Activist Publishes Book of Hate Mail from Bible Believing Christians, Bible Believers Respond By—You Guessed It

By Valerie Tarico ~

When devout fundamentalist Christians find their evangelism thwarted, all hell can break loose—along with some surprisingly nasty language.

Bonnie Weinstein is married to Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), which brings a special set of challenges to their relationship. The mission of MRFF is “to ensuring that all members of the United States Armed Forces fully receive the Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom to which they and all Americans are entitled by virtue of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.” Some people don’t like that.

They don’t like it because ensuring religious freedom in the military means among other things that:

• No religion or religious philosophy may be advanced by the United States Armed Forces over any other religion or religious philosophy.

• No member of the United States Armed Forces may be compelled in any way to conform to a particular religion or religious philosophy.

• No member of the military may be compelled to endure unwanted religious proselytization, evangelization or persuasion of any sort in a military setting and/or by a military superior or civilian employee of the military.

• The full exercise of religious freedom includes the right not to subscribe to any particular religion or religious philosophy. The so-called “unchurched” cede no Constitutional rights by want of their separation from organized faith.

Why MRFF is Needed

Mikey Weinstein founded MRFF in response to rampant violations of these principles by Evangelicals and other “Great Commission” Christians at the United States Air Force Academy, where their two sons (both Jewish) and future daughter-in-law and son-in law (both Christians) were cadets and, like Mikey, later graduates.

Great Commission Christians are those who think it is their responsibility to save souls by converting others to their form of belief. They typically are biblical literalists who believe the Bible is the perfect and complete word of God. Their behavior often stands in contrast to Great Commandment Christians—those who think that the prime directive of the New Testament is not evangelism and right belief, but love. Many of these Christians perceive the Bible as a human document, an imperfect record of God’s relationship to humanity and the ministry of Jesus. Because of U.S. demographics, the vast majority of MRFF’s clients are Christians of this latter type, followed by religious minorities including Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Native American spiritualists, atheists, agnostics and Wiccans. MRFF also represents 861 LGBT armed forces clients.

For years, Great Commission believers have been engaged in more and more bold attempts to convert the U.S. military into an army of Christian soldiers—pressuring subordinates to attend Bible studies; promoting Christian-themed media like Mel Gibson’s torture porn, “The Passion of the Christ;” and converting the chaplaincy into a cadre of missionaries on the public dime. And they had been getting away with it. After Weinstein—a former Air Force JAG officer and member of the Reagan administration—started making waves and then launched MRFF, many were, not surprisingly, displeased.

Unhappy Believers

From the beginning, the Weinsteins and MRFF staff have received a barrage of hate mail filled with curses, imprecatory prayers, graphic descriptions of bodily harm, death threats, gloating promises of eternal torture and more—all in the name of Jesus and often accompanied by Bible quotations, chapter and verse. Some of the ugliest messages hone in on the fact that Bonnie and Mikey are Jewish, stating, for example that the Holocaust didn’t go far enough; that their children should be turned into skin lamps; that “their kind” are not Americans and can’t be; and that Hell will be worse than the gas chambers.

At the suggestion of appalled supporters, Bonnie Weinstein finally compiled a selection of choice missives into a book, To the Far Right Christian Hater: You can be a good speller or a hater, but you can’t be both. I was a conservative Evangelical for many years. Over that time, I imagined saying nasty things to people, and sometimes did. I imagined swearing, and sometimes did. But it never crossed my mind that a believer might combine swearing and denigration with the name of Christ. The kaleidoscope of variations found in Weinstein’s book would have been unfathomable. Even today, if I hadn’t read them myself, I wouldn’t believe it still.

"Christian Built This Country"

One might think that seeing their words in print would shame self-proclaimed guardians of God into silence. Or they might consider that such words make a mockery of their claim to moral and spiritual superiority. Or, if nothing else, they might realize that spewing hate is a poor way to win converts as directed in the Great Commission. But apparently not. Because offended believers responded by sending contents for Volume 2.

One took the time to explain why the work of MRFF is so wrongheaded as to merit the barrage: [Note: I have left all spelling and grammar as received.]

It was Christians on the wagons west and Christians who built this country of and for the Glory of Christ. Christians saved the American indians from going to hell and Christian stopped the nazis and commies from taking over the world. Christians liberated negroes from slavery and gave the jews Israel and are the only ones protecting the unborn and trying to keep marriage pure. It was even Christians whom put men on the moon. And now its Christians who die to stop the moslems from beheading us all. The common theme for you Bonnie is Christians. And do not believe that lie about ‘separation of church and state’. Not even in the constitution. Nowhere there. In America noone have to be Christian but they do have to hear and consider His Word.

What is “His Word?” For those who take the Bible as a literally perfect revelation from God, as do most of MRFF’s detractors, God’s Word is the Good Book, and that’s where things get complicated. The texts assembled in the Bible promote love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance and faith—qualities that one New Testament writer calls the fruit of the spirit. By their fruits you shall know them, says another. Christians are exhorted to be a light shining on a hill, without which the world would fall into (moral) darkness. Regrettably, the Bible also endorses holy war, death to blasphemers and infidels, vengeance, and torture. With these mixed messages bound together as a package, the net effect of thinking that the Bible is God’s perfect Word can be hard to predict.

Piling It On

Here are some excerpts from recent messages to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation from those who see themselves as defenders of God and goodness. The letters arrive with different fonts and tones, and from different email addresses, but the themes are painfully consistent:

• Mr. M Weinstein I am a spirit-filled ordained pastor of The Gospel from the great state of Nebraska. Stop your attack on God Almighty and His only Son our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Stop your attack on His holy Christian wariors in our armed military forces! My congregation includes many military from the nearby air force base. We pray as one for you to die tonight in your sleep leaving a bloody mess for your family to find at daybreak.
• To the enimy of Jesus The Christ - Let’s all watch how Jesus makes you pay for taking Him out of the Army. Your hellbound ‘religious freedom FROM religion” followers too. You all try to fool everybody and hide behind the contitution. Your afraid of the Gospel. Why is it you give a jew a chance to recrusify our Savior and he’ll do it ever time. And your the worse of jews in the world. Blood thrifty for inocent Christians bringing The Word to the Army. damn you and die. And burn for youre sins against Christ Jesus. For all time.
• For god and country and in god we trust. Maybe if the Jews fought in the revolution and wrote the constitution he would have a right too speak. Other wise shut the f up.
• When We see a jew like mikey wienstien we know that Hitler was right. Leave US soldiers alone mickey. Get you a nosejob hebe. And why not swindle someone in business? While eating a bagle and showing off your jew diamonds.
• This country was founded on the belief of God, if you and your people do not believe in the Christian God maybe you should move to Iran or Syria where your shallow thoughts will last but minutes since you will be but an infidel, soon to be stoned for your beliefs.
• Athiest jews are servents of satan. They do not deserve America. Mikey weinsteen does not deserve life any place but espcialy in the USA. He is THE leader of all which is wrong in America and all who fight Jesus Christ which is the only true God in the universe. Weinsteen will destroy our military and the whole country if he is not deported. Send him to Cuba which niger Obummer loves so much. Or send him and all the other athiests to North Korea to rot and starve.
• Eat shit and don’t die. Just keep eating shit Michael Loser Weinstein. Fun to watch you eat shit. For all time. Since you and your little family of mfrr shit eaters are nothing but shit anyway. Your only hope is to surrender to Jesus Christ. Your a stiff necked jew so you will not (Exodus 32 and verse 9). Thus you have no hope. Keep your shitty self out of Christ’s military and Christ’s nation you dirty shit bag.
• Fuck your crybaby slut ass wife and fuck your crybaby spoiled children. Who got their fancy air force academy educations all paid for by the GRACE of Amercan CHRISTIAN taxpayers. And just look what we got for our tax money. The family Whiningsteen jew traitors from HELL. Cry cry cry cause you have it so bad in a CHRISTIAN made country. You know what you all happier in North koria or back in Jewsrael. get OUT of our country! Here Jesus is KING and if you dont like it than fuck you.
• Your day will come when you have to face Our God Almighty and would not want to be in your shoes. You and your ilk think you are so intelligent and stand above the rest but you are sickening and nothing but a joke and a huge one at that. By the way, where is your stand against the muslims? you either are one like your golden idol charlatan closet muslim obama or you are afraid of them.
• Thankfully, judgment is a certainty and Mr. Weinstein’s future – and the rest of your staff – is secure. And eternity is forever.
• Our Spirit-Filled Church prays to Christ Jesus thru Psalm 109 for His Hand to curse Judas Weinstein (Matthew 27: 3-5) down as per Scripture in 2015 for sins against His Church and His armed forces and His America: We Pray Thee Lord Jesus To Lay Thy Avenging Hands (Revelation 19:11-16) on unbaptized (Mark 16:16) Michael Weinstein his evil wife and evil children (john 8:44) and all of the evil doers who work at MFRR (Revelation 21:8);
• Christ will slay Mikey Weinstein with The Sword of Righteousness. Your serpant husband will be cut down by Jesus and mutilated for his evil doings. Then him and they all will be cast wiggling and screaming into the Lake of Fire to burn for all time. See John 3:36 and Revelations 20:14. You still have time Bonnie and so do your kids. This is ‘Truth’ mail from those Christians who love you so much and your kids and grandkids too.

