Recap: In
Part 1, our hero has met a hot lady whom he wants to marry. He loses a riddle bet due some trickery by the aforementioned lady friend, and is forced to kill thirty guys so he can steal their clothes to pay the bet. He’s bummed, so he bunks out at his mom and dad’s, and while he’s gone, his disloyal fiancé marries the best man from the canceled wedding. Time for some good, old-fashioned revenge!
Exhibit 5:
Samson said, “This time I cannot be blamed for everything I am going to do to you Philistines.” Then he went out and caught 300 foxes. He tied their tails together in pairs, and he fastened a torch to each pair of tails. Then he lit the torches and let the foxes run through the grain fields of the Philistines. He burned all their grain to the ground, including the sheaves and the uncut grain. He also destroyed their vineyards and olive groves.
Judges 15:3-5 (NLT)
Arson and animal cruelty. That’s two out of three of the psychopath indicators. Definitely not PETA-approved,and we have the deliberate destruction of private property.
With as irate as fundamentalist Christians get about sex and violence in movies (well, sex at least- they are pretty okay with violence), it is surprising the kind Bible stories that get passed off as appropriate for the kiddies. Sunday School lessons are populated with all sorts of unsavory characters plucked from the pages of the Good Book, sanitized and shined up to be presented to impressionable children. Christians are so desensitized to the nature of what is really going on in the stories that they fail to see that maybe - just maybe - these Hall of Shame members are not the best role models for kids to look up to.
Today’s example: Samson, who even has been immortalized as an children's action figure.
Samson’s sordid saga is detailed in Judges, chapters 13 through 16. It is like one long and violent soap opera. For the sake of brevity, we’ll just hit the low-lights as I present evidence that this hero of the faith (Hebrews 11:32) was just a scoundrel living the thug life.
The Southern Baptist Convention, under the leadership of Rev. Fred Luter Jr.
just voted to officially condemn the policy of the Boy Scouts of America, which now allows the participation of gay Scouts. They will seek the removal of executive and board members of the Boy Scouts who tried to allow gay members without first consulting religious groups. They affirm support for churches which decide to drop ties with the Boy Scouts..
The irony in all of this? The Southern Baptist denomination formed as a pro-slavery breakaway from American Baptists, in 1845. In 2012, they tried to atone for their racist past by
electing Fred Luter - a black man - as their leader. And now, under his leadership, they vote overwhelmingly to support bigotry against gays. Seriously, you can't make this stuff up!
Written by J. M. Green
Lately, I've noticed a number of instances of Christian schools (Protestant and Catholic)
firing teachers who become pregnant out of wedlock. The schools are the sort that like to micromanage the personal lives of their teachers, as well as their students, and often require teachers to refrain from ‘ungodly’ activities such as pre-marital sex, pornography, and homosexuality. Quite possibly masturbation or reading 50 Shades of Grey might also be firing offenses.
In
the case of Cathy Samford, she was engaged to be married and offered to move up the wedding date, so as to remedy her pregnant-out-of-wedlock status, but that simply wasn't good enough the squeaky-clean Pharisees at the Heritage Christian Academy in Rockwall, Texas.
According to Headmaster Dr. Ron Taylor,
"It's not that she's pregnant. The issue here is being an unmarried mother. Everything that we stand for says that we want our teachers, who we consider to be in the ministry, to model what a Christian man or woman should be."
Apparently, what the model Christian man would do is kick the pregnant Ms. Samford - along with her two dependent children from a previous marriage – out on the streets, leaving her with no job or medical care – WWJD – right?
It’s not uncommon to hear American evangelical Christians complaining bitterly that they are being persecuted. The circle-the-wagons, us-against-the-world mentality is a tool which religious leaders have frequently used to rally the faithful and whip up a frenzy of righteous indignation, so it’s not surprising that the sheep have bought into this oft-repeated lie. This mindset is bolstered by the biblical admonitions of Jesus and Paul that true believers will suffer persecution, and of course confirmation bias kicks in to prove them right.
The real mind game consists in the fact that these ‘beleaguered’ believers manage to convince themselves of this, while simultaneously persecuting those who
they despise. They complain about people being intolerant of Christian beliefs, all the while, preaching and railing against other religions, gays and lesbians, and of course, those damned atheists and humanists. They warn about the dangers of Islam, and Sharia law, while attempting to force their particular religion and god into government, the judicial system, and schools, every chance they get.
Essentially, the fuzziness of the fundamentalist Christian mind allows them to simultaneously play the roles of both victim and oppressor.
Matthew Hagee is the Executive Pastor of 19,000 member Cornerstone Church. He is also a skilled practitioner of Christian mind games.
Here is a one-minute video clip in which a viewer asks Hagee a question about praying for healing. Watch his answer, and then we’ll dissect the mind games which he employs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8gJTCbVv2GA
Let’s continue our look at
how Christians react to disaster situations. God’s failure to intervene when his followers (and even many non-religious) are begging him to presents a problem to the believer: How do they manage to account for an absent God, while avoiding cognitive dissonance? The religious mind has come up with an ingenious solution:
Take what humans do to help those in need, and attribute those actions to God.
In effect, they are mentally Photoshopping God into a situation where he never was.
Yesterday, as the devastating tornado ripped a path of destruction through Moore, Oklahoma, I watched the storm play out through the Facebook status updates of a friend who lived in the area. This friend is a Christian, and her response is similar to that of many believers in the face of such an event. Earlier in the day she posted:
“Praying the storms won’t hit.”
