Showing posts with label sin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sin. Show all posts

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Oh, C'mon Now, Who Are You Trying to Fool?

You wanna mess up your kids? Tell them every stray thought will land them in hell and then show them the works of Heironymous Bosch.

Sin.

Once upon a time, sin was a big deal to me. I was convinced, utterly convinced, that every little sin was sending me to Hell. I absolutely, sincerely convinced that Satan watched everyone at all times and listened to our thoughts and that any stray thought or negative emotion of any kind- no matter how fleeting- could land me in Hell. Immediately.

I was nine.

Yes, my childhood was a happy one. Ever try not thinking about Satan? Good luck with that.

Ever try not feeling angry about anything ever? Better luck with that one.

Keep in mind, that's not unusual Christian theology. Plenty of Christians belief that even feeling slightly angry at someone else is the same as murder. (coughRayComfortcough) Even more feel that finding a woman vaguely attractive is exactly the same as a gangbang with five hermaphrodite hookers, a goat and a pineapple- and it's all the woman's fault, btw.

Now, I know this guy comes from the Ray Comfort school of "ever been angry? enjoy hell, sucka!" school of theology, which is why I find this post a little bit . . . disingenuous.

The following comes from page 1951 in the John MacMarthur Bible Commentary and addresses the fact that born again believers do not habitually sin.

Why Christians Won't Habitually Sin

This passage begins with the phrase "Whoever commits sin" (v. 4). Commits translates a Greek verb that conveys the idea of habitual practice. Although genuine Christians have a sin nature (1 John 1:8) and do behave sinfully, their confession of sin (1 John 1:9; 2:1) and acceptance of forgiveness prevent sin from becoming the unbroken pattern of their lives (John 8:31, 34-36;Romans 6:11; 2 John 1:9). God builds a certain growing awareness about sin that provides four effective reasons why true Christians cannot habitually practice sin:

1. Genuine Christians cannot practice sin because sin is incompatible with the law of God, which they love (1 John 3:4; Psalm 119:34, 77, 97; Romans 7:12, 22); whereas habitual sin betrays the ultimate sense of rebellion - living as if there were no law or ignoring what laws exist (James 4:17) - in short, lawlessness.

2. Genuine Christians cannot practice sin because sin is incompatible with the work of Christ (1 John 3:5). Christ died to sanctify (make holy) the believer (2 Corinthians 5:21;Ephesians 5:25-27). Habitual sin contradicts Christ's work of breaking the dominion of sin in the believer's life (Romans 6:1-15).

3. Genuine Christians cannot practice sin because Christ came to destroy the works of the arch-sinner, Satan (1 John 3:8). The devil is still operating, but he has been defeated, and in Christ we escape his tyranny. The day will come when all of Satan's activity will cease in the universe, and he will be sent to hell forever (Revelation 20:10).

4. Genuine Christians cannot practice sin because sin is incompatible with the ministry of the Holy Spirit, who has imparted a new nature to the believer (1 John 3:9; John 3:5-8). This new nature shuns sin and exhibits the habitual character of righteousness produced by the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22-24).

So, who sins? Everyone. Who doesn't lie, who doesn't get angry, who doesn't feel lustful? Surely some of the people who claim to be Christians must actually be Christians, and I've never noticed a difference in behavior between Christians and nonChristians, have you? Christians have a higher divorce rate, there are more Christians in prison and the more religious a country is, the more crime it has. Christians sin, just like the rest of us.

What this is, really, is a No True Scotsman and a Guilt Complex. This allows you to say, "But they're not really Christians" any time I point to a clearly sinning Christian, "real Christians don't sin!" Sure. Unless conversion is actually being replaced with a pod person, yes, Christians sin like the rest of us.

[Note: before you go all apeshit in the comments section, follow the link, see why that is a logical fallacy and not acceptable in argumentation and DON'T USE IT.]

The Guilt Complex of this is a little more subtle. It explains the constant rerererererededicating their lives to Jesus that so many Christians engage in. You'd think once or twice or three times would be enough, but no, they're dedicating their lives to Jesus on a weekly basis. How many times does it take, really? 58,000 apparently. I can tell you what the internal struggle is, because I've lived it.

Christian: Oh, not again!

Atheist: What?

Christian: I keep sinning. I'm not really a Christian!

Atheist: You believe in Jesus, right? You accept him as your Lord and Savior, right? Sure you're Christian. Fairly obnoxious about it, actually.

Christian: No, no, no! I can't be a Christian, I keep sinning!

Atheist: Sinning how?

Christian: I keep finding women other than my wife attractive!

Atheist: Srsly?

Christian: How did you say that without vowels? Never mind, yes, it's sinning! It's adultery!

Atheist: Dude, finding an attractive woman attractive is no big deal. You're not fucking them, are you?

Christian: NO!

Atheist: Yeah, you'll be fine.

Christian: No, I won't be fine. I need to become a Christian, or I'll burn forever in hell when I die! I could die at any moment! Please, God, save me!

Atheist: Um, yeah, well, call me when you're done with that.

These poor people, they're absolutely tormented. Tormented by assholes who tell them, over and over again, that being human is proof of their worthiness for eternal torment. It's sick.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

An Honest Question re: Genesis

This is an honest question about the Genesis story that has been bothering me for a long time. You hear it a lot: the reason the world has pain and suffering in it is because of Adam and Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden. That sin, the eating of the forbidden fruit, introduced pain, disease, death, predation*, every violent, sad, tragic, painful or even slightly unpleasant thing was introduced to the world by man's sin.

Well, okay, but wasn't Satan already in the Garden? I seem to remember:

1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’”
4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they werenaked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

Yeah, that's odd. What was the serpent doing in the Garden of Eden if God hadn't put him there? Why was the serpent subtle if God hadn't made him subtle? If there was no sin in the Garden, why would the serpent suggest disobeying God?

Anyway, that's my question for the day.


*Apparently, every predator today, such as polar bears and tigers, were herbivores prior to Adam's and Eve's mistake. Presumably, their teeth, claws and digestive systems were entirely changed in that moment. Among other things.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

It's a Good Thing Buses Don't Have Desks

Or I would have headdesked myself into a coma this morning.

The bus driver and a passenger were discussing god. For a while there it was a fairly standard discussion about giving all things to God and in faith all things are possible, until the driver declared that Satan was trying to make him "mess up". How does he know this? Because of the things he has been saying to his wife lately. You just don't say things like that to someone you love. Ergo, Satan.

Here is this grown man completely denying any responsibility for words that came out of his own mouth. Even a five-year-old who's been caught lying or cursing won't try to say that somebody else said it.

Yet this is totally acceptable in some Christian circles. An excuse that a small child would reject as being too unbelievable is the height of theology for a great many people.

*headdesk*

Friday, January 15, 2010

108 Sins

Why am I not currently being hugged by a sloth?


That's right, kids, the Bible lists 108 types of sins!





Along with the ever popular murder, adultery and witchcraft, the following are apparently also sinful:





Anxiety (Phil. 4:6; 2 Kings 6:15) And now millions of fundies are anxious about their anxiety, further compounding their sin.