The writer of this last missive wanted to make sure that nobody misunderstand his intent. “This is not 'hate mail' Bonnie Weinstein. Do not dare to call it that! This is LOVE mail. We are showing truest Christian love.”

Hate is love. War is peace. Ignorance is strength. The outpourings from self-described Christians sound Orwellian because they are, literally. In his book, 1984, George Orwell coined the term doublethink, which has been defined as not just the ability to say that black is white, but “also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink. Doublethink is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

Hate is love. War is peace. Ignorance is strength.The people who wrote these letters honestly believe that they serve the God of Love and Truth. I know, because I once shared that belief as an Evangelical biblical literalist. Such conviction can be all-consuming, and blinding.

Religion that is based on authoritarian hierarchies and sacred texts has tremendous power to produce doublethink, to translate love into hate and to redirect the human moral impulse into words and actions that are patently evil. Parents who kick out their queer children think they are doing a good thing. Jihadis who murder cartoonists do so convinced that their actions are righteous, as do ordinary fundamentalist Muslims who throw acid on women, as do ordinary fundamentalist Christians who pray for the death and dismemberment of their enemies.

The Power of Belief

Beliefs are powerful, and the power of absolute belief is absolute.

Far too many well-meaning lovers of peace fail to understand this. In their desire to promote tolerance they insist that harm done in the names of gods isn’t really motivated by religion, that it is motivated by tyranny or desperation or a host of other socio-political factors. Most certainly the relationship between religion and violence is complex.

But consider, if you will, the fact that the writers of these letters are not oppressed minorities, nor the victims of colonialism, nor destitute and hopeless. And consider that the only harm they experience from the work of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is harm not to persons but to religion itself—the kind of religion that mandates evangelism and dominion.

Religion is powerful in part because it takes command of primal moral emotions including moral disgust and outrage. These emotions can get activated in the service of justice, or compassion, or fairness, or ahimsa, or love. But they also can get attached to matters that serve no purpose save that of protecting the religion itself—violations of ritual purity, or blasphemy rules, or god-ordained gender hierarchy and rules about sex—or an army captain’s obligation to preach the gospel to his underlings.

Obligations like these can feel as morally compelling as a father’s responsibility to protect his children, and when they are obstructed, true believers can feel equally crazed. Hundreds of thousands of Chechens took to the streets last month to protest blasphemy against their Prophet, which many perceive as a crime greater than mass murder.

Paths Forward

Such passion can be met only by confronting the beliefs that drive the behavior. Organizations that work to constrain specific harmful actions, like MRFF, play a critical role in maintaining secular pluralism and rule of law. But make no mistake—as devout believers seek to follow perceived moral mandates they will push to the limits, and sometimes beyond, while simultaneously working to change whatever rules or laws constrain them. That is the nature of moral certitude.

In the long run, the only solution lies in replacing harmful beliefs with those that actually serve peace and wellbeing. Secularists like me see the path forward as one that increasingly relies on science to help us understand and advance human flourishing within a complex web of life. Progressive people of faith, some of them clients or supporters of Mikey Weinstein, embrace the fabric of wisdom in ancient traditions like Christianity and Islam and believe that the best path forward is reformation from within. Either way, the inbox of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation stands as a stark reminder that this work could not be more urgent.

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Her articles about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including AlterNet, Salon, the Huffington Post, Grist, and Jezebel. Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com.

10 Reasons Popular Versions of Christian Heaven Would Actually be Hell

By Valerie Tarico ~

Maybe descriptions of Hell are so horrific to keep people from thinking about how hellish popular versions of the Christian Heaven would be—even without Pat Robertson in the mix.

Most Westerners are at least vaguely familiar with the popular Christian version of Heaven: pearly gates, streets of gold, winged angels and the Righteous, with their bodies made perfect and immortal, singing the praises of God forever. What’s surprising is how few people have actually thought about what a nightmare this kind of existence would be.

Let me start by laying out a bit more detail about Heaven itself.

Popular Christian Descriptions of Heaven Derive from the Bible

Our familiar images of Heaven come from texts written in the first and second centuries and incorporated by Catholic councils into what we now call the New Testament. The Hebrew writers of the Torah alluded to an afterlife much like the Hades of the Greeks and Romans—a hazy underworld in which the souls of the dead neither die nor fully live. But by the time the New Testament was written, the concepts of a distinct Heaven and Hell had emerged in the Jewish culture, from whence they entered early Christianity and then, later, Islam.

The books of the New Testament were written at different times and for different ends, which means they don’t always agree. Although Paul, in 1 Corinthians, says that Heaven is beyond imagining, other writers offer concrete details. The popular version of Heaven today is a composite that comes from several texts but relies heavily on the book of Revelation.

• Heaven is a real place. The writer of John puts these words in the mouth of Jesus, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:2-3NRSV). Some Christian leaders use verses from Old Testament prophets to pinpoint the location of Heaven, suggesting that it is somewhere beyond the North Pole.
• People in Heaven have bodies. The earliest Christian texts, the letters of Paul, suggest that the eternal body is “pneuma” or spirit, but later New Testament writers inclined toward physical resurrection of both Jesus and believers, though with renewed, perfected bodies. This view was affirmed by Church fathers and is now the predominant Christian belief. From this we get the Evangelical belief that in the “End Times” bodies of believers will rise up to Heaven in a Rapture. This belief in a bodily resurrection is even used to explain why Christian women should keep their bodies chaste and “pure.”
• Trappings of wealth abound. Many translations of the Gospel of John say that the dwelling places in Heaven are mansions, which fits with other descriptions of heavenly opulence. In the book of Revelation, the writer is taken in a vision to glimpse Heaven for himself: “And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; The fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolyte; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls: every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.” (Revelation 21). God sits on an ornate throne, and along with crowns, the heavenly hosts are clothed in white, a symbol of purity and a reminder that they do not need to work.
• Heaven is eternal and reserved for believers. The Bible verse that is most quoted by Protestant Christians is John 3:16, which makes both of these points: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. The author of Revelation assures that, “he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more” (Revelation 21:4). In this eternity, it is always light (Revelation 22:5) and there is no need for sleep (Revelation 7:15).
• Children who die before an “age of accountability” also go there. Despite the belief that children are born bad, thanks to “original sin,” most Christians believe that children who die young go to Heaven because the alternative is simply unthinkable. For evidence, they point to two verses in the book of Matthew: “So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost” (Matthew 18:14). “But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs” (Matthew 19:14). Although Christians have disagreed over the centuries about when a budding human acquires an immortal soul, a process called “ensoulment,” many now believe that this happens in the process of conception.
• Inhabitants spend their “time” serving and worshipping God. Even though it is always light, we are told that the saints (meaning the saved) will serve and worship God round the clock. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them (Revelation 7:15). Several passages suggest that the faithful will receive crowns, which they can then offer up as gifts to God. Some take this literally and some do not.

