Working For The Church

By WP ~

I have been a Christian my whole life but the past two years have completely broken the mind fuck spell I was placed under.

Growing up my mom would take me to baptist church in Louisiana. I always hated that because I remember being a 5 year old kid and being screamed at that I was going to suffer for eternity because I was trying to nap during service.

Fast forward to high school and a different state and a different church and my story takes a turn. We started going to a church in Las Vegas and it was all the rage. They had the best worship, the best lighting and the best indoctrination program I have ever witnessed. I bought the “truth” hook line and sinker and I fervently dedicated my teenage life to being the best Christian I could be. I was on the worship team and I went to every camp imaginable.

My junior year of high school I found out that I suffered from severe depression with some especially bad bouts of suicidal thoughts. At one point I actually tried to jump off of a parking garage but was tackled by security. Once word of this reached my youth pastor he instilled in me a sense of purpose that “Jesus saved you to carry out his will.” I ate that shit up and i wasted quite a few years pursuing full time ministry.

Out of high school I worked at several different churches in a worship leader capacity but I was unable to support myself financially doing that. Churches have a way of convincing you that wanting a paycheck is wrong. Ultimately I ended up back at the big church that “cured my depression.” I got a full time position as a facilities technician and life seemed great except for the fact that the past two years working this job I have lost all belief in god. The constant gossip and mind fuckery has obliterated any and all belief in a god.


In that moment it became clear that this place was manipulating people for money. My depression resurfaced and I’ve been seeing a real counselor that has really opened my eyes to the fact that I have a mental condition that no one can fix and god can’t magically take away. I have real problems, real bills and the magic man in the sky isn’t going to fix or pay for them. The day my eyes were opened to the farce I was sitting in a meeting and the head of financing care up to me and asked why I wasn’t tithing more than 10% of my paycheck.

In that moment it became clear that this place was manipulating people for money.

It suddenly made sense why my pastor had 4 cars and a mansion and why there were some members of the church that were literally starving and homeless. I’ve expressed my evolving views to my wife and she cried for a long time. It was really heartbreaking. She kept asking me how I was going to raise our daughter if I don’t believe in god. I explained that my morals haven’t gone out the window I just don’t believe that a fairy tale magic man exists and that I will control my own actions for my own life and I will raise our daughter to be an active thinker and not fall into this cesspool of simple minds that need a deity to organize their world.

I’m going to teach her that just because the rest of her family is part of a cult and has drunk all of the koolaid it doesn’t mean that she has to do the same.

Cult escapee,

WD

Goodbye Jesus

By Tim Sledge ~

I cannot pinpoint the exact moment when I stopped believing in the faith that shaped my life. I would compare it to living with a persistent, unrelenting ache, and then one day, suddenly realizing the ache is gone.

The disintegration of my faith often felt more like something that was happening to me than something I was doing, and frequently I was startled when I heard myself expressing some new belief that I could not remember consciously thinking about. It would usually occur when I was involved in a conversation about religion, I would express my view on the issue being discussed, and later I would think, “Did I say that? Yes, I did. Is that what I believe? Yes, that’s what I believe now.”

I was the one ruminating and contemplating, but as I changed one belief, related topics would reshuffle, and sometimes I was surprised when I heard myself making a statement that represented the results of this quickly evolving process. My brain was realigning what I viewed as true and what I viewed as false, occasionally informing me of its progress by letting me hear myself say something that reflected the massive internal belief system reorganization that was taking place.

The driving reason for my rejection of the Christian faith was simple: Christians are not people who have been supernaturally changed and the new birth doesn’t work. After living and leading in the church for decades, I saw no consistent evidence of an ongoing supernatural presence—and I wanted to see that evidence with all that was in me.

The final disconnect came in the months after I stopped attending church. With time and freedom to fully reconsider the tenets of my faith, I decided I no longer believed in the teachings of Christianity and admitted to myself that these teachings defied not only what I had seen and experienced, but my sense of logic as well.

