The Antichristian Phenomenon

As I am studying the Greek philosophers right now, there is one interesting question regarding Plato. I may just be rambling and be way off, but I thought it might be worthwhile writing it down nevertheless. To understand why, I will first explain what ideas Plato formulated:

Plato stated that there are basically two realities: one which we can sense with our 5 senses, and one which is objective and is independent to the reality which we can actually sense. This reality is also said to be timeless and cannot change. For sake of easy reference, this objective world will from now be called O, whereas the material reality that we can study will be called M. Plato’s main idea is that M is a shadow of O, because M constitutes of many attributes that makes it “weak” or “lesser” in terms of existence, such as being finite, as compared to O.

Now, I thought that O vs M is a good analogy to ask, what if we compare O to god? I don’t think this idea is very farfetched in theory, because there are actually many similarities between the Christian god and O, most notably that:

- M is a reflection of O
- O is supposed to not be able to change in nature and is timeless
- O exists independently of M

If switching the word O with god, this would happen:

- M is a reflection of god (which can be interpreted as M is god’s creation)
- God cannot change in nature and is timeless
- God exists independently of M

Now, there are however a few flaws in Plato’s theory, most notably the one about independence. Because if O exists independently of M, then how can we know for certain that M is merely a reflection of O? We simply cannot know what O is, because O is supposed to be seperate of M. We cannot study O at all.

This argument is strikingly similar to the argument that Christians keep repeating, except that they are contradicting themselves, because:

1) Christians claim that god exists in another realm of existence outside the material world and can thus not be interacted with or studied
2) Christians claim they have had personal experiences with god, such as being told something by god, or felt a divine presence

But 1) and 2) are almost mutually exclusive because:

3) Christians also claim that we cannot understand or know god

So if 1) is true, then 2) cannot be true, because how can they know it was god if they also at the same time claim 3)? So 2) is actually a contradiction to 1) and 3), because even if they claim to know that was indeed god, we simply cannot know.

While I am not trying to argue for some kind of extreme skepticism here, at least I think that using Plato’s theory as an analogy shows that Christians can never know for a certainty that god indeed exists, and if they claim they do they are contradicting themselves. We cannot logically prove whether god’s existence is true or false, particularly if using a similar argument like that of Plato’s, but I don’t think that is what is important, but rather which I have shown here. Due to logical uncertainty, I think any religious person should not be so quick rushing at saying “goddidit” or “it was god, I know it”, because according to this, how can they can truly know? It could’ve as well been Satan or any other divine being. It is exactly that kind of naïvety that they often claim anti-religious for doing, when the anti-religious do something they do not personally agree with, (“you follow Satan but you don’t know it”), but I think here I have evidence for that they themselves shouldn’t be so certain of god’s existence, or they are as hypocricial as they claim others to be.

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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…)

In this short article I will share my views upon the future, and why creationism has no place in it. A warning in advance; this is merely conjecture, although highly probable, still only a product of my imagination.

Like Santayana once stated, before we can take a look at the future we have to dig into the past. Creationism has it’s roots in the original biblical Christian dogma. God has created man in his own image, and our souls will be dealt with after our death based upon our loyalty to the dogma during our lives. During many, many years after Christianity became the de facto faith in the western world, philosophers have slowly stripped Christianity down to what it is now. A collection of shaky assumptions, easily taken down by modern reason.

One of these assumptions, dualism, has never been successfully challenged by reason. There have been, and still are, several philosophers who have an interesting view on things. The so-called father of modern philosophy, Descartes, was one of the first to describe dualism in a less theistic way, in a way acceptable by the standards within the level of reason mankind had reached in the seventeenth century. He described the two aspects of the human being. The mind and the brain. The mind, according to Descartes, is the non-physical part which encompasses self-awareness. The brain would takes care of the intelligence and the physical interaction with our surroundings. The Christian creationist’s view is easily applicable on this model, hence the largely theistic following of Cartesian dualism. The model has been refined over the years, like the removal of the idea of a gland as the link between the mind and the brain. But the basics have been preserved and are still fueling many philosophical debates today.