Carelessness (Exod. 4:24-26) Dropped a plate? Knocked over a lamp? You're going to hell!





Compromise (Judg. 2:2; 1 Kings 22:1-4) Well, that explains everything.





Delaying (Acts 24:24-25) Delaying what? Now I'm imagining standing at the pearly gates and having Peter tell me that due to that time I pushed back dinner an hour in 1998, I'm going to burn for all eternity.





Doubt (Matt. 14:31; 1 Tim. 2:8) said every cult leader, ever.





Dullness of hearing (Heb. 5:11-14; of seeing, 2 Pet. 1:9) I do love a little ablism.





Living in the flesh (Gal. 3:3) Where else would I live? Because given the chronic pain, I'd love to know.





Murmuring (Exod. 14:10-12; 16:7; 17:2-3) IT'S GOING TO BE A VERY LOUD WORLD IF THIS GETS OUT.

Partiality (James 1:2-4) Now that doesn't make any sense. Aren't they opposing marriage for everyone?

Unbelief (Matt. 13:58; Heb. 4:6, 11) Ah, fuck it. I'm already living in the flesh and anxious about it. I may as well not believe.

Willful ignorance (2 Pet. 3:5)
Wisdom rejecting (
Prov. 1:20-29) Bad news for the Creationist/ID crowd.

Got a problem? Christianity has the solution- and we guarantee you have a problem!

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

The Question of Sin

My life's goal is to grab a sloth and run around with it.



I have to thank chris geiser. This simple post of his crystallized for me exactly how self contradictory and bizarre evangelical theology is on the subject of sin and salvation.



Abortion, euthanasia, murder, hatred, grudges, and calling someone a fool is just as bad as murder in God's eyes according to Matthew 5:21-22. How can a murderer enter heaven? Seriously? Why would God let a murderer into heaven? Once a person is labeled a murderer, they are always a murderer. Time does not forgive sins. Murder committed fifty years ago is still remembered by the Lord.

God is keeping tabs on evil deeds. God is also not bribed by evil men. Whoever is reading this and hates the Lord, look at your sins. God hates sin. Sin is breaking the Ten Commandments. God sends sinners to hell for their evil deeds. However, the Lord is also rich in mercy and has given mortal men a second chance at eternal life. John 3:16.



Why exactly would god be keeping a list and checking it twice? All that is required to get into heaven is belief. Nothing else. Once saved, always saved: believe in god, believe jesus died for your sins, sincerely and absolutely, for one second in your whole life and off to heaven you go. Live a life of goodness and sacrifice for your fellow man and burn for all eternity if you don't believe.




Jesus said to give all to the poor and you give nothing? Not a problem, you believe. Jesus said to love your neighbor and you spew hatred in his (gay/atheist/muslim) direction every day? Not a problem, you believe. Jesus said to be meek, to pray in private and you pray on the White House lawn for a Senator to die? No problem, you believe.




Sin is irrelevent. Sincerity is sovereign.

Monday, August 24, 2009

But I Want a Family!

god, bible, jesus, sin, good, evil,
Trigger warning: child molestation.

The question of why any loving, concerned god would allow the vast amounts of human suffering that occurs every day (that is occurring right this minute) is something that has distressed believers, and created nonbelievers, for millenia.



In the time it took you to read that sentence, at least 2 women in the US were raped, depending on how fast you read. I wish I could do something about that. I wish I could make sure nobody was ever raped again. I wish I could end genocide, starvation, disease, war and just plain meanness.



I can't. An omnipotent god could. An omniscient god would know how. So why doesn't he?


Presumably not for this reason:



Wouldn’t you just like God to tell you what he thinks about your suffering? I mean, who wouldn’t? Maybe in a personal letter. Where he spells out what he sees in all your pain. I guess god writes a letter because if you were in front of him while he explains it all, he'd have to start answering questions or something.





For many years, I wrestled with him about where he was when my father took me, his four-year-old daughter, out to the cornfield behind our house to take his pleasure at the expense of my pain. How could God let that happen? i cannot reconcile a loving god with such things. i could reconcile an omnipotent being that just doesn't care about us with such a thing, but a god that answers prayers for lost car keys? no.

And where is he in the bitterness of broken romances, the anguish of jobs lost, the struggles of all the refugees in the world, the hunger of the 800 million people who don’t even have enough food? i love that broken hearts and job loss come before homelessness and starvation. After thirty years of prayer, thought, and study, I sat down one day and these words flowed. thirty years of prayer? she must be right! In the form of a letter to a semi-autobiographical “Annie,” this is how I see God’s perspective on our distress.

The Father of Jesus
1 Golden Way
New Jerusalem I'm fairly certain god had a name before jesus, mostly because i'm guessing jews don't refer to him that way.

My Dearest Annie:

I know you are unsure of me these days, particularly wondering whether you really are dear to me. Your twenties have been such painful years, haven’t they? I know you’ve wondered whether you would ever stop crying. And those breakdowns that landed you in the hospital—such terror—thinking you were going to be rolled up in a little ball and thrown out into the empty universe. i'm beginning to think you should have to pass a test before you're allowed to use metaphors. I’m so sorry you had to go through all that. My heart has bled for you. god has a . . . never mind, but if he's so sad about it, why not do something about it?

. . .

You’ve particularly been wrestling with me about free will. I wanted to write to you today because you’ve begun to see it differently. Up until now you’ve always said, “Free will isn’t worth what it costs! It was a human choice in the garden that led to all this pain, and it was my father’s choices that have provoked so much terror in my life.” good points, actually. why should everyone throughout history suffer because two people made a mistake? a mistake god knew they would make, no less.

You’ve blamed me for creating such a system. well, yeah. why put the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life right where Adam and Eve could get at them? why create those trees at all?

You admitted to me two weeks ago Saturday that you actually hated me. (I was so glad to hear you confess that!) And now, in these last two weeks, it has begun to dawn on you that there’s no real goodness on earth without real evil. no, one couldn't really perceive good as being special without evil, but "good" in the sense of being kind and generous could surely exist without child molesters. The same ability to choose that creates evil also yields goodness. i'll agree to that. some people choose to free the slaves, some people choose to commit genocide. Do you get it, really? get what? I want people who will love me freely, without coercion or manipulation. what? god's fucking lonely or something? if love something set it free, and if it comes back to you, that was true love? god rules the universe via easily mocked mantras? That means you all need to have a choice to walk with me or to walk away from me. okay, but why does "walking away" have to involve torture and rape and genocide? couldn't walking away just mean not attending church? I know it’s confusing, too, because it’s hard for you to evaluate who’s with me and who’s not. wait, what? Like your father, who looked like he was walking with me oh, i got it, false convert. but sure walked away from me that day in the cornfield when he molested you. because that's the important part, not that he ruined his daughter's life, but that he wasn't a true christian. Have you ever thought about what I felt that day? seriously? can you imagine how enraged the semi-autobiographical annie would be if her mother said, "yes, i knew your father was molesting you, but have you thought about how i felt about it, how much it hurt me?"

