Imagine there's no Heaven You may say I
am a dreamer |
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Imagine no possessions
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Last updated August 2024
(Be sure to see my
Fuck Faith page)
(Be sure to see the 20 Reasons to Abandon
Christianity.)
The
taboo of criticizing the religious beliefs of others is now
outdated and
unfounded. In a modern world, where religious beliefs fuel everything from suicide attacks to the killing of one's one children, it is now MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER to directly challenge those beliefs without hesitation or apology. |
Your religions beliefs are not
"sacred" or immune to criticism. They are beliefs in your head, based upon where you were born, how you were raised, and who influenced you. Simply having religious beliefs does not make them true or obligate others to respect them. |
Theist: "You have to
respect everyone's beliefs!" No, you do not! That is exactly what gets us into trouble. I will acknowledge your religious belief. I will acknowledge your right to have a belief. But I will respect no belief or religion that divides humanity, slows human progress, uses fear tactics, makes conclusions without deep examination, promotes homophobia, plays a huge part in wars, and limits free thinking and freedom of speech. |
Yes, you have the right to believe
what you want. And I have the right to believe what you believe is fucking ridiculous. |
Christianity, in a nutshell, is the
following: 1) We are all destined - and fully deserve - to roast in Hell for all eternity, because in the eyes of a "all good and perfect" Creator, telling small lies or stealing a candy bar is just as bad as killing millions of people and therefore we are doomed just by being alive. (In some denominations, this goes even further by saying the reason why we are all evil is because two people ate a magic apple, and now their genetic sin is our problem.) 2) Somehow the above scenario is justified because "God is so perfect even a small sin is infinite," and although he lacks common sense and compassion he is somehow still perfect and to be worshiped. 3) The ONE and ONLY way to avoid our fully-deserved fate of Hell is to believe in a story written in an ancient book 2,000+ years ago, with no evidence to back it up, and to fully believe the supernatural and bizarre events described (God came down as a person, was born to a virgin, sacrificed himself for a blood sacrifice that is never explained why It is needed, he rose from the dead, etc) are actually real. 4) God's sacrificing his son was a benevolent thing to do. Seriously? If your neighbor committed a horrible crime and was going to prison, and the only way to bail him out was to have your own son crucified, would you do that to your child to pay for someone else's problems? Any decent parent and person would say, "Hell no!" How can anyone take this seriously? Points 1, 2, and 4 show how morally wrong the whole premise is, and how unethical and evil this religion's portrayal of God is. And Point 3 is basically saying the way to be saved in the afterlife is to believe an unbelievable story – like trying to force yourself to believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, long after you've hit the age of critical reason (around age 7) where those types of childhood magic characters are no longer believable. Please explain how the above is ethical, in a way that lines up with God being the all-good and all-loving being He is claimed to be and logical/rational as something that is likely to be real. It is more likely the premise is simply something a Iron-Age mind would concoct, not something from the supreme creator of the universe. |
How many of you consider yourselves to be devout Muslims? You are aware, of course, the Quran exists, and claims to be the perfect word of the creator of the universe. You are aware, of course, once having heard of this possibility and rejecting it, you are going to Hell, for eternity. Christians and atheists are all going to Hell if this vision of life is true. Everything said in the defense of Christianity, with few modifications, could also be said in defense of Islam and in fact has been said in defense of Islam. The logic is exactly the same. We have a book that claims to be the word of the creator of the universe, and tells us about the nature of moral reality and how to live within it. Well, what if Muslims are right? What if Islam is true? How would we view Allah in moral terms? Christians were born in the wrong place, to the wrong parents, given the wrong culture, given the wrong theology. Christians are all doomed. They have been thoroughly confused by Christianity. Atheists have been thoroughly misled by science. Just appreciate what a bad position you are now in, to appreciate the true word of god. Where is Allah's compassion? He is omnipotent. He could change this in an instant. He could give us a sign that would convince everyone. And yet He is not going to do it. And Hell awaits. And Hell awaits our children, because we can't but help to mislead our children. Now, hold this vision in mind... and first appreciate how little sleep you have lost over this possibility. Just feel in yourself in this moment how carefree you are... and will continue to be, in the face of this possibility. What are the chances all Christians and atheists will go to Hell for eternity because we haven't recognized the Quran to be the perfect word of the creator of the universe? Please note this is EXACTLY how Christianity appears to someone who has not been indoctrinated by it. (Sam Harris) |
You know, it truly makes me sad to realize theists have been unable to achieve a level of emotional maturity to be able to deal with the death of a loved one or a pet. Instead, they have to maintain a primitive belief in a fictional paradise, a paradise there is absolutely no evidence of, so they can pretend they will eventually see and be reunited with this loved one or this pet again. In doing so, they are forced to bottle up their emotions and mask their true feelings with happy-clappy smiles and platitudes about being reunited again in Heaven one day. It's tragic to watch. |
Why do atheists deny the existence of gods? Well, for one, they do not deny it. They reject the claim. However, you are asking the wrong question. Instead... ...why should they take the idea of gods seriously? ...why should they care whether or not gods exist? ...why should any god be worshiped? ...why does every society reject the claim of all of other gods from every other society? We have no objective, verifiable information about gods. Absolutely zero evidence. Nothing at all. A god that cannot be detected or demonstrated to exist is irrelevant and meaningless. It is a poor, poor foundation for belief. |
Here's the deal: if you are going to resort to “the universe is too perfect... therefore there must be a god God!” type arguments, make sure you are proving the entirety of your deity claim. Otherwise, you haven't advanced your argument at all. In fact, you have hurt it. |
Religion, the ultimate con game. Priests will tell you they are 100% certain they know the mind of God and if you do not do what they say, you will anger God and lose his love and protection. So you give money to the church, pray three times a day, and do good works with the poor, etc. Yet your crops fail, your child dies, you are afflicted with illness. You might think the priests have some explaining to do. They will 'explain' it is your own fault you lost God's protection. You did not give enough to the church, you had impure thoughts, God is testing you, etc. This is the ultimate con-trick. The 'expert' tells you to do something. You do it and get the opposite result of what is promised by the expert. The expert then tells you it is your fault. Hilarious. And tragic. |
The concept of sin has been one of the most profitable fictions for the Church. It is the ultimate scam. You pay the church to insure you for imaginary crimes, against an imaginary being, so you won't go to an imaginary Hell, as well as insuring you to go to an imaginary Heaven. It is a billion dollar industry
established by charlatans and funded entirely by the stupidity
of our species. |
Your god, if he exists at all,
is not
moral. The Bible is not moral. Islam is not moral. Anything that deteriorates the
value of human beings, anything that hangs on to Iron
Age ideals about genocide and slavery and murder and
deference to higher powers, none of those things are moral. We've graduated beyond that, and I am sorry we've had to drag religions kicking and screaming into the 21st century, but some of you have to let this stuff go. You're not going to get anywhere until you realize It is ok not to be afraid. It is ok to say, "You know, I think slavery is wrong. I think slavery was always wrong." (Matt Dillahunty) |
Morality is doing what is right, regardless of what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told regardless of what is right. |
Morality predates religion. From the
earliest human ancestors, who relied on altruistic behavior to
survive, to other animals living in complex social groups, morality
has evolutionary origins and has been refined over time through
secular moral philosophy, rational discussion, and legal debate. You do not need religion to have morals. If you can't determine right from wrong, you lack empathy, not religion. |
It is an insult to humanity to say our
morality is completely dependent on someone else giving us a list of
DOs and DON'Ts. It is an insult to say we have no innate sense of right and wrong, that we have no independent ability to see what is good and what is just. |
Does being a Christian make you more moral? No, it does not. What it offers is an escape from morality by shoveling your failures onto an innocent party. Fear is one of the greatest tools for control. That's why the religious invented Hell, as a means to control the believers from either leaving or questioning their orders. Christians believe being religious makes you moral, when in fact Christianity is in itself a system of escaping morality. I say this with confidence, because any honest Christian who has read the bible will readily admit that the only unforgivable sin is non-belief or “denial of god.” It says explicitly in three different chapters in the Bible that every sin will be forgiven if asked for, except non-belief. So that means you can spend your whole life being a complete maniac…raping, murdering, being a pedophile, going on genocidal rampages…and so long as you pray before you die and beg forgiveness, this god will forgive you…so long as you never denied his existence! That's not morality, that's scapegoating… but then again, that is what Christianity is all about, scapegoating. Jesus was the ultimate scapegoat, because he took all of “humanity's sins” and put it on himself so people could be forgiven and go to Heaven. That is not moral, because it is not taking responsibility for your own actions - you are simply passing them to an innocent party. There is no morality in Christianity or Islam and what little you can find is cherry picked. You need not fear Hell, because there isn't a shred of evidence it exists….nada, zilch, zero. When we die, all evidence points to it will simply be like before we were born... we won't even know we existed at all. If we could hypothesize a god exists and it has an interest in humans and plans to reward or punish them based on some criteria, it is nearly certain those criteria would be based on how moral and ethical the life was lived, not on whether the subject worshiped it or believed some miracle story about a god-man. This god would look at the morality demonstrated by each life and would not offer a trick to get immoral people ‘off the hook,' nor to punish moral people who disregarded the trick. Christianity does not teach morality. It teaches how to escape it. |
Religion does not provide morals. In fact, the opposite is true! God did not forbid slavery, rape, homophobia, sexism or child marriage. Instead, God chose to forbid shellfish, mixed fabrics, saying his name angrily, two women falling in love... and pork. It took humans to decide that slavery, rape, homophobia, sexism and child marriage are wrong. |
Do you really mean to tell me the only
reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or
to avoid his disapproval and punishment? |
Atheists have no need for a "moral compass." They have their own conscience. |
Human decency is not derived from
religion.
It precedes it. |
Religion does not provide a moral compass to people. What religion does is hand you a hammer to smash your own moral compass with. |
Our species (Homo sapiens) have been on this planet for at least 100,000 years. Initially, for thousands and thousands of years, our species suffered and died. Most of us dying in childbirth, the others having a life expectancy of about twenty-five to thirty years at the most. We died of our teeth, famine, struggle, war, suffering misery, malnutrition, and fear. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe for the first 97,000 to 98,000 years Heaven watches all of this with complete indifference. And then, some 2,000 years ago it thinks, "Well, that is enough of that. It is time to intervene." The best way to do this is by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate part of the Middle East. Oh, no, let's not appear to the Chinese, where people can read and study evidence. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation. This is nonsense. It cannot be believed by a thinking person.
(Christopher Hitchens) |
Prayer
Does Not Work Perhaps it makes the believer feel better, in the same way meditation or deep thought would, but prayer does not actually affect the external world. Not only is it ineffective, it is also a very narcissistic practice. Why would a "God" change his "divine plan" to accommodate any person's wishes? Let's imagine you have cancer and you are a believer. You pray to God for a cure, you undergo surgery and chemotherapy, and the cancer does in fact go into remission. What cured you? Was it the chemotherapy, or was it God? In other words, is there any way to know whether God is playing a role or not when we pray? The problem is, in this imagined case, there is ambiguity. The Christian believes God answered the prayer, but it could also be a simple coincidence. All scientific evidence clearly indicates it is, in fact, a coincidence. Whenever we do a scientific experiment on the efficacy of prayer, the data shows no effect from prayer. Scientific evidence indicates "answered prayers" really are coincidences every single time. So how do we figure this out? Is God answering prayers as Christians believe, or is it coincidence as science indicates? The way to answer that question is to remove the ambiguity. We make it impossible for the "answered prayer" to be a coincidence, and then we see what happens. The way to remove the ambiguity is to say a prayer that
cannot be answered (or is highly unlikely to happen) by
coincidence. For example, instead of praying to God to cure
one person's cancer, pray to God to eliminate all cancer
tomorrow. What we find whenever we perform an unambiguous experiment like this, is God never answers unambiguous prayers. Ever. Jesus promises in many places in the Bible he will answer prayers -- even impossible prayers. But what you find whenever you put Jesus to the test is that Jesus is making a false promise. What we find is God never answers impossible prayers - even if the prayers are incredibly worthy. For example:
These unambiguous prayers are how we know, for sure, God/Jesus are not actually answering prayers. The scientific evidence is correct. "Answered prayers" are nothing more than simple coincidences every single time. The whole idea of "God answering prayers" is a complete illusion because God is imaginary. - from the wonderful website "God Is Imaginary - 50 Simple Proofs" |
Praying for others is the ultimate self indulgence. People pray for you as if they were actually doing something for you and then feel good about. It is delusional. It is about as helpful as worrying for you. I know plenty of people who have made an art form out of worrying. |
If people would spend as much time helping others as they do praying for them, it would be a much nicer world. The problem is helping others requires you to actually do something. | The only thing worse than sitting idle as someone suffers is to do absolutely nothing yet think you are actually helping; in other words, praying. |
Prayers never bring anything. Oh,
they may bring solace to the sap, the bigot, the ignorant, the
aboriginal, and the lazy - but to the enlightened it is the same as
asking Santa Claus to bring you something for Christmas. (W.C. Fields) |
What is
Prayer? Prayer – especially the supplication kind, requires the belief that... ...you, a finite, short-lived, self-focused, fallible, mortal being with little knowledge, by uttering (or even just thinking!) some request out into the expanse of the universe somehow might be heard and comprehended by a more-knowing, less-imperfect and more-powerful Being (to whom you are directing the request), and that this may cause the Being to take some action that will cause change in the course of some part of the universe you care about, in a direction you think would be better than if this change didn't happen. It is insanity. It is vanity. It is ridiculous. |
People who pray for others actually
think they're helping. In the process, it gives them peace of
mind and can help them cope through difficult situations, such
as a loved one being sick. Atheists do not have such comforts, so they must be mentally and emotionally stronger than believers because of it. It is the price they pay for intellectual honesty, and most people simply find it too high a cost for what they consider little reward. But for those who value intellectualism and intelligence, it is more than worth it. |
"I will pray for you!" This comment
sounds like an alien language to atheists. It comes out
something like this: "BZPZTPFDQFYTOT." When this alien phrase is interpreted, it becomes clear the person who is making such a comment feels quite smug and superior in that he/she has chosen the RIGHT god, and that he/she now has a direct pipeline TO this God, whereas you do not, and he/she will put in a good word for you, you lowlife scum. |
If you truly want to make a
difference, take action and physically DO something to make a
difference. Praying does absolutely nothing to change anything
in the world. Oh sure, it may help the person praying feel better about a situation by talking themselves into some delusional sense of well being, but that is as far as prayer goes. That is not helping influence the world. Instead, that is simply having a voiceless conversation with one's self. Two hands working can do more than one thousand hands clasped in prayer. |
Ask and it will be given to
you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be
opened to you.