There wouldn’t be any debate if there wasn’t a movement pleading against dualism. And remember, the case against dualism is a case against Christian dogma. A large variety of philosophers are forming a formidable counterweight against the aging Cartesian dualistic model. Usually these counter arguments have a scientific background. There’s the argument from the physicists, who claim that dualism breaks the second law of thermodynamics. The biologists and doctors say brain damage can cause personality disorders. Psychologists are reporting physical reactions to mental problems. And there’s of course Occam’s razor, which simply asks why dualism should exist in the first place. All these people haven’t been able to kill off the Cartesian dualism once and for all.

The final blow to the very existence of the weakened concept “soul” will come from a very unexpected corner of science. One of the greatest, if not the greatest, logician Alan Turing. His ideas are still used in the foundations of modern computer science. His other major achievement is often overlooked. Turing saw the raw potential of computer science and it’s role in the creation of true artificial intelligence. According to Turing, a computer, if powerful enough, should be able to think individually. It should be able to be conscious, while being entirely physical. If such a computer could ever be built, the entire dualistic world view would cease to exist. Theists mocked Turing and when it turned out he was gay, which was a criminal offense at the time, he became an easy target. Soon after his prosecution and obliteration of his scientific career he died, under questionable circumstances. Many people believe he was killed because of his radically new ideas.

And then along came Gordon Moore, with a company indirectly fulfilling Turing’s dream. In 1965 Moore published a paper, “The experts look ahead – Cramming more components onto integrated circuits”. The paper describes an exponential increase in the amount of components that will fit onto a single chip. This increase is responsible for the exponential growth of computing power, storage capacity and bandwidth available in computers. This paper has been coined Moore’s Law, simply because his assumptions were bang on.

If we continue this exponential trend, following Moore’s Law, mankind will be able to effectively rebuild the human brain in electronics, and thus the mind in software. And this important breakthrough isn’t that far away. The human brain is capable of processing roughly a hundred million million instructions per second. That’s fourteen zeros. We’ve been able to create computers to just surpass one percent of that goal, but still lacking in bandwidth. But since this increase is exponential, we will reach Turing’s dream in a mere thirty years or so. Most of you will still be around when the last bastion of the old dualistic model collapses, when the pope gets a phone call from HAL 9000, explaining how there is no soul, no god and no hope.

Further reading: Vinge’s Singularity.

After c0nsulting a little with Waldheri I decided to edit this post properly to make it more cohesive and actually present the problem at hand in a more focused light. This article will deal with the problem of Christianity’s belief that God is an omnipresent being and how it contradicts Descartes’ argument of the seperation of mind and body and that Christianity is in fact, not a monotheism but a pantheism.

Anyway, let’s start off in the beginning with Genesis and the creation of the Earth:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Genesis 1:1
Nowhere does it say that God made “the heavens and the earth” out of any form of matter. This passage has in turn made the assumption that there was nothing in the universe before God’s Creation, as it is a “beginning”, before God’s Creation there was nothing. Obviously God, while omnipotent, cannot make something out of matter which doesn’t exist, so let’s just ignore that for a while and assume that it is possible that God can make matter out of nothing and that he popped the Earth out from his arse (we are in fact God’s diviniely poo!) and thus, the Earth is created. Without the need of overquoting Genesis, it is made clear that God made the Earth into what it is today and that we are all a part of God’s creation:
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27

Therefore that we can draw the conclusions that not only is the Earth immaterial but also supernatural, and that God is indeed everywhere, and in humans too:

In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God,
for whom and through whom everything exists,
should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.
Hebrew 2:10

This idea strongly disagrees with the Cartesian dualism, formed to explain the relationship of God and humans, because in Descartes’ philosophy it is not possible that the body in this case, can have a two-way relationship with the mind. But if this is not true, then it is not possible for God to be everywhere and everything and this obviously directly questions God’s omnipotence.