I know you’ve been angry with me about how I’ve set up the system, but think about it from my point of view: I want a family to love. so god made two people who immediately disobeyed him because god's incompetent? So I made Adam and Eve with the ability to be my children. But they walked away from me and unleashed such evil and suffering. i could have stopped the evil and suffering, or prevented it in the first place, but . . . i dunno. How I grieved! I was sorry I’d made them. i could have done something about that, too. Every violent thought broke my heart. not quite enough to do something about it. And that’s how I felt that day in the cornfield. I wept over you both, knowing what your father’s sin would cost in your life, and in his. And, do you see that I could not intervene? not really, no.

If I stopped your father, it would only be fair to stop all the evil choices and then where would human choice be and then how would I get my family? I want a family! I want an enormous, extended family. I want people who want to come to family reunions. Well, it’s not that I couldn’t intervene in the most literal sense—I could, of course. What I mean is, if I did routinely stop bad choices, that would be the end of choice. Real choices require real consequences. Maybe you think I could just make you love me, but I want a family who really loves me.

this is both ridiculous and psychopathic. for one thing, parents allow their children to make choices, choices about what clothes to wear, what toys to play with, etc. parents allow those choices to prepare their children for a time when they will have to make much more important choices. However, no parent (i hope) ever allows their child to choose to stick their fingers in an electrical outlet or set themselves on fire or drink lye. the writer's theory seems to be that we really ought to let them choose such things, because what happens to free will otherwise?

the psychopathic side of this: I want a family! i need you to suffer so that I can have what I want! wait, isn't that the logic of the child molester . . . holy shit, i just . . . wow.

i think we're done here.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Sinless Sex

sex, sin, christian,
I have found something so funny, I simply must share it with you. It is a flowchart for moral sexual decision making.

In case you have trouble with flowcharts, I will list all the circumstances that must be in place for a christian couple to morally have joyless sex.

You can feel free to have sex if:

You are married.
You are having sex with your spouse.
You have been married at least 3 days.
The wife is not menstruating, pregnant or nursing.
It is not Lent, Advent, Whitsun Week, Easter week, a feast day, a fast day, Sunday, Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday.
The sun has set.
You are not naked.
You are not in church.
You do want a child.

Otherwise, go somewhere and don't masturbate.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Even at My Worst

atheism, atheist, religion, christian, bible, god, sin, fundy, rapture,
I was never this bad.

Most people tend to view sin as simply the things you shouldn't be doing, most of which you wouldn't do anyway, such as murdering and stealing. The bible defines sin, at least in the New Testament, as any random passing consideration of something sinful, such as thinking "nice ass" when a person of your preferred sex, who has a nice ass, walks by. Fundys really take this to heart.

To anyone who hasn't been exposed to this particular definition of sin, it seems unfathomable: how can anyone control all of their thoughts? It's not possible, so why expect it of people?

Control.

If I can make you feel guilty and despondent at the fact that, just like any other human on the planet, you occasionally get lustful or angry, I can control you. And, if I can convince you that these passing thoughts will doom you to an eternity of torment, even if you never act on them, and never would, I own you.

What really pisses me off about this is how beaten down fundys get about all this. It took me the better part of a decade to learn to like myself, to accept myself for who I am: snarky, geeky, irritable and nowhere near the media ideal of beautiful. To watch fundys beat themselves into submission for the great crime of being human makes me angry. They are wasting the only life they will ever get hating everything about themselves, apologizing for every thought, not once enjoying what it is to be human.

They'll never get another chance at this, and they're fucking wasting it.

Twinkling of an Eye starts the thread with: I remember one time many years ago i was talking with my born-again Christian brother, and i remember him saying that he believed it was possible for a Christian to go one day without sinning.
Do you think that's so? I've often wondered. One whole day without sinning...

and while you're dreaming of that, i'm enjoying a nice fantasy about [censored], and i gotta tell you, hot!

yogi3939 defines the only conditions under which (s)he believes this could happen: I know I did it one time. I was in the hospital and drugged for severe pain after a car accident. I know I spent at least one day without waking up or dreaming.

guys? it's okay to like yourself. i'm sure you have good qualities.

Christina makes me a little sadder:
I doubt it very much because we are responsible for our thoughts and sometimes thinking the idea is the same as doing it, I know I'm on my knees daily asking the Lord to forgive me for something, either something I did, said, thought or a way in which I reacted to someone or something.

no, you're not responsible for your thoughts, any more than you're responsible for the workings of your digestive system. brains think, it's what they do.

Sunny takes it to a whole new level (Rapture Ready does tend to be an ongoing "i can outfundy anyone!" contest): I doubt it. Our sin goes into the deepest parts of us. It's out thoughts and motives that we don't even notice that would get us, not the easy stuff that you can point out.

this isn't even thoughtsin here, this is subconscious-sin. she's holding herself responsible for thoughts she isn't even aware of! seriously!

cocopea9052 is apparently reading from a different bible than the rest of us: Well I know my biggest daily sin is impatience and irritation over still being here!. I'm always saying , "I'm sorry Lord, I don't mean to be this way, I know your coming back in your time". Then 5 minutes later, I'm like, ok God why are we still here! And if I hear of something bad or tragic happening, then I get downright angry about it. It is a daily, no hourly, no minute struggle. Really it is. I am constantly praying for patience.

first of all, utterly tragic that you are spending every irreplaceable moment of this life wishing for it to be over. secondly, when did impatience become a sin?

1angel4u feels guilty for being angry at a door. a door!: Yesterday I got so angry at our front door

I'm not kidding though, my key does not work on our deadbolt because our house has "settled" according to my DH. ~~~just get it fixed~~~

So, I litterally have to drop my purse, my bag from work, groceries that I picked up on the way home from work and then when I finally got it open - using two hands - I flung the mail on the floor of the living room and stomped in using four-letter words.

It's very unlike me. But, I've been putting up with this stupid lock/key problem for months now!

It sounds so petty, I know

I prayed for forgiveness right away.

I'm so sick of this world. I remember a time when we didn't even have to lock our doors.

(hey! the emoticons came through! all RR posts are like that, if not worse.) where in the bible is it written that anger against inanimate objects is a sin? oh, and profanity- not a sin. taking the lord's name in vain is forbidden, but generalized profanity is never mentioned in the bible.

Living by Faith considers being sentient a sin: No,and anyone who says they can is most likely sinning right there. It's very arrogant and boastful to think that way,IMHO.
God is so holy and pure,that the things we think of as no big deal are a huge sin before a holy God. Things like pride and stubbornness and lack of trust in Him,complaining.. lobotomies! they need lobotomies, and then they can be godly.

I find it incredibly irritating when fundys say that atheists are without morals because we are without god, but you know what? I'll take complete and utter immorality to hating everything about myself and spending all day, every day, fearing my every thought. People who actively encourage self hatred should be ashamed of themselves.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

A Little Bit More About Me



sin, think, religion, atheism, atheist, snark, jesus, god, satan, bible, humor,
The hubby noted once about me that I don't have a sense of humor so much as I have a sense of the ridiculous.

