Religious believers love to claim that God is the only possible source for morality. While I have made it clear in a previous article that God does not ground morality at all and that the true source of morality is human empathy and compassion, many religious believers still hold on to their dogmatic view. Not to worry, I have developed a test to see which one of us is correct.
Category Atheism
Look, I understand that in countries like China, Iraq, Egypt, or Israel, it is certainly possible and even probable that a Christian might be persecuted for his or her religious faith, but in America where 80% of the country is made up of Christians and roughly 95% of our government is made up of Christians (including the President), it is extremely unlikely. It is more likely that a Republican would be persecuted in Alabama than a Christian to be persecuted in the United States.
This is why I love it that the number one online news program are filled with rational people who self-identify as “agnostics.” The on-air personalities of The Young Turks aren’t those mean atheists like me; they are open-minded progressives like me. They are also not “preaching” to the “choir” in that their audience isn’t just atheists. I don’t know if I can call them mainstream, but they are certainly more mainstream than the average atheist broadcaster.
The other night, I re-watched the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Who Watches The Watchers.” This is probably the episode that most obviously deals with religion and has become a favorite among atheists.
Even though Tom Cruise is an outstanding actor who picks mostly good to great movies to star in, that isn’t the reason why I love him. I love him because he is such an outspoken Scientologist.
A while ago, I created a Facebook page specifically for Dangerous Talk, but it really didn’t take off the way I was hoping it would for a variety of reasons. For starters, I mainly posted there at 2am and as a result fewer people saw those posts on their feeds. Also, I had one other content creator and he was busy with his own stuff and didn’t post there that often either. But mainly I think the problem was that most people don’t know what Dangerous Talk is. The name alone could mean anything. It just isn’t descriptive enough to people outside of my blog.
Fred Phelps is dead. He was the founder of the now infamous Westboro Baptist Church, which is the smallest famous church you will ever here about. For the most part, the Church is made up of Phelp’s admittedly large family and that is about it. It isn’t like they are some giant mega-church or even a match for the local church around the corner (there is always a church around the corner). So why are so many religious writers so giddy that Fred Phelps has died?
I work part-time in retail and the other day I had a woman ask me about how I viewed the Bible. She then handed me a Bible tract titled with that same question and told me that it would only take a few moments of my time, but it could change my life.
A day doesn’t go by when some Christian “warns” me about the looming threat of eternal torture which is sure to await me if I continue to 1. Lack a belief in their God and 2. Not worship their God. These are two separate issues and yet Christians only try to address the first of these concerns.
It isn’t unusual these days for some right-wing Christian to say something hateful and then shift the blame to their deity. It isn’t that they hate gays or thing that atheists deserve to be tortured for all eternity, they are just the messenger. They are just telling us God’s message.