Then, as it became evident that this prayer was unanswered,
“Hang on, my friends.”
Followed by a Bible verse:
"Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you. 1 Peter 5:7”
Next status:
“We are in a safe shelter. Praying for all those in the path in the storm. Jesus, protect us!”
Then:
“Lord, we beg your mercies upon us. Praying for the two schools that were hit. Please keep the children & teachers safe.”
Okay fellow atheists, can we just admit when we are wrong? I mean, all along we’ve been claiming that the Bible is not a scientific book - that it's the product of superstitious ancient men, not an all-knowing God, and yet here is clear proof that we have been mistaken! In light of this discovery, I have no choice but to relinquish my unbelief.
In this short passage, quietly tucked away in Deuteronomy, is the very key to what so many scientific researchers are pursuing; the secret to extending the human life span.
Humans are pattern-seeking creatures. Religious people have found divine communications in the strangest places – from an appearance of the Virgin Mary on a cheese sandwich, to the likeness of Jesus on a tortilla.
Popular evangelical pastor Louis Giglio has wowed audiences with a
sermon based on the ‘revelation’ that in scientific drawings, the protein molecule Laminin is shaped like a cross. Of course, the actual electron microscopic image of Laminin hardly looks like a cross – more like a deformed swastika, but that did not quell his audience’s enthusiastic cheers and clapping.
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Matthew 10:29-31 (NIV)
Nice try Jesus*. I suppose you meant this little ‘gem’ to be comforting, but I have to say it fails badly. This is just the sort of ridiculous, crappy platitudes that many of your followers spout whenever bad things happen.
I suppose we should not be surprised that women fare badly in a religion in which penises play a prominent role.
Anyone who has taken a stroll through the Bible soon encounters the fact that Yahweh is creepily interested in men’s junk. For starters, he required penile surgical alteration as a condition of male membership to the Jewish faith:
I confess.
When I was a Christian, I was overly impressed with the writings of C. S. Lewis, and in particular, his ‘trilemma’, as presented in the book Mere Christianity:
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
While I still enjoy Lewis’s writing style, I can now see how he stacked the deck by limiting the options regarding Jesus to Lord, liar, or lunatic. One doesn't have to be much of a detective to see that there are a couple of missing L’s.
According to the famous Whitney Houston song, the greatest love of all is to love oneself. Travelling back in time long before Grammy awards were handed out, we find that Jesus, (according to the Gospel of John), had a different idea:
“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13 (NIV)
The Apostle Paul (not-surprisingly) had his
own take on it:
“God said it. I believe it. That settles it!”
Christian bumper sticker
“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell... And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) member of the House Science Committee
“In this respect fundamentalism has demonic traits. It destroys the humble honesty of the search for truth, it splits the conscience of its thoughtful adherents, and it makes them fanatical because they are forced to suppress elements of truth of which they are dimly aware.”
Paul Tillich
I would like to present a few thoughts on the marked difference between the fundamentalist view of truth and the scientific pursuit of truth.
Behind all the furor over gay marriage, there seems to be the underlying belief by fundamentalists, and the preachers and pundits of the Religious Right, that the purpose of marriage is this: To be a method of funneling men and women together into a government-backed monogamous, lifetime child-production alliance. They also contend that Traditional Marriage™ is in a weakened state and needs to be protected and propped up by the government, since the future of society, our country, and indeed perhaps civilization itself could be threatened if gay marriage becomes a legally-recognized union. Traditional marriage does seem to be in trouble, and in light of this, I would like to present a solution which addresses all the important root causes. If you are a literal-minded Christian, please stop reading immediately, get a dictionary, and look up the word ‘satire’ before proceeding.
Forget the Rapture, the Mayan calendar, the sinister United Nations, and socialist/Muslim/antichrist President Obama. Fundamentalist Christians know what will trigger the end of America, Western Civilization, and possibly herald the start of the Great Tribulation. Gay marriage! That’s right folks, if same-gender marriage is recognized by the Federal government; if gays are extended the same rights and protections as straights, Very Bad Things will happen!
Who knew that the future of the planet dangled from the slim thread of a word definition? Who knew that marriage, which has existed in such a variety of cultural forms throughout history, could be neatly squeezed into the Traditional Marriage™ box and that Christians owned the rights to it?
More clichéd Christian ‘challenges’ which have been floating around for a while now. Just a little more shit to clean up and then we’ll wash our hands of this mess.
“You can’t see love or air. I suppose you don’t believe in them either?”
Translation:
“Please God, don’t let them bring up oxytocin levels, or the fact that air has weight!”
Nearly two thousand years ago, Christians were faced with a problem. Their beloved Jesus had said things indicating that he would return within their lifetime and set up his earthly kingdom (Matthew 16:27-28, Mark 9:1, Matthew 24:33-34). The apostles also taught this (James 5:7-8, 1 Peter 4:7, Revelation 22:12), with Paul even denigrating marriage because the end was so near (1 Corinthians 7:25-31). The trouble was that with each year that passed, just like Lindsay Lohan with a court date - Jesus was a no-show. As history has shown with apocalyptic cults and numerous failed Rapture predictions, most believers don’t lose faith when the return of Jesus fails to occur – they just find a way to rationalize, and push it into the nebulous future.
The pseudonymous author of 2 Peter (writing decades after the crucifixion) was acutely aware of the problem of the absentee Jesus, and helpfully offered this biblical nonsense as an explanation:
