Wednesday, August 27, 2003
The commandments have been moved from the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial building.
People have been praying for weeks, even months. As moving day approached, a crowd of people lay prostrate on the steps of the building, praying with great intensity.
The commandments have been moved.
They prayed in earnest to their deity. They begged and pleaded and sobbed for His Holiness not to permit the monument to be moved.
The commandments have been moved.
The great Jesus up in the sky, the one who (if you believe Christians) regularly intervenes in important things like football touchdowns and Grammy awards and the finding of misplaced keyrings, could not be persuaded to lift one holy finger to prevent a handfull of workers from hoisting the allegedly holy monstrosity up onto a dolly and wheeling it away like a broken-down, graffiti-covered clothes dryer.
Now if it had rained on the workers, well that would have been a sure sign of the existance of the holy of holies. No question there ... Had a walnut fallen from a tree and hit a worker on the head, that'd have to be an unquestionable intervention from heaven above.
But there was no walnut, and there was no rain. There were no lightning bolts. There weren't even any dollies with broken wheels. One would think an omnipotent deity would at least throw a broken wheel into the mix.
Surely, in the minds of those believers, a walnut falling from a tree would count as clear evidence for their God. And yet, in those same minds, is lack of a walnut evidence to them that this God is make-believe? Not on your life.
The commandments have been moved. And all that's left is a pathetic crowd of misguided zealots, crowing and gesturing towards a natural blue sky that can't hear their crowing, and can't see their outstretched arms. The sky is real. Their god is merely pretend.
People have been praying for weeks, even months. As moving day approached, a crowd of people lay prostrate on the steps of the building, praying with great intensity.
The commandments have been moved.
They prayed in earnest to their deity. They begged and pleaded and sobbed for His Holiness not to permit the monument to be moved.
The commandments have been moved.
The great Jesus up in the sky, the one who (if you believe Christians) regularly intervenes in important things like football touchdowns and Grammy awards and the finding of misplaced keyrings, could not be persuaded to lift one holy finger to prevent a handfull of workers from hoisting the allegedly holy monstrosity up onto a dolly and wheeling it away like a broken-down, graffiti-covered clothes dryer.
Now if it had rained on the workers, well that would have been a sure sign of the existance of the holy of holies. No question there ... Had a walnut fallen from a tree and hit a worker on the head, that'd have to be an unquestionable intervention from heaven above.
But there was no walnut, and there was no rain. There were no lightning bolts. There weren't even any dollies with broken wheels. One would think an omnipotent deity would at least throw a broken wheel into the mix.
Surely, in the minds of those believers, a walnut falling from a tree would count as clear evidence for their God. And yet, in those same minds, is lack of a walnut evidence to them that this God is make-believe? Not on your life.
The commandments have been moved. And all that's left is a pathetic crowd of misguided zealots, crowing and gesturing towards a natural blue sky that can't hear their crowing, and can't see their outstretched arms. The sky is real. Their god is merely pretend.
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
From CNN.com ...
>On Monday, Moore's supporters filed a federal lawsuit in
>Mobile in a last-ditch bid to prevent the stone carving from
>being moved. They argued that removing the monument
>would amount to a government endorsement of a "religion
>of non-theistic beliefs," according to the complaint.
I need to ask ... Moore supporters, what color is the sky in your world? If the sky were blue, would you say it is yellow? If not, why would you say that non-religion is religion?
I notice a strange trend among strong adherents to the Christian faith. They look at something and say that it is its opposite.
If a person has died, they claim that person is still living. Never mind that the person looks like he's dead, acts like he's dead, and if you leave him there long enough surely he's going to smell like he's dead. No, never mind the directly observable facts, that fellow is still alive. They think they'll meet up with that fellow later on, after they die. Isn't that amazing? Not only are people alive when they're dead, but they're even capable of meeting up with other dead living people. We would all think this stuff is completely crazy had we not accepted it from a very young age via cultural influences.
Christians have a god whom they claim is everywhere, yet you can't see him anywhere. They have a god who answers prayer, yet they have an excuse that says he answers according to his will. That means if you don't get what you want, or if you do get what you want, apparently your prayer has been answered in both instances. I wish I could pay my bills or not pay my bills, and in both cases their balance book could reflect that I've paid. If my creditors would lower their standards to those promoted by Christians regarding their god's actions, I would have a lot more money at the end of the month.