Please note that I have made no attempt to analyze or explain what these passages may have meant in their original contexts, given the culture and objectives of the writers. My purpose here is to demonstrate where modern Christianity got the image of Heaven so often depicted in hymns, sermons, art and pop culture.

Why This Heaven Would Be Hellish

To many people the biblical description alone is enough to make Heaven sound unappealing, especially if you then add the company of noxious but professing public figures like Pat Robertson, Mel Gibson, Sarah Palin, Ken Ham, or Anita Bryant. (Why does God have such a bad marketing department?) But the problem isn’t just bad company. The closer you look, the more the Bible’s version of paradise seems like another version of eternal torture. Let me spell it out.

1. Perfection means sameness. --Much of what makes life worth living is the process of learning and discovery, growth and change. We delight in novelty and laugh because we are startled by the unexpected. Curiosity is one of our greatest pleasures, and growth is one of our deepest values and satisfactions. In fact, our whole psychological make-up is designed for tuning in to change, including our senses. When a sound is continuous, we mostly stop hearing it; a static image on the eye registers as a blind spot. Even art relies on imperfection and newness to create beauty or to trigger our aesthetic sense.
   
   By contrast, timeless perfection is static, as Christians are reminded in the traditional hymn, “Immortal, Invisible God Only Wise.” We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree/ And wither and perish but naught changeth Thee. In the book of Matthew, Jesus commands, “Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect,” and in Heaven, we are told, this ideal is finally attained. The problem is, perfect means finished and complete. It means there’s no room for improvement--for change and growth. Perfection is sterile—in every sense of the word.

 

2. Your best qualities are irrelevant. – If everything is perfect, then many of the qualities that we most value in ourselves and each other become irrelevant. Compassion and generosity are pointless, because nobody is hurting or in need of –anything. Forgiveness? Not needed. Creativity? Courage? Resilience? Decisiveness? Vision? All useless. Sigmund Freud once said that mental health is the ability to love and to work, but in the state of perfection both lose their meaning. There is no need to create or produce, and little value in offering our affection and commitment to another person who is 100 percent perfect and complete without us.

 

3. Gone is the thrill of risk. – In addition to loving and creating, some of life’s most exhilarating experiences require risk. Picture flying down a ski slope almost out of control; pounding a single track over bumps and beneath hanging branches; jumping out of an airplane; racing cars; surfing; or performing. The adrenaline rush—the high—and the euphoria afterwards surge only because, despite our skill and preparation, there was some chance we would fail.

 

4. Forget animal pleasures like food, drink, sleep, and sex. - Does the risen Jesus with his new and perfect body have a penis or anus? Do angels? Eating, drinking, or fornicating--each of these physical pleasures depends on hunger of one sort or another. Ice water tastes most heavenly when you are hot and thirsty. Falling asleep is most delicious when you simply can’t stand to be vertical any longer. The reality is that our bodies and brains are made for each other and optimized for life on this planet where our pleasures are linked to survival.
   
   To make matters more complicated, we are predators in a complex web of life. The eating that gives us so much sensory pleasure and sustenance simultaneously destroys other lives and creates waste. Christians disagree about whether there will be meals in Heaven. Some point to “feasting” in the book of Revelation and reassure foodies that eating and drinking will be part of paradise. But none dare speculate on the perfect slaughterhouse and sewer.

 

5. Free will ceases to exist. – Some Christians explain the presence of suffering and evil here on earth as God’s way of creating creatures who would love him freely--by giving them the option to reject him. But that is exactly the opposite condition they predict in Heaven. In Heaven there is no sin, no option to sin, and so, by Christianity’s own definition, no free will. (Some skeptics point out that “love me or I’ll torture you forever” doesn’t exactly create the conditions for genuine love either. Why, they ask, would a god who wants love to be freely given threaten us with hell, even if it existed? But that is a different article.) Secular philosophers and neuroscientists debate whether free will is real or merely and adaptive illusion. Either way, in the Bible’s version of Heaven, even the illusion vanishes.

 

6. Ninety eight percent of Heaven’s occupants are embryos and toddlers. Human reproduction is designed as a big funnel. Most fertilized eggs die before implanting, followed by embryos and fetuses that self-abort, followed by babies and then little kids. A serious but startling statistical analysis by researcher Greg S. Paul suggests that if we include the unborn, more than 98 percent of Heaven’s inhabitants, some 350 billion, would be those who died before maturing to the point that they could voluntarily “accept the gift of salvation.” The vast majority of the heavenly host would be moral automatons or robots, meaning they never had moral autonomy and never chose to be there. Christian believers, ironically, would be a 1 to 2 percent minority even if all 30,000+ denominations of believers actually made it in.
   
   Immortality—A fate worse than death.The theological implications are huge. Christian theologians typically explain evil by arguing that this was the best of all possible worlds, the only way to create free will and to develop moral virtues (like courage, compassion, forgiveness and so forth), to make us more Christ-like and prepare us for Heaven. But if we run the numbers, it appears that God didn’t need the whole free will—sin—redemption thing to fill his paradise with perfect beings because no suffering, evil, or moral freedom is actually required as a prelude to glory.The ratio of adults to embryos has social implications as well. Pastoral counselors sometimes tell a women that she will get to apologize in Heaven to the fetus she aborted, which will be a fully developed person there. As a psychologist, I don’t know what this means, because the brain and mind, our individuality and identity, and the qualities that define our personhood—develop only via experience. Imagine if 98 percent of the “people” around you had never made a decision or felt sorrow or experienced anything akin to an adult conversation. The company of Mr. Robertson starts sounding not so bad.

 

7. Gems and streets of gold define heavenly wealth and beauty. – Our desperate, goat-herding Iron Age ancestors may have yearned for the trappings of royalty. They may have heard rumors of the gold and jewels amassed by Pharaohs or kings or tribal warlords and wished the same for themselves. Both greed and inequality are timeless, and the story of King Midas has played out in countless variations over the millennia. So, the fascination of the Bible writers with gold and precious stones is understandable.
   

    

   But let’s be honest. Their gem-encrusted paradise is the product of limited imagination, the challenge we all face in trying to dream beyond the arts, technologies, and mythologies of our own time and culture. The Bible’s version of paradise is like a velvet painting from a tourist shop when compared to a real alpine meadow or cloud forest or coral reef (or when compared to a world that contains all three as Tracy Chapman does in her song, Heaven’s Here on Earth.)

 

8. Take your pick of sadism or ignorance. - One of Heaven’s dirty little secrets is that it co-exists with hell. Or maybe it isn’t a secret. Maybe it’s a perk. Some theologians have argued that witnessing the torment of the damned will be one of the joys of paradise. In the words of Puritan superstar Jonathon Edwards, who preached a whole sermon on the topic: “When the saints in glory, therefore, shall see the doleful state of the damned, how will this heighten their sense of the blessedness of their own state, so exceedingly different from it! When they shall see how miserable others of their fellow creatures are, who were naturally in the same circumstances with themselves; when they shall see the smoke of their torment, and the raging of the flames of their burning, and hear their dolorous shrieks and cries, and consider that they in the meantime are in the most blissful state, and shall surely be in it to all eternity; how will they rejoice!”
   