(Matthew 7:7 NIV) When you wish upon a star Makes no difference who you are Anything your heart desires will come to you. (Jiminy Cricket) Can you tell any difference? |
Football hero Tim Tebow prays on the football field while 8,640
people starve to death worldwide each day. (It is
estimated one person starves to death every ten
seconds.) 45,000 innocent people die each year, worldwide, from natural disasters. That's an average of 123 each day. Christmas shoppers pray to find the latest gift fad while tsunamis and earthquakes bury whole cities in an explosion of swirling, violent debris. Believers pray to find their car keys while Taliban hostages are beheaded on the internet. Find a good parking space at the mall? Praise God! A child dies of leukemia? Oh, that is just terrible, but God is love and He has a plan, right? And, of course, anytime the law of averages or happy coincidence makes a wish come true? DING! God answers your prayer! This is monumentally imbalanced, lazy thinking. Prayer is the placebo. The empty calorie. The blue pill. |
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A man who prays is one who thinks God has arranged
matters all wrong... but who also thinks he can instruct
God how to put them right. (Christopher Hitchens) What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. (Christopher Hitchens) I do not feel obliged to believe the same god who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. (Galileo Galilei) |
Why do religious people always need physical evidence for each and every step of evolution, but when it comes to God, all they need is faith? | Faith is belief without and against evidence and reason. Coincidentally, that is also the definition of delusion. |
Faith is not a virtue! It is the glorification of voluntary ignorance. |
Faith is the great cop-out, the great
excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith
is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of
evidence. (Richard Dawkins) Faith is nothing more than the license religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail. In a world that has been shattered by mutually incompatible religious beliefs, in a nation that is growing increasingly beholden to Iron Age conceptions of God, the end of history and the immortality of the soul, this lazy partitioning of our discourse into matters of reason and matters of faith is now unconscionable. (Sam Harris) |
If you define faith as the
ability to keep working toward a goal when you aren't sure you
can reach it, I am all for it. When the whole world seems to
be against you, it requires a certain kind of faith to say "I
can do this despite all appearances," or "I am going to keep
pushing even if I can't ever succeed," and that kind of faith is
the key component of any great endeavor. But if you define faith as you do not have much evidence something is factually true, but you decide you really should believe it anyway, so you close your eyes and grit your teeth and believe as hard as you can, then I can't imagine why anyone would want to do that. I can't imagine why an all-powerful God would want us to do that. Maybe that is just a lack of imagination on my part, but that is where I am stuck. It just does not make sense to me. |
Faith means not wanting to know what
is true. (Friedrich Nietzsche) Science adjusts its beliefs based upon what is observed. Faith is the denial of observation so belief can be preserved. (Tim Minchin) Throughout history every mystery ever solved has turned out to be... not magic. (Tim Minchin) Love and respect all people. Hate and destroy all faith. (Penn Jillette)
(Sam Harris) |
Faith
- belief that is not based upon evidence - is one of the world's
great evils. (Richard Dawkins) |
The men who committed the atrocities of
September 11 were certainly not 'cowards,' as they were repeatedly
described in the Western media, nor were they lunatics in any
ordinary sense. They were men of faith - perfect faith, as it turns out - and this, it must finally be acknowledged, is a terrible thing to be. (Sam Harris) |
When
there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith." We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when wish to substitute emotion for evidence. (Bertrand Russell) |
If you can say that you believe something just because you feel
it, what do you say to Charles Manson? Are you going to
attack Charlie Manson for not being faithful enough? Look
in those crazy eyes, just south of the crazy swastika carved
into the crazy skin of his crazy forehead. There's some real
faith in there. There are things that Charlie Manson takes
on faith. And how is that faith different? Is the argument
against Charlie that not enough people share his faith? Of
course It is not true the Beatles were sending Chuck messages to
kill those people, but Charles sure had faith they were. If you assert
you believe shit you can't prove because you
feel it, don't you have to give everyone that right? I am not
just talking about obvious crazy shit like virgin birth, arks
full of critters, and seas parting. I am talking about any kind
of faith. If you believe that your warm, snuggly feeling about the universe means a god... then Charlie Manson can tell you that those people were killed because the Beatles told Charlie about an impending race war. We all act on things we can't prove. Einstein had to imagine E = MC² before he had all the evidence. That is different than faith. There's a humility to just imagining. There is a word of safety in doubt. The respect for faith, the celebration of faith, is dangerous. It is faith itself that is wrong. I deny terrorists the moral right to have faith in a god that will reward them for killing people with airplanes. That means I have to deny a Christian the moral right to a faith that Jesus Christ died for their sins. That means I have to deny the warm, fuzzy faith that here's a positive conscious energy guiding the universe. That means I have to get pissed off when Luke Skywalker trusts "the Force." The only real argument against religious terrorism is to try to share the reality of the world. The world is plenty. We have each other. We have love. We have family. We have art. We have time. We have an impossible universe full of awe and wonder. We have an infinite number of questions we can work on. We have all the glory that is real and is us. We must top glorifying faith. Fuck faith. The last four paragraphs from the wonderful book, God, No! by Penn Jillette |
An atheist will wonder why a Christian believes in God, and then joke about it. A Christian will condemn an atheist to eternal damnation in Hell for not believing in their God. |
Atheists are not mad at God. They are
not angry or hurt. They are not rebelling or trying to be cool.
Atheists are people that can tell the difference between real and
imaginary, wishful thinking and facts, evidence, and faith. An atheist refuses to live a lie just because it feels good to be comforted. |
Being an atheist means coming to grips
with reality. Being an atheist is like being the only sober person in the car... and nobody will let you drive. |
Believers do good things out of fear of
death and Hell with expectation of great reward. Atheists do the right thing because It is the human thing to do. |
God is just Santa Claus for adults.
Believing in Him may give you comfort in times of trouble, and may give you something to look forward to... but that does not mean He is real. |
I am not anti-religion. I am anti-sexism, anti-racism, anti-homophobia, anti-violence, anti-misogyny, anti-slavery, anti-ignorance, anti-child abuse, anti-oppression, anti-war. Religion is anti-me. |
How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the right one. |
God giving man free will, and then
telling him, "If you worship me you will go to Heaven, but if you
do not, you will be damned in Hell," is nothing less than extortion
and coercion. It is the equivalent of a mafia boss telling you that if you do not pay him the "protection money," he will break your thumbs. Real love is impossible under the threat of eternal torture. The claim God loves us, but will torture most of us, or does nothing to stop us from being tortured, is preposterous. |
If a person sticks a gun in your face
and says "give me your wallet or I will kill you," you will
probably give him your wallet because you want to save your life. But Jesus is an even worse character than the street robber because he says, in effect, "Give me your life, worship me, love me more than your own family, give me your time, your money, and your soul, or else I will torture you in great pain and anguish forever." Jesus is an extortionist. |
Suppose the following:
You live in Colorado and intend to drive to Utah. On a National
Enquirer website you read that anyone caught speeding in Utah will
be put to death. This seems really far-fetched, but, to be sure, you
make inquiries all around, including to the state of Utah, but all
you get are conflicting messages. No one will confidently confirm or
deny this alleged law. You drive into Utah and are stopped by police for speeding. You are taken immediately to a wall and are facing a firing squad. You protest this is a wildly excessive punishment for speeding, but are told you must have read the law on the National Enquirer website, so you were adequately forewarned of the consequences. Then, the riflemen deposit multiple bullets into your body and you are dead. This is the story of Christianity. You are given a Bible full of inconsistencies, contradictions, absurdities, anachronisms, brutalities, mixed messages, and illogicalities, and then, if you do not believe in it, or at least in the one of the thousands of different interpretations that is 'correct,' you will be punished for all eternity. If God will not reveal
himself in a way that is clear and unmistakable, it is absurd to
think that you deserve eternal torment for not believing. |
If you identify with a specific
religion, ask yourself:
(David G. McAfee) |
I have always wondered why sacrificing
an immortal being has any inherent value. It is rather like being
impressed and amazed by the bravery of someone getting a haircut.
You do understand it grows back, right? |
I will not bow to any god, nor will I
surrender logic and reason to faith. I am not an atheist by choice. I am a seeker of truth. Being an atheist is just a natural result of that endeavor. (JD Stockman) |
If a beautiful sunflower or a rainbow or
a sunset is
somehow supposed to be evidence of a god, then what is a
parasitic worm that eats children's eyeballs evidence of? What
about lightning strikes that kill thousands of innocent people each
year? What is that evidence of? The truth is, a rainbow, for example, is miraculous only to those ignorant of basic physics. Such is the credulity that religions hang upon. Meanwhile, the Earth is a wholly hostile environment, and for almost all of our 200,000+ years, humanity has suffered from weather, disease, drought, starvation, dehydration, poisoning, accident and sheer misfortune. However, theists apply cognitive dissonance and blot all such facts from consideration. That being just part of the damage that religion wreaks. |
If you could reason with religious
people, there would be no religious people. It is horrendous how people can be born, live, and die all under the impression that they are only on this planet to worship a god. |
My favorite part of the Bible is when
God, soon after he created faulty-humans and gave them free will,
later killed everyone with a flood for
not acting the way he wanted. Yep, God killed tens of thousands of innocent infants, children, and animals. Praise the Lord! |
One does not "convert to atheism." One simply realizes everything they have been told about God is bullshit. |
Organized religion is like organized crime. It prays on peoples' weakness, generates huge profits for its operators, and is almost impossible to eradicate. | Religion is like a virus that change's people's minds into dogmatic thinking, rule following, and blind faith, qualities which do no good for the well-being of mankind. |
Religion: The practice of convincing you you're sick... and then pretending to sell you the cure. |
Religion: The practice of validating fear, ignorance, and prejudice. |
Religion divides humanity, slows human progress, uses fear tactics, makes conclusions without deep examination, promotes homophobia, plays a huge part in wars, and limits free thinking and freedom of speech. |
The basis of religion is not faith; It
is
fear. If the truth makes you uncomfortable, don't blame the truth. Blame the lie that made you comfortable. |
The Bible no more proves the existence
of God than my comic books prove the existence of Batman or
Superman or Spider-Man. There is no society in recorded history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable. |
When one person is delusional It is
called insanity. When many people are delusional they call it
religion. Would you allow your child to be raped, tortured, murdered if you were fully able to stop it? God would... and did. |
The plain fact is religion must die for
mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be
able to indulge in having key decisions made by religious people -
by irrationalists - by those who would steer the ship of state, not
by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a
chicken. |
If the only way the supreme creator of
the entire universe can demonstrate his existence to me is to create
images of Mary or Jesus on food items, I am not impressed. The scientist accumulates vast amounts information in a lifelong quest for truth. With a single, 2000+ year-old book, the religious man feels complete. |
Yes, I found religion! Thank you. I found it to be
completely worthless. Praise the Lord! Atheists maintain a standard of evidence proportional to the extraordinary nature of certain claims. They are usually open to the idea of god, but so far unconvinced by any evidence or argument put forward to support it. |
Religions often use the technique of
"Believe in God or else he will punish you for eternity!" Such religions portray God as a thug, apparently incapable of obtaining obedience or respect through any other means. I do not worship thugs. I hold them in contempt. They have less character than I do. They need to come to me for wisdom and enlightenment, not the other way around. They need to seek my mercy and forgiveness through repentance, not the other way around. What will happen if I were to meet such a thug? It should fear me. Not the other way around. |
Christians outlawed atheists from the universities and teaching
careers, besmirched their reputations, banned or burned their
books and their writings, drove them into exile, humiliated
them, seized their properties, arrested them for blasphemy. Christians de-humanized them with beatings and exquisite torture, gouged out their eyes, slit their tongues, stretched, crushed, or broke their limbs, tore off their breasts if they were women, crushed their scrotums if they were men, imprisoned them, stabbed them, disemboweled them, hanged them, burnt them alive. And this went on for more than
one thousand years. |
The Bible is historically inaccurate,
factually incorrect, inconsistent and contradictory. It was
artificially constructed by a group of men in antiquity, decades
after Jesus's so-called appearance on Earth. It is
poorly translated, heavily altered and selectively interpreted.
Entire sections of the text have been redacted over time. Christianity is no more real than the ancient myth it is based upon. |
Have you read the Bible cover to cover?
If not, be warned. The Bible is full of dreadful stories about genocide, murder, adultery, incest, deceit, greed, arrogance, megalomania, sexual perversion, and all sorts of despicable behavior. |
The god character of the Bible is a
misogynistic tyrant that condones and even orders the practice of
slavery, rape of women and murder of children. The moment you disagree with a single instruction of the Bible, such as the command to kill any bride who is not a virgin or any child who disrespects their parents, then you acknowledge there exists a superior standard by which to judge moral action and thus no need to rely on an ancient, primitive and barbaric fantasy. |
Science has already annihilated the very
foundation of Christianity. According to many interpretations of the Bible, God made Adam and Eve when he created the Earth, 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, Adam and Eve sinned, and Jesus suffered and died for those sins. Science has proven the earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, humans have evolved over a period of two million years, and modern humans descended from a group of least 10,000 primates. Therefore, the story of Adam and Eve is false, which means there was no original sin and thus no reason for Jesus to have suffered and died. |
Several thousand years ago, a small tribe of ignorant
near-savages wrote various collections of myths, wild tales,
lies, and gibberish. Over the centuries, these stories were
embroidered, garbled, mutilated, and torn into small pieces that
were then repeatedly shuffled. Finally, this material was badly
translated into several languages successively. The resultant text, creationists feel, is the best guide to this complex and technical subject. |
If an omniscient, omnipotent, perfect being is the mastermind
behind the Bible, then why does the book reflect only the
culture, science, history, literature, technology, morals, and
values of the era in which it was written? Why are there so many versions of it? Why does it have so many inaccuracies and inconsistencies? Why is it open to so many different interpretations? Why does it include stoning, torture, murder, burning, slavery, homophobia, bigotry, and chauvinism? Why would anyone have to ask so many questions about it, if It is supposed to be the go-to source for truth and the ultimate instruction book for morality? If the Garden of Eden, The Tower of Babel, the Great Flood, the Egyptian exile, and Jonah and the whale are allegories, how can we be sure that anything in the Bible is factual? |
When an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe God commanded him to perform this act or that he will be rewarded in some afterlife for the act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his actions are based on his sense of morality. The kindness he bestows on others is simply because he feels it to be right. |
Show me two isolated cultures that developed independently of one another: no common history, no shared ancestry, etc. Now, let's see what religions emerge from these societies. If both religions worship the same God who goes by the same name and has the same rules with no contradictions, THAT God might be real. But that never happens, because isolated society A invented their god, as isolated society B invented their god, and the likelihood that they would invent the exact same god is low enough to rule out. |
Assume you are a god and you wish to
communicate with your creation. You've decided the best way to
do this (and I would argue this is a particularly stupid
method), is to reveal information to individuals, in languages
that you know will mutate and die out. Furthermore, you do not
even take steps to make sure the people who are transcribing it
and interpreting it get it right. How is this remotely a good plan for a god to communicate this message? Based upon that, there is no good reason to believe there is an intelligent, wise god who tried to communicate through a bible or other holy text. Sure, there may be a god, and he may be intelligent and he may be wise, but no intelligent wise being, knowing what was going to happen, would communicate in this way. If you are going to do this, you'd wind up with a Bible 2.0 and 3.0, direct translations, etc. And so if that is the case, and if there is an intelligent, wise god, He is certainly not using this method to communicate. And he does not appear to be using any other method to communicate. (Appearing on burnt toast is a poor form of communication.) In fact, the opposite is true. He seems to be the universe's Hide and Go Seek Champion for many years running. What reason would there be to believe in Christianity if you do not have any reasonable expectation the information you have available on Christianity is reliable? |
That is not free will. It would be akin to a man telling his girlfriend, "Do as you wish, but if you choose to leave me I will track you down and blow your brains out." When a man says
this we call him a psychopath and cry out for his imprisonment
and execution. (William C. Easttom II) |
Lighthouses are more helpful than
churches. (Benjamin Franklin) The way to see faith is to shut the eye of reason. (Benjamin Franklin) |
(Seth Andrews) |
Science has enabled the blind to see.
Christianity has not. Science has enabled the deaf to hear. Christianity has not. Science has enabled the dumb to speak. Christianity has not. Science has fed the multitudes. Christianity has not. Science has cured most of the worst plagues of humankind. Christianity has not. Science has enabled paraplegics to move about independently. Christianity has not. Science has uncovered the secrets of the universe. Christianity has not. Science has taken us to moon, to the planets, and the comets. Christianity has left us stuck on Earth. Christianity has promised us an eternal life, but has done nothing to extend our earthly lifespan. Science has doubled our life expectancy in the past 150 years. If immortality is ever achieved, it will be science, not Christianity, that will deliver it. |
What is referred to as The Old Testament is a combination of
hearsay, historical fact, fable, and a mixture of the various
cultures, legends and mystical information the Jewish people
collated over the many centuries of their existence in the
Middle East. The hearsay comes from their own longstanding word of mouth history before anything was ever actually written down. A dubious form of reference as to actual accuracy. Moreover, it is now well understood how much "cultural appropriation" was taken from so many other civilizations the Jewish people encountered. This is something every civilization tends to do. However, once the Jewish people actually began to record their history, they did make a great effort to keep this continuous recording as accurate as humanly possible. Outside the spin and editing that may have occurred as the Jewish people experienced so many Diasporas in their history. One thing archeologists have noticed is the relative accuracy of Old Testament accounts of regional Palestinian locations that have been lost to history. Especially in the millennium before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. As to the accuracy of historical events in the Old Testament, much of it is questionable. There appears to be considerable confusion as to dates, events, people, and even certain places. |
The only problem I have with religion is that it divides
humanity, slows human progress, uses fear tactics, makes
conclusions without deep examination, promotes homophobia, plays
a huge part in wars, and limits free thinking and freedom of
speech. The Christian Bible is full of
dreadful stories about genocide, murder, adultery, incest,
deceit, greed, arrogance, megalomania, sexual perversion, and
all sorts of despicable behavior. |
If one accepts the prevailing scientific understanding of the
development of the universe, yet also believes in one of the
major religions, then presumably a god sat idle for 13.7 billion
years - waiting as the stars, galaxies and planets formed. Then
it watched with complete and utter indifference as modern Homo
Sapiens evolved, struggled, and died for a further 150,000 -
200,000 years. Finally, a few thousand years ago, this god suddenly decided to reveal itself to several people in the most primitive, illiterate and remote portions of humanity in a completely unverifiable way - and then simply disappeared. |
Prayer has no place in public
schools, just like facts have no place in organized religion. (School superintendent on The Simpsons) |
If a theist quotes Psalm 14, "The fool hath said in his heart 'There is no God.'" be sure to remind them about Matthew 5:22: "But whosoever shall say 'Thou fool' shall be in danger of Hellfire." |
Do not pray in my school and I won't
think in your church. (unknown) |
There is no "theory" of evolution. In
science, the jargon usage of the word "theory" applies to any
properly demonstrated law, model, or understanding of how things
work. The truth is, evolution is a fact. There is so much evidence for it that any sane, educated person has simply got to believe in it. The only "theory" is just how it happened. |
Evolution is almost universally accepted
among those who understand it, and almost universally rejected by
those who do not.
