Tuesday, 28 June 2011

Something I want to make clear ...

Religion is not only untrue. I wouldn't be so opposed to it as I am if that were the case. I do not hate religious people. I respect people for who they are; not what they are. But it is quite common that any small amount of criticism and mockery of religion sounds like and is held in the same boat as hate-speech. This is also untrue, and it is one factor as to why such delusions continue.

I am opposed to religion because it makes a virtue of irrational, illogical, non-thinking and out of that breeds intolerance, hatred, bigotry, and violence, as well as ignorance and outright rejection of modern science. This is not to say that that all religious believers think this, but by counting themselves as one of the herd of sheep, they are part of the problem.

Tuesday, 15 March 2011

What Would You Do?

It is commonly asserted by the faithful that only if you actually believe in the faith then you can have an accurate understanding of it. This is completely flawed. Nowhere in any other context would this be accepted.


The faithful like to argue that atheists/non-believers don't have a good understanding of the Bible/scripture to criticise it. But I could just as well argue the opposite.


It is just as easily argued, or even more so, that the reason why believers 'believe it' is because they don't have a good understanding of the Bible and its origins.


The Bible is almost certainly not the word of an all-loving god, given that one exists. The more amicable verses demonstrating love and tolerance are oases compared to the fast desert of bronze aged barbarism, slavery endorsement, sexism, racism, infanticide, genocide, and superstition.


It appears blatantly obvious that one's answer to the question 'Would Would Jesus Do?' is no more than a reflection of one's own ethical deposition. If we were asking really what Jesus would do, then it is just as logical to condemn entire cities to dreadful deaths and to the eternal torment of hell because they didn't care for Jesus' preaching (Matthew 11:20), or why Jesus speaks in parables to confuse people so they will go to hell (Mark 4:11-12), or how killing disobedient children is in accordance to the commandment: “He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.”  (Matthew 15:4-7).


There is a very good reason why many so-called 'Liberal' Christians say as I have heard them say "We don't need the Bible to have a relationship with Jesus Christ." And that reason is because even to them, they know that the Bible is a pack of lies or at least very unreliable in seeking guidance.

Wednesday, 9 March 2011

A gist of how evolution explains morality.

The term ‎'Survival of the fittest' was a term that Herbert Spencer, a contemporary of Darwin's coined; not Darwin himself. The mistake has left a lasting misunderstanding of Evolutionary Theory though.


At a genetic level, yes genes are selfish. Genes want to only replicate themselves. But in order to do this, those genes that have worked the best and thus become more widespread amongst living things, are genes that collaborate with one another.


If it really was a 'dog eat dog' world, there wouldn't be any of us left. But those 'dogs' that worked together, are the 'dogs' that are more likely to pass on their genes. And so put this principle into practice, you get altruism.


Selfish genes produce altruistic bodies. We feel sympathy for a complete stranger on the street because in our evolutionary ancestry, everyone we met was likely to be a close relative or next of kin; hence the same genes. This was a rule of thumb, which is in layman's terms 'be nice to everybody, because everybody is your relative'.


But this rule of thumb still exists in our genes today. We are compelled genetically (at least most of us) to feel pity for those less fortunate or even a complete stranger directly because of our genes, which has been given to us by evolution.


No God needed.

Friday, 4 March 2011

A response to a Christard.

"But anyone that tries to use science to disprove God is foolish."

No one is trying to 'disprove God'. Don't you get it?

OK, last and final time. If you don't understand this point, I'll think of you as forever an idiot. Its not that science is trying to disprove God. It establishes that the BELIEF in god is UNFOUNDED. You can't disprove Fairies either. Does that then mean that the BELIEF in Fairies is a valid belief?

"All mysteries ever solved all turned out to NOT be magic." - Tim Minchin.

That is to say, that for all explanations RELIGIONS have given to something, science has always overruled it with a BETTER explanation.

