M1Religion

Evil Thoughts

This article contains some brief thoughts (some serious, some more light-hearted) on

things that seem problematic in the Christian view of things and in religion more generally.

Unless requested otherwise, I will publish their work here.

God's Glory

The heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19:1)

The Finger of God, Carina Nebula

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Prayer

God has a perfect plan for your life. When you pray, you are telling God that his plan sucks and he should use yours instead.

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Is Satan Really the Bad Guy?

The bible records God killing or ordering the deaths of over 2 million people. And that's without the great flood. It records Satan killing 10 people - and all of those were with God's consent.

God deals in plagues, floods, famines, marauding foreign armies, fire from heaven, hail, ground that opens up and swallows people, snakes and other wild animals summoned to kill and worms that eat people's insides. Satan deals mainly in sex, drugs and rock and roll.

We only have God's word for it that Satan is the bad guy.

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Exorcism

Exorcists charge for their services. If you don’t pay, you get repossessed.

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'Christian' Men with their Right Eyes

In Matthew 5:27-29 Jesus says: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.”

Matthew 7:21 says: “Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Presumably, if Jesus tells us to gouge out our right eye, then that is the will of his father in heaven.

So most Christian men should have gouged out their right eye. As they’ve invariably not done so, they will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Will there be any men there at all? Maybe the gay ones won’t have trouble with this command, but they won’t be there anyway, for a different reason. It seems heaven will be populated by women. Maybe there is method in the madness of the male god.

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Sat a Day

The sabbath is named Saturday because, after working hard for 6 days creating everything, God sat a day and rested.

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Jesus' Foreskin and Other Holy Relics

In 800 CE, Charlemagne, when being crowned emperor, presented Pope Leo III with Jesus' foreskin, which he said had been given to him by an angel while he was praying at the Holy Sepulchre. During the middle ages, the foreskin was kept at Rome so that pilgrims could be blessed by it (for a small fee).

Also during the middle ages, Jesus' other foreskins were available for devotion at cathedrals and churches in the European cities of Le Puy-en-Velay, Antwerp, Coulombs, Chartres, Besançon, Metz, Hildesheim, Charroux, Conques, Langres and Fécamp and Auvergne; there were two in Auvergne.

Where the truth of spiritual matters is at stake, the Catholic Church is always scruplously honest in its claims.

Scattered around Europe are 36 of the original nails that held Jesus to the cross

and 139 thorns from his crown of thorns.

Martin Luther once said that “One could build a whole house using all the parts of the True Cross scattered around the world.

Frederick III of Saxony collected over 19 000 holy relics. These included some bread from the last supper, a sample of the Virgin Mary’s milk, a piece of hay from Jesus’ manger and part of Jesus’ beard. It has been calculated that if a person offered devotion to each of these 19 000 items, they would earn themselves a reduction of almost two million years off their time in purgatory.

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My God is Real

Humans have invented and worshiped thousands of different gods. They are all totally imaginary. Except mine. Mine is real.

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How the Universe Came About

In the 16th century, there were theories about how lightning came about. A god was one of them. Now we know it isn't a god.

There have been theories about lots of other natural phenomena too - droughts, floods, volcanoes, plagues, and so on. A god was always one of them. But they all turned out not to be god.

In the 21st century there are theories as to how the universe came about. Once again, a god is one of them. We still have a way to go in deciding, but the god theory isn't looking good.

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God's Protection Racket

Religion is a protection racket. Do as God says and you'll get protection from what he's got planned for you.

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Genitals

Once Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they realised that genitals are evil and covered theirs up with fig leaves.

There was nothing evil about Jesus, so clearly, he didn't have any genitals.

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Ears

I’ve got to believe in God. I mean, look at my ears – they are exactly the right size and shape and in exactly the right place to keep my glasses on my head. How likely is that to have happened by random mindless mutations without intelligent design?

