to "invite them in" because that simply means willing myself into a state of suggestibility and self-hypnosis. Do you invite foreign gods into your head? Sorry, into your heart. I can't get my head around this Christian alternative anatomy. I have asked many different gods to reveal themselves to me or to smite me. The result is exactly the same in all cases, the gods display their indifference/mercy/aloofness/non-existence by doing nothing at all. The same goes for the one true god as for the one false god, the wrong people's one true god and the dead people's many obviously dodgy gods. Odin, Thor, Baal, Jesus, Satan, Allah, Thoth, Yahweh or Kaali, they all do nothing at all.

Evolution is not an accident. I'm sick of that absurd charge. Go and read some books on evolution written by somebody who believes it.

It is much harder to account for the existence of a wise and powerful god with human characteristics and motivations than it is to account for the generation of time, space and matter. How can wisdom exist without experience? How can a will form before there is time, matter, energy or space? Anything powerful enough to design and create the universe must be significantly more complex than the singularity that the Big Bang came from. If that's not stretching credulity enough your god has to have human properties (which of course have evolved, but he didn't evolve) with a thing for Jews which nobody can properly explain.

People invented gods. Gods have changed over the years as people have become more sophisticated. The god of Genesis didn't have a heaven to share with dead people, walked about in the Garden, could wander off and not see things happening and punished disobedient animals by pulling their legs off. Later men decide that it wasn't a snake at all, it was a quasi-god who was bad. People then imagine God in their own image: he's a Super-Jew to slay the Philistines and their heathen iron age technology, he's a Southern Gentleman who approves of slavery and keeping women pure, he's a cool hippie who actually meant that stuff in the Sermon on the Mount but like literally - wow! Or he's an American patriot who hates immigrants and faggots and thinks poverty is a curse he can lay on the heathen and he detests both abortion and welfare mothers.

Hasn't it ever struck you as strange that people believe in a god who hates exactly the same bunch of people as they hate and for exactly the same reasons? Even when those people and reasons are totally different but the god answers to the same name.
--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

Thanks for writing me back.

And I’m very glad to hear from you.

To answer your question, I think your web-site biography mentions that at 12, you felt that God was not real and you were just kind of

going thru the motions at church to appease your mother. (that’s where I got it from).

I just gathered that your atheistic convictions started when you were a child.

Anyways, there is a huge difference between Christian “religiosity” and a person who actually follows Jesus.

My mistake is that I made an assumption that your wife was following Jesus.

So, in essence, your wife is a religious person. That explains a lot.

Your marriage then would not have endured the hardship of being “unevenly yoked” (a union of a believer and non-believer).

Your marriage is an atheist and a religious person, so essentially your marriage would not really have endured

The specifics that married believers and non-believers go through.

Most of the new testament is written for believers.

It was written to encourage believers.

Since you are not a believer, you can’t get out of the bible what believers get out of it.

It’s because you view the bible as “literature” and only see it with un-spiritual eyes.

There are lots of college classes that teach the bible from a literal standpoint, but it really never edifies anyone.

Approaching the bible without spiritual eyes, is like trying “eat” by looking at the pictures in a cookbook, it never satisfies.

I never call myself a Christian or a “religious” person.

I distinguish myself by calling myself a “follower of Jesus” or “a Believer”.

The word Christian is so misleading and watered-down.

Churches are filled with “Christians”. However, most churches are not overflowing with “followers of Jesus”.

Anybody can call themselves a Christian, and Christian can mean one thing to one person, and something else to another.

A lot of people who sign church membership cards call themselves “Christians”.

People who “like” Jesus might consider themselves to be Christian, too.

A lot of Christians believe in Jesus, but they may only believe in the historical Jesus.

Or they may “believe” he really was a man that talked.

Some may even believe he was a good guy.

The clear distinction is what people BELIEVE ABOUT Jesus.

I believe Jesus did something great. I believe that Jesus conquered DEATH.

A lot of Christians might not even believe that.

If Jesus didn’t conquer death, I would not follow Him. It would be a waste of my time.

So have you ever had any diaglog with a follower of Jesus?

It might look different than dialog with a “Christian”.

I don’t go to “church”.

I go to a bible study at my friends house on Thursdays, where I meet with other followers of Jesus.

Following Jesus in my life is like this.

I admit that by my personal nature, I’m nothing like Jesus at all.

I think He’s the epitomy of goodness and loving kindness.

If I want to be like him, I call out to him (that’s called prayer) and

Ask Him to help me to be like him. On my own, I can try to “fake it”, but it doesn’t usually work out.

I screw up all the time, but despite that, He continues to love me.

At the end of my life, when I die, I have the hope that Jesus will transform me into a very loving person forever.

And Heaven will be filled with people who have also been transformed.

The transformation begins when we start following him in this earthly life, but the completion of the transformation happens at our death

When we meet Him face to face.

It’s funny that you can’t imagine a loving God, but you imagined a heaven filled with

“ignorant octogenarian priests and nuns”.

I was in diaglog with a Muslim woman who was depending on her “goodness” to gain heaven.

She was appalled at the idea that heaven could be shared with forgiven murderers, adulterers, etc.

So her view of heaven is that she is so good that she deserves heaven, and the rest of us don’t.

I think most established churches have done a lot of damage.

A lot of religious people are not really spokespersons for God.

Actually no one is a spokesperson for God, except God.

I think Jesus can pull up a chair and sit down with a person right in their own head of they have Alzheimers.

I hope I don’t get Alzheimers, but who knows, maybe I will.

Maybe you will, no guarantees.

Anyways, I believe there’s something going on INSIDE their head that no one from the outside can observe.

I think Alzheimers folks get an opportunity to meet with God in a special way.

I think there is no danger in having HOPE.

Have a good evening !

I am not interested in you, your ideas, your opinions, your saviour or your posturing to be worthier than the next religious idiot. You are not a nice person, I would not wish to spend ten minutes with you let alone an eternity. You make me feel sorry for God.

If that is what religious belief does for and to people I am very happy to be thoroughly immune.

Martin Willett

More! Mixed Nuts 08 Part Two, The Revenge

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Mixed Nuts 2008

Email from 2008

Arshad Peeroo wrote:

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