Although I wanted to keep believing, as much as faith had been my bedrock—the steady ground on which I had built my life—I had now traveled to its unexpected edge. I found myself dangling from a precarious cliff as my grip began to loosen, and eventually, I fell—or perhaps it would be better to say—started to fly.

****

Christians are not people who have been supernaturally changed and the new birth doesn’t workI felt ashamed of how easy it is to see the truth once you are willing. How could I have been so blind? How could I have gone for so many years convinced of so many things that are so obviously illogical and untrue?

And yet I missed the warmth of Christian fellowship that feels like forever, but vanishes in the wind when you walk away from it. I was profoundly sad in my awareness that I no longer had a tribe.

What if, right now, I could swallow a pill that would bring my old faith back? Would I do it? Would I take the pill? The answer is no, because the Christian faith is not based on truth.

-- Tim Sledge in
Goodbye Jesus: An Evangelical Preacher's Journey Beyond Faith Copyright © 2018 by Tim Sledge. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

Me and the Mormons

By John Draper ~

Things were getting dicey. You know me—push, push, push.

“So what you’re telling me,” I said to the well-scrubbed missionaries, “is that you can become a God.”

“Yes, that’s true,” the thinner of the two missionaries said. “It’s in the Bible.”

“Really?”

I could see the beefier of the two missionaries looking at my bookcase filled with “anti-Mormon” books and videos. Anything written about Mormonism by non-Mormons is by default anti-Mormon and to be avoided as a product of—for all practical purposes—Satan Himself, prolific trickster.

The beefier missionary narrowed his eyes.

“Yes,” the thinner of the two missionaries said, pulling his mega-scriptures from his backpack—not just the Book of Mormon but the Pearl of Great Price and Doctrine and Covenants. All three Standard Works. And the King James Version of the Old and New testaments, included because the authorities back in Salt Lake knew the missionaries would encounter gentiles like me. It looked more like a CARE package than a book.

He knew just where to go. Romans 8:16-17. He began to read: “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”

“Yeah, what about it?”

I actually had been waiting for him to use that verse—or any of the Verses Mormons Use that I had researched online.

“Well,” he said, “Heavenly Father has a plan for us. He wants us to have everything He has—so, yes, that includes becoming a God.”

“If this was really something the Bible taught, becoming a God, then the Bible would likely have more to say about it than this one verse. Much has to be read into this passage to make it say something the original author never intended. Read this verse for me: Isaiah 45:5.”

He obviously didn’t know where to find the book of Isaiah.

“It’s in the Old Testament. To your left.”

I’m not proud of this now, but I was enjoying it then.

When he finally got there, he read aloud: “I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me.”

This really was unfair. By that time, I’d been a devout Christian for 34 years. If these two followed the typical routine for Mormon missionaries, they’d grown serious about their religion only when the time for their mission arrived. They’d heard the Book of Mormon read on Sunday, and they’d never cracked a Bible. Stupid Mormons.

“See? You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?”

I talked as if the meaning of the verse was plain to any fool. Truth was, when I was first “saved” and studying the Bible in college, I had absolutely no idea what a “joint heir” was. At the time, I was a member of Campus Crusade for Christ, and we were taught that any biblical conundrum could be solved with a Greek-to-English Bible, a Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, a concordance, and a couple of commentaries. And prayer. If everything else failed, pray. And if you still didn’t understand the verse, it was just one of those “unsolved mysteries of the faith.”

I could tell the thinner of the two missionaries was thinking to himself, This isn’t working like they told me at the Missionary Training Center.

The beefier of the two missionaries glared at me as if I had just made an obscure joke about his Motherland that he didn’t really understand.

“You and your frickin’ videos!” he barked. “You have no concern for the things of God!”

