Lay Theism

For starters… No.  No you are not.  There is no such thing.  But, wait, I am getting ahead of myself.

The other day I stepped into a Walgreens for some allergy medication (because I was pretty sure I was going to die), and during the 5 minutes I was inside on a Saturday night at 10pm in North Atlanta, some douche jammed a card into my door handle with this tease on the top:

Am I Going to Heaven?

It’s worth quoting from, if for no other reason than to make this easily searchable by web zealots bent on converting me (back).  I just don’t feel like typing it all, so here are some choice highlights:

The greatest book ever written was published in 1611. It’s name - The Holy Bible - authorized by King James. The reason for it’s greatness is that it is God speaking to us in English words.

Huh?  What a weird way to start a Christian track.  Who cares when it was published in English (words)? Authorized?  Well, thank goodness… then there’s no way it could be manipulated or untrustworthy, right?

The king gave the translators instructions designed to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy.
- Wikipedia

But I digress… it’s not terribly relevant when or how Christian mythology was further corrupted and usurped four centuries ago.  Several billion people don’t believe any of that crap.  Around a billion people actively do not believe in any god or gods, and you won’t be converting them because they have already been saved… by reason.

A couple of more highlights:

If you want to have joy in your heart under all circumstances…
If you want to be totally free from guilt…
If you want the power to overcome things you would like to change in your life…
If you would like to truly care about others, not for what they can do for you, but what you can do for them…
If you would like to never be alone again…

Hey!  That’s a lot like me!  I live that way, but I didn’t need God to make it happen. Getting rid of God, in fact, freed me to live that kind of life. I won’t address each one, but suffice it to say that you can realize these aspects of your life by being kind to others, living by the Golden Rule, getting an education, and generally not being an ass.  Things tend to fall in place when you live responsibly, god or no god.  People who naively cling to god as savior without squaring up the rest of their life are surely up for serious disappointment.  Examples of failures, misery, and hypocrisy are everywhere.

If I get the energy, I’ll type in the rest and say more about it… I’ve attached a scan of the entire thing if you are inclined to dissect it on your own.

Hey, and special thanks to Ken at:

Inprint, Inc.
P. O. Box 76147
Atlanta, GA 30358
inprintincorporated@yahoo.com

Stay away from my car.

Agnostic, Atheism, History, Religion belief, bible, bullshit, god, heaven, King James, propaganda

Someday I hope that this point of view dawns on us all…  Seen on Verbal Razors:

I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam — good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system.

— Gore Vidal

Wow… color me stunned and awed.  Clearly I need to brush up on my Gore Vidal.  I think I’ll start with Creation: A Novel.

Agnostic, Atheism, History, Religion, Science, Video belief, Christian, clever, doubt, faith, skeptic

I really enjoy listening to NPR and This American Life… I actually pick up TAL from the free podcast most of the time.  I am currently listening to the latest episode where this poor woman named Trisha was moved by the good works of a decent man (who happens to be a Christian):

This past Christmas a story swept the internet about a football coach at a Christian high school in Texas who inspired his team’s fans to root for the opposition: a team from the local juvenile correctional facility. Among the thousands of emails that the coach received in response to his actions, one stood out to him. Trisha Sebastian mentioned her loss of faith, and coach Hogan got a message from God that he was meant to bring her back. We eavesdrop on their phone calls.

Problem is, she sent him an e-mail.  She was not just moved, but moved to action.  She had a friend that had died of colon cancer a few years earlier and never could reconcile this with her Catholic faith (”very lapsed Catholic”).  She also made the mistake of saying that she is “borderline agnostic”… a big mistake.  After this admission, there was a protracted exchange where God “moved his spirit” repeatedly to witness to her about “the idea of God”.  His first e-mail response to her even included the admonishment “I expect to hear back from you, young lady”.

They spoke on the phone and with permission Trisha recorded the call.  It really went off the rails when Coach Hogan dragged Hitler into the conversation in the context of “objective good” and “objective evil”:

Hogan: If you say “Good” is only people’s opinion it stems from our own… [stammer]… you define true for you and I define true for me then how do you reconcile that with Hitler saying it is true that if we can eliminate Jews and other people on the planet then it will be a better planet because we are a superior race?  And he of course he gets his world view from Charles Darwin.

Sebastian: Right.. Wait. Wait Wait…

And that’s where he pretty much lost her.  I’m sure there was plenty of nonsense and weirdness before this, but she took a GIANT step away from him when he went there.  There are so many issues with that asinine statement, it’s difficult to know where to begin.

1. The concept of “race” to Darwin, Hilter, and modern science are very different.
2. Hilter was a Christian (aka, Hitler was not an Atheist)
3. Darwin was correct about Evolution (it’s a fact)

 
It’s a shame that we have to live with the legacy of Darwin’s relative ignorance about the similarities of men.  At the time (150 years ago), class, geographic isolation, religion, and extreme differences in culture and skin pigment contributed to the classification of people as coming from different races.  While evolution certainly was responsible for the genetic variations Darwin and others observed, we know now that there is common ancestry of ALL humans less than 8,000 generations ago.  It certainly wasn’t the Tower of Babel, The Great Flood, or some other cataclysm that caused our differences.

I wish I had more time, more energy, and more knowledge (I am only a laytheist, after all) with which to explain and debunk Christian bullshit, but there are so many angles… if you aren’t happy with scientific comparisons, just compare to other religions.  That should be enough to convince anyone that religion was made up solely by men at different, overlapping times all over the world.

Why would one be better than the next?

Trisha, I’m so sorry about your friend.  The truth is that she had a groups of cells in her colon malfunction and go bad.  In what sounds like a fairly serious cell breakdown, the cancer was virilent enough to cause the rest of her body to ultimately lose. Now, do you really think that this is a mechanism that God put in place to eliminate some people for reasons we can’t know? If so, why are there so goddammed many mysterious ways for the body to break down and die?  Wouldn’t two or three be adequate? Is suffering necessary?  Why have we been able to permanently eliminate some previously fatal diseases and maladies?  Doesn’t it make more sense that it’s a product of millions of years of evolution and change…?  And that sometimes the shit just breaks?

Agnostic, Atheism, History, Religion, Science belief, bible, Catholic, Christian, darwin, evolution, faith, turd burgers

Rafael nailed it in his latest post about why people buy religion.  It’s hell… without that, heaven doesn’t have a chance.  He ends by saying:

Religion is a tricky sale, but Hell is what a sales person would call the perfect closer. As soon as people want to turn away from religion, they pull out the Hell card, and you’re locked in. Another soul saved. Which is the ironic thing, they believe they are doing you a favor, they are saving your soul, and for that you need to give them money.

Having been in sales, and having attended a Southern Baptist church, he’s not kidding.  Basically a restatement of Pascal’s Wager.  It’s shameless and bizarre once you step outside of the circle and see it for what it really is… Control.

Atheism, History, Religion beanie babies, belief, bible, damnation, hell, inquisition, tarnation

OK, this is slightly off topic, but still a major sacrilege… apparently Fox can’t do any better than Comic Sans (serif) for their weekly graphics.  My jaw dropped.  And if you think the still is bad, you should have seen the way they were animating it the 30 seconds prior to that.  Horrific.

Idol fans and fans of good taste not pleased… real-time displeasure from Twitter.

Graphics, History, Religion, Video disaster, music, typography