A Christian recently commented to me that because the Book of Revelation talks about greater natural disasters before the End Times, this is proof that God exists the Bible is true. While I have heard this argument before, it hit me funny this time and I lost my shit.
Tag Bible
The Senate’s report on the CIA’s torture activities has recently been released. Morally, we recognize that torture is wrong and yet so many religious believers have no problem defending their imaginary deity when their religious holy books advocate for eternal torture.
I Christian recently told me that the evidence for God is in the stars. Let’s explore that for a moment because I would have gone the opposite way on this. I think that the stars are evidence against 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.
Religious believers often claim that atheists choose to not believe in God for various reasons. Some will even say that our choice not to believe is just a phase. Obviously I disagree with that point of view, but more than that I disagree with the premise that atheism or even belief is a choice at all.
I often criticize and argue against religious fundamentalists because I think there are more of them than people realize and that they wield a great deal of political power in this country. However, many religious criticize me and other atheists for “picking low hanging fruit.” They claim that we aren’t arguing against “real” Christians and that fundamentalists have religion all wrong. That’s interesting, because it seems that God in his all-knowingness couldn’t foresee that fundamentalists would or could “twist” his message so easily.
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.”
Picture this, you are walking on a beach and all you see for miles is sand. Then, out of nowhere you find a perfectly formed rock. How do you suppose it got there? How could a rock have formed naturally?
Many more progressive religious believers and a few misguided atheists insist that religion isn’t really the problem; the problem is merely how some extremists interpret religion. They claim that atheists like me want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I disagree. I just don’t want to drown the baby in baptism.