Frickin’. That’s pretty darn-diddly harsh for a missionary. Usually, the closest they get to an F-bomb is flippin’. It was righteous indignation, I guess. His was the biblical view: The fool hath said in his heart, “There is no God.”Fools aren’t just dumb. They’re evil. Morally fatuous, if you will—all because they don’t orbit their existence around God and his One Holy Church and are left with no recourse but self-centeredness. Stupid is as stupid does.

And I was one of them, in his mind: a frickin’ degenerate.

Little did he know. I was actually on a mission from God at the time. I was an evangelical hellbent on skewering Mormonism through my debut novel—every bit as zealous as he was. Joke was on him. I wasn’t godless. I was, I guess, god-ful.

The beefy missionary narrowed his eyes. Here it comes.

He stood up as he said, “I testify to you that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and restored the gospel upon the earth in 1830 after the gospel was lost shortly after the death of the last apostle in the first century, and I testify to you that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the One True Church on the Earth today, and this Church is led by a living prophet who receives revelation by speaking directly to God.”

He grabbed his backpack and turned to the thinner missionary, “C’mon, let’s go. This jackass isn’t ready for the gospel.”

And, once again, another meeting with Mormon missionaries had spun down the crapper like your morning McMuffin. Usually they stormed out of my house after declaring that I had a “Spirit of Contention.”

They were probably right. It was fun to see them squirm. They had come to a gunfight only to find they had been issued a peashooter by High Command. Mine went kablammo! and theirs went . . . pip.

I knew my Bible. I was right.

As I watched them walk away—the beefy missionary looking at the ground because he was ashamed the “natural man” had gotten the better of him, again, and he had blown up—a niggling thought occurred to me. So I suppressed it.

But as I met with more missionaries, and then when I started going to a Mormon church “under cover,” the thought kept coming up.

These people are just like me. They are me.

They had a passion for serving Christ—they strove to be like Him, sold out—but they believed what they believed because they had been told to believe it.

Me too.

Ouch.

Likewise, we approached scripture in the same way, bowing to authority instead of using our brains. We believed the interpretation that was bequeathed to us as being the “plain meaning of the text” and comforted ourselves knowing that scholars had adjudicated on these matters and confirmed our cherished beliefs. We thought our point of view was the view that Any Smart Person would arrive at if they just studied the Bible hard enough.

Truth is, I believed the Party Line. So did they. Stupid me and stupid Mormons.

They regurgitated to me, and I regurgitated to them.

The truth is that the Bible contains multiple depictions of God. There is no one biblical view of God. That’s because it was written by men who were all over the map, both geographically and figuratively, over several hundred years.

How could it not contradict itself?

I learned all that when I started reading books by people who disagreed with me—that is, allowed my brain full rein. If you are of the mind to lose your religion, I advise the tactic. It’s surefire. Eventually, you see things aren’t as cut and dried as you thought they were—that you didn’t reason your way into your faith.

You complied.

*****

http://johndraperauthor.com/

Christianity can exist only in a world where it is false

By Michael Runyan ~

If you were to travel to some parallel universe where Christianity is true, this is what you would find:

• The Bible contains a lot of scientific facts and explanations that were unknown at the time it was written, but were later confirmed by scientific discovery.
• Science would have confirmed that the universe and life was created and did not evolve over time.
• The Gospel books are in agreement on all details of Jesus’s life and ministry.
• There are numerous accounts of Jesus written by contemporary historians that confirm his existence, miracles, and message.
• In addition to the gospel books, there are a good number of eyewitness accounts of Jesus’s miracles.
• Jesus, himself, wrote a creed that was passed on and preserved, and this creed is consistent with the gospel books.
• The Jewish people, en masse, became followers of Jesus, that is, there is no separation between Judaism and Christianity.
• Original documents of Jesus’s history were preserved and available for examination, such that editing mistakes and forgeries do not exist.
• There is scientific evidence for demons, and a field of study exists for how to deal with them.
• Scientific studies prove that prayer (Christian-based only) is an effective healing technique, even for paralysis and dementia, and all hospitals have faith healing wings.
• All other religions have withered away, leaving Christianity as the only effectively viable faith.
• There are no denominations of Christianity, it is one unified church to which all Christians belong.