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Over-engineering

God made Adam. Eve was an afterthought. God brought all the animals to Adam to see which one he would fancy. He didn’t fancy any of them, so God took one of Adam's ribs and made Eve.

Clearly, God’s initial idea was to have just one person. To give that person somewhere to live, he made a garden.

A few acres was probably enough, but God made a whole planet with 150 million square kilometres of land. ‘A case of over-engineering’, one might say. But not only that, he made a whole solar system around the Sun. He didn’t stop there either; he made a whole galaxy with a few hundred billion suns. Still not enough! He made 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, and probably countless more galaxies beyond that.

All so Adam would have a garden.

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A Path to Truth

Faith leads so many people to so many different conclusions. Can it be relied upon it as a path to truth?

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Christianity in a Nutshell

All humans deserve to be burnt alive for all eternity because a stone-age couple in Iraq ate a piece of fruit.

4000 years after the fruit incident, an innocent man got crucified for the crime.

So now, a select few who were lucky enough to be told this and believed it will be spared. Everyone else will still burn.

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Thanking God

Thanking God because you survived cancer is like thanking a gunman for shooting you in the leg rather than the head.

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Poor Canaan! Life's not Fair

After the flood, Noah got drunk and fell asleep naked in his tent.

His son, Ham, went in unsuspecting and saw him. He came straight back out again and told his brothers, Shem and Japheth, who went and covered him up, without looking at him (or treading on him).

Because Ham saw him naked, Noah put a curse on Canaan, Ham’s son (who was in his own tent at the time, playing with his toy camel and minding his own business).

Because Canaan was cursed, God told the Israelites to kill all his descendants, the Canaanites, when they invaded their land.

According to Genesis, the Israelites were descended from Shem and were therefore Semites; the Canaanites were descended from Ham and therefore not Semites. Funny thing is that the Hebrew and Canaanite languages were both Semitic and were so similar that they could quite readily understand each other.

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Why Different Religions?

If religion comes from the god of the whole universe, one would think it should be the same all over the world.

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People of Faith

We build our model of the world from our own sensory input (observations) and from what we are told by others (orally or in writing).

Sometimes, these two sources of information conflict. When they do, we have to decide which one we are going to go with. Some people give preference to their own sensory information. Others give preference to what others tell them. The latter are called people of faith and many people see being a person of faith as better and more noble than being a critical thinker.

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God was Never Meant to be Fair

If you are indoctrinated into the right belief system, then you will receive an eternal reward.

If you are indoctrinated into the wrong belief system, then you deserve to be tortured for ever.

Once you realise you were wrong, there is no hope of forgiveness.

That may seem unfair, but then who ever said God was fair?

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Some People Will Believe Anything

In John 20:19-29, Jesus reprimands Thomas for not believing his mates when they told him that they had had a visit from a man who had died a few days earlier. He makes it clear that we should believe whatever we are told, however unlikely it might seem.

This is what faith is.

Only those who are prepared to believe whatever they are told without question can make it as Christians. This is probably why most Christians are also into every conspiracy theory going and why they tend to believe outrageous claims about rigged elections.

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Adam and Eve were Innocent

Until they had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve wouldn't have known that disobeying God was wrong.

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Godly Sadism

God made man with far more capacity for pain than for pleasure.

As hell is planned for most of us, we can see why he would do that.

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God Killed his Son so He Wouldn't Have to Kill Us

Igor went into town last night and saw some hooligans, drunk, swearing and generally making a nuisance of themselves. This angered him; he felt like killing them. But instead he went home, got his son out of bed and killed him. That appeased his wrath, so now he doesn’t have to kill the hooligans.

In his defence Igor said, "I thought that was very godly of me."

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Our Origin: Evolution or Magic?

Man first domesticated wild dogs a few thousand years ago. Because offspring are always slightly different from their parents, man has been able to preferentially breed the ones with the more desirable traits. As a result, we how have Great Danes, Dachshunds and Chihuahuas, all very different from the original wild dogs.