He was right. Don't bother taking me to see a comedy, I probably won't find it funny. Or I'll laugh in all the wrong places. Monty Python? Hilarious. Adam Sandler? Not so much*.

This actually does relate to atheism, or at least to areligionism. You see, I better be right about the fundys being wrong, because if they're right, I'm screwed. I can't help but commit thoughtsins**. I can't help picturing Jesus in a gay bar. I'm not trying to say that I think Jesus was gay, I just can't not find the awesome inappropriateness of that funny.

I've tried to be normal. I tried and tried and tried. (Ask anyone I went to elementary/middle/high school with. I tried- and I failed.) I can't help thinking the way I do. I've learned to keep it from flying out of my mouth, but the thoughts remain.

This whole issue used to frighten me as a child. (We were rather fundy for Catholics.) I was honestly convinced that both God and Satan could hear my every thought. Every single one. Obviously, as a young child I wasn't troubled with lustful thoughts, but any time I wanted something I wasn't supposed to have, or wondered if Jesus had to defecate (they never talk about those things in the bible), or I got mad at someone, I was instantly seized with the tremendous fear that god hated me and satan was coming for me.

This is not a nice thing to do to children. It isn't healthy for adults, either. It was bad enough being the sort of awkward child that simply cannot fit in, ever, but to be convinced that every thought was an express ticket to the fiery torments of hell was adding injury to injury. Jesus loves you- except for those wicked, wicked thoughts you can't help having!

So, yeah, I'm going to be snarky. I'm going to picture Jesus in a gay bar. I'm going to keep fantasizing about [censored], and [censored verb] [censored for your own piece of mind] on a grand piano.

*Don't bother flaming me on this issue. You either find something funny or you don't.

**Thoughtsin is a popular issue with fundamentalists. For example, from Ray Comfort's blog: Most of us would sin ten times as much as that, with our lustful, selfish, self-righteous, unthankful, and greedy thoughts . . .

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Why I Really Don't Believe

bible, sin, atheism, atheist, religion, jesus, god, freedom, christian, christianity, logic
First of all, Christian Anti-Defamation Council is the funniest concept evah! Hey, jackasses, you are more than 75% of the population of the US. That's called a majority. You're not being persecuted, get over it.



Second of all, if you want to know why people don't believe what you do, ask people that don't believe, not other people who believe. Articles like Defending Your Faith: Why Your Friend Really Doesn't Believe make me wonder if they are aimed more at shoring up the believer's faith than converting nonbelievers. After all, you don't really need to "defend your faith" just because you know someone who doesn't believe as you do. (Even if they do offer you delicious cookies!) The basic premise seems to be that belief is like smoking: even if you don't smoke, there's still that second-hand smoke problem. I can only describe that sort of reasoning as . . . odd.



Often we assume that the reason the people we love do not believe the gospel is that they simply need more proof for the veracity of its claims. Yes, proof would be nice. Just because you believe something doesn't make it true. We often are prone to think that if the unbeliever could just hear the facts we've heard your "facts" or witness a miracle stop that. if i saw a bona fide miracle, like a guy that had been verifiably dead for days suddenly get up and walk away, I would totally believe. then certainly they would be willing to repent and believe on Christ.



Jesus knew that is not the case.

In fact, Jesus turns it completely around. He taught “If anyone wills to do His [God’s] will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority. (John 7:17)

According to Christ, your friend’s willingness to obey God precedes their ability to know the truth about Christ and what he came to reveal. So the problem with unbelief is not the intellect, rather it is a matter of the will.
I can't see the truth in the bible unless I believe. Do you suppose the author of this article is completely unaware of how asinine that statement is?



"Hey, I found the secret lair of tiny pink unicorns!"

"Really, where is it?"

"I can't show you unless you already believe the unicorns exist."

[*]

Unbelievers do not believe simply because they are not willing to humble themselves and submit to God’s will. That's it. I'm just not quite humble enough. Not nearly as humble as this asshat. I think we need to revisit the definition of "humble":

adjective, -bler, -blest, verb, -bled, -bling.
–adjective
1. not proud or arrogant; modest: to be humble although successful.


2. having a feeling of insignificance, inferiority, subservience, etc.: In the presence of so many world-famous writers I felt very humble.

3. low in rank, importance, status, quality, etc.; lowly: of humble origin; a humble home.

4. courteously respectful: In my humble opinion you are wrong.

5. low in height (
I'm quite humble, apparently!), level, etc.; small in size: a humble member of the galaxy.

I may or may not be humble, but the writer of this article is not.

Clever and subtle arguments may be employed by your friends, but their intellect is not the real problem. when you're describing "intellect" as a "problem", you're the problem They are smoke screens which they hide behind. no, i'm just freakin' smart. that's it. sorry, can't help it.

That does not mean that we are not to offer reasonable answers for our Christian hope. please define "reasonable" in that context. We are explicitly commanded to do so in the Bible. (2 Peter 3:16&17)

really? here's that passage:

16He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
17Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position


that is not an explicit command to offer reasonable explanations for Christian hope. do these people think i won't look up any referenced bible verses?

But conversion is not simply agreeing with good arguments and sound reasoning, it consists of a supernatural inward change evidenced by repentance and faith in Christ. I will agree with everything before the comma. Belief cannot be turned off and on, there's no switch to flip, no magic button to press. I bet that won't stop people from acting as if it were that simple. (Ray, are you paying attention?)

Why are unbelievers unwilling? Have you stopped beating your wife yet? It's that sort of question. It assumes something unproven- that unbelievers are unwilling- and goes from there.

There are a few factors mentioned in the Bible as to why unbelievers are unwilling to believe the gospel.
perhaps the bible, the holy book of christians, isn't the best authority on unbelievers and their motivations. after all, nothing in there was written by an unbeliever. This is actually an appeal to authority, if you're collecting logical fallacies.

Most people are familiar with the verse that says, “The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God."
yeah, trust me, all atheists are familiar with that one. it gives christians full reign to call atheists anything they want. This famous verse comes from Psalm 14:1. But the verse does not stop there. The rest of it goes on to describe these fools who deny God. “They are corrupt, They have done abominable works, There is no one who does good.” That's right, Ghandi did nothing but "abominable works". Didn't do one good thing, ever.

Note the real problem. He is not a fool because he lacks information. The point is that even though he should know better, he is behaving like a fool.
so he's not a fool, he is behaving like a fool? hey, guys, we got upgraded! The unbeliever is condemned as a fool because he is immoral. I.AM.NOT.IMMORAL.

Now your unbelieving friends are most likely not ax murderers or bank robbers,
child molesters and rapists, maybe. shoplifters for sure. arsonists? possibly. but they are still guilty and condemned. I love how fair yhwh is. child molesters go to heaven, ghandi goes to hell. it's so very fair. i'm starting to think of religion as a really long experiment in Stockholm Syndrome. No man except Jesus Christ has ever perfectly fulfilled the law of God. So what is the standard that God’s law requires? stuff i can't do, apparently.

All of the commandments of God are summarized by Christ. He told us that we must love God and neighbor with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. We do that by perfectly obeying the Ten Commandments.
funny, i'm pretty sure that's not what he said.

