Any rational thinker or person who is even marginally non-religious already know about the true meaning of Christian tolerance, how they scream that their views are being suppressed even as they actively suppress all dissenting views. Here is The Herald’s take: Its The Christians Who Practise Intolerance (from The Herald )
Magic may be defined as making people believe that they have seen/felt/experienced something that didn’t really happen. One might say the same about religion. Stage magicians mess with your sense of reality to entertain and hopefully to make a living. Preachers do the same. A major difference is that the vast majority of magicians will openly admit that they are performing tricks.
In any case, the study of how magicians fool us can teach us something about how the human brain works, and in so doing it may teach us something about how religion fools us too.
What Can Magicians Teach Us about the Brain? Scientific American
From the UK, an article about the intersection of science and religion, at the level of quantum physics: BBC NEWS | What do you get if you divide science by God?.
Scientists who are also religionists are in the minority, for sure, but they get a disproportionate amount of attention… like a Jewish Nazi of a black employee of the KKK. Is this appropriate?
Not sure… obviously many people think this tells us something about the state of knowledge. I’m more inclined to believe that it is just further proof that religion is brain/genetically based as I postulated over 20 years ago. With that being the case, you’d expect a certain percentage of people with a high knowledge of reality would still find themselves unable to let go of superstition. Otherwise, you’d have an equal percentage of people with little understanding of the rational thinking process who would nevertheless be non-believers.
Here is an article discussing the source of morality for atheists and others who might reject old-line, fear-based religions: Do Atheists Get Their Morals From the Bible?
Many believers argue that atheists really can’t have any morals, since all morals come from the Bible in their view. The fact that moral codes predate the Bible usually doesn’t enter the discussion. Certainly we wouldn’t want to bring up the fact that much of the great moral code of the Bible contains, 1) Many rather immoral things such as slavery and the right to murder your own children if they disobey you, and 2) The fact that the 10 commandments parrots much older writings. But that aside…
The unspoken and rather obvious point is that morality is an instinct. It competes with other instincts, of course, so that is why morality is always relative (and nowhere more so than in the Bible). Nevertheless morality is as genetic and hard-coded as the mother cat who knows to care for her kittens or the worker bee that feeds the growing larvae. In fact, it is exactly the same.
You’ll enjoy this article showing how a leader in Scientology being confronted with his own “scripture.” How does he deal with it? Pretty much the same as every other religious leader; he goes on the attack. He claims you are just ridiculing his beliefs.
Scientology Official Addresses Works of L. Ron Hubbard
Well…? Yes, the beliefs of Scientology are truly ridiculous. There is a reason why they try so hard to hide them from the general public, as you’ll see.
Of course, a rational thinking might point out that believing in space aliens who created life on earth and whose spirits now haunt our lives is no more ridiculous than believing in a 2,000 year old zombie with magic powers to save us, but I’ll leave that to the reader.
Christians are fond of calling themselves an oppressed minority. It’s part of religion in general; it enforces the group-think. In order to keep people in line, you have to remind them how everyone else is out to get them. But who is really oppressed here?
Cenk Uygur: The Silent Minority
“There is a minority group in America that is a bigger percentage of the country than blacks or Hispanics. But they are often ignored or derided in public. Almost no politician would ever admit to being one. And they are given no voice in the public arena. ..the non-religious.”
In addition to enforcing group-think, religion also needs to view itself as being under siege to stifle criticism and prevent its members from seriously considering any contradictory information.
In other words, just believe what we tell you because everyone else is out to destroy you. Science? Oh, it might SEEM like it is only investigating and documenting natural phenomena, but the fact that such evidence contradicts religious explanations is proof that science is really out to get us. So now just investigation of evidence and even nature itself is out to get the poor believers. And so it goes….
The non-religious people aren’t trying to enforce group-think or prevent rational investigation so they don’t complain enough about being the real oppressed group, which is what they are.
Not getting enough attention lately, David Wilkerson predicts world-shattering catastrophe.. again. Famed pastor predicts imminent catastrophe
Let’s see… according to my notes of predictions from the old blog, all these religious leaders are still batting a big fat ZERO with their predictions from God. By now, we should have all died in a nuclear war AND been wiped out by giant tsunamis and a meteor (all according to information provided to these holy men by GOD, of course). So they tell us. Apparently, God is a total failure when it comes to predicting the future. Or ..you know, it could be that these religious leaders are a bunch of thieving, lying-ass crooks! One or the other…
But it’s a game that’s easy enough to play: Keep predicting disasters. Your past failed predictions are always forgotten and forgiven. That’s just the way it is with true believers. ….Eventually something will happen. It doesn’t have to be something you specifically predicted for this year, it just has to be big – so you can say, “See I predicted a major disaster, God has spoken through me!”
And then all the true believers will flock to you, call you a prophet of God and shower you with wealth. Face it, folks, that’s the ONLY reason these guys do this.
It’s like playing the lottery for these religious scamