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!”
You've heard it a million times - the stupid shit that your Christian friends and relatives say to atheists. Join us for Part 2 and crack a smile as we look at what's really going on in those devout minds. Let's wipe out the nonsense and flush their crappy arguments right down the toilet.
“Deep down you know there is a God, it’s just that you hate him.”
Translation:
“Because I’ve never questioned my beliefs, using reason and logic, I can’t imagine that you would have any actual reasons why you reject the idea of a God. What’s that? Of course I don’t hate Santa. Don’t be silly, he’s not real. How could I hate something that’s not real?”
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:
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. Matthew 5:29-30 ESV
Really Jesus, you managed to pack so much silliness in these few sentences that it’s hard to know where to start! In fact, it goes well beyond silliness – perhaps ridiculously irresponsible would be a better description. Surely if you were God – all-knowing and wise – it might have occurred to you that encouraging people to pluck out their eyes and cut off their hands (even if you intended it metaphorically) might not be the best idea? Didn’t you realize that mentally unstable people might act on your words? Not very prudent of you to put those ideas so carelessly out there, now was it?
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.
“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.
When it comes to dealing with the violent, angry, bi-polar god of the Old Testament, many Christians use Jesus as their get-out-of-jail-free card.
If we atheists bring up some of the many examples of the despicable actions and character of Yahweh, as described in the Bible, we hear: “But… Jesus… grace… New Covenant...”
It’s as if sometime during the inter-testamental period, their god attended anger management sessions or got in touch with his kinder, gentler side. Perhaps an image consultant advised him that all the smiting and killing was starting to give him a bad reputation? God 2.0 (aka Jesus) is supposed to magically override the trail of carnage that the Bible tells us that Yahweh left in his wake.
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.
When Christians are asked why their all-powerful, loving god does not intervene when people are carrying out acts of horrendous cruelty and violence, they have an answer. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they have an emergency exit. This mental escape hatch allows them to stop wrestling with the implications of a god who stands idly by and allows psychopaths to carry out their cruelties, unopposed.
Long ago, Epicurus pointed out that a god’s inaction in the face evil calls into question its power and goodness:
Fundamentalist and evangelical Christians believe that we live in a world gone wrong, and controlled by
dark spiritual forces. They think that a host of things we face
today, including death, disease, predation, violence, painful
childbirth, thorns and thistles, and Miley Cyrus’ twerking can all be
traced back to a Very Bad Thing which happened once upon a time in a
garden called Eden, where a rebellious woman listened to a talking
snake, ate a forbidden fruit, and led her husband into eating his way into
God’s bad graces.
(image credit: Forbidden Fruit by Amanda Chervinko - amandachervinko.com)
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.
I have a friend who calls Christians “stupid people that believe in a fairytale, with whom one cannot have intelligent conversations.”
I have to disagree. I know many Christians who are quite intelligent.
Do Christians hold stupid beliefs? Absolutely. Are there Christians who are stupid? Undoubtedly. Just try and follow Pat Robertson’s rambling incoherencies, or pick a different clown from the televangelist freak parade. Are there certain groups or denominations within Christianity which tend to denigrate reason, and celebrate emotionalism and mindless belief? Most assuredly. But, haven’t we also encountered atheists who are uniformed about certain things and yet hold dogmatic assumptions nonetheless?
John Green is a missionary pastor's son from a Pentecostal background who has written some things for Discipleship Journal and Wittenburg Door. Below is his brief story and an article he wrote on hell.
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.
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?
Even among non-believers, there exists the idea that Jesus was the model of virtue, compassion and selflessness. After all, the New Testament is filled with stories of him nobly healing the sick and suffering – right? Today, I want to barbecue that sacred cow and show where the gospels portray Jesus to be a calculated manipulator – someone who uses people as pawns in a game in which he and his Sky Daddy conspire together in order to make themselves look good.
First, let’s look at perhaps the most notable miracle which Jesus purportedly performed – that of raising Lazarus from the dead.