Matthew 22:34-40

34Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."


nothing at all about the ten commandments. how odd.

But, all have broken God’s law, therefore we all are under its penalty of death.

By virtue of our fallen nature, all people want to be “free” to do their own thing as if God does not exist and did not create them.
not my motivation, and no, i don't believe god created me. Man wants to be “as gods” (Gen 3:4), pretending to know good and evil apart from what God has revealed. i do not want to be a god. it sounds obnoxiously time consuming, for one thing. The fool wants to set his own rules and act as if there will be no judgment of his life by a Holy God when he dies. there won't be. relax.

Miracles?

Sometimes we believe that if God would just dramatically intervene or answer some unbeliever’s prayer that the person will then throw up their hands in surrender to God. This too is simply not the case.
yeah, actually it is. if i prayed for a ham sandwich, and a ham sandwich suddenly appeared before me, you'd better believe I'd believe.

Jesus had to rebuke the Jews of his day because they should have believed on him, but did not.
that says something a little different to me than it does to the writer of the article. you'll see why in a minute. Imagine the incredible things they saw happening in Christ’s ministry. The sick were healed, demons were cast out and the dead were raised. A few of the Jews did believe, but most did not. Even though they ought to have believed, no amount of miracles could overcome their willful, unbelieving hearts. this says to me that there were no miracles, or simply the rumors of miracles was not enough to sway everyone. think about it. someone comes up to you and says, "This Jesus guy totally healed a leper. No more leprosy, just like that!" (snaps finger). I bet you'd want some proof, wouldn't you? I would.

In fact, Jesus taught, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead." (Luke 16:31) People do not need a miracle to convince them, even one as dramatic as Christ’s resurrection. If they are hard hearted and unwilling to submit to God they will just ignore or rationalize a miracle.
Did I see the resurrection? Is there historical proof, other than the bible, of the resurrection? no.

So we can see one major reason why people are unwilling to believe is because they love their sin and “freedom” more than they love God.
no, i don't believe in god. therefore, my love of god doesn't freakin' exist. and i don't love sin. jesus does not make you better than me. This is precisely what Jesus was getting at when he explained why the world rejected him. uh huh. so if i say that rejecting me as god makes you sinful and evil, does it? what if i get other people to write a really long book about it?

“And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” John 3:19
blahblahblah bible quote.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Militant Atheism and Mendacity

atheism, atheist, atheophobia, liar, pride, sin, lying, lie, christian, jewish, judeo-christian, values, morality, religion, fundamentalism

Can I just say "militant atheism"? Was I in the bathroom when they were handing out jackboots to the atheists?



And, mendacity, in case you don't know, means given to or characterized by deception or falsehood or divergence from absolute truth. (From Mirriam Webster online.)



Militant Atheism and Mendacity: How the Rise of Atheism is Destroying Truth

by Bruce Walker (if you start voting republican and talking about the superiority of trickle down economics after viewing that site, don't blame me.)



Public opinion polls show faith in a Blessed Creator um, blessed by whom? who blesses the blessor? melting it's melting! (you know what voice i'm hearing here.) in Europe, in other English speaking democracies, in Japan are the Japanese especially christian, and I missed it? nope: shinto and buddhism are the major religions in Japan. a significant portion of buddhists are atheists, and always have been – just about everywhere but America that counts. everywhere that counts? really? oh, that's right, those damn Ay-rabs don't count! (very religious, but not the right one.) and forget about those brown people in africa- who cares about them? (well, not many people apparently, but that's a different discussion.) Even in America, the most religious nation on Earth i think most muslim nations are far more religious, at least officially. and what about israel, aren't they pretty darn religious? oh, that's right, muslims and jews don't count., the percentage of the American people who believe in a Blessed Creator is declining. true, though not by much.


Atheism is not the advocacy of murder or rapine or any other particular social vice wow, that is so true . . . this isn't going to last is it?, so is the decline of faith in God a serious social problem? i'd say it's the solution to a serious social problem, but i'm usually wrong . . . It is. yup, i'm wrong. It is a problem for the same reason that science and the systematic study of knowledge arose precisely once in human history: the Christian medieval university. what? that didn't even make any sense. i can't even imagine what asshat is trying to say. It is. It is for the same reason that the Jewish people have not only survived the Diaspora but thrived and made Israel a living nation again. again, i can't see the comparison/similarity/point here.


Without God, everything is permitted. nothing is true, everything is permitted are supposedly the last words of the founder of the Order of the Assassins, Hassan-i Sabbah. probably not true, but cool nonetheless. That literary maxim of the Nineteenth Century is quite true no, but it somewhat misses the mark. or just entirely misses the mark. The wilted lettuce rusty spoons? moldy bread? sprouting potatoes? of atheism in Europe and America is not about to set up a Gulag or a system of death camps yeah, we're just too wilted for that. Atheists are not championing the cause of ghastly criminals whose horrors haunt our television news. does this guy have multiple personalities or something? Indeed, militant atheism jackboots! in modern industrial democracies masquerades as compassion, “Secular Humanism,” as Bill O’Reilly oh dear, he's quoting O'Liely. and that's not even the person who came up with the phrase. That phrase became popular after it was used in a 1961 Supreme Court decision, Torcaso v. Watkins. Bill was born in 1949, which would have made him all of 12 in 1961. likes to call it.



It is true that the denial of objective moral absolutes which is atheism no, we don't deny objective moral absolutes, we simply don't believe in god. why, oh why, is that so hard to understand? inevitably leads toward more and more members of society becoming self-absorbed monsters what?! there is absolutely no evidence that atheists commit more crimes. in fact, atheists commit less crimes., but that is not the biggest social problem of atheism rampant. Atheist Soviet Russia like atheist Nazi Germany had a degree of social order. please stop blaming us for fascim and communism. i'll have to bring up the crusades and witch trials, and then the discussion really goes downhill. Crimes like murder and rape and burglarly, when not perpetrated by the state, were punished. you mean like capital punishment and eminent domain in the US today? Life is unpredictable, death is certain, and the best grounded system of objective moral absolutes will not prevent tragedy or keep creeps from winning lotteries. Does this asshat agree with me, or not? it's really rather confusing.

oh, and just as a reminder to my atheist and pagan readers, good things are god, bad things are free will.

The hidden horror of atheism oh my! is a greater loss than just the grave which faces us all, and the loss of God i didn't lose god (how does one lose an omnipotent, noncorporeal being, anyway?), i just don't believe in god. involves a loss greater than just chastity, charity and security. that's just odd. atheists are incapable of being chaste, charitable and secure? i'm personally incapable of being chaste, but i am charitable and secure. (not financially, but i'm secure in some things.) The loss of God involves the loss of the possibility of truth. what? Why? do tell. If there are no absolute objective moral virtues, then honesty is not an absolute moral virtue.

