The Antichristian Phenomenon

I just saw this Greek post on making a multiple choice test in the Bible that I thought was brilliant and I couldn’t help but repost the translated version.

The following is basically a little test to see if you still remember the Good Book and all the nice values it has provided to you. Use it in case you need to freshen up your memory, to test if you children are paying attention in School and so on.

Try to figure out which are the correct answers and see how close to inspired perfection you stand. One of the following questions has more than one answer. Can you tell which one?

Good Luck!

1. A Few children were making fun of Prophet Elisha as he was going up a mountain, shouting at him “Get up baldie!”. Elisha…

   a) Cut the ears of 42 of them and made them eat them.
   b) Cursed them so that a fire broke out around them, burning 42 of the kids.
   c) Cursed them so that two bears came out of the woods and mauled 42 of them.
   d) Turned 42 of them into pigs.
2. What is the 10th Commandment that God gave to Moses to write on two stone plates in the Mount Sina

   a) Do not put one ox and one mule in the same field.
   b) Do not cook a kid (baby goat) in the milk of it’s mother.
   c) Do not sleep with a deaf-mute so that you don’t turn into a deaf-mute yourself.
   d) Do not open you house’s door to idol worshippers.
3. What is the name of God?

   a) Whiner.
   b) Cheater.
   c) Jealous.
   d) Naughty.
4. How should parents kill their son in case he’s drinking and talking back to them?

   a) Implate him.
   b) Stone him.
   c) Burn him alive.
   d) Decapitate him.
5. What happens if you’re not a (female) virgin on the first night of marriage?

   a) Your father must pay the husband 100 pail.
   b) Your husband whips you and then divorces you.
   c) You’re stoned to death.
   d) The whole village spits on you.
6. What is explicitly allowed to be eaten according to the Holy Writ? (All others are explicitly forbidden)

   a) Fried Oysters.
   b) Rabbit stew.
   c) Lemon Pork.
   d) Grasshoppers with ketchup.
7. According to the Holy Writ, God cannot defeat

   a) Those who have iron chariots.
   b) Those who have iron spears.
   c) Those who have iron swords.
   d) Those who have iron bows.
8. When Jephthah came victorious from battle, what did he burn on the alter as an offerring to God?

   a) His only son.
   b) His only daughter.
   c) His two small grandchildren.
   d) His wife.
9. What did David offer to Kind Saul so that he would get his daughter?

   a) The heads of 200 Phillistines.
   b) The dicks of 200 Phillistines.
   c) The testicles of 200 Phillistines.
   d) The penis skins of 200 Phillistines.
10. For what reason did God torture Job?

    a) Because God was bored and had nothing to do.
    b) Because Satan challenged him to destroy him for no reason.
    c) Because Job ate raw meat.
    d) Because Job forgot to use incense.
11. How does God punish pretentious women?

    a) He makes them bald, and exposes their cunt.
    b) He makes them full of zits, and exposes their tits.
    c) He makes them full of sores, and exposes their thighs.
    d) He makes the grow a beard, and exposes their arse.
12. What is the punishment for the lame?

    a) Do not approach the holy so that they do not desecrate them.
    b) They must pay double the tax as the healthy.
    c) The must burn double the amount of animals during sacrifices.
    d) They are not allowed to eat bread.
13. Which Christmas tradition is forbidden by God?

    a) Sing Christmas carols for money.
    b) Giving gifts.
    c) Decorating a tree.
    d) Eat turkey.
14. What did Jesus suggest people do, if they can tolerate it?

    a) Self-flaggelate
    b) Become a eunuch.
    c) Rip out their eyes.
    d) Stay unmarried.
15. Hare, according to the Holy Writ is:

    a) Marsupial
    b) Reptile
    c) Ruminant
    d) Predatory
16. How do we make animals with dots?