In the wild, the same selected breeding occurs because animals with certain traits are more likely to survive and breed than animals without them. So the same changes occur, albeit a bit more slowly.

But over a million generations, populations which are geographically isolated from one another will become sufficiently different to not be able to interbreed: they become different species and they can be quite different in terms of size, appearance, senses, brain structure and intelligence.

Over a few billion generations, these changes from one species to something quite different will happen thousands of times, meaning that quite primitive organisms can evolve into quite complex ones, even humans.

It takes quite a bit of knowledge of biology, genetics etc. to really understand how these things happen, as well as a reasonable level of intelligence. For those who don’t have these, an easier option is to assume that all species were produced instantly in the recent past by magic (an act not in accordance with the laws of nature). By its very nature, magic isn’t open to explanation, so one automatically understands everything that needs to be understood.

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Be Sure to Sin

Be sure to sin. If you don't, Jesus died for nothing.

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Acts of God

Why do churches take insurance against 'Acts of God'?

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We Owe Our Salvation to Judas

I don’t understand why Judas Iscariot is so vilified by Christians. Had he not done his bit, Jesus would not have died for our sins, and we would all be going to hell. Gratitude seems to be more in order. Even the bible vilifies him, showing how little thought went into making the story coherent.

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God Created Us Evil

The knowledge of good and evil showed Adam and Eve that nudity and their reproductive organs were evil.

Which means God created them evil.

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Torture

If I believe the things a religion tells me, it can give me the comfort of thinking that God won’t torture me after I die.

Though others are just as sure that I will still be tortured because I picked the wrong religion.

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Who was the Apple Meant For?

Why did God plant the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Who was the fruit meant for?

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A Self-defeating God

God is love. He made mankind with the intention of loving them. He also made the devil, knowing that the devil would get the better of him, turn most of manking against him, and cause him instead to subject nearly all of humanity to the worst imaginable horror for all eternity.

There seems to be a logical contradiction here which makes the whole story very unlikely.

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There are No Christians

Christianity requires faith (Eph 2:8-9).

Faith requires certainty (Heb 11:1, NIV).

Many Christians are certain.

Many adherents of other religions are certain.

They can’t all be right.

So it’s possible to be certain and wrong.

Once you realise this, you can’t be certain.

So you can’t have faith,

And you can’t be Christian.

Christians can move mountains (Matt 21:22) and drink poison (Mark 16:18).

No one can do that. So there are no Christians.

Church goers are all in for a big disappointment.

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God Lets Us Be Misguided

Most people in the world believe in God. Surely, so many people couldn’t be misguided.

But those people all have quite different ideas about who he is, what he’s like, how he speaks to us, who his messengers are, what he expects of us and what he’s going to do to us if we don’t do what he says.

So, maybe they could be misguided.

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Christians Shouldn't Think Too Much - It Can Lead Them Astray

God gave us brains so we can think for ourselves.

Then told us we should have faith and believe what we are told without question.

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Who needs hospitals?

Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits—

who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases [Palm 103:2-3]

If God heals all our diseases, why don’t ambulances deliver patients to the church instead?

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Foreskins

Are foreskins a good thing or a bad thing?

If they're bad, why did God give us one?

If they're good, why did he tell his people to cut them off?

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Don't Do As I Do - Do As I Say

God says we should forgive any wrong against us, however heinous, and turn the other cheek.

But he can't forgive the slightest wrong, like coveting our neighbour's ass, without someone having to die.

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Genocide is OK with God - Don't Hold Back

They say the bible is the only reliable and absolute source of morality.

So, if slaughtering whole villages because they have a different religion from you and you want their land is good enough for God and his chosen people, then it should be good enough for us.

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Forgive and Forget - No Way!

In 100 years I will be dead and forgotten.

In 5 billion years, the Sun will die and the Earth with it.