This is a short list of what you would see, but what should be obvious is that in a world such as this where Christianity is true, there would be no reasonable means for anyone to deny its truth, meaning there would be no apostasy, save for the mentally-challenged. But in that situation, there is no need for faith and no separation of the wheat from the chaff- therefore the whole concept of reward in heaven and punishment in hell falls apart. So Christianity cannot exist in a world where it is true- it can only exist in a world where it is false, such as it does in our world.

The Adam Bomb

By Michael Runyan ~

Many scientifically-literate Christians hold on to their faith while admitting to the truth of biological evolution. This is actually an untenable position. The New Testament scriptures reveal that Christianity is dependent on the Adam and Eve story, not biological evolution, being the literal truth.

In Luke 3:38, Jesus’s genealogy is traced back to Adam. If evolution is true, then Adam would have had a father as well.

In Matthew 19:4-6, Jesus is alleged to have made the following statement:

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

In this verse, Jesus is showing that he believed in the initial creation story, including the first man, Adam, as a literal historical figure.

In Romans 5: 12-14, we read:

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

This verse indicates that sin entered the world through the actions of Adam.

In 1 Corinthians 15:22, Paul makes this statement:

For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

This is an unambiguous statement that ties the sacrifice of Jesus to the sin of Adam. If Adam did not exist, the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection is significantly diminished.

In 1 Corinthians 15:45, Paul makes this statement:

So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.

This verse cements Christian theology to a historical Adam, and directly ties Jesus (the last Adam) to this figure.

In 1 Timothy 2:13-14, we read:

For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

Here, a doctrine of men possessing hierarchy over women is shown to be a consequence of a literal belief in the events discussed in Genesis concerning the Garden of Eden.

In Jude 1:14, we read:

Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones.

This is yet another reference to Adam as if he actually lived and was the first human being.

What should be gleaned from this discussion is that one of the foundations that Christianity rests upon is the assumption of the literal truth of the Garden of Eve story and the creation of Adam as the first human. For those who accept the overwhelming evidence for biological evolution, this foundational pillar is removed and Christianity suffers a serious blow to its authenticity.

Religions are just making it up as they go along

By John Draper ~

I belong to a Facebook group called Recovering Ex-Christians. I join in the conversations, even though I don’t think I’m recovering.

Truth is, I enjoyed being a Christian.

In particular, I enjoyed fellowshipping with fellow believers. My last church, for example, was full of love and laughter. The church met in a grange, a two-story box of a building that smelled of scuff marks and Murphy’s Oil Soap. After service, we’d pull the creaky chairs around folding tables and chat and poke fun at one another over coffee and cake.

I also enjoyed worshipping God. I felt it. I’d raise my hands and close my eyes and pour forth my adoration. During the confession of sin, I’d go to my knees and place my forehead on the hardwood floor. I was so grateful He saved a wretch like me.

I also enjoyed serving God. The church was small enough that the midweek Bible study comprised basically the entire congregation. Together, we’d search the scriptures to learn how we could follow Christ more nearly.

These experiences—the fellowship, the worship, the passion for serving God—were all real experiences. The thing is, though, I’ve come to see that there was really nothing special about them. That is, they are experiences that are common to all devout religious people.

“It just feels right”

The problem is—and this is key here—the problem is that these religious devotees take those common subjective experiences and use them to assert the objective truth of their particular religion. Bottom line, if you keep pushing a religious person to say why they think their religion is true, it will ultimately get down to, “It just feels right.”

