One of the things I love about being a person of reason is that embracing reason over faith often encourages people to admit their mistakes and to change their position on various issues. For starters, most atheists once believed in a deity and have changed their position based on new information. All of science is based on the principle that we don’t have all the answers and that some of the answers we do have might not be completely correct or maybe totally wrong.
Category Christianity
Last night, I went to the Church to give my presentation. To start with, I asked the Pastor if I could tape a letter to the Church door as part of my presentation. He allowed it. My letter was a list of 10 things that all atheists agree about. Each numbered item was a particular deity that atheists lack a belief in. I tried to pick a mix of deities what were mostly pretty well known. Of course the last deity on the list was Yahweh.
Recently, my 5-year-old son was running around the house and knocked over my glass. It broke and while no one was hurt, it was a glass I really liked. My son immediately apologized, but I told him that I could not forgive him until he went out and mercilessly slaughtered an innocent lamb. I explained to him that I love him and that I want to forgive him, but until he sacrifices the innocent blood of a lamb, I just could not forgive him. Those are the rules. I didn’t make them up; God did.
I haven’t created a YouTube video in a while, so I figured now might be a good time to get back into that. In my latest video, I ask religious believers and former religious believers about the line of religious crazy. Basically, I am curious about what aspects of religion are too crazy even for the religious. Check it out:
One hundred years from now we will be dead but it is entirely probable that our children may still be alive. I say “probable” and “may” because it really depends in large part to who wins the culture war. For simplicity sake, let’s look at the two opposing worldviews and see which one offers the best hope for our future.
A few years ago, I got into a religious conversation with my ultra-Jewish cousin. This was a long awaiting exchange of ideas. My cousin is very smart and so I was expecting a pretty interesting debate-style conversation. What I got was the same typical arguments I have gotten from newly minted born-again Christians.
There is a lot of suffering in the world, but not to worry, they are just punishments from God for all the things particular Christians don’t like. We bring all this suffering and death on ourselves by allowing evil sinners to do things we claim God doesn’t like. That’s what some Christians are still telling me.
I recently received a comment from a Christian pointing out that the Bible supports fasting for health reasons and that a scientific study has shown that fasting can be beneficial to cancer patients on Chemotherapy. The commenter then added that “this was another case of science catching up with God’s advice.”
Fundamentalist Christians have been putting out films for a while and not that God’s Not Dead has been successful, we can expect to see more of these super heavy handed religious films from the batshit crazy sector of society.
I was having a discussion with a Christian recently and we were talking about blood sacrifice and how Jesus was the Innocent Lamb of God. My Christian friend reminded me that because of the sacrifice of Jesus we don’t need to sacrifice animals any more. That reminder jarred me back into reality and I had to remind my Christian friend what century this is.