Now, what defines Pantheism is that there must be a force, almighty or not, present everywhere and in everything and this force should be conscious and even preferrebly, sentient. This very much agrees with the Christian God, because we are shown that God is very well possible to make demands and have emotions on his own. For example maybe the one of the most blatant examples are the 10 Commandments where God more or less demands his followers to live after these rules or they will be cast into eternal Hellfire:

1 And God spoke all these words:

2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

3 “You shall have no other gods before ^[a] me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything
in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them;
for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children
for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

6 but showing love to a thousand {generations}
of those who love me and keep my commandments.

7 “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work,

10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.
On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter,
nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals,
nor the alien within your gates.

11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth,
the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

13 “You shall not murder.

14 “You shall not commit adultery.

15 “You shall not steal.

16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,
or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Exodus 20:1-17

God even states himself that he is a “jealous God”, I guess we must congratulate him in his truthfulness. Now, the hardest concept to maybe grasp would be that of the universe not being physical as Descartes claims it to be. The reason I have already mentioned before, namely that if God is a supernatural force, then God is also nonphysical, and since the universe is a part of God himself, then the universe too, is of nonphysical and supernatural matter. Therefore the only conclusion can be that Descartes made a false dichotomy based upon the assumption that our universe is made out of physical matter. But, but, isn’t it made physical as in that we can touch and feel it? Yes, indeed we can, but it doesn’t matter if we assume that the physical is actually sprung out of the nonphysical and even less so if assuming the physical and the nonphysical is the same or if there is a heavy communication between the two where we cannot discern when the physical ends and the nonphysical begins. Descartes’ argument rather means that there can be no communication between and therefore even the slightest union is thus, impossible. However, as shown, there is a great flaw in his logic as presented above which he failed to see, even though he based his entire theory upon Christianity itself and its dualism. Christianity is not a dualism, it’s a monism and even more it is a pantheism and not a monotheism as has been previously believed. While certainly the idea of monotheism is supported in Pantheism too, thanks to the Trinity, it actually matters little since the focus no longer lies on the Trinity and in the existence of Jesus being God’s son. This becomes rather self-evident if we are to understand that God is omnipresent and as such, we can go even a step further and argue that Christianity actually believes us to be our own personal gods since God is indeed inside of us, and this gives us the power and will to use the God inside of us to do as what we see fit; hopefully into making our environment a little nicer to live in for others.

Was this better Waldheri? I am still waiting for your reply.

I know this is a bit after the fact, but for various reasons I was not on the internet much over the holidays, mostly because my grandmother does not have internet, and that’s where I was.

By going to my Grandmother’s house over the Christmas Holiday, I was obligated to attend Mass on Christmas Eve.  She is deeply religious and my mother will do anything to ensure that I do not break her illusion of god-fearing grandchildren.  I have reason to believe she fears that my irreligous state will reflect poorly on her parenting, but that is the topic of another article.

Returning to church was somewhat of a landmark for me, as I used to attend mass very regularly throughout my childhood and through High School, but since escaping off to University, it had been a full year since I last set foot inside a church of any kind.  I did not even attend Easter Mass last year, as I did not go home for Spring Break and as a result there was no obligation.  However there was not much of an option in this circumstance.  I decided to mentally take note of how a full year of separation and a rapidly declining faith changes the impression of Mass, and create a little write-up for the ACP.  Oh yes, and this is a Roman Catholic Mass, by the way.

