The Antichristian Phenomenon

As a bit of a closet atheist when it comes to one segment of my family, religious discussions between my father and I can be…awkward, at best. After all, he’s a Catholic, raised me to be Catholic, and assumes that despite our differing political beliefs that I still am. Usually this isn’t a problem, but alas, the recent controversy around the National Day of Prayer, every May in America, inevitably brought it up. You’ve all heard the arguments, I needn’t re-hash them for you. What was disconcerting to me was to hear the statement that non-Christians, specifically atheists, should leave the country. I’ve heard the sentiment many a time online, on television, on the radio, etc…hearing it from a parent is another experience. As most atheists are aware, that sort of experience is quite unpleasant, and a little terrifying.

Because of it, I wanted to talk about the sort of mentality that lead to the statement and why it, and Christianity as a whole, should concern Americans more than Islam. While this website isn’t specific to America at all, the world is nevertheless affected by America’s policies—for better or for (in my opinion) much, much worse. Compared to other developed Christian countries, the United States is obsessed with it’s religion. We’re a diverse country, but the majority group—that is, those who practice Christianity—feel that the country “belongs to them”. And they are willing to enforce that belief. That, ladies and gentlemen, makes Christianity a greater threat to “our freedom” than Islam ever was.

Now, I won’t pretend America is the beautiful shining “land of the free” it’s made out to be. We all know better.

The mindset, it’s a rather common one in America and, I’m sure, in much of the Christian world. I imagine it’s a fascinating thing to feel that an entire country and it’s history, laws, and resources belong to you. While as a white, able-bodied person I am privileged, it is one thing to be in a privileged group and another to feel that said group is entitled to something as, for example, white supremacist groups feel. And Christian nationalism is the religious and cultural equivalent of white supremacy, and the two are intimately entwined.

Now: a quick bit of sidetracking. If you don’t care about semantics, just skip this paragraph. To build on ACP’s previous post—What is religion?—I will give my own definition of religion. A definition is possible, as most can agree on which things are religions and which are not, except for when an ulterior motive is involved. One of the problems with definition is that while a religion often acts as a social group, it is possible to adopt the rules and even partially the culture of a religion yet be disconnected from the group. Adding to the problem is that religions rarely follow their own rules, are too organic to be considered organizations (rather, organizations exist within a religion, and religions exist outside of organization). The cultural and often racial aspects of religion are too strong to deny—race and culture go hand in hand, and religions change entirely when adopted by new cultural groups. A religion is looser than an organization and tighter than simply being “like-minded”—it is a loose group of people who share specific beliefs concerning the supernatural, from which extends a shared culture and morality as well as different interpretations of the beliefs, which may be enforced by organizations representing the religion. Anyway, that’s  the definition I’ll be using—mostly I just discussed it because I’d like to encourage the definition to be talked about.

Onwards:

The danger of Christianity in America is twofold. First, it is a negative influence on decisions which affect the entire country and, two, Christian nationalism threatens to turn the country into more of a theocracy than it already is, at the cost of non-Christians in America and around the world. Islam only poses a true threat to freedom in the countries where it has legal clout—for the same reasons Christianity is dangerous in Christian countries. Outside of Islamic governments, Islam poses little threat to the rights of Americans and others. That sounds rather insane to say, but consider that Islam’s only threat to America lies in its few radical extremists’ ability to cause fear by taking lives. Yet the actual number of lives they take is small compared to even the seasonal flu.

To the average American, even the Christian ones who are only moderate or Christian in name, Christianity poses a greater threat. The reason is that as a Christian-controlled government with significant support from certain politically inclined sects, America’s policies are not being decided on facts and reason but on faith, which can fit any preconceived viewpoint. It’s not just an accident of human nature—it’s what Christian nationalists want.

Like extremist Muslims, the Christian establishment (as well as the other Judeo-Christian religions) uses terrorism to enforce it’s morality. Where radical Islamists use direct violence and threats of direct violence, Christian organizations use other methods to induce fear (the threat of Hell, for example). Not a big deal, right, after all, so does every political group. There are a few problems, however. Unlike white supremacy groups and specific political parties, Christianity is not a fringe political group, nor is it’s pull kept to one side of the political spectrum. Christianity exerts a pull over anyone who proclaims themselves to be a Christian, even if they disagree with the specific message. The fear of Hell can influence any Christian.

