Adding to my joy of late is a remarkable article predicting the demise of evangelical Christianity in our lifetimes.
Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the “Protestant” 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.
Do I believe it will happen? I confess that there’s a good bit of wishful thinking on my part that clouds my judgment, but I have high hopes, and I think it entirely possible. This particular article is especially interesting because it is published in the Christian Science Monitor, and it’s written by a Christian (well, more accurately, “a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality,” whatever that means), writing as an insider with intimate knowledge of the evangelical movement. He’s not happy about it, either, which makes the article an interesting read just because every time he intones an article of woe in his litany of doom, I’m feeling like pumping a fist in the air and shouting “Yes!”
He places the blame on several factors. 1) Evangelicals hitched their wagon to conservative politics, and that cart is busted. 2) Christian media has been superficial and failed to teach them the basics of their belief (which I don’t think is quite as damaging as he thinks—teaching the actual scripture is a great way to make atheists). 3) Megachurches. Enough said. 4) Christian education has failed. 5) Christianity has become a taint rather than a selling point in efforts to do good works. 6) Confidence in the bible and faith are waning. And probably most importantly, 7) “The money will dry up.”
One caveat to his explanations, though, is that he is making specific predictions about a very narrow part of the Christian spectrum, evangelicalism. We still have to worry about the crazy Charismatics, the freaky Fundamentalists, the conservative Catholics, and all those weird little splinter sects all over the place. Christianity isn’t going to simply vanish, it’s simply going to submerge for a bit, be a little less flamboyant and openly money-hungry, and maybe be a little less politically influential. Those are good outcomes all around, in my opinion.
He also wants to predict that a new and vital Christianity can arise from the ruins. Let’s hope not — I want to see a clearing away of the detritus of superstition to allow for a new Enlightenment to shine forth, instead.
Whoa.. that’s one big link!
I think you’re missing a “less than sign a greater than sign” there.
…but it’s much better now.
Not to continue OT for too long, but it’s pretty cool that this blog is so well read that people spot things like that instantly. PZ rocks.
Yeah, I can just throw out typos like mad, and trust that within 30 seconds I’ll get a flood of complaints. It’s like being nagged by a thousand editors.
Don’t forget the prosperity Christians.
If there is an anti-christ, Joel Osteen is him.
The guy is just talking out of his ass. There is no evidence of any kind cited and no logical arguments made to support any of his predictions.
What else would you expect from, “a writer and communicator living and working in a Christian community in Kentucky.”
There are many liberal and moderate Evangelicals too. Moreover, Evangelical Christianity in all of its guises is still the brand of Christianity that is gaining adherents here in the USA.
Maybe evangelicals just need to work on their framing.
I’ll put my Typo-fu against yours anyday.
Also, the CSM is basically a badly-named good newspaper, in that it’s actually a respected news source that does not promote Christian Scien (… uh … tism? Science?). And I do think that there’s both a trend toward religion being less important in people’s lives and just as significantly, people are becoming more aware that athiests/agnostics/nonreligious people are not all about finding new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves so that the earth will flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom, but rather can be very ethical and decent people. This is big.
Regarding the first few posts about typos, the correcting of same, and PZ having “a thousand editors”:
thought you might enjoy this excerpt from an article in The New Yorker (February 9 & 16, 2009, page 59). The article was written by John McPhee and he interviewed fact-checker Sara Lippincott for the article:
Any error is everlasting. As Sara told the journalism students, once an error gets into print it “will live on and on in libraries carefully catalogued, scrupulously indexed …silicon-chipped, deceiving researcher after researcher down through the ages, all of whom will make new errors on the the strength of the original errors, and so on and on into an exponential explosion of errata.” With drawn sword, the fact-checker stands at the near end of this bridge. It is, in part, why the job exists and why, in Sara’s words, a publication will believe in “turning a pack of professional skeptics loose on its own galley proofs.”
Hm. Although picking them off one at a time isn’t bad, it just takes longer. I’m really happy by this. When ever I hear of the nut job xtians it’s always Evangelicals or Catholics. And lets face it, Catholics have a monopoly on most of the world it’s going to have to be a few countries rejecting them before they collapse. We’ll bring them down eventually. Last fall I was talking to my grandmother in Canada and she was talking about how all those old churches were getting converted into schools and communities centers. I’m looking forward to that day :D
Oh, but they’ve been predicting this all along. True Christianity ™ will wane to where it’s a tiny, persecuted minority. (“I’ll make my way with the Lord’s despised few” Herbert Buffum) Then Jesus will come back and show the rest of us, but good!
In an unrelated but curiously coincidental event, there seems to have been recently published book by A. Desmond and J. Moore called “Darwin’s Sacred Cause” which presents the hypothesis that the real motive behind the “Origin Of Species” and natural selection was Darwin’s abhorrence of polygeny because he felt that it was a justification for slavery. I was always led to believe that Darwin was an abolitionist primarily because of his upbringing and he was against slavery before the Beagle voyage. Fitzroy believed that the Bible justified slavery and this was a thorny problem between the two from the get-go. It seems a little farfetched that Darwin would haave dithered so long about his discovery if all he was interested in was justifying abolition. Anyone out there read this book yet? TPFD.
I’ve read a lot of his blog, InternetMonk. He’s a really good resource to point Christians to (especially evangelicals) to show them good criticisms of the worst of Christianity from a Christian’s point of view. What Slacktivist Fred is to Left Behind, InternetMonk is to evangelical Christianity.
Despite all of these challenges, it is impossible not to be hopeful. As one commenter has already said, “Christianity loves a crumbling empire.”
This is the big worry. With all the jackasses looking for economic failure for this country under Obama, a crumbling American power and influence could lead to a, uh, resurrection in the churches – especially the more radical ones.
If this actually occurs, I’ll be much relieved. At least if they’re living in their own counterculture and not getting involved in politics, we can ignore them.
@ the pro from dover –
I noticed that book too at a local Barnes and Noble, but it didn’t interest me. Although some people have praised Adrian Desmond for his Darwin biographical scholarship, I have been put off by at least one of his earlier books, in which he allegedly concludes that there was some kind of “secret agreement” by Darwin’s friends which ensured that Darwin got his full share of credit for discovering Natural Selection, when he found out that he had been “scooped” by Wallace.
There is no doubt that Darwin was a staunch abolitionist in his lifetime, and was, briefly, a supporter of the Union in the Civil War, until the Union Navy seized a British merchant ship. Afterwards, he was more sympathetic towards the Confederacy.
I know it can be considered trite to compare religions to a virus, but you bring up something which I think supports the analogy. For a virus to survive, there’s a limit on how aggressively it can ravage its host. If a virus evolves to become too lethal, then the hosts die before they can pass on the virus. This seems to parallel religion. A low level infection can be passed relatively easily and survive for long periods in otherwise healthy populations. But if religion becomes too fanatical, an outbreak of this highly aggressive form of religion may briefly sweep through a community. However, it’s not sustainable, so the overly-aggressive strain eventually burns itself out.
I just got an email from our campus atheist group, Dr. Avalos is going to be on WOW 98.3 FM from now until 3pm if anyone is in the Central Iowa area and wants to listen. According to Dr. Avalos “The topics may range from the Academic Freedom bill to the rise of the non-religious demographic in America. The host, Chris Bradshaw, is a self-described agnostic.”
Apparently he debated Casey Luskin last week on the radio and I missed it. Bummer.
I first saw this article on the Rapture Ready message boards (great fun! we’re all worshipping the antichrist, btw) and they were all bemoaning the fall of civilization until- aha!- they noticed the article was printed by the Christian Science Monitor.
Then all was right in crazyfundyland.
Good News!!! The WBC has managed to piss off GOD ALMIGHTY, HIMSELF! It’s only a matter of time until they are smitten:
http://stuffgodhates.com/2009/03/68-the-westboro-baptist-church/#comments
If only we can convince da yoot that religion is uncool, we’ve got it.
It’s a simple matter of controlling the young.
How hard can it be?
Ack- I sometimes go to rapture ready’s forums for laughs… but usually leave creeped out:
“Prophecy & The End Times (57 Viewing)” With about 39,000 posts, and 1,400 threads…
@ Conor H.
Is there a pod cast?
Oh, are you an atheist, PZ? I had no idea.
Conor H. @ #21:
Cool! Avalos is a terrific skeptical voice to have in the conversation.
For those of us outside of Iowa, do you have any idea if the audio will be available online?
Uh, sorry to break it, but… isn’t this kind of masochistic “help we are persecuted and no longer dominating at all” just their mating call?
I don’t have any word about a podcast or online streaming. There’s a link for live listening on their website but I haven’t tried it and have no idea if it will give what you want:
http://www.983wowfm.com/article.asp?id=507304
I do have this link from last weeks Luskin talk that was enclosed in the email that I suppose I can share:
http://cdn1.libsyn.com/mickelson/mickelson-2009-03-04.mp3?nvb=20090310150540&nva=20090311151540&t=02abec0abf7dde3405443
The fact that this was written by a Christian makes it less credible, not more. I believe it it meant to simply rally the troops by putting the fear of (no) God in them.
As a lonely, perhaps particularly impressionable teen in an evangelical youth group, I recall a particular meeting regarding the meaning of Revelations.
Apparently the Babylon in the title of your post, PZ, is a metaphor for the United States. You see, the US is never mentioned in Revelations. You can see how morally corrupt the population is. It’s not mentioned in the Bible because it will be destroyed, soon.
At that point I was finally weirded out enough to stop waiting for the magical Jesus feelings to kick in, stop compartmentalizing, and evaluate religion on it’s own merits.
The Rapture Ready creep the hell out of me.
Even so, we should be fine as long as the crumbling empire doesn’t run back to Christianity as a coping mechanism. And considering the fact that no matter how far we go, the President could never adopt a religion – barring, of course, a change in the Constitution – in an attempt to unite the nation (a la Constantine), we should be fine in that respect.
Wow. Doesn’t this “Christian” believe in miracles? Jesus will come back to save the day!
So much for his faith…
Also, +1 to the people saying that this just seems like the typical ploy to make the church seem under attack to put asses back in the seats. Its the same general principle behind putting gay marriage amendments up for a vote during the General Presidential Election. Persecution is the bread and butter of Evangelicals (another example from previously mentioned youth group was a couple weeks where they talked about how badly Christians all over the world are persecuted, which even then felt just like a thinly veiled attempt to instill a feeling that you are needed and you can make a difference if only you come to church and give your 10%).
I don’t believe that. Has this country ever been truly religiously antagonistic? I’m afraid that he’s confusing antagonism with the lack of overt support.
It’s claimed that while Xians are down in this country, the fervor among the remainder is up. I do like to think that such a state is the precursor to a certain disillusionment, however, as they’re in exile politically, while religion doesn’t really provide anything (at least nothing that couldn’t come via some other way).
So yes, we may urge along a religious decline. Yet the way religion works in America, a decline isn’t that unlikely to precede a revival.
I wouldn’t mind a retreat in anti-science attitudes for a while, though. The trouble is that, in Europe, anti-evolutionism seems to be more closely tied to lack of knowledge of science than even with religion, and I’m afraid that we’re not likely to get a scientifically knowledgeable populace any time soon. Which would be likely to facilitate the next religious revival.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Fervent religiosity is a response to human suffering. Since the next century is likely to feature a lot of that, you have to be rather optimistic to think that pure reason is going to cancel out all those tears.
Posted by: Jim Harrison | March 10, 2009 3:43 PM
Sadly, there are plenty of the religious crowd that see such situations as recruitment opportunities, so I’d have to agree. Although, that does offer a possible sad little commentary about why some on the far-right fringe are hoping for the President to actually fail.
I read “postevangelical” as “pastavangelical” and thought for a moment he was a Spaghetti Monsterist.
I was particularly taken by this statement in the article:
When “doing good” apparently means denying rights to others (gays, women,) and insisting on teaching anti-science in science classes, certain people get the idea that “good” is a subjective term. I know a couple of evangelicals who are unhappy about anti-gay marriage drumbeating.
There may not be any citations in the CSM article, but there are plenty in Christine Wicker’s Fall of the Evangelical Nation, which reaches the same conclusions although for different reasons. Among other things, Wicker cites:
Perennial overcounting of the evangelical movement in the first place – there’s quite a lot of overlap between evangelical congregations;
The aging and death of many of the heads of evangelical churches – they trained younger ministers as support for themselves, but not replacements, and there is no upcoming young leadership;
The aging of the congregations at megachurches – younger families aren’t organizing their whole lives around the churches any more;
The movement of the younger members of megachurches away from the churches as neighborhood demographics change – incoming people are often in different social and ethnic groups and have their own religious institutions;
Financial difficulties – most megachurches are overbuilt and mortgaged to the hilt, and declining donations won’t support them.
There’s a lot more in Wicker’s book, and it’s well worth looking into.
Where the writer goes on about the christian youth being so ignorant about their faith I think he is right on. In fact it’s probably not just the young. In discussing how relevant the bible is to modern life Hector Avalos says in his new book
Which has to do with delivering first fruits to the priest, do most people even have first fruits these days? No.