   If we are to believe the earnest Christian hate mail that Bonnie Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has now compiled into a book, or “love letters” read aloud by biologist Richard Dawkins (watching him struggle with the word biatch is priceless!), at least some of the faithful can hardly wait for the show to start.
   
   Other Christians, to be fair, find this thought horrifying or even traumatic, and some teach universal salvation or that evildoers are simply annihilated. But for hell-believers the alternatives to gloating aren’t a whole lot better: Either the faithful are blessedly blissfully indifferent to the endless suffering of the damned, or their joy depends on them being unaware, meaning ignorance is a condition of their eternal bliss.

 

9. Your celestial day (and night) job is to sing God’s praises. - What do the faithful do in Heaven? The same thing the angels do. They worship God and sing his praises. The writer of Revelation even offers us a sample song. In one passage, 24 elders “fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives forever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” (Revelation 4:10-110). As one graduate of Evangel College (Assemblies of God) observed wryly, “Having spent some time in N. Korea, where the incessant praise music and propaganda were required and all-pervasive, I sometimes wonder if the dynastic leaders there somehow lifted a page from an older playbook.”
   
   It has been said that the only god worthy of worship is one who neither wants nor needs it. What are we to think of a deity who creates the earth and her inhabitants – in fact the entire universe—so that a crowd of bipedal primates, most of whom were never born, can spend an afterlife in this posture of praise and adulation?

 

10. This Heaven goes on forever. - Most of us would prefer to live longer than the time allotted to us. Aging sucks, and losing a loved one is one of the most painful wounds we can experience.
    
    But forever? Forever is infinity. It never ends. Think of the best possible experience you can imagine—your favorite symphony or rock concert, the most beautiful place you’ve travelled, the most intimate or intense sex ever, holding your child . . . . Any one of them, stretched to infinity becomes unthinkable.
    
    Fiction writers who seriously explore the idea of immortality rarely treat it as something to be desired, and for good reason. Even kids grasp the problems, for example, when they read Tuck Everlasting. Author Edgar Shoaff put it bluntly: Immortality—A fate worse than death. The movie Groundhog Day is a comedy. But part of what’s funny for viewers is the insane array of suicide attempts Bill Murray makes in order to stop living the same day over and over. What might an inhabitant of the Heaven I’ve just described do to cease existing?

Could an omnipotent god create an afterlife that was actually some form of paradise? Perhaps. And without a doubt pained Bible believers who read this article will insist that their God has done just that. Some will fall back on the words of Paul and claim, on biblical authority, that they (and I) have no idea what Heaven will be like—other than eternally wonderful.

But the fact is, Christians for centuries have claimed that they do have an idea of what Heaven will be like. New Testament writers, Church Fathers, monks, iconographers, crusaders, inquisitors, reformers, conquistadors, missionaries, priests, nuns, Sunday school teachers, pulpit pounders, faith healers, televangelists, internet wonders . . . . For almost two millennia Bible believers have sought to entice small children, the desperate poor and the vulnerable or trusting by promising the kind of tawdry, debased everlasting life described above. They still do today. Selling shares in this Heaven is a multi-billion dollar industry.

Crowns and white robes and streets of gold and angelic choruses have long been Christianity’s carrot, with the threat of eternal torture as the stick. Millions of people have lived and died, fearing one and anticipating the other, never noticing the sleight of hand—that they are two versions of the same thing.

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Her articles about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including AlterNet, Salon, the Huffington Post, Grist, and Jezebel. Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com.

Fleece Alert ! !

By summerbreeze ~

This is a heads-up on a scam.

I hadn't planned on posting an article so close to my last one, but something happened to us about 2 weeks ago that I thought I should share, as a kind of warning.

My husband ( Mike ) had received a call from two guys with very thick Indian accents ( New Delhi Indian, not Native American ) who said they were from 'Windows' and wanted to help 'clear up' issues with our computer. They each took turns speaking with Mike. He thought that they were legit because we had been having a few minor problems.

They had him do several things with the computer, then said that our anti-virus protection was not sufficient and we needed to up-grade it with their plan. They explained the different programs and the costs. Mike was very suspicious and said he'd get back with them after he searched other options. They got mad, real mad. They said that they'd shut down our computer if Mike didn't accept their plan NOW. He didn't, and they actually shut down our computer!

Mike scooped up the computer ( feeling like a fool ) and took it to a computer repair shop that we trust, and they said that this scam has been going around. We got a new password, and our computer was put back in shape.

The very next day after that call, a woman called me, also with a thick Indian accent, wanting me to donate $100.00 towards feeding American Indian children in the SouthWest. ( ironic, huh ? ).....I turned her down and hung up.

Then just this week, the 2 jerks who called in the first place, called again !.....Mike gave forth with some delightful, colorful, unheard of before cuss words that would have made a Longshoreman blush.

It's pretty obvious that the three of them were after our credit card numbers.

On the Saturday after these confrontations, Mike had coffee with his buddies as usual. There are two men who are fundamentalists in a big way, who go to coffee. ( my husband is a believer, however not a church-goer ) Mike told them all what happened....the lies...the extortion...the costs....the inconvenience....the anger, and how he would love to strangle them to death.

The two fundies piped in that these people should be forgiven, after all they no doubt are in 3rd world countries and must be poor and desperate......HA !....easy to say when it never happened to you, and I doubt most sincerely that they are poor. I'll save my forgiving for people that don't try to fleece me.

P.S. - I have no problem with people from India, my favorite Doctor is from India, and she's wonderful.

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More on this scam:

http://www.snopes.com/fraud/telephone/microsoft.asp

http://blogs.microsoft.com/cybertrust/2014/06/26/is-that-call-from-microsoft-a-scam/

http://www.computerrepairtips.net/phone-call-from-microsoft-about-virus-is-a-scam/

http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0346-tech-support-scams

http://www.howtogeek.com/176605/tell-your-relatives-no-microsoft-wont-call-you-about-your-computer/

What the Hell? Christians Trying to Revise the Word of Jesus

By Carolyn Hyppolite ~

In the venerable tradition of making crap up as you go along, Christians have been trying to allegorize and sanitize the embarrassing fact that their loving God is planning to roast most of his creation in perpetuity. Unfortunately for them, we can read.

When I ask, how am I supposed to enjoy Heaven knowing that most of my fellow human beings are locked in a torture chamber, mostly for misdemeanors, I am told that Hell is no such thing. It is in fact a place of separation from God, or a place of darkness, or just eternal annihilation.

None of these description of Hades can be justified by the Christian’s primary text—the Bible. Nothing remotely close to “eternal separation from God” is ever mentioned in the New Testament. Darkness might be the very place one might expect to find God since he has been known to speak in it (Deuteronomy 5:22), make it is his canopy (2 Samuel 22:12), and to dwell in it (1 Kings 8:12).

There is some Biblical warrant for the notion of Hell as death—which is not scary for the atheist who has been expecting to die all along. Jesus says, “But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.’” (Luke 19:27)

That the Scripture writers saw no inconsistency in placing these words in the mouth of Jesus while simultaneously attributing the following to him is to say the least surprising:

But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you…. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same…. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful (Luke 6:27-28, 32, 36).

Thus saith the Lord, do what I say, not what I do.

It is a little unfair to impose our modern worldview on the Bible. As L.P. Hartley rightly said, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” However, since believers insist on infecting our present with this antiquated notion of justice, we cannot remain dispassionate about the plans that their king has for us. According to the Bible, these plans include not mere separation, not darkness, not even the mercy of nonexistence, but torture—conscious and perpetual torment.

In the end of times, Jesus is coming back to cast the unrighteous into fire:

The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13:41-42).