And Christians have long since declared war on secular America. As Atheist Revolution recently mentioned, America’s top Republican presidential candidates for 2012 have made it clear there is room only for the Christian god in the nation they plan to run. In the documentary Jesus Camp, Christian fanatics train children to be “soldiers of God” in order to “fix this country”. We’ve all heard the rhetoric—“take this nation back for Christ”. Christians have for years been attempting to force religion back into the classroom, and continue to expect shows of faith from citizens. The sense of Christian entitlement in this country is so strong that non-Christians are often told to simply leave the country if they don’t like it—the presumption being that Christians own the nation. All of this leaves an increasingly small amount of space for an increasingly larger group—that is, those in America who desire secular government. History has shown that formerly powerful groups who have lost their power and feel (justified or not) oppressed lash out legally and violently.

Radical Islamists can frighten Americans who fail to put death tolls into perspective. Their real power lies in their ability to frighten critics of Islam—and that is truly terrible—but the overall effect of censoring criticism of Islam does little to really harm this country and much of the world. If Islamists really wanted to destroy America and Western culture—as we are constantly told—they need only give Christian nationalists more power.

“The thing about religion is that it provides a powerful language through which you can justify any ideology.” —Reeza Aslan, author of God Or No God.

Atheists and other non-theists/non-Christians across the blogosphere are struggling with a difficult question: what do you tell a child about God and religion? And now, a particular and even more difficult question: what do you tell a young child dealing with death?

Friendly Atheist pointed to this dilemma, with his post on the subject (you can see my response to his post and to the general question below), and a link to an article in which a writer talks about a friend who brings up the question of children and death. He writes:

My colleague Margaret Watson warnend me against filling Zoe’s young head with Godless thoughts. Margaret’s dad died when she was nine, and her faith was a great comfort for her, because she could believe that he was waiting for her in heaven. “And, being Catholic,” she said, “It meant that there was still someone I could call Father.” I can’t argue with that. You’d have to be a brutally militant atheist to tell an orphaned child that we die and that’s it.

So what do you tell a child about God and death? Do you treat it like Santa, and risk turning them into a theist? Do you let them figure it out on their own? Do you answer with brutal honesty?

I’d like to offer my own answers, as well as invite the other writers here to answer them, in this post.

Blue Linchpin: I think telling a child a lie to make them feel better will do nothing but cause more grief later on. It’s better for a child to learn to deal with death and grief early, instead of lying and delaying the inevitable. It will only result in the child losing trust in their parents and adults, and having to deal with the loss anyways. I don’t think refusing to lie to a child and cause more pain later on is horrible and militant atheism. What’s the best solution? Honesty, I think. “I don’t know” is probably the best answer, and letting the child know that this is how life works but that their parent WILL continue to live on in certain ways: if I were a parent trying to explain this, I would tell them that the dead parent has become a part of everything within the world, from the air to the trees to the ground, and that they continue to live on in this way, and be with us, even if we can’t see them. This would probably instill respect for the world and all things while comforting them and allowing them to deal with death realistically. Neither is it a lie: naturally our bodies recycle and become a part of the world, though unfortunately this is slowed thanks to pointless burial traditions.

Db0: A child does not need to be told fairy tales to pacify it and it’s doubtful that having the fairytale of heaven will do much to help this going. If the concept of heaven was enough to avoid sadness, you wouldn’t see all the people in religious funerals crying their soul out, but rather, they would be celebrating their brothers and sisters going to “a better place”. There’s also the fact that the child might grow even more sad if they think their loved ones might go to Hell instead. Just imagine if the child later on in life learned of a “mortal sin” which is certain to take you to hell and that their loved one used to do?

Personally I would take an Epicurean view on this subject. You can expain easily that all humans eventually cease to live, one way or another. But that should not necessarily be a matter of sadness. As long as one’s life has been good, then they have already been rewarded by the mere act of living. And if their life has not been good, then at least this unpleasant existence has ceased for them.

We, the ones that remain, can always keep them alive in our memory and remember and enjoy the good times we used to have. Being sad about the good time we may have had in the future is nothing more than self-punishment.

