RagingRev

I’m Pissed.

You see, the other day I found a video showing Christian’s in India being beaten and stoned to death. According to this video the reason they are being beaten and stoned is solely because they are Christians. The video featuring the pastor of Cornerstone Church, Francis Chan, is located here.

*Warning: This video contains very disturbing and graphic images, if you are offended by violence, blood, or evangelism you should not watch this (nor should you read the Bible).

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In order to fight my ever present writers block, I have decided to start a series of blog posts on different arguments and fallacies that the atheist may run into in his/her dealings with religious folks, specifically creationists. The purpose of these posts will not only be to argue against these common points of contention, but to also to attempt to make sense of why these arguments seem conducive to the believer. I fully intend to use my experience as a former believer and apologist to explain what I now know to be illogical and unreasonable. In my experience with atheists there is a tendency to think, “how stupid are you?” when confronted with some of these arguments in favor of creationism, and the atheist is more prone to uncontrolled outbursts of anger and frustration, often leading to a worthless tirade against the opponent. Not only do these arguments give atheists a bad name, but they also ruin the environment of discourse. Though I, too, have been guilty of such dismissive tirades, these posts will attempt to give atheists a more involved and intelligent means of discourse when dealing with religious people and creationist worldviews.

I know that many current atheists are also former believers, and many were quite devoted to their faith. As true as this may be, I think that I represent a very rare breed of atheist in that I have, as I have explained many times before, experienced god in ways that seemed entirely logical at the time, yet I was able to comprehend my own psychological failings in order to reject my faith and the inane arguments of creationism. Creationists do not lack reasoning all together; they simply lack the desire or ability to accept a point of view that endangers their belief in god. I have been through such a dilemma myself, and as much as I regret the years I spent in service to god, I must pull from that experience in order to better defend a realistic understanding of the world.

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“The Rapture” is one of the most often used fear tactics used by Christian believers in order to scare unbelievers into repentance. You see, the way some people interpret the Bible there will be a point in time when Jesus calls up all the living and dead believers to heaven, they call this event the Rapture (The term itself does not appear in the Bible). Now, there are many different beliefs as to when this is supposed to happen, there are Pre-tribulation believers that believe that it will occur prior to the 7 year Tribulation prophesied in the Book of Daniel as well as post-trib and mid-trib and even more theories/beliefs that I can’t remember from my Christian days.

The problem with this whole “Rapture” deal is that it has supposed to have been coming soon…2000 years ago. In fact Jesus said that he would come back before some of the disciples died in Matthew 16: 27-28.  Clearly Jesus was either confused or wrong. So why is it, after all these years, people still trust that this man is God and is coming back to earth for them? Some people go so far as to predict the date or time frame of this glorious event:

• This Site has gone so far as to predict that the actual rapture will occur this Fall of 2009(Just a few days ago they said it would happen today, Wednesday November 11th 2009 but they changed it earlier today). The site includes plenty of warnings to repent, lots of fear mongering here
• Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins wrote the wildly popular Left Behind series of fiction books to explain how they believed eschatology would play out  in the near future, including the rapture where all the Christians disappear randomly leaving behind their neatly folded clothes – Kirk Cameron even starred in two movies based on the book series a few years ago.
• Video’s have been passed around among the Tea Party elite (and other groups of fundamentalist/Republican half-wits) that claim to prove that President Barack Obama is the Anti-christ, which means that the rapture must be coming soon. Here’s one such video (don’t laugh too hard, people actually believe this stuff): Click for video.

It’s a sad reality, really, that people are living as if Jesus will show up in the clouds tomorrow especially after 2000 years of fruitless anticipation and preparation.  These types of claims should be met with the same skeptical eye as any other unsubstantiated claim and utterly rejected  in the likely event that they turn out to be just another control mechanism of faith.

One more thing…if the Rapture does happen, can you imagine how wonderful our world would be? All that superstition just floating away with Jesus in the clouds? I can’t wait!