As far as that argument goes, it's true. If there are no absolute objective moral virtues, then honesty is not an absolute moral virtue. However, asshat has not established that there are no absolute objective moral virtues, nor has he established that godbotherers have absolute objective moral virtues and atheists do not. This is called the logical fallacy of the unasked question. you assume the answer to a question, and then assert your argument based on that answer. For example: have you stopped shooting heroin yet? This assumes that you ever were shooting heroin, and it's awfully hard to continue a debate until you deal with that.

The Judeo-Christian tradition, what I have sometimes simply called “The Great Faith,” making up your own names for things, huh? godbotherer. demands the absolute moral virtue of honesty isn't that number 9 on the list?, and it shows this demand it ways that surprise unbelievers. really? okay, shock the unbelief right out of me, asshat.


The Hebrew prophets, for example, never once told their audience “The Blessed Creator says everything you are doing is great. Don’t change a thing.” ummm . . . why is this surprising? prophets never say nice things. it's always the fire and the brimstone. On the contrary, that part of the Tanach which deals with the major and minor prophets is a litany of complaints from God to the Hebrew nations. god's whiny? besides, it's not just a "litany of complaints", it's also a litany of really awful things god did to the Israelites as a result of his anger: killing, plagues, killing, snakes, killing, floods, killing and killing. Critically, when the Tanach was canonized, all of these embarrassing and serious complaints from God were kept in, while “feel good” books, like Esther, were almost kept out. it is surprisingly hard to keep one's station as a powerful religious leader when the gospel is "hey, good enough for you, good enough for god."


Likewise, the Church Fathers did not try to reconcile inconsistencies in the Gospel. wow, is this guy a secret atheist? you rarely hear the word "inconsistencies" attached to "gospel" out of a christian. usually, it's either "inconsistencies" and "evolution" or "there are no inconsistencies in the gospel- see this overly complicated explanation that involves facts i can't possibly prove?" Quite the contrary, the different versions of the ministry of Jesus are deliberately kept in. all four of them. out of twelve. for further explanation, see the Council of Nicea. Things hard to grasp and harder to explain are left in the Gospels. Did Jesus have siblings? Why does He pray to His Father on the Cross, like an abandoned child? These very difficulties, like the difficulties of the prophets or the anomalies of Genesis have been kept for thousands of years precisely because serious Jews and serious Christians believe in honesty and believe that honesty is the path to truth and to God. or because changing the gospels every time somebody notices a problem is basically admitting that the gospels are not the direct word of yhwh?

Atheism, like Allahism (or Sinisterist Radical Islam) what?! i bet this guy believes the Illuminati, or some similar group of jewy jewish conspiring conspirators are involved in a conspiracy to control the world, by contrast, has no objective moral absolute against lying. lying is wrong. lying is wrong because when you lie to people, you don't treat them with respect. lying is wrong because if everyone lies, and you can't trust anyone, society falls apart within 0.5 seconds. People of faith, like everyone, lies sometimes slightly less than atheists and Sinisterist Radical Islamists?, but they realize that lying is a sin so, it's okay to lie, as long as you realize it's a sin? does that in any way affect the fact that you have lied, or the damage lying does? no. can we say "rationalization"?. Atheists simply realize that lying is the easiest way of accomplishing your objective yes, it is. if your objective happens to be making certain no one trusts you. This does not just mean self-enrichment or self-aggrandizement, but it also means achieving goals which, to an atheist, are “noble.” you know, like equal rights for everyone, food for starving children, health care for everyone, saving the environment. we're an evil, evil people. and godbotherers never lie to achieve an objective which they might consider noble. (see: Ray Comfort)


So, when religion came under its most serious attack in the early Nineteenth Century, religion or christianity? I find it hard to believe that in all the history of the world, that atheism (and I think he's really referencing evolution, which is science, which is not atheism) is the most serious attack on religion. i mean, what about the lions? the professors who launched the attack first began to lie. They pronounced as fact things like Christians had believed the Earth was flat before Columbus actually, at one point, christians did believe the world was flat. so did most people. these people still do. or that the complaints about Galileo’s heliocentrism were theological they were. stop rewriting history, asshat., rather than scientific, even though they knew this was not true.

Because these professors did not believe in the Judeo-Christian God, they saw no ethical problem with destroying the idea of God with lies. really? all professors (i think he means scientists, too) are atheists? this just isn't true. nor are all people who recognize the irrefutable fact that the church's position on heliocentrism is a fact atheists. Serious Christians and Jews, by contrast, could not do that. why yes, christians and jews would not try to disprove the existence of yhwh with lies. that's true. Dishonesty is a sin. or it's just wrong for rather obvious reasons.


The consequence is that a marketplace of ideas filled with atheists quickly produces a lot of counterfeit intellectual currency. BWAHAHAHAHAHA that was great! that's right- atheists lie and lie and lie. it's all we do. we don't have little things called facts and evidence and logic behind our assertions. Why be even-handed in research if you know that you are right and there is no God to worry about? why be even-handed in research if you know that you are right and god is behind it all? Indeed, why worry about even being right? cause it's science, asshat? if atheists/scientists didn't worry about being right, that computer you typed this on, and the internet you display it on, wouldn't fucking work. neither would your car. or the lights in your house. If you fancy a theory, fabricate findings to “prove” it and then move on

(much like Margaret Mead did when she invented findings about Samoa, because it described a reality she preferred.

(1) Margaret Mead was never discredited. As Boas and Mead expected, this book upset many Westerners when it first appeared in 1928. Many American readers felt shocked by her observation that young Samoan women deferred marriage for many years while enjoying casual sex but eventually married, settled down, and successfully reared their own children.
In 1983, five years after Mead had died, anthropologist Derek Freeman
published Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth, in which he challenged Mead's major findings about sexuality in Samoan society, claiming evidence that her informants had misled her. After years of discussion, many anthropologists concluded that the truth would probably never be known, although most published accounts of the debate have also raised serious questions about Freeman's critique. His obituary concludes that "many anthropologists have agreed to disagree over the findings of one of the science's founding mothers, acknowledging both Mead's pioneering research and the fact that she may have been mistaken on details."

(2) look, it's one discredited scientist. all scientists are liars. you don't want to play that game- ted haggard, anyone?)


This all falls from the prime sin of pride. oh, now we're prideful and liars. and, since when is pride the prime sin? according to the Ten Commandments, the prime sin is holding another god before yhwh- which atheists do not do. Pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins which are not listed in the bible. In fact: The Seven Deadly Sins are really attitudes that underlie sins . . . first identified by St. John Cassian (360-435) and refined by Pope St. Gregory the Great (540-604).

Atheists like Margaret Mead margaret mead was an anglican. in fact, she was a A committed Anglican who took a considerable part in the drafting of the 1979 American Episcopal Book of Common Prayer wanted to be a god (or goddess) and create a reality to her liking. This theory is just so silly. I don't believe in god. I don't believe gods are even possible. How freakin' delusional would I have to be to want to become a god, and more, to believe that by lying I could become one? (About as delusional as the author of this article, probably.)

