The Antichristian Phenomenon

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

Welcome! If you're new here, before you open your mail program to fire up a nasty email, you may want to first read our FAQ to avoid being ignored. If you like the content, we hope you will to subscribe to our RSS feed. Stay open minded!
If you don't like the content of this website on the other hand, kindly fuck off.

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.