    a) We make them wear tunics with dots which can get discoloured, and leave them in the rain.
    b) We make them look things with dots while they’re drinking water.
    c) We throw them on the coals and take them immediately off them again.
    d) We make them stand under thinly grown Garlands every noon.
17. According to the Holy Writ, feeling come from…

    a) The intestines
    b) The stomach
    c) The liver
    d) The kidneys
18. Which from the following creatures appears in the Holy Writ?

    a) Unicorn
    b) Dragon
    c) Basilisk
    d) Satyr
19. When Jesus dies, which from the following miracles happened?

    a) A rain of blood fell over Jerusalem.
    b) All street of Jerusalem got full of zombies.
    c) All sheep in Jerusalem started baying.
    d) All wines in Jerusalem turned into vinegar.
20. Question 20 omitted because I’m too lazy (and obviously sinful) to translate all that text. Maybe later.

How well did you do? Compare your answers to the holy truth:

1. C (2 Kings 2:23-25)
2. B (Exodus 24:26-28)
3. C (Exodus 34:14)
4. B (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
5. C (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)
6. D (Deuteronomy 14:7-8 and Leviticus 11:1-20)
7. A (Judges 1:19)
8. B (Judges 11:30-40)
9. D (1 Samuel 18:27)
10. B (Job 2:3)
11. A (Isaiah 3:16-17)
12. A (Leviticus 21:16-23)
13. C (Jeremiah 10:2-4)
14. B (Matthew 19:11)
15. A (Leviticus 11:6)
16. B (Genesis 30:37-39)
17. A (Psalms 7:9, 16:7, 26:2, 73:21, Proverbs 23:16)
18. All of the above (Isaiah 34:7, Numbers 23:22; 24:8, Deuteronomy 33:17, Deuteronomy 32:33, Psalms 74:13-14, Isaiah 13:21-22, 34:13-14, Proverbs 23:32)
19. B (Matthew 27:51-53)

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.

Reddit delivers again, this time from the personal experience of one redditor with the Mega-conman Benny Hinn. The whole story is very cringe-worthy, particularly the way that people are manipulated shamelessly and then blamed for the lack of success. Some choice quotes that made my eyes pop in surprise.

We sat next to a latino family who, by the looks of their clothes, did not have a pot to piss in. Upon the first offertory (and there were 4 offertories that evening), the family father cut a check for $3500 and slipped it into the lock box carried by one of the three dozen visibly armed ushers. Each lock box had a sign on the front reading, Suggested Donation: $1000.00. The family gave additional money each time the lock box went by, but I am not sure how much.

Which is a perfect example why the poor in very religious countries have so much more difficuly rising out of poverty. The fact that the scum that is Benny Hinn can accept such donations for nothing more than a stage show is sickening.

Well, the old lady who fell was crying. Not because she injured herself. But because the men in blue told her (according to one of the Pepsi Center employees who allowed us to stand nearby) that she couldn’t be healed because her faith in God was not 100%. She was told to stand against the wall until she confessed to God that her faith was shaken and be forgiven for it, or confess the sin she was hiding that was preventing God from healing her. A sixtysomething woman, bawling her eyes out (old people crying really gets me).

This is the face of fucking evil folks. This is what you indirectly support as a moderate christian who tolerates faith healing nonsense just because you can’t bring yourself to admit that your God is not omnipotent.

Fuck. This. Shit.

It wouldn’t be as bad if it was simply foolish people losing their money to a professional conman and thus taking themselves out of the social pool in a Darwinian sense (although that’s pretty bad anyway.) It’s the fact that a scum like Benny Hinn achieves so much financial power that he can easily start lobbying politicians for policies that benefit him (even scarier, imagine politicians actually attending and believing his shows…) and he can purchase and control actual capitalist businesses and run them according to his greedy-scummy nature.