This is a continuation of the last post: My Gripe with the TEA Party: My Town Responds please read it after you have read my original post: My Gripe with the TEA Party

The final letter that was addressed to me was from none other than the pastor that I focused much of my attention on in my original submission. Understandably he too thought that I was the heckler that shouted and interrupted his speech at the rally. I have attempted to call Rev. Hicks to inform him that this is not the case and left him a voice mail to that effect. I hope to hear from him soon, perhaps he would be willing to go grab a cup of coffee with me sometime. Due to the length of this letter I will only post it in portions, then deal with it a paragraph or two at a time. His letter can be read in it’s entirety Here without any of my comments inlaid.

Dear Editor, In the last edition of this newspaper, I was the main target of a lengthy letter to the editor. Inasmuch as the writer identified me by naming the church where I pastor, I feel compelled to respond. It is the right and privilege of the writer of that letter to express his “gripe” as he sees fit. I am thankful for the right to respond.

First, thank you very much for your relatively gracious response. We are both mutually thankful to have our right to respond and have gripes and I am even more glad that we can do so in a civil way. My intention was not to bring any negative attention onto you or your church and I am very sorry if that has been the case – I will try to better explain my intentions and failures as we progress here.

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Last week, as you remember, I wrote a letter to the editor of The Dodge County News regarding the T.E.A. Party tax rally held by some private organizers and citizens of Eastman, GA. That letter can be found in it’s entirety Here along with various comments from locals and my internet friends.. The Dodge County News runs weekly, every Wednesday and when I got my paper yesterday I was delighted to see that there was nearly a full page in total dedicated to answering my letter. I am going to post these answers and reply to them here rather than write another letter to the editor because I simply do not want to continue monopolizing the space of the paper, but I do want the Dodge County News to know that I am eternally grateful for their inclusion of my letter and it’s responses – the media is so often either a lame duck or a slanted medium to push policies and opinions of it’s editors that I find it very refreshing that even in my small conservative town a voice of dissent (and in my opinion a voice of reason) is not silenced despite the pressures that the editor may receive from various parties. It means a LOT to me that they allowed my voice to be heard and that tells me that this paper is one of integrity – Dodge County is lucky to have it.

I am breaking this up into two separate posts because this entry will be over 5000 words if I do not, the two shorter responses will be on this post and a very long response from the pastor that was a target of my original TEA Party letter will be on another post.

July Fourth – Religious Holiday?

The first response I would like to reply to is one that comes from a misunderstanding of the writer, and evidently a few other folks. While at the TEA party there was an individual standing outside the grounds at which the rally was being held that started yelling at Rev. Hicks, the speaker that I spent most of my letter complaining about, things that were pretty well in agreement with what I said in my letter. The individual yelled something to the effect of, “What the hell does this have to do with taxes?” among other things that I couldn’t quite make out. Though I agree with the general sentiment of the heckler (as I will call him henceforth), that heckler was not I nor was it anyone within my company at the time. The most protesting I did whilst at the rally was shaking my head at some of the things the speakers were saying, but I did not yell or interrupt the speakers at any point. The letter is as follows:

Editor, There was a letter in the paper July 8,2009 addressing the contents of the T.E.A. party held on July 4, 2009. The person that wrote the article would, by his actions, like to silence the tone on born again Christians.

The 4th of July holiday was picked by those that planned the gathering with the intention of giving a Christian tone, because the 4th of July is a holiday that is celebrated across our nation thanking God for the privilege of assemble. I was one of the people that was in the planning, paying my money and time to have the right to select the speakers that we wanted and giving the right to even an atheist the privilege to attend. Take notice that we did advertise that we would have barbecue, yet this intruder elected not to participate. He brought his own and stayed out of the venue that had been reserved for the TEA Party. By his actions, his purpose was not to come and listen, but was to cause trouble. The 4th of July is a holiday that was selected for Christians to assemble, and if the atheist that wrote the article really wants to organize something for his cause, he should locate and rent an old phone booth and invite all that wants to hear him. He could hold this gathering on the atheist holiday, which is April 1. At least he wouldn’t be bothered by any born again Christians to heckle him. In closing, Mr. Oxley has the right to be wrong. JW (Initials for privacy)

Source

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I’ve said it before and now I’ll say it again, “The Bible is it’s own worst enemy”. I think this rings true for any former Christian that decided to read it as if it were not a perfect book, thats one of the steps I took  before I got to where I am today.