The only reason I stopped being a Christian is that I came to see that Christianity is no more likely to be objectively true than any religion. They’re all just based on feelings. So, to me, the logical choice was to opt out of religion all together. I suppose I could have picked one. But it would have just been throwing a dart at a wall. Or I could have just stuck with the one I was born into, Christianity, and say I chose to believe in it.

But if you’re going to base your life around a truth—and insist that others do the same or suffer the consequences—it should be objectively true, shouldn’t it? You should be able to prove it.

There’s the rub.

If there is a God, They/It/She/He doesn’t care about revealing anything about Themselves/Itself/Herself/Himself. God apparently wants to be unknowable—and unexperienceable.

The best you’ve got is the common religious experience mentioned above, which is available to all creeds. Religious people don’t like the sound of that. They want an exclusive.

Atheists would say we can’t know and experience God because there is no such thing. That silence is the vacuum where God is supposed to be. I’m not convinced. To me, the most we can say is that God is a mystery.

But then we shouldn’t speak in sacred tones about this . . . mystery. Or devote our lives to its pursuit. We should just shrug our shoulders and get on with our lives. Think about deep matters, sure, but don’t insist on your conclusions.

Ad lib ad nauseum

When I realized this, it made a lot of things come into focus. The people behind religion—all religions—are just making it up as they go. They’re not being guided by God. It explains so much. Like how Christianity didn’t come up with an official explanation for the Trinity until 400 years after Christ died. And the explanation, the Athanasian Creed, really isn’t much of an explanation. It’s more of a bludgeon. One feels no more enlightened upon ingesting it, just punch-drunk.

The creed opens with a snarl:

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.

(My response upon seeing that now is, says who?)

The only reason I stopped being a Christian is that I came to see that Christianity is no more likely to be objectively true than any religion.
The creed then goes on to explain what that catholic faith is, which is that one must embrace a series of logical impossibilities. For example:

So the Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods; but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords; but one Lord.

Basically, it’s saying God can make a circular square. I don’t know how he can, but He can. Now stop asking questions!

That the church didn’t come up with this for 500 years is the reason I don’t think Christ taught that he was God Almighty. If Christ had said he was God Almighty, then—believe you me—the early church would have gone to pains to address this apparent effrontery to monotheism. How can Christ be God Almighty if God Almighty is already God Almighty? Doesn’t that make two Gods?

I think the truth is that, early on, the church came to think of Jesus as divine in some sense. I think Paul thought he was the Angel of the Lord. (See Galatians 4:14.) But, trust me, if Christ had flat-out said he was God Almighty, how exactly that could be possible would have been addressed in what came to be known as the New Testament. It wouldn’t be something you would put a pin in for 500 years.

Anyway, I’m not here to argue about the Trinity. It’s silly to argue about religion, because no one has the first bloody clue what the truth of God is . . . or what He wants . . . or if there is a God. Sure, have discussions over a pint or two. Just don’t insist. Warm feelings aren’t worth shit. I mean, they’re agreeable. You just shouldn’t go to war over them—or boil someone in oil.

Says me.

http://johndraperauthor.com/

WHERE WAS GOD?

By ex-Pastor Dan ~

I originally wrote this rant back in November, 2017, after the horrible massacre took place in a Texas Church (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/11/05/mass-shooting-reported-at-texas-sutherland-springs-church.html).

I was unable to post it here at Ex-Christian.Net at that time due to technical difficulties, so I sent it to a few of my Atheist friends. Now that I am able to access Ex-Christian.Net once again, and since there has recently been a big shake-up at that church, involving the use (or misuse) of donated funds ( http://www.miamiherald.com/article208913494.html), I have decided to post it now.

November 7th, 2017 - responding to the lunacy that I just read in the local paper!

This week's latest horror is a double edged tragedy. Not only have we seen another, senseless, mass shooting, but many of the victims were innocent, little children. And, where this insanity took place should give any thinking person pause. It happened in a place where the putative ruler of the Universe is worshipped, adored, venerated, exalted, and trusted as the ALL SEEING, ALL KNOWING, ALL POWERFUL, EVER PRESENT, ALL LOVING Father & Protector of His children.