Do you still believe the earth is flat or do you accept the modern science that the earth goes round the sun? Do you still believe that demons cause disease or do you accept the SCIENCE of Germ Theory (that germs/bacteria/viruses cause illness)?

The Bible makes absolutely no mention of any of these advances in science, and nor does it account for evolution either which is a scientific fact. I know you don't accept evolution, but then neither should you accept germ theory if you don't wish to be a hypocrite.

The Bible is in fact authored by MEN, by desert dwindling goat herders who present their lack of scientific knowledge in abundance with countless errors.

What errors you ask? Very well then.

1) Mathematical: The mathematical number Pi is the ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference. The value of Pi truncated at 10 digits is 3.141592653. The bible itself gives us a different value of π.
Then he made the molten sea; it was round, ten cubits from brim to brim, and five cubits high. A line of thirty cubits would encircle it completely. (1 Kings 7:23)

2) Thermodynamic: The very first line of the Bible claims that "God created the heaven and the earth." The first law of thermodynamics, however, indicates that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

3) Astronomical: a) In Genesis, the moon is referred to as a "light" ("lesser light" actually). The moon is merely a reflector of the sun's light, and produces no visible light, although it does shine in different wavelengths not perceivable to the human eye, such as the infrareds. Of course, when talking to tribal nomads and other desert-dwellers, the concept of referring to the moon as a light was commonplace.

b) The Bible makes it clear that stars are tiny objects in sky that will fall down when Jesus comes back. (Revelation 8:10) Of course, they are IN FACT gigantic spheres of burning gas, some smaller, some much larger than our sun. The Bible is wrong.

c) According to the Genesis creation myth, the earth was formed and floreated before the creation of the sun. Aside from biomechanical problems, this flatly contradicts the nebular hypothesis of stellar formation, in which planets form in the accretion disk created by a young star.

Shall I continue? Or do you want to call a Time Out?

Wednesday, 2 March 2011

Free Will and Sin.

I repeatedly get the same argument from believers, especially among the Christian and Muslim ilk, who like to assert that God is all-powerful & all-knowing but yet still believe in Free Will. They have to say that. They must accept Free Will because without it, there is no basis for Sin. There would no justification for blaming evil on humans, which God fashioned to begin with.


‎'All-knowing' does not mean 'all-knowing SOME of the time'.
'All-powerful' does not mean 'all-powerful SOME of the time'.

Either he is what you say he is (all-knowing, all-powerful), or he isn't. You can't get away with saying that 'God is all-powerful, but we can CHOOSE to struggle against his Might' or 'God is all-knowing, but we can CHOOSE to struggle against his Will.'

If he truly was all-knowing and all-powerful, then by the definition of the word 'ALL' (meaning 'everything', 'total', 'complete', '100%') then nothing could contradict his Will, meaning that everything that happens is ALL part of his Will. God's 'Will' would totally, completely, 100% of the time, overrule our Will. You can't have it both ways. You can't have your cake and eat it too.



The entire foundation for Sin is flawed and immoral too. How can a supposedly just God blame humans for acquiring the knowledge of Good & Evil when they had no prior knowledge of Good & Evil?


It would be like telling your baby daughter "Look, Emma! You're not allowed to play with THIS toy. All the other toys you can play with, but not this one!" And then going out of the room, coming back, finding your baby daughter playing with the toy you told her not to play with, and then banishing her out of the house.


If Adam & Eve were innocent then blaming them for something they could *not* have understood to begin with is unethical and by today's standards would be treated as child abuse by any Child Protection Authority.


Now, I hear you cry "Oh but the Adam & Eve story is just symbolic!". Right. So what did Jesus die for then? If the account for the origin of Sin according to the Bible, is from Adam & Eve, then Jesus shed his blood and died for something no more than symbolic act? Are you KIDDING me?! Please!