To their eternal credit, the BBC here in the UK are currently producing an absolutely uncompromising series of programs on the importance of the theory of evolution:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/darwin/
There is no concession whatsoever to fundamentalist objections: there was a lovely bit today where Andrew Marr had just told us about Pius XII trying to say that biologists could study the body but should keep their hands off the soul, then we cut to some studies of chimpanzee behaviour and the next line of the voiceover, cheerfully, was “Too late!”
I met Dr. Avalos when he visited Boston for the most recent Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting. He’s a nice fellow.
(Irrelevant to the strength of his arguments, of course, but I just felt like being cheerful about how the Internet occasionally makes us aware of nice people.)
For British readers: there is now a petition you can sign regarding the following:
Thanks to “ukvillafan” on the Richard Dawkins website. Just thought I’d mention it here. Please pass it on.
U.S. foreign policy (including Obama’s) being what it is, the human species may not endure for two generations.
I take it as a good sign that the fundamentalists I (morbidly, compulsively) listen to on KKMS, the Twin Cities Christian talk radio station sound increasingly rabid. There’s no backlash without a lash, and what they’re responding to, it seems clear, is the rejection of their message. Not be everyone. There are still the zealots and crazies dug down deeper than a tick. But they perceive that their empire is crumbling, that they are growing irrelevant and laughable. They remind me, sometimes, of they scene at the end of “Inherit the Wind” when Drummund (do I have that name right? the Christian prosecutor in the faux Scopes case) is ranting, trying to get someone to listen to his carefully prepared pro-God speech, and instead he is ignored, and he dies in apoplexy. I think these are the beginnings of such throes and spasms. It won’t be pretty. But I predict that eventually, evangelicalism as it’s been known in this country will go very nearly away.
“5) Christianity has become a taint…”
Heh heh heh heh… you said “taint.”
Posted by: Patricia, OM | March 10, 2009 4:05 PM
I’d definitely agree. I read something once about the revivalist movements of the 1800’s beginning this trend, with the emphasis being placed less on scriptural competency, and instead more on just “loving Jesus.” I know that when I was growing up as a Catholic with a mostly Baptist extended family, I was seen as strange for having to memorize things in the Catechism. When I’d go to church (cumpulsory down here in the Belt as a kid) with my extended family, the emphasis was all on feeling, and the only actual study you got was what the minister read to you, which he then summarily explained and told you how to interpret it. It all reminded me of the times I read about in Catholicism when the congregation – through illiteracy – was forced to rely on the clergy for understanding of the text.
Well, I grew up in a small fundamentalist evangelical family in Scotland. I’m immensely grateful to the bumbling incompetant dogma of this strain of christianity and being born in the largely secular UK. If it wasn’t for both being just so I might not have found the strength to be atheistic. If I hadn’t, despite my discomfort since infancy in the religious constructs of ‘the faith’, I’d have had to develop adaptive behaviour to fulfil any social role in my life.
It’s still a significant wedge between my parents and myself. My mother holding on as she does to a profession of faith I made after she scared the willies out of me when I was 6 telling me my family could be raptured leaving me behind if I wasn’t redeemed. I was never comfortable around odd behaviour and the conversions I witnessed during a Billy Graham tour I was taken to as a child left me stupified by the trance like behaviour (it’s the holy spirit?).
The cynicism of childhood and my locale might not have innoculated me if the circumstances were slighly different. I really have to thank the baffoonary of the spiritually self-obsessed, and their inability to recognise the capacity for personal insight in children, for my independance. I was attracted to good nature in people and good humour before I fully understood what the term ‘sinner’ meant.
This kind of religion survives in a vacuum alone of it’s own design. I’ve been told by a few Christians of this ilk that it’s the parents’ responsability to see that their children are brought up by way of the teachings of god. So if their kids aren’t Christian they’re a disappointment and the parents feel guilty.
It’s an oppressive failed data set and is responsible for a lot of division. I would dearly love to believe it’s in remission, but I’ve read/heard a lot of correspondence that suggests it’s growing outside of the states. It’s a damaging belief system and I hope it doesn’t leave an indelible mark on any generations affected. As it is any kids I might have will probably only have supervised visits with their grandparents as I doubt they’d respect any boundaries I’d ask of them to prevent them intimidating my children in their ambition to save their souls.
“Your grandparents are very superstitious. If they tell you scary stories about god, hell and sinners just ignore them and tell me about it later”. Probably won’t stop infants having nightmares. There’s so much unwarranted credence given to ghost stories and religion I can’t imagine humanity being without them till we are no longer subject to fear and intimidation.
I value the time I have, my natural curiousity and the world I was born in. Why is that not enough?
Paul #32: I wouldn’t worry about the rapture. In fact it has already happened, but nobody was “saved” because all the nutjobs that believe it also believe that they would be the ones to go, and therefore have committed the sin of Pride (as well as overwhelming smugness in my opinion).
The Rapture – God’s Catch 22!
The Dancing Kid #46
I’ve been hearing this doomsaying for the past 50 years.
well, more accurately, “a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality,” whatever that means
Indeed. I read some of the author’s blog. It makes as about as much sense as your typical fundy rant, except with better spelling, sentence structure, and book smarts, but it’s all futile acrobatics. That dude can post-evangelicize, deconstruct, fast, and try to fill that Jesus-shaped hole a million different ways, but in the end, the universe is still vast, cold, indifferent, and godless. Gimme a good ol’ YEC nutjob than someone who tries to intellectualize their superstition.
“We still have to worry about the crazy Charismatics, the freaky Fundamentalists, the conservative Catholics, and all those weird little splinter sects all over the place.”
Actually, the existence of all those in-fighting splinter groups is the main reason I *don’t* worry much about Christians.(*) We just need to become better at playing both ends against the middle so that no one faction manages to get enough political power to be truly dangerous.
—
http://www.chl-tx.com
* I do worry about Muslims. Not enough splinter groups there, and the major factions are already plenty dangerous.
From what I saw in Iraq, while there aren’t as many as the Christians have with the proliferation of Protestantism, there are quite a few Islamic sects that are never talked about in this country where they aren’t as noticeable. And that’s infinitely more dongerous, considering mainstream Christianity has largely disavowed spreading their religion by the sword*.
*PZ’s e-mailers not included, of course…
Elwood #51: As charmingly witty as that statement is, the Deadly Sins are a rather passé construct. Only the Catholics put any stock in them, and any good Evangelical believes that all is required is that Jesus is in your heart. Actual deeds or imperfections have nothing to do with it.
The cynical side of me toys with the idea that, at least at the top, the Rapture Ready folks don’t believe it. They’re just forcing the young’uns to consider a stupid form of Pascal’s Wager before they have a chance to develop any particular critical thinking skills, and since young people generally don’t think much of their own mortality they need to present them with an urgent timeline. Note that many of them “believe” in a pre-tribulation (e.g. 7 years of the anti-Christ reigning, kicking cripples and babies, etc) Rapture for extra incentive to let Jesus into your heart before it’s too late, even though scripture says no such thing. It’s just Pascal’s Wager made accessible to the minds of youngsters.
Just for fun, here’s Rapture Ready’s Top 10 prophetic signs that the Rapture is coming:
# Global financial crisis
# The Fighting in Gaza
# Iran’s nuclear program
# Russia’s military aggression
# The declining value of the dollar
# China’s growing economic and military might
# Global terrorism
# Nation ID initiatives
# Natural disasters
# The supply of oil
brokenSoldier, OM – That’s true. I hired a 23 year old youngster five years ago, that was a rabid atheist, and he used to be astonished that I could rattle off bible verses by the dozens. So as a game, I would teach him the most horrific or salacious verses which he would win beer bets with every weekend.
It has been argued before that the center of gravity of evangelicalism will shift to south of the equator in this century.
Atlantic magazine article: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200209u/int2002-09-12
Quote from article: “That demographic future puts Christianity on a collision course with Islam. Though there will continue to be more Christians in the world than Muslims, they will be jostling for converts in the same places, and Jenkins forsees that several countries “might be brought to ruin by the clash of jihad and crusade.” The Northern world is unlikely to be the instigator of future crusades. But it seems inevitable that both Europe and the United States will be shaken by the reverberations of growth and conflict in the new Christian world.”
We all know about the nasty “witch hunter” that inspired Sarah Palin. I think individual like this are more likely to have social and political influence in the regions where Christianity is still likely to thrive.
You know what was “dongerous”? Dr. Manhatten. Big blue dongerous.
That’s not as bad as you may think: I don’t know what definition he’s using, but “evangelical” is a broad, fuzzy-edged term that overlaps heavily with the other groups you mention (except maybe the Catholics).
The main problem I have with that article is the lack of data — and keep in mind that bemoaning the sorry state of God’s Flock has a very long tradition behind it.
Posted by: Patricia, OM | March 10, 2009 4:47 PM
Hedonistic positive reinforcement – I like it! ;)
Proof positive of the power of Prayer!
Suck it atheists! Bill O’Donahueydeweynloui wins!
When I read the post I misread “splinter sects” as “sphincter sects”. Does that mean anything?
I really hope you are right, but I have dire concerns that we may be in store for a backlash. In financially troubled times, people tend to turn to the great sky-god for guidance and or repentance for what is obviously divine retribution. As we get poorer, look for the message from high-powered Christians that this is “God’s Punishment” on America–undoubtedly for all of our gay sex and abortions(TM).
I’m still bracing myself …
I think it’s a mistake to maintain that hard times are likely to make people more religulous. Sure they will, some. But I remember something I heard an Army Chaplain say once: “Not only are there atheists in foxholes, but foxholes probably make more soldiers into atheists than do anything else.” Some people are driven away from God by hard times because it becomes more obvious to them that, no, no all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good being could possibly be watching over us if THAT just happened to my spouse, my children, my friend, my tender, juicy thigh.
Printed in the Christian Science Monitor.
They have never gotten anything correct.
Paul – Yes I know, but I just can’t resist having my little dig at those loonies! I’ve yet to hear of anyone who 1) believes in the Rapture, and 2) DOESN’T think that they qualify. That in itself speaks volumes about their intellectual integrity.
(I would have posted this sooner but I got held up by a long phone call!)
What I wish for is for Christians to be ashamed to admit they’re Christians. That’s the way it should be now.
The best way to rid America of the disgusting Christian death cult is better science education, especially evolutionary biology. In my opinion the acceptance of evolution is the greatest possible threat to all religions, and that’s one of many good reasons to teach it at a very young age. Students shouldn’t have to wait until high school to find out how the world works.
So when Christians tell me evolution conflicts with Christianity, I strongly agree with them, and I tell them that’s why their religion is doomed.
Please, no Enlightenment! We had enough of that… we may have needed it, but we sure as hell don’t need to go through that self-delusion again, where we convince ourselves that we have unattainable reason and objectivity.
No, we need something new. Obviously not post-modernism — which isn’t anything new, as its name implies, but just a recognition of “something” being screwed up, and lacking any coherent idea about what it is and what could replace it.
I’m sick and tired of lame 19th and 18th century philosophies being repeated ad nauseum as “new” ideas, as if we were all ignorant imbeciles that have to look to our great-great-great grandfathers for decent thought.
My “debate” on March 4 with Casey Luskin about the “Evolution Academic Freedom” bill
in Iowa may be found at:
http://cdn1.libsyn.com/mickelson/mickelson-2009-03-04.mp3?nvb=20090310215743&nva=20090311220743&t=0d934ed2c853f6cc7339f
The archives are at:
http://www.mickelson.libsyn.com/
Thank you, Dr. Avalos. I look forward to checking it out.
History would agree with you. Many late 14th century writers bewailed the fact that the Black Death failed to make people more religious. And it’s also a theme for Thucydides in post-plague Athens, I believe.
Heh, that was me during my stint as a churchgoer, actually. As I’m sure at least a couple others here can understand, no matter how much proclaiming or churchgoing or gospel singing I participated in, I never felt the slightest thing that could be attributed to the supernatural. As an otherwise intelligent kid, it kinda creeps me out to think back to it. You know, feeling like there had to be something wrong with me, not feeling what everyone else did. I used to have nightmares about being Left Behind (stupid movie). But then I figured hey, if nothing else, I could help bring the Gospel to people after the Rapture so they could be saved.
Let it never be said I’ve never had delusions of grandeur. lol.
As a matter of fact, my personal experiences are why I think the science-based mentality is pretty doomed unless they follow the church strategy of hooking them while they’re young. If kids aren’t learning about the controversial (to religion) things at an early age, teachers are working against years of indoctrination that is continuously reinforced relentlessly. I’m still ashamed that despite being in advanced math and science courses for most of my elementary to college education, my belief in a ghost in the machine lasted as long as it did. Compartmentalization between things you are supposed to rationalize and things you are supposed to take on blind faith seems all too easy, especially when it’s the only way that’s socially acceptable to a growing kid.
It occurs to me that saying “As a matter of fact, my personal experiences are why I think the science-based mentality is pretty doomed…” is more melodramatic than intended. The doom I mention is that there will be endless hordes of Luskins , Collinses, and Egnors that refuse to see reality and keep giving the churches plenty of material to keep “rationalizing” belief to keep the money flowing. Education is going to be the most important way to shift the demographics and keep the religious from continuously exercising their strength in numbers to enforce their hangups on everyone else.
Rationalists aren’t going to be finding God en masse anytime soon, but without better public education their point of view will keep being in the minority.
