Category: Religious Absurdity

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The Centurion Shall Not Be Mocked!

Another Day, Another Butthurt Christian

You thought you'd get a break from teh st00pid after the Mayan Apocalypse came and went without winged beasts marauding our cities or fleets of UFOs attacking from space, right? Guess again dear readers, and get ready to reboard the crazy train. Apparently the folks over at a well known right-wing wacko website have their already over-tight panties in a twist because in their fevered minds, CBS is mocking has-been footballer Tim Tiebow, Jeebus's chosen emissary on earth (and by extension, all of Christianity) by running an ad for the Super Bowl featuring outspoken homosexual actor Neil Patrick Harris.

Apparently because Mr. Harris has the date of the game, "Feb 3" and "2013" on his eyeblack, this is somehow mocking Tiebow, who felt the need to put bible verses under his eyes (perhaps as a reminder to not grope grab other players' asses too tightly).

I have several friends who consider themselves Christians. These friends are not, however, the foaming-at-the-mouth "I'm being persecuted for my faith!" type who seem to find offense at every turn in modern society. No, these friends are who I consider "good" Christians, people who quietly live their lives, personally practicing their faith without feeling the need to shove their belief system down the throat of everyone they encounter. I respect their right to believe; they respect my right not to.

Perhaps if more of these publicly butthurt whiners like the ones finding offense at this Super Bowl ad would spend more time actually practicing the words of their savior (y'know, doing good works, feeding the poor, loving their neighbors, etc.) and less time playing the martyr while trying to make their faith the law of the land, the rest of society might take a more favorable view of them.

In other words, they need to get a life.

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Teh St00pid, It BURNS

To be filed under Religion Spoils Everything

From TUAW:

And now for your daily dose of overreaction.

Extreme Orthodox Christians in Russia have upped their complaints about Apple's iconic logo, according to CNet. This specific group of Orthodox Christians say that Apple's logo represents a "blasphemous" attack on the church since it can be seen as a representation of the Christian mythology of Satan tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden.

As CNet points out, the uproar correlates to other religious/political issues happening in Russia right now — namely the jailing of punk band Pussy Riot for its protest against the Russian Orthodox Church and its (and other secularist's) assertions that the Church has the goal of creating a clerical police state.

This isn't the first time Apple's logo has been associated with Satan, and there's plenty of other crazy examples out there (jump to the 2:40 mark in this video) but this is something that Apple should conceivably be worried about. Anti-blasphemy laws are currently being proposed in Russia which, should they pass, could theoretically bar Apple from selling products with its logo on them in the country.

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Okay, Let Me Get This Straight

According to Christian mythology, God is omniscent. God created Adam and Eve (not Adam and Steve, as we're so often reminded). Eve was tricked by Satan (in the form of a talking snake) into eating of the Tree of Knowledge.

Because of that, we lost our immortality and were cast out of the Garden of Eden to live out our lives in pain and suffering. (And apparently snakes were also stripped of the gift of gab as part of the punishment…just because.)

Let's stop right there for a moment.

The Christians' invisible friend-in the-sky is perfect and all knowing. Yet he created beings who—by being omniscient—he knew from the very beginning would be flawed. In other words, humans were built broken (and therefore created imperfectly) to begin with. So if God is incapable of making mistakes, that means he intentioinally created humans imperfect and subject to sin.

WTF? I mean seriously. WTF?

He created imperfect humans so they'd sin and "force" him to cast them out of the Garden.

What kind of sick fuck would do this?

Good ol' Yaweh, that's who.

This Christian God sounds like a real asshole.

And if Adam and Eve (and later, their two sons) were the only people on Earth, where the fuck did Cain and Able get wives? Were they screwing Eve? So they married their own sisters? Where in the Big Book of Traditional Marriage does that option appear? (Turns out, more often than you'd think.)

But hah, not this time. Instead they went east into the Land of Nod, where there were apparently already a large group of people living quite contentedly without any knowledge whatsoever this wondrous Garden and its psychotic keeper to the west.

W…T…F?  Where the hell did these people come from if there were only supposed to be four living people on the entire face of the planet up until this point?

If you ask any man of the cloth this question (when he's not busy raping pre-pubescent boys) the answer is generally, "Some things are just taken on faith." In other words, shut up and don't ask questions.

My brain hurts.

But let's back up even further.

Perfect, all knowing Christian sky-fairy creates everything—including another product of the fevered Christian imagination—angels.  But one of them rebels and is "cast out." So once again we're shown that God isn't perfect, or that he just intentionally creates imperfect things that he enjoys torturing, like a kid with a magnifying glass encountering an ant hill on a sunny day.

Why does the word "psychopath" keep coming to mind?

Later on in the Big Book of Lies (aka the BuyBull), God says "Whoopsie!" and decides that humanity—after being fruitful and multiplying—didn't turn out exactly like he'd intended again and should be killed…except for one small family who is then tasked with saving a pair of every living creature on earth. Or at least within walking distance of their home.

What's the matter? Isn't this God quite capable of saving all the animal life he wants on his own? Or is Norman Bates already growing impotent? And what about the plants, for chrissake? If the planet needs a reboot to rid it of the sin that Mr. Invisible created in the first place, why not just send it careening into the sun and start again from scratch? Or is that now beyond his power? I mean seriously…a flood?

And one more question: If all current humanity sprang from that one little family, where did all the races come from?