Ever since Last.fm sold out to corporate interests I was expecting the day would come when the many anti-religion groups that existed there were taken down to avoid offending the sensibilities of the increasing pop audience. Well it seems that happened while I was not looking as the first thing I heard about it is this post from Anath in the forum. Apparently the last.fm admins purged many of the existing anti-religion groups with the reasoning that they were promoting “hatred” but fortunately spared the ACP which was seen of keeping things more civil. This message was sent to Anath:

Hi,

As you might have heard, some anti-religion groups have been deleted recently. I have been looking at your group as well, and a few things are beyond what I would normally authorise, but most of the contents are discussion orientated and not just plain bashing and hatred. This is the reason why I am not deleting this group. But I strongly encourage you to keep a strong moderation going, so it does not become mindless hatred.

As an example, “Metal against Islamism group was deleted… BASTARDS!” and “Oh good grief. Stupid bastards, creating a mass of groups for exactly the same thing. That’s just confusing.” are the kind of things I would rather not want to see appearing.

In this thread various opinions were heard, some coming from the Metal against Islamism admins who tried to explain that they had no warning and no chance to fix things before being deleted. The admins of Last.fm also chimed in to explain that they would simply prefer to avoid rampart hatred but have no problem with reasoned arguments. Apparently one of the main reasons why MAI was deleted was their shoutbox was flooded with seething anti-Islam posts, far too many to delete individually. So the whole thing had to be taken down. It reminds of how the Protoss used to clean the Zerg infestations in the popular Starcraft^[I] PC game.

The ironic thing is that the reason the ACP group was spared was the strong moderation we were seen of having which prevented a lot of the most questionable stuff. This moderation, which takes the form of requiring people to join the group before posting in the forum or shoutbox, was implemented in fact to prevent Christian trolling as we would often get fly-by posts and shouts from people who only wanted to disrupt. They would spam the forum with dozens of pro-christian nonsense for example and then leave before being banned, making it impossible to stop them.

The interesting thing is that all this purging has given a very strong boost in activity to the ACP as it has now become a haven for all those people left groupless in the anti-religion department. Hopefully this will make for a healthier and more active anti-christian community that does not devolve into a circle-jerk of mindless christian bashing.

It also points out the benefits of having an external website complementing your last.fm forum such as the one you’re currently reading. In case the ACP had been taken down, we would still be able to use this area for a staging area until we found a new home, either under a new name or a new forum.

As for Last.fm, unfrtunately it seems to be taking more and more of the corporate route. One can only hope that they won’t go to the extent that Microsoft has for example when they started banning all mention of homosexuality in their allowed usernames. One can only hope that if “hateful” anti-religion groups have been deleted, the same has been done to the hateful religious, fascist and racist groups but I have no knowledge of this either way.

Footnotes

1. I was thinking of linkin to a wikipedia article of this but then I thought: Seriously, if you don’t know what Starcraft is, you’re probably too old for this site anyway [↩]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oR5GwAEYCE

That’s all folks.

We’re used to Hollywood portraying Atheists as cynical and bitter personalities who only need the slightest push to see the light as part of their redemption (or alternatively serve as a handy character to kill for being too rational.) Usually we can point out and avoid movies which play on those ridiculous archetypes but sometimes this nonsense comes at you from where you least expect it.

Such was my experience with Dragon Age, which after my recent escapades during its procurement, now gives me another reason to blog in relation to it. You see, this game not only features de-facto atheists as part of your band of “heroes”, not only does it feature them in a profoundly Holywood way but it goes at that extra step to make sure we get the point.

As far as I’ve progressed in the game, I’ve encountered two characters who can be rightly proclaimed as atheists. One of them is the Wild Witch Morrigan which even though is a mage shows a strong disbelief to “The Maker” (A monotheistic deity whose religion is similar to the Christian one) and the other is Shale, a stone Golem which I’ve only had with me for a bit and speaks like an agnostic but already shows strong tendencies towards atheism.