Paul: As a matter of fact, my personal experiences are why I think the science-based mentality is pretty doomed unless they follow the church strategy of hooking them while they’re young.
Like anything else cultural, it’s about the family. Neither “Science-based” and “Fiction-based” mentalities are doomed, as long as we avoid some kind of genocidal war. One side will pick off a few of the other side — but that effect is very long term (Three generations plus). And of course, the kind of mentality that makes you influential (and therefore a model) will pick off people at the three-generation plus time frame.
I dunno which one makes you more influential. In the mid-term, being a priest gets you money for nothing. But in the long-term, we are all slaves of mathematicians.
I don’t care if it’s a very narrow slice of the pie – GOOD RIDDANCE!
It’s not a brand, it’s how an ever larger number of US Christians calls itself. Just a few threads ago we were told that a poll found 18 % of self-declared Catholics calling themselves evangelical at the same time. I think people think it means “goes to church more than twice a year”.
That’s how it is over here — though not in the way you think. Over here, one’s innermost beliefs (or even the lack thereof) are considered something private. It’s simply not something you talk about in public.
Then why are there still Christians left in Europe? 2/3 of the population even in France, and more elsewhere.
I never liked “Christian Science”. It isn’t Christian and it isn’t scientific. I was misled by their name the first time I heard of the cult.
Facilis, still showing no reason or logic. You are good for a laugh. We are laughing at you. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
Didn’t you like Expelled?
Wow! Dr. Avalos.
♫ ♪ Babylon is laid to waste… ♩♬
I am an evangelical. The only one here, I guess? Evangelicals have one flaw of late –infighting. There have always been arguments and schisms in churches –all religious groups –and ALL GROUPS! the union and the country club and the PTA included. Not to mention, GOV’T! But the church needs to select mature leadership and challenge its leaders to be mature –loving people who give as much grace to those under their leadership as God bestows on them. We are a pretty harmonious body these days.
My church is getting its act together. Learning from some poor lay leadership styles in the past. Learning that you just can’t disrespect people and expect them to stay around. (Disrespect, in our case, had to do with spiritual lording over others and judgmental attitudes –not on scriptural grounds but more personal and definitely more on the part of those who left, than on the part of those who stayed.) A very few left because they were pentecostal and wanted to feel more demonstrative in worship, free to dance. We dance in choreography for our church musical, but otherwise are a rather dignified, staid bunch in our blended worship style. Our music is beautiful and uplifting –but if we don’t stop making people stand up for whole worship sets, I think it will stunt our growth. I keep saying this is one of the reasons why unchurched people would not come back –standing up to sing 4 or 5 long songs in a row which they do not know. We got this from the pentecostals who got it from the youth rock culture –standing endlessly for music. Those who are “into” worship don’t mind. Those who are “seekers” as in the seeker-friendly mega-churches WOULD mind –and we, at my church, need to be more seeker-aware that way, too, I think. We have some things to learn form mega churches about what’s REALLY important –getting people to return to hear the Word and believe and grow –but there are advantages and value to more traditional, smaller churches, also.
In our local church, there is a clear focus on racial reconciliation and helping the poor. But as a body, we are struggling with the economy –people laid off, e.g. Our minister is adopting a baby, their 3rd child, their first adoptee –and he is from Africa. He will already have 2 adopted black cousins in our otherwise all-white church (except for our Wed. children’s program.) Our denomination is promoting foster parenting and conducts services and ministries to the homeless. We have made several trips to katrina-hit areas –our fifth is this week –to just help out in church-organized missions that are still ongoing there. Our children’s wed. night ministry is well-integrated racially —a new thrust for us in its second year. We have about 200 people in our church, counting all constituents. Attendance a little less than that. We raised an extra offering of $2000 last week for formula in Ethiopian orphanage –as they have no formula in the country, we were told.
Many years ago, A wave of young adults left our church to be Calvinists (one kind of evangelical) then a wave of home schoolers who didn’t like it that our denomination ordains women and lets them hold leadership on the basis of the holy spirit bestowed on all people. But these people all left for other churches and haven’t lost faith. We are Weslyan-Arminian –and not Calvinist. We are not strong on the Rapture teaching as that is not as clear to us in scripture as the Left Behind series would make it. The Calvinists, by the way, are thriving in at least one big church in our city and we also have many pentecostals. We share faith in Christ as our Saviour. We have at least 2 of the mega churches in our city–one is denominational, the same denomination as my church. They are both patterned after the Willow Crreek Church model in Chicago–an excellent example of a church that wins back the disenchanted and converts the never-churched to faith in Christ.
I don’t know how the Catholic church is doing –except that there are some very devout ones whom I know and we join together on the pro-life, pro-family, pro-marriage concerns.
While some decried evangelical involvement in politics –since we are not of THIS kingdom but of Christ’s –many of us still see the value of political involvement –and OUR RIGHT to influence gov’t– just as much right as atheists and secular humanists have to try to influence laws to please themselves.
We do see that gov’t schools, particularly at the college level, undermine the faith foundation of some of our church young people. Yet, many young people leading the church today were raised in our church. So we aren’t losing them all. And we’ve seen people come INTO the church as adults –ready to believe, though they were not churched as children.
The Holy Spirit still speaks truth to the minds and souls of people today –despite all the secular and atheistic influence. They hear the word and they believe. It’s still happening all over the world –despite your polls.
It’s all about Jesus. Did He come, do miracles, die on the cross and rise again –according to the Scriptures? We evangelicals, pentecostals, fundamentalists, Messianic Jews, devout Catholics and devout main-line church people –all the Bible-believers share common ground about God, Christ, salvation through faith, the importance of repentance for sin –and the importance of loving each other and fulfilling Christ’s teachings regarding the poor, widow, orphan, prisoner, hungry and naked. We share in basic definitions of right and wrong –and many of us think it’s important to be politically active re: God’s definition of what is right and wrong. Separation of church and state, to us, does not mean that we legalize everything God has called sin. And for that, we wonder if we will eventually know martyrdom in the US –persecution. We hear it in the blog vitriol. One blogger I know says we should be rounded up and put in cattle cars and hauled away to concentration camps. He has never apologized for this outrageous suggestion. I think he believes it.
David Marjanović, OM #78
There’s also the point that in some countries being an observant goddist is a political statement. The majority of French Catholics who go to church regularly are politically conservative.
Yeah, fuck those people born into a different religion. The only thing that matters is believing in redeption, it doesn’t matter one bit about being a good person.
Christianity in the way it’s presented is a fucking disgusting religion with no compassion or regard for what it means to be human. Christians may go on about “God’s love” but really it means believe what they do or spend eternity for suffering… sick religion with sick minds in it.
Barb the idiot BIMBO. tl;dr
But you have never said anything cogent. But then you are a godbot. That says stupid, no matter what you may think, even if you could.
#5 caught my eye. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. That tired old saw “Atheism makes people amoral and Christianity compels them to do good” still crops up sometimes, but I have noticed it’s beginning to die. Secular altruism, especially in environmental causes, seems to be not only increasingly acceptable, but increasingly expected. In fact, the Christians who volunteer for the good causes I’m involved in are often almost apologetic.
I hope that sentiment extends to other areas of volunteerism, as people realize that losing their faith doesn’t mean losing their drive to make the world a better place. Altruism is more honest if it isn’t derived from guilt, or from fear for one’s eternal soul.
Altruism is more honest if it isn’t derived from guilt, or from fear for one’s eternal soul.
Of course. Who would disagree? After all, we are not saved by works –but by faith in the grace of God.
I certainly didn’t say you all do no good works. but the Bible says works won’t save you; –and that faith without works is dead.
Nerd, why the hostility? what’s bothering you? disagreement?
We are to do good because we want to. The lie is to say either that evangelicals do no good works or that they don’t do it out of love –but out of guilt. Not so.
Kel, you surely misread me. To say it doesn’t matter about being a good person –as persons born into other religions.
I spoke of the common ground of Christians. We realize that non-Christians may also do good –but it IS true that the good we do isn’t good enough to save any of us -it was the good Christ did on the cross that saves us. He can save anyone He wants to save. I can’t promise from scripture that he will save the non-believer who does good deeds. that’s His call. he has promised to save the believers who do His works toward the poor, widows, orphans, etc –loving brother, neighbor, enemy –and so on.
It does no good to be mad at God because you don’t like the system. He has given us a way to live forever –and it is a way of belief in the resurrected Christ,repentance for our sin, and obedience in loving service to fellow man.
Barb the BIMBO, you have nothing of interest for us. You god doesn’t exist. Your bible is fiction. And you are stupid to think we have any interest in what you think. So shut the fuck up.
God, Barb is sure as hell evil. Another of that ilk who strips humans of their dignity, cover their own narcissism in lies and in the end justifies universal sadism.
It’s so funny that the quickest way to find demonic impulses is to look to those who claim their angelic connection.
Barb is a BIMBO. If she shut up about her imaginary god and fictional bible, she might be able to make a point. Until then, she has nothing of interest for us since she is only presenting your mental illness to us.
Brevity, Barb. Brevity!
Barb bleated:
For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. James 2:26
Hey Barb, I think you are a whole new brand of troll. At the risk of angering my fellow pharyngula readers, I have to say I find your nonsense amusing and not totally unwelcome. You know, the kinds of delusions and dogmas that you are spewing out are old. After awhile it becomes boring to rebut them. For example, we cannot possibly hate something that doesn’t exist, OK? It is not that we believe in your particular god deep down and we deny him simply to cover our hatred. But I’m sure this is way above your head.
So tell me, if it’s such a noble idea to help the sick, the poor, and the needy, then why is it such a bad idea for everyone to pay their fair share and have it spent with transparency? Why does it get called “socialism” (run for the hills!) if the society makes sure there are no children without health insurance, but caring for orphans by your church is a good thing? 75% of you guys voted for John McCain, was that because he promised to be better for those in need? Do good deeds count only if religion gets the credit?
With all due respect, Nerd, that is a comparison most insulting and injurious to most bimbos.
Xians like Barb are at least half the reason I’m an atheist, but pointing that out is invariably ineffective. It’s almost as if they can’t grasp that their behavior might possibly be unwelcome, any more than they can grasp that their magic book with magic words about their invisible friend might somehow be less than convincing.
We need a new addition for the obviousness-impaired.
TL:DR:DC (don’t care)
or maybe TL:DL:HIAB (heard it all before)
The MadPanda, FCD
Barb #89 wrote:
The good things that you Christians do out of love is admired by people of other religions, and those without religion. But that is actually a problem for Christianity, in that a person doesn’t need to believe any of its supernatural revelations in order to recognize good done to others here on earth, for its own sake, from love — the basis of humanist ethics.
Christianity is strongest when it practices humanist ethics. The “love for Jesus” which inspires it isn’t really necessary. I think evangelicals themselves recognize this problem when they are hasty to add “but of course good works alone won’t save us.”
Why not? Because it can’t, or there would be no advantage to being a ‘believing Christian.’ Good works make sense without the Bible to urge people on to them. The whole issue with ‘salvation by faith’ then is to separate believers from non-believers.
And yet you’re forced to appeal to us on the common ground of humanist ethics.
Back to the main subject of the thread, before troll contamination: I am not sure how much I trust the article, but I think there may be reason for further secularization. Recent poll data not withstanding, one hypothesis for decreased church attendance in most of Europe(without the “niche” being filled by new religions) is that once people have effective and reliable social support for hard times, like disability, disease and unemployment, they have no reason to turn to religion and it will ultimately fall under its own weight.
If that is true, people like Barb will have more than one reason to despise President Obama.
Oh, Barb.
The average person does good because a person can. Further, having had good done to herself by others, and noting the effect thereof, a person might be expected to return such efforts in kind. She, further observing the salutary affects, might then put such behavior in the same category as “eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired and scratch where it itches.” Normal human behavior, observable everywhere.
The average believer labors under imposed goals and restrictions under the aegis of an imaginary being. An outside force is imposed to assure behavior that does not require threats or promises in order to be the habit of many. That is, doing good in order to live forever in a dream world, or because of the threat of doing it in a nightmare world are poor excuses for justice and compassion. The two stand on their own quite stably.
I’ll side with people who are not your average believer, thank you. They are much more conversant than Invisible Supernatural Spooks and they tell me straight up, sparing me the effort of parsing ancient screeds scrawled by scribes scared by their contemporary brand(s) of doomsayer.
People seem to appreciate an honest approach, a kind and respectful one. I have yet to run into an honest, kind and respectful approach that included magic, revealed truths and or an irrational attraction to or a fascination with the failures of our ancestors to come to terms with the world they found themselves in. Deadly.
Today, praise science, life is comparatively forgiving and I suppose some of that forgiveness should go to those who would rather be told about reality than to discover it for themselves.
So I forgive you your youth, your naivete, your trusting faith. I can’t blame you for accepting a view that comforts you.
I did that once too. OK, twice. Separated by a long time . . .then I got better.
Conner H at 30
I have to say, I thought Prof Abalose did a relatively poor job in places. For example, when CL was trying to distance his beliefs from the wedge document, Abalose should have retorted something like “well then, you sure pick a strange place to work – still in this economic climate even working for organisations who’s core beliefs you apparently don’t believe in is better than no job at all, right?”
or when Casey tried to show that ID was science using the observe->hypothesize->test->conclude system, he should have pointed out that evolution predicts the same thing (complexity) but without the need to invoke an imaginary designer.