In a trillion trillion trillion years, the universe will have suffered heat death.

But billions of creatures from one species on one planet will still be being tortured because they were indoctrinated into the wrong belief system a trillion trillion trillion years earlier.

One might wonder ‘What is the point? Why couldn’t God just put them out of their misery? Did their crime really deserve more than a trillion trillion trillion years of such inhumane punishment?'

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Broad is the Path that Leads to Destruction

We are faced with numerous conflicting religious doctrines. Pick the wrong one and we risk being tortured for ever without mercy. It’s an important decision. And, unfortunately, most people on this Earth get it wrong.

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Atheists Eat Babies?

Some people fear atheists because they think they worship the devil, have no morals, kill people and eat babies.

Religious people worship the devil and sacrifice children. Religious people torture heretics, burn witches and stone blasphemers. Religious people fly planes into buildings and murder innocents on the street in the name of their god.

Atheists don’t do any of those things.

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Freedom of Religion

People demand the freedom to practice their religion, even if one of the expectations of their religion is that they ignore everyone else's beliefs and force everyone to follow their religion's rules.

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Lucifer is Demonised

Isaiah and Revelation are interpreted as saying that Lucifer and a third of the angels rebelled against God and became the devil and his followers. They don’t say when or why this rebellion took place.

If I were an angel and God said he was going to destroy the whole Earth with a flood and kill almost everyone (including all the small children) and all but an ark-load of the animals, I would probably object. Quite possibly, one third of the angels felt sufficiently strongly about this to withdraw their allegiance from God.

After that, heaven would have been divided between the rather evil, murderous and vindictive God with his loyal angels and the more compassionate and peace-loving Lucifer with his angels.

Of course, it’s God who got his version of the story into human hands, so he demonised the rebels, claiming that they are the source of all evil and all rebellion against a good god.

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Dabbling in Religion

Unfortunately, religions were never meant to be dabbled in; they were meant to be taken seriously and totally. The commandments in the bible weren't offered as suggestions. The only two rational approaches in relation to a religion are to be a fundamentalist or to not bother. Dabbling and picking and choosing the bits we like doesn’t come with any rewards.

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Hate

I don’t really hate anyone I know, though there are some people I have heard about that I could hate.

However, I wouldn’t hate even the worst people enough to want to see them burnt alive – that was a barbaric practice from medieval times.

God isn’t like me though. He will burn 98% of humanity, including very many good people who tried hard to please their god, but were led to believe in the wrong one. And he will burn them not just for the few moments it takes them to die, but for eternity. Though they will be desperate to end it all, he will keep them alive, conscious and suffering 24 hours a day 7 days a week – without mercy.

That is hate beyond anything I can imagine. In what sense can anyone say, ‘God is love’?

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Judge and Jury

Christianity requires faith. Faith is believing what you are told without question and rejecting any suggestions to the contrary. Basically, this means believing the first thing you are told and refusing to consider anything that suggests it was wrong. Should judges and jurors be people of faith?

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Religion Has a Vested Interest in Keeping us Ignorant

WHAT IF . . . every school student studied philosophy – researching all the major world views – like mainstream science, conspiracy thinking, spiritualism, new age ideas, astrology and the various religions, along with the evidence for and against each; and also the various commonly held philosophical views on existence, knowledge, ethics, politics etc.

As a culmination of this, over the last couple of years of school they could decide on their own preferred worldview and provide a detailed account of the view along with the evidence for it, and the reasons why others don't share it.

Would people be better thinkers and harder to indoctrinate into spurious ideas?

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A Small Oversight with Tragic Consequences

God made Adam and told him not to eat the fruit. Then he made Eve, but didn’t tell her.

Because of that small oversight, everyone will die and most of us will go to hell.

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God Knows Everything - Or Does He?

There are 8 billion people in the world and the omniscient God knows exactly what each of them is doing.

