Christianity

RCimT: Busy Sunday

Jason Thibeault, , , ,

It’s Sunday, and almost the end of my vacation. We’ve been going at 150km/h all day, doing all sorts of work on outstanding projects. I’ve got a few posts planned for the next few days, and I’m hoping to be able to write them up tonight, scheduled for the next few days, so I can get back into the work groove without having to worry about breaking my post-a-day streak — which is, what, five months now? So I’m going to blow through the links I’ve gathered up over the past week.

Turns out Al Gore and Hillary Clinton have links to The Family — the fundamentalist Christian group that’s wheedled its way into enough power to shape public policy in the American government. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again — religion is a poison. If these two otherwise apparently decent human beings are tainted by the scourge of fundamentalism in any way, shape or form, they are heretofore untrustworthy.

Why do I consider Christianity specifically ridiculous? It’s centred on the existence of a man that probably did not, actually, exist. And some simple proof of that fact is available here, in a 12-part “puzzle”.

Michael Shermer finally watched Expelled. Have pity on his poor “soul” (by which I mean, brain).

Now, I’m not much one to laugh at others’ misfortune, but boy is this one laughable. A woman marries a preacher who goes on to become completely insufferable; she vents on this forum, and the advice given is, naturally, in keeping with God’s teachings: you’re not allowed to divorce your husband who is obviously incompatible and suddenly engaging in reprehensible behaviour.

Epiphenoma explores the recent accidental phenomenon of Christians destroying the “secular truce” between those that would impress upon the Christmas holidays all the import of religious trappings, and those that would claim the holidays are so secularized that they can be endorsed by the government, federal or local. After that last heady link, some hilarious IRC quotes about Christianity will cleanse the palate.

News flash: another pastor has been arrested for child molestation. I mean, seriously, it’s almost getting to the point of being ludicrous, how often this happens. What is it about the religious promise of subjugating your natural sexual inclinations, that draws in pedophiles that understand their natural inclinations are so antisocial as to be criminal? (I answered my own question there, didn’t I?)

In case you didn’t see it as it happened, someone prayed to God that a Senator would miss the health care reform vote — and God apparently answered by cause James Inhoffe to miss the vote for the Republicans, meaning the bill passed 60-39. Which, I have to remind you Americans, is a super-majority, capable of busting any filibusters — you know, in case filibusters were ever actually exercised, rather than just idly threatened.

A scary bit of news for us bloggers — an Egyptian blogger was sentenced to four years in jail for daring to publish his opinion, which just happened to be critical of Islam. That’s right, for having an opinion counter to religion, this man was sentenced to jail time. Thankfully, Canada is not presently anywhere near as Draconian about its religious proscriptions, but I still feel a little shudder thinking about this kind of thing — I mean, this guy was jailed merely for going against the dominant religion of the region.

On to happier thoughts, PalMD dissects Deepak Chopra’s ridiculous pseudoscientific nonsense. I mean, it’s only been done a million times already, but Peter does it with such panache.

VJack has decided to take on his employers and take a stand against his federal employers’ endorsement of prayer “in Jesus’ name”. This apparently marks the day when he became an “Atheist Revolutionary”, having taken a stand against encroachment on the separation of church and state. He is now officially “militant”. Visit to read about what that entails.

And finally, Hemant Mehta posts a fundie anti-atheist bingo card that would have been nice to have prior to Christmas, but I only got around to posting now. Luckily most of you are already readers of the Friendly Atheist blog, so you probably didn’t miss out. …Right?

And that’s all I have in my tabs this week. I just switched over to Google Chrome (Chromium under Ubuntu), so hopefully you’ll cut me some slack on this one.

Have a sacrelicious week!

RCimT: Busy Sunday
{advertisement}

Lusting for death

Jason Thibeault, 6 Comments

I need to watch this documentary.