Abalose had the high ground, but just sounded like he was complaining, while Luskin sounded polished, albeit evasive.
You say that, but it’s hard to believe when you espouse this:
This is exactly what I was saying, it’s not works that matter, it’s not about doing good deeds – it’s about believing that you have redeption through Jesus Christ. Works don’t matter, beliefs do. And if you don’t believe (for whatever reason – most likely because you weren’t brought up Christian) you’ll suffer for all eternity. That’s the sick twisted message of Christianity – believe what we do or you’re fucked!
It’s understandable why modern theologians distance themselves from this kind of thinking; it’s barbaric and a throw back to a primitive means of thinking. It’s conformity through fear so while you may pretend God is love, while you are preaching eternal hellfire it’s a little hard to swallow. Fundamentalist Christianity is an abolute joke and it’s adherents are masters of doublethink.
Barb the thing you don’t get is – and I think I am speaking for the majority of posters here – THERE IS NO GOD. Posting that we need to have faith to be saved means nothing to us. You would feel the same way if we threatened that if you didn’t wear purple (I have nothing against wearing purple btw) a giant spider would descend and throw you into a pit of fire.
What we both agree on is that belief in a sky fairy does not make people good.
Therefore, speaking for myself here, I don’t really care what you want to believe, just keep it out of my life*
*politics, legislation, schools, pharyngula blog.
I don’t think he was referring to the scripture per se. Lets face it, every Christian sect has scripture it tries to ignore or rationalize away. I think he was referring to doctrinal matters: what their sect believes, what the sect thinks the reason for believe what it does, how to apply it to one’s own life, etc.
Barb, first let me say that it’s awesome that your church is successfully getting its act together and transcending much of the pettiness and poor behavior that plagues many other churches. I also commend you for having the guts to post in a forum where you’ll inevitably be chastised and mocked. Using evangelical rhetoric will only further guarantee that… it’s your style; I understand that. But if you’d like some unsolicited advice, may I suggest that you might get a more civil conversation if you leave some of the catch-phrases out. You take things like salvation and scripture for granted as concepts that everyone surely accepts. Actually, that is not the case. You’ve come to a forum where salvation, faith in god, the divinity of Christ, etc. have no validity. We’re on a new level here.
Your reply to my comment puts me in an awkward place, as I hadn’t actually read your first comment when I posted it. It does kinda sound like I was replying to you, but, alas, I wasn’t.
But I am now! W00t!
Um… so…
Well, I’m more or less an atheist too (I prefer the term ‘naturodiscordian hobbyist’; it keeps people guessing) so I have nothing helpful to say about faith, scripture, or god’s love. The only things I found worth keeping from my religious days are meatless Fridays (cattle ranches are encroaching on our national parks) and idolatry (I have a collection of female idols in my kitchen).
But! It’s good that you’re having a good experience in your church.
A word of warning about adoption – remember, adoption is a really bad way to make a political statement. Your minister’s children aren’t representatives of interracial unity, nor are they ‘lucky’ or ‘blessed’ to be saved from a horrible fate by their parents’ altruism. They are the minister’s children in a legal and practical sense, and nothing more. If the church wants to hold them up as an inspiration to all, maybe the congregation will benefit, but the children will struggle. Someday they’ll need to escape from the burden of feeling like charity cases, and who knows how they’ll do that? They could simply leave the church and start a healthy life elsewhere, or they could try something more devastating.
Not that I’m an expert or anything… *whistles*
Also, please be careful how you act upon your pro-family, pro-marriage sentiments. Here in MA, we have something like 11,000 married gay couples (as of 2007 I think), and if someone, or some political force, were to forcibly break up their families, a lot of adopted children would be deeply affected. You can talk about protecting families, but I’ll do what I can to protect my neighbors’ and coworkers’ families right back.
There we go! A great example of the phenomenon ‘Tis Himself mentioned earlier about how do-goodery can be subjective.
Better.
a lurker #103 wrote:
I remember reading about a survey that showed a list of phrases and asked Christians to indicate which ones were in the Bible. The vast majority thought “God helps those who help themselves” was Biblical.
Not only isn’t it in the Bible, but a case can be made that this message is the opposite of what the Bible teaches. At least, the religious gentleman who had done the survey argued that it was. “God helps those who help themselves” is basically a nod to humanism: “God” will be on the side of those who work hard and apply their efforts to find a solution. In other words, set religion to the side, and have the confidence to try to fix your own problems.
The Bible, on the other hand, is presumably a message against the sin of pride — the belief that one can “help oneself” without God. No, we humans were put on earth to learn the lesson that we are helpless, worthless, and doomed. We need to be broken, so that we come to scorn the efforts of Man, give up following our “way” of reason and self-reliance, and rely only on God.
As the infidel Robert Ingersoll put it, “Hands that help are better than hands that pray.” The religious themselves recognize this. Push comes to shove, they get off their knees and nod to reality with a hasty and practical “God helps those who help themselves.”
Posted by: Sastra | March 10, 2009 10:26 PM
Exactly. As Hitchens likes to quote (I forget the original source), “man was born sick and commanded to be well.”
I find the odd combination of in-group self-loathing alongside pious arrogance towards the out-group very disingenuous indeed. I mean, it isn’t very often you find people who are just so damn humble. [cough]
By your definition, genuinely good people who have helped better humanity like Mohandas Gandhi, Stephen Hawking, and Morihei Ueshiba cannot be saved.
And why? All because of the technicality they didn’t believe in your personal saviour.
Barb, show me physical evidence for your savior. Evidence that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as being of divine, not natural origin. Until you show evidence for your savior, it remains a lie and bullshit upon your part. That is how evidence based science operates. No savior means no holy bible. And everything falls apart. An eternally burning bush ala Moses is what is required. No stupid “look in the mirror” or “look around you”. Both those have natural explanations.
Don’t bother. Barb never debates, or even thinks. She does occasional drive-bys, bleating scripture and her “truths”, while complaining about tone, completely refusing to engage any semblance of reason she once may have had, and misses every point completely. Then vanishes, only to come back another day and do it all over again.
Her cup, it be overflowing.
Barb – Thank You for reminding what I fled from. Totally deluded, self-congratulatory, smug fuckwits.
Do you think the old, poor and homeless would really be better off if I showed up every week at the local St. Vincent de Paul food bank with empty egg cartons and told them I would pray for them rather than hand out dozens of eggs? Should I throw the eggs away so that they can have greater opportunity to know jezus?
I don’t give a shit what you and your imaginary friend think Barb. Those people are hungry now. If your gawd is so great why doesn’t HE feed them?
Barb, here is a thought.
Stalin would send people to the Gulag for saying he was not the perfect leader.
But even he could not punish them for thinking he was not the perfect leader.
Your god promises 24/7 monitoring and recording of thoughts of every human being, past, present and future. He further promises punishments being doled out on that basis.
Your god is the ultimate Big Brother. Stalin would be jealous.
That the thing, she doesn’t care. All that concerns her is whether or not her actions please the one who’ll supposedly decide her eternal fate. If she let herself believe there was no eternal fate, I doubt she’d give a damn about the homeless and their hunger.
brokenSoldier – You’re right about her, she’s such a shit I want to throw eggs at her. grrr!
Because you’re a veteran, you’ll get a kick out of this – we have two old veterans that live some where in a homeless camp. They both have admired our garden and pullets throughout the year, over the back fence, so we give them veggies and eggs. Well come to find out, they have pooled their resources from us, we heard that they keep half of what we give them for food and trade the other half for beer and tobacco money. (Our squealer knows them) Now Barb would stop giving them anything, we on the other hand get a charge out of their resourcefulness, and act like we don’t know. *grin*
I’m done being on the defensive. God, Jesus, Him, His, (never, never, never Her, right?) evangelical, fundamentalist, sin, salvation, cross, good works, Protestant, Catholic, Shia, Shi’ite–I just have no fucking idea what you are talking about. It certainly ain’t fucking reality. No longer am I am an atheist; I am a realist, and all “religious” are arealists, denying reality until their dying day.
Barb, you are your own counterexample.
If I can reference aaaalllll the way back to #11:
How exactly is it helping the atheist/agnostic/nonreligious cause that on a forum like this, we talk about Christians in the same way that sickened me when Christians talked about nonreligious people (or, more often, other Christians with whom they disagreed)? If, as atheists we can’t even be nice to people with whom we disagree (let alone think that they might have a few good points), we’ll never escape the comparison to Christian fundamentalists who used to tell me that if I didn’t agree with them I was either “too stupid or too sinful to see the light.”
Isn’t it about time to quit relying on the easy “What about the Flying Spaghetti Monster (pbuh)?” etc arguments that don’t take into account (or at least refuse to take seriously) the actual intricacy that characterizes thoughtful and (almost) intellectually honest religious belief?
Sorry about all the parentheticals. Try as I might, I can’t seem to write without them.
Barb @#84
I see far more fundamentalist Christians online threatening to have atheists killed or put into concentration camps than the other way around.
Among most fundamentalist sects ‘Christian love’ seems to be absent.
Will E. – You sound like my dad. He said the one thing he learned for sure in every foxhole in Korea, was that prayin’ won’t save ya, and cryin’ don’t help.
I’m betting that’s true.
I see you toned down the devil owns hollywood, the schools, and the mainstream media schtick. It comes across as pathological. My friend works evaluating incoming at a psychiatric facility. He sees that a lot in the more severe cases that end up in lockup.
The persecution story is still loony. Read the poll. Xians make up 76% of the US population. Pretty hard to be a major majority and a persecuted minority at the same time. There are numerous segments of society being persecuted by xians any way they can. Gays, scientists, MDs, nonxians, Jews, atheists and so on. When they can’t find a Hindu or gay to persecute, they are very good at fighting among themselves.
Xians might have a right to their political preferences like anyone else. In fact, it is impossible in the USA to be elected to just about any office including dogcatcher without being a xian.
Don’t make the mistake that xian voters are the same as those who voted for Theothuglicans. Not all xians believe in inept corrupt government with senseless wars and national catastrophe as a result. In fact, among evangelical voters, a significant fraction voted for Obama, a third or so if I recall correctly. And of the 52% who did vote for Obama, the vast majority were….xians.
You don’t speak in any way, shape, or form for anyone but yourself. Certainly not all or even most xians.
The persecution story is still loony. Read the poll. Xians make up 76% of the US population. Pretty hard to be a major majority and a persecuted minority at the same time.
not if one employs as much denial as they do.
you’re right to point out that all of this shite has more to do with psychology than with some particular ideology.
Of course, the first thing one should do with an alcoholic is keep them away from alcohol.
these people all need deprogramming.
And of the 52% who did vote for Obama, the vast majority were….xians.
well, that’s kind of defacto given your earlier point in para 2.
still, it’s not like xians ran away from him enmasse.
Probably not. There is a backlash against the fundies, pure fact. Polls show that the majority of the US population is sick and tired of them trying to force their wingnut beliefs on everyone else. Most of that majority are other xians. As you sow, so shall you reap. They earned it the hard way.
The agenda of much of the christofascists is clear. They hate the USA, want to overthrow the US government, and head on back to the Dark Ages. They say so often. Read the xian Dominionist/Reconstruction literature and it is all there. Organizations include Focus on Overthrowing the Goverment(Dobson), the Discovery Institute, Falwell, Robertson, Hagee, Parsley, Palin, and much of the much diminished Theothuglican party.
Well get this. Most of the USA doesn’t want to sit on a pile of rubble, skinning a rat for dinner, and chanting Jesus loves all the zygotes.
If the fundies sat in their trailer parks waving their snakes around and watching their teen age daughters get pregnant, no one would much care. When they try to take over the country and destroy it, people care.
The last administration cost me 2 friends, dead in Iraq for no good reason. A lot of people have had their 401K plans destroyed and unemployment in California is over 10%. This is too high a price to pay. The Haters, Liars, and Killers for jesus have driven more people away from xianity and created more atheists in 1 day than PZ and Dawkins could in a millenia.
Why does Barb think anyone here gives the slightest damn (pun intended) about her church?
Is she trying to rid the world of atheists by boring us to death?
As you sow, so shall you reap. They earned it the hard way.
I’m not-so-secretly hoping that the christofascists will be the door that opens unto the end of all theism.
…because when it comes down to it, it really is all a sham, and more people will begin to realize for themselves as the real nutters get more and more publicity.
If they just weren’t so bloody tedious, I’d say we should be inviting MORE Simons/Nats/Barbs to post on Pharyngula, so lurkers can see again and again just how much they like to shoot themselves in the head.
OTOH, I think Panda’s Thumb can work for that just as well, and I’ve grown weary of the fool’s convention we seem to be having on Pharyngula this last week or so.
so, to Simon, Nate, Barb, SF, and the other religionauts out there…
try posting HERE instead:
http://pandasthumb.org/
ask for Pim Van Meurs.
enjoy!
The last administration cost me 2 friends, dead in Iraq for no good reason.
very sorry to hear that.
condolences.