Atheists like Rachel Carson included, in her “masterpiece,” Silent Spring, a dedication to Albert Schweitzer (who strongly support the use of DDT which she sought to ban oh, for nothing at all's sake, Schweitzer supported the use of DDT before he knew the damage it did. so did a lot of people. changing your mind because new facts have become available is not flip-flopping, it's good thinking.), and at least another twenty-seven outright lies from her source materials. give me a link, asshat. She, however, made herself a goddess she had the power to create universes? really? and the fact that banning DDT caused unimaginable suffering and millions of deaths in the tropical parts of the Third World did not bother her at all. that is entirely irrelevant. DDT is extremely hazardous to all kinds of birds and fish. it is unacceptable to destroy entire species in an effort to prevent malaria. you would only find this acceptable if you believe that humans are more important than say, everything else on earth. and, honestly, mesquito netting. doesn't kill birds, prevents malaria.

The dialogue which can produce truth in sociology or environmentalism can only nudge us toward that truth if based upon a holy belief in honesty. how on earth could you possibly provide scientific truth if you base science on a book written thousands of years ago by bronze age desert nomads? Atheists, believing nothing holy but the playthings of their minds and whims what?, will always allow pride to trump integrity no, but apparently you will, given the complete disregard for facts and evidence represented in this article, self-interest to stand above honor repeat after me: Jesus does not make you better than anyone else. Atheists will always be tugged toward counterfeiting reality prove it. really. just one link, one study, one shred of evidence, asshat. and then taking that counterfeit currency enough with the "marketplace of ideas" analogy and using it to buy fame, wealth, power, adulation yup, that's me, swimming in fame, wealth, power and adulation- not unlike your average TV preacher, for example (especially the adulation of popularity – because they believe everyone is as hollow as they are ad hom attacks are not logic or reasoning. try again.)


The answer to rampant lying in our culture can you prove that more people lie than before, or in other cultures? can you prove that religious people lie less and atheists more? if so, why haven't you done so?, the need for a user id and password for everything, what? because not all people should have access to all information? because without a username, how would we prevent every person from getting everyone's email? it would be a little tedious sorting through billions of emails a day to find yours. the doubt in our children’s eyes about everything that must be you, because the children in my family are fine is not because God is not dead i think you mean "god is dead", but because atheists have done their best to try to murder consciousness of God how does one murder the consciousness of an omnipotent being? and how powerful must the average atheist be to achieve this?. The first social victim of this attempted homicide is truth itself, "homicide" refers to killing a human, hence "hom". the truth is not a human being, nor can it be killed but after truth dies TRUTH CANNOT DIE then those who murdered truth STOP IT or rejoiced in its convenient death NO MORE descend into an infinite maelstrom really? uh-huh,, an eternal descent you pretty much covered that with "infinite maelstrom", to a place devoid of purpose or of hope. i have both purpose and hope, as do all atheists i am acquainted with, so, your point is . . . totally invalid?

Friday, December 26, 2008

Judge Not

Matthew 7:1 Judge not, that ye be not judged

In case it's been a while since sunday school, Jesus said that. Here's the quote in context:

1Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye


What's truly interesting there is verse 2, which is mostly overlooked. This is not just a prohibition against judging other people, it is a warning that you will be judged by the same harsh standards you use against everyone else. We see this all the time when we laugh at the most judgmental preachers who end up being publicly outed as thieves and adulterers. "Oh," we say, "He was one to talk!"

Verse 3 is also interesting: you shouldn't be judging others because you know you have done wrong yourself. Worry about your own faults and flaws instead of others', in other words.

(Hey, I may be an atheist, but Jesus had some good ideas.)

Apparently, Grace Community Church got some faulty bibles that didn't include those 3 verses in the 7th chapter of Matthew. They are publicly "disciplining" a 49 year old women for having sex with her boyfriend. Yeah. Really. So, after being confronted about her "habitual sinning", she stops attending the church.

End of story, right?

Hey, c'mon now, this is christianity, of course not.

Grace Community Church decides that it's not enough for her to simply stop attending church. They need to publicly "discipline" her, which involves announcing to the entire congregation why she no longer attends church. The best part? Her two young boys still attend the church. Grace Community Church intends to announce the exact nature of her "habitual sinning" in front of her sons.

Nice, huh?

I picked up on this after reading a two part blog post at baptist21 defending the church's actions. Oh, yes.

This is an extremely interesting story, and several observations about it need to be made. First, the church is acting appropriately! They are following a command laid out by King Jesus to restore those who refuse to repent of sin and might be on a path to destruction and judgment (Matt. 18:15-19).

Clearly, baptist21 misunderstands these verses. (Why am I doing better at bible reading?)

15"If your brother sins against you and stop. sins against you. YOU. How is a woman having sex with her boyfriend sinning against anyone at Grace Community Church? She may be sinning against god, if you believe that sort of thing, but she's not sinning against you or me. , go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' 17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector. Wait, what part of this suggests announcing to everyone in the congregation that the woman and her boyfriend were having sex?

18"I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Dogma clause. Doesn't even apply here.

19"Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. apparently, if the church "disciplines" this woman on earth, she will be disciplined in heaven, as well. What does this have to do with the question at hand?

You know, Jesus loved the sinners, and not in a "hate the sin, lover the sinner" kind of way, either. He never condemned prostitutes and adulteresses. In fact, he protected an adulteress from being stoned.

Now, you may say that Grace Community Church has the right to expell anyone they want from their congregation, just like any other private group. That's true, but it misses the point of what Jesus actually said. Jesus didn't preach for the perfect, the sinless, the rich and the powerful. He preached for the poor, the drunk, the diseased, the imperfect and the flawed.

Why is it that Christians, whose own savior said more than once not to judge, just can't let go of the judging?

Monday, December 8, 2008

The God Train


subtitle: the trouble with metaphors.

It's surprising how often writers get into trouble with metaphors. In essence, a metaphor is a technique in writing where you describe one thing as being equal to a second thing in some essential way. I like the metaphor of bigotry being a double-edged sword: whenever you swing it, you damage yourself as much as your target. That is a metaphor that works. It describes exactly how I feel about bigotry, without implying anything unintended or unfortunate.

The metaphor of the following article, Crossing Paths with God by Dan Ecklund, is not so successful.

When a car tries to race a train to the crossing, and it ties for first place, it usually ends up as a loser. The odds the train will swerve to avoid the collision are zero, and the likelihood of the car winning the match up is slim. Most collisions usually leave the car and driver so mangled that the identity of both can’t be easily recognized. The power, speed, and weight to the train are taken out on a thin metal frame and glass. Millions are spent on warning lights and crossing arms, yet the warnings go unheeded on a daily basis as drivers try to shave a few seconds off their travel time.

I like this first paragraph. ". . . ties for first place" is understated, "The odds the train will swerve to avoid collision are zero . . ." is amusing and the rest is quite evokative. It's practially poetic, and it describes an event I've seen play out numerous times, though never ending with tragedy. I was hopeful that this article would be better than than any other I have seen on RaptureReady.


Alas, such was not to be.

In the lives in the life of blahblahblah, not the lives. this use of the plural implies that every person has multiple lives. for a hindu, this would be appropriate, not so much for a christian. of every person, we if you start with "in the lives of every person", you can't move to "we". either start with "in all of our lives" or end with "all of us". continue to try to beat the odds with God.

