Apologies for Being Christian

Rechelle over at My Sisters Farmhouse wanted to apologize for all of the jackassery she did because she was Christian. I have one I'd like to apologize for myself.

I apologize for ever having pushed my mom to go to church. This caused my mom to get into it, and bring my brother, and get him surrounded in it. I apologize for being the one who caused my brother to be absorbed into their lies.

Some Conversations I've Had in the Last Week

I've had 2 interesting discussions with Christians this week. The first was me 2 friends, 1 Wiccan, and one Christian. I cant remember what we were talking about, but the Christian said we were a Christian nation. I countered with the fact that Jefferson, Paine, and Adams, to name a few, were all non Christians, and were founding fathers. In addition to this, the first amendment makes it clear that we, as a nation, have no religion. The counterargument that the Christian said (after saying that she was a history major, so she knows what she was talking about), and the Wiccan agreed to, was that we were a Christian nation because of the Puritans. Because the Puritans came over here, and slaughtered Indian tribes, we are a Christian nation... apparently. Nevermind that couple hundred year gap between those events and our nations founding. By the time our nation was founded, the Enlightenment had begun, and because of this, many of our founders were openly skeptical of Christianity. I gave up on the argument once it began to devolve into "no you are wrong."

The second discussion I had was at a Christmas party on campus. I was hanging out, waiting for my friend to get out of class so I could bring him home. As I was waiting, a couple of girls came over and asked if I wanted to come to the party. I went, and began talking to people. I saw one guy with a picture of Christ Pantocrator on his shirt. I started chatting with him, discussing the history of the image on his shirt(turns out I actually DID learn something in art history) and it drifted into a theological discussion. He told me he was a reformed Calvinist, and I let him know that I was an atheist. He began asking me how I live knowing my life has no purpose. I told him my life has plenty of purpose. My life purpose is to be happy, make others happy, enjoy my time here with my friends, and hopefully, make a significant societal contribution. He said that because that purpose was not eternal, it was meaningless. We continued talking, but nothing else meaningful was said. I ended up leaving soon thereafter.

Are Religious Visitors Questioning Their Belief?

I read a fascinating post at Greta Christina's blog. In it, the case is made that many religious visitors to atheist blogs are looking for someone to challenge their belief so that it can be tested, to see if it is really rational to believe what they do. I can say I was that way. It wasn't blogs for me, but books. I read The God Delusion because I felt it was foolish to only hear the church's side of things. I felt that if I was in an isolated bubble from other arguments, my faith was falsely propped up. It was looking into a lack of belief that was a stepping stone to atheism.

I agree that we need to be patient with the religious believers, because they may be honestly looking for other ideas. If they spout stupid fallacies, such as that atheists have no moral basis, or that since we can't prove with certainty, we can go ahead and just assume god, then we have to be patient with them. This is all they get at church. If they are serious about expanding their knowledge and looking at other viewpoints, then patiently explaining the flaws in their argument may help them. Now, if they start ignoring or insulting you repeatedly, they are probably a troll, so feel free to ignore them, or, if it is your blog, block them.

What do you think? Are many of the religious people on the blogs sincere, or just trolls?

Belief Without Evidence

Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." - John 20:29

This verse has always troubled me. It is saying that it is a virtue to believe in the absence of evidence. This makes me fear that there is nothing we can do to combat the religious nutballs. Regardless of the evidence we bring, they will just go "Nope! I have faith!" I will never understand how someone can go 'There is zero evidence for my claim (there is even evidence against it) but I will believe it anyway!'

Is there anything we can do to reach people like this?

PS - Sorry for the lack of a 'Churching an Atheist' post yesterday. My mom did't wake me for church. I suspect that was deliberate, because of my actions last week.

A Christian Doing Good

I often rail on Christians for doing evil things, but not all of them suck. Case in point: Pastor Joel Miller is fasting for 30 days to raise 30,000 cans for a local food bank. That is amazing! I was only ever able to fast 56 hours, and that was a liquid only, so I had juice and stuff, whereas Miller is only drinking water. It makes me smile to see good done, regardless of religious affiliation.

How Can We Effectively Satirize Faith?

