How progressive, how insightful.
I would like to start this post by quoting from a salient Christian Facebook page:
religion |riˈlijən| noun
The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power (Dictionary.com)
Following Christ is not about being controlled, it’s about knowing we’re now friends of God, in a loving relationship because of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.
Religion seeks to control man through legalism BUT where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is FREEDOM!
This is a page open to people to share their thoughts about Religion… How it has hurt people, manipulated people, controlled people, punished people. That is not the heart of God – God loves His people!
Let’s disregard, for a moment, the happy-clappy, feel-good statements around how following the big J is freedom…
Clearly, these people are very progressive. They can see how ‘religion’ is a bad thing! Happy days! Secularism seems to be making some progress…. surely?!?
Luckily (for us and them, presumably), they follow Christ and that’s about freedom and it’s all good (and warm and fuzzy). They’re Christians, there are more than a billion of them and they worship Christ as their infallible deity.
Right, fair enough, they purport that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Saviour and God and I personally know several people who hold this position openly and proudly and I do think they might actually believe this.
I’ll take it at face value. They’ve said it is so, and so it must be.
Exhibit A – From the infallible divine word of the almighty creator of the universe (New Testament, the bit that contains Jesus and isn’t marred by too much genocide):
“For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:18-19 RSV)
Just to be sure, here is a second opinion, from the King James Version:
“For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:18-19 KJV)
So, Jesus Christ said, unequivocally, that if you do not follow all of the Mosaic laws in the Old Testament, in full, until the very end, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. For the life of me I cannot pinpoint the exact place where Jesus Christ once mentions dropping the old, hard, difficult laws in favour of something easier.
Ah, “out of context” the True Christian may mutter, not so I think. The bit before is interesting:
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” (Matthew 5:17 KJV)
And no, fulfil doesn’t miraculously now mean: to discard all of the old laws and institute a new one, since then it wouldn’t be followed by an explicit: ”…Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” regardless of how desperately one may want it to.
And the bit after is just as fitting:
“For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgement: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.” (Matthew 5:20-22 KJV)
I believe the context says: obey the Mosaic laws or you burn.
The one person who does say differently in the Bible is Paul (who used to be Saul) whose sum total of interaction with Jesus Christ Superstar was something that can more accurately be described as a seizure, on the road to Damascus. He believed his job was to sell this new religion and decided to make it easier to sell since, to be fair, being a perfect Jew is nigh on impossible…
Now, the last time I checked people were not calling themselves Paulistians, were they? Nobody I know claims to follow a dude named Paul; JC is the man. Always JC.
How is it then, that a billion freaking people happily proclaim loudly that they follow Jesus Christ and then in the same breath say: “but FUCKED if I’m going to do as my God says, it’s too hard. I prefer Paul’s easy, instant, from the comfort of my couch version. Let’s go with that, deity’s commands be damned.”.
That statement sums Christianity up perfectly: ignore the hard bits, keeps the warm cuddly bits and blindly believe it’s going to be alright even if you don’t do a damn thing your God tells you.
People who call themselves Christians and do not live EXACTLY like Hasidic Jews are:
- Full of crap and wildly deluded
- Filthy liars
- Lazy, stupid and ignorant
What else could you possibly classify people who go and outright ignore the commands of their God, the almighty creator of the universe, as?
Here is a short list of some of the 613 things one is, as a good Christian following the words of Jesus Christ himself, obligated to (or not to) do (randomly chosen):
- To love other Jews Lev. 19:18
- To love converts Deut. 10:19
- Not to hate fellow Jews Lev. 19:17
- Not to speak derogatorily of others Lev. 19:16
- Not to take revenge Lev. 19:18
- Not to bear a grudge Lev. 19:18
- To honor those who teach and know Torah Lev. 19:32
- Not to follow the whims of your heart or what your eyes see Num. 15:39
- Not to make human forms even for decorative purposes Ex. 20:20
- Not to erect a column in a public place of worship Deut. 16:22
- Not to plant a tree in the Temple courtyard Deut. 16:21
- Not to engage in astrology Lev. 19:26
- Not to attempt to contact the dead Deut. 18:11
- Not to perform acts of magic Deut. 18:10
- Men must not shave the hair off the sides of their head Lev. 19:27
- Men must not shave their beards with a razor Lev. 19:27
- Men must not wear women’s clothing Deut. 22:5
- Women must not wear men’s clothing Deut. 22:5
- Not to tattoo the skin Lev. 19:28
- Not to eat meat and milk cooked together Ex. 23:19
- Not to cook meat and milk together Ex. 34:26
- Not to work the land during the seventh year Lev. 25:4
There’s another 590 just like these…
Right, so, Jesus Christ, Lord, Savior and God, EXPLICITLY tells ‘Christians’ (in quotes because he was technically speaking to his Jewish followers…) to do something (613 things actually) and they explicitly disobey him, yet continue to claim that they are Christians.
Seriously, do none of them see a problem with this? Personally, I find it fucking disturbing. Then again, in hind sight, I bet a great amount of sophistry and self-imposed stupidity has gone into rationalizing disobeying the Son Of Man himself.
Christianity: The easy consumer religion… but only if you explicitly ignore the deity you claim to worship.
Nicely done ‘Christians’, nicely done.
(And that’s not even beginning to dig into the ludicrous amount of contradictions, errors and flat-out lies in the New Testament alone)
Happy Friday.