Well sure, if 76% of the country is xian and Obama receives 52% of the vote, the majority of his voters have to be xians. But remember who we are addressing here. LOL!
This Barb doesn’t really get that not all xians think like Free Methodists in the Upper Midwest. They don’t believe the mainstream media is controlled by satan. Ironically, the mainstream media isn’t liberal as myth has it, it is decidedly conservative overall.
The stuff about the public schools and universities being satanically controlled is just plain loony too. 30 of the top 40 universities in the world are located in the USA, a fact which goes a long way towards explaining our lead in science, medicine, and economics.
Who knew that satan was a patron of knowledge and economic and technological advancement. Hmmmm, maybe that is why the fundies want to go back to the Dark Ages. Well, they are free to destroy all inventions of the last 100 years, toss out everything in their medicine cabinents, destroy their cars and computers, and go. They never do.
So, the best thing you can do is support secular centers of community mutual support, so that people have somewhere else to go. Schools, community center, Y, Sports league, babysitting co-op…
Who knew that satan was a patron of knowledge and economic and technological advancement.
I did.
Oops, said too much.
Now I’m in for it.
*mutters to self repeatedly*: “not supposed to reveal plans!”
So, the best thing you can do is support secular centers of community mutual support, so that people have somewhere else to go. Schools, community center, Y, Sports league, babysitting co-op…
excellent point.
They are missed but I’m not the real tragedy. Until you see it, you can’t imagine what a hole it blows in other peoples lives.
One guy was a humanitarian relief worker. His parents, who I know are in their 80’s. They had 3 kids and two are dead. This isn’t what you want at the very end of your life.
The other was a kid soldier, son of family friends. His fiancee really lost it. She went on a 6 month drug and alcohol fueled binge that resulted in her getting dozens of tattoos. It ended when she was arrested for getting in a fistfight with another girl twice her size over nothing. Judge heard the story and tossed the case.
wooohooow,
maybe I’ll live long enough to see a god die.
Actually trying to help the old, poor and homeless instead of ‘praying for them’ is what I do. Barb goes on about her pastor adopting a black child from a foreign country, well that’s nice, but I see it as self serving. Her pastor is using the child.
We get blessed up one side and down the other when we roll up to the food bank with a load of eggs. Am I as rude about it as I am here, no.
From the looks on peoples faces, lots of them are not believers too, but they feel they have to pretend to get aid.
I’m not trying to toot my own horn, we godless don’t have the aid networks set up yet, it’s something we need to work on.
Monado – I absolutely agree with you, but in my little fundie corner of the world – there are no secular centers of community support.
The FSM,teapot etc argument is a valid construct to illustrate faith in something imaginary.
Schizophrenics can have beautifully intricate and detailed delusions,it doesnt make them any more real however.
“Intellectually honest religious belief”,that doesnt even make any sense.
Patricia @133/134
Actually, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the Red Cross a secular charity?
raven,
…pretty much everybody? Eve? Faust? That slave girl from Acts 16:16? If you want to be smart and rich, Satan’s always been the go-to guy.
On the other hand, God…well…damns you to eternal torment if you make a deal with Satan. Which doesn’t make God better, exactly, but does make him the only feasible choice left.
God’s like Microsoft. He prefers sabotaging the competition to improving his product.
The flying spaghetti monster is not there for that though, it serves a role as a specific counter-argument (not the one it was created for either) as a response to those who say “you can’t prove God is not there.” The serious theologians don’t resort to the petty arguments that would warrant an FSM reply. Look at Barb above, convinced her God is a loving one while condemning most of humanity to eternal torture. Modern theologians reject this notion of hellfire and actually make a loving God.
Posted by: Patricia, OM | March 10, 2009 11:39 PM
No matter where on Earth you go, there are two things old soldiers and sailors will always find: booze and smokes. (Young ones go for the women first, but then they go find the booze and smokes.) For all our faults, we’re nothing if not predictable…
That’s because you have both a sense of humor and a heart, while all Barb has are a Book and a list of rules.
Confucius said: “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”
That quote has always been indicative in my mind to the morality debate with theists – they have a list of rules to live by, while I understand the rules by which I live.
TING – Red Cross? You get the cross part, right?
Secular? Even if it were, which it isn’t, I wouldn’t give the Red Cross a dime. My father, a Korean war veteran, and my husband, Viet Nam era veteran have told me all I need to know about the Red Cross.
All of the veterans I know speak kindly of the Salvation Army, so with gritted teeth I donate a small amount of money every year, and a large number of pumpkin pies for the Thanksgiving and christmas free community dinners. Best I can do. :) Beats throwin’ rocks, right?
I could never give anything to the Salvation Army and, yeah, it is personal. They are a major opponent of gay rights.
And just for added emphasis, the Red Cross has a counterpart in the Muslim world, called the Red Crescent (symbolic of the Islamic crescent) that does the same tasks and is protected equally under the laws of war.
A question for Barb. You left a long post going off about the minutia of your church. I think it is safe to state that less then one percent of the all the readers of this blog bothered to slog through.
Yet you cannot answer a question I have asked repeated of you, what do you think of fundamentalists parents, like you, who kick their GLBT children out of the homes? I ask because I have seen the compassion of people like you in action. And it would be nice if you tried to give a justification for this.
Every time I come across this quote I’m reminded of its parody: “Give a man a fire and you keep him warm for a day. Set a man on fire and you keep him warm for the rest of his life.”
Recently I read a couple of Chaim Potok’s books about Orthodox Jews. The casuistic hairsplitting involved in “interpreting” Jewish law and ritual was amazing to me. The intensity with which people would argue about minutiae is difficult for the outsider to understand.
I much prefer BrokenSoldier’s “rules by which I live.” Sure, it’s situational ethics (at least on my part) but it’s based on pleasing me and pleasing other people, not on pleasing a mythological omniscient bully who has a deep concern about my sex life.
Posted by: ‘Tis Himself | March 11, 2009 3:28 AM
Nice – I’ve never heard that before. Though now every time I play Civilization IV and that quote pops up, I’ll laugh a little! ;)
And something that these kinds of theists never seem to get is the difference between understanding the reasons behind external rules that are dictated to you, and internally comprehending the motivations and justifications behind your own actions, and how satisfying that really is. I want to laugh – and sometimes, cry – every time I think about how many people have spent their entire lives trying to interpret exactly how their sacred texts tell them to live their lives. What a waste.
Unfortunately, I think the original author is wrong. Let’s see:
1) Evangelicals hitched their wagon to conservative politics, and that cart is busted.
The nation will switch coats again the next time it’s hungry and frightened.
2) Christian media has been superficial and failed to teach them the basics of their belief.
It’s not about actual belief – it’s about sense of belonging.
3) Megachurches. Enough said.
Oh, people love to flock to corporations. What’s more popular, Linux or Windows?
4) Christian education has failed.
So?
5) Christianity has become a taint rather than a selling point in efforts to do good works.
Not sure what to make of this one – it’s intuitively wrong, at least in my eyes.
6) Confidence in the bible and faith are waning.
So what? I seriously don’t think Christians believe in what they preach – it’s a matter of proving loyalty to the herd.
7) “The money will dry up.”
The State will provide more.
I hope I’ve been wrong, and the meddling spiritual bullies go down the drain. However, if I were to bet money on it, this is how I’d reason.
Patricia & brokensoldier:
I’ve been trying to look it up and have only found this (actually from richard dawkins’ blog)… I KNOW it seems counter-intuitive but I’m pretty sure the red cross IS secular.
“The Cross symbol is not religious in origin, it derives from the Swiss flag.
The Red Crescent symbol however was adopted in Islamic countries because nations objected to the original Cross symbol because they thought it WAS religious in origin.”
TING:
Indeed, as I have found myself by poking around a bit more. Though my own personal misconception was birthed out of the fact that I observed the Red Cross and Red Crescent in action, and while the ICRC (Internat’l Council of the Red Cross & Red Crescent) are secular shell organizations, many of the ICRC people I encountered in my ops overseas were religiously affiliated. (Especially the Red Crescent, but that is to be expected, I guess, when you’re operating under theocracies that wouldn’t allow it any other way.)
While the first is admirable and makes sense to the educated it is the second which is more likely to have an effect on the lives of people and ultimately reduce the power of the church.
The miners of the UK created social centres and health services paid for by contributions from their meagre wages.
These ‘Institutes’ became centres of learning and dissent and created a political movement out of which came such benefits as universal health care.
As a side effect the role of the church was diminished.
If you take away the church’s role as ‘shepherd’ many of the sheep will wander off to where the grass is greener – where no-one needs fear eternal damnation for not conforming to the accepted dogma but can receive real help in the here and now for current needs regardless of beliefs.
TING You’re right. The Red Cross was started by a Swiss national
Ah-ha.. still on the case. This is from the red cross website:
“The Committee, later to become the International Committee of the Red Cross, chose as their emblem a perfectly formed red cross on a white background the simple inverse of the Swiss flag.” (it was founded by a Swiss).
I know, still doesn’t prove they’re non-religious, but I’m getting there!
P.S. You’re perfectly entitled to not give to the red cross of course. They have a pretty good reputation here in Aus.
Barb asks: Did Jesus do what’s in the gospels?
No.
This has been another addition of simple answers to silly questions.
To quote Paul (1 corinthians 13-17), “[13] If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. [14] And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. [15] More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. [16] For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. [17] And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.”
Got that, Barb? Your preaching is useless.
The red cross *is* secular. The cross actually derives from the Swiss flag. The red crescent, star of david, crystal, etc were adopted as alternatives because other people saw the cross as a Christian symbol.
I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about them, so I’m rather curious what might have gone wrong.
Look, if I always read the whole thread before commenting, I’d never say anything :)
First – the Christian Science Monitor is *not* an evangelical paper. It is owned and operated by the Christian Science Church, which is a different type of fundamentalism. Whatever it says about the current evangelical movement needs to be taken with a grain or two or salt.
Second – I think the slaps against megachurches are based on stereotypes, not reality. Scott Thumma’s recent book on the subject gives a much better look at the phenomenon.
Third – I think the evangelical community will splinter over politics, but lose half its members? Wishful thinking IMHO.
*sigh*
#143 it’s not just religious fundies that throw their GLBT children out, but the religious history of our modern societies and cultures has set a precedence for intolerance. Lots of families in various religions disown their non-believer (or don’t quite practise the faith right) children too.
It’s hard to tell how different the stories would be for families sundered by religiousity if they didn’t have figments to adhere to. I do know that it wouldn’t be as easy to displace accountability. Family members acting against the best interests of their own would have to look their kin in the eye when rejecting them instead of consulting scriptures and looking to supernatural rationale.
Which reminds me of a completely different saying
Never pet a burning dog.
Ok back to the regularily scheduled comments.
I thought it was “Teach a man to fish, then you can sneak round and knock his missus up when he’s not there”?
There’s also “Teach a man to fish and he’ll spend all day in a boat drinking beer.”
@Kel #138
You make a good point, but what about the first part of my comment? As I read the posts on this forum, all I can think is that y’all are just the fundies on the other side of the coin. If I thought all nonreligious people were like the ones on this forum, I would have just stayed in evangelicalism and dealt with the crazies there. Christianity is a “death cult” and Christians are “fuckwits”? Give me a break. No, I don’t need all the examples of how Christianity is illogical, unprovable, and has been used for some terrible things in the world. I know all of that. But y’all are acting like a bunch of kids who are just pissed that you can’t have things your way. Like I said before, if this “Christians are so fucking stupid and crazy and I just can’t wait til they all die off” attitude is the real fruit of an atheistic mindset, then I’d say we’re just as intolerant as they are but with less power and influence to do anything about it.
You’re concern trolling is noted. When you have a real point rather than passive condemnation, please let us know.
I’ll take “really stupid comparisons of atheism to religious fundamentalism” for ten, please, Bob.
Also, it’s “teach everyone to fish and you’ll create an environmental catastrophe and the cod stocks will collapse”.
@159
“If I thought all nonreligious people were like the ones on this forum, I would have just stayed in evangelicalism and dealt with the crazies there.”
Funny, it seems you’d want make a decision like this based on whether or not you think god exists, not on which side has the people you like more.
Get simplistic theists on here, you get simplistic responses. Bring on intelligent theists with sophisticated arguments and it changes. When someone’s intellectual depth is “evolution is false because cats don’t turn into dogs” you are hardly going to get anything more than a mockery of such an opinion – nor should you expect anything less.
The comparison between atheism and fundamentals is concern trolling 101 around here. really it serves no purpose other than to cast yourself as being a judgemental douche. You don’t have to agree with what everyone is saying, but coming on without understanding the dynamics then making blanket criticisms condemning the behaviour of all present just makes whatever point you may have seem petulant and whiny. Just try to put up with continual creationist garbage and see how your tolerance level holds up…
Chris Martin @159
Yes, you’re right – there is a need to be careful we don’t paint any person who belongs to a religion or believes in god with the same brush… and I don’t think that’s what is happening…to the contrary I think that most people DO have a general ‘live and let live’ attitude to religion. A lot of atheists who post here have parents and friends (myself included) who are religious.