You get the religious views of those two characters mainly by having them in your party at the same time as you have the ultra religious Leliana which then strikes up casual dialogue with either of them on this topic while you’re walking in cities. From those ambient discussions, you quickly realize the beliefs of the two atheists while also getting the classic Holywood trope about atheism. Even though the discussions are quite humorous at times and entertaining in their own right, especially at the parts where Morrigan wonders why she should believe in anything without proof, they quickly turn annoying when instead of showing a person who has a solid basis in their worldview, they paint those characters as insecure and afraid (deep down).

“I’m feel sorry for how isolated and alone you must feel in your life” Leliene says at the end of an exasperating discussion with Morrigan. “Er…I…none of your business.” retorts Morrigan, making obvious to all that she does indeed feel isolated and lonely. I couldn’t help but feel why she couldn’t answer like I would.  “You’re mistaken, I’m far from lonely” or even “I like it that way.” In short, any kind of retort that an atheist who is not insecure in his life would give.

But that’s not the worst of it, far from it in fact, if that was all I wouldn’t really mind it. What really annoys me is not simply that those two are cynical, bitter or whatever but that they’re both downright evil! And this is quite the explicit kind of evil mind you, not the vague moral choices that seen from the right perspective might lead to some interesting ethical questions, but the “who cares for suffering, just give me unlimited power no matter the costs” kind of evil that only exist in the cartoonish villains of Hollywood. Morrigan is by far the worse of course, abundantly disproving when I even think of helping the downtrodden and blatantly approving of only the most vile acts (examples: -5 approval for simply convincing a merchant not to exploit the desperate refugees. +7 approval for opting to allow the evil demon to possess a child.)

Shale on the other hand openly admits in disliking humans, consider itself a far superior being, has no issue with wanton violence and is of course, quite hearless about it. This wouldn’t be an issue in itself but when coupled with it openly promoting rationalism and critical thinking, once more one tends to say “Now hold on a goddamn minute!”

Now let me here point out that I have no problem with there being evil Atheists in games. Not at all. However I’d like some basis on this evil which here simply doesn’t exist. Morrigan seems to be wishing the evil options for the sake of being evil. The excuses for the disapproval the character gives are laughable only only serve to point out the shallowness of her worldview which makes the fact that she ignores the obvious result of doing the good thing as benefiting our own mission even more annoying. For example, during a mission where I had to convince a king to help me, I reached his castle only to find that undead were pouring out of it and attacking a nearby village. It made perfect sense to protect the village during the attack and then once the undead were destroyed or lessened, I would go in the castle. Then the obviously thankful King would be more willing to help me out. However for Morrigan helping the village was a big no-no so I got penalized for doing the sensible thing.

So evil atheists are not a problem but when you have only the (blatant) Atheists as goddamn evil bastards while the theists are all little goody-two-shoes angels who approve of all the good stuff (and of course the game doesn’t give any proper moral choices, only caricaturish black&white options) and only care for helping the poor, then one can’t help but make the appropriate assumptions.

While the game could have put a nice perspective into the oppression of organized religion in the form of the templars, we’re rather told that they’re in fact right for being so oppressive since all those people they oppress are kind obviously powerhungry fucks. So again religion + authority + strict rules  = good while individualism + atheism + freethought = bad.

For me thus, the problem does not simply simply lie in the fact that some Atheists are portrayed as powerhungry bastards, it lies in the fact that all atheists are such while all the theists are, quite explicitly, good. Would it hurt to have some of the theist heroes be intolerant of, say elves and dwarves (maybe some are, I haven’t seen all of them yet). Would it hurt to have some of them disproving of alternate sexualities? And on the same track, it wouldn’t hurt if some of the atheists weren’t total bastards all the time. It really pokes me in the wrong way where either I have to make total dickish choices with my character (eat babies!) or to lose the only two characters I like since they will disapprove of me so much.

