Letters to the Editor
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Populating the earth from two
I'm curious to know if they (or Mr. Ham, specifically) explained how Adam & Eve populated the world and how he explains the obvious incest that would've had to take place. Also, the same issues arise with Noah's family having to repopulate the earth after that nasty flodd.
Also, is the apocolypse in the Bible? I've never read it and have only had it preached to me from the pulpit while growing up.
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my problem with the Creation Museum
Where is Adam's shoulder-fired rocket propelled grenade launcher? T. Rex would have gulped down both Adam and Eve as an appetizer unless Adam had a weapon with the range and knock-down power to take down T. Rex first
There was indeed a Great Flood but it did not cover the entire Earth: in ancient times (also known as George W. Bush's childhood), the Mediterranean was a valley dotted with many mountains; a massive earthquake opened the Mediterranean near Gibralter to the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and these waters poured into the Mediterranean basin
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Sellvation from the $avior, payable in installments
I think bad religion invariably crowds out good religion, when push comes to shove, because bad religion offers quick fixes and easy answers, versus hard questions, good deeds, and contemplation, the real work of theology, for those inclined to believe at all.
It's why Americans take so readily to the superficial (and correspondingly pervasive) religiosity that fundamentalism offers. Someday maybe the evangelical hucksters who sell McRighteousness to their Frankenflock in pill form (McHost, maybe -- guaranteed righteousness or, well, no, you don't get your money back, silly!) A whole marketable lifestyle -- biblical flatware, biblical cars, biblical movies, biblical underoos. Whatever you want.
You take your average Medieval Christian and compare them to the most purportedly diehard American-style fundamentalist, and the latter look like the charlatans that they are -- for all their noise, the Frankenflock are addicted to convenience, endlessly narcissistic, pathologically pampered, compared to their Frankish forebears, who lived, breathed, and died for their faith, the churchbells drowning out everything else in their lives. They're Americans, in other words, before they're Christians (whether they admit that or not) -- that's why they've tried to hard to blend their nationalism into their frankenfaith, to fuse them together: Cross and Flag.
But the fundie movement seems more into selling things than in salvation -- sellvation, you could call it. Take the commerce out of it, the millions of picked pockets, and they're nothing. I'm sure the hucksters to created the Creation Nauseum have dollar signs in their eyes, are licking their chops at the prospects of people making pilgrimages to their lavish shrine. They sure know how to fleece their flock, good shepherds that they are.
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Quick clarification
I knew this would be flame bait, but just to keep everyone on an even keel, I should have mentioned that I don't go to church, nor do I identify with a single religion. I just think atheism and religion are about the same thing and that its possible to say "I don't know everything" and be comfortable with that...
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How could people believe this?
They themselves so flamboyantly illustrate that what they take to be an intelligent designer is, rather, a moronic designer. Why, how,then, do they trump up such crap? This, to me, is the fascinating question. They are other human beings like us, believe it or not, yet they cling to demonstrably unreal beliefs. Why? How?
Finding satisfying explanations for this have deeply interested me for some time.
A passing believer woman in the creation museum gives a good clue: certainty. She goes there seeking certainty; she needs certainty. And, I would add, comfort. She needs the comfort of certainty. Well, shoot, all the rest of us know that that's a wet dream; that life's flux, plain and simple. Who then lives and dies for the comfort of certainty?
Most of these American Christian fundamentalists come from good Scotch-Irish stock. Alcoholics in the wood pile, every family. Where does black and white thinking come from? All-or-nothing? Yeah, right: alcoholism. Add in a little brutality, too, which comes along with the addiction, and you get brains that test out Authoritarian. Check out, please, the clinical testing of , author of "The Authoritarians," which is free to read on the web.
A major wet dream of those from alcoholic families is the comfort of black and white certainty. They will gladly warp all manner of reality in order to ginn up some holographic illusion of certainty. They will win elections to over-turn democracy so they can stuff it down our throats.
And I believe in a higher power; the kind both atheist and religious can ascribe to, accessed through the experience of egolessness. An unnamed agent of creativity, of intuitive design, in love with the action of evolution.
Best,
Monty
(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")
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The lawsuit I'm waiting for
Someday, someone who finds themself woefully unprepared to succeed on a level with the best and the brightest will sue their lunatic parents for homeschooling them and retarding their chances for a success on a level that requires a sound education and understanding of science, culture and history.
Not all of these kids will grow up to be Christain kooks, and the ones who don't will feel mighty cheated.
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Bible Literalism
What I really don't get about Bible Literalists is why they don't think there could have been any influence from the fact that humans passed down the Bible orally for thousands of years and then wrote it down(and revised what was in it over the course of dozens of committee meetings over hundreds of years). Genesis was oral history for generations before it was ever written. Are all people who claim to be speaking for God infallible? (If so, then Fundamentialist Christians should believe everything said by Joseph Smith, Rev. Sun Myung Moon and David Kouresh.)
But of course it would be rational to think about this, and Bible Literalists apparently think that God wants people to deny the rationality that He gave us.
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@wilson ... uh, dude, you have it *exactly* backward. Which figures, by the way.
wilson wrote:
Also, I hate to break it to you, but Strong Atheism is no less a belief system than any other religion in the world - it is a fixed belief in something that can never be proven.
^^^^^^^^^^
You have this exactly backwards. You believe in something that cannot be proven. I, on the other hand, know for a fact there is no god. Can I prove it, as a logical matter? No. But my non-belief is not a matter of faith. It's a matter of fact. Or, if you prefer, a matter of theory whose chances of being wrong are so vanishingly small (based on current *scientific* evidence) that it might as well be fact.
Don't accuse atheists of a belief system of the kind you have. We don't have one. You indulge in cheap projection when you do that.
And, by the way, the other poster who pointed out that people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris would be far more protective of religious beliefs than any fundamentalist christian, was right. I feel the same. You want to collect souvenir plates? go ahead. You want to believe in the tooth fairy? Go ahead. You want to practice rituals and design rules for behavior in service to belief in a non-existent supreme being? Be my guest.
Atheists are the best friends the religious ever had. Just don't mix your beliefs in with politics. And don't tell me I have to conform to your weird ideas about the cosmos, human nature, and origins thereof.
(I must confess, I've always been deeply amused at the way religious people just won't address the problem of the tooth fairy. Or Zeus. Or Hera. Once, many people believed in these supernatural, non-existent beings. How is there *any* logical, practical difference between Zeus, Odin, and the Christian god? There is no difference. Christianity simply stole many of its fundamental precepts for older beliefs-in-gods-that-don't-exist. Some of Christianity's essentialy beliefs go all the way back to Egyptian polytheism. This is all a commonplace. What's not commonplace is the stubborness of irrationality. Wired in by the very evolution that irrationality dismisses. It is a lovely irony, really.)