Christianity In A Nutshell

Recently, a Christian friend of mine posted an interesting meme on Facebook that I think pretty much sums up Christianity in a nutshell. I should add that this was created and posted by Christians and at the time of this writing had two-hundred thousand Facebook “likes” and nearly a million “shares” all presumably from Christians. A large Christian Facebook page posted it with the caption, “Share if you are proud to be a Christian!” Check it out:

First off, I want to make it clear that as an atheist I absolutely oppose ridiculing Christians. All people should be treated with respect and dignity. However, I have no problem ridiculing ridiculous beliefs. If a Christian wants to believe that a woman came from the rib bone of a guy or believe in a walking, talking snake, I am going to point out the absurdity of that such beliefs. I might even use humor and satire to do it. Mocking beliefs is very different than mocking actual people and if you take your beliefs so personally, that you equate mocking them with someone mocking you, then I don’t know what to tell you. I guess it is sort of like hating the sin and not the sinner but way different.

Second, if you are a Christian in America, no one is going to torture you or kill you. Roughly eighty percent of Americans identify as Christians. Who is going to torture you? The .6 percent of Muslims?

Sadly, it is more often than not, Christians who are the ones torturing and killing those of other religions and/or no religion in America today. They do it in Jesus’s name and they defend it as their sincerely held religious belief.

But let’s move on to the meat of this meme: “You cannot change my mind.”

Persecution complex aside, this is really Christianity in a nutshell. No matter what you say or what evidence you present, Christians seem to be proud of the fact that they are close-minded. Those who share this meme are claiming that you cannot change their minds. Facts be damned… lalala… they can’t hear you. Evidence…science… human rights… human dignity… human survival on this planet… lalala… NO, the Bible is true because it says it is true and even though they don’t follow half the crap the Bible says, the things that their pastor tells them is in there is in there. Anything else is atheists taking the Bible out of context because even the Devil can use scripture. It says so right in the scripture. 😉

I have said it before and I will say it again, I am open to changing my position on anything if given valid evidence or a really good argument. Some positions I am less likely to change because the evidence or arguments are overwhelming. For example, it is doubtful someone will present valid evidence that the Earth is a cube and not a sphere. I’ll be honest on this one. I don’t think the likelihood of me changing my position on that is very high. However, I’m open to it if new evidence is presented.

In that vein, it is very unlikely that a Christian is going to convince me of the existence of the Christian God? Back when I was younger and knew less about Christianity, things might have been different, today? It is pretty unlikely. Not impossible though. Unlike so many Christians, if presented with valid evidence, I would absolutely change my position. It is just that currently the evidence is severely stacked in the other direction.

Getting back to this meme, I don’t know what is more disturbing to me, that Christians would claim to be so closed-minded to new evidence and information or that fact that they appear to be proud of this. Again, this got almost a million shares. Close to a million people thought this meme was so awesome that they had to share it on their Facebook wall for all their friends and family to see.