And that's where the metaphor falls apart. He just compared God, loving omnipotent, omniscient creator of all (hey, i don't believe that, but Mr. Ecklund does) with a train. He then compares meeting your maker with a train collision. I'm an atheist, and I find that metaphor unfortunate. Beyond the "impersonal and ultimately avoidable display of certain principles of physics" aspect to it, there is the implication that one could surviving "beating the odds with god". It is theoretically possible to survive a collision with a train. It's probably even happened. Could one possibly come out on top of a meeting with god. Really?

If you were to poll the average person living in America, you’d find the majority would list themselves as Christians. According to the US Census Bureau, in 2001 79.8% of USians self identified as christian. Numerous polls have ranked people who confess belief in God between 90 and 96 percent. Which polls? The US Census Bureau puts the number of atheists/agnostics at 15% in 2001. Admittedly, agnostics do believe in god, but I can't tell where he is getting that figure from. (Notice that I told you exactly where I got my figures from.) I also have to wonder if he is including Jews and Muslims in this statement. Yet despite the belief in a God, the population is divided in a moral standard that should accompany Him. More like completely fragmented. That 79.8% who self identify as christian, are divided into 18 different groups, not including the "other" percentage. People say things like “My god would never create Hell.” ”My god has told me He’s fine with my lifestyle.” “My god told me (insert sin here) is ok.” Who says these things? I looked at the tenents of every one of the 18 listed christian denominations and they all believe in hell and sin. In general, when people say "god told me", what comes next involves hatred or violence. One must concluded one of two things as truth, either one god has a personality disorder, or some of us have a different God. 18+ different christian denominations, plus judaism in its variations, islam in its variations, hinduism, buddhism, etc.? Yeah, well, duh!

Christians in Chaos BWA HA HA HA HA HA I don't know what it is about the word "chaos", but it comes with a villain laugh attached to it for me. Obviously, I can't discuss chaos BWA HA HA HA HA HA theory.

Statistics don't lie- but statisticans often do.

Even though most Christians will claim we serve the same God really, do they? i have no idea. i'm guessing this guy doesn't either., it becomes evident that we do not. is this some sort of polytheistic revelation? Mr. Ecklund is not a monotheist? (Oddly, neither christianity nor judaism require monotheism, which is the belief that there is only one god. Both religions only require that you don't worship any other gods, which is monolatrism. Hmmm) It’s shown by the design a person puts on their personal god of chose choice?, taken from the Christian God. ok, i have no idea what this sentence even means. Does he mean that all gods are only copies of the christian god? kinda sticky considering that Jesus was a jew. Barna the Barna Group is, according to their website, my partner for information, strategy, execution and transformation. Whatever that means. surveys support this view. Here’s a list of division within “confessing Christianity” the only reference to confessing christianity that i could find was in reference to a christian resistance organization in nazi germany. on key issues that are found within scripture.

One third of born again adults (33%) say that abortion is a morally acceptable behavior, compared with 45% of all adults, 4% of evangelicals, and 71% of atheists and agnostics. (2004)
I'm a little surprised that so many "born again" adults feel that way, but the rest of the numbers don't surprise me.

Half of born again Christians (46%) agree that Satan is "not a living being but is a symbol of evil." (2007) Where does satan appear in the bible? Not in the old testament at all. In fact, most of what you think of as religious fact concerning satan is taken from "Paradise Lost" by John Milton. Are epic 17th Century British poems scripture?

46% of born again Christians deny Satan's existence see above, i guess.
26% of born again agree that "while he lived on earth, Jesus committed sins, like other people he was rude to his mother once, which in Leviticus is supposed to be punished with death.
36% of born again said they believe in moral absolutes
37% of born again believe that if a person is good enough they can earn a place in Heaven. (2007)
only 37%? That explains a lot of behavior on the part of fundagelicals.

Focus on the last two of the 2007 polls first. 36% of born again believers say they believe in moral absolutes. That means for 64% of believers there are no moral grounds that can’t be adjusted. I found this very surprising until I thought about the problem with polls: the questions. (among other things) I cannot believe that 64% of any group believes that there are no, none, nada, zip moral absolutes. For example, unless you're polling NAMBLA, where would you find any group of people 64% of which think that "raping kids of bad" is in any way adjustable?

Let me put it another way. If you asked 100 random people "is killing someone bad?", I guarantee you that at least 95% of those people would say, "yes, killing people is bad." However, if you asked those same 100 people "could you think of a situation in which killing someone would be justified?", I guarantee you that at least 80% of them would say "well, yeah, if it were to save my life . . . "

See what I'm getting at? It's all in how you ask the question. I'd have to see the questions Barna asked, exactly as they were asked, to get a sense of what this means.

That in itself explains the division within Christianity. Not really. If want to, read about what caused Protestantism, the first break in christianity. It didn't have to do with biblical inerrancy. If God’s Law, written in stone, is not an absolute, then the person can decided what is morally acceptable to them. Does this guy not speak English natively? "then a person can decide" plus, if god's law is "written in stone" then it is necessarily absolute, that is the meaning of the phrase. If it is not absolute, then it is not written in stone. I would imagine Mr. Ecklund is referring to the ten commandments, and the various branches of christianity can't even agree what they are exactly. This is of key importance. If something is absolute truth, it must come from outside of mankind, as it’s obvious we change what’s right and wrong to fit our desires no, not obvious to me. you'll have to show you're work on this one. People don't change their minds on what is right and wrong to fit the situation. Well, normal people don't. What normal people do is excuse their own behavior based on "special circumstances. For example, cheating on my husband is wrong. I could decide that due to the circumstances in our relationship, however, that I am justified in doing so. I would still assert that cheating is wrong. (no, I don't cheat on my husband.). It is no different that saying we can decided if we can beat the train to the crossing, despite the arms being down and the lights are flashing. No, actually that's totally different. In every way. Saying that there are situations in which killing another human being is justified- war, self defense, defense of another-- is not the same as deciding that physics doesn't apply to me. May as well try to flap my arms and fly away. Which is in no way morally reprehensible.

Recently, some Texas Catholics went into an uproar. Two bishops wrote a letter on the churches standing on abortion. The bishops wrote that it was immoral to support the act, which had been the churches belief for the last 50 years. Upon some of the church members hearing the letter read during church, they left the service. Some of those who left that were interviewed on TV, and they demanded the churches be taxed for taking political sides. The former patrons had decided the issue of “life” was not a moral one, but a political choice, and the church itself had no right to tell them what to do.
Actually, that is not what happened. He is referring to two separate occurrences. During the election, the Catholic Church announced that good catholics would vote for McCain because of Obama's stance on abortion. (Killing people during a war? Just fine!). After the election, the Catholic Church announced that anyone who voted for Obama must receive confession prior to receiving the eucharist again. That is seriously blurring the line between church and state, and Ratzinger (or whatever he calls himself these days) does not want to go there.

Moving on.

Creative Commons License
Forever in Hell by Personal Failure is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at foreverinhell.blogspot.com.