Month: June 2009

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”

–Benjamin Franklin

Share

I am disgusted by the cult of personality dominating the media at the moment. Wake up people. There are more pressing issues in the world than the death of Peter Pan and a Charlie’s Angel. I wish that the media would just let MJ’s memory be rather than drag it around for days like some carcass of a once-proud show horse paraded around for the sake of sentimentality and ratings.”

Share

Theists are afraid people will think for themselves; atheists are afraid they won’t.

Science has given us much. What has theology given us?

Theology has given us hell.

Share

Here is the list Moses got the third time around, the final authorized, edited and proofed version of the Ten Commandments:

1. Thou shalt worship no other god. (The same as Exodus 20; so far so good.)
2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. (So, graven images are okay now!)
3. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. (My family never did this.)
4. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest. (Another match with Exodus 20.)
5. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks. (What is this? When is this?)
6. Thrice in a year shall all your menchildren appear before the Lord God. (Boys only? And how, exactly, do they get up there every four months?)
7. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven. (What?)
8. Neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left until the morning. (Because the meat will spoil overnight?)
9. The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the Lord thy God. (This applies to farmers, so most of us are off the hook.)
10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk. (No problem. That one’s easy to keep.)

These are the real Ten Commandments? They only have a 20 percent match with Exodus 20. Did the rules change between Moses’ visits? Did God lose his memory? What happened to homicide, theft and perjury. Is adultery okay now?

If I were still a Xian, I might be embarrassed that the God I thought I admired could be so forgetful and so petty. Not to mention so weird.

Share

• Anger at religious immorality
• Disgust with superstitious anti-intellectualism
• Fear of the dangers of Xian intolerance
• Dissatisfaction with the way religious divisiveness interferes with true compassion
• Empathy for the victims of sectarian bigotry
• Outrage at the hypocrisy of believers
• Impatience with the churches that actively retard social progress.

Share

Atheism is exquisitely vulnerable to disproof. Theism is not.

Most Xians and Muslims would rather earn devotion points within their co-believing community than give any credibility to some Lone Ranger atheist.

The issue is not so much what we think, but how we think. Epistemology.

Share