Posts Tagged “Christianity”

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.

It is done, your holy saviour is defeated once more, and even the ultimate might of your omnipresent and omnibenevolent imaginary sky daddy was not enough to stop this truly evil deed.

Where is he Christian?! I ain’t seeing jack shit.

But we all know that nothing is going to happen and you know it as well. It is why you think you need to act and show your outrage. Your god cannot defend himself because he does not exist, so by this act going unpunished the seed of doubt it further planted within you.

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?

I’ve decided we need some reviews here and there on this site, this is my first one for “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris: (more…)

Culture’s definition is loosely connected to real life and elusive at best. People who have been assigned to watch over what some people think is culture are being criticized by thousands. I’m part of a culture. You are part of a culture. This website is part of a culture. What culture? Cultures are being added to the big soup of multicultural madness faster than you can decide whether you want to be a part of them or not. Politicians speak out about “our” culture. Things like subcultures arise from the masses of people resisting the very concept of culture. Culture nowadays is a broad term used to define everything two people and their dog take part in. The attention we give to culture is a cultural phenomenon. To quote the mighty wisdom of Wikipedia here: “Cultures can be understood as systems of symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, that are constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another“. There, a definition. What good does this do? A definition can’t get much more tolerating than this.

But, some really interesting aspects of culture can be derived from the definition. Culture is progressive, liberal even, in nature. It’s never static, not for a second. Culture is constantly evolving into something new. Visit deviantART and watch culture evolve in real-time. Culture is not a static definable object, it’s an everlasting process of creation fueled by creativity and man’s hunger for something new to identify himself by. As long as people are communicating with each other, this cultural process will thrive. There’s no need for anything else, just communication between people. If a person stands out by doing something different, and is successful in his attempts, people will mimic the abnormality until it becomes normal. When the numbers grow you can start defining certain branches of cultural development, each of them going it’s own way evolving further into something completely new. Even if you take a closer look into one of these branches you’ll discover a finer grain of subcultures. The branches will collide and interweave over time, split up again or merge with other branches. They don’t know about physical borders, the influences between branches are only limited by the amount of communication between them. The process of cultural development is a complex and highly dynamic one. There’s no way of telling what will change tomorrow.

And now, all of a sudden, cultural preservation pops up. People start defining culture as something static, as an object, instead of the process it really is. They see the process as a threat to the object they’ve defined. This cultural snapshot is usually the culture these people are comfortable with, and most likely the culture that provides them with great power. They take an aggressive conservative stance against culture and provide people with their static, crippled substitute for culture. They’ll do anything to preserve their position in culture, even if it takes culture itself down in the process. Culturally different people are looked down upon and oppressed. The cultural placebo is force-fed into the mouths of the innocent at gunpoint. The non-conformists are beaten into obedient good citizen. Cultural developments are set aside as evil, it’s practitioners as terrorists. Even the last cultural strongholds are raped by abusing tentatively free media to spread the conformist’s message into the homes of millions.

Sounds familiar? It’s the Christian way of doing things. Hijacking culture to stop it from evolving, to stop it from being what it actually is – an everlasting process. They have been quite successful at it too. The American elections are the latest prime example of the immense success of the Christian anti-cultural influence. Many of the hot topics during these elections are Christian ones, topics that aren’t even that important in the grand scheme of things. I see the effects in my own country, the Netherlands, too. Politicians on the conservative right of the political spectrum are talking about conserving our identity and culture. Opposers, among whom our crown princess Maxima, are mocked because of their criticism. The reduction of tolerance comes at a price. Two anti-culturalists have been killed and terrorist threats have never been so real. Politicians can’t walk across the street without fully armed bodyguards at their sides to protect them from the very thing they preach – forceful preservation of culture.

You see, cultural preservation isn’t just about the five hundred year old church around the corner that has to make way for a new mall. It’s a tool used by the powerful for preserving their power in a virtual substitute culture. The cultural preservation most people are familiar with, that of property ownership, is actually basically the same thing. Churches, especially Christian churches, often don’t have to pay taxes. Christian initiatives are subsidized and tax money is spent on preserving their places of worship, just because it’s of cultural significance. I do wonder though, why every church is treated like it’s historical influence is great enough to save it from demolition. Even in these times of heavily reduced church attendance. It seems the Christian influence upon the western culture has made it’s dominance stick, which is worrying, to say the least.