Unfortunately this is a perfect example of the Hollywood-type worldview, on games which enter the same mainstream as movies. When the budgets and risks get into the same range, only the same safe bets in displayed morals and ideas can be played and thus culture might just as well go down the same shallow drain. I’m afraid that as long as profits are on the line, morality will always remain black and white and cuddle the theists who wish to claim the moral high ground. After all, in aggregate, they have the most money don’t they?

Quick note: Scott Pruett has started answering the initial refutations to his 10 questions and in his latest post he has started including answers from the ACP. Unfortunately I’m on vacation at the moment and can’t answer but feel free to take a shot at it.

Very shortly: This time he is tackling the answers to the ‘Order’ question. Unfortunately his answers can be simply surmised as him falling back onto his ‘Creation’ question. He turned the question from “How can the universe be finely tuned to human life” to “Why have a universe that can sustain any kind of life rather than no life” this is aking to saying “Why is there a universe”.

And my answer to that question is the same as before.

(h/t FaithlessGod)

Through the Austro-Athenian Empire I’ve noticed LifeWay presenting 10 questions to Atheists and I thought this is a good reason to activate the ACP once more. Hopefully, the rest of the co-writers around here will add their part as always.

So LifeWay presents these questions which fortunately avoid becoming strawmen as I expected and display an actual willingness to hear the other side of the story. Wether anything good will come of it or wether the answers provided will be quote-mined for a nefarious cause is yet to be seen, but from me, you’ll get the Epicurean perspective.

I am only going to quote the actual question part of each point to save space. LifeWay has written a bit of introduction to each question so I’d advise you check out what the reasoning behind it is.

Edit from Anath: Added my responses, more to come as they are added in the forum thread.  Each person’s response will be marked with their name, so readers can choose to read only responses from a particular author if they like. (more…)

Yep, it’s that time of the year again where I approve all the journals waiting for many long months and present you with some that I found interesting.

• LeaTelamon continues her Dissection of Death Metal. More innards!
• Doomface has a rant about Giftmas and how the whole thing becomes so annoying to those poor and uncreative of us.
• Self-MadeWolf takes us on a tour of the genres in Gothic music. Interesting to see what exactly the fine distinctions are. They all sound similar to me :-/
• KhaosWolf666 brings us a very nice view on Islam from an Iran-born activist.
• And finally VampyreAngel discovers some interesting nuggets of info on Wikipedia on a bored day.

So that’s all for now. If you want to be included in the next version of the Journal Roundup, simply write an interesting Last.fm journal and submit it to the ACP group. Once I go through and approve them, I will select those which have more than 2 minutes of thought put into them for the next roundup.

I’m thinking of making this feature a more regular thing, like a carnival for the last.fm people. Of course this depends on having a decent amount of journals posted to choose from. What do you think?

This is far beyond nasty, this is fucking insane

My pastor’s reaction surprised me. Instead of showing the Christian love that he had preached, he began to blame me for a multitude of problems that would occur as a result of my sudden decision. My wife’s reaction was even more surprising. She took me aside to tell me that she was praying for me. She then said these words, “I am praying two things for you: that you will either get right with God or that He will take you out!“

Do you know what is worse than leaving the faith and your own wife praying for your death? Leaving the faith and your wife joining your pastor to accuse you of child sexual abuse so that they can remove you from the family as quickly as possible.

Disgusting

Related articles by Zemanta

• Some of us had it easy
• Others watch bad pastors too

It’s been a slow time over at the ACP. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much of an activity going on around here. Perhaps I should get my cat ‘o nine tails ready to provide some…incentive.

Fortunately, in this slow period, someone decided to send us an email to explain why we go wrong. This is a historical moment as we haven’t actually received any such thing until now. I think it deserves a post of its own.

Our contact is Jonathon who by now has sent two different emails. He seems to be open to communication so in the spirit of openess, I will post the discussion here so that they rest of you might join in. I will provide the email as it was sent with my replies (which I’ve already sent back) in between. Feel free to comment on any part you wish. (more…)