It Makes Sense If You Don't Think About It

By TheThinkingAtheist ~

Francois Xavier Fabre, Death of Abel

Once again, a big thanks to everybody that reads these articles/rants of mine, and of course a I'd like to thank the managers of this site.

One thing that I haven't yet disclosed is that I used to go to a Catholic School. Before I start, let me make clear that this isn't a rant about how I "didn't want to go", or how BS it is that I had to go there.

This is about death.

I always found it both horrifying and amusing at how religious people could write a person's death off by saying "God needed him", "It was his time", or any variation of that. Because, let's be frank, death is a sudden and sometimes gruesome thing, and for it to be written off and even condoned is not what a healthy person would do.

Take this favorite example of mine: a car was speeding down a four-way intersection, and the driver couldn't see a person that was turning left at the same time. They crashed. The speeding driver survived, having a truck, while the person that was turning left died in the hospital. So now, this man gets penalized a certain amount of money, and continues on with his life.

Except, he thanks God for saving him. He says "It's a miracle that I survived! God must have had a hand in this."

Well, doesn't that mean that God also killed the other person for no reason? Why do these miracle-pushers never think about the victims? Why this selfish attitude? It is because religion, and the Bible- no matter how many times Jesus would say that you need to "give to the poor"- is NOT a good model for charity, love, or any other positive human quality, mindset or action. You can't ignore half of the Bible, and only refer to what you believe Jesus said.

It's like conducting an experiment, and, when the data contradicts with the hypothesis, dismissing the parts that don't match up. It is not a logical attitude to take, in anything, not only religion.

But, but, but! When some people actually acknowledge that here is some sort of mistake present, rationalization makes an appearance.

Another example of this would be the whole 'prophesy' crap that some people espouse. They say that "It was predicted in the Old Testament that this, this, and this would happen, and it did! Now bow down, infidel!" Well, My problem with that is that the New Testament was written AFTER the Old Testament. That's why one is 'New', and another is 'Old'. Simple, right? So it really wouldn't be that hard to read the Old Testament and write something that agrees with what is written.

God is either powerless and benevolent, or cruel and omnipotent... You can't have it both ways - you can't claim that God is loving and all-powerful in one breath while saying that Hell actually exists.My opinion is this- if there really was a God, and he wanted for us to worship him, well then, why the f*ck does he not just move a mountain? Or why does a worshiper not do the same? He said it could be done! In fact, if a random man claiming to be God (or Chuck Norris) just waved a hand, and Mt. Everest was was suddenly Texas, then we could see that the guy had something going for him. But for some strange, inexplicable reason, there haven't been any cases of mountain-moving in recorded history.

And as for the people that say that it would 'take away belief', I just roll my eyes because God either exists, or he doesn't. His (non) existence is not in any way affected by my 'beliefs', or lack of thereof.

Likewise, God is either powerless and benevolent, or cruel and omnipotent if he exists. You can't have it both ways - you can't claim that God is loving and all-powerful in one breath while saying that Hell actually exists, or some other statement like that. It simply doesn't make sense if you think about it.

Deists are also strange in that they believe that God exist and created the world, but that he never intervened since. My question to that is, once again, if you can dismiss the whole Bible, then how do you justify believing in a God at all?

Also one topic that I've been meaning to address is Heaven. Now, imagine the best place you've ever been. Now imagine living there for more than 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. And that is nowhere close to infinity. I mean, can you imagine what the suicide rate must be? You remember your annoying brother/sister/friend? How about you spend... that much time with him/her? Sure, they're dead,and you get to see them again, but at what point will you start wishing that there wasn't a Heaven? There's this nice little quote that summarizes this situation up quite nicely:

"Too Much of a Good Thing".

And indeed, anything for that insane amount of time become too much. For 100 years, you feel happy. At 1,000 years you start go get a little bored. But at 10,000 years you just don't know what to do and your favorite past time is trolling newcomers in Heaven. 100,000 years? Forget it.

People develop more over time. They might be the ideal person on Earth, but if you consider that you will spend that much time in Heaven, well, people change. Customs change. Society changes, and Heaven is an antiquated idea from simpler times, much like religion itself.

I seem to be jumping around a lot in this article, but I'll finish up by saying that before you put your backing, your 'faith' into something, at least fully investigate what it is.

Comments

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~ S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden – Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~ A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins Accepting Christ as Savior Frequently reading the Bible Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules) Attending church services Partaking of the Lord’s Supper Tithing Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc. Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro

Search This Blog