The Rapture Doctrine, the belief that good Christians will be bodily spirited away during the tribulations leading up to the End Times, was invented by John Nelson Darby in roughly 1828 and taught primarily by the Plymouth Bretheren, making its way to American soil in about 1860. Since then it has been thoroughly integrated into fundamentalism such that it provides a convenient escape valve for the good Christians to avoid the pain that their Bible assures them will occur:

These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me you might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.
-John 16:33

I guess God’s divine plan of catching the good Christians up at the last trumpet-blast post-tribulation isn’t good enough of an insurance policy, and fundies would prefer to be spirited away suddenly and before any of the prophesied bad-stuff happens. And so, since bringing about armageddon would also result in the good Christians being spirited away, there are whole sects of Christianity that make a concerted effort to bring about war in the Middle East over a tiny scrap of land that was “promised” by God to three different religions simultaneously. At least, according to each one’s foundational texts.

I have to wonder how cynical those that preach Rapture doctrine are, given that they recognize pet insurance ventures as scams, without also admitting that they’re scams because the Rapture is a fevered invention of someone who thought the End Times would be scary and painful, and not a good bait for the hook of Christianity. The pet insurance ventures are good in two ways — they separate the credulous and their money, and they force the cynical religious leaders to tip their hands and admit they’re scamming their sheep.

I hope I haven’t frightened you all too much this Tuesday morning.

Hat tip for the video to The Good Atheist.

Lusting for death

RCimT: Fashionably Late Sunday Readings

Jason Thibeault, , , , 1 Comment

Here’s yesterday’s Sunday RCimT, which is only fashionably late.

Your Cool Atheist of the Week is author Terry Pratchett of the Discworld series. The series is on my short list of books to read, as soon as I obtain a copy. Oh, and read everything else I’ve got queued up.

“I think I’m probably an atheist, but rather angry with God for not existing.” In a 1999 interview he told Anne Gay, “I’m an atheist, at least to the extent that I don’t believe in the objective existence of any big beards in the sky. That is a religious position, by the way.” He has also referred to himself as a “Victorian-style” atheist, in the sense that he rejects supernaturalism but considers himself culturally and morally Christian.

Continue reading “RCimT: Fashionably Late Sunday Readings” →

RCimT: Fashionably Late Sunday Readings

Christopher Hitchens on Nidal Malik Hasan

Jason Thibeault, , 6 Comments

The Army Major that went suicide-bomber and shot up Fort Hood recently has had a lot of coverage lately, especially regarding his being a Muslim and his obviously unbalanced mental state. It wasn’t merely his being a Muslim that caused him to flip into holy warrior mode — it was his communication with radical Anwar al-Awlaki, and his enthusiasm for al-Qaida’s tactics in this holy war.

That, combined with the correct casting of Bush’s wars as, essentially, holy wars. Even despite their original purpose, being wars for oil (or at least, that’s how they were presented, that they would “pay for themselves” with the oil America would then control), they have devolved into “Good Christian America vs Bad Islamic [whoever]”. And this is a problem — a major one — insofar as it is a pissing contest between the Holy Roman Empire and the Heathens Across the Sea, to see whose imaginary friend is better. Never mind that their imaginary friends are supposedly the same Abrahamic god Yahweh and that “God” and “Allah” are merely different languages’ titles for the same deity.

Christopher Hitchens breaks down all the facts in the Hasan case and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Hasan’s diseased mind proved fertile grounds for the radical flavor of Islam that infected and flourished and ultimately flowered in Hasan’s murder-suicide. I only lament that in the course of this article, Hitchens does not realize that his robust support for Bush’s wars is actually encouragement of the continuation of holy wars of religion vs religion.

So, ultimately, yes, Major Hasan was a radical Muslim. While “Allahu Akbar” is not by necessity a warcry, any more than “Jesus help me” is a war cry, in the case of radical Islam it apparently is used as such. Radical Islam, because it is so focused on suicide-bombings and suicide-murder sprees, needs to be ended. It’s fairly obvious that the radicals have to use these tactics, because they do not have access to the same level of resources as the “Christian” Americans do — they do not have a standing army, they do not have well-trained soldiers, they do not have bases but instead caves and hideouts. They are fighting a guerilla war because it’s all they can do.

But at the same time as radical Islam needs to be ended for these reasons, so to does every belief in an imaginary higher power that leads directly to violence against our fellow humans. Without Islam and Christianity, this war wouldn’t be happening. Other religions might step in to fill the gap, and other wars waged, but if you were to eliminate religion altogether, then maybe wars would be fought not over whose imaginary friend is better, but rather who has access to the Earth’s resources — surely another horrible reason to go to war, but one that at least has a little more sense behind it, since resources are real things, and your imaginary personal deity is assuredly not.