What happened? Did God turn on his own? Was he punishing his flock for their sinful ways? But, what sin can an 18 months old toddler be guilty of? Even more puzzling (nothing more precious in God's sight) an unborn fetus still in its dead mother's womb? Over half of those slaughtered were not even to the "age of accountability" (a churchy term meaning old enough to understand that you are a sinner!)

Rhetorical, silly, heartless questions some may counter. But, I am not trying to be hurtful or argumentative. I had these same questions while still firmly ensconced in the church, as a lover and worshipper of this mysterious, fickle Lord of the heavenly kingdom - lover and supposed protector of His flock.

Where was God when His people really, really needed Him?

WHY, WHY, WHY LORD??? What could possibly be your reason for ALLOWING this to happen to those you are supposed to be protecting from the wiles of the Devil? Protecting your children from the sinful, heathen, violent purveyors of wickedness and harm, that is what your Word (the Bible) says is a major part of your promise to those who will only say that they believe you exist and endeavor to follow your commands. So, WTF God??!!!

The good citizen who encountered the shooter and shot him, presumably scaring him away from the scene, said that he "thanked God" for helping him play a part in stopping the shooter. Hmmm? God just allowed the shooter to kill 26 of his faithful (and wound 20 more), while they were in active worship of Him, in His "Sanctuary" of peace! Yet, just seconds later (I guess God woke up from a nap) he gives an outsider the strength to overcome great fear and aim a gun at a killer and pull the trigger.  Does anyone else see the irony in this? The Almighty was not present in the dedicated "House of God" to smite the enemy (or even make his gun jam), but He decided that His help in that moment would go to the elder, Texan gun-toter.

It just never ceases to amaze me. Vigils were held last night, and prayers were offered for the comfort of those left in the wake of this murderous nightmare. Prayers were offered!!! ??? WTF??

Where was God when His people really, really needed Him? Where was God when hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of children were being heinously abused by Catholic Priests? Where is God right now, when every 15 seconds a child dies of malnutrition or disease?

Where is God???????  I'll tell you where God is...

GOD DOES NOT EXIST!   This is the ONLY logical conclusion that any sane mind can deduce. Because, if God does exist, the answers to my questions above are too mind-boggling to even contemplate.

Replacing Religious Addiction with Science Knowledge

By Carl S ~

The “spiritual” history of civilization can be a mirror of one's personal experiences: a journey, an undercurrent, even a merry-go-round going nowhere. The spiritual, or “transcendental” (something to do with teeth improvement?), can be quite attractive to an individual or population disappointed or bored by self or everyday living and looking for “explanations.” The siren call of other-reality can be pursued until it morphs into an addiction to delusional thinking, fantasy, a retreat from reality. For those who are very religious, fantasy is an ever-expanding retreat. It appears even liberal Christians don't care what religious addiction one ascribes to, just so long as it remains an addiction. Progressing scientific knowledge, on the other hand, is a process of growing up. So, learn and grow up.

A book from many years ago reminded me of our present times. Gore Vidal's historical novel, “Julian,” is based on the writings of that Roman Emperor. Julian wrote of the Roman fascination with the Oriental religions in his domain, which he saw as endangering its philosophical, ethical, and moral thinking. Trusting historical evidence, we can say Julian was spot-on in his concerns of how irrational beliefs might affect the future: one blend of Mithraic/Jewish/Zoroastrian religions eventually triumphed. (And if you've read Vidal's futuristic novel, “Messiah,” you already know how John Cave's religion replaced Christianity.)