But going back to the Garden of Eden for a moment. Let's play a little game and say that Eve didn't eat of the Tree and humanity was never cast out from the Garden or lose its immortality. Can you imagine what a sty that place would be with fifteen to twenty billion of us trying to squeeze in there now? (Remember, people don't die, but they sure don't stop reproducing either!)

Anyway…

Later on, magic sky fairy realizes that he's fucked up again and Noah's descendants turn out just as bad their predecessors. You'd think that by now the idiot would realize this, right? (Definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.) But this time, instead of flooding the place (or sending it careening into the sun) he's going to go down there as himself…as his son…to torture and descend into hell so that whoever believes in this ultimate sacrifice latest bit of crap doesn't have to go to that make believe place themselves.

These fairy tales are fine for iron-age savages who don't have the deductive reasoning—or scientific history to back them up—that modern men do, but c'mon guys…it's the 21st Century. We've landed men on the moon and have just put a probe the size of a car on Mars. If ever there was a time for the "All Powerful" to come down and say "Great job, guys!" it's now. But since he's been conspicuously absent from the goings on of our daily lives going on 2000 years now and from all accounts is a major DICK, I think it's high time for him to put up or shut up.

This is why I'm an Atheist. Because all these magic stories are pure, unadulterated bullshit.

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I Just Don't Get It

So all the usual suspects are foaming at the mouth because of Obama's endorsement of marriage equality.

Quelle surprise. BREAKING: the sun rises in the east.

At least for me, all their yammering on about the sanctity of marriage is simply becoming so much background noise. While Obama has yet to do anything concrete to back up his supposed "evolution" on the matter, it still feels like a seismic shift has occurred in the American psyche. As I said to a coworker today, "The dam has burst, and there's no turning back."

After what happened in North Carolina on Tuesday, Obama's announcement was nothing less than a thing of beauty and a very stiff middle finger pointed straight in their direction.

But what I really don't understand—and maybe I really shouldn't waste any more brain power because of the inherent stupidity associated with it—is why all these knuckle-dragging Christofascists are so upset that it's happening. I mean, if they take it as a sign of  the imminent arrival of their beloved "End Times" ("Ooh Santa is coming tonight!) why aren't they embracing it?  Don't they want their invisible sky fairy to finally descend from the heavens, reveal himself to all the unbelievers and condemn the Atheists, gays, abortionists, Muslims, yada, yada, (basically anyone who isn't them), to eternal damnation and never-ending hellfire so they can stand there smugly with their arms crossed and say, "I told you so!"?

Is it maybe because in their shriveled little black hate-filled hearts, while they have no doubts whatsoever about the existence of hell and the righteous judgment of unrepentant sinners, they do have doubts that maybe—just maybe—their names won't be found written in the desired column on Jeebus's Big List of Naughty and Nice®?

Let's face it: we're human. Who among us hasn't done something we shouldn't have. Show me someone who claims that he's never lied and I'll show you a liar. (The same goes for masturbation.) And the ones who are always screaming most loudly about GAWWWWD are the ones bathing in champagne and pissing out their penthouse windows on the masses below.

Wasn't it their very own Lord and Savior® himself who supposedly said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?"

I've thought about this probably more than I should have, and this is the only explanation I can come up with. They have that one little bit of doubt about their own worthiness to enter the Magic Kingdom that's bouncing around in their empty skulls, and basically, deep down, they're scared shitless.

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Religious Absurdity, Part 1

Stolen in full (oops, there's that pesky 8th Commandment) from Spewing Truth in the Face of Lies:

First there is Genesis 1:26
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Um, how many is god including by saying "us?" More than one god perhaps?

But it gets more interesting when the fall of man occurs.

We'll set up with Genesis 2:9
And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

So we've established the trees that exist in the garden that their God set up for them. It will become more clear why I say "their" God as we progress.

Genesis 2:17 is where God lays down the law to Adam

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Above is where God tells a little lie. God conveniently leaves out WHEN thou shalt surely die.

The serpent enters the picture in Genesis 3, telling Eve a whopper.

3:5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Genesis 3:16 really gets into the misogyny of Catholic/Christian teachings:

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

Well, well—there we have it, the original misogynistic quote.

When God finds out what Adam and Eve did he starts the punishment:

3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

That last part, where the man is become one of "us" again. That's that pesky construct, "us".

Genesis 4:16
And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.

Yup, there was a land OUTSIDE of Eden. So in essence Christianity, if true, is based on an experiment performed by a God of some sort.

So just going through four chapters of Genesis you see some of the more immediate problems in the Bible.

One is that there is an almost constant reference to "us". Perhaps it's God and the Holy Spirit and the Angels but you'd think enumeration would have cleared it up.

Then of course is Cain in Nod, you know, East of Eden. That means that there are others outside the realm of God's kingdom. Imagine that!

As a friend of mine likes to say, she's one of the "others".

So too am I, I am an atheist, the other.

Don't even get me started on the whole God is omniscient and knows everything riff.  If this god was so all-knowing, why didn't he know that Eve was going to eat of the apple? Or was that the plan from the very beginning? I know from past encounters that pointing this shit out to die-hard believers is like arguing with a wall. The little hard drive light on their foreheads will flash violently for a few seconds and then they'll respond with some bullshit like, "You just need to have FAITH."

Blargh.

I'll definitely be following along with this author as he makes his way through this piece of fiction…