Martin Luther King Jr. once said that, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Here is the thing about moral arcs, prayers don’t bend them – people do!
Category Religion
While fundamentalist religious believers certainly have a lot of ridiculous beliefs, I actually can understand their position much better than I can understand the position of the more nominal believers — as the old saying goes, in for a pinch; in for a pound.
Jamaica is a lot like the US as far as religious demographics are concerned… well sort of. About 65% of the country is Christian and about 20% have no religious affiliation. America has about 80% Christian and 20% with no religious affiliation. So who makes up the additional 15% in Jamaica? Jews, Muslim, Rastafarians, and closeted Obeahs. That last one is really pissing off the Christians.
This week I am on vacation and today I took my kids to a small zoo. There we saw lots of strange animals, not the least of which were human beings. While at the small zoo there was two large groups of summer campers. Both groups were from the same summer camp, but one group was the girls (with women counselors) and the other group was the boys (with men counselors). The two groups were NOT together; they were segregated.
Recently, Hemant Mehta had a dialog with a Christian mega-church pastor at the pastor’s mega-church. About 6000 people got to hear Mehta talk about atheism. One of the things that Mehta talked about was that he (and most other active atheists) have heard all the questions before. It was after this that his pastor friend brought out a questions that no atheist has every heard before.
I love religious believers; they are so hypocritical. Right now, the country is debating the role and rights that government has or doesn’t have to spy on its citizens. As it turns out, our government is already doing that and just wasn’t telling us about it.
Despite the fact that the Bible is hopelessly boring, the characters have no depth to them, and many of the stories challenge human credibility and morality the Bible remains the bestselling book of all time. The History Channel recently capitalized on the books popularity with much success. Now they are planning on creating a sequel mini-series.
As I talk to religious believers of various theological bends, I often hear them counter my criticism of their beliefs by informing me that I worship science. While I admit that I am quite fond of the scientific method because it allows us to better understand the world and makes our lives so much easier and more fulfilling, I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I “worship” science.
I recently saw the new Superman film, “Man of Steel” and the religious media is ablaze with talk about how the film was “filled” with Christian references. To be honest, I really didn’t see any Christian references in the film… at least not any more than one can pull out of any film if you were intent on finding them.
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The Bible contains a lot of extremely silly and ridiculous claims and unless you are a diehard Bible literalist, that should be pretty obvious. When religious believers come face to face with these silly and ridiculous claims of their religion, they typically fall back to the old, “that part is a metaphor” card. Let’s examine that briefly.
For starters, I would like to inquire about this so called “metaphor.” What exactly is the claim a metaphor for, exactly? I mean when Jesus says that it is better to pluck out your eye and chop off your hand rather than to steal or feel lust, he prefaces it why saying that it is better to lose these body parts than to have one’s soul tortured for all eternity. So what exactly is that a metaphor for? Maybe that wasn’t one of those metaphor parts of the Bible?
There is an atheist meme that states that any part of the Bible that contradicts science or is just blatantly ridiculous is obviously a metaphor. Basically, this meme is making light of the ever sliding scale of biblical credibility.
The old “metaphor” card seems to be the new “God of the Gaps” excuse. It seems that as time goes by and our scientific understanding of the universe grows, there also seem to be more and more metaphors in the Bible. Funny how that works out.