Waldheri

It’s a hard question of course, and one that I think has been an ally to feel-good superstition for as long as human history. One answered in countless ways to ease the grief of family and friends. I don’t see any reason to infatuate in the modern religious notions associated with death, or even any good reason to ease the grief of death. Death <b>is</b> the end, and should not be downplayed to something less bad, or imagined as only a part of existence. People say death is a part of life. It isn’t, it is the end of it, it’s opposite. Some superstitions, including Christianity’s, make death almost something to look forward to – the perfection of heaven as opposed to this flawed physical world. Not a very good thing at all, something that can even make people blow themselves up given enough false promises. No, death is bad and we should all realise it. Even if life isn’t always rewarding, it trumps the emptiness of death. Existence here and now is all we have, and we should make the best of it. Only because of our actions in human life we have a chance that the idea of us will be immortal. When person X dies and a child asks “Where has X gone?” I can only answer “Away. X does not exist outside of us anymore. X only exists in our memory of X. Even though we will never make new memories of X again, X will remain a part of us.” It is the best thing we can offer as a comfort for the loss of somebody.

Heya! Blue Linchpin here. This isn’t so much an essay as letting you all know about something, and a call to action.

Google recently created Google Knols, an alternative to Wikipedia which will likely soon eclipse it, as Google Knols has the advantage of being created by the most widely used search engine. Already there are a great amount of wonderful articles, ranging from what do to when your bowels erupt (seriously!) to medical information on anorexia and cancer, to incoherent rants by religious fanatics. For the most part, its articles are almost all medical or religous, a strange mix.

And it’s that last type of “knol” that really gets me. Here we are, being presented by a great tool in beta that gives anyone and everyone a voice while allowing for ratings of articles so the crap can get filtered out. Depending on your preference, Wikipedia might be better, Knols might be better, or both might be pathetic. But it’s obvious that Google Knols will become widely used in the future, as it is a wonderful tool. The problem is that it is already being used for religious propaganda presented as articles. For example, there is one Knol user, a Christian church, who has been publishing articles via Knol disguised as helpful information about childcare, parenting, marriage, couples advice, as well as more obvious hatefilled bullshit. Some of these articles start out with stories or good advice, then down the line start babbling on about God. (As a side note, there’s a ridiculously idiotic writer on Knols who’s claiming some pretty silly stuff, like an article about liberals that has basically all the information about conservatives, only ‘conservative’ is replaced by ‘liberal’…d’oh!)

While most articles are written by conservative Christians and are simply rants against liberals, abortion, atheists, etc, Google users have been fighting back a little by denouncing these, but they aren’t being removed and no one (besides your favorite person, me!) has been fighting back by writing articles of their own, voting, or reviewing the propaganda.

So if you’re bored or interested, please head over and help out. Google Knols will certainly be getting a lot of viewing and coverage in the future, and possibly become the new Wikipedia: so it’s important not to let ranting, fanatical Christians take over a source of knowledge.

P.S., my profile on Knols is here, you can find the articles I’ve written or am working on there, as well as horrible articles I’ve reviewed. I could use some help!

Love, Blue. <3

This is in response to all of the chatter going on recently related to PZ Myers, that kid who took a Catholic cracker, and general hostility by the atheist community towards Christians. Here’s my opinion.

And it’s a difficult one to figure out. What good is being skeptical and intelligent if we stay silent because we don’t want to offend someone? But will our speaking out help anyone if it is hostile to the point that it drives religious people who are doubting their religion away?

As someone who recently wrote on how damaging hostility can be to someone who is new to a (especially outcast) idealogy or lifestyle, I can certainly attest who how a Christian would feel in a similar case.

Imagine a Christian in a similar position to mine, only worse! They’ve been lied to their entire lives, they are starting to realize, slowly but surely, what a scam religion is…they are seeing how hypocritical it all is and starting to venture, afraid, into the world of atheism. Poking around in blogs. Lurking around some forums. Reading about atheist activity and groups. All the while, looking over their shoulder and terrified, wondering if they might go to hell for doubting God, what their families will think, what their loved ones and friends will think, whether or not they are still moral, what’s wrong with them, do they need help…it can be terrifying.