How about a god who is loving, and yet he damns roughly two-thirds of the world's population to eternal torture? Based on world-wide statistics, only about a third of the world is Christian, and the Bible explicitly says that people get to god only via Jesus. So I suppose the other bunch get burned. (That is what I think about the Christian scam ... every time you put a fiver into the bucket, you're getting burned.) Here we have a claim that eternal torture is the act of a loving deity. Are you buying this?
Oh, here is a good one. Faith is evidence. Yes, that is in the Bible too ... "Faith is evidence of things not seen." Who thought up this whopper? Faith is not evidence, it is belief. Belief does not require evidence, it is arbitrary. One can believe in anything, and those beliefs need not have anything to do with reality ... rather like the Christian faith.
And infantile babbling is language! Go to a church where they claim to "speak in tongues". Someone will stand up and bellow out a stream of non-sensical syllables, and the other attendees will think he's just uttered something profound. Now this babbling has been analyzed by linguists and it has been found to have no linguistic characteristics whatsoever. But does that stop the believers from believing? Of course it doesn't. Never mind the facts when the "Holy Spirit" is present (yet nobody can see him).
So torture is loving, invisibility is compatible with omnipresence, death is life, faith is evidence, inaction is action, babbling is meaningful language, and non-religion is religion. So this way of thinking is supposed to bring peace to the believer? It brings me a headache.
Apparently I don't have what it takes to be a Christian. I support honesty. I think we should call things what they are, and not attempt to call them the opposite of what they are. Reason is reason. Contradiction is not reason. Acceptance of contradiction is merely unreasonable.
E-mail: >On Monday, Moore's supporters filed a federal lawsuit in
>Mobile in a last-ditch bid to prevent the stone carving from
>being moved. They argued that removing the monument
>would amount to a government endorsement of a "religion
>of non-theistic beliefs," according to the complaint.
I need to ask ... Moore supporters, what color is the sky in your world? If the sky were blue, would you say it is yellow? If not, why would you say that non-religion is religion?
I notice a strange trend among strong adherents to the Christian faith. They look at something and say that it is its opposite.
If a person has died, they claim that person is still living. Never mind that the person looks like he's dead, acts like he's dead, and if you leave him there long enough surely he's going to smell like he's dead. No, never mind the directly observable facts, that fellow is still alive. They think they'll meet up with that fellow later on, after they die. Isn't that amazing? Not only are people alive when they're dead, but they're even capable of meeting up with other dead living people. We would all think this stuff is completely crazy had we not accepted it from a very young age via cultural influences.
Christians have a god whom they claim is everywhere, yet you can't see him anywhere. They have a god who answers prayer, yet they have an excuse that says he answers according to his will. That means if you don't get what you want, or if you do get what you want, apparently your prayer has been answered in both instances. I wish I could pay my bills or not pay my bills, and in both cases their balance book could reflect that I've paid. If my creditors would lower their standards to those promoted by Christians regarding their god's actions, I would have a lot more money at the end of the month.
How about a god who is loving, and yet he damns roughly two-thirds of the world's population to eternal torture? Based on world-wide statistics, only about a third of the world is Christian, and the Bible explicitly says that people get to god only via Jesus. So I suppose the other bunch get burned. (That is what I think about the Christian scam ... every time you put a fiver into the bucket, you're getting burned.) Here we have a claim that eternal torture is the act of a loving deity. Are you buying this?
Oh, here is a good one. Faith is evidence. Yes, that is in the Bible too ... "Faith is evidence of things not seen." Who thought up this whopper? Faith is not evidence, it is belief. Belief does not require evidence, it is arbitrary. One can believe in anything, and those beliefs need not have anything to do with reality ... rather like the Christian faith.
And infantile babbling is language! Go to a church where they claim to "speak in tongues". Someone will stand up and bellow out a stream of non-sensical syllables, and the other attendees will think he's just uttered something profound. Now this babbling has been analyzed by linguists and it has been found to have no linguistic characteristics whatsoever. But does that stop the believers from believing? Of course it doesn't. Never mind the facts when the "Holy Spirit" is present (yet nobody can see him).
So torture is loving, invisibility is compatible with omnipresence, death is life, faith is evidence, inaction is action, babbling is meaningful language, and non-religion is religion. So this way of thinking is supposed to bring peace to the believer? It brings me a headache.
Apparently I don't have what it takes to be a Christian. I support honesty. I think we should call things what they are, and not attempt to call them the opposite of what they are. Reason is reason. Contradiction is not reason. Acceptance of contradiction is merely unreasonable.