HOWEVER, what you see here is people reacting to the sorts of religious thinking that results in people like Barb who ARE completely crazy, and the sort of thinking which is at unbelievably high levels in places like the US, and as such has an impact on politics and education. This mentality includes disbelieving anything that contradicts their bible or using their religion as moral reasoning to discriminate against the GLBT community (for example).
I reckon that is why people get so shitty – there is good reason for it.
@Kel (160), Sure it’s off topic and it’s trolling 101, but is it too much to ask for an online discussion that doesn’t end in exaggeration and name-calling? I shouldn’t have made the blanket statement b/c there have been some really constructive comments. Maybe I’m just in a pissy mood.
@Ben (162), To think that cold reason is the main motivator behind any decision any of us have made is too simplistic. And I didn’t say I believed god existed; it’s easy enough to find a church where you don’t have to believe anything. I left because even in those churches, the “us v them” mentality dictates everything.
Kel and TING, you are being too rational in explaining goddist bashing to Chris. He should just understand that we’re mean SOBs who take delight in saying nasty things to and about those who we feel superior to.
Yes it is. Semi-anonymity brings out the more extreme nature in people. Still there is chance to be civil, though again it’s hard to find any theist that comes on here who is interested in what you are describing. It’s the nature of a place like this, it doesn’t attract the moderates, so automatically you are put in a position of having to argue against crazies. Which of course with their terrible arguments weakens the bonds of tolerance to a positive feedback loop drives a downward descent of discussion.
Bring on a theist genuinely interested in conversing (one who is willing to both argue and listen) and see what happens. In the time I’ve been here, I’m yet to see that. Instead it’s just the crazies who want to preach and say evolution is wrong.
I guess one other thing for me personally is that we have to deal with some of these same trolls over and over. Eventually even the most tolerant among us lose patience with the same fallacious assertions and blatant godbotting. Again, if they were actually willing to take on board the opinions of others, then maybe the conversations could go somewhere. But when the conclusion is Goddidit 6000 years ago, how can you even start to have the kind of conversation you are talking about?
“To think that cold reason is the main motivator behind any decision any of us have made is too simplistic.”
I say this is just flat wrong. The reason I don’t believe in any gods is because of cold reason.
Sounds like you’re a joiner–you want to be part of a group–and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I can’t fathom why anyone would join a church or religious group based on anything other than one’s belief in a god.
@bobxxxx
That is just anti-Christian bigotry. Imagine if Christians told you you should be ashamed of your worldview and your disbelief in Jesus.
Chris, we have had a real rash of tone/concern trolls this last month. So, at the moment, we are very sensitive and respond quickly and forcefully to people who complain about our tone. For a rational discussion, just throw an idea out and back it up with some evidence. The people here love a good argument, and it doesn’t always degenerate to name calling. However, those who complain about our tone prior to putting out their argument, usually have shown themselves to be godbots trying to disguise their intentions. So we are a bit suspicious of you.
Right–because that would never happen.
This idiocy from someone who thinks atheist should be ashamed of their lack of beliefs? Facilis, you obviously don’t understand the golden rule. Look it up. You can find it in Matthew and Luke. You need to apply it to yourself and your attitudes. Your belief should get no special treatment.
Facilis, was you trying to be funny? Or was it an accident?
Let’s see, there are the regular trolls like Barb and Silver Fox letting us know that there is no way we could be decent people because of our atheism. Facilis, do you pay attention to anything?
Chris,
For the past several days there’s been a poster named Facilis who has been making the argument that god is the source of logic therefore it’s logical to believe in god. When the circularity of this argument is shown, he ignores the rebuttal and claims that nobody can refute him. After a while, the discussion moves from the problems of presuppositionalist philosophy to what an idiot Facilis is.
Then there’s Barb, who isn’t interested in having a discussion but just wants to preach at the unbelievers. Unfortunately, she’s extremely shallow, quite unimaginative, and rather stupid. Did you know that the human heart beats for a lifetime without any outside energy? Barb said that and, when the flaw in this statement was pointed out to her, didn’t retract it. Ignoring her or making fun of her are the only two options available because she does not engage is dialogue with us.
Those are just two recent examples of the godbotting that we’re subjected to time after time. I don’t know how many times Pascal’s Wager has been thrown at us as a viable argument for becoming a goddist. After a while, we just sneer “what an idiot you are to trot out Pascal’s Wager” without bothering to show the speciousness of the argument.
Your problem is that you’ve stumbled onto a conversation that’s been ongoing for years. The players on the goddist side change with great frequency, the players on the atheist side remain fairly constant. As a result, the atheists are generally making canned responses to the same stale arguments that we’ve heard for years.
I hope this explains some of the reasons for the “exaggeration and name-calling.” If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Facilis, are you being particularly stupid today or was this just another one of your idiotic non sequiturs?
What makes you think this isn’t a routine response by Christians to atheists? I can assure you, based on years of personal experience, this response by many Christians to my profession of atheism is extremely common. Its frequency is up there with “yer goin’ ta Hell unless ya believes in Jebus.”
Tis Himself, if it were an actual dialogue then there’d be an argument for not using exaggeration and name-calling. But with these regular trolls, there’s no point. Might as well have some fun with it.
Yes, I had an encounter with a creationist on the Texas Freedom Network blog this week. He didn’t even have the guts to admit he was a creationist. All he’d do is attack the theory of evolution with broad statements and no support. I asked again and again for specifics, and I pointed him toward loads of evidence in regards to evolution, but he wouldn’t counter with anything sensible. Just kept saying evolution is weak, both “sides” should be taught, isn’t that what science is all about—all the typical drivel. According to him, he was the one who was really interested in science, and I was the one operating on emotion. Also, evolutionists are dishonest and have a hidden agenda. All rubbish, but he wouldn’t stop with it. If he’d been commenting here, he would have received an avalanche of incivility–and it would have been deserved. Imagine dealing with that sort of dishonest godbot day after day, year after year. Many regulars do have to deal with jerks like that. In my opinion, godbots deserve everything they get.
‘Tis Himself, Facilis has not been doing this for a few days. He has been doing this for a few months. But there is a certain consistency in his argument. That was not meant as a compliment.
@Nerd of Redhead @Tis Himself, Your comments clear things up a bit. I just stumbled onto this site after following a long line of links through and around blogs where all of the conversations seem to just be angry people yelling at each other. So when I ended up here, I just decided to post my frustrations. Sorry all. Looking forward to seeing more of the normal convos.
@Ben, I’m most definitely a “joiner”, but my previous statement about cold reason came more out of a belief that there just really isn’t any such thing as cold reason than my desire to be in a group.
Janine, I meant to write “for the past several weeks.” But thanks for the correction.
Ben, I’ve noticed that the Creationists are rather good at finding holes in evolution (more more usually, misunderstanding it), but rather poor at doing the same with their own ideas. It’s as though they are stuck in this false dichotomy – if evolution is false then Genesis must be true, so all I need to do is cast some doubt on evolution. (e.g. I am yet to find an even half-way plausible explanation of how the flood arranged the fossils just so they looked like they evolved from simple to more complex life-forms. Maybe it was blind chance ;-P)
Make that months…….
*Sigh*
Insightful ape @ #112:
If you use Stalin instead of Hitler, is there a Cyrillic version of Godwin’s Law involved?
Not that I disagree with your point; it’s the distinction I’ve often made between a dictatorship and a truly totalitarian state.
Nerdiah, that’s dead on. As another commenter on TFN said about creationists, “If X goes against Genesis, then X is wrong. Period.”
You see, this world is but merely a warped reflection of the true reality that is god.
The smarter species all ran uphill really quickly, and died along the way! Isn’t it obvious?! LOOK AT THE TREES!
Or at least that’s Hovind’s explanation, iirc.
I though I’d write a long list of all the things we’d miss if mass Evangelical Christianity were to vanish off the face of the Earth,
I’m stuck on number 1.
Can anyone help out?
And Chris:
As to the following,
While the statement can be made with condescending import, it can be made just as accurately with no condescension – many atheists that I’ve talked to since I left the church find it abhorrent to glorify something as hideous as crucifixion, even as the mechanism for redemption. Christianity’s defining moment – without which it would not exist in the same form we know it today – was the brutal, bodily sacrifice of the faith’s central human figure. The only thing that keeps Christianity safe from the notion of being a cult today is the sheer number of adherents and amount of time that has passed since the central figure was sacrificed. So at its core, it is, which is one reason I decided to move away from Catholicism, and religion in general. I’m not trying to be condescending or snarky at all – just trying to show that the difference is highly relative, depending on viewpoint.
@187–Janine
Exactly!
Uh…
By “god,” you are talking about Mordak, right?
There isn’t one. The flood is dead. It’s been dead since before Darwin penned Origin, and we’ve been taking uninterrupted swings at the carcass ever since. There are some geologists out there who advocate that the flood is supported by geological evidence. They’re lying. What’s more, I think that they know they’re lying.
You kind of have to be careful in saying ix-nay on the flood thing as a whole – I think this may have been posted to this thread already – because there is support for the notion that the area where the Persian Gulf now sits was once a valley that flooded as the planet warmed gradually following the last ice age, displacing the nomadic hunter-gatherers of the area. If I’m not mistaken, this (local) flood event is thought to be what inspired the tale of the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which in turn showed up in the Christian tradition as the Noah story. Global flood with a huge ark and two of every animal – hardly. But there may have actually been a flood in that region that lived on in oral traditions to eventually take root as the story used for the basis of the Noah tale.
Huummm. Not sure. But seeing that true reality involves either eternal pain or being eternally a sycophant, it seems that god’s reality is a warped view on our reality.
lol @ Discombobulated. It’s like the explanation only needs to survive scrutiny for as long as it takes for the Creationist to change mental topics. Seriously, who thought that one up and then didn’t keep thinking for long enough to go “… oh, drat, the trees. I forgot about those!”
Josh: Oh I know, but you’d think they have come up with _something_. I mean, it’s not like the hypothesis has to satisfy Occam’s Razor or anything, right?
Yeah, I should have modified that comment with Noachian, but even so:
A., marine incursions from rising seas aren’t floods. They are marine incursions from rising seas. Ice damns giving way–okay. Rising sea levels–not a flood (although to be fair, I wouldn’t call a worldwide deluge a “flood” either, so I’m probably splitting hairs here that don’t need splitting). Either way, we need to be equally careful about which paleo-Persion Gulf event we’re talking about (there were several). Moreover, there are some conflicting data about rates of inundation regarding the Ryan/Pitman event.
B., the godbots who are the problem refute the idea of a localized flood* and are talking instead about a global deluge.
*and it seems that this position has some Biblical support, as I think even Jesus was supposed to have held this opinion (Matt. 24:37–39).
Facilis #170 wrote:
I think it’s important to separate ‘factual belief” from “identity” here. Making blanket negative judgments about people because of an irrelevant identifying characteristic such as sex, race, or native origin is bigotry.
But making a negative judgment against a factual claim is not. If you think the factual claim is stupid enough, then you’d agree that the people who hold it ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Consider the case of superstition. People in modern Western culture who believe in pointless and archaic forms of superstition are often a bit sheepish about admitting it. “I know it’s silly, but I worry that black cats might cause bad luck, so I would never own one. Oh, and I try not to step on a crack, lest it break my mother’s back. I know, but it’s a habit of mine. I should probably work on trying to get rid of it.”
We consider belief in God to be similar to superstition. In a culture which praised and admired people who admitted to being afraid that black cats caused bad luck, you would see an atheist-style reaction on the part of the rational skeptics (and I assume you’d be one of us.) People should know better, because we’re capable of better. Fostering pointless superstitions doesn’t help either the individual, or the social progress of humanity in general.
Is the existence of God so clear, obvious, and self-evident that denying it is like denying that there is air? If you think so — really, truly think so — then you ought to think we should be ashamed of ourselves. And so we should be — if you were right.
But there’s a significant difference between belief in God, and belief that there is air. In order to believe there is air, you don’t need regeneration by the Holy Spirit, so that your eyes are opened to an extraordinary truth that is concealed to ordinary reason, ordinary sense, and ordinary experience.
AnthonyK: Oh, it’s not all bad. I for one am going to miss the kitschy earnestness of their artwork (e.g. goldengirls03.org/LordsPrayerJesusCrying5.jpg) and their infectious Christian versions of popular logos and brands – I still can’t look at an Asus logo without seeing “Jesus” written there. I also think that Christian metal is funny, but that’s just me.
Oh, and the hair-styles, clothes and make-up of evangelist wives. Maybe this is terribly superficial and bitchy of me, but seriously, what is it with evangelical wives and being stuck in the 80s? That stuff cracks me up.
Can we please drop this “cold reason” bullshit? I realise it’s been a popular trope since the Romantics, but it needs to be killed off sharpish. Reasoning is one of the most distinctively human things you can do, and if done properly it can be exhilarating and enlightening.
@ Josh:
Yeah we’re not in disagreement at all. It’s been a long while since I read into it, but that particular event fascinated me back in college when we were studying the Epic and other Sumerian tales.
That statement is true on many different levels.
Death Cult is usually applied to the fundies though.
1. They are very good at hating and threatening to kill people. They all have long lists of people they hate and want to kill. They occasionally kill them.
2. The Rapture Monkeys have the longest list. They want god to show up and kill all 6.7 billion people and destroy the earth. They only way they could get more wannabe murderous is if we discover extraterrestrial life. Then god can kill the aliens too. C’mon, just sitting around waiting for yourself and billions of people to die is just plain kooky and evil.