In my recent plea for someone to ask questions of me for better inspiration one OscarGecko asked me the following:

In your post, “Ex-Timony,” you said, “…alot of the stories, the book of Job in particular, really make g-d look like a huge asshole if you think about it more critically…” can you explain this further? ~OscarGecko

First let me just say thanks to Oscar for being my muse for this round of Ask the Atheist…I appreciate your cooperation very much sir!

Next, I want to clarify my position a little bit and then we will go through the specific example of Job, as the picture it paints of God to the unfaithful. My position is that the Bible and Job in particular are testaments to the character of YHVH, that they exemplify who he is at his very core rather than who he is  when you look at the prettier picture painted by the story of Christian “salvation”. This, not the sacrificial god found in Jesus, is who YHWH truly is, everything else is just what he needs to be to be more acceptable to the masses. I say that the intent of the new testament is like a huge Public Relations campaign to make YWHW more palatable to those that may not be “God’s Chosen People”. Of course this is a rather rudimentary simplification of my view, but it should serve my purpose here.

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Recently our friend over at The Atheist Blogger wrote an interesting piece on Religious Child Abuse. In it he posted a video from a BBC Documentary about the Drapper family, a fundamentalist Christian – home schooling family in the UK.

In the Documentary posted in 6 parts below; Deborah Drapper, age 13, is extensively profiled. The cameras follow her around while she goes about her daily activities , interviews her about her faith, and even goes with her on a trip to her brothers college apartment. Deborah is naive…very much like I was at her age…She is an intelligent young girl, my intention is not to call Deborah stupid  here, at all.

When I was about 15 years old I decided to start living my life for God again…I had been “saved” at the age of 6 just like Deborah claimed to be.  At these young ages both Deborah and I claim to have understood 1: That man was depraved and doomed to eternal torment and 2: That Christ died on the cross as a scapegoat for our sins – thereby saving anyone that accepted this belief in Christ and his sacrifice from the eternal furnace. Do you think we could have possibly understood this? Do you think that we could understand the Biblical fall of man or the doctrines of Atonement? I truly don’t. I think at the earlier age we were merely repeating the things we had heard from church, or in Deborah’s case – her parents.

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Today’s Fun Friday post is inspired by none other that God’s Holy Word (The Bible,  so it claims)

Elisha was Gods Prophet…one day Elisha was walking on his way to Bethel when a group of 42 little children started making fun of him for having a bald head. How did Elisha respond? Read it for yourself:

2 Kings 2:23-24:

And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.

And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

That’s right kids, God’s holy and chosen prophet decided to curse them, causing two female bears to maul them to death…sweet Jesus, no wonder I miss God so much!

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Bill Maher’s Religulous recently came out on DVD, I rushed to get it as soon as it came out just in case one of our freedom loving local fundies decided to buy them all out so no one would be exposed to it’s deceptions (please read into this a ton of sarcasm). I wanted to see it in theaters but I couldn’t find a theater with the balls to show it within 100 miles and for some reason the Torrent sites were empty until just recently.

The film was good, I think my favorite part was when Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) stated (in response to a question about the talking snake in Eden) “You don’t have to pass an IQ test to be in the US Senate”.  The look on Maher’s face, and the corresponding look on Pryor’s face was priceless…silence was the only necessary response. Probably the most honest thing any politician outside of Ron Paul has said in a very long time.

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