Category: Fuck Religion

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Belief in Gods and Other Religious Concepts Has Declined Since 2001

There's a bit of good news to report from a recent Gallup poll. Their strange title gives most of it away: Belief in Five Spiritual Entities Edges Down to New Lows. But what are the five entities?

    1. "God" (I'm unsure which one this is supposed to refer to)
    2. Angels
    3. Heaven (how is this an entity?)
    4. Hell (again, how is this an entity?)
    5. The Devil

It should not surprise (but may disappoint) you that 74% of their respondents profess belief in some sort of god. Sadly, the United States continues to be an outlier here. Still, this number has dropped quite a bit since 2001. And while only 12% of those surveyed say they don't believe in gods, that number has increased.\

According to Gallup:

As the percentage of believers has dropped over the past two decades, the corresponding increases have occurred mostly in nonbelief, with much smaller increases in uncertainty. This is true for all but belief in God, which has seen nearly equal increases in uncertainty and nonbelief.

Those of us who don't believe in these things should find this news encouraging. Perhaps more of our neighbors are beginning to come around. Caution seems wise, though, since some religious believers will see this as a reason to clamp down and push their beliefs with more force.

Gallup's results also show that belief in these entities (or concepts) breaks down as you'd expect on political lines. Belief is much higher among Republicans than Independents or Democrats. This is consistent with most of what we've heard from leading Republican presidential candidates, and it is cause for concern. Electing such people would be bad for secularism and those of us who value it.

There are plenty of issues where Americans are divided. Religious belief seems like a big one. I watched an interview with several Republican voters recently where they were asked a number of thought-provoking questions. They agreed that nobody who supported reproductive rights was really a Christian. If nobody on the "other side" is Christian, we should not be surprised when we hear rhetoric about crusades or spiritual warfare.

"Christian" continues to be used as a proxy for moral goodness. If none of my political opponents are Christian, none of them are good people. These beliefs are harmful. They bleeds over to how I view my neighbors, and it affects how I treat them. This goes beyond division and ends up as hatred.

Image by Andreas Breitling from Pixabay

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Let's Talk About The Rapture, And Why It Shouldn't Keep You Up At Night

I ran across this online presented in a series of pictures and had to pass it on.

In the passage of scripture known as the "Olivet Discourse" found in Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21, Jesus makes a number of prophecies about the destruction of the temple, wars, famines, earthquakes, persecution, etc.

He then predicts that after this great tribulation, the sun and moon will go dark, that all the peoples of the earth will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven [who's gonna clean that mess up?] with great power and glory, and that then his angels will gather up his elect from the entire earth.

But then he makes a promise that he cannot keep. He promises his disciples that "this generation" as in the generation alive at the time of his ministry on Earth, "will not pass away until all these things take place."

From this passage of scripture alone it would seem like Jesus made a false prophecy—or was just pulling shit from his ass—because I dare say that no one from Jesus' time is still alive today.

But it gets worse.

Paul, Peter, James and John ALL believed that Jesus would return within their lifetimes.

In 1st Corinthians 15:51-52 Paul writes:

"Behold, I am telling you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed."

Leaving aside for a moment I doubt "twinkling of an eye" was in the original lexicon, remember this is from a letter TO a real life church in Corinth in the first century, not to Christians living 2000 years in the future.

In 1st Thesssalonians 4:15-17 Paul writes, "For we say this to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descent from heaven with a shot, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who remain, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord."

1st Peter 4:7 states, "The end of all things is near…"

James 5:8 states, "You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near."

And 1st John 2:18 states, "Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour."

In summary, Jesus made a false prophecy. His followers believed him, suffered, and were put to death for him. And over the past 2000 years the church has tried to reinterpret these passages, because as the late Carl Sagan would say:

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge—even to ourselves—that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."