(Richard Dawkins) Note: The Catholic Church accepts evolution. |
Do you want to know what the average
theists knowledge of evolution consists of? It consists of a single week of study in high school, in the 8th or 9th grade, as part of a Biology class, taught by a teacher who likely didn't understand it either. I've already lost track of the number of times I've heard the ignorant question, "Well, if we descended from apes, why are there still apes?" |
Evolution has been proven beyond any
doubt based on substantial fossil discoveries and analysis of the
DNA relationships among all living matter, pointing to a 3.8 billion
year process of natural selection of beneficial mutations. Our discovery of evolution is perhaps the single most important piece of evidence that Christianity is false. It is not possible to combine evolution and Christianity into a unified coherent theory. They do not mix. Christians who assert that they believe God used evolution to create mankind are not thinking on anything other than a superficial level. |
It is time for students of the
evolutionary process, especially those who have been misquoted
and used by the creationists, to state clearly that evolution is
fact, not theory. (Richard Lewontin) The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) |
The statement that organisms have
descended with modifications from common ancestors — the
historical reality of evolution — is not a theory. It is a fact,
as fully as the fact of the earth's revolution about the sun.
(Douglas J. Futuyma) |
One thing all scientists agree
upon is the fact of evolution itself. It is a fact that we are
cousins of gorillas, kangaroos, starfish, and bacteria.
Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun. It is not a
theory, and for pity's sake, let's stop confusing the
philosophically naive by calling it so. Evolution is a fact.
(Richard Dawkins) |
Today, all biologists
acknowledge that evolution is a fact. The term theory is no
longer appropriate except when referring to the various models
that attempt to explain how life evolves. It is important to
understand that the current questions about how life evolves in
no way implies any disagreement over the fact of evolution. (Neil Campbell) |
If your personal beliefs deny what is objectively true
about the world, then they are more accurately called personal
delusions. |
Evolution is an observed fact
supported by utterly massive credible evidence from multiple
fields of science, and explained by about the best supported
theory in all of science. Creationism and god are utterly unsupported by any credible evidence whatsoever; and directly contradicted by whatever evidence we do have. They are ultimately supported only by faith (including faith in the Bible). Faith can be demonstrated to be just about the most unreliable way you could possibly imagine to establish the probable accuracy of purported facts. There are thousands of purported gods throughout history and every "faithful" insists, "My god is the one true god and your god is a false god." |
Make no mistake, anyone who denies
the truth of evolution is denying reality. Creationists try
earnestly to discredit evolution because it conflicts with their
religious convictions. If they were doing real science, they'd
provide some sort of empirical, testable and falsifiable data
from experiments they've conducted and publish their findings in
peer-reviewed journals so other scientists can attempt to
replicate or falsify their findings.
Since they're unable to do this,
their only recourse is to take their case to ignorant
politicians, school board members and the public and lobby to
get their ideas taught to impressionable young minds. They want
children to be taught that there is some kind of controversy and
in order to have a properly balanced education they need to be
taught both sides of the debate. |
Many people believe that a
"theory" falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty;
above a
mere hypothesis, but below a law.
However, scientists do not use
the term that way. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution—or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter—they are not expressing reservations about its truth. |
In addition to the theory of
evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one
may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as “an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as ‘true.'” The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling. All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain. |
The junkyard tornado, sometimes known as Hoyle's fallacy, is an argument against abiogenesis, using a calculation of its probability based on false assumptions, as comparable to "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein." It was used originally by English astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) in his book The Intelligent Universe, where he tried to apply statistics to evolution and the origin of life. Similar reasoning were advanced in Darwin's time, and indeed as long ago as Cicero in classical antiquity. While Hoyle himself was an atheist, the argument has since become a mainstay in the rejection of evolution by religious groups. Hoyle's fallacy contradicts many well-established and widely tested principles in the field of evolutionary biology. As the fallacy argues, the odds of the sudden construction of higher lifeforms are indeed improbable. However, what the junkyard tornado postulation fails to take into account is the vast amount of support that evolution proceeds in many smaller stages, each driven by natural selection rather than by random chance, over a long period of time. The Boeing 747 was not designed in a single unlikely burst of creativity, just as modern lifeforms were not constructed in one single unlikely event, as the junkyard tornado scenario suggests. The theory of evolution has been studied and tested extensively by numerous researchers and scientists and is the most scientifically accurate explanation for the origins of complex life. |
You just gotta love the great flood fable. Despite the fact that Christianity seems to think itself the center of the universe, there were a dozen other civilizations at the time of Noah's flood who somehow managed to not be drowned or even mildly inconvenienced by the great flood that supposedly killed every man, woman, and animal on the planet. |
What happened to the infants when
the flood of Noah came?
When you envision a worldwide flood, do not picture a happy family floating on a boat. Instead, attempt to picture in your mind the image of a single crib with a single, terrified baby, slowly drowned by the cold, dark waters. What could that child have possibly done? |
I find it hilarious
Christians claim the entire world was drowned under water, but
the Greeks, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Chinese, Koreans, Olmecs,
Celts and so on were all going about their business without
noticing they were supposed to be drowning under mountains and
mountains of rainwater. You would think they could hardly have missed such a thing, but apparently, they did. |
Historical records from all those other civilizations show that at no time were their civilizations suddenly wiped off the face of the map by a global flood, or a slow re-population afterward. Nowhere in the world is there any evidence of such an event. Not archeological evidence, not geological evidence, not historical evidence. Nothing indicates a flood wiped out the world and drowned all the people on it except one eight-person family. |
The story of Noah's Ark was adapted
by the Hebrews from an earlier Babylonian myth called the
Epic of Gilgamesh. In many respects, the Babylonian flood
story - which is older than the biblical tale - is virtually
identical to the biblical clone, but describes different gods
and ark-building characters. Greek mythology also has a flood story. When Zeus decided to flood the Earth to punish an evil human race, Prometheus instructed Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha, to build a wooden ark. After the flood waters receded, they were the only surviving creatures on Earth. There is nothing new or original in Christianity. Its maxims, miracles, and mistakes, its doctrines, sacraments and ceremonies, were all borrowed. |
No story about Noah and his ark is complete without the bloated, gnarled, rotting carcasses of men, women, children, infants, fetuses, and other animals God murdered floating alongside and bouncing against the boat. |
The Bible describes Noah's Ark
as being 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 40 cubits, which
translates to approximately 450 feet long by 75 feet wide by
45 feet tall. Were this for real, the ark was four times as
large as the largest wooden ship built by any civilization
in the history of the world, and certainly out-sizes any
other ship built by any other ancient civilization that
existed during the second millennium BCE. The stresses navigating the open ocean place on large wooden ships were severe, and the larger the ship, the greater the stresses. There is a reason why the ships built by Bronze Age civilizations were much smaller than those built by post-Dark Age civilizations. To be blunt, the technical advances later civilizations developed to enable a large wooden ship to survive ocean travel just did not exist in the Bronze Age. In point of fact, no ship the size and weight we are discussing was known to have been built and successfully sailed until the year 1900 CE. These ships, built as I note in 1900, were nine-masted schooners some 300-feet long (150 feet shorter than the ark). They were so long they visibly undulated with waves and required large diagonal braces made of steel -- a substance unheard of in 2400 BCE, a time when bronze was the new big thing when it came to metal -- to keep it from breaking in half. And even with these reinforcements, the stress regularly caused gaps in the ship's hull; these schooners would leak like sieves and required constant bailing with automated pumps that ran -- quite literally -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And even with all this, these over-sized schooners were never taken out of sight of land, because if taken out onto the open sea they'd be battered to pieces by oceanic waves. They were used for coastal traffic only. The fact these large transport ships had so many problems was one reason why the world's navies turned to steel ships during the last years of the 19th Century and the years prior to World War I. And this was only 116 years ago. So we're supposed to believe a ship 4,000 years ahead of its time was built by Noah -- a man who was not a nautical engineer but a shepherd and farmer -- and survived the open seas during a catastrophic, raging flood. We're supposed to believe this 600-year-old farmer solved engineering problems, all by himself and without the use of modern metallurgy, construction techniques, or physics knowledge, that every navy in the world could not manage to beat 4,000 years later. And then, after the flood, the knowledge of how to build these super-ships was apparently forgotten because no other ship of this type would be built, ever. Disprove that something was a piece of Noah's Ark? I want to know when somebody proved such a thing ever existed. |
There have been thousands of gods that have been worshiped by humanity. But do not worry... your god is the one and only true god. |
The fact that a human being has to tell
you about the existence of God proves there is no God. If God will not reveal Himself to you in a way that is clear and unmistakable, it is absurd to think you deserve eternal torment for not "believing." |
If a perfect god with the ability to create a perfect world exists, and he has the desire for you to live there, you would already be there. He wouldn't need to run a bizarre, incredibly cruel test - the results to which he must by definition already know. |
What could possibly go wrong with living your life by following ancient laws written by anonymous authors in dead languages by ignorant, racist, sexist, superstitious, goat herding barbarians who believed everything they couldn't explain in the world was magic? |
It is blindingly obvious all
world religions are the product of extremely ignorant
(not stupid) near barbarians who didn't understand much
about the world around them and made up stories to
explain things the best they could. It is also obvious most theists believe in the god that is worshiped by the culture in which they grew up. And everybody is convinced their religion is the only "right" one. They can't all be right, but they can certainly all be wrong. It is also obvious the universe is just too vast and full of stuff not in any way related to humans to seriously believe it was all made just for us and we are the pinnacle of all creation. Religious beliefs of today are substantively the same as every other discarded superstitious belief of the past. If it is silly to believe in Zeus and Apollo and Thor and Osiris, it is just as silly to believe in Allah or Jehovah. Every single bit of proposed "evidence" for the existence of God has either been totally debunked or can be explained through other means. And it is obvious any justification for believing in God is part of an ever-shrinking "god of the gaps" argument. The Holy scriptures that supposedly provide the only source for knowledge about God are riddled with internal inconsistencies and blatantly wrong information about the world and world history. It is also blindingly obvious every depiction of God that is actually worshiped by anybody is riddled with logical inconsistencies. How can God be all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving if he permits massive suffering throughout the entire universe (and not just suffering caused by man's free will)? Why would an all-loving God set up a system whereby the vast, vast majority of his children would never get a chance to hear the "truth" and be saved, and thus be condemned to an eternity of torture? How can God simultaneously be immaterial and timeless ("pure mind") and still interact with the material world? "God moves in mysterious ways" and "God always answers prayers, but sometimes the answer is no" are just lame excuses to explain why God rarely (if ever) keeps his supposed promise to actually give the faithful what they ask for in faith. |
An imaginary God gives some people hope. This is true... but it is a false hope. It is no good for the future of mankind. God and religion must die in order for man to succeed. Imagine, for instance, a man wants to believe there is a diamond, the size of a refrigerator, buried somewhere in his yard. No doubt it would feel uncommonly good to believe this. Just imagine what would happen if he then followed the example of religious moderates and maintained this belief along pragmatic lines: When asked why he thinks there is a diamond in his yard that is thousands of times larger than any yet discovered, he says things like, "This belief gives my life meaning" or "This belief gives me hope" or "My family and I enjoy digging for it on Sundays" or "I wouldn't want to live in a universe where there was not a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in my back yard." Clearly these responses are inadequate. But they are worse than that. They are the responses of a madman or an idiot. Anyone who believes in God is delusional... just like the man who believes there is a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried somewhere in his yard. |
Pascal's
Wager
Pascal's Wager is the argument
that a rational person should live as though God exists and
seek to believe in God. Why? Well, their argument is if God does
actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss
(some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas they stand to
receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in
Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).
(3) Belief in God can
actually bring harm. I'll give one example, but
there are many. There are Christians in Nigeria who
are killing their own children because they believe in God
and their God said you shall not allow witches to live, and
they believe their children are witches. |
The Watchmaker Analogy In 1802, William Paley first proposed what would later become known as the Watchmaker Analogy. Basically, the analogy is this. Assume a person is walking through a forest. (Others like to say the person is walking along a beach. The exact location is, of course, irrelevant.) The person finds a watch and wonders about its origin. Did it accidentally come there because of its parts falling from the sky? The parts formed the watch completely by chance? Or was the watch a product of a designer, and simply dropped there? Theists will claim someone had organized it, planned it all as an engineer would. In other words, this watch must have had a designer. By that same "logic" a theist will therefore conclude the universe, being so complex, must also have been designed... it couldn't have happened by chance. They often like to use another analogy... that of the parts of a 747 could not have come together and formed the 747 by chance... it too must have had a designer. There are dozens and dozens of websites, maybe hundreds, that clearly debunk this analogy. I'll try to sum them up here in a nutshell.
For one, we know
watches are designed/created.
We know with 100%
certainty that humans exist and that they make watches.
We know watches don't come into
existence on their own.
Therefore it's perfectly reasonable to assume a human made
the watch. We know 747s are designed. We know they didn't come into existence on their own.
Here's a better analogy: If the only way a theist can prove the existence of their god is via a poor watchmaker analogy, they are admitting they have no valid evidence at all. |
When you consider God could have commanded anything he wanted - ANYTHING - the Ten Commandments have got to rank as one of the great missed moral opportunities of all time. How different history would have been had God clearly and unmistakably forbidden war, tyranny, taking over other people's countries, slavery, exploitation of workers, cruelty to children, wife-beating, stoning, treating women, or anyone as chattel or inferior beings. (Katha Pollitt) |
The central concept of Christianity is Jesus died on the cross as a final sacrifice to allow his followers to receive it vicariously and thus be washed of sin for entry into Heaven. But whereas a sacrifice means losing something permanently, Jesus lost nothing. He came back three days later good as new. So, in effect, there was no sacrifice. (He gave up a weekend.) However, the larger point to be made is why would a god require a blood sacrifice to forgive people of their sins? It smells suspiciously like something a Medieval mind would concoct, not something from the supreme creator of the universe. |
A god that does not manifest in reality
is indistinguishable from a god that does not exist. (Matt Dillahunty) |
Assume you are eating in a restaurant
and you begin choking on your food. A theist is
standing nearby. Do you want him to perform the Heimlich Maneuver on you or do you want him to pray for you? (Lawrence Krauss) |
God is an ever-receding pocket of
scientific ignorance, that is getting smaller and smaller and
smaller as time goes on. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) |
Gods are fragile things. They may be
killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. (Chapman Cohen) |
I contend we are both atheists. I
just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all of the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. (Stephen Roberts) |
To most Christians, the Bible is like a
software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just
scroll to the bottom and click 'I agree.' (Bill Maher) |
The best cure for Christianity is
reading the Bible. (Mark Twain) |
Properly read, the Bible is the most
potent force for atheism ever conceived. (Isaac Asimov) The road to atheism is littered with Bibles that have been read cover to cover. (Andrew Seidel) |
Many Christians claim God is the
actual author of the Bible and that humans merely transferred the
inspired words to papyri. If that was true, it would be expected the style of writing would be consistent throughout, similar, for example, to the similar writing style seen in each of Charles Dickens books. This is not the case. Many of the 66 Bible books have very different styles, indicating they were written by different people. The various writing styles indicate God did not inspire the writers, but rather that they used their own minds to create their stories. |
The Black Plague (aka The Black Death) From 1346 to 1353, a devastating pandemic hit Europe causing the death of approximately 75 to 200 million people. Entire families were wiped out and villages were turned into ghost towns. Houses became empty because all of the inhabitants had died. Fields and animals went untended causing crops to fail and the animals to die. Most people thought that a vengeful God caused this catastrophe and the remedies of choice were prayer, fasting, and mystical rituals. All of these were ineffective, of course, and when there seemed to be no end in sight, most people thought the world was coming to an end. The Black Plague offers a multi-faceted demonstration of the non-reality of the Christian faith. First, it convincingly showed the ineffectiveness of prayer, as God
ignored millions and millions of prayers of the suffering Europeans.