But, when there was just Adam and Eve, he didn't realise they had eaten the forbidden fruit until he noticed them hiding and asked them why.

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What's the Most Evil Thing One Could Do?

They say that molesting a child is bad, that torturing prisoners is a breach of human rights.

But they are nothing compared to holding someone in a fire and letting them feel their skin burn for ever and ever.

God is so evil!

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Promises and Threats

You can promise people anything and threaten them with anything for after they're dead, knowing they'll never prove you wrong.

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Rome

Rome became a major power in the 3rd Century BCE. Their territory expanded progressively up to around 100 CE, by which time it had become the most successful empire in history, ruling all the Mediterranean and surrounding lands from Egypt to Britain.

All this time, the Roman people had paid homage to their pagan gods, and, in return, the gods had blessed and protected them. Around 30 CE, Christianity appeared in Palestine. Initially, it consisted of maybe a few dozen followers, but, with the work of Paul of Tarsus, it spread into Asia Minor, Greece and even Rome. By 100 CE, a small but significant portion of the Roman Empire was Christian.

Rome had prospered under the pagan gods. Now with blessing of the true God, it should do even better. But around 100 CE, Rome’s expansion faltered. From then to around 300 CE, it gained negligible further territory.

By 300 CE, maybe 5-10% of the empire was Christian. In 312 CE Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Christian establishments were then favoured over pagan ones, pagan temples began to be destroyed, and many citizens were converted, either by persuasion or coercion. In 380 CE, Theodosius declared Rome a Christian state and other religions were made illegal. Now, between 50% and 90% of the population was, at least nominally, Christian. Persecution of the non-Christians began in earnest.

So, during the 4th Century, the Roman Empire had become progressively more Christian, and so, one would think, progressively more under the care and protection of the true god. Its prosperity should have been assured and should have exceeded that of the earlier days under the protection of the false pagan gods. However, during the same time, and despite Christian prayers, Roman armies started to be defeated in battles against the Barbarians and territory was gradually lost. In 410 CE, Rome itself was sacked by the Visigoths. 476 CE saw the final fall of the Christian Western Roman Empire to the Barbarians.

It would seem that the pagan gods managed to do a much better job of protecting their people and their lands than the Christian god ever managed to do. But, then again, the Christian god never did a great job of looking after his chosen people, the Jews, either.

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The Worst Time in History

Following on from the previous item, though the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 CE, most of the people remained Christian. What's more, many of the invading Barbarian peoples adopted the Christian faith and Christianity spread further afield.

The Christian god continued to look after his people as he had done in the empire days. In 536, a volcanic eruption brought in a volcanic winter which caused the sun to shine weakly if at all, temperatures to plummet and crops to fail. Millions died in the famine. The effects lasted until 539 CE when a second eruption heralded an even worse period. The effects were noticable until 549 CE with a possible third eruption in 547 CE.

Not satisfied with that, bubonic plague spread throughout Christendom in 541 and, over the next few years, killed up to half the world's Christians.

From 636 CE, the Muslims, inspired by one man, Muhammed, started to invade Christian lands and slaughter Christian armies. Soon they controlled all of the Eastern part of what used to be the Roman Empire, including the Holy Land, all of North Africa, as well as the Iberian Peninsula. Most of the locals, either died or, through persuasion or force, converted to Islam.

God certainly did care for his people and reward them for their faith.

Philippians 4:19 (And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.) seems not to have applied.

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There is no God

The fool says in his heart, “There is no god”. [Psalm 14:1]

The wise man says it out loud.

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Violent Video Games

When European society was torturing heretics and burning witches, there were no violent TV shows or video games to blame it on. It was inspired solely by fervent loyalty to the church.

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God Wants Us to Disbelieve so He Can Send Us to Hell

As far as I can tell, everything that happens in this world is in accordance with the laws of physics. Nothing reliably attested happens otherwise.

What happens in the world is exactly what one would expect to happen if God wasn’t there.

