What could go wrong when you base your life on ancient laws written and re-written by anonymous authors in dead languages who were ignorant, racist, sexist, superstitious, goat herding barbarians and who believed everything they couldn’t explain was magic?

What, indeed.

The Ten Commandments (Fixed)

And there it is. Religion in a nutshell.

I don’t always use the Lord’s name in vain… but when I do it’s because it’s the only goddamn thing he’s good for

And that, is that is the goddamn truth.

A disturbing – yet altogether unsurprising – case of strawmannery. I’d call it dumbfuckery but I’ve decided to be nice. Ish.

So this evening, Captain Christian surfaced another spectacular post of doublethink and asshattery. You see, Captain Christian is… very Christian. Totally into the whole Christian scene and a strong believer. Completely and utterly immune to logic and reason when it comes to his dearly held beliefs. Especially immune to the irony of every damn Christian – all of whom have personal relationships with the good Lord – having a different opinion on how the Bible works, what God wants, what Jesus actually meant in… you get the picture.

The recent post of awesome was about how a faith healing churches are linked to a bunch of child deaths. Specifically, a couple lost their second child after failing to seek medical attention after their 2 year old child contracted exceedingly treatable pneumonia.

The outrage – it seems – is centered around how – from his perspective – some other Christians ‘twist the Bible’. That presumably means he doesn’t agree with those Christians’ interpretation of the Bible and that perhaps he takes a dim view on ‘faith healing’ for that reason.

The irony is thick.

Behold… Facebook Christianing and outrage at it’s finest.

Alrighty. The fact that all the Christians get their instructions from the same book aside.  Also, the fact that they all interpret the instruction manual provided by the almighty creator of the universe differently, aside. Also, the fact that they all speak to this almighty creator of the universe all the time and he – for reasons that elude pretty much everybody – fails to clear up the misunderstanding aside… Jesus, so many asides…

“Twisting the Bible” – not sure how it’s twisting the Bible to believe:

Matthew 21

21:21 Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.
21:22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

or

Mark 11

11:22 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.
11:23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
11:24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

or

Luke 11

11:9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
11:10 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

Let me guess… wrong context? The faith healing people didn’t have enough faith maybe? Letting your kid die – horribly, twice – sort of shows you really believe the magic you were doing was going to work – that’s what it looks like to me anyway. So what is it then?

…the Bible does not condemn, forbid, or even discourage the use of medicines or other medical care.

Well, no, perhaps it doesn’t. But it does say ask – pray – and you’ll have it, whatever the fuck ‘it’ may be. Does it not? Right there in Matthew, Mark and Luke which happen to be in the New Testament which Christians sort of can’t ignore? I must be reading it wrong or maybe it’s that I’m not wearing my special Mind-fogging Christian Goggles…

James 5

5:13 Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms.
5:14 Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:
5:15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

I could swear that says… How about:

Matthew 18

18:19 Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.

Sounds to me like praying for a sick person… anyway, moving along, let’s have a look at the long comment down.

If you don’t know how that’s “twisting the bible” then you have not read the bible.

Well, no, I’ve read it. Faith healing Christians have read it. A billion Christians have read it but somehow this person is the fucker who got it right. Who’d have thought.

There are no promises to Christians that if you obey the law you will have blessings and conversely if you disobey the law and have sin you will get sick and die.

Oh, nice sophistry Captain Christian’s sidekick.

In fact, if you have read the bible, and the rule exists that if you have sin you will get sick then we would all be sick all the time. Since the bible says that everyone sins, even christians. The bible says that anyone who says they have no sin is a liar.

And that has what to do with…

There is the promise that Jesus died and defeated sickness and death, but Christians who believe that is for right now, that all sickness is gone have what we call an over realised eschatology.

Well, no. What they have is “Ive read the words in the fucking Bible”itis. What you have is “oh my god the bible says prayer should heal but it doesn’t so now I have to make shit up to explain that”itis. Nice try though, your preachy tone totally had me con… no, its gone.

It’s placing too much emphasis on what we are promised will come on the other side of eternity as if it should be taking place right now. The kingdom of God is here, but not yet fully here.

Sophistry and preaching with self bestowed authority. Oh, and a bunch of made-up bullshit and making the assumption that basically nobody reads the Bible. Many Christians assume this – to their detriment. Just because most Christians couldn’t be bothered to read the Bible doesn’t mean most atheists haven’t read it. Cover to cover. More than once.

Doublethink. Sophistry. Believing your own sophistry. Christians. If stupidity didn’t irritate me so much it would be terribly amusing.