If the truth is ugly, way it goes. Don’t glorify and hope for mass killing and people won’t call you Death Cultists.
Isn’t it ancient Roman? Audaces Fortuna adiuvat — Good Luck (arguably personified as a goddess) helps the brave ones.
Book of Job from start to finish. “The Lord gives, the Lord takes, praised be the Lord”…
Frankly…
Of course there’s something wrong with that! It’s the cause of 2/3 of all evil in the world!
“Imagine there’s a war and nobody comes”…
I didn’t really think we were. But it still makes me glad to know that we aren’t.
David Marjanović, OM #203 wrote:
Yes, sounds similar. The ethics of humanism trace back in Western culture to the Greeks and Romans.
The same sort of moral is found in that annoyingly popular joke about the drowning man who turns away rescue boats because “God will save me” — and when he subsequently drowns and meets God, God explains that He sent those boats.
After all, we are not saved by works –but by faith in the grace of God.
To even approach this aspect of the Pauline theology, you need to have some understanding of what Paul meant by those terms, and I have yet to see it from a preaching Christian. Probably because it makes little sense outside of the Jewish context of earliest Christianity, and the last thing most fundies want is an examination of their comfortable legends of the Apostolic age from the point of view of actual history. “Works” for Paul amounts to a technical term, meaning more accurately “adherence” to the Law. Paul was preaching against circumcision and purity codes as necessities for gentile Christians to be among the elect, decidedly not against ethical behavior as broadly construed in Deuteronomy, the Commandments, etc.
From Paul’s point of view, there was a new Law, identified with the Sprit, brought to us by the risen Lord, and the idea that just to sit back and claim “purity” via the “works” of circumcision and following the various dietary and other purity codes, without following the kinds of ethical practices that we moderns actually would call “acts” –deemed the result of faith in the Spirit, or “the grace of God” per Barb– was not acceptable.
Long story short, Paul and early Pauline theology just don’t mean the same things as we do when they talk about “faith” and “works,” and the modern gloss makes an originally not altogether coherent dichotomy nearly unintelligible.
“The red cross *is* secular . . .
I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about them, so I’m rather curious what might have gone wrong. ”
I used to work at the HQ in my neck of the woods (WNY) and I can say one of the larger problems is that the phone bank is not very large, but the supervisor’s desire for their (offensively) large bonus is HUGE – so the same people get called 2,3,4 times a night to come in for donations. Which, naturally, pisses them off and they demand to be taken off the list. Which shrinks the list a bit more. Which cuts off donations.
I quit once I found out that, while they would not give the phone bank workers credit for scheduling appointments at mobile blood drives to meet the quota (20+ appointments per 4 hour shift – not easy when you’re calling the same 200 people every. single. night.), they were allowing such appointments to count towards the supervisor’s quota so he could get the bonus.
I still donate blood every two months like clockwork. At a local hospital. Far the hell away from the Red Cross.
I don’t think evangelicalism will fall completely — it was on a strong downswing in the mid-20th century, for example, only to reappear as a reaction to the human potential/New Age movement in the late 70s and early 80s (aided and abetted by Cold War propaganda, of course). Also, there’s a wild card in the whole thing — look at where evangelicalism is spreading. There are many countries in the global South that shouldn’t be third-world but are perenially infected with post-colonial corruption, and those countries are where fundamentalism is spreading like a wildfire — conservative/traditionalist Catholicism and Pentecostalism in Latin America and Africa, fundamentalist Islam in southeast Asia. (Hell, there are fundamentalist Anglicans in the United States if you can believe that — churches who have switched their allegiances from the US Episcopal churches to extreme conservative sects based in the most benighted parts of Africa so they don’t have to be tolerant towards gays.)
We may eventually rid ourselves of fundamentalism, but it won’t be in our lifetimes even in the West.
As a former fundagelical, I don’t think this demise will happen anytime soon. If anything, the right of evangelicals will go full on fundie, and the left will go lutheran. Christians have been predicting their demise forever… partly as a sign of the endtimes… but ultimately, those who Believe will continue to find ways to circumvent logic/science and keep their faith intact.
If anything, we’ll see a whole new breed of fundagelicals who are hardcore environmentalists and into leftie politics… as christian stewards of the land and living a more christ-like life… which is scary in its own special way.
Eventually, yes, there will be logical enlightenment, but I don’t think the evangelicals are putting on the brakes yet.
Yes, please! And good riddance.
If anything, we’ll see a whole new breed of fundagelicals who are hardcore environmentalists and into leftie politics… as christian stewards of the land and living a more christ-like life… which is scary in its own special way.
Ah. The worst of both worlds.
Janine: You see, this world is but merely a warped reflection of the true reality that is god.
Exactly. Christianity is gnostic in spirit, and it’s internal inconsistency arises from the fact that it is based on a gnostic ideology, but claims to be non-gnostic.
This is also why rational discussion is basically irrelevant. Once you accept a gnostic world-view, discussions from this plane of reality can only be about technical issues, and not substantive ones.
That’s why DOMA works from a Christian point of view — it reduces science to a technical issue with no relevance to the substance of reality. It’s also why magic crackers make sense — it’s not that they become, in the material world, meat and potatoes, but in the real world they become converted from the “essence” of wheat to the “essence” of a cannibalistic feast.
This is also why the fungelicals are particularly crazy. Unlike the Catholics who have refined the distinction and keep the gnosticism more explicit, the crazies want to have it both ways — this world is both the marred reflection of a “other” reality, and this world is that reality: the end of the world will happen in this world explicitly, yet this world is just a mirror of the angelic world. They’re NUTZ.
Imbecilis: Imagine if Christians told you you should be ashamed of your worldview and your disbelief in Jesus.
Imagine that! Imagine if Christians told you that you would suffer eternal torment for disagreeing with them!
Imagine that.
Endor, thanks. If badly fucked up management in one specific place is one of their *larger* problems, that’s not so bad. I can certainly see why you would avoid that one, of course!
Xtine – you may well be right. I see the current thought seems to be “we’re better off without those fainthearts anyway”, which I find unconvinciing to say the least.
However, what I could hope for and maybe expect would be a decline in the Megachurches,and a sidelining of the more extreme sects. What I’d like would be a less aggressive form of Christianity, more internal and reflective. The greater the extent to which the hands of the anti-realists can be prized from control of the church, the more they can manage the decline. What will happen, do you think and what about your friends and relatives?
CJO –I deny being as ignorant as you claim about the faith vs. works issue. My son talks about it all the time. He loves the implications for what used to be the primary proof texts for individualistic pre-destination –which he finds repugnant, I might add.
Yes, Paul talks about being under grace, not Law, and how there is nothing we do to merit salvation –and that the purity laws and circumcision aren’t necessary to justify us with God –and yet, we are not free to live just any old way we please either, taking unholy advantage of grace.
Jews didn’t believe you could earn heaven –didn’t have a works-based faith. They believed their works are part of what established their identity as the People of God. This is a major claim put forward by most, if not all, of the promoters of “the new perspective” on Paul. The observation by E.P. Sanders that Judaism really was a grace-based religion, not works-based, is what initiated this movement.
Barb the blathering bimbo is back. Set you killfiles to avoid the stupidity.
Imagine that! Imagine if Christians told you that you would suffer eternal torment for disagreeing with them!
That’s not our central theme or message. The truth is that we all die –mortals all.
Yet, a man came and rose from the dead and made claims to be from the Creator. All we had to do to ALSO live forever was to believe in Him as God’s son and follow His teachings.
It’s Good News, not bad. He said to His followers, “Because I live, you shall live also.” And this is what we all celebrate at Christmas and in particular, Easter, coming soon. “he is risen!” “He is risen indeed!”
Barb the blathering baby is back. With nothing to say of course.
Seriously, is Barb a Poe that has gone to far or is she suffering from some sort of brain damage?
Brain damaged neocon godbot.
Feynmaniac – definitely not a Poe (check her blog)….
Barb? Barb! Here. Sit. Stayyyy. Now, Play dead. Good barb.. gooooood.
Barb:
Disingenuous.
We all live forever, in your stupid theology. Some in Heaven, some in Hell.
So yeah, your central theme is all about agreeing with you or supposedly going to hell. As frog said.
Sheesh.
Barb:
Wow. That’s some absolutely stunning self-contradiction there. Apparently you are ignorant about what CJO ried to explain, or you would be able to clearly see how the two above statements run completely perpendicular to one another. In Paul’s view, all Jews had was a works-based faith.
Liar. Everybody dies, baby, that’s a fact. Only the delusional thinks other wise. But everyone who has been exposed to the tenants of christianity has been told that if they do not accept Christ as savior, they will burn in hell. Do not bullshit us Barb. And, yes, you are ignorant and you are proud of it.
And please answer the question I have been asking you. What do you think of fundamentalist parents who kick their children out of their homes when they find out their child is a homosexual? Do not tell me about your church. Do not tell me what your message really is. I know. I have heard it thousands of times in my life.
I think I know what your answer to my question is but I am giving you the chance to prove me wrong.
So without Jesus, there would be no hell? Because he lives, we live too… it sounds like we were far better off before Jesus came on the scene. Some cult leader 2000 years ago has condemned billions of people to eternal damnation for the crime of being ignorant of his existence (or rejection of it)
Posted by: TING | March 11, 2009 9:52 PM
Well, at least my monitor has now had it daily shower ‘o drink.
There’s an old saying in the NFL: “You can bullshit the spectators but you can’t bullshit the players.” Barb, you’re trying to bullshit the players. Just yesterday, at a different blog, I was informed in no uncertain terms that as an atheist and apostate I “will burn in Hell forever!” Nor was this the first time such a threat had been made to me.
Barb, all too many of your coreligionists chortle with glee knowing that the flames of Hell await me and people like me who fail to believe in your Big Guy In The Sky. So please, while you can lie to yourself all you want, don’t lie to us. We know better.
Hello Barb. For once, from me, nothing nasty.
Since you’re here – would you consider reading this? I wrote it specially.
An open letter to Barb, a Christian, American, grandmother.
Dear Barb,
I thought I’d write this to you from me, expressing, I think, the views of the posters here.
This letter contains no swearwords, no blasphemy, and no insults designed to upset you in any way.
It is as sincere, honest, and heartfelt as I can possible make it. Please read it – you will not, I think, regret it. It is not designed to attack you or your faith, but merely to explain some things you really should know – important things!
So, first, posting on Pharyngula is your little secret, isn’t it Barb? I bet you have told no one you post on here, not your husband, not your friends, no one. Except, of course, Jesus, who has presumably told you to carry on, for the time being. Well, good. I have a tiny suspicion in my head that perhaps the reason that you are posting here it that you have a suspicion in your mind that the cosy, isolated, intellectual and faithful world you live in may be lacking something – and you are right, it does. I see you as someone peering somewhat uncertainly over the walls of what I might call your compound, out at the big bad world, struggling to understand the evil there – why oh why is there still so much evil? – we, the godless, wonder this too – and considering what to make of it. Is there something you don’t know? (yes) And if so would it help you to make sense of the vast majority of humanity so far unsaved and destined to rot in hell ?(possibly). If this is even a fraction of your motivation for coming here, then good. Seeking understanding of the world is surely what God wants you to do.
So let’s come to the question of God. What is He, and what does He want of us?
OK, now, imagine if you will that there is a God (this should not be too hard for you!). Imagine, also, that this is a God which, being Lord of the Universe, we atheists are also aware of, but deny. This is also true, kind of – except that we do not call it God, do not worship it, and reject all religions which posit its existence. But let us, for the sake of argument, admit that He exists. What then? What do atheists “know” of the existence of this God, and His nature?
Let me tell you the answer to that one, for we think we know it. This answer is truly extraordinary in every way, and, roughly speaking it goes like this:
The God we see is unimaginably powerful, beautiful, and awesome beyond our imaginings. Truly. . He has given us “science” and the “scientific method” to enable us to investigate ourselves and the Creation. We gaze upon it in wonder and utter delight.
The Creation is beyond words. We find ourselves to be a consciousness, now, we think, fully alive and aware. We are an organic entity, one among many on this planet, but the only one, perhaps the only one in the universe, to know that we exist, and to be able to make some sense of our surroundings. We are, perhaps, and if so pleasingly, an average size being, between the unimaginably vast – the universe – and the unimaginably small – the sub-atomic realm. On the big side, we see distant stars, planets, galaxies, shining in the night sky, sending their light from billions of light years away, vast galaxies colliding, being born, and dying in spectacular outpourings of light and energy besides which our sun is less than a pinprick. Gaze out, Barb, go out and look up in the night sky from your yard and regard that terrible beauty, those limitless empty spaces, and truly marvel as never before – that is God.