So what about it? What can we, the youth, do to save culture? The answer is quite simple, we should keep on doing what we do best. Non-conformance is the only way to save culture, pubescent behavior keeps it from dying altogether. So if you’ve got kids, and they’re rebellious, be proud of them. They are the real preservers of culture.

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.

This is my first article for this website.  Some others here may even disagree with my commentary, but I think my points on the subject are quite valid.  I am probably one of the most militant here in terms of being Anti-Christian.  I view their whole ideology as a threat to my well-being, and the well-being of my fellow man.  With that in mind, I see no fault in following things on the natural course to defend my person.  With that in my worldview I will use strong terms, because strength and wisdom need to overcome lies and ignorance.

With that being said, I was listening to my local Christian radio station when I realized that this religion truly is a threat to the global well being of mankind.  Its whole basis of thought is “do as we say or you will die.”  They may not physically kill you right then and there, but they expect it to happen someday and they take solace in this fact.  Yet, when I use harsh concepts such as these, I am usually berated for it.  I am unfair.  I am intolerant, or I am harsh.  The world needs to wake up.  It needs to see what this really is and I challenge most Christians to figure out what it is they are following and what it is they are actually saying to the world.

I submit the point that if you claim to be a Christian you have to believe that Jesus is the only way to reach salvation.  If you don’t believe that absolutist tenet then you are not a Christian.  End of debate, get over the fact that you’re not Christian right now and join our ranks for you will, just as quickly, be smitten as the rest of us, so its fight or flight for you… decide already!  I make this comment based on a recent debate someone mentioned to me that “not all Christians believe that there’s only one way”, well if they don’t then they’re not Christian.  Jesus said “the only way to the father is through me” (paraphrased).  Furthermore the New Testament echoes the concept that if you don’t follow Jesus then you will be sent to Hell to experience eternal death away from God.  Do you not see this is a religion inherent with fear tactics?  When faced with these two options, most people can’t let go of life, so they bow their head and obey.  Maybe it’s time for us to move on, accept the concept of death and stop hanging on to life as a slave.  Maybe death is the better in that case, after all, is it not freedom?

For most tyrannical rulers this would be enough, to have the populations submit to them and acknowledge them as supreme rule.  This is not enough for Christianity, in all it’s vile ideas; they also tell you that you are living in eternal sin.  You are a failure!  Nothing you ever do will ever be good enough.  You are constantly in need of Jesus.  Spare me your scare tactics, I will relish my “sins” in your eyes and realize that I have not sinned in the real world, only in a fantasy world ruled by an incoherent dictator named Jesus.  It is a phenomenal psychological trick to play upon the uneducated, why do you think Christianity is targeted towards the lowly and the mob.  The mob are the people, they have the numbers.  It’s a genius move in terms of conquering, conquer the people and they will revolt the current rule.  Well, now those of us who know the truth of this religion are the underdogs and we should not seek superiority of all mankind, but the leveling equality of mankind.  This is not a call to communism; it is a call to knowledge and understanding.  There are simply basic truths and concepts the mob should be made aware of and as long as that idiotic book, The Bible, stands in the way, knowledge will constantly suffer.  Ignorance will rule our world and the current corporate monarchy wants it that way.  The blind truly need to be shown the light and wisdom given a chance, lies have ruled us for far too long and I believe as a race we can truly overcome and advance our species.

For all the disgust your god visits upon me, I visit it back upon him and his followers ten fold.  I see no reason why we should seek an accord anymore.  This is a global call to action to shun this unwarranted religion.  I herald a day when their revelations will be put into action, so they can see their “god”, their minor deity will never come.  Only wisdom is power, and you, my reader, are the only one who can control that.  God will give you nothing if you don’t take it for yourself.  At which point you will truly question what has “god” really done for you, nothing that you haven’t managed on your own.  All that will happen are you will wake up to the ignorant that surround you because they simply do not know.  Soon it will be time for us to stop watching and for us to start doing.  Already Christians gather in great masses, it would be wise for us to do the same one day and show the world the dissent that has been brewing against its religions.

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.

I debated whether or not to put this under the DC series but decided against it. This is less a “debunking” or awareness article and more of a ramble. As you may or may or not know, I work a part time customer service oriented job during the summer. This is something I discovered, much to my displeasure.

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