The Bible vividly describes the torment in store for those who worship the anti-Christ:

“Those who worship the beast and its image, and receive a mark on their foreheads or on their hands, they will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and they will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image and for anyone who receives the mark of its name.” (Revelation 14:9-11).

There’s nothing about any of these passages that indicates the existence of an allegorical or spiritual suffering. Jesus makes it clear that Hell involves physical torment. In a story often lauded for its lesson on economic inequality—a lesson ignored by Christians—Jesus tells us that the rich man is in such suffering that he begs for a drop of cool water:

The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ (Luke 16:22-24)

The torments that await the damned is so bad that Jesus suggests that it is better to dismember your body than to risk it:

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched (Mark 9:43-48).

Most Christians have not taken Jesus’s instruction too seriously. However, the fourth century theologian Origen is rumored to have castrated himself to avoid sexual temptation. And even today, a few Catholics, like John Paul II or members of Opus Dei, employ self-flagellation to subdue their sinful bodies.

The past is a foreign country, and for centuries Christians praised God for the existence of a place of eternal torment because they lived in a time where that would have been more palatable. That there are attempts to backpedal from these claims indicates that believers are equally subject to the moral zeitgeist of their day as everyone else. The attempt to clean up Hell reflects secular, post-enlightenment ethics. And while we should be grateful for that moral progress, we should not let them get away with rewriting their history.

Why Male?

By Carl S ~

The Day after the terrorist attacks in Paris, a spokesman for Islamic Americans said that Islam is “a religion of tolerance.” These words were spoken by someone who chooses to ignore the fact that, after an Islamic extremist attack, the perpetrators shout out, “God is great!” (Where did they learn that phrase from? Oh yes, at least five times a day, every day, from the time they are children.)

The following morning, in Saudi Arabia, a blogger was flogged 50 times for degrading Islam. That same evening, Al-Jazeera America did a feature about a male singer-songwriter in Iran who was about to depart the country and had his visa revoked. “Tolerance?” In protest, several women got on the internet or Facebook or whatever, and in a group, and individually, sang one of his songs. Wonderful! Thousands of hits. But there's a problem with this: you see, in Iran, it's against the law for a woman to sing. It's based on the fear that a woman's voice will lead men into sin. This is only one law based on that belief; it seems that anything publicly feminine is forbidden to them, else why would women have to be covered in tents? This begs the question: Why aren't men in non-Islamic countries roiling in fornication and adultery at exposures to so much cleavage, bare legs, even pornography, and so much other female flesh, and so many women singers?

If there's anything to make me angry, it's prejudice against women. The source of greatest prejudice and deprivation of their rights has its origin and perpetuation through male dominated faiths. The biblical deity is a misogynist. We have writings from early Xian Church fathers speaking out on the “evil” nature of women. (Did those men resent the fact that women were necessary to make babies? I'm inclined to think so.)

Gods are supposed to be spirits, yet they are gender-based fertile for religions, which is why many of them were goddesses. This fertility explanation is the primary foundation of the Judaic/ Christian/ Islamic religions, where the god is male. As such, this god has a penis. (Wizened Sage once wrote, “Does God Have Parts?” citing bible passages in support of a yes answer.) So, this one god has a penis, or as the argument goes about religion's beginning, was a penis, and creates, seeding everything. And this is where the trouble begins for women. One reason for this is the belief of primitive peoples that the male, as made in the image of this one god, carried the entire infant in his body, and therefore, the female was only the garden plot in which his seed was planted and grew. Therefore, males rule, bitch!

It follows that the male-only baby maker superstition is the chief message of scriptural texts. Consider the virgins taken as rewards for genocide, the spoils of war. As pagans, they were considered pure planting grounds for a pure Israelite baby to come. The same applies to virgins impregnated by the “sons of God,” as described in Genesis before the Flood, and Mary, the mother of Jesus. Ignorance, total ignorance, about how babies are made. But without perpetuating ignorance, religion can't thrive.

Only half of every human organism is male, the other half is female; you can't make a baby without female chromosomes. (Although some organisms can reproduce through parthenogenesis, meaning “reproduction in which an unfertilized egg develops into a new female individual.” A case for a female god if there ever was one - males can't do that. Perhaps this Male God creation is “jealous” of a Parthenogenesis Goddess.) Monotheistic religions still insist on male superiority, in spite of the fact that their male god and all males may jack off forever and still can't make a baby without the females.

The biblical deity is a misogynist.So, now we have this one indivisible, unstoppable, out-of-control, over-testosteroned male who destroys everyone and everything that displeases him, as an example for all males, created in his image by them of course, to emulate. He okays destruction of property and lives, even demands it in his name. And, despite religion's efforts to re-brand this god as a loving father, there is no evidence that the natural world is any different than it has always been.

Christian focus on the “family values” are only paternalistic-dominated ones, in which a wife must obey her husband, not those in which a woman is the head of household. After all, it is the male, like God, who has the penis. Isn't this the same “rationalization” in Judaism and Islam?

Evidently, this jealous god, in Islamic countries alone, doesn't trust men to be self-controlled. It is why their women have to be controlled, covered up, kept quiet, lest men give in to their wiles, their Siren voices, tempting their naturally uncontrollable lusts into disobeying him. Yeah, Allah doesn't know men very well.

Perhaps the domineering monotheist “God,” created by men, is merely a projection of their own fears of sexual vulnerability to the down-to-earth sensuality of women? Astoundingly, men and even women will even kill to preserve this traditional god. Women buy into it? Surely, unknowingly, they are their own worst enemies! Are they all fearful of divine and human punishment in “letting go?” Sadly, the Almighty Penis rapes them all.

Now more than ever, we have the power to change things by changing things for women. This is why we must fully support educational and reproduction empowerment for all girls/women everywhere in the world. In doing so, we will not only bring about freedom of their human rights, but freedom for all genders to truly be themselves and express themselves ever more fully.

In every country where this male and female expression exists as rights, everyone, men, women, and children, profits without the domination of religions. Religion might not go away, but that kind of religion must fade and recede into the ignorance from which it originated. Castrate this god. Let's make it happen.

Craig Hicks forces me to write my first Atheist Apologetics Blog

By David Kirk ~

This week atheist Craig Hicks killed three Muslim students which has forced me as an atheist to write my first atheist apologetic blog.

If you do not know what the term "apologetic" means or what an apologist is in cases of religion , an apologist is defined as "A person who argues in defense or justification of something, such as a doctrine, policy, or institution."

Thankfully atheism is not a doctrine, policy, or institution.

The End.

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David Kirk is a former Christian and recently launched www.atheistfortitude.com, a website dedicated to helping other former believers who are in the process of "coming out."

Joy Unspeakable, Part 6: Jesus Freak in Neverland

By undercover agnostic ~

My added zeal for the Lord, prompted by rapture-mania, manifested itself in peculiar ways, especially at the High School, a.k.a. my “harvest field” where I was commanded to fulfill the great commission. So, what do you call a kid who wears “Jesus” paraphernalia to school, attends a weekly Bible study during lunch, stuffs gospel tracts in lockers and coat pockets, owns no secular albums, and has a Gideon New Testament peeking out of her backpack? Take your pick: weirdo, nerd, fruitcake, Jesus Freak-- that was me. I was the clumsy misfit whom the jocks and cheerleaders mocked and patronized. Even Mr. Osmond, my Social Studies teacher, would roll his eyes in mild disgust when reading aloud, my fake Coca cola button, “JESUS CHRIST He’s the real thing,” or the sticker on my binder that said, “My God is not dead. Sorry about yours.” I took to heart the message I had heard repeatedly at church, “If you’re ashamed of God, He will be ashamed of you.” Lord knows I didn’t want the king of the universe claiming not to know me on judgment day, yet I couldn’t help feeling my face get hot while performing my duty as a Christian mascot. I wanted to follow Christ AND fit in, but I couldn’t have both. When I considered what Jesus endured on the cross, it seemed the least I could do was suffer the momentary pain of isolation and social suicide at my tiny rural High School. Just like the day I refused to dance my way into the lunch line in 6th grade, I believed God was most pleased with me when I felt ostracized and persecuted. As a result, for my entire four years of High School, I lived in Never, Never Land. I never went on a date, never kissed a boy (or a girl), never went to a party, never took a sip of alcohol, and never attended a rock concert or school dance. I didn’t even go out for track, despite my P.E. Teacher’s encouragement, because there were occasional meets on Sunday, and Mama was convinced that running the 100 yard dash would most certainly render the Sabbath unholy-a clear violation of the fourth commandment.