But there’s more – so much more. Skip past, for a moment, our puny scale, and go deep within. There are tiny organisms that can kill us – germs – which are alive, and viruses – which are not. We have only known of their existence for about 150 years or less, and have only known how to conquer them (imperfectly) for less than 80 of those years. What happened to polio – perhaps a scourge of your youth – and smallpox, which killed tens of millions, even in Jesus’ days? These two, among many, have now vanished from the human race, perhaps forever, if we are vigilant. And what has made these diseases vanish? Was it thousands of years of religion, and countless prayers and invocations, since the dawn of human history? No. It was science, Barb, in this case medicine, of which your husband is apparently a practitioner. In particular years of careful research by scientists, many Christians, as you are. They stepped for a moment away from their prayers, contemplations, and rituals, and applied the method of science to God’s wonderful Creation because they believed, surely correctly, that this is what God wishes them to do. He does, and He wishes you to do so too.
Oh, there’s so much more to say, to see, and to discover – cells, little micro-worlds of stunning complexity, billions of them, responsible, unknowingly, for you being you. Truly, even you yourself are a marvel of God’s Creation – as far as you‘re concerned, vitally so. And look further, deeper still, to the sub-atomic scale: here are baffling entities we barely understand, but which, controlled by us, are responsible for the technological world we all live in. There are electrons, atoms, quarks, hadrons – maybe, we‘re still looking for those! – and so on endlessly smaller and smaller and smaller, perhaps as small as the universe is large. And though we don’t fully understand these things – and may never do so – we can control them now, and this very knowledge is what is responsible for the words you are reading right now. Impressive, huh?
So we, yes even we atheists, gaze at God’s Creation and are truly prostrate with wonder – and we want to know even more. We want to know everything of this marvel, of God’s handiwork, and perhaps in looking at it we will discover who, and what, we truly are.
Now, in one sense, you know all this. Even the world you can see with your own eyes, and touch, and smell, and remember, is a marvel to you, as well it should be. Here, you are not deceived.
However, in one important respect your understanding of God’s universe is terribly diminished and impoverished. And it’s this – you know what’s coming here – why, it is, in a sense, the reason for this blog’s entire existence – it’s evolution. You, and many other Christians (though by means all of them) reject this idea . Why? Because, fundamentally, you are afraid of it. It seems to make us all mere animals, purposeless, possibly even evil, and you refuse to accept it. Your scriptures make no mention of it (or, indeed any of the rest of science), and your interpretation of them makes you think that this idea is forbidden, a lie, a work of Satan himself.
Well, in this belief you, and your fellow Evangelicals (if this is how you style yourself), are in error. Creationism – it just ain’t so. The universe (our world scale) that we know about is, once again, freaking awesome! But what we do know is that we live on a planet, about 4.5 billion years old, with life itself a late arrival (did you know – betcha didn’t! – that of the, approximately, 3.5 billion years of life on earth, for nearly 2 billion years, the only life on Earth, the only life, was a bacterial scum? An alien arriving then would have flown off, concluding Earth was lifeless or, at best, uninteresting). Then, and slowly, life emerged from the scum – well it does say dust to life in the Bible doesn’t it? -and slowly at first, but then in a stately rush, animals and plants appear, molluscs, dinosaurs, reptiles, mammals, us – all guided by God, to finally produce a creature who could understand it all, and could worship Him. Do you, Barb? Do you really? If God truly created life and the universe, then this is how He did it..
But we shall return to the subject of evolution, briefly, later on. ,
Now, if you will, can we turn for a moment to contemplate your conception of God? Once again, I intend to commit no blasphemy against your God, or Jesus, but I do think I understand your conception of Him. Please try to imagine, now, your conception of God – and let me tell you, sympathetically, what we think of your vision.
We think that your conception of God is shallow, hidebound by scripture, flat and dull. When you see the Biblical God, we see (if He exists) a narrow, petty tyrant, prone to rage and permitting many, many outrages too horrible to contemplate, some done in His name. We understand that Jesus came to save us from sin – though we do not believe it – but even so, the whole idea of the God you worship seems ludicrous at best, terrifying at worst – though only terrifying in the sense that men and women do very bad things as a result of their beliefs, not because we fear hell. What we see, is an all too human Deity – and so many of them! – whose apparent moral teachings are deeply flawed. We see, in short, a God that no one who has really looked on His face – as we who follow the scientific method attempt to do – could possibly believe in or accept. There really is so, so, much more to God than you think. Now please, do.think. You will not lose your faith because you have researched God’s ways, and found them beyond complexity and wonder, rather it should broaden your horizons and allow you to truly marvel, and to appreciate Jesus and God so much more. Surely, surely, God wants you to know of him? Well, He does, and I think He has a message for you.
Enough for now. Perhaps part 2 will tell you a little more of the wonder we atheists feel when we look upon the face of God, and why we find your moralising and proselytising a little bit annoying, to say the least.
Did you enjoy that? I hope so. The truth will set you free.
PZ, Barb is not engaging with these post and run tactics. At what point will she be plonked for godbotting, stupidity, and being boring? Might I suggest sooner rather then later?
Hmmm, today somebody wrote that Barb wrote that a human heart beats a lifetime without any external energy. I was skeptical. Surely no one that dumb could master the ability to type.
I was wrong:
Every village has to have an idiot, and we’ve got a couple of ’em. Maybe we are getting overpopulated with fools, but I’m kind of letting you guys cull the herd for me. Keep chopping her up, we’ll see how long she lasts.
It would be nice if she would answer my question. I have to be honest, it is personal for me. I have dealt with a few kids who were kicked out of their homes. I never had a chance to ask their parents why they thought they were justified in doing so.
David Marjanović, OM @#203 (and Sastra @#205)
It also exists more explicitly in the ancient Greek of Æsop’s fables (although the Romans may well have had the same sentiment either independently or from them):
http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/perry/291.htm
Janine – total respect for wanting some sort of justification for that kind of act, but I’m thinking that whatever answer they would give would only leave you feeling worse. People like Barb view homosexuality as wrong and amoral, based on their wonderful 2000 year old document of course. My sister is gay, and while my parents now are fine with it, when she first came out, my mother wrote a long letter to her telling her basically to “grin and bear it” (a heterosexual r’ship). And that came from (while a catholic), a relatively free-thinking woman. If I think of fund/evan-tards like Barb, I imagine that multiplied by 100.
The alleged truth of that is highly dependent on who you talk to.
There are no sects in geometry.
Janine:
I have to second the notion that Barb is actively going to avoid answering that question. I had an experience with something like this when I was overseas. My fiancee and I, at the time, had some troubles and split. After the requisite time of not really talking much, we got back to being extremely close friends again, and the next year she came out to me before she told her parents. Her parents were – and had been for a while – divorced, and they weren’t hardly religious at all, but when she came out to them, she got the blast of disapproval full in the face, and to this day whenever I go visit her, I just can’t even try to play nice with them, though she has smoothed relations since then. I think a parent that treats any child – much less their own – like that for any reason is a absolutely sorry example of a human being, much less a parent.
TING, there is no answer that Barb could give me that would make me feel worse than dealing with those homeless kids. I am well aware of the reasons. Barb is but a surrogate for all of those fundamentalist parents that I never meet. I want all of them to justify their inhumane actions. And than I want to hear them say that we are the ones that are evil.
BrokenSoldier, strange as it sounds, I am pleased that your engagement came to an end before you got married. While obviously, I feel for the person who tried to act straight, most of us do. I also feel for the spouse. The questions this brings up.
Did I make this person go gay?
Did this person really love me?
Why did this person deceive me?
What did I do wrong?
People should not have to go through that. This is part of the reason that homosexuality needs to be out in the open, everyone should be able to find who they are attracted to with out deception.
I cannot say that I know you but the fact that you are a friend to your ex fiance speaks well of your character. And that their was a friendship that you had with her when you were engaged. Al least that was real and you were able to get that back.
???What!!! They do it all the time. It is the central tenet of the faith. It is also one of the few perks. Good xians go to heaven. Everyone else goes to hell. Unless you are a member of one of the cults. Then everyone in your cult goes to heaven (all 200 or so) and the rest of the Fake Xians(tm) go to hell. Especially the catholics.
Hmmm, we humans got short changed. We have rather limited self healing capabilities. Cut a leg off an axolotl salamander and it will grow a new one. Ditto crustaceans. You can cut the head off a planarian and it will grow a new one. Pieces of a jellyfish or sponge will grow entire new organism. Does this mean god likes invertebrates better?
Someone missed basic biology. Try not eating for a few weeks and see what your eternal fueless heart does.
Janine:
That is actually something that we were both kind of surprised to find our eventual reaction to be. I had every one of those question you listed running through my mind, and when I found out that she had the inverse of a couple of them running through hers, it made it easier to talk about it with her, and I think that’s what really helped us to move on effectively. Had I not stayed close to her, I couldn’t imagine the sorts of issues I would still have over it. I did get a great friend out of the deal, and we both ended up learning a lot about ourselves, so I definitely view the whole thing as a positive. I really just wish I could go back in time and slap her parents around – they still to this day don’t realize how bad their reaction hurt her, and what’s worse, they carry on sometimes like the whole thing is just a huge inconvenience to them, as opposed to seeing that it’s just their daughter being who she really is. You’d think they would at least give her credit for being honest about herself in the midst of a society that is still so backwards in so many ways.
So true. I think the ridiculously high divorce rate in this country is proof positive of the reluctance in today’s social climate towards being honest and open in a relationship simply because such openness is hindered by too many senseless “taboos” in our nation’s moral image. Whether it be staying honest enough to admit who you really are, or all the way down to people’s differences in simple likes and dislikes that can end up ruining a relationship if they’re kept bottled up.
raven:
One of my favorite videos is one where Neil DeGrasse-Tyson talks about ‘stupid design.’ In it, one the best points he makes is that a human drinks, eats, and breathes with the same orifice, which plenty of other organisms do not have to do, ensuring that many humans will die each year by choking. (The video should show up on youtbe if you search his name & stupid design)
I’ve seen that too. One woman kicked her teen age son out. The reason. Her new boy friend didn’t want any of his girl friend’s kids around.
A friend of his mother took him in. She requested legal guardianship to avoid any legal hassles, which was quickly given. Some people shouldn’t have had kids. Some find out after the fact that they don’t want to be parents. Some are incapable of being parents.
This isn’t even a bad case, rather run of the mill really.
It is not my place to answer for Patricia, but she did discuss her beef with te Red Cross a coupla months ago (when I was better at reading the comments – and post here).
I believe her father and his … squadron/unit/whatever-the-term-is had some bad experiences with corrupt RC workers during the Korean war. As I recall it they were charging the soldiers for cigarettes and similar goods meant to be given to them for free.
There was some discussion of the matter back then too, but I don’t recall the thread in question so I won’t bring up the attempted refutations, since my memory is even more unreliable on that count.
But it’s been talked about in this place, so it should be possible to search for. RC doesn’t come up all that often, I think.
Ah! Starts here. Sorry for butting in.
I recently was born again as an atheist, science advocating person and I must say I hope religion dies. I really do. I will never get back all the years I spent worshipping my imagination. It’s truly sad.
The NEWEST Pretrib Calendar
Hal (serial polygamist) Lindsey and other pretrib-rapture-trafficking and Mayan-Calendar-hugging hucksters deserve the following message: “2012 may be YOUR latest date. It isn’t MAYAN!” Actually, if it weren’t for the 179-year-old, fringe-British-invented, American-merchandised pretribulation rapture bunco scheme, Hal might still be piloting a tugboat on the Mississippi, roly-poly Thomas Ice (Tim LaHaye’s No. 1 strong-arm enforcer) might still be in his tiny folding-chair church which shares its firewall with a Texas saloon, Jack Van Impe might still be a jazz band musician, Tim LaHaye might still be titillating California matrons with his “Christian” sex manual, Grant Jeffrey might still be taking care of figures up in Canada, Chuck Missler might still be in mysterious hush-hush stuff that rocket scientists don’t dare talk about, John Hagee might be making – and eating – world-record pizzas, and Jimmy (“Bye You” Rapture) Swaggart might still be flying on a Ferriday flatbed! To read more details about the eschatological British import that leading British scholarship never adopted – the import that’s created some American multi-millionaires – Google “Pretrib Rapture Diehards” (note LaHaye’s hypocrisy under “1992”), “Hal Lindsey’s Many Divorces,” “Thomas Ice (Bloopers)” and “Thomas Ice (Hired Gun),” “LaHaye’s Temperament,” “Wily Jeffrey,” “Chuck Missler – Copyist,” “Open Letter to Todd Strandberg” and “The Rapture Index (Mad Theology),” “X-Raying Margaret,” “Humbug Huebner,” “Thieves’ Marketing,” “Appendix F: Thou Shalt Not Steal,” “The Unoriginal John Darby,” “Pretrib Hypocrisy,” “The Real Manuel Lacunza,” “Roots of (Warlike) Christian Zionism,” “America’s Pretrib Rapture Traffickers,” “Pretrib Rapture – Hidden Facts,” “Dolcino? Duh!” and “Scholars Weigh My Research.” Most of the above is written by journalist/historian Dave MacPherson who has focused on long-hidden pretrib rapture history for 35+ years. No one else has focused on it for 35 months or even 35 weeks. MacPherson has been a frequent radio talk show guest and he states that all of his royalties have always gone to a nonprofit group and not to any individual. His No. 1 book on all this is “The Rapture Plot” (see Armageddon Books online, etc.). The amazing thing is how long it has taken the mainstream media to finally notice and expose this unbelievably groundless yet extremely lucrative theological hoax!