First, the preparation.  I do remember Christmas Eve mass used to be a very big deal when I was a young child.  My mom would take us out shopping to purchase a new outfit for the occasion (the same happened for Easter Mass), as generally I had outgrown my past year’s dress, and in years I hadn’t… what a travesty to wear the same dress two years in a row!  Also we generally attended Mass at the church in my hometown so this was my first experience with Christmas Eve mass at any church other than that one.  Getting ready for Christmas Eve Mass in the past also generally included curling hair and dolling up a bit, because God cares that you dress up for this specific Mass.  No really, he does.  You have to be a step above normal Mass because this is a Holiday, he’ll probably send you to hell if you attend in jeans without your hair styled.  At least, that was the impression that I got from my parents and the other members of my congregation…

Fortunately, my mom has been a bit lax in what I have been allowed to wear over the past few years, but since it was my Grandmother’s church, she was a bit more strict, but at least I could wear dress pants.  I sincerely hope that none of the readers here can sympathize with this sort of foolishness.  Perhaps in the future I will write an article about church “Dress Codes”…  Regardless, I was able to get away with my Thor’s Hammer necklace (I don’t think my mom understands what it means, or why I wear it anyway), a thin scarf with skulls and crossbones all over it, and simply run a brush through my hair.  That’s right, no hair spray OR curling irons.  So far, this whole church thing is not quite as bad as I remember.  I stuff Richard Dawkins’ “River Out of Eden” in my coat pocket and wait forever for everyone else to get ready.  There was a special on the History Channel about giant man-eating Anacondas to watch while I waited, which was pretty awesome.  I’m probably going to Youtube it later, it was that cool (here it is!).  Apparently Florida is having this problem with Burmese Pythons that escaped during the hurricanes and… oh yeah, church.

We helped my grandparents into our van, and drove off into the cold.  (Un?)Fortunately due to my grandfather’s current state of health we were able to use their handicapped tag and parked right next to the doors and a life-size, very ugly Nativity set.  Some things don’t change between churches and the horrific Nativity displays are one of them.  I swear they use the cheapest plaster and paint, and hire the worst sculptors and painters to create these absurdities, and then proceed to light them rather unflatteringly, to make them look even WORSE than they already are.  We helped my grandparents into the church, and as a young man (who would be the lector) opened the door for us I was nearly bowled over with an overwhelming stench, that brought back decades of anxiety and anger.  Incense.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the smell of some incenses.  If my room mates happen to be smoking cigarettes downstairs, I light up a bit of the sweet perfume in the center of my floor to drown it out and relax.  However, the Catholic Church must have some business deal with a company out there to be the exclusive provider of their full line of shoddy, cheap aromas.  A while back, the Church I attended in my hometown purchased different incense, that smelled sweet and pleasant, but since then, they have been purchasing the same disgusting scent my Grandmother’s church used that night.  I closed my eyes to let the brief nausea pass and followed my family to a pew that was in the second row from the front, in front of a smaller Nativity set, equally as hideous.  I refused to genuflect and marched to my seat near the end.  Already I was feeling a little bit uncomfortable, but I had some time to kill as we arrived about 45 minutes early to get a seat so I calmed my nerves by reading about the “utility factor” of male to female births and whether a son or daughter would be advantageous in various animal species in terms of passing down DNA and ensuring descendants.  Fascinating.  Not Church related at all either.

The building began filling up rather quickly and about 20 minutes before Mass started, a choir began to sing various Christmas carols.  I relearned exactly why I disliked organ music… Overall the music quality was sadly lacking.  At this point, my dad leaned over and pointed out that there was a random girl in the nativity scene, the first either of us had seen that was not the Virgin Mary.  She was carrying a pitcher of water, and wearing a red apron, which seemed to have the breasts emphasized with a white highlight.  Good job on being politically correct.  There was also some random half-naked Amish guy, I don’t know what he was supposed to be… a shepherd maybe?  With the cheesy nativity scene, christmas lights, trees, choir, and happy organist, I could only think of one word to describe the atmosphere, and no pun intended of course: gaudy.  And the priest hadn’t even entered the scene yet!!

I missed the Procession as my nose was still buried in Dawkins, but when I finished the page I discovered that I was standing up and the priest was giving the greeting.  The time that passed between the introduction and the first reading are jsut a blur, a testament to how good I got at tuning out the mass in the years before.  Then the lector had to go and piss me off.