And then they see some things that only reaffirm their fear: atheists committing acts that, to them, are atrocities, atheists being shockingly rude and cruel to them and other Christians, etc. It will do nothing but drive them back to the “safety” of their religion, unless they really have had their eyes opened and know that the actions of others do not change what is true and what is not true (like I did).

But then…on the other hand, being silent hasn’t exactly helped atheists throughout history. If anything, it has made us weak and easy to prosecute and weed out. Silence will kill us. If we do not speak out, if we are not active, if we do not loudly declare our defiance, we will be quickly forgotten. We must always be considered, by politicians and by the general populace. We must show ourselves as an example that we are Americans and we are not religious, and (not but) we are good people–we are the better people because we choose to act as good people through personal choice and not through fear and indoctrination.

And why do Christians deserve special rights not to be offended? Across the decades they have burned us alive, they have torn away our “God-given” rights, they have screamed for us to get out of “their” country, they have forced their religion down our throats and refused to respect us. Should we give them anything better than they gave us? Is our right to free speech worth any less than theirs? No. If anything, it is worth more because we aren’t insane, but that’s beside the point because regardless, everyone has the same rights to free speech.

So in the end, I think its very important to be loud and proud, and exercise our rights as humans to speak freely. We have every right to “desecrate” their symbols and criticize their leaders, just as they have every right to do the same to us.

The trick is to be respectful. Make fun of their words, their beliefs, their symbols, their leaders, but be careful if you make fun of them. Hold your arms open for doubters and show genuine kindness and honesty, not hatred. Was PZ Meyers justified in his desecration of a “sacred” little cracker? Yea, he was. It’s just a fucking cracker, and he was making a point, which is his right. He wasn’t personally attacking anyone, it was just as ridiculous that anyone got angry over him or the cracker incident as it was that Muslims got angry over the comics. People are deserving of respect, not beliefs. Maybe somewhere, somehow, a Christian is seeing that. And maybe there’s another who was starting to see the light of atheism, but is so easily swayed that such an incident changed their mind.

Either way, respect towards others is necessary. Respect towards symbols of an abusive, racist, sexist, hateful, insane idealogy is not.

Debate all you like about whether or not your religion is the right one, Christians. But it has no place in politics or in any intelligent society.

The fact of the matter is that, and even Christians will admit this, that Christianity and in fact all religions rely on a specific lack of evidence and accept it as fact. Say what you will about any scientific theory, the fact remains that science and intelligent thought demands at least some evidence before accepting a theory as fact. Religions are the only “scientific theories” to have ever been accepted as fact by a large group without any evidence. These “theories” are the only ones to have ever been accepted as somehow explaining why you should live your life a certain way, and they are the only “theories” to have ever demanded anything simply by being accepted.

It’s been said many times before by those more eloquent than I that believing something without proof is insanity. And it is.

From birth, Christians, Muslims and other religious folk are trained to believe without proof. This is a fact that we all know. How then, in an environment where citizens are expected to make intelligent, world-changing decisions while they vote, can we accept religion as a factor? How can we accept the fact that the vast majority of our voters are willing to believe things without any proof, when we don’t let the insane vote (I think)? Does attaching religion to an insane belief really give it credibility? If the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster became a powerful and wealthy group, would Pastafarians be allowed to dictate the politics of the nation? Christians can believe whatever they want but they need to accept the reality of the situation, that this is not a Christian country and that they rely on faith and not evidence, and evidence is what is needed.

This country is run by Christian law, or at the very least was and Christians are still trying to run it according to Biblical law. Christians cite the Bible for all of their political beliefs, and Christians make up the majority of this country, and many feel Christianity is the only religion that has a place here. It is perfectly fine in the views of these people to discriminate against non-Christians or even refuse service based on their beliefs, yet something as simple as taking a tiny rice paddy is a hate crime.

Does this ring a bell anyone?

Don’t Christians think that we have to go and kill people in the Middle East like Iran and Iraq because they are ruled by fanatic religious law? Isn’t that exactly what Christians want?