So God acts exactly like he’s not there. Then he sends us to hell for thinking that he’s not there.

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It's All Your Fault

It’s your fault that God created you and let you be misled, and you deserve the consequences.

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Our Religion Depends on Who Gets to Us First

The trouble with faith is that it can be placed in anything anyone tells us.

It just depends on who gets to us first.

Critical assessment of what we are told is not allowed.

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Noah

God made humans, but the humans were so bad that God regretted it. Clearly the omniscient god didn’t realise that they would be bad. He decided to solve the problem he had caused by telling Noah to build an ark to save a selected few whom he considered ok while he killed the rest (and almost every other living thing on the planet) with a flood. The ark was to be big enough to carry 2 (or in some cases 7) of every type of animal, plus enough food for them all to last nearly a year.

Noah and his family worked by themselves, cutting all the wood by hand, hoisting the beams and planks into place, making all the nails etc. By the time the ark was finished, he was 600 years old and the generation that God decided to kill were probably all dead anyway. No problem: God just killed their children and grandchildren instead – including all the newborn and unborn babies.

God is so powerful. There is nothing he can’t do. He could have solved his problem very easily by administering a fatal heart attack to everyone except Noah and his family, instead of making Noah build the ark and destroying the world and all the animals living in it, against most of whom he presumably didn’t have a grievance anyway. But he seems not to have thought of that.

On the other hand, it seems that, by God’s way of thinking, people deserve punishment even if they don’t do anything wrong, even still-born babies.

He credits everyone with Adam’s ‘original sin’ as a justification for the punishment. So killing all the animals probably helped satisfy his need to punish things anyway. God’s main aim and purpose seems to be to punish things. 98% of humanity goes to hell.

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Playing it Safe

God and his threat of hell might be imaginary. But, not being sure, people don't like to take the chance.

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Funeral

At a Catholic funeral I attended recently, we prayed that God would accept the soul of the deceased. Presumably, if we hadn't prayed that, then he wouldn't have accepted it.

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Views on Sh..t

Daoism:   Sh..t happens.

Hinduism:   Sh..t will happen again.

Judaism:   Why does sh..t always happen to us?

Zen:   What is the sound of sh..t happening?

Islam:   If sh..t happens, blow yourself up.

Jainism:   Don’t eat that sh..t.

JWs:   We’d like to talk to you about sh..t.

Catholicism:   Sh..t happens, and you deserve it.

Protestantism:   Sh..t won’t happen if you work hard.

Atheism:   Sh..t happens anyway.

Mormonism:   Knock knock, sh..t is happening.

Pentecostalism:   Sh..t maraba leeri si mabar o hamon.

Agnosticism:   I’m not sure if sh..t happened.

TV Evangelism:   Send more sh..t.

Rastafarianism:   Let’s smoke this sh..t.

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Bear Sh..t

Some consider the Genesis story to be bullsh..t.

But anyone who reads it in the original Hebrew will know that it’s actually beresh..t.

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Love, Tolerance and Forgiveness

Jesus taught love, tolerance and forgiveness.

This was such an important message that his followers started to kill anyone who didn’t believe it.

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Emigration

If all the atheists and agnostics left America, they’d lose 93% of the National Academy of Science, and less than 1% of the prison population.

                              – Ricky Gervais

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Worms

"I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator."

                                    – David Attenborough

David receives hate mail from Christians for comments like this.

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Original Sin

Adam sinned and all mankind inherited this original sin, thus making them depraved.

Christianity has the solution: people can be forgiven for stuff they didn’t do because they killed someone else who didn’t do it either.

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Liar

The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may freely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die.” [Gen 2:16-17 NASB]

The serpent said to the woman, “You certainly will not die! [Gen 3:4 NASB]

she also gave some to her husband with her, and he ate. [Gen 3:6 NASB]

When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. Then the days of Adam after he fathered Seth were eight hundred years, and he fathered other sons and daughters. [Gen 5:3-4 NASB]

Who was the liar?