In short, the Black Plague is exactly what would be expected from evolution, a godless process that has no preference or partiality for humans. For an objective observer, it provides a compelling clue that Christianity, and all other religions, are false. |
A knowledge of the true
age of the earth and of the fossil record makes it
impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in
the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the
way that fundamentalists do. And if some of
the Bible is manifestly wrong, why should any the
rest of it be accepted automatically? (Francis Crick) |
Religion does three things
effectively. It divides people, it controls people, and it
deludes people. (Mary Alice McKinney) |
Religion is the most perverted
system ever shown on man. (Thomas Jefferson) |
Religious wars are nothing more than
people killing each other over who has the better imaginary friend. (Quote often attributed to Napolean Bonaparte, but it appears in none of his writings.) |
Religion is regarded by the common
people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as
useful. (Edward Gibbon) |
Religion is bullshit. Big-time,
major-league bullshit. (George Carlin) |
Religion is an incarnation of the
most childish superstitions. (Albert Einstein) |
Religion was invented when the first
con man met the first fool. (Mark Twain) |
Rational arguments do not usually
work on religious people. Otherwise there would be no religious
people. (Gregory House, M.D.) |
Religion is something left over from
the infancy of our intelligence, and it will eventually fade
away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines. (Bertrand Russell) |
Men never do evil so completely and
cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. (Blaise Pascal) |
The one thing I think is really
dangerous in many religions is that it gives a gold-plated
excuse to stop thinking. (Daniel Dennett) |
What worries me about religion is it
teaches people to be satisfied with not understanding. (Richard Dawkins) |
Religion can never reform mankind because religion is
slavery. (Robert Green Ingersoll) |
Convincing oneself that a belief is
true when there is no proof for it, and, in fact, there is
evidence against it, is deceiving the mind and judgment thereof. Yet again, religion meets the criteria for delusion. |
If you "found God" at the most vulnerable part of your life It is because the vulnerable are much easier to brainwash. |
SLAVE; noun.
1. a person entirely under the domination of some influence or person DELUSION; noun 1. an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument |
BRAINWASH; noun
1. a
method
for
systematically
changing
attitudes
or
altering
beliefs,
originated
in
totalitarian
countries
2. any method of controlled systematic indoctrination, especially one based on repetition or confusion BRAINWASH; verb 1. make (someone) adopt radically different beliefs by using systematic and often forcible pressure |
There is either a god who sends child rapists to rape children or there is a god who simply watches it and says, "When you are done I am going to punish you." If I could stop a person from raping a child, I would. That is the difference between me and your God. (Tracie Harris) Note: Theists will argue a god who prevents a rapist from raping is a violation of the rapists free will. Hogwash. What about the free will of the victim? His or her free will is now being violated. If someone's free will has to be violated, why not the rapist? Furthermore, and more importantly, stopping the rapist prevents them from acting upon their will, it is not a violation of it. Let's face it, since God allows rape, one must conclude He is either impotent, evil, or... imaginary. |
We're under some gross misconception
we're a good species, going somewhere important, and at the
last minute we'll correct our errors and God will smile on us. It is
delusion. (Farley Mowat) Since it is inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is they are all wrong. (Christopher Hitchens) |
Why Do People Believe in Gods? Unfortunately, humans are wired to believe in Gods. Evolution has programmed us to avoid death at all costs, and since almost every religion has promised a paradise in an after-life, we are attracted to claims that soften or erase the fear of death. We believe an after-life because it is an attractive option that appears on the surface to continue our existence. For many, this belief helps them cope with the fear of death. Abolishing this belief requires one to be completely intellectually honest with oneself. It is not easy for people to admit our consciousness ends with our death, yet this adds value to our life and stresses the importance of enjoying every moment. |
Christians are often hurt when atheists
attack their beliefs. It seems hateful. Being told there is no
evidence your
god exists, being told there is no evidence for a heaven, being told
there is no evidence you are a part of anybody's divine plan... well, these things hurt. You must try to realize atheists are against the belief, not the believer. Atheists do not hate you. They are simply against your sick, awful, abhorrent, abusive beliefs. They hate seeing your belief keeping you trapped in a state of constant delusion. |
I have no need for a god who does not
feed a hungry child today, but promises you a heaven tomorrow. (Kamal Haasan) |
We must question the story logic of
having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans,
and then blames them for his own mistakes. (Gene Roddenberry) |
Never argue with stupid people. They'll
drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. (Mark Twain) |
Never be a spectator of unfairness and
stupidity. The grave will supply plenty of time for silence. (Richard Hitchens) |
I know Christianity, especially
Catholicism, like the back of my hand. And my education has
given me the freedom to know it is completely absurd for me to
believe it. (Amber Heard) |
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God can either do nothing to stop
catastrophes, or he does not care to, or he does not exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely. (Sam Harris) |
It is far better to grasp the
universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however
satisfying and reassuring. (Carl Sagan) |
I'm sorry, I can't accept Jesus into my heart. I'm in a committed relationship with reality. |
Bone cancer in children? What's that
about? How dare him. How dare he create a world where there is such misery that is not our fault. It is not right. It is utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain? Because the god who created this universe, if it was created by God, is quite clearly a maniac, utter maniac. Totally selfish. We have to spend our life on our knees thanking him?! What kind of god would do that? Yes, the world is very splendid but it also has in it insects whose whole life cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind. They eat outwards from the eyes. Why? Why did you do that to us? You could easily have made a creation in which that didn't exist. It is simply not acceptable. It is perfectly apparent he is monstrous. Utterly monstrous and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish him, life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living, in my opinion. (Stephen Fry) |
If someone went to their doctor, would
they want that doctor to use a 2,000-year-old medical journal to help
diagnose their illness, or would they want their doctor to use a
medical journal
from the current year? The current year, of course. But some of these same people have NO
problem getting guidance from a 2,000+ year-old book of myth and
fairy tales. |
How can an atheist deny God? It is easy. The same way a Christian denies everyone else's god. Atheism: Having the courage to tell people you are not afraid of their imaginary friend. |
I think rape, slavery, child abuse, and
genocide are always wrong. And just like that, I am more moral than your god. Organized religion is like organized crime. It preys on people's weaknesses, generates huge profits for its operators, and is almost impossible to eradicate. |
Believing in God and other supernatural
beings and phenomena does NOT make you "open-minded." It means you lack knowledge in the subjects of science, critical thinking, and human belief. Religious people will adamantly
believe the same things over a lifetime, even in the face of
conflicting evidence. |
The Genesis story is just one
that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe
of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status
than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the
world was created from the excrement of ants. (Richard Dawkins) |
If my mom had lived, she would
be 101 years old today. I loved my mom tremendously. We were
very, very close. When you claim that there is an
omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent power in the universe,
you are saying there was an intelligent force in the
universe that decided my mom should be paralyzed and suffer
the last four years of her life. I can take the fact that happened to her randomly. I can take the fact that the universe works that way. But trying to postulate that some sort of being specifically allowed my mom to suffer, is more horrific than any hell or any emptiness in the universe that you can possibly conjure up. (Penn Jillette) |
Do dogs to go Heaven? Only pets, not wild animals? If only humans go to Heaven, how far back? Homo Erectus? Australopithecus? Only people after Jesus? Not Abraham, Moses, or Elijah, then? Which "you" will be in Heaven? Senile you with dementia? Middle-crisis you? (Richard Dawkins) |
Atheism is not a solution for improving
our world. Instead, we will need to replace harmful dogma and superstition with humanism and skepticism. Atheism is just a by-product of this. |
Religion - You're basically killing each
other to see who's got the better imaginary friend. "If you do not love me, I'll make sure you burn forever." If It is creepy when a man says it to his girlfriend, why is it beautiful when a god says it? |
The only people who are mad at you for
speaking the truth are those people who are living a lie. Keep speaking the truth. Whenever one person stands up and says, "Wait a minute. This is wrong." it helps other people do the same thing. |
God DOES exist! Look in the mirror and you'll see him! That is why his opinions are yours. That is why only parts of the Bible you like are true. This is why he knows you so well. He is you... and he only exists in your head. |
There is no evidence for God and that is the simple
truth. If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. Oh, there might be some other nonsense in its place, but not the exact nonsense. However, if all of science were wiped
out, it would still be true and eventually we'd find a way to figure
it all out again. |
The question I get asked by religious
people all the time is, "Without God, what is to stop you from raping
all you want?" And my answer is, I do rape all I want. And the amount I want to rape is zero. I also murder all I want. The amount I want to murder is also zero.
The fact that these people think that if
they didn't have this person watching over them, they would go on
killing, raping rampages is the most self-damming thing I can
imagine. |
Insanity is believing your
hallucinations are real. Religion is believing other people's hallucinations are real. |
If God gave man free will, how can
everything be a part of God's plan? If everything is part of God's plan, how can man have free will? |
Atheism - believing in one less god than you
do. Seriously, that is all there is to it. |
Large groups of like-minded people
who come together often undergo a euphoric experience through
the release of oxytocin in the brain, much like a drug. This what the theist feels in church, not God. |
The idea of God was not a lie but a
device of the unconscious which needed to be decoded by
psychology. A personal God was nothing more than an exalted
father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile
yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and
fairness and for life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshiped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness. Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. It had promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity had come of age, however, it should be left behind. |
It is okay to appreciate the food on
your table, but thanking God for that food implies that he
chooses who gets to eat and who does not. Why would he choose to ignore all of the people in the world who die of starvation each and every day, while providing you with nourishment? Are you somehow superior to those people? Please think before participating in mindless traditions. |
Knock Knock "Who is it?" "It is me. Jesus. Let me in." "Why, Jesus? Why do you want in?" "I want to save you." "Save me from what?" "I want to save you from what I'll do to you if you do not let me in." |
When I was a kid my
parents would fill my head with nonsense; Santa Claus, the
Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy... But now that I am older, I do not fall for that shit anymore. Thank God!
If gods do exist, they are trying really hard not to be found and I think we should respect that. |
Claiming that someone else's
marriage is against your religion is like being angry at
someone for eating a donut because you are on a diet.
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"An Eskimo hunter asked the
local missionary priest: "If I did not know about God and
sin, would I go to Hell?" "No," conceded the priest. "Not if you did not know." "Then why," asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?" |
There's no Hell mentioned in the Old
Testament. The punishment of the dead is not specified there.
It is only with gentle Jesus, meek and mild, that the idea of
eternal torture for minor transgressions is introduced. (Christopher Hitchens) |
Atheists are often accused of
blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit. When the
atheist examines, denounces, or satirizes the gods, he is not
dealing with persons but ideas. He is incapable of insulting
God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being. (G. W. Foote) |
The basic formula of Christianity is that every person is born with the original sin of Adam and is therefore preemptively sentenced to Hell at birth. So even if this person leads a sinless life, the original sin remains and is sufficient to merit eternal punishment. It should be acknowledged that some Protestant denominations renounce the idea of original sin, but, in effect, it makes little difference because everybody commits sins in their lives and thus becomes deserving of Hell. Christianity provides a means to overcome the problem that it has created by allowing believers to transfer their punishment over to Jesus, accepting him as their savior. Although ridiculous, this seems to be a fair game. However, the devil is in the details. Consider the person who grows up in India, for example, and follows the Hindu religion his entire life. What is his or her eternal fate? Some fundamentalist
Christians will say that person will go to Hell. Other more
moderate Christians will say they will be granted a chance
to accept Jesus after death. How can a person be faulted
for following the religion they were raised to believe
and the one that ties them to their culture and family and
friends? On the other hand, how can it be fair that
they receive a chance after death, when it becomes obvious
that Jesus is the real savior? This problem is completely unnecessary. God could have convincingly communicated his existence and the plan of salvation to all of mankind, expunging all false religions. This would have placed everybody on an equal basis, with an equal chance for salvation. The fact that he did not do this is good evidence for his non-existence. |
I refuse to believe or worship a God who is the primary cause of conflict in the world, preaches racism, sexism, homophobia, and ignorance, and then sends me to Hell if I am "bad." |
God sacrificing his only son,
knowing he would resurrect him shortly thereafter, does not
sound like much of a sacrifice to me. How long was he "dead?" Three days? Jesus gave up his weekend for your sins. |
How can 41% of Americans believe
Jesus is coming back? There's absolutely no evidence whatsoever to show he was here in the first place. |
Religion - the practice of training your mind to ignore evidence, logic, and reason, while being able to believe in fairy tales based upon faith alone... and being proud of it rather than ashamed. |
Religious moderation is the direct
result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings? (Sam Harris) |
120 million of us place the Big Bang
2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to
brew beer. (Sam Harris) |
It is terrible that we all die and lose
everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings
suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be
directly attributed to religion - to religious hatreds, religious
wars, religious taboos, and religious diversions of scarce resources
- is what makes the honest criticism of religious faith a moral and
intellectual necessity. Unfortunately, expressing such criticism places the nonbeliever at the margins of society. By merely being in touch with reality, he appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors. (Sam Harris) |
Religion Promotes
Tribalism Infidel, heathen, heretic. Religion divides insiders from outsiders. Rather than assuming good intentions, adherents often are taught to treat outsiders with suspicion. "Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers," says the Christian Bible. "They wish that you disbelieve as they disbelieve, and then you would be equal; therefore take not to yourselves friends of them," says the Koran (Sura 4:91). At best, teachings like these discourage or even forbid the kinds of friendship and intermarriage that help clans and tribes become part of a larger whole. At worst, outsiders are seen as enemies of God and goodness, potential agents of Satan, lacking in morality and not to be trusted. Believers might huddle together, anticipating martyrdom. When simmering tensions erupt, societies fracture along sectarian fault lines.
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Religion Anchors
Believers to the Iron Age Concubines, magical incantations, chosen people, stonings.... The Iron Age was a time of rampant superstition, ignorance, inequality, racism, misogyny, and violence. Slavery had God's sanction. Women and children were literally possessions of men. Warlords practiced scorched earth warfare. Desperate people sacrificed animals, agricultural products, and enemy soldiers as burnt offerings intended to appease dangerous gods. Sacred texts including the Bible, Torah and Koran all preserve and protect fragments of Iron Age culture, putting a god's name and endorsement on some of the very worst human impulses. Any believer looking to excuse his own temper, sense of superiority, warmongering, bigotry, or planetary destruction can find validation in writings that claim to be authored by God. Today, humanity's moral consciousness is evolving, grounded in an ever deeper and broader understanding of the Golden Rule. But many conservative believers can't move forward. They are anchored to the Iron Age. This pits them against change in a never-ending battle that consumes public energy and slows creative problem solving. |
Religion Makes a Virtue
out of Faith Trust and obey for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus. So sing children in Sunday schools across America. The Lord works in mysterious ways, pastors tell believers who have been shaken by horrors like brain cancer or a tsunami. Faith is a virtue.
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Religion Teaches
Helplessness This attitude harms society at large as well as individuals. When today's largest religions came into existence, ordinary people had little power to change social structures either through technological innovation or advocacy. Living well and doing good were largely personal matters. When this mentality persists, religion inspires personal piety without social responsibility. Structural problems can be ignored as long as the believer is kind to friends and family and generous to the tribal community of believers. |
Christians: "The church
does not do any harm." What? Are you kidding me? We have, first of all, Christians in Nigeria who are killing their own children because God said you shall not allow witches to live, and they believe their children are witches. We have Christians in Uganda who are passing laws to make it a life sentence to partake in homosexuality. We have Christians in Africa telling people in Aids-ridden nations not to wear condoms. We have Christians here in the United States who do not believe in women's rights. We have Christians who are
trying to trample the rights of gays. Nah, religion does not do any harm. |
Catholic Church
Practiced Castration The church needed soprano singers to voice their scores and at some point didn't want to rely strictly on prepubescent boys who quickly outgrew their high pitch skills. Women could not be used because they were to remain silent in church. So their solution? Castrate boys before they reached puberty so that their voices would remain in the soprano range for life. They were called castrati. This butchery continued for hundreds of years, ending only in the 19th Century. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castrato The Catholic Church's involvement in the castrato phenomenon has long been controversial, and there have recently been calls for it to issue an official apology for its role. As early as 1748, Pope Benedict XIV tried to ban castrati from churches, but such was their popularity at the time that he realized that doing so might result in a drastic decline in church attendance. This unfortunate practice
revealed three flaws in Christian philosophy - a denigration
of women, a callous attitude to performing damaging and
irreversible surgery on minor children, and a reluctance to
issue a necessary apology. |
There's little harm in
just believing in gods. The problem is that just believing
in gods is rare. It always comes with baggage. There's real harm in teaching nonsense in school science classrooms. There's real harm in attempting to limit access to health care. There's real harm in trying to control people's sex lives and to justify homophobia. There's real harm to challenge verified and objective scientific findings simply because they contradict a known religious belief. There's real harm in victimizing people who do not believe the same thing you do. That is the the kind of thing that so often comes as "extras" with god-belief. If we take these positions as being caused (at least in part) by god-beliefs, we should encourage people to get rid of those false beliefs. |
Theists often joke
there are "no atheists in foxholes." And yet if this same theist is choking in a restaurant, I suspect they would want someone to perform the Heimlich Maneuver on them, instead of simply praying for them. And of course we know why. We have evidence the Heimlich Maneuver actually works. We can test it and verify it and repeat the technique, arriving at similar results. As mentioned many times above, there's no evidence prayers are heard, let alone answered, by any deity. The truth is, there should be no sincere Christians in foxholes. Why? Because a sincere Christian wouldn't need the added protection of a foxhole. They could stand up and pray for their god to protect them. |
As religion is now
practiced and science is now practiced, there is no
intersection between the two. That is for certain. And it’s
not for want of trying. Over the centuries, many people -
theologians as well scientists - have tried to explore
points of intersection. And anytime anyone has declared that
harmony has risen up, it is the consequence of religion
acquiescing to scientific discovery. In every single case.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) |
The meaning of my life is
whatever I want it to be. I am free of anyone or anything
else's determination of my purpose.