I saw this article at Friendly Atheist. It makes a point that satire is an effective way to point out flaws in an argument while not angering those who support it, because they are too busy laughing to see they just got owned. The article references Jon Stewart's Beck satire. I'll post it here because
a. if you haven't seen it, you should.
b. if you have seen it, watch it again! it is funny!
c. we all need laughs

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The 11/3 Project
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Now.... where were we? Oh yes... satire as a means of pointing out flaws. To satire effectively, you have to be close enough to the real thing to be recognizable. The question though, is how we get close to the flawed logic of faith without invoking Poe's Law? Any ideas?

Received a Letter Today...

It was from a member of my church. I will not post it, partly for length, and partly for other reasons. This letter pointed out, and rightly so, that I was being biased in my coverage of the church's lessons. I never intended such bias, and am truly sorry for it. My goal is objectivity, not polemics and being a jackass. I come off as thinking all Christians are complete bumbling fucktards apparently, and that is a message I do not wish to convey. Christians are wrong to believe in a magic sky fairy like they do, but that doesn't make them complete morons(eg Ken Miller). In my recent posts, I have been that which I have despised. I have been an angry, belittling jerk who picks fights with people who have done nothing to deserve it. All I have done is pick on them for being different than me.

Another comment from this letter, one that hit me deep, was how I treated my mother in my posts on her position on me going to skepticon. Apparently I came off completely unloving towards my mother, and like I had no respect for her. I did not mean for this at all! I love my mother, and I know she loves me. There is nothing I would take back from those letters, but I do admit I was rather angry while writing them, and none of the love i feel for my mom was being expressed.

If this post isn't fully coherent, that is because I am in a introspective out of it state.

Churching an Atheist: Open Discussion Unwelcomed

Went to church again. Started with singing songs. It is interesting listening to the songs from the 'other side.' The song 'I am Thine, Oh Lord' seemed a little morbid for kids with the words "Draw me nearer, nearer to thy precious bleeding side" and the song 'Have Thine Own Way' had me thinking about Burger King.

The sermon was over Jesus' "If you've been angry, you are guilty of murder" comment in the beatitudes. The preacher started by saying we need to ask God to change us, and make us nonjudgmental. But if that happened, how could Christians hate gays? They HAVE to be judgmental and angry. He also made the comment that everyone is made in the image of God, and it is that reason that we don't murder. Not the fact that it is deplorable, cruel, and inhumane, but because the Sky Fairy says so. He then made a funny quip that he is German and Irish, and was thus born angry. I chuckled at that, being mostly German and Irish myself. He goes into a rant on how my generation is angry, insulting and disrespectful, ignoring that what he just said was an angry disrespectful insult. He begins talking about an argument he had with his wife, and how he talked to God, asking for her being wrong to be forgiven, and How god talked back to him. Im not sure if he believes that God actually talked to him or not. I'd like to assume it was metaphorical, but there are whack-jobs who believe that. Not that it really matters, as a delusion is a delusion. He then ended by quoting a verse from The Message Bible, and then bashing it for not being suitable for deep textual analysis, as if anything other than the original Greek and Hebrew(if even that given the huge gap from story to written record) would be suitable for real analysis.

After the sermon, classes are offered. I went to one that goes through various kook theories(ESP, mind reading, ghosts etc.) and shows why they are false. Surprisingly, the reasons offered for why these things were false were relatively sound(there is a rational explanation for how it happened, the scientific tests show no evidence of it, no one has ever successfully shown it to be true). It was on the lack of evidence that it is true that he even played a short clip by James Randi. It all was very good, but the speaker seemed to overlook that every critique he offered applied to his God and his bible.

I waited until after class to bring this up with the speaker, in an attempt to not appear disruptive(I am on their property during their worship time, so I have to obey their rules). I mention that the things he mentioned apply to the bible, and he responded with 'no, the bible is the word of God.' I brought up that he is using what the bible says about itself to prove itself. He simply responded with the fact that you HAVE to(which I agree with, because there is no other reason to believe it) and thus it is ok. He then brought up a useless non sequitur of 'who is the god of the atheists?' I replied that we do not have one, and he just said 'yes you do, who was the first atheist?' I couldn't form a reply to that because it made no sense. It was then that one of the people who had been in the class(who happened to be a church elder) accused me of 'pushing atheism' by asking how those arguments don't apply to the bible. I responded that I was not pushing atheism, but merely trying to start a discussion that allowed all parties to learn something. The associate minister walks in to unplug the tv we used to watch the Randi clip, and asks me to not bring up debates in the future, because this is their time to worship, and I should not get in the way. I agreed that I should not disrupt, and made note that I actively avoided it by having a one on one with the speaker. The associate minister asked me to not do that again, and said he had gave my mom some books for me to read(Case for Faith by Lee Strobel, Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig, and I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman L Geisler and Frank Turek). Not sure if I'll read them. Craig is the idiot who just redressed Aquinas' first cause argument in slightly different terms and felt he had proven God. Strobel... well... having read the Case for Christ, and the Case for a Creator(great systematic chapter by chapter debunking here) I don't expect the Case for Faith to be any better. The other book I have no knowledge on, but the title reeks of ignorance.