Jesus Freak-- that was me. I was the clumsy misfit whom the jocks and cheerleaders mocked and patronized. All of these moments describing a typical American teen’s rite of passage were off limits to me and I lived in a parallel universe. I clung tightly to the one club that would fully embrace me: The church. In my sanctuary, I felt safe, cared for and understood. Within the sacred walls, the God I loved and worshipped was revered instead of ridiculed and the people on the outside, who didn’t believe were the foolish ones-- not me. Inside the holy place, Jill and I were the poster kids every godly parent wished their teen would emulate. We were squeaky clean from head to toe, with excellent manners and servant’s hearts, willing to help anywhere we were needed. The only trouble we ever got into, during our entire teen age years, was driving to Pocatello, without permission, to go roller skating with the youth group, while our parents were touring the Holy Land. Yes, you heard me right. Roller. Skating. I knew my brother wouldn’t let us go, due to the blizzard, so I lied and said I had a piano lesson, which was true until my teacher called and cancelled, but Ray didn’t need to know that. This was our ticket to rendezvous with our Jesus homies and get a small taste of the wild side. By “wild” I mean, going out on a school night. But, as “luck” or, as my parents suggested, “the Holy Spirit” would have it, I backed into another car, in the parking lot, denting my dad’s pick up truck. The other car was not damaged as it was one of those old Cadillacs with the sharp pointy tail fins, that jabbed my dad’s tailgate like a wieldy sword, while leaving no trace of its devastation on its own beastly frame. We were grounded for the entire month of December and my dad decided not to fix the old GMC, so that every time we saw the crumpled artifact of our imprudence, we would remember what we had done- the gift of condemnation that just kept on giving! As Mama always warned, “Be sure your sins will find you out.” And they did.

Besides this one unfortunate indiscretion we really were good girls. I even showed up early at the local nursing home, to play the piano for the old folks, before our main service on Sunday mornings and we helped with children’s church, doing puppets and skits. Jill and I also sang duets during the offertory and I played piano solos on occasion. These things were not motivated by obligation or fear, but out of pure love for Jesus. All I can say is, I was the real deal. I wanted nothing more, than to live my life completely and wholeheartedly consecrated to Christ, and serving Him with my time and talents.

Religion’s Dirty Dozen—12 Really Bad Religious Ideas That Have Made the World Worse

By Valerie Tarico ~

Some of humanity’s technological innovations are things we would have been better off without: the medieval rack, the atomic bomb and powdered lead potions come to mind. Religions tend to develop ideas or concepts rather than technologies, but like every other creative human enterprise, they produce some really bad ones along with the good.

My website, Wisdom Commons, highlights some of humanity’s best moral and spiritual concepts, ideas like the Golden Rule, and values like compassion, generosity and courage that make up our shared moral core. Here, by way of contrast, are some of the worst. These twelve dubious concepts promote conflict, cruelty, suffering and death rather than love and peace. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, they belong in the dustbin of history just as soon as we can get them there.

1. Chosen People –The term “Chosen People” typically refers to the Hebrew Bible and the ugly idea that God has given certain tribes a Promised Land (even though it is already occupied by other people). But in reality many sects endorse some version of this concept. The New Testament identifies Christians as the chosen ones. Calvinists talk about “God’s elect,” believing that they themselves are the special few who were chosen before the beginning of time. Jehovah’s witnesses believe that 144,000 souls will get a special place in the afterlife. In many cultures certain privileged and powerful bloodlines were thought to be descended directly from gods (in contrast to everyone else).

Religious sects are inherently tribal and divisive because they compete by making mutually exclusive truth claims and by promising blessings or afterlife rewards that no competing sect can offer. “Gang symbols” like special haircuts, attire, hand signals and jargon differentiate insiders from outsiders and subtly (or not so subtly) convey to both that insiders are inherently superior.

2. Heretics – Heretics, kafir, or infidels (to use the medieval Catholic term) are not just outsiders, they are morally suspect and often seen as less than fully human. In the Torah, slaves taken from among outsiders don’t merit the same protections as Hebrew slaves. Those who don’t believe in a god are corrupt, doers of abominable deeds. "There is none [among them] who does good,” says the Psalmist.

Islam teaches the concept of “dhimmitude” and provides special rules for the subjugation of religious minorities, with monotheists getting better treatment than polytheists. Christianity blurs together the concepts of unbeliever and evildoer. Ultimately, heretics are a threat that needs to be neutralized by conversion, conquest, isolation, domination, or—in worst cases—mass murder.

3. Holy War – If war can be holy, anything goes. The medieval Roman Catholic Church conducted a twenty year campaign of extermination against heretical Cathar Christians in the south of France, promising their land and possessions to real Christians who signed on as crusaders. Sunni and Shia Muslims have slaughtered each other for centuries. The Hebrew scriptures recount battle after battle in which their war God, Yahweh, helps them to not only defeat but also exterminate the shepherding cultures that occupy their “Promised Land.” As in later holy wars, like the modern rise of ISIS, divine sanction let them kill the elderly and children, burn orchards, and take virgin females as sexual slaves—all while retaining a sense of moral superiority.

4. Blasphemy – Blasphemy is the notion that some ideas are inviolable, off limits to criticism, satire, debate, or even question. By definition, criticism of these ideas is an outrage, and it is precisely this emotion--outrage--that the crime of blasphemy evokes in believers. The Bible prescribes death for blasphemers; the Quran does not, but death-to-blasphemers became part of Shariah during medieval times.

The idea that blasphemy must be prevented or avenged has caused millions of murders over the centuries and countless other horrors. As I write, blogger Raif Badawi awaits round after round of flogging in Saudi Arabia—1000 lashes in batches of 50—while his wife and children plead from Canada for the international community to do something.

5. Glorified suffering – Picture secret societies of monks flogging their own backs. The image that comes to mind is probably from Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code, but the idea isn’t one he made up. A core premise of Christianity is that righteous torture—if it’s just intense and prolonged enough--can somehow fix the damage done by evil, sinful behavior. Millions of crucifixes litter the world as testaments to this belief. Shia Muslims beat themselves with lashes and chains during Aashura, a form of sanctified suffering called Matam that commemorates the death of the martyr Hussein. Self-denial in the form of asceticism and fasting is a part of both Eastern and Western religions, not only because deprivation induces altered states but also because people believe suffering somehow brings us closer to divinity.

Our ancestors lived in a world in which pain came unbidden, and people had very little power to control it. An aspirin or heating pad would have been a miracle to the writers of the Bible, Quran, or Gita. Faced with uncontrollable suffering, the best advice religion could offer was to lean in or make meaning of it. The problem, of course is that glorifying suffering—turning it into a spiritual good—has made people more willing to inflict it on not only themselves and their enemies but also those who are helpless, including the ill or dying (as in the case of Mother Teresa and the American Bishops) and children (as in the child beating Patriarchy movement).