He was a young, attractive man, no more than three years my senior or one year my junior.  Isaiah 9:2-7 was the reading, though I imagine it might have been edited slightly, as I have found that in-Church readings always seem to say exactly what the preachers want them to… out of their biblical context.  His voice was firm, but slight wavers betrayed his nervousness.  About the time he reached the boots of warriors and cloaks rolled in blood, his voice picked up a malicious sneer, and his eyes flashed with arrogance and blind zealotry until the last line; “The ZEAL of the Lord of hosts WILL accomplish this.” OH?  When exactly?  Last I checked, our world was still war-torn and stricken with everything BUT peace.  Oh yeah, I almost forgot, he meant after the second coming and heaven and stuff, which is apparently sometime soon, and has been “sometime soon” for the past 2000 or so odd years.  And everyone forgets why these sorts of verses were really written in the first place.  Here’s a hint, it has something to do with Jews and captivity… not Jesus.

After another really bad musical interlude, the lector stood back up on the podium, a bit more confident this time, and a lot more arrogant.  The second reading was from the Letters somewhere (of course), but my ability to tune out nonsense prevailed and all I can remember is an overwhelming desire to punch the lector in his smug face… or at least stand up and scream “BULL SHIT!” but my grandmother was there and I mustn’t make her look bad.

Then the Gospel, yay… Of course, it was some version of the Christmas story, shepherds in the fields and angels singing, and all that nonsense.  I’ve always wanted them to recount the two stories right next to each other to see if anyone notices the discrepancies…  But regardless, it was homily time.  I worked hard to pay attention, as usually this would be the time I’d imagine dragons crashing through the stained glass windows with the mission of carrying me off to fantasyland, and paying attention was really really hard.  The homily was an anecdote about the Children’s mass a few hours earlier, where he asked Children questions about Christmas and Church.  I think it was supposed to be touching and funny?  The priest made sure to lay on a bit of guilt, tell everyone they need to be reborn for the next year, try to sin less, and think about others in the holiday season.  I was pretty sure I’d heard the homily before actually, and it reminded me of the recent ACP aricle on the same topic.  He also told a mind-numbingly stupid stock story about a girl who bought a hair comb for her grandmother to illustrate some point about giving and selflessness, and finally it was over.

Which meant we moved to the second half of mass: Liturgy of the Eucharist.  Originally I had intended on not taking Eucharist, but the fact that we went to my grandmother’s church changed that plan, and I walked through the motions as I had for many years.  The beginning of the second liturgy is an excessively long series of prayers and rituals (all of which I have memorized) mostly carried out by the priest as the congregation kneels.  I refused to kneel, and instead sat forward in my seat.  I will do a number of things to maintain an image, but I will never kneel at the altar of a dead god.  The very act of kneeling is at its heart degrading.  Instead my mind wandered, storming in discust and rage at what I had witnessed thus far around as the familiar words bounced around my skull.  Nothing new.  My resentment and anger built as the rituals carried on, and I felt thoroughly gross after shaking everyone around me’s grimy, dirty hand.

When everything was prepared, and the crackers and juice properly Jesus-ified, we filed around to recieve our divine snack.   I actually have always enjoyed the taste of the crackers they dish out, symbolic caniballism aside, so this was not the most painful part of the mass, and instead of kneeling to pray afterwards I returned to Out of Eden to read about the mating habits of salmon.  The word “SEX” was printed no less than 10 times across the page, referring to both gender and the act of mating, so I hope the nice happy family behind me was approprately disturbed as they leaned half across my seat in prayer.  “OMG SEX IN CHRUCH! BLAFSMEMEY!”

Unfortunately my brother copy-catted me and pulled his book out too, so my dad quickly chastized us for our inappropriate behavior and I was left with nothing to do but listen to more Christmas carols and stare at the random nativity-scene milkmaid’s prominent breasts and wonder why the craftsmen felt the need to make them so… obvious…  Eventually the priest allowed everyone to sit again and began the closing procedure (This mass has ended, go in peace!  “THANKS be to God!”).  It seemed to end rather abruptly, but I suspect that was my incredible tune-out ability at work yet again. Regardless we went back to my grandmother’s, and ate a lot of ham.