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Everything Must Have a Cause

If the universe had a beginning, then it must have had a cause because nothing can happen without something causing it to happen.

A radioactive atom sits doing nothing for 7000 years, then emits a beta particle. Nothing happened to cause that.

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Science

Science is God's way of telling us that he doesn't exist.

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God Doesn't Change His Mind

God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. [Numbers 23:19]

So no point in praying.

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What Does It Mean to be Born Again?

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. [John 3:3]

People who have just been born are little children. Is this what Jesus meant by being born again? – becoming little children? Yes.

And he said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. [Mathew 18:3]

In what way are we expected to become like little children? Not in stature obviously, not in dependence on our mother. No, it is believing what we are told without question, reducing our critical thinking to that of a small child and being willing to accept any story without resistance.

This is, after all, exactly what faith is. Just as Jesus expected Thomas to believe what his mates told him, totally and without question, we, born again as small children, are expected to believe whatever anyone tells us without question.

And, if we can’t do this, we don’t have faith and so cannot be saved.

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Satan

God created Satan because he wanted someone to stop him from doing what he wanted to do.

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Atheism

Q. What's it like not believing in God?

A. Very similar to not believing in Zeus.

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A Wonderful Plan

The loving god has a wonderful plan for your life.

Though not for theirs.

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The Word of Paul

In 1 Corinthians 7:25 Paul gives an opinion that he admits is not from God. Is the bible all the word of God, or is some of it the word of Paul?

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Godly Advice 1

In Matthew 5:38-39 (NIV), Jesus says:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”

Great advice! If an evil person kidnaps your son, offer them your daughter also!

The words of Jesus were so sublime, they could only have come from God.

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Godly Advice 2

In Matthew 6:31-34 (NIV), Jesus says:

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Anyone who applies for a job will probably not be starting the same day. They are making plans for later so that they can earn money, support their family and not be a burden on society.

This is a clear defiance of Jesus’ command.

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Being Dead

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it".

                                    – Mark Twain

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Hateful and Cruel

A man locked his son in a room. Then he sent in six men, telling the son that, one of the six, if asked, would let him out of the room. The other five, if he asked them, would skin him alive. The son had to decide which one to ask.

Surely, there couldn’t be a man so hateful and cruel.

God put the old testament in the hands of the Jews, the new testament in the hands of Christians, the Quran in the hands of Muslims, the Vedas, Upanishads etc. in the hands of Hindus, the Book of Mormon in the hands of Mormons and so on.

And he left it to us to work out which one was right, on pain of hell (a fate far worse than being skinned alive) if we picked the wrong one.

Surely, there couldn’t be a god so hateful and cruel.

Could there?

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How can we tell?

Most people consider the religious view they were brought up with to be the correct one. However, as the religious views are all different and contradictory, most of them must be wrong. It is clearly in our nature to believe what we are brought up with rather than to open-mindedly seek the truth.

But, looking at the world, how would we know which religious view is actually correct? There is no way of telling. All are convincing enough that they could be correct.

Would a god punish us for believing the wrong thing when he gives us no way of knowing, however hard we try, which of the many options is the right thing?

It would be much better for humanity if such a god doesn’t exist.

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What is Right

Morality is doing what is right, no matter what one is told.

Religion is doing what one is told, no matter what is right.

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Eternal God

The trouble with an eternal god is that he has to have sat for an infinite number of years doing nothing before creating the heavens and the earth.

An eternal god couldn't start creating when he first came into existence because he didn't come into existence.

This all makes the idea of an eternal god rather illogical.

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God Answers Prayer

God answers all prayers: Either ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

So does my pet rock.

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Which God?

Ok, I’ve seen the error of my atheist ways and realised that there must be a god. I need to worship him and do as he says. The trouble is deciding which god it is that I need to worship. . . Allah, Yahweh, Shiva, Ahura Mazda, Zeus . . . .