Christopher Hitchens on Nidal Malik Hasan

Does Jesus Save Aliens?

Jason Thibeault, , 4 Comments

6a00d83451586c69e201287579ff21970c-400wi

Apparently this question is putting many Christian sects into a tizzy. Given Christianity’s Earth-centric views, and species-centric doctrine, if we discovered that, say, dolphins were intelligent and sapient, or if we discovered alien life from another planet, would they be “saved”? Would they have their own Alien Christ to preach to them the gospel? Or would every sapient creature in the universe — save humans that believe in Jesus — burn in the pits of hell for eternity?

The Vatican does not have an official position on alien life forms, but a number of its scientists have spoken out on the issue. Father Jose Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory told the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, that the possibility of “brother extraterrestrials” was not incompatible with Catholic theology.

William Stroeger, an astrophysicist at the Vatican Observatory Research Group and a Jesuit priest, agreed: “There might be fundamentalists for whom the two things are incompatible but mainline congregations – Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists – would not have a problem with this,” he said.

Stroeger pointed out that the Catechism introduced after the second Vatican council states that there can be no conflict between science and religion. “If there’s a contradiction it means that we haven’t understood or interpreted one of them correctly,” he said.

Go on, guess which one he means.

Does Jesus Save Aliens?

Zdenny has two modes: fail, and fail harder

Jason Thibeault, , , , 6 Comments

Our favorite troll is back. And here I am feeding him yet again. He has posted on this thread, however it’s not only wholly incorrect, my reply is too bloody long to make a proper comment, so I deleted the original comment and publish it here in its entirety.

Darwinian evolution is a worldview that says that nature began itself and then designed itself. Theistic evolution is a worldview that says nature was created and then designed by mind.

Evolution itself does not disprove Christianity as Genesis 1 explains the the world was created through a process. It doesn’t say that God created everything in one day; rather, six days emphasizing this process. Ironically, the process is almost identical to current scientific theory.

More below the fold…
Continue reading “Zdenny has two modes: fail, and fail harder” →

Zdenny has two modes: fail, and fail harder

‘Religion’ of Evolution

Jason Thibeault, , , , 1 Comment

A common assertion you’ll see in debates of creation vs evolution, is that those that put more stock in scientific discovery than in the foundational texts of the various religions (especially the Bible, as creationism is primarily a fundamentalist Christian belief — though Islam is catching up) are as dogmatic and religious about their own personal religion, being Darwinism, which is in the complainants’ minds a synthesis of the scientific knowledge of the day as revealed by the Prophet Darwin. This is an obvious and execrable mischaracterization of those that take the side of evolution in these debates. Religions like Christianity have traditionally only had to deal with other religions eroding their flock — but science is a completely different animal. It is the attempt by intelligent human beings to discover the truth behind this universe’s principals of chemistry, physics, and ultimately the biology that results from the two former fields given enough time.

FFreeThinker, one of the better science Youtubers, has put together a short open-letter video asking that the theists that use this tactic, think better of it. I honestly doubt that anyone as prone to such thinking as creationists would abandon a tactic that is not only dishonest but also gets under the evolution-boosters’ skin, but it’s worth a try. If they can cry out for civility time and again, we can maybe ask them to stop lying about us in turn.

‘Religion’ of Evolution

A response to Real Scotsman — err, Real Theist

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , , , , , , , , 14 Comments

Over at Vizhnet’s brand-new blog, someone commenting under the name of “realtheist” (whom DanJ believes is Daniel Maldonado, owner of the Real Theist blog and an occasional commenter here), left a very VERY long comment in reply to me and in defense of our favorite apologist Zdenny. I reproduce it herein, as Vizhnet has stated he debates only on Twitter and I want to save it for posterity in case he decides to clean up again. I’ll break it down paragraph by paragraph.

Continue reading “A response to Real Scotsman — err, Real Theist” →

A response to Real Scotsman — err, Real Theist