- Carl Sagan |
A lot of theists are under the
impression not believing in a god means life lacks
"purpose." However, if your idea of "purpose" is to be the eternal servant of a Cosmic Puppetmaster, you really do not have much of a purpose at all, do you? |
"God" is never an explanation. It is a placeholder for those lacking the courage, or the intellectual honesty to say, "I do not know." Furthermore, "God" as an answer simply appeals to one mystery with an even bigger mystery. For example, who or what created God? Who or what created that which created God, ad infinitum? If God is "infinite" or "timeless" then you can say that about the universe too. Otherwise that is called special pleading. |
Religion allows people to
believe by the millions, what would be insanity for any
single individual to believe in. It is an enduring mass
delusion, and nothing good can come out of that. Indeed, people's religious beliefs can never be isolated. The dogmas and tenets of their religion inevitably infects their every day actions - sometimes for the good, and sometimes for the bad. But any good that comes out of religion is probably not caused by the religion itself - they merely credit religion for it, when it is almost always attributable to their own innate goodness - such as charity and compassion. However, for a good person to do truly horrific, indeed insane acts - that takes religion, or a similar dogmatic belief system with the same attributes as religion-like flying planes full of people into buildings also full of people. Non-belief can never do that. Not only can such an act be justified by religion, allowed by religion, but an act that our common sense should tell us to be horrific and highly immoral, instead becomes blessed. At the same time, religion demands credit for our morality. Indeed it is a standard argument among Christian apologists to demand it be accepted as an axiom, the notion that without their religion, we would not have morality. Religion steals away our morality, the very best part of us, claims it as its own, uses it as a club to beat us down, and then offers us as a crutch, the very same morality religion stole from us in the first place. Religion is never content to stay within the confines of its willing believers. It is a poison that spreads across the land, striving to infect anyone and everyone, but attacking first those who are most vulnerable - children, those who are broken and at the end of their rope. "Eat of the Lotus" its whispers, and all will be well. Just surrender your critical faculties. Religion demands that people not think for themselves, not question what it demands to be true - you are enjoined, indeed commanded under pain of eternal damnation, to set aside your reason, your logical quest for evidence - and just believe. This is called "faith" and is held as a virtue - indeed, the only virtue that counts, when in fact it is merely unquestioning credulity. Faith is NOT a virtue. It it the glorification of voluntary ignorance. Nothing good can come of religion. Indeed, people learn to devalue evidence and reason, and it is small wonder that many people apply this to the political realm as well, even as religion pounds on the statehouse doors, demanding to become the law of the land - and it will never be satisfied with anything less than absolute control of society. |
And yet people ask what's the harm of
religion - and we cite all these different problems with religion:
the global gag-rules and things like that, the oppression of
different people, etc. But there's a bigger harm with religion, and it is the reason why I am outspoken about it. It is because the average feel-good Johnny-in-the-pew person who is decent and kind and loving and good to their family and generally a good person to be around has polluted their mind to the point where they are unable to take credit for their accomplishments and responsibility for their actions. They are unable to interact on an interpersonal level with the people around them, to build a community in this cooperative society where that is absolutely essential. They have got this mentality that they are worthless without God. Matt Dillahunty |
I'll live for me and for other real
people. Until some god gives me five minutes of their time... they
deserve none of mine. Matt Dillahunty |
If merely observing the beauty of the outside world is sufficient evidence of your god, then by that very same standard it is sufficient to prove the existence of every god. Furthermore, and more importantly, if beauty such as this is attributed to a god, then is not that same god responsible for natural disasters? Tornadoes, for example, that kill innocent babies? Lightning strikes kill approximately 2,000 people each year, worldwide. Thousands more are severely injured. How about Hurricane Katrina back in 2005? An estimated 1,800 people lost their lives with that one event. Of course, that is nothing compared to the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. It is estimated that more than 225,000 people died that day. |
There is no such thing as a single,
global Christianity, but instead many different local
Christianities, which often do not recognize each other, accept
each other, or even understand each other. (David Eller) |
If this is your god He is not very
impressive. He has many psychological problems. He is insecure. He demands worship every seven days. He goes out and creates faulty humans and then blames them for
his own mistakes. He is a pretty poor excuse for a Supreme
Being. (Spock - The God Thing, Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek script) |
When a man is freed of religion, he
has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life. (Sigmund Freud) |
Ignorance is a virus. Once it starts spreading, it can only be cured by reason. For the sake of humanity, we must be that cure. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) |
I do not deny you your right to believe whatever you like, but I have the right to point out It is ignorant and dangerous for as long as your baseless superstitions keeps killing people. | If God himself was not able to render human nature sinless, what right did he have to punish man for being sinless? |
When God put the Tree of
Knowledge in the center of the garden, did he know what
would happen? If he did, he set us up for failure. If he didn't, he is not all-knowing. |
How could Adam and Eve know eating the fruit was "wrong" if it took eating the fruit for them to get the knowledge of what "right and wrong" means? |
Religion is a Devastating Virus. It spreads to the children of theists, without the child having a say or knowing better, essentially brainwashing them. It teaches people to ignore logic - that it is okay to accept something for which there is no evidence, as truth. It triggers irrational emotions of anger and superiority while allowing them to be protected from people calling the virus of their beliefs ludicrously stupid. It harms people the same way verbal abuse does, in the constant threat of Hell if you are "bad," which is ingrained into the person's thinking, using fear to control them. Religion is poisonous. |
At the end of a
televised debate, both debaters were asked one final question: "What would make you
change your mind?" And therein lies all the difference in the world. |
The problem with faith is that it really
is a conversation stopper. Faith is a declaration of immunity to the
powers of conversation. It is a reason why you do not have
to give reasons, for what you believe. (Sam Harris) |
Contrary to popular belief, God does not
reside in the clouded sky. He merely dwells in clouded minds. |
Religion. It is like science, except
without the facts or evidence. Oh wait, we call that fiction. |
You can't convince a believer of
anything, for their belief is not based on evidence, It is based on a
deep-seated need to believe. (Carl Sagan) |
Namely, of the gods of
the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off
from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of
the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
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If a man have a
stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his
father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have
chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. Deuteronomy 21:18-21 |
But if this thing be
true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you. Deuteronomy 22:20-21 |
Who were the people of biblical times?
(1000 BC - 700 AD)
Those are the people that wrote your Bible. |
But before they lay
down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the
house round, both old and young, all the people from every
quarter: And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them. And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him, And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly. Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof. Genesis 19:4-8 |
Religion has no place in society
today. We are now capable of scientific exploration. The more we rely up a magical fairy in the sky, the further behind we are going to be. |
Teaching kids to ask magical beings
to solve their problems creates irresponsible adults who fail to
find solutions. Do not take it personally. I reject all gods, not just yours. |
Suggesting I hate people with
religion because I hate religion is like suggesting I hate
people with cancer because I hate cancer. (Rick Gervais) |
Your ignorance of scientific
knowledge is not evidence a god exists. Do not settle for belief in fairy tales just because you are overwhelmed by questions for which you have no answers. |
Twinkle Twinkle Little God Science tells us you are a fraud Existing in the minds of fools Stay out of the public schools |
Theists: God can do
anything! Yea? Have him say hello. Theist: Evidence for God is everywhere! Other theists: There's no evidence for God. It's something you have to take on faith. |
Sky Daddy is fake Big Brother is real But give each the chance And your money they'll steal |
How Did Animals Get Their Stripes?
Science: Over a long period of
time, any one animal developed small changes in their coloring. Some
color changes allowed these animals to survive better than others of
their species. These small changes accumulated over time, resulting
in a striped coloring scheme that helped that animal survive and
reproduce. Which explanation seems more likely? |
How Can You Argue with a Fundamentalist About Dinosaurs?
The short answer is, you cannot. In an ideal world, fundamentalist beliefs about dinosaurs and evolution would fade into obscurity, driven out of the sunlight by the overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. In the world we live in, though, school boards in conservative regions of the U.S. are still trying to either remove references to evolution in science textbooks, or add passages about "intelligent design" (a well-known smokescreen for fundamentalist views about evolution). Clearly, with regard to the existence of dinosaurs, we still have a long way to go to convince fundamentalist Christians of the value of science. |
The God of the Old Testament is
arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust unforgiving
control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a
misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal,
filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic,
capriciously malevolent bully. (Richard Dawkins) |
It turned out I was pretty good in
science. But again, because of the small budget, in science
class we couldn't afford to do experiments in order to prove
theories. We just believed everything. Actually, I think that
class was called Religion. Religion class was always an easy
class. All you had to do was suspend the logic and reasoning you
were being taught in all the other classes. (George Carlin) |
The fact that a believer might be
happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact
a drunken man might be happier than a sober one. (George Bernard Shaw) |
How
safe would your loved ones be if Christians programmed a robot to enforce God's Will from the Bible? Task: Kill an unmarried pregnant women Authorization Code: Genesis 38:24 Task: Kill all infants of those who show contempt to God Authorization Code: 2 Samuel 12:14
Task: Kill all homosexuals Task: Kill all police,
firefighters and others who work 7th day Task: Kill all
uncircumcised males Task: Kill all who curse
their parents Task: Kill all who commit
adultery Task: Kill all residents of
any town if they worship other gods |
If science and education and logic is able to destroy your faith, It is not God you are praying to, It is ignorance. |
Christian: "What will it take to convince you God exists?" Atheist: "I am not sure... but God must certainly know what it would take to convince me... and apparently he has decided not to put forth that evidence or information." That is worth repeating. God must certainly know what it would take to convince a person of His existence, and if He deliberately fails to produce the necessary evidence, and then convicts the person for failing to accept him, whose fault is that? |
It is often hard to accept the answer "We do not fully know yet," but It is a much, much better answer than "I do not know... so it must be God." | The only difference between God and Adolf Hitler is God is more proficient at genocide. |
The very concept of “gods” is
completely and utterly ridiculous and obviously the product
of ignorant superstition dreamed up by people living
thousands of years ago who knew very little about the world
around them. Man used to believe the Earth was the center of the universe and the entire cosmos revolved around it. We now know, of course, this is not true. This was just something dreamed up by ignorant (not stupid) people who knew very little about the universe and our place in it. Man used to believe everything in the universe was composed of earth, air, fire, and water. We now know, of course, this is not true. This was just something dreamed up by ignorant (not stupid) people who knew very little about the universe and our place in it. Man used to believe diseases were caused by “bad air” and mental illness was the result of demonic possession. We now know, of course, this is not true. This was just something dreamed up by ignorant (not stupid) people who knew very little about the universe and our place in it. We know so much more about the universe and our place in it today than we did thousands of years ago. This isn't to say we know or understand everything, of course, but we certainly know and understand enough to abandon all of those ridiculous ideas of the past that were obviously the product of ignorant superstition dreamed up by people living thousands of years ago who knew very little about the universe and our place in it. And yet, many people cling to the concept of “gods” despite the obvious fact that it was also the product of ignorant superstition dreamed up by people living thousands of years ago who knew very little about the universe and our place in it. This concept gives them comfort, it gives them hope, they are indoctrinated to believe in it from a very young age. The very concept of “God” has been redefined along the way to supposedly make it impossible to ever prove God doesn't exist! Instead of a God who regularly intervenes with human affairs and promise to give faithful followers “whatsoever they ask for,” God is now some sort of immaterial “pure spirit” that exists “outside of time and space” and is completely mysterious and utterly ineffable and unknowable undetectable in any way. And it's that last point in particular that goes to the heart of the question as to why there is no evidence for the existence of God will ever be found. In addition to the fact “God” is such an absurd concept to begin with, theistic apologists have spent thousands of years carefully redefining the concept of God purposely to make it impossible for there ever to be any objective evidence of its existence. Sure, they claim the particular God they worship has said and done and promised to do all sorts of miraculous things, but the moment somebody asks for any actual evidence of these things, suddenly God is all “mysterious,” “unknowable,” “undetectable” and “ineffable.” And so, if the people who claim to believe in God don't think it's possible to ever have any evidence of its existence, why should I expect there to ever be such evidence? |
There is no evidence
for gods. And no, there is no specific criteria
as to what this evidence might be. Science deals with the natural and god-claims tend to be supernatural. Science does not even attempt to, and could not, verify the existence of the supernatural, or what the supernatural can do. Science does not have a mechanism by which it can do that. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If my friend Jennifer tells me she adopted a cat, I can accept and believe that claim at face value. I already have evidence Jennifer likes cats and has owned cats in the past. I have evidence people adopt cats all of the time. A friend telling me she adopted a cat is not an extraordinary claim. However, if Jennifer tells me she adopted a hippopotamus and it is currently living in her bathtub, I almost certainly would require evidence before I could believe and accept that claim. It would seem more likely she is just pulling my leg. |
If you wake up tomorrow morning
thinking that saying a few Latin words over your pancakes is
going to turn them into the body of Elvis Presley, you've lost
your mind. But if you think more or less the same thing about a cracker and the body of Jesus, you are just a Catholic. (Sam Harris) |
We could be 1,500 years ahead of
where we are now if it
hadn't been for the Church dragging science back by its
coattails and burning our best minds at the stake. (Catherine Fahringer) (Just imagine how better off we would all be, and what life would be like if we had a little science center on every other corner, instead of a church.) |
If the God of the Bible was real, I
consider him an immoral thug and I wouldn't worship him.
If some other God exists, I
wouldn't worship that God either because I believe worship
itself, this idea of devout reverence to an individual, is
fundamentally immoral. |
It has been estimated that
tens of thousands of people were executed for witchcraft in
Europe and the American colonies over several hundred years.