There’s been some talk of atheist movements and how they might work or be organized. I think this is a great idea, and the more push there is for the atheist agenda, the more sane our world will be. I wanted to write a small essay of sorts on how an atheist movement might be accomplished as well as ask for feedback from other writers and readers here at Anti-Christian Phenomenon. Serious change should be the on the minds of every active atheist or anti-theist, because the religious institutions of the world will never stop until everyone else is under their control. Beware, it’s a long albeit badly written, and very much thought out, at least I hope it is. Again, I’m looking for feedback and serious discussion.

Let’s address some serious questions. (more…)

Let’s try seeing Christianity through different eyes, how it really is.

Christianity, Inc. is the single most powerful, wealthy and influential corporation in the world. It enjoys a ‘religious’ and thus special status in countries where it controls or at least has a hand in the government–in these countries, it is also given special status including exemption from laws like torture, child abuse, and in America, separation of Church and State. Those who subscribe to Christians are also given legal immunity to criticism and annoyance, and legal preference over anyone who disgusts them (homosexuality) or who disagrees with them (atheists, skeptics, agnostics, etc).

Christianity markets a wide variety of products, from placebo salvation, superiority, and wealth to books, music and video games. Nearly every idea or product ever created has been consumed by Christianity and turned into something profitable, including the Pagan holidays Yuletide, the Spring Equinox, and Samhain–turned into Christmas, Easter, and Halloween respectively, three of the largest moneymaking schemes in the history of mankind. Members of the corporation’s ‘club’ are expected to pay, at the very least, weekly tithes of their paycheck to keep their churches well decorated and run–many churches display such opulent wealth like giant screen TVs, stained glass, ceiling murals, and statues. The more impressive, the better. In fact, according to Avro Manhattan in The Vatican Billions,

“The Catholic church, once all her assets have been put together, is the most formidable stockbroker in the world. The Vatican, independently of each successive pope, has been increasingly orientated towards the U.S. The Wall Street Journal said that the Vatican’s financial deals in the U.S. alone were so big that very often it sold or bought gold in lots of a million or more dollars at one time.

The Vatican’s treasure of solid gold has been estimated by the United Nations World Magazine to amount to several billion dollars. A large bulk of this is stored in gold ingots with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, while banks in England and Switzerland hold the rest. But this is just a small portion of the wealth of the Vatican, which in the U.S. alone, is greater than that of the five wealthiest giant corporations of the country. When to that is added all the real estate, property, stocks and shares abroad, then the staggering accumulation of the wealth of the Catholic church becomes so formidable as to defy any rational assessment.

The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe. The pope, as the visible ruler of this immense amassment of wealth, is consequently the richest individual of the twentieth century. No one can realistically assess how much he is worth in terms of billions of dollars.

Ironically, Christianity, Inc. has stated in press releases such as “The Bible” that its goals on Earth are, in addition to spreading the word of an imaginary figure named “God”, to help the poor. Christianity, Inc. has not responded to requests for comments on why it uses the world’s fortunes to fight homosexuality, abortion and in the past racial and gender equality instead of using the money for purposes such as feeding Africa.

Such hypocrisy is standard with Christianity–Christians often are against measures such as universal healthcare, peace, equality and tolerance listed as goals in their Bible. The corporation is also suspected of administering powerful hallucinogens to their consumers, leading them to see visions of faces in toast and to believe in irrational ideas such as a zombie Prophet, ‘Jesus’, an all-loving all-knowing all-powerful stalker in the clouds too lazy to do anything, and people with wings a.k.a. ‘angels’.

Christianity, Inc. is obviously a serious threat to the global society. I suggest mass layoffs.

Fred Phelps has released a video on George Carlin.