Christians, the billboard at the church and very human discord
Yesterday morning while I was having my morning shower I found myself wondering about the atheist and the skeptic movements. In particular, I was pondering why we tend to disagree so vehemently on so many subjects. In fact, there is very little we agree on. Fundamentally, atheism is a lack of belief in any god right? But us atheist don’t really even agree on that point. Some of us are quite convinced that there is no god, never was, never will be. Others insist that there probably is no god but you can’t really know. Others reckon you don’t have enough information to make up your mind either way. I think the closest we do come to agreeing on anything is the idea that it is much less likely that a god exists than the converse.
One of the things I find most trying about dealing with other atheists, especially in groups, is that you have to defend every single point you make since very few people ever agree with you completely. You very infrequently experience agreement purely for the sake of a feeling of community. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it forces you to avoid making statements for the sake of making statements and to seriously consider what it is you want to relay; your logic, thought process and conclusions will be questioned and best you be prepared to back everything up with some convincing evidence. This can sometimes makes informal conversation… exhausting.
“How much easier the religious have it”, I briefly thought with a pang of self-pity, “the Christians especially get to go to church and everybody just gets along and agrees…”.
Then I laughed. Hard.
I’m going to pick on Christians now because they’re in the news again. You see, at the core, Christians have something fundamental in common. They all read the same manual, the unchanging perfect words of the almighty creator of the universe; the super being who can do no wrong. You’d think, then, that they all agree and get along.
Christians do not agree and they do not get along and I find this hilarious to say the least.
There is a church in Auckland city that puts up some pretty risqué billboards; you can check out their site here: http://stmatthews.org.nz/. Now, I can appreciate this, at least they’re trying to get their Christians to think about what they’re doing a bit. The latest billboard was of the virgin Mary with a positive pregnancy test.
You might not think there’s much to that. Christians do, after all, believe a virgin, Mary, was impregnated by the almighty creator of the universe and bore its son whom they called Jesus Christ. Mary, virgin, pregnant. If you’re a Christian, that’s what you believe and that’s what the poster shows: Mary, surprised, pregnant.
Apparently not. One Mr. Arthur Skinner from the Catholic Action Group took great exception to this poster. “Blasphemy!” cried Mr. Arthur Skinner. He was, in fact, so pissed off with this blasphemous affront to his personal version of Christianity that he took to the poster and cut the positive pregnancy test right off. Clearly, the poster is now much less blasphemous since the removal of the proof of pregnancy… or something.
The "blasphemous" billboard - Before
The "blasphemous" billboard - After
From the New Zealand Herald article at http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10773887
Strange, it was put up by Christians who obviously didn’t find it blasphemous… I guess Mr. Arthur Skinner must have a different line to the almighty that says something else. Which, too, is a little strange, no?
Let us consider this situation for a moment. Both Skinner and Cardy claim to worship Jesus Christ. Both of them claim to have Jesus as their personal lord and saviour, to have a personal relationship with him. Seems to me somebody should just ask Jesus if he has a problem with the poster or not. Get an answer and have the deity in question settle the dispute. Seems pretty damn straightforward to me. Pray, get Jesus to tell each of them at the same time if the poster is ok or not. Simple right?
“It doesn’t work like that”, I hear them say. No? Then how the fuck does it work if you both speak to the same freaking god? If your god can’t even settle this one little dispute between devout followers amicably, what, precisely, can he do?
You see, here’s the problem with religion, Christianity in particular. They all (mostly – the Mormons had to go write their own addition to the unchanging words of the almighty) read from the same (by ‘same’ I really mean ‘similar’ since some of them took liberties in the many translations…) unchanging perfect word of the almighty creator of the universe. They all have a direct line to Jesus Christ who personally saved them and with whom they have a relationship with. And yet there are over 38,000 Christian denominations.
I shit you not. Thirty eight thousand different denominations. Thirty eight thousand different interpretations of what, exactly, it is, that Jesus Christ and his dad want from the world.
Some of the major Christian disagreements
Look, Christians, if you people can’t even agree on the basics, how the fuck do you expect to convince us unbelievers of The Truth (… as you currently see it anyway…). Tell me, which one of you has it right at the moment? Yea, of course…
Some of the major Protestant disagreements. Seriously. They even read the same holy book.
Disagreement and discord, those are very human characteristics. It is normal for human beings to disagree, to see every little thing differently. The way you view the world is shaped by unimaginably complex processes. Things like physical brain structure, brain, body and environmental chemical levels, hormone levels, altitude, electrical signals, external stimuli, culture, family, surroundings, the food you eat, the stuff you drink, the gasses you breathe, the things you’ve read, heard, watched, the parasites you carry, the diseases you’ve had, the diseases you currently have and all of this over the span of your entire life.
How could we NOT disagree? We are so fundamentally different, we have to disagree. If there was no disagreement what so ever, that would go a long way towards proving the alleged divine origins of religion since it would take a massive miracle and an almighty super being to get humanity to agree completely on any given point unquestioningly. That there is disagreement among the faithful says everything that needs to be said about that ‘faith’.
You Christians do not have a personal relationship with the same deity. You, fucking, do, not. It’s clear as daylight to anybody who looks. Grow up, accept that. There is no god. You’re making that shit up.
We do not agree on anything and we never will. The ability to compromise and work together despite our disagreements, that is what sets us apart. That is what makes us special.
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