Tuesday, 21 December 2010

Catholic Cult Of Mind



I know someone in person, who I used to have on my friends list on Facebook before he removed me. He's a "proud Catholic" and he tried, and failed, to debate me on religion all the time.

I think what made him finally remove me was on the issue of condoms, and how the Pope further proved himself a hypocrite when he recently said that condoms were OK 'some of the time'. This person was trying to make the point that abstinence was the most effective way of preventing STD's, but what he could not understand was that its just not in humans' nature to be abstinent; a nature which he would believe God created.

He was arguing that because condoms are NOT 100% effective at preventing STD's, by promoting the use of condoms, that I was condemning millions of people to death. A moron, right?

But when I asked him "How long has the Catholic church been promoting abstinence?", which is thousands of years and given the fact that it has not worked, condoms are the next best thing. He finally quit and then removed me.

You see, as a person, he's fine. He and others like him who have been brainwashed [he doesn't think he's been brainwashed] to argue for and defend the Catholic cult from an early age, despite all evidence linking them to child RAPE, protecting paedophile priests, obscene wealth, and subjugation and discrimination of women for thousands of years.

How anyone can call themselves a "proud Catholic" is beyond belief to me. But there are, and I am moved to feel physically sick.

Sunday, 28 November 2010

Secularism as Religion’s New Home

We are all too aware of acts and atrocities carried out by religious authority in the past and even in the present, as well as those verses in scripture that justified them. So is it no surprise therefore, that there are people who act on them? The apologist may argue that there may always be violent and dangerous people, but if one were to remove scripture as a source for ‘morality’ then in the very least, such people would no longer have a base to justify their actions. It would mean that their source that justifies their actions would no longer exist. But its really a non-starter because the argument presumes that 'people' and 'religion' are not mutually exclusive, when there is very little way of knowing that.

But while the fact that religion causes so much violence and hate is a good point to make, for me, it comes secondary to my first argument against it, which is "Is it actually true?" Because if it isn't true, as it most surely isn't, then people fighting, sentencing homosexuals to death, forcing women against their human rights, mutilating children's genitals, etc, only serves to make it look even more pathetic and stupid.

And this whole idea "Oh I have the true interpretation of religion 'X'! All those people committing genocide and atrocities in the name of religion 'X' have got it wrong!" is absolutely pathetic, and that's the most respect I can give to that argument.

'Liberal theology' actually derives its values far more from secular (and Humanist) practices and moral progresses, not from religion. Why Christians today don't stone to death disobedient children [Deuteronomy 21:18-21] or keep slaves [1 Corinthians 7:20-24] etc, is not because the Bible says not to [because it most surely does!] but because of secular moral progress - that is, progress IN SPITE of religion. The entire idea that somehow someone is against slavery because they think it what their God or holy book says, is completely, utterly, totally, absolutely wrong, completely wrong. There are no two sides to this. They'll make excuses and pass it off as much as they want, but they are wrong.

I can appreciate that there are decent, civil, kind, generous, warm-hearted people who, at least would like to think, that they're religious believers. I have family members who think like this myself, and I still love them dearly. But I simply argue that they're not really Christian, because Christianity at least, has come so far removed from itself now, that Christianity today would not recognisably be called 'Christianity' hundreds of years ago. 'Moderate Christians' would be classed as heretics or even atheists, heaven forbid [pun intended].

But religion doesn't have a self-correcting mechanism like science does. There isn't any way of changing the 'word of God', is there? The word of God is the word of God, as it is written in the holy books. Instead, it jumps on the back of the secular moral persuasion, which is self-correcting, and then claims that it's somehow 'grown up' or 'not so bad any more'. The so-called 'fundamentalist Christians' are simply the more 'theologically honest Christians'.

In a secular society, we need to make ourselves aware of this, and to not treat religion as some kind of rejuvenated or enlightened instruction manual on 'How to be a good person'. Its not. Religious people in more secular societies are actually far more secular [non-religious] than they realise.