The exact number is, of course, unknown, but modern
conservative scholars estimate the number to be around
40,000 – 50,000. Others believe that over a period of 300
years, the number is greater than 100,000. And God saw it all happen. And did nothing. (Free will, right theists?) There's no such thing as witchcraft. There's no such thing as witches. If you could have done something to save these people, wouldn't you have done so? God didn't. |
During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in a lazy and indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. The Church worked hard at it night and day for nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean of their foul blood. Then it was discovered there was no such thing as witches and never had been. One does not know whether to
laugh or to cry. |
Let me see if I understand this
story: A cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever with eternal happiness if you symbolically eat his flesh, and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, while he will remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because at the dawn of time a woman who was magically created from a male rib was convinced by a talking snake to eat fruit from a magical tree. Am I missing anything? |
The supreme creator - an
all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving being that is capable of spinning
universes into existence - needs a day off to rest. Then, as is noted in Isaiah 45:7, he intentionally creates evil in this world, knowing in his omniscience that it will unleash unimaginable and unspeakable suffering. Then when his imperfect creatures, who he created to be imperfect, succumb to evil, he goes on genocidal rages, wiping out tribes, first-born babies, and at one point drowning an entire planet, as a means of correcting his own mistakes, of which he is supposedly incapable. Then when none of those solutions work, he decides the best plan of action is to mysteriously impregnate a virgin to give birth to a god-man son, who will ultimately die in a barbaric and torturous blood sacrifice to prevent people from going to a hell that he created in the first place…AND IT STILL DOES NOT WORK. Okay, let's take a look at that son. His singular mission is to rescue people from an eternity of merciless agony; a pretty important mission by any standard, and one you would want to articulate as clearly and succinctly as possible. He chooses to convey this message in a series of parables, proverbs, and metaphors so profoundly vague and easily misinterpreted that his followers will spend the next two millennia arguing about their true meaning. He performs genuine miracles like healing the sick and raising the dead but apparently those are insufficient to convince people of his authority so he resorts to cheap tricks like turning water into wine, providing lunch for the multitudes, and walking on water. (Just in case you weren't convinced by that corpse who is now doing the Macarena.) He is the son of God yet seems to be in a perpetually foul mood. He curses and kills an innocent fig tree, tells his disciples to steal a donkey for him, and publicly disrespects his own mother. (You're god. Maybe stop brooding for five minutes and tell a few jokes.) He tells people he came not to bring peace but to bring a sword, that they should give up all their possessions, abandon their families, and follow him exclusively. Not exactly a family values platform, is it? He spends the night before his PREORDAINED death - which he knows is the act he was conceived for in order to rescue all of humanity - asking himself for a way to get out of it. He also tells his disciples that, although he is about to leave them, he'll return before any of them die. Still waiting... This is "the plan?" Iron Age messiah myths depicting irritable, error-prone, feckless "gods" that seem incapable of solving the problems they, for some reason, created in the first place? |
Let's just grant the possibility
that there is a Creator God, who's omniscient, who occasionally
authors books. And He is going to give us a book - the most
useful book. He is a loving God, He is a compassionate God, and
He is going to give us a guide to life. He has a scribe and the
scribe's going to write it down. What's going to be in that book? I mean, just think of how good of a book it would be if it were authored by an omniscient deity! There is not a single line in the Bible or the Quran that could not have been authored by a first century person. There is not one reference to anything - there are pages and pages about how to sacrifice animals, and keep slaves, and who to kill and why. There's nothing about electricity, there's nothing about DNA, there's nothing about infectious disease, the principles of infectious disease. There's nothing particularly useful, and there's a lot of iron age barbarism and superstition in there. This is not a candidate book. (Sam Harris) |
The truth is that religion, as we
speak of it - Islam, Christianity, Judaism - is based on the
claim God dictates certain books. He does not code software,
he does not produce films, he does not score symphonies, he is an
author. And this claim has achieved credibility because these
books are deemed so profound they could not have possibly been
written by human authors. Please consider for a moment how differently we treat scientific claims and texts and discoveries. Isaac Newton went into isolation for 18 months starting in the year 1665. When he came out of his solitude he had invented calculus; he had discovered the laws of motion and universal gravitation; he had single-handedly created the field of optics. No one thinks this was anything but a man's labor. And it took 200 hundred years of continuous ingenuity on the part of some of the smartest people who ever lived to substantially improve upon Newton's work. How difficult would it be to improve the Bible? Anyone in this room could improve this supposedly inerrant text scientifically, historically, ethically, spiritually - in moments. If God loves us and wanted to
guide us with a book of morality, It is very strange to have
given us a book that supports slavery, that demands that we
murder people for imaginary crimes like witchcraft. The true
basis for hope in our world is open-ended conversation; And
religion has shattered our world into competing moral
communities. What we have to convince ourselves of, is that love
and curiosity is enough for us - and intellectual honesty is the
guardian of that. |
Christians are obligated to accept the
fact God first chose to minister and support only the Jews, and
to ignore all others, and even to assist the Jews in plundering the
neighboring gentile populations. At the time there were large civilizations in Asia, Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Australia. People living in these areas did not learn anything about Jesus until centuries later, some even until around 1,500 years later. To consider this fact is sobering. Why would a god do this, ignore humans for tens of thousands of years only to present himself solely to a desert tribe on a tiny spot of land? A much more reasonable explanation? The Jewish people invented a god that favored them, just like nearly every other culture that has existed. |
I have examined all the known
superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular
superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all
alike founded on fables and mythologies. (Thomas Jefferson) |
I refuse to believe in a god that
would send me to Hell just for not believing in him. (Bob Snuka) |
Believing there is no God gives me
more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty,
sex, Jell-o, and all the other things I can prove and that make
this life the best life I will ever have. (Penn Jillette) |
So far as I can remember, there is
not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. (Bertrand Russell) |
People who do not like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs. |
The argument is not evolution vs. creation. It is logic and reason vs. superstition and ignorance. |
I know an invisible giant with
superhuman powers. He made the universe in a week and he
kills people who do not worship him. His name is Norman and he
is
a talking pink squirrel. |
The most powerful nation on Earth
has millions of literate, educated citizens who actually believe
a talking snake tempted a woman to eat a magic apple that caused
her to be ashamed of her genitals? |
Several fact-challenged televangelists
have claimed Harry Potter books promote witchcraft and satanic
worship. In essence It is just a jealous outlash. The Harry
Potter series is far better fiction than their bible, and Harry is
much more likable than their completely deranged, hate-mongering
god! (EA Miller) |
Common sense should tell you gods
are the creation of man. Never mind what's written in the holy
books. The writing of fiction is as old as writing itself. In fact, I'd go further and say fiction (the ability to fool others) is older than the written world, maybe older even than the spoken word. (Anthony W. Allsop) |
I have never, in all my life, not for
one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is
that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which
does not include any aspect of the supernatural and which I find
totally satisfying. I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so. (Isaac Asimov) |
Adolf Hitler dispatched Jews to the
concentration camps and gas chambers for no reason other than their
ethnic identity. This was a temporal punishment; it sometimes
lasted only a few days. God, on the other hand, is prepared to send good, well-accomplished, and generous people to a place of everlasting punishment and torture for the 'crime' of not believing in something for which no credible evidence exists. The god of the Bible is, in effect, worse than Hitler. Furthermore, the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution states that "cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted." It should be obvious that placing a person in Hell is both cruel and unusual. Consequently, Christianity violates the United States Constitution. |
Ted Bundy, a convicted murderer of over
30 young women, confessed his sins before his execution and because
of this, according to Christian doctrine, was sent directly to
Heaven. (See next item below.) On the other hand, Andrew Carnegie, a well-known atheist and philanthropist who donated $350 million ($76 billion in current dollars) to charities, foundations, and universities, was sent to Hell. It is hard to imagine anything more unjust or immoral, but this absurdity is precisely in accord with conventional Christianity. |
Christianity is not a moral system. It is an immoral system. According to many interpretations of the Bible, atheists, those of us who don't believe gods exist (and obviously don't worship them), are punished. John 3:36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Matthew 25:41 Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.' John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Romans 10:13 For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. 1 John 5:12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. Mark 16:16 The one who believes and is baptized will be saved, but the one who does not believe will be condemned. And yet murderers and rapists, who later repent their sins, are rewarded! Ezekiel 18:21-23 But if a wicked person turns away from all his sins that he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is just and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of the transgressions that he has committed shall be remembered against him; for the righteousness that he has done he shall live. Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? Isaiah 55:6-7 Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. Matthew 4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Acts 3:19 Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out Acts 2:38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. Luke 13:3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. So the little boy (or girl) who doesn't believe in gods (no evidence) who gets raped or murdered, is worse off than the person who raped or murdered him (or her). How is that moral? It isn't. But that's Christianity for you. An immoral system. |
When one examines the geographic
distribution of the major world religions, it can be shown
a person's place of birth is by far the major deciding factor in
their choice of religion. This indicates religious belief is mostly a consequence of childhood and cultural indoctrination, and not the result of objective analysis. People will put more logical thought into choosing a car than they do in choosing a god. |
There are many reasons why one
should reject the Christian faith and all other religions. Christianity for example, is completely illogical, nonsensical, hypocritical, superstitious, and has no place for an enlightened humanity. Merely studying the history of the Christian church, with its grotesque torture, its vast intolerance and hypocrisy, and even today, with the rampant Catholic sexual abuse of young children, it is amazing so many still blindly accept this crap, and give their lives away to it. Christianity, and religion in general, is a retirement home for the mind. It is a morass of nonsense, promulgated through fear. It is a spiritual prison. A religious philosophy should be simple: live to do the most good, and the least evil. You do not need bibles, priests, prophets, saints, cardinals, and especially a non-existent crucified savior to rescue yourself by demanding conformity. If humanity is to evolve than it is time to let religion, the source of our greatest fears and superstitions, fall into the dust where it belongs. |
Fictional Stories
Many believers insist the Bible is
the inerrant word of God, but for that to be true, it must stand
up to critical analysis as a factual history. Any deviation from
this ideal would mean that any other portions of the Bible, even
the otherwise believable stories, would be suspect for their
veracity.
These are just some of many examples, but they are sufficient to show that the Bible contains a lot of fiction and the extent to which it pervades the book is unknown. It calls into question every story presented in the Bible as being potentially fictional or otherwise exaggerated. |
Truth: Most of the miracles discussed in
the Gospels were common elements of pre-Christian pagan
religions including:
The truth is that very few of the
miracles discussed in the Bible are unique to Christianity.
This is a strong indication Christianity is a
man-made, cobbled, and fundamentally plagiarized faith. |
The following infamous open letter
was written to Dr. Laura Schlessinger after she had made remarks
about homosexuals based on her reading of the Old Testament. The letter destroys the idea that the Bible can be taken
literally, or that it is a bastion of morality and ethics. Dr. Laura, Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Leviticus. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them? I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her? I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Leviticus 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians? I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself? A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Leviticus 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I do not agree. Can you settle this? 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here? Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Leviticus 19:27. How should they die? I know from Leviticus 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves? My uncle has a farm. He violates Leviticus 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Leviticus 24:10-16) Couldn't we just stone them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Leviticus. 20:14)
- Your devoted
disciple and adoring fan
|
We read the Golden Rule and judge it to
be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God's teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father's doorstep. (Deuteronomy 22:13-21) (Sam Harris) |
The only angels we need invoke are those
of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we
must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind: ignorance,
hatred, greed, and faith, which is surely the devil's
masterpiece. (Sam Harris) |
The theory of evolution, like the
theory of gravity, is a scientific fact. - Neil deGrasse Tyson
The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a
scientific fact.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/neil_degrasse_tyson.html
Perhaps we've never been visited by
aliens because they have looked upon Earth and decided there's
no sign of intelligent life.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/neil_degrasse_tyson.html
Perhaps we've never been visited by
aliens because they have looked upon Earth and decided there's
no sign of intelligent life.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/neil_degrasse_tyson.html Perhaps we've never been visited by
aliens because they have looked upon Earth and decided there's no
sign of intelligent life. |
The good thing about science is that
It is true whether or not you believe in it.
People turn to religion not to be informed, but to be massaged. It tells them what they want to hear, not what they need to know.Only one discipline exists to inform the human mid and expand human knowledge, and that discipline is Science. Neil deGrasse Tyson) |
So let's start a movement called Stupid
Design, and we'll see where that takes us. For example, what's going
on with your appendix? It is much better at killing you than it is at
anything else. That is definitely a stupid design... or the fact that
you breathe and drink through the same hole in your body, causing
some fraction of us to choke to death every year? And here's another
one. Ready? Down there between our legs, It is like an entertainment
complex in the middle of a sewage system. Who designed that? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) |
Sin is not a valid concept to
nonbelievers. Sin is defined as actions that transgress
against the will of God. SIN; noun 1. an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law. Atheists care about how their actions effect others, not if they offend some deity they do not believe in. I do not want to be a good person so I can live with God after I die. I want to be a good person so I can live with myself while I am alive. |
I made a list of things I
might consider sin if the concept of sin were valid: 1) Credulity, gullibility. I'd say that is a sin. 2) Voluntary willful ignorance. I'd say that is a sin. 3) Letting fear prevent you from understanding reality. I'd call that a sin. 4) Limiting the rights and freedoms of others in order to make them abide by your standards. That is a sin. 5) Sacrificing the mental, emotional and physical well-being of a child in deference to your religion. That is a sin. 6) Wasting the one and only life you know you are going to have, worrying about and working for an afterlife that somebody told you might be there. That is a sin. (Matt Dillahunty) |
If you know nothing about how a car
works, you would think it is quite magical how you can just press
the accelerator pedal and it moves. All you see is the shiny
exterior and the passenger cabin but nothing else. This is the situation with most Christians - they only see the shiny exterior of their faith. Here's how to be that kind of Christian:
To continue with this analogy, if you
look under the hood of the car, examine the parts, and study the
science and mechanics behind how it works, it no longer seems
magical. Christianity exists today only because most of its followers are intellectually lazy and all too willing to accept a reassuring fable over a harsh but authentic reality. |
It is difficult to understand how any Christian
woman (or anyone who is for the rights and equality of women) can
endorse the Bible.
One Bible verse alone, "Thou shalt
not suffer a witch to live"
(Exodus 22:18) is responsible for
the death of tens of thousands of women. |
The argument is not evolution vs. creation. It is logic and reason vs. superstition and ignorance. | You do not get to advertise all of the good you think your religion does, without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does, and considering the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all, does better. | If any religion says you will spend an eternity in Hell just because you do not believe in that god (when there is no evidence to support such a god ever existed), you need to find a different religion. |
It is very simple.
Either there IS evidence
a god exists, or there is not evidence a god exists. |
Some people spend their
entire lives devoted to a religion that claims to be the
'right' religion... they often deny scientific evidence that
contradicts their archaic holy books, they sometimes oppress
those who disagree with them, and they always do what they
do in the name of an unknowable deity... but sometimes, they
wake up. Occasionally, they realize that all religions are
man-made and that none of them are 'right.' And when they
do, they can live happy and fulfilling lives without dogma
and without anticipating or fearing an afterlife. (David G. McAfee) |
If everything must have a cause,
this, by definition, must also apply to God; if God can
exist in isolation, then why not the universe? ( |
Give a man a fish and you feed
him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish. |
No religion is greater than
truth. No faith is greater than fact. (Malcolm X) |
If you won't convert to another religion "on faith" and "without evidence" what makes you think I would convert to your religion "on faith" and "without evidence?" |
Theist: What if you are wrong and you go to Hell for being an atheist? Atheist: What if Islam is right and you go to Hell for being a Christian? Logic. It works just like that. |
I believe religious
indoctrination is child abuse. |
Teach children HOW to think, not
WHAT to think. Indoctrination is child abuse. |
Children have a human right not
to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people's
bad ideas, and should have the ability to question the
religious views of their parents. (Nicholas Humphrey) |
It is impossible to convince some
children there is no Santa Claus. They do not fully grasp
reality. (R. Reboulet) |
If religious instruction were not
allowed until children attained the age of reason, we would be
living in a quite different world. (Christopher Hitchens) |
Sunday School: A prison in which
children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents. (H. L. Mencken) |
Faith is Child Abuse Teaching a child to uncritically accept your religious beliefs is teaching them not to think. You are teaching them belief, without evidence, is acceptable. This damages a child's ability to reason. Teaching a child that normal behavior is sinful and the sinful are bound for Hell, when there is no evidence that Hell exists, is nothing less than psychological abuse. |
Have you ever stopped to consider what the world might be like if everyone gave that 10% to medical research or charity every month, instead of to a church? |
The Bible is NOT the evidence. |
Science has questions that may
never be answered. Religion has answers that must never be questioned. If your religion teaches you not to question, your religion is hiding something from you. |
Hello. I am God. I can do everything and I know everything. I am testing you all the time, to see what you will do, although I already know in advance what you will do. And although I created you and I know what you will do, I will still punish you for what you will do, since it is all part of my Divine Plan. (God) |
The Bible speaks of a world you
can only experience by reading its books. Look for it not in
your neighborhood, your city, your state, your country, or
anywhere on planet Earth. It is a world gone with the wind, or
much more likely, a world that never really existed. The following quote is taken from John W. Loftus, at his website "Why I Am Not a Christian": The Bible is filled with superstitious beliefs that modern people rightly reject. It describes a world where a snake and a donkey communicated with human beings in a human language, where people could reach upward of 900 years old, where a woman instantaneously transformed into a pillar of salt, where a pillar of fire could lead people by night, and where the sun stopped moving across the sky or could even back up. In this imaginary world an ax head could float on water, a star could point down to a specific home, people could instantly speak in unlearned foreign languages, and one's shadow or handkerchief could heal people. It is a world where a flood can cover the whole earth, and a man can walk on water, calm a stormy sea, change water into wine, or be swallowed by a "great fish" and live to tell about it. This world is populated by demons that can wreak havoc on Earth and make people very sick. It is a world of idol worship, where human and animal sacrifices please God. Visions, inspired dreams, prophetic utterances, miracle workers, magicians, diviners, and sorcerers also populate this world. It is a world where God lived in the sky (Heaven), and the dead "lived" on in the dark recesses of the Earth (Sheol). This is a strange world when compared to our world, but Christians believe that this world was real in the past. My contention is not that ancient people were stupid, but that they were very superstitious. As Christopher Hitchens puts it: "One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge." The Christian world is also one that was created in six days with Earth at its center, a world where Neanderthals, Homo erectus, and Homo habilis have no place in history, where dead people rose out of their graves, walked about the city and conversed with the living, a place where demons could enter pigs and cause them to run off a cliff and drown themselves, where two bears can maul and kill 42 children, a place where a woman can conceive and deliver while remaining a virgin, where the act of sending dead people to a place of eternal torture can be seen as a just punishment for living an ordinary human life, a place where angels interact with the local citizenry and make important proclamations, where slavery is held up as an honorable 'enterprise,' where women are a form of property, and where rebellious children, adulterers, and homosexuals are considered so evil they deserve to be stoned to death. And finally, it is a world where God feels he must kill his own son because he can find no other way to forgive people of their sins. Yes, this seems like a very strange world to anyone alive today. It should take only a few moments of reflection to understand, to grasp, to figure this whole thing out, the god of Christianity is to adults as Santa Claus is to children; an imaginary friend. |
So, after waiting 150,000 - 200,000 years after modern humans
evolved, God decides to deliver an important message to mankind.