6. Genital mutilation – Primitive people have used scarification and other body modifications to define tribal membership for as long as history records. But genital mutilation allowed our ancestors several additional perks—if you want to call them that. In Judaism, infant circumcision serves as a sign of tribal membership, but circumcision also serves to test the commitment of adult converts. In one Bible story, a chieftain agrees to convert and submit his clan to the procedure as a show of commitment to a peace treaty. (While the men lie incapacitated, the whole town is then slain by the Israelites.)

In Islam, painful male circumcision serves as a rite of passage into manhood, initiation into a powerful club. By contrast, in some Muslim cultures cutting away or burning the female clitoris and labia ritually establishes the submission of women by reducing sexual arousal and agency. An estimated 2 million girls annually are subjected to the procedure, with consequences including hemorrhage, infection, painful urination and death.

7. Blood sacrifice - In the list of religion’s worst ideas, this is the only one that appears to be in its final stages. Only some Hindus (during the Festival of Gadhimai) and some Muslims (during Eid al Adha, Feast of the Sacrifice) continue to ritually slaughter sacrificial animals on a mass scale. Hindu scriptures including the Gita and Puranas forbid ritual killing, and most Hindus now eschew the practice based on the principle of ahimsa, but it persists as a residual of folk religion.

When our ancient ancestors slit the throats on humans and animals or cut out their hearts or sent the smoke of sacrifices heavenward, many believed that they were literally feeding supernatural beings. In time, in most religions, the rationale changed—the gods didn’t need feeding so much as they needed signs of devotion and penance. The residual child sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible (yes it is there) typically has this function. Christianity’s persistent focus on blood atonement—the notion of Jesus as the be-all-end-all lamb without blemish, the final “propitiation” for human sin—is hopefully the last iteration of humanity’s long fascination with blood sacrifice.

8. Hell – Whether we are talking about Christianity, Islam or Buddhism, an afterlife filled with demons, monsters, and eternal torture was the worst suffering that Iron Age minds could conceive and medieval minds could elaborate. Invented, perhaps, as a means to satisfy the human desire for justice, the concept of Hell quickly devolved into a tool for coercing behavior and belief.

Most Buddhists see hell as a metaphor, a journey into the evil inside the self, but the descriptions of torturing monsters and levels of hell can be quite explicit. Likewise, many Muslims and Christians hasten to assure that it is a real place, full of fire and the anguish of non-believers. Some Christians have gone so far as to insist that the screams of the damned can be heard from the center of the Earth or that observing their anguish from afar will be one of the pleasures of paradise.

9. Karma – Like hell, the concept of karma offers a selfish incentive for good behavior—it’ll come back at you later—but it has enormous costs. Chief among these is a tremendous weight of cultural passivity in the face of harm and suffering. Secondarily, the idea of karma can sanctify the broad human practice of blaming the victim. If what goes around comes around, then the disabled child or cancer patient or untouchable poor (or the hungry rabbit or mangy dog) must have done something in this or a previous life to bring their position on themselves.

10. Eternal Life – To our weary and unwashed ancestors, the idea of gem encrusted walls, streets of gold, the fountain of youth, or an eternity of angelic chorus (or sex with virgins) may have seemed like sheer bliss. But it doesn’t take much analysis to realize how quickly eternal paradise would become hellish—an endless repetition of never changing groundhog days (because how could they change if they were perfect).

The real reason that the notion of eternal life is such a bad invention, though, is the degree to which it diminishes and degrades existence on this earthly plane. With eyes lifted heavenward, we can’t see the intricate beauty beneath our feet. Devout believers put their spiritual energy into preparing for a world to come rather than cherishing and stewarding the one wild and precious world we have been given.

Devout believers put their spiritual energy into preparing for a world to come rather than cherishing and stewarding the one wild and precious world we have been given. 11. Male Ownership of Female Fertility – The notion of women as brood mares or children as assets likely didn’t originate with religion, but the idea that women were created for this purpose, that if a woman should die of childbearing “she was made to do it,” most certainly did. Traditional religions variously assert that men have a god-ordained right to give women in marriage, take them in war, exclude them from heaven, and kill them if the origins of their offspring can’t be assured. Hence Catholicism’s maniacal obsession with the virginity of Mary and female martyrs. Hence Islam’s maniacal obsession with covering the female body. Hence Evangelical promise rings, and gender segregated sidewalks in Jerusalem and orthodox Jewish women wearing wigs over shaved heads in New York.

As we approach the limits of our planetary life support system and stare dystopia in the face, defining women as breeders and children as assets becomes even more costly. We now know that resource scarcity is a conflict trigger and that demand for water and arable land is growing even as both resources decline. And yet, a pope who claims to care about the desperate poor lectures them against contraception while Muslim leaders ban vasectomies in a drive to outbreed their enemies.

12. Bibliolatry (aka Book Worship) – Preliterate people handed down their best guesses about gods and goodness by way of oral tradition, and they made objects of stone and wood, idols, to channel their devotion. Their notions of what was good and what was Real and how to live in moral community with each other were free to evolve as culture and technology changed. But the advent of the written word changed that. As our Iron Age ancestors recorded and compiled their ideas into sacred texts, these texts allowed their understanding of gods and goodness to become static. The sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam forbid idol worship, but over time the texts themselves became idols, and many modern believers practice—essentially—book worship, also known as bibliolatry.

“Because the faith of Islam is perfect, it does not allow for any innovations to the religion,” says one young Muslim explaining his faith online. His statement betrays a naïve lack of information about the origins and evolution of his own dogmas. But more broadly, it sums up the challenge all religions face moving forward. Imagine if a physicist said, “Because our understanding of physics is perfect, it does not allow for any innovations to the field.”

Adherents who think their faith is perfect, are not just naïve or ill informed. They are developmentally arrested, and in the case of the world’s major religions, they are anchored to the Iron Age, a time of violence, slavery, desperation and early death.

Ironically, the mindset that our sacred texts are perfect betrays the very quest that drove our ancestors to write those texts. Each of the men who wrote part of the Bible, Quran, or Gita took his received tradition, revised it, and offered his own best articulation of what is good and real. We can honor the quest of our spiritual ancestors, or we can honor their answers, but we cannot do both.

Religious apologists often try to deny, minimize, or explain away the sins of scripture and the evils of religious history. “It wasn’t really slavery.” “That’s just the Old Testament.” “He didn’t mean it that way.” “You have to understand how bad their enemies were.” “Those people who did harm in the name of God weren’t real [Christians/Jews/Muslims].” Such platitudes may offer comfort, but denying problems doesn’t solve them. Quite the opposite, in fact. Change comes with introspection and insight, a willingness to acknowledge our faults and flaws while still embracing our strengths and potential for growth.

In a world that is teeming with humanity, armed with pipe bombs and machine guns and nuclear weapons and drones, we don’t need defenders of religion’s status quo—we need real reformation, as radical as that of the 16^th Century and much, much broader. It is only by acknowledging religion’s worst ideas that we have any hope of embracing the best.

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Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Her articles about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including AlterNet, Salon, the Huffington Post, Grist, and Jezebel. Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com.

Related:

How Religion Can Let Loose Humanity’s Most Violent Impulses

Who, When, Why –10 Times the Bible Says Torture is OK

15 Bible Texts Reveal Why “God’s Own Party” is at War with Women

Duality of Consciousness

By BlackFreethought ~

I have many facets to my identity. Here are just a few: Blerd, Afrogeek, Blatheist, or if you prefer, Black Nerd, Black Geek, Black Atheist. I am a non-conforming individual fighting against the religious status quo. At least that's what I would like to think. The reality has much more complexity than it would seem.

I love comic books and the ideas about secret identities and alter egos. I especially like the X-Men. With it's thinly veiled allegory about being "the other" and the challenges that come with it, allow me to insert my experiences into the stories. The "other", referred to in the X-Men by the term mutants, have abilities, powers, and skills that set them apart from everyone else. These folks were born with their powers.