Now a few closing comments.

One of the realizations I reached while ignoring the priest during the prayers was that every single Antichristian should attend Church once in a while.  It can be easy to forget just how real and imminent the delusion is, and arrogant lectors and homilies serve to help keep the flames burning.  I left that mass renewed, though not in the way the priest intended… instead I was renewed in my passion to move towards total eradication of such nonsense, to oppose it with every fiber of my being.  I also realized that in the short year between masses, I had gone from a mushy agnostic-atheist-kinda-still favoring some fluffy God concept and maybe-all-religions-have-a-puzzle-piece-of-wisdom to something pretty close to a miltant athiest.  That’s quite a change to mull over, I haven’t fully digested my thoughts on the matter yet, I’ll get back to you when I do.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a good Holiday season!

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

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To say that, maybe the second most important (after Easter?) Christian holiday has a pagan symbolism is beyond thinkable for most “holy” people. Of course, I always regard Christmas as another Christian scheme- turning the pagan solstice celebration into the birth of Christ. By the way, what evidence is there ? As of the rest of Christianity’s claims: NONE !!!!

Anyway, this article tries to reconcile some views and give a different perspective on generally accepted things.

(more…)

In this article a few topics converge to the core of what I would call my quarrel with Christianity, its teachings and more importantly: its followers or rather lack thereof. You might think “a lack of following?” and following that remark present me with an estimate of the vast amount of people who identify themselves as Christians, being a big chunk of the global population pie. And that is exactly my point: these people identify themselves as Christians whereas I am speaking of strict followers of Biblical dogma.

I must start with the Old Testament. Anyone who has ever read even part of it will undoubtedly recognize that this collection of books is mostly concerned with he history of the people of Israel. The god found in the Old Testament presents itself as one only concerned with the Israelites. This god completely lacks any sympathy for any other tribe or people and will not hesitate to wipe out any people, city or tribe that are either a threat to his precious, chosen people or who simply piss him off for various petty reasons. It is an angry, tribal god, a boastful bully who enjoys the reek of burnt animals and requires his followers to cut off a part of their penises. Regarding the Israelites themselves, the Old Testament describes how this people was freed from Egyptian slavery and how they consequently, after many a bloody conquest, they established kingdoms (of Judah and Israel). However, these kingdoms were lost after the Israelites were conquered by other peoples, leading the Israelites into Babylonian exile. Of course, this was all the result of disobedience of that wonderful god. However, because the OT god is such a good guy, all hope was not lost, since through Isaiah it was prophesized a king would come who would would restore the kingdom of Israel, rebuild The Temple and other neat things such as reviving the dead and making the OT god the god of all nations and peoples.

This is a very important clash with Christian belief, which is rooted mainly in the New Testament. Jesus did not revive all the dead, nor does the entire world now serve God (look at me!), nor was death abolished since Jesus’ arrival – nay, Jesus even died himself. As the Moshiach (“the Anointed One” who will bring the Messianic age), Jesus utterly fails. Still, Christians swear by him as the Messiah prophesied in the Israelites’ scriptures, even though the Israelites’ themselves disagree (and for good reason). Leaning on the crutch that is the Old Testament, a new dogma developed with Jesus as the center-point. The gospels from the newly formed scriptures claim this Jesus figure spoke of a god of love for everyone; or rather: some new god as it does not match the pattern of our Old Testament friend. Other important theological additions include the concepts of Satan, heaven and hell. All these modifications and additions strike cacophonous chords with the older scriptures, but such seems the nature of Christianity: Reinventing dogma as it goes along. It is this exactly central characteristic that I often find myself entangled in.