How should I decide?

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Does the Punishment Fit the Crime?

A man kidnaps, rapes, tortures and murders a series of young girls. Christians will generally consider that he deserves to be punished, maybe with a prison sentence, maybe even with death. But most wouldn’t feel that he should be burnt to death for his crime.

Yet the same Christians will consider that someone who commits the thought crime of thinking that there isn’t a god, does deserve to be burnt – not just to death, but for all eternity.

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The Tenth Plague

Pharaoh wouldn’t do what Moses asked. God could easily have caused Pharaoh to change his mind. He could even have killed Pharaoh if he'd wanted to. But, instead, he killed every first-born in Egypt (except Pharaoh it seems) including the children and the animals.

Killing a few hundred thousand people who had no part in Pharaoh's decision was clearly much more pleasing to God. It seems God is like that.

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Inadequate Ignorance

When I became a Christian, I put quite a bit of effort into trying to convince myself of biblical 6-day creation.

But I found my level of ignorance was totally inadequate.

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Uncritical Acceptance

When humans are taught as children that snakes are dangerous, those who accept this uncritically and make it a permanent part of their thinking are more likely to survive to adulthood and to reproduce than those who want to check it out for themselves. Thus we have evolved to make what we are told when we are young an almost hard-wired part of our world view. And it doesn't matter if it's not true.

Most of us are taught religion when we are young.

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Urinals

When I was young, my father warned me not to touch public urinals because they are dirty and full of germs. As an adult I know that urine is generally sterile and urinals have fewer bacteria than a typical kitchen bench. But I still can’t bring myself to touch a urinal.

What we are told when we are young has a deep and lasting impact that is hard to shake. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, it still constrains my thoughts today.

The same goes with religion.

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A Bit of Mathematical Logic

It is sometimes said:

Truth + God = Life

Rearranging, we get:

God = Life – Truth

Truth = Life – God

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If Only Adam and Eve had not Sinned

If Adam and Eve hadn’t eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, might things have turned out better?

Well, they would have had no idea what was a good way to live and act and what was an evil way. They wouldn’t have known that feeding their kids was right and starving them was wrong. They wouldn’t have known that inflicting pain on each other and seeing each other scream was wrong, or that killing and eating each other was wrong. Actually, things probably wouldn’t have turned out well at all.

And . . . that talking snake would still have been there to persuade them to do the worst possible things.

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The One Commandment

'Don't be an asshole.'

Some people manage that by themselves; others seem to need an instruction manual.

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Hope

If Christians are right, at least 6 million people alive today will go to hell.

If Muslims are right, at least 6.5 million people alive today will go to hell.

If atheists are right, no one will go to hell.

Let’s hope.

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For a few short bible passages which seem to be at odds with the Christian view of things, click here.

Image Acknowledgements

Satan: Devil-307138.svg, Wikimedia Commons       Nails: Wikimedia Commons (cropped)       Temptation: Phillip Medhurst, Wikimedia Commons       Finger of God: Picryl       Dogs: Rawpixel       Adam and Eve hiding: Heinrich Aldegrever, Wikimedia Commons       Firey devil: JonaDav on DeviantArt       Jesus: Wikimedia Commons via Picryl.com       Lustful look: Courtney Carmody on Flickr       Ass: PxHere       Twin Towers: Flickr       Bible: Bible Study Together       Roman Empire: Sharklord1 on DeviantArt       Plague: Picryl       Noah: Picryl       Ark: Flickr       Godfather: https://www.goodfon.com/films/wallpaper-vito-corleone-the-godfather-kriostnyi-otets.html       Angry God: Everton, Creative Commons       David Attenborough: Flickr       DNA: Wikimedia Commons       Happy man: publicdomainpictures       Starving family: Wikimedia Commons       Galaxies: Flickr       Pet rock: Pexels       Urinals: Freerange Stock