Some mutants look very different from normal humans and have a difficult time with acceptance due to their appearance. Other mutants look like normal humans and can fit in as long as no one discovers that they have powers. Some of the major themes of this comic book are hatred, conformity and discrimination. The mutants are feared and hated by normal humans. The mutants are also discriminated against because normal humans do not see them as equal to them. They view the mutants as rejects or human mistakes.

Any group that doesn't fit into society's accepted boxes can relate to these particular comic book characters and their struggles. I am similar to both kinds of mutants referred to in the previous paragraph. I cannot hide the fact that I am a Black man. People see that and have their preconceived notions about me based on my skin color. However no one would know that I am atheist unless I told them. In that regard, I get to hide my beliefs and suffer no ill consequences as long as I am quiet. I have to wear an intellectual mask around my friends and family to protect myself from the stigma that comes from going against the grain of Christianity. A large majority of my social circle still consists of Evangelical Christians.

As I have written before, the social consequences of going against Christianity in the Black community can be severe. In most major urban areas, Black Evangelical Christians hold key positions of power and authority within the public and private sectors. They are in positions where they have influence over who gets promotions or gets opportunities.

Coming out loud and proud as an atheist could cost me familial relationships, political clout, and a platform to secure an income. I applaud those who are privileged to come out as atheist without many social consequences. Others like myself have to maintain a duality of consciousness as well as an air of secrecy. I have to walk a fine line between upholding my personal integrity and playing the "don't ask, don't tell" game.

It would be nice if I could be judged based on the content of my character and not on the context of my faithlessness. Trying to walk an enlightened path is tough when you want to take the high road, and foolishness from others attempts to bring you down. I realize that Christianity does not play by the rules they so desperately want others to play by when it comes to them.

Hopefully in the near future, I will be able to say that I am a non conformist fighting against the religious status quo. Please understand that I am proud to be an atheist. However until the day comes where I can feel safe being who I am without any masks on, I will continue to hide in plain sight.

http://blackmaleatheist.blogspot.com/

Silence and the Stage

By Ronna Russell ~

Preacher Dad decided he needed to be around more. My mom had been a good mother in our early childhood but it was time for him to take over. Her usefulness as a parent had been served and she could step aside, he told her. Thanks, honey. Mom wept a lot. So he took a job as the vice-president of Jackson College of Ministries in Jackson, MS. This small church college was owned and operated by the local UPC pastor, Brother Thomas Craft. If you have ever seen the movie The Apostle with Robert Duval, that’s the man. If Mr. Duval did not study Brother Craft with a microscope in preparation for that movie, I will eat my hat and yours.

We arrived in the Deep South on a pedestal. Big announcements were made, public introductions, etc.; PD went to work and I went to fourth grade. Socializing at school was not allowed. All other kids were sinners from sinner families and had to be kept at arms’ length. I was, however, allowed to witness to them or invite them to church so that they, too, could be saved. Knee length dresses with sleeves were required at all times; my uncut hair hung to my knees. Television and movies were strictly forbidden. There was no secular information of any kind in our home. I lived in Jackson, MS in the mid-1970s and knew nothing of the civil rights movement or of Martin Luther King Jr. A classmate made a diorama of the solar system for their science fair project; I didn’t know what it was. Any acknowledgement offered to me at school was refused on my behalf. Once my teacher chose me to be hall monitor, an honor given to responsible kids. My mother wrote the teacher a note refusing because it would make me too bossy. My personality just wasn’t good enough. To be fair, mom probably did me a favor. When the teacher told the girls in class (me) to leave our little dresses at home and wear blue jeans the next day for field day, mom wrote another letter explaining that because of religious beliefs that wasn’t gonna happen. The music teacher asked who had seen Star Wars and everyone raise their hands. Nope, no idea. I had seen stars outside at night… but that wasn’t what she meant… I kept my nose in a book as much as possible.

Social ostracism deepened as my parents need for control grew. They were strict even by churchy standards. Free time before and after services was to be spent on my knees in the prayer room. Other church girls had sleepovers. I wasn’t old enough. Sunday afternoon playdates between church services? Sometimes. The only place I had any freedom was the college campus, so I hung out with the college kids. I learned titillating things, heard scandalous gossip and wore padded bras and high heels. Made out with 18 year old boys. It was pretty fun. At least there people would talk to me and I learned to kiss. Well.

Social ostracism deepened as my parents need for control grew. They were strict even by churchy standards.Dad’s explosive temper grew; triggered by any little thing. It was always there like a scary movie soundtrack, setting the scene in the background. I remember him yanking my sister off the couch onto her back because he didn’t like her tone of voice. And the shocking smack of his hand on my face in a nothing-held-back slap, again for tone of voice. I just couldn’t see it coming because, I never stepped out of line on purpose. He had a deep, low Slytherin-like way of reaming your ass in a pants-wetting hiss. This was back in the days of 45 records. My sisters had Andy Gibb, Rita Coolidge, Climax, Debbie Boone, John Denver. (Don’t you just remember every word to every song? They’re embedded.) So on a rare outing to the local mall I purchased, for $1, a 45 of the song A Little Bit of Soap, by Nigel Olsson. Dad found it and made me play it in front of the entire family, then proceeded to give me a humiliating lecture on the evils of secular music and my personal shortcomings for listening to such unholy crap. When I found the courage to speak up, I pointed out that my sisters had records, too (yes, I sold them out; yes, they were mad). Any perceived rebellion (a breath that sounded like a sigh), sitting when we were told to stand (the man of god told you to stand up), suspicion of promiscuity (being out of sight for a moment), asking a question that put him on the spot (can I go over to so-and-so’s house?), cheeks flushed with humiliation (scrub check for makeup) resulted in his seething anger. Endless lectures on my shortcomings, which I received silently, constant fear of dad’s wrath, disdain and dismissal of my needs and feelings, evolved into my almost complete withdrawal. To be seen and not heard, while never actually put in those terms, was the rule. This did not go well later on.

Scrutiny was the name of the game at church, too, and invisibility at school; hours of primping before Sunday night service and oddball denim skirt-centered frump on the bus left me swinging between two worlds, silence and the stage. It is impossible to underestimate the warped nature of my development during those years. Appearances were paramount; skirt length measured by fractions, hair length was glorified and uneven, uncut split ends were mandatory. Any female whose hair had an even bottom edge had clearly sinned with scissors. (A few years later, I clipped some long bangs around my face in a 15 year old bout of fuck you and was told that I had ruined my dad’s career. The sick thing is, it really was a nail in the coffin. Dad was an asshole but he wasn’t making it up.) Teenage girls rubbed Vaseline onto eyelashes and eyelids in lieu of mascara and eye-shadow. Clear lip gloss was allowed, but not clear nail polish and oddly placed Vaseline was pushing it. The youth pastor’s wife spoke against the use of Vaseline during a girls’ only service. I asked why it was okay to put shiny stuff on your lips but not on your eyelids. She openly mocked me, but didn’t answer. I also asked why we were not allowed to go to baseball games. (A hot new guy came to church and rumor had it he played; thus my interest. I hadn’t heard about Title 9.) Sister Youth Pastor told me not ask dumb questions and never answered. Maybe she didn’t know, but I never found out. Brother Youth Pastor wouldn’t let me get off of the choir bus with everyone else because he could see my bra strap through the cap sleeve of my shirt. He cornered me, placing full blame for my promiscuous clothing choice squarely on my inadequately covered shoulders. I was 14.

Many years later after Dad died, I had a series of nightmares about him that left me terrified. I would wake up shaking, my heart pounding and sick. I do not remember the details of those dreams. Then one night, I stood up to him. I faced him and, with voice quivering and knees buckling, told him what I really thought of him, how I really felt. I never dreamed about him again.