Yet another author posited the collapse of Rome began with the madness of its emperors, since they had a fondness for drinking wine from lead-lined cups. Lead damages the brain, ergo... Was lead-laced wine also responsible for their accepting something as bizarre as Christianity? We have evidence that connects religious revelations, drugs, and psychedelic plants. Religions have their own varieties of methods to get high. The religious addict, such as a fundamentalist or evangelical, can be just as indifferent to his or her life or effect on others as the chemically dependent addict.

The God of the Judaic-Christian-Islamic bibles is a psychopath I doubt Christianity was universally accepted by the populace. To me, that's just one more piece of its propaganda. (Israeli diplomat Abba Eban: “Propaganda is the art of persuading others of what you don't believe yourself.”) Unfortunately, whenever a religion becomes state-empowered, those under its power must pledge allegiance to it, whether they believe in it or not. Absence or loss of faith becomes a crime. So pretending is the practical solution when it becomes a choice of going along or losing status, home, or life itself. This is the reason why fundamentalism strives to seize political power. Some things never change.

Christian fundamentalists still believe the pre-Christian Zoroastrian religious doctrines of mind-body separation, absolute good and evil, and a constant struggle between those forces of absolute good and absolute evil, to the destruction of the world (which by tradition is in the imminent future.) Those infected with these absolutes are in fear of deviating from beliefs, of changes to their beliefs, afraid of allowing freedom for others to not accept them. Unwilling or unable to explain their pathogenic “revelations” to societies or even to one another, they fight on.

The God of the Judaic-Christian-Islamic bibles is a psychopath. He is a punishing reactor to the free will choices of humans, rather than a proactive force. Do societies go into a state of insanity when mad gods like him are involved? Or do they create such rabid gods because, unawares, something infects their brains? Does the pathogen arise unexpectedly, in different periods of history, and run its course, to be neutralized by scientific facts and accepted reasonable solutions? What we experience is, while the infection dominates humans, they can be as unpredictable and fickle as their gods. Witness what happened with Christianity and Islam alone.

There's a commercial demand in these times for the spiritual, self-transcendent, surreal, and fantasy worlds, for gurus of all those attractions, for writings on the “nature of God,” what's the meaning of your life, blah-blah... Every con artist is in on the “I'll tell you how to fill up the hole in yourself” ultimate answers you're looking for. Even extraordinary reality of nature and the universe is “explained” by them! Our known traditional religions are hashes of older ones. The “new” wisdoms and cults are variations further rehashed. Meanwhile, as Stephen Hawking said, “There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win, because it works.”

Let’s Drop God from Public Pronouncements

By Carl S ~

Millions watched one morning after the tragic school shooting in Florida. The words of the policeman were displayed beneath him: “Student survived by the grace of God.” He should have added that seventeen students didn't survive by the grace of God. Come to think of it, the media reports on those survivors who thank God their prayers were answered, but they never report from those who prayed and perished. In the spirit of unbiased fairness, they ought to report all the experiences they have time for in their available 7 days, 24 hours per day. We might even hear from survivors who said no prayers at all.

The name of God doesn't have to enter into tragic news, since God isn't present when tragedy strikes. No witness reports seeing God preventing harm or doing anything, saying anything, to those who are suffering and dying. Neither are there reports of bullets bouncing off the invisible hands of God, thus shielding the students, nor of bullets being removed from bodies by God, or of humans being transported through the air away from danger, etc., by an invisible God-force. Even the survivors who “thank God” don't get a “You're welcome” from him.

After every mass shooting, politicians commonly pronounce, “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of the victims.” And we don't need to ask them who their prayers are addressed to. These are the very same politicians who invoke the same “God” whenever they want to get re-elected or pass laws in his name. It behooves them to stay on the safe side with him and his adoring fans who aren't paying attention to the evidence of his absence whenever shootings occur.