You would think it is essential all of the people on Earth
receive this vital message and it is clear and unambiguous.
Let's see how that worked out:
But after all of this, God will
judge us if we do not believe his message, whatever the hell
it is, and send us to a place of eternal torture. |
There is clear evidence that... ...humans invent gods and there is no reason to believe the Jewish god is an exception. ...religions and gods are propagated through culture by infecting children, and no evidence that they are propagated by gods. ...religions evolve as human understanding of the world changes whilst a real, God-given religion should never need to change. ...humans on this planet have unequal access to Christianity. Thus, if Christianity is true, billions would be condemned to Hell for no fault of their own. This contradicts the Christian notion God is omnibenevolent. ...the Bible, supposedly inspired by God, is riddled with the type of errors that we would expect from Iron Age men and not from the creator of the universe. ...the arguments presented for the existence of God are founded on logical fallacies – all of them. All that is left for Christians is faith and their feelings. We know that faith and feelings can be used to believe in any god at all – including non-existent gods. So faith and feelings are worthless. And that is all Christians have. There is NO evidence at all prayers are answered, despite the Bible promising prayers will be answered. Christian theology is incoherent to the point of absurdity. God killing his son so he can forgive our future sin is like me breaking my son's legs so I can forgive my neighbor just in case she ever parks her car on my driveway. It is ridiculous. Considering all of these points together as a cohesively-conceived argument is a death blow to the assertion that Christianity is anything remotely resembling what Christians claim it to be. |
Why did the "perfect" God make such
an imperfect creature he would need to save it? Is this
some sadistic cat-and-mouse game? The people who are finding solace in the pages of the Bible have been crippled by it in the first place. They are not told they are divine incarnations but horrible sinners, pathetic wretches in the eyes of a glorious God. The Judeo-Christian ideology creates the schism between human beings and God by utterly separating God out of creation. It then promises that it holds the keys to reuniting man with God. It is an extortion racket. |
This appalling story took place in Los Angeles County in 1996.
These were no doubt "good" Christians, in that they probably went to church regularly and hung onto every word the pastor said. Or perhaps they were just emulating their beloved Catholic Church, whose past deeds make these disgusting acts look petty. In any case, there is enormous precedent for this behavior within the hierarchy of various Christian organizations, which demonstrates that such behavior is well within the Christian ideology in general. Perhaps these women were a few of
the sadistic Inquisitors themselves come back for some more fun!
No, their acts were too tame for Inquisitors. Perhaps these evil
deeds were the most these sick individuals could get away with
in this day and age, since the public now frowns upon that sort
of thing. Not so back in the good old days, when the Vatican
reigned supreme. Back then, these women would have received
recognition and a pay raise. During the various Inquisitions,
which went on for centuries, hundreds of thousands or millions
of men, women and children were killed in this and more hideous
manners, all for the "glory of Rome" and "in God's name." And
mobs mindlessly went along with the carnage, frequently calling
for blood through their toothless, slitty mouths. |
You Know You're a Fundamentalist If... 10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of your god. 9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt. 8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God. 7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you do not even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees! 6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky. 5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (a few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Iron Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing Earth is a few generations old. 4 - You believe the entire population of this planet, with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering, and yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving." 3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity. 2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence prayer works and you think the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God. 1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian. |
Should We Believe In Christ's Resurrection? Only if delusion is your preferred way to live life. If not, do not buy into magical fantasies. Magic is not real. Gods - by all descriptions of which I am aware - have powers that far surpass those of mortal men. To unleash hurricanes, turn water into wine, give Aunt Judy cancer, cure Aunt Judy's cancer, read our minds, count the hairs on our heads remotely, even see the future (according to many rumors). We colloquially call this power "magic." The actual name does not matter - It is the ability to change physics of the world by force of will. Just like Dr. Strange & Merlin do. People who haven't noticed that magic is not real by now, are either not paying attention or are extremely confused about the world. The, I do not know how a thing happened, so it must be God's magic, is very typical of confused, superstitious, religious, flawed thinking. Gods, sons of gods, miracles & religion, are just rumors predicated on magic supposedly being real. The result of human fears, desires and uncertainties about the world that somehow result in the belief that magic is real in a world where magic is not real. Oh, of course many theists deny this - but many other theists are happy to agree they think magic is real. Their lives are supposedly surrounded by magic, after all. Magic baptisms, magic prayers, magic cross-making hand gestures. Ya gotta make the magician happy to get a magical reward and avoid magical punishment. Their gods can't be gods unless they have magic powers. Without magic, a god is just a person. Magic is what makes them gods in the first place. So, since magic is NOT real and never was, then gods can't deliver the goods as advertised. Without magic, there are:
"Throughout history every
mystery ever solved has turned out to be... not magic."
(Tim Minchin) |
To assume there is an intelligent and compassionate god who sees his creations fighting and killing each other - in his name - and all he needs to do is show himself unequivocally and tell them how (or if) he wants to be worshiped, but that he refuses this, is an impossible contradiction. To claim "he has his reasons that are unknowable to us" is an impossible cop-out. If one cannot know or say what one's god considers compassionate or good, one has no justification for saying anything about his religion. |
A few simple questions for all Christians:
|
In the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her
companions come face to face with the Great Oz who speaks to
them in a dramatic and threatening voice. They are quite scared. However, Dorothy's
dog Toto notices a bustle behind a curtain
and exposes a man who is pulling levers and speaking into a
microphone. He is clearly running the show and everyone
immediately realizes the great and powerful Wizard of Oz is just a fantasy. It is hard to believe that the author of the book, L. Frank Baum, was not thinking of the Great Oz as being a metaphor for the Christian god. Over the past 2,000 years there have been hundreds of thousands of men standing behind the proverbial curtain, pulling levers and voicing the Great Yahweh, giving him a commanding and menacing demeanor, one that causes fear and respect from Christian followers. But as in Oz, time after time, the man behind the curtain is unveiled, and we see what we had believed was a great work by this great god was actually just a simple mechanism of the natural world. The Great Yahweh is revealed to be impotent, not really doing anything, and only continuing to exist because of a stubborn refusal, in the face of mounting evidence, to part with a cherished dream - a dream of an ultimate purpose and an ultimate reward. |
One sign that the Christian god is not real is the long list of
petty rules he made for his chosen people, the Jews, that
are prominently displayed in the Old Testament. Here is a small
sampling:
These are the types of rules that would be created by anal-retentive men, but they're not the issues that would concern the creator of the universe. The long litany of petty rules that have no bearing on a person's character or have any effect on the well-being of other people is persuasive evidence the Christian god is imaginary. |
Most religions give you a feeling
you are never good enough and it is your own fault no matter
how hard you try. That is why you need Jesus, Allah, or some
other god to lean on. "All have sinned and fallen short of the
glory of god."
(Romans 3:23 NIV) It sets up every
believer for ultimate failure. God made you imperfect and the
only way to feel good about yourself is through him. Listen to just a few minutes of preachers like Paul Washer, a popular youth preacher with dozens of YouTube videos. Virtually every minute his videos is about guilt, damnation, and apostasy. The only path that will save you is to follow exactly his prescription. The religious life is one of constant circles and backtracking. You were born a sinner, and always are a sinner. You must seek forgiveness from the god that you made you unclean from birth. Get forgiven. Be born again, but do not sin again. Because when you sin, it starts all over. You must seek forgiveness. The virus implants a constant sense of guilt and unworthiness that cannot be eradicated. (Darrel W. Ray, Ed.D. The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture) |
The Christian Bible offers many promises to the faithful.
Arguably one of the most important promises is the conditional,
after-death reward of eternal life in a Heaven-like setting.
But to judge the trustworthiness of this promise, we should look at the validity of other lesser ones, particularly the promises that favorable outcomes will result from earnest prayer.
|
Theists: Near-death
Experiences are Proof of an Afterlife! No. It is not. A "near-death" experience is not evidence at all of an afterlife, nor is it evidence we have souls, nor is it evidence there is a heaven, etc. Near-death is not death. That is why It is called NEAR-death. When our brain lacks oxygen it does weird stuff! Near-death experiences are most likely simply hallucinations caused by activity in the brain as cells begin to die. Lack of oxygen may also trigger temporal lobe seizures which causes hallucinations. The very last person you want reliable testimony from is from someone who experienced a lack of oxygen to their brain! How is it culture influences the kind of near-death experience people have? A Christian sees Christian-related things, a Muslim sees Islam-related things, etc. Many people claim to see Heaven while they're on drugs, but most theists do not regard that as proof of an afterlife. Yet why should the results of one kind of brain stress be regarded differently from another? Theists love hearing about near-death experiences in the same way they love Pascal's Wager, since they do absolutely nothing but reinforce the already functional brainwashing they suffered as children. If the best a god can do to let itself be known is by appearing on burnt toast or by giving someone "a peek of Heaven" via a near-death experience, I am not impressed with that god. |
Biblical Prophecies 1) Biblical prophecies are absolutely worthless. Each and everyone of them is so vague you can read anything into it you choose. 2) If I order a medium-rare steak at a restaurant, and then after the waiter who took my order walks away, predict the waiter will soon be bringing me a medium-rare steak, is that a valid prediction? (Maybe my prediction won't come true and he gets my order mixed up and he brings me a well-done steak.) Sometimes the data or the situation suggests an outcome or result that is more likely than others, and if so, predicting this outcome is not much of prophecy. 3) Sometimes predictions do come true! The chances all predictions never come true is so remote to not even be considered. If you throw enough darts in the general direction of the dartboard, some will hit the target, and eventually one will hit the bullseye. 4) Finally, even if a prophecy in the Bible or any other holy text is fulfilled, it does not mean a god exists or was involved. That would still have to be demonstrated. There may be many other valid reasons as to how and why the prophecy came true. Heck, maybe someone back then had a time machine! If I make a wild prediction and 2,000 years from now it comes true, does that mean I am a god? For those who already believe in a god, prophecy they believe are fulfilled is further evidence for them of God's existence. Unfortunately, they are using the error in thinking known as confirmation bias. Correlation does not prove causation. |
I would love to believe
when I die, I will live again, that some thinking,
feeling,
remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I
want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide
culture traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of
nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. (Carl Sagan) |
My earlier views on the
unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the
human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and
stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for
thinking I shall ever change them. (Abraham Lincoln) |
I believe religion,
generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind. (H. L. Mencken) |
The pioneers and
missionaries of religion have been the real cause of more
trouble and war than all other classes of mankind. (Edgar Allen Poe) |
Christians often defend God against the scourge of evil in the
world by saying he does not interfere with peoples' free
will, and by not interfering, "evil things" are bound to
happen. But yet they also claim God answers prayers, which in most cases would necessarily involve interfering with other peoples' free will! Let's now suppose God cannot interfere with free-will human choices. If He cannot interfere, then Christians should stop all petitionary prayers whenever free-will human actions are involved! They should stop praying, for example, for safety in their cross-country travels, since reckless drivers have free will, since criminals we meet at highway rest stops have free will, since bungling mechanics with free will may have worked on our vehicles, and since incompetent factory workers with free will have made them. At what point in this process could God ever grant prayer requests for safe travels if doing so involves so many free will choices? A whole host of other requests could not be granted either, like getting a job promotion or an award in an art contest or the lover we so desire. Nor can he change the course of anything else in human history. These two conflicting claims indicate a huge problem with Christian theology, although it is very unlikely that people who fail to practice rational thought when it comes to their religion would ever notice. |
Multiple Religions Can Exist Only If They Are All False Imagine a room filled with magicians, each trying to impress the audience with the skills of their trade. Each magician takes turns displaying their tricks, deceptions, and illusions. Now imagine a magician who truly has magical powers enters the scene, a person who has the ability to override the natural physical laws. He does trick after trick without the normal sleight of hand movements, curtains, smoke, or other similar devices magicians typically use to obscure their actions. Very quickly, the other magicians and the audience notice something is very different about this magician. He is working true magic! The next week, they all come together again, and the true magician again displays his powers, this time in even more spectacular and graphic glory. The regular magicians start to cower and semi-apologize for their acts, which are by comparison, lame and sophomoric. Week after week goes by, and soon the regular magicians stop coming because they don't like the feeling of being upstaged, and, anyway, the audience only wants to see the true magician, who by now has received incredible press and the confirmation by scientists that something supernatural is happening. Magic is now being done by only one magician, the only one who truly has magical powers. By now you've figured out this is a metaphor for all of the world's religions. Each religion is like a magician, claiming to have magical powers, but always operating behind a wall of plausible denial - where all claimed miracles are easily debunked by disinterested parties. Now imagine the arrival of a true religion - one that actually operates under the authority and power of a supernatural deity. It would soon display manifestations of miraculous phenomena that would dwarf anything emanating from the false religions. In a matter of just a few years, or less, all of the false religions would die out as everybody would flock to the only religion that produces tangible results. Just as multiple magicians can co-exist and continue to work as long as all of them are incapable of true magic, so a multitude of religions can exist under the assumption they are all false. When a true magician or religion enters the scene, it dominates and drives all of the fake ones off the stage. Even philosophy-only sects would die out in the face of a true religion. The long-term existence of multiple world religions indicates they are all false. |
Theists? Do you Believe in Multiple Gods? If not, why not? There are dozens of Bible passages that suggest there is more than one god. For example, in the Psalms, there are these passages: "There is none like you among the gods, O Lord” (86:8); “For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be revered above all gods” (96:4); “Our Lord is above all gods” (135:5); “He is exalted above all gods” (97:7); “For Yahweh is a great god, and a great king above all gods” (95:3). In Exodus, Yahweh predicts that he will execute judgments “on all the gods of Egypt” (12:12). And the author of Numbers then declares that is indeed what happened: "Yahweh executed judgments against their gods” (33:4). If the universe contains magical beings, there is no compelling reason why there would be only one. |
Christians teach children the earth's moon is 10,000 years old,
spun into orbit by an all-powerful space deity. They allege secular scientists (in league with Lucifer) have altered the geological column to hide the evidence of Noah's flood. They assert the tyrannosaurus rex, apparently vegetarian, happily romped in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. They credit God for healing children treated (often at significant expense) by trained, human physicians. They claim the Ten Commandments as the ultimate moral code while being unable to name even half of them from memory. They call down divine protection as they lock their doors, click their seat belts, carry their mace, wear their protective gear and load their weapons. They betray the designs of the USA's own founding fathers by claiming this nation belongs to Christianity. They bellow in protest when anyone disputes their "true" stories about the ancient god-man who saved humanity by giving birth to himself before thoroughly getting his ass kicked by the very humans he had come to save. This kind of insanity is everywhere. Superstitious babblings continue to contaminate what is otherwise a wonderful age of scientific discovery and understanding, and I often wince as Christians enthusiastically sell a Bible they haven't properly read. - Seth Andrews (Deconverted - A Journey From Religion To Reason) |
An atheist...
|
Atheists are often asked, "What would convince you God exists?" I, for one, am not sure... but if there is a god, then that god must certainly know what it would take to convince me... and apparently he/she/it has decided not to put forth that evidence or information. One easy way that does come to mind does not even involve direct proof! If, for example, all of the scientific evidence pointed to an earth and universe that was less than 10,000 years old and there was no evidence for evolution, or, if all the scientific evidence pointed to a relatively small, geocentric-model of the universe with earth at the center and all the planets and stars revolving around it, then I would say there would certainly have to be a god. In other words, god could have easily made a universe where atheism wouldn't even be able to get off the ground, or would quickly fall apart if it did. God could have created the world according to the account in Genesis, but he didn't. Instead, I am being asked to believe God purposely made the world appear exactly as it would if it were natural and he/she/it didn't exist. This is nonsense. This cannot be believed by a thinking person. |
At the following website http://www.waivingentropy.com/2013/07/10/what-would-convince-you/ a list is made of facts, conditions, and observations that would give pause to an atheist and make him or her reconsider their lack of belief in a god or in Christianity is particular:
If Christianity is true, all
of
these conditions should be met, but none are
observed to be true. |
There is a good reason why many Christians don't read their
Bibles. It's because they know there is a lot of bad stuff in
there and they fear having their image of God tarnished. Or if they do read it, it is a controlled process where they only read certain ‘safe' passages, preferably the kind that are read during church services. But a more curious exploration of the Bible can reveal something Christians are afraid to admit - the god they worship is a cruel, sadistic bastard. God... ...buries people alive. Numbers 16:27-34 ...burns people to death. Numbers 16:35 ...burns people forever after they die (but keep them alive to torture them). Revelation 14:10-11 ...forces parents to eat their children and friends to eat each other. Jeremiah 19:9 ...forces people to kill their brothers and eat themselves. Isaiah 9:19-20 ...forces people to cut off their noses and women to pluck off their breasts. Ezekiel 23:25-37 ...kills a newborn baby to punish its parents. 2 Samuel 12:14 ...dashes little children to pieces and rips up pregnant women. Hosea 13:16 ...causes birth defects and spread dung on peoples' faces. Malachi 2:3 ...orders a woman's hand to be cut off “without pity” for touching a man's genitals. Deuteronomy 25:11-12 The Bible was written by barbarians, people who believed in the deliverance of pain, suffering, and torture as the best ways to control an unruly society. It is most certainly not the work of a super-enlightened deity, the maker of the universe, or the embodiment of universal love. The evidence is plain as day. By simply reading what the Bible says, we know it reveals a divine character so short of grace, integrity, and morality. it just cannot possibly describe a real divine figure, unless it is conceded such an entity is the embodiment of pure evil. |
The Christian Bible would have
made the world a much better place if it had remained a tree.