Have any of you read them? If so, let me know what they were like.

Churching an Atheist: It takes Faith to be an Atheist?

I went to church tonight. I know, you are thinking "Why in the fuck would you do that?"

The reason I went was to get my mind of some things. I figured that there would be no better way than challenging some Christians in the nature of their theology. It was interesting. The lesson started by asking us questions with 2 answers. The first answer was 'from Satan' and the second was 'from God' and, as I expected, I was 100% satanic. The teacher(Devin) asked how we should deal with hardship, and of course someone(Brittany) said 'praying to God.' Devin said that was a good answer, but I asked him how you account for people like me who asked God for help again and again and again and felt nothing.  Brittany responds 'take it on faith that God will help.' I start to chuckle, and Devin correctly noted that that was unlikely to sway a skeptic like me. Yet, after getting that right, he fails by making the old 'atheism takes as much faith as believing in god does' which I brought up after class to him.

I told him that Atheism is not a matter of faith. He stated that it does, because being certain there is no god is just as much a mater of faith as being certain there is a god. I told him that that is not what an atheist is. An atheist is anyone who does not positively affirm the existence of god. I then stated that assuming nonexistence until evidence of existence is the rational way to go. After all, you wouldn't believe in a two horned purple unicorn just because I said so, would you? He responded with a 'but you take history books on faith because you weren't there' argument, which is foolish. Saying that a reliable well documented source takes faith to believe in the same way that the words of a bunch of ancient goat herders does is quite a stretch. It was after this that I had to leave.

I intend for this to be a weekly feature, on Sundays(or the occasional Wednesday), entitled "Churching an Atheist"

EDIT: remembered something after posting. I had a member of the group admit to me that they didn't believe in god. That first dissenting voice makes the second easier. I will keep their identity secret because a few members of the church may read this blog.

Christian Inconsistency

Many Christians are very hypocritical in their beliefs. They claim the bible is the inerrant word of god, and that, because of that, it is the absolute standard of morality. I will cover that in a later post. For now, I will focus on the hypocrisy of  how some verses seem to be more inerrant than others. For example, the above picture refers to how Leviticus 18:22 is devine eternal truth for saying

Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.

 yet a few chapters later in 21:5 it says

Priests must not shave their heads or shave off the edges of their beards or cut their bodies

 yet every priest and pastor I know cuts their hair. Hell, some even get John Edwards style $200 haircuts. That money could be better spent feeding the poor. But who feeds the poor. I mean, the only people who do that are stupid commie liberal hippie douches like Jesus. And no self respecting Christian wants to be like that liberal pussy.

a few more ignored verses:

Women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says. (1 Corinthians 14:34)

This verse is ignored, as evidenced by.... well, the fact that women speak in church. This verse is not completely ignored though. It is used to justify the fact that women are to be subservient and to obey the man. So, not only is this verse not taken for what it says, but it is twisted to mean what the Christians want.

"One of illegitimate birth shall not enter the congregation of the Lord." (Deuteronomy 23:2)

 This one is of personal interest to me, because i was born out of wedlock. Yet, I was allowed into the church just fine. Christians will say "That is the Old Testament, done away with by Jesus." The problem with that is that Jesus himself said

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. (Mathew 5:17-20)

This is a sign that ALL of the bible is to be followed. Yes, that means you should detest homosexual behavior, but it also means you shouldn't eat shellfish, pig, and consider women to be dirty for 7 days after their period, just to name a few.

If Christians want to be homophobic bigots in the name of 'following the bible' they need to start following the inconvenient verses as well.

UPDATE: saw a youtube video today relating to this