To part from the basic level of scriptural discrepancy and move into the realm of Christian theology, we see the aforementioned central characteristic return. There are numerous Christian denominations with varying interpretations of the scriptures and I will concentrate on the prime example: Catholicism. Catholicism stands out among the denominations not just because of its size, but because of its sheer brutality. Over the centuries the Catholic Church made the Judeo-Christian religion into a political machine. This machine has had a firm grip on many powerful nations in the history of the world, with the pope at its head. This political influence brought about extra dogmatic additions and inventions which lead to “holy” wars (and consequential plunderings, one of the factors in the the amassment of the excessive wealth of the Vatican), the Spanish Inquisition, the selling letters of forgiveness “from god”, and so on. One of their more recent dogmatic inventions is papal inerrancy, which as an effect relieves the pope of any responsibility.

The Catholic Church is of course an extreme example of the reinvention of dogma and I am certainly not arguing that this practice will lead to the monstrosities we find in the history of the Catholic Church. To be fair, I will provide you with another example, and it is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Mormonism. In addition to the original scriptures this church has the book of Mormon, magically revealed to the church’s founder Joseph Smith, Jr. The book was supposedly translated from golden plates having “unknown characters”, given to Joseph Smith by an angel named Moroni. The plates are, of course, now buried somewhere in the hills near Smith’s house. Mormonism hasn’t lead to anything too disturbing, barring occasional polygamy and the wearing of magical underwear.

You average non-catholic, non-Mormon Christian thinks he has not strayed as far from the Biblical path as those silly Mormons, but nothing less is true. Although they have indeed not built an empire or added any extra books to their precious Bible, they are in fact very unbiblical in just about every aspect of their lives. Most of them simply don’t realise it, because they haven’t actually read the Bible. I have no statistics on this, but time and time again I find myself debating a professed Christian who hasn’t even read “the Holy Book”. I am sure anyone who is active in these kinds of debates have had similar experience. These particular Christians tend to forget that there is a reason why we oppose their religion. It is because we have studied it, through experience and inquiry and have found it not to belong in the world we inhabit this day. Hiding gods whose baseless laws and morality they unverifiably passed to men have no place in modern government. Without actually having read the horrific, inhuman laws found in the New Testament or having realised God’s disgust for us as worthless, sinful mortals you as a self-proclaimed Christian have no right to call “their” God just and loving. These “Christians” have a one-sided conception of the Biblical god. In my experience, especially Christians from largely secular countries have this skewed perspective, and in these countries Christianity has once again reivented its dogma, and a new Christian god is born yet again.

There is but a relative handful of Christians who have actually understood the Bible and its god. A lot of them spend their lifetime trying to piece the biblical puzzle together in such a way that their god can be called loving in the face of his vile deeds – spending their lives studying theology. Some of these Christians write Apologetics, doing just that: thinking of excuses why an all-loving god would do such horrible things – and not to mention finding ways how scripture can be interpreted so that it doesn’t collide with scientific discoveries, but this is largely beside the point. There are also those Christians who do not try to understand the actions of God, but take them for face value. These Christians are abhorred by almost all Christians for giving them a bad image. It is the likes of Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church I am speaking of. These Christians show a much better understanding of the Bible and God: God does indeed hate homosexuals, God does hate sinners, and God will punish us for eternity in hell after we have died if we escape the apocalypse. It is ironic that their scriptural knowledge is not applauded by fellow Christians, but rather ignored. Ignored, like Christians have ignored so much else: the maturing of human society, our sobering from our superstitious beliefs and our advancement in the knowledge of the world in which the Bliblical God and Biblical doctrine have no place.

Well, since we are now just two days away from the 25th of December, a day celebrated by one third of the world as the (supposed) day that symbol of Christianity was born, I feel that I should speak about a subject, actually a practice, so useless in nature as well as so grotesque in design.

I don’t know about other places, but here in my country there is a tradition every Christmas and Easter- the well-known tradition of rebirth, of being born once more under the blessings of Christ. I call them “seasons of rebirth”. I’m sure many people, from different places, know what I’m talking about.

But what does this “rebirth” consist in, and who are “the reborn” ?

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