Behold the pure, unadulterated awesome that is my very own work of heathen art:

Saligia II by Nichola Romney

It’s titled “Saligia II” and its beautiful. If you’d like to extract some meaning out of it, start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saligia

From the artist:

S A L I G I A – latin representation of the seven deadly sins. Color representation here, red-sin, gold-glory, black-corruption. The Catholic/Christian church, holds itself out to be the ‘universal/ultimate/absolute’ church of God. Do people ever ask how this widespread belief became so accepted?

Researching religion & its heritage is a fascinating subject, learning of the church’s fallacious origins, its violent and oppressive history, and it’s deployment of ‘The Crusades’ (their armies), in enforcing ‘their’ religion as being the ‘true’ word of god, gives insight into how the ‘prominence’ of the church came about. The Crusades, massacred, tortured, raped and oppressed millions, all in the name of ‘God’, over a span of several hundred years.

I have to take this opportunity to thank both my wife and Nichola Romney who conspired to get me this epic birthday present. I love it. Heathen art is my favourite kind!

Marriage: a Christian love story – Deuteronomy 22:28-29

22:28 If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;
22:29 Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

Isn’t that’s just breathtakingly beautiful?

(Image from https://www.facebook.com/WFLAtheism)

The issue is this: some time ago I linked to a Christian site (http://www.christian-faith.com) in one of my posts and specifically to a page on the site about Christian ‘testimonies’. The post is titled ‘Finding God‘ and the context for the linking is this paragraph:

So a personal god then, by definition, intervenes in the real world where humans exist and he might do so through miracles, by answering prayers and by communicating with people. I’ve been to Christian ‘revival’ meetings (Rhema specifically) where ‘the holy spirit’ was claimed to have ‘touched’ people, to the point where they fell over and lay on the floor twitching (there is a rather amusing post in that for another time). And there is the plethora of ‘testimonies‘ for various miracles and healing that a god is alleged to have caused.

Now, the issue is that one Mr. Michael Fackerell – apparently the owner of http://www.christian-faith.com – has emailed me twice asking me to remove the links to his site (I’ve only linked to the testimonies part). I find this somewhat confusing for a number of reasons…

Christian ‘testimonies’ are, after all, for the purpose of showing that the Christian deity exists and ‘does things’. They are purportedly eye-witness account by Christians about how the creator of the universe personally intervened in their lives to make stuff happen. As far as I understand, eye-witness accounts of things are used to convince people of the truth of something… and for little else. In this context these ‘testimonies’ provide a feedback loop to Christians to reinforce their delusion and presumably to convince those people who doubt the existence or efficacy of the Christian deity… of the existence and efficacy of the aforementioned deity. I think it will be pretty difficult to make a case for Christian ‘testimonies’ existing for any other purpose than: to be used to convince people – Christian on not – that this deity exists and does stuff.

Why then, would one want to remove a potential audience from these accounts? I would think that – considering this command directly from the lips of the god-man Jesus himself:

28:19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

… that you’d want as many links as possible to the page with ‘testimonies’ about the greatness of the creator of the universe so that you can get as many people from as many places converted as possible. No? Strange.

I mean, I’d be the first to admit that this site and these posts are pretty unkind to Christians and their ridiculous delusions but still, why attempt to remove any opportunity to gather more sheeple? You’d think that gathering more sheeple would sort of be a priority… but then again the world is littered with examples of the specific disobedience of the explicit wishes and commandments of that particular almighty creator of the universe by its alleged believers.

Perhaps it’s my complete lack of religiosity that makes it so hard for me to understand. Perhaps it is my bullshit filter. Who can say.

The second reason of course is that I’m doing the site a page rank favour by linking to it. Contextually. Perhaps Mr. Fackerell just doesn’t understand how the internet works?

Which brings me to the conundrum. Should I acquiesce (to late for that perhaps?) to his request – I will be the first to admit that it’s a very polite request – and take the time to go edit an old post (and now this one) to remove links to the man’s site for reasons I fail to comprehend or do I just ignore the requests and hope he goes away and continue to provide him the fantastic benefit of page rank and free traffic?

It’s for his own good, really.

Matthew 6:26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

Matthew 6:26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

Matthew 19:14 But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

From the picture it looks to me like the heavenly father is certainly helping a fowl of the air to get a meal. I guess the bit that says “Suffer the little children” was meant literally.

When an honest man discovers he is mistaken, he will either cease to be mistaken or cease to be honest.

Religion: the thing that makes honest people dishonest.

Until you have science, everything is a miracle — Lawrence M. Krauss