George Carlin is now in Hell. And it is not relevant that George Carlin boasted that he does not believe in Hell when he lived on earth. He believes in Hell now. Like the rich man that the Lord Jesus told about in Luke 16, who died and in Hell he lifted up his eyes being in torments and he cried, “Lord Abraham have mercy on me, and send Lazarus the beggar on earth, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in flame.” Luke 16:23,24. When told that he could not have a drop of water, forever, though tormented in flames, he begged somebody to rise from the dead  to preach to his kinfolk, thus they also die and come to his place of torment. George Carlin the filthy blasphemer, the obscene pottymouth skeptic, agnostic and profane atheist had nothing but disdain for God and the Bible, all the days of his tragic life is at this minute and and forever writhing and screaming in exquisite pain, pleading for mercy from that God he flipped off while performing for HBO [Luker?]. Carlin made lots of money making fun of god, now he must deal with God face to face forever. The Lord the God repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them, he will not be slapped to them that hateth him, he will repay him to his face. Deut. 7:10.  When Carlin died June the twenty-second, he split hell wide open at once, as it is written, “Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming. It stirreth up the dead for thee. All they shall speak and say unto thee: art thou also become weak as we ‘George Carlin?’ The worm is spread unto thee, and the worms cover thee. Isaiah 14:9,10. Two of his fellow perverts scrambled to report the news, both of whom who will no doubt in due time will join Carlin and his buddies in hell, with the lying propaganda-man Keith Olberman and Jerry Seinfeld. All of these and more are typical anti-Christic American loudmouths and spindoctors! Westboro Baptist Church exists to publish Gospel truth and thereby to expose Satanic lies. George Carlin is in hell, deal with it! You will soon join him there, America is doomed! We will picket George Carlin’s funeral.

…Well! Watching that video and attempting to transcribe it certainly unsettled my stomach. It also brought up some interesting points about the extreme right and Fundamentalist ideas.

Sometimes I wonder why Christians can consistently deny the truth and evidence without weakening at all. How can they look at the truth and still believe what they believe? The answer is in Fred Phelp’s words–Christians believe that anything that goes against the Bible was simply put there by Satan to challenge their beliefs, and no matter how true it may seem, it’s still a satanic lie.

If you think about it, it’s ingenious, and in my opinion the Church’s sole reason for still existing. The Church and Bible created a near perfect argument to keep those already in their clutches staying there. Because if someone already believes the Church’s lies, they’ll just believe that anything that challenges their beliefs, anything they don’t want to believe, isn’t true for that reason. It stops critical thinking before it begins. Really ingenious–you have to give credit to the intelligence of those who have managed to claw their way out of the Church’s clutches.

Fred Phelp’s frothing speech on hell, torture and blasphemers also brought up a fun little point. Anyone who believes in the idea of ‘hell’ is denying their own belief of an all-loving, omnipotent God. A common argument I hear in response to, ‘If God really loves us, why would he send us to Hell? Especially just because we’ve never heard of him?” is that when we sin, we put ourselves in Satan’s power.

Wait just one second. I thought God was all-powerful. If he’s all powerful, all loving and merciful, no one would go to Hell. Simple as that.

But Christians continue to cling to their narrow-minded beliefs of Hell. You can just hear Fred Phelps relishing the idea of George Carlin roasting in Hell–Fundies are sadistic, to say the least. They enjoy the idea of those who disagree with them enduring eternal torture, and even more so they enjoy putting the image in young and impressionable children.

Family values? Yea right.

It was suggested I write an introduction first so, uhm, alright. I’m the newest member of ACP’s writing, er, factory. I’ve been blogging on my own about a year or so over at my own opinion blog, but lately have been hoping to become part of a community of similarly minded people. Apparently I succeeded!

Uh, a little about me. I’m kind of awkward. You’d never know, am I right? I’m a seventeen year old girl (not for long! Er, the age, not the gender…heh!) who’s been an atheist for about five years or so, after having been raised by a very religious family. I first started questioning my beliefs when I was about twelve and met my future brother-in-law, Steve. Steve, as I quickly learned, was one of the nicest people in the world, and quickly took me in as his own sister. He also happened to be gay–challenging my father and I’s beliefs. I’m proud to say that after seeing that gay men were not evil, I started to question my beliefs and soon realized how incredibly faulty they were. Unfortunately, my father did not, and still lives with the same delusions.

I’m not much of a debater, preferring instead to ask questions that Christians can never answer convincingly. Why is being homosexual immoral? Why is a God necessary for morality to exist? and so on.

Anyways, I’m a regular reader of the separate blogs of several writers here…so really ecstatic to be among you guys. I love your work!

Love,

Yvette

Editor’s Note: Our new, shy, writer is the first person who asked directly to join the authors of the ACP. A Cheers for the youger generation.