The book declares ridiculous things such as the existence of giants (Gen 6:4), talking snakes (Gen 3:1), talking donkeys (Num 22:28), unicorns (Num 23:22KJV), and talking bushes (Exodus 3:1-3). The Bible condones slavery (Lev 25:44-46), and misogyny (1Tim 2:12). It forces rape victims to marry their attackers (Deut 22:28-29). It commands the death penalty for children who backtalk their parents (Deut 21:18-21), people who worship the wrong god (Exodus 22:20), picking up sticks on Sunday (Num 15:32-36), and having homosexual sex (Lev 20:13). We all know none of these crimes warrant being stoned to death, but the Bible disagrees. Jesus is not the loving character you probably think he is, as he tells his disciples to hate their entire family (Luke 14:26). I don't believe anything in the Bible to be true, and it's a good thing, because the book is full of preposterous stories, contradictions, and is dangerously immoral. “Jesus died for my sin,” you say. What sin? I urge you to consider: Is it really acceptable to brutally torture then murder an innocent Jewish man as a means for an omnibenevolent deity to forgive a crime you never committed? Sin is an imaginary disease, invented to sell you an imaginary cure. |
If there really was an all-powerful deity who wanted humans to know about its existence, then there would be no controversy or question about its existence. This deity would be obvious to every reasonable person, and would have been for all of history. There would be no argument about it. No faith would be required. There would be no atheists. It would be as observable, testable, and provable as hurricanes, Australia, or oak trees. Since this is not the case, it is reasonable to conclude no such deity exists, or if it does, it is not concerned with being detected. |
Most religious people
are blissfully blind to the fact they have made a
‘purchase' without adequate investigation. Too much credit is
given to what they were trained to believe and too little
consideration is given to what they were trained to disbelieve.
So, in the end, we have billions of people living in a state of delusion brought on by their human nature to mindlessly accept what is presented before them. |
There is a vast difference between a declaration and a demonstration. Things that are declared without being demonstrated are rightly rejected by even the least skeptical persons... except when it comes to religion. Then, no demonstration is required and belief is purchased at a penny on the dollar. |
Christianity - The belief God
sacrificed God to God, to save God's creation from God. Christianity - a support group for people who wish to avoid reality and fool themselves into thinking there is a fairy-tale ending to this existence. |
If there were
proof a god (or gods) existed, theists wouldn't believe in it,
they'd have knowledge of it. |
There have been over 300
covers and remakes of Hallelujah written by Canadian
singer Leonard Coen, none of which are better than this
one. I wish I knew who wrote it: An Atheist Hallelujah (author unknown) I wondered if there was a secret prayer So He'd respond and I'd know He is there Instead of believing what's taught to ya And when I struggled and prayed to intercede I took the silence as taking the leave Though broken and beaten I'd call out Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah My faith would grow, and I thought it proof Cause my life was well, though you were aloof I figured I just was not worthy to talk to ya But the burgeoning guilt, self-loathing and shame The promised comfort from calling your name Was absent whenever I kneeled in Hallelujahs Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Despite the years of servitude You continued on mute in my solitude I couldn't deny the doubts I had about ya So I swallowed my pride and opened my mind The world soon collapsed with this new paradigm There was never a God to answer my Hallelujahs Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah With no confidant it was bottled inside An atheist is one most all would deride How could ya break the news to those that love ya? The Confession, The Heartache, the Crying and Grief Was tough to endure but paled to the relief Of indescribable freedom! Hallelujah! Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah You see more beauty, your eyes feel clear The shame and the guilt are replaced by cheer You never thought your life could mean so much to ya It is short and It is precious and bittersweet So you'll fight for the truth against deceit To free those who want to feel the Hallelujah! Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah |
Gods have all the properties of things that do not exist…and yet are said to exist!
Just… why? I don't understand why people are still having this
discussion. “God” is often said to be invisible, silent,
intangible, undetectable and immeasurable, all the
things you expect to come from the non-existent... but somehow
this god
exists! He doesn't take the form of anything that can be said to
be a property of existence, doesn't make himself heard, doesn't
do anything at all to manifest himself as a distinguishable and
observable property of existence... but he exists? And the answer to this is that God is from an alternate, immaterial reality that isn't bound by the laws of the physical world. How would anyone know there is such a thing as an alternate immaterial reality in which things aren't bound by the laws of the physical world in the first place? You can't just make up a random world in which things are completely different by definition and necessity just to escape from the obligation of explaining and proving something that is supposed to exist and interact with us. That is such a bizarre show of empty assertions and defining things into existence that could only be granted if we were to assume a scenario that is only supposed to be discussed internally. I
just want to know how something that is invisible, silent,
intangible, undetectable and immeasurable can exist. It
takes an embarrassing degree of gullibility to believe
that there is an omniscient, omnipotent deity in our midst who
is intimately involved in each persons' life, who is capable of
bending the forces of nature, who answers prayers, and
who has an army of angels to do his bidding, and yet, he
can't be seen, or heard, or felt, or sensed in any measurable
way. |
Deuteronomy
13:6-11 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again. Seriously??If you disagree with this or any of the other hundreds of instructions that are similar to his one, then you have demonstrated you know what is right and wrong. You do not need to determine right and wrong from a god. If you disagree with it, you have acknowledged there exists a superior standard by which to judge moral action and thus there is no need to rely on ancient, primitive and barbaric writings. The Christian Bible was written by barbarians, people who believed in the deliverance of pain, suffering, and torture as the best ways to control an unruly society. It is most certainly not the work of a super-enlightened deity, the maker of the universe, or the embodiment of universal love. The Christian Bible would have been better off it it had remained a tree. |
Civil War Analogy It it illustrative to view the Jesus resurrection story by imagining a modern-day analog of the same story. In this case, a story about a Civil War (United States 1861-1865) soldier who came back to life: Imagine if there was a Civil war report that a soldier had died and come back to life after being tortured, stabbed, and then put in the grave. No one would believe this story in the modern day. And they definitely wouldn't believe it if all they had were anonymous accounts that were written 40 years later filled with internal contradictions with little corroborating evidence. Maybe not even if there were no contradictions or errors. If, however, they had been raised from birth to believe this ridiculous story, and went to gatherings to celebrate it, and were threatened with Damnation for not believing it, that would be quite a different story. Christianity runs on two main engines - childhood indoctrination (along with the fear of Hell) and a person's inherent desire to avoid death. The story of a man reviving after being dead for three days is so preposterous that it could never be accepted by the masses without those two engines running full throttle. |
Christians often use the argument the universe could not have created itself, and therefore it must have had a creator, which they conveniently assume is the god they worship. This is one of the most persistently used double standards in theological debates. One of the hallmark objections from theists to a secular worldview is asking the question, “Well, what created the universe then? Why is it here at all?” alongside misconceptions that the Big Bang is supposed to be a model for how the universe got here, when it isn't. Point blank, nobody knows how the universe got here. The matter and energy currently present in the universe has always existed as far as we can tell, and if it ever didn't exist, we have no idea why it came into existence. It is a simple fact the origin of matter and energy is unknown to current science, and I don't anticipate it will ever be known in our lifetimes (and possibly not anyone's lifetime). The fact that theists have an answer to this question does not mean their answer wins out over the assertion that we do not know. The fundamental origin of existence is a complete mystery to mankind. More importantly, this quasi “God of the gaps” gotcha question just passes the buck. Even if we did accept the idea the universe was created, and further accepted it was created by a conscious deity, this does not resolve the fundamental problem of “how did it get here” because that chain of questioning has simply been transferred from the universe to God. How did God get here? God is timeless? Well, then you could say that about the universe too. Otherwise that is special pleading. All answers to this question can also apply to the universe. There is no reason why eternal existence, or self-creation, or anything else, becomes more plausible and valid when applied to a hypothetical conscious deity. There is nothing about consciousness that makes you capable of creating yourself, and if there is a conscious God, the idea that he has existed eternally does not make more sense than the universe existing eternally. The mystery of how the universe came into being is equivalent to the same for God, with one exception - we know the universe exists! So the question of how God was created is easily explained by the plausible fact that he has never existed. We can't say the same about the universe. |
The Christian Bible indicates there is a heaven, an afterlife, where one can liver forever after death. Or does it? Genesis 3:22. Adam and Eve should not have access to the tree of life and so become immortal like “us”. 1 Timothy 6:13-16 Only god is immortal. Ezekiel 18:4 Souls can die. John 11:11-14 Death is like a sleep. Psalm 146:6 and Ecclesiastes 9:5,6,10 The dead do not think, don't know anything and do not have emotions. Ecclesiastes 3:19 and 3:20 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Ecclesiastes 12:7 When death occurs the body goes back to dust and the breath of life goes back to god. Job 7:9,10 14:12 The dead cannot come back. Just more of the many thousands of inconsistencies in the Bible. |
Jesus Turned Water
Into Wine. A Miracle? Taking it on faith Jesus turned water into wine does no good whatever. That's to embrace “what the church says,” instead of thinking independently. Faith is no path to knowledge, and it is certainly no way to prove history or to conclude something is true. Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Mormon clergy all plead with their followers to take their version of god(s) on faith. Hence we end up with so many different, conflicting, incompatible claims about what god is like. Millions of people each day suffer horribly from disease, famine, cruelty, torture, genocide, and death. The occurrence of a finite miracle, like turning water into wine, in the midst of so many instances of unabated suffering, suggests that a being who is responsible does not know about, does not care about, or does not have the power to address the others. A reasonable person can conclude this miracle did not happen. It is vastly more likely it was spawned by the creative imagination of the man who wrote the Gospel of John, than water molecules, violating all known laws of nature, actually changed into molecules of alcohol. Yet, Christians accept on faith it really happened. Gullibility on this scale is a disgrace to the human species. |
Theists often claim the universe is just too "finely tuned" to come about by per chance... hence, their must be an intelligent mind behind it. Some even believe It is fine-tuned just for us and life in general. Seriously? First, considering the vast majority of the universe (more than 99.9999% of it) is incapable of supporting any life whatsoever, including, of course, intelligent life, I would argue the universe certainly not fine-tuned. Most of the universe consists of the cold, dark vacuum of space where nothing can live, and everywhere else we look we just find airless rock or gas planets with inhospitable atmospheres. The universe is much more fine-tuned, for example, for making black holes than to support life. Rather, the opposite is true. The universe is barely tuned, and life has eked out a niche in a universe kicking and screaming to not have any life in it. Second, if you believe this universe is fine-tuned, what would a universe look like that is not fine-tuned? How would it look different from this one? Alas, we do not have any examples of other universes we can draw upon to compare. Again, theists have it completely backwards. It's the opposite that is true. We are fine-tuned by the conditions of the universe, specifically, the conditions here on Earth. If you make applesauce from apples and sugar, you are not suddenly going to get cherry preserves. You will get in return according to the ingredients and conditions available. The conditions on Earth gave rise to life from which we are descended over hundreds of millions of years. Have you heard of the Creationist Puddle? It is a puddle of water that fits perfectly in the hole it resides in... and because of this, the puddle believes that hole must have been designed just for it! What is absolute nonsense is the idea that physical laws have been tuned by a magical ghost that condones owning and beating slaves as property. This magical ghost tunes these laws of physics so, for example, the Sun can give us cancer. He tunes these laws the enable tornadoes and lightning to exist, which kill innocent people on a daily basis. Good grief, I am no god and I could design a universe that was better fine-tuned than this one. (For example, an Earth that contained a vast amount of fresh water, suitable for drinking, rather than 75% of the Earth's surface containing deadly sea water.) |
The truth is, there's no
evidence for gods. There's no evidence prayers are
heard, let alone answered, by any deity. And no,
personal experiences are certainly not evidence. The time to believe in something, anything at all, is after there is evidence and a valid justification to warrant that belief. Not before. There might be a teapot named Russell (Russell's Teapot) orbiting the Sun in between Mars and Jupiter, that is too small to be seen with our telescopes. But until there is evidence such a teapot exists, there's no valid reason to believe it exists. There's no evidence for ghosts or goblins. There's no evidence for leprechauns or elves or gnomes. There's no evidence for vampires or werewolves. There's no evidence for fairies or invisible pixies. There's no evidence for any of these things and thus there's no valid reason to believe they exist. The same is true for gods. |
Oh, good grief. "Looking
into a mirror" is not considered evidence for the existence
of a god or gods.
That's nothing more than an
argument from personal incredulity. That's
saying, "I can't imagine any other way how something so
complex could come to exist, therefore... god!"
Mirrors are simply optical devices that reflect light, allowing us to see reflections. They are a product of human knowledge and technological development and they can be explained by the principles of physics and optics. Furthermore, as it's been stated earlier, "God" is never an answer to anything. All that answer EVER does is attempt to appeal to one mystery with an even bigger mystery. The existence of a god or gods is nothing more than a philosophical question that has been debated for centuries. It is a matter of belief, faith, and personal or cultural interpretation, rather than something that can be demonstrated through the use of mirrors or scientific evidence. As such, there is no evidence for gods. There never has been. While some people may find personal experiences or interpretations of the world around them to be evidence of a god, the use of a mirror as evidence for the existence of a deity is not a widely accepted or logical argument in the context of most religious or philosophical discussions. Again, it's an argument from personal incredulity. The existence of a god is a matter of faith and personal belief, and it is not addressed through empirical or scientific means. |
Pick a story in the
Bible. Any story. It doesn't matter which one. Many theists believe that story was inspired by God. Oh sure, they believe an actual human wrote it, but the story itself was directly inspired by God. And yet, isn't there another possibility? Couldn't that story have simply been written down by the author with no divine inspiration, a story he believed to be true, that has been passed down from generation to generation? Of course it could. And there's a third possibility. Couldn't that story have been... completely made up? Of those three possibilities (and I'm not discounting the fact that there might be others), the second two are much more likely to be true! We have evidence stories do indeed get passed down from generation to generation. (We also have evidence that with each telling, the facts and details of the original story are likely to be changed/altered/misremembered.) And of course we know for a fact people make up stories. It happens all the time. The first possibility, the story was inspired by a god, isn't even a possible answer until a god has been demonstrated... which has not yet been done. We have no evidence for gods. |
I believe in evidence. I believe in observation,
measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers.
I'll believe in anything, no matter how wild or ridiculous, if
there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous
the claim is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence
will have to be. - Isaac Asimov |
Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something
you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something
you dreamt up after being drunk all night.Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/isaac-asimov-quotes - Isaac Asimov I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse. - Isaac Asimov |
Consider the following gospel passage: Matthew 7:21-23 “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. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ This passage clearly implies
some Christians, confident of their post-life ticket to
heaven, will instead be sent to hell! |
Recommended Reading
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