The media also does service to this God myth with an over-saturation of reporting, de-sensitizing the populace to mass murders, thus making it easier for God's spokesmen to carry on with their messages of “God's punishing America” or “Thank God more were not killed,” or “God works in mysterious ways,” yadda, yadda. Notice that anyone brazenly standing out there speaking for “God,” clergy and politicians alike, does nothing to stop future carnage. They're cowards who use their “God-given” power to avoid really doing anything. They can't be bothered. Some prefer to defend “In God We Trust” on coinage, and even pushing for laws preventing access to birth control. They are indifferent to the absence of quality of life experienced by those who are truly aware and suffering. It's easier for them to repeat “They're in God's hands.”

It looks like God only hangs around when people believe they've got all the answers to life's problems if they trust in him, so they'll feel secure and comfortable. But this feel-good daddy flees the scene whenever innocent human beings are in danger of never feeling anything again.

The world will be better off if “God” gets out of public pronouncements. No more using that name to deny human rights, shut the doors to reasonable discourse, impede scientists from teaching truths, and to justify wars or immoral actions. “God” requires employment for obstructing apologists, defenders, explainers, and justifiers. “God” is a write-off for refusing to deal with cold-hard facts and inconvenient realities. God is a dead end when it comes to investigating and searching for realities. God is used as an excuse to make unfair laws and to avoid making reasonable decisions for the common good.

There are multitudes of voices releasing floods of God on society. One voice never heard is God's.

God should be permanently erased from oaths.Think of it: Using God as an excuse or copyright for whatever clergy and politicians want is grossly unfair to both God and humans. Every pro-God voice is permitted, but not God's. Every defendant is entitled to confront accusers; the common citizen is entitled to question those claiming to say things in his or her name. God should have that right, too. It's just not fair.

It's asserted God chooses to remain invisible. (Since all the other gods are invisible, we may wonder which one of them came up with this policy first.) Invisibility should be no problem: he could come in as an eternal burning bush or in a Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil whirlwind, a Disney Aladdin working wonders in seconds, or anything else to indicate his presence. He could hire a team of personal attorneys to represent him. For thousands of years, there've been those who speak for him by proxy. But even they can't agree with each other. So how are we to know he hired them? Ah, that's always been the problem. The system is set up entirely by those who claim God set it up. That's not fair to us or him.

There's something else that's not right. Since the evidence proves evolution is fact and the Earth is billions of years old, we know these are true, and so God has to know this too. So why would he want those who speak for him teaching evolution and the age of the Earth are lies? Why would he want people to remain in ignorance about these wonders? God should contradict his spokesmen citing books written by testosterone bullies who took their frustration out on women because they couldn't get it up any more, as his “wisdom.” God needs his time in court, and to be present on all media, since being a No-Show would make him a quitter. Until he does show up, his “experts” should shut up with their public God-pronouncements. It's only fair.

God should be permanently erased from oaths. Physical witnesses to oaths aren't deterrents to liars, much less invisible ones. Many people take oaths, ending with “so help me God,” and go on to not abide by them, even when it's illegal. They'll swear to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God,” and then proceed to lie their asses off. The phrase is meaningless. Those who want the Ten Commandments posted on government property are ignorant of this fact: the second commandment is about swearing falsely using the name of their God. They don't agree with that.

It's better to get “God” out of public pronouncements. God has become a copyright symbol of the Christian kingdom and has no place in a democracy. He doesn't represent everyone and he needs to get with the program, because the world is much different now than when he lived. His prejudices are welcome by very, very, few. That's the image of God the public sees. It's much too divisive. Besides, one should never invoke what one has no solid evidence of existing.

Most people have no problem with God. Unlike clergy and politicians who render lip service, they just pretend to believe. Plus, they notice a lot of people get pleasure in believing there's a God, (and pleasure is, let's face it, America's prime pursuit), so they let this stuff go on. And although it's socially unacceptable to offend someone for his or her beliefs, it's not illegal or immoral. Believers might be offended to hear that “God,” in essence, is an individual's taste or addiction. So let's leave it at that and stop pretending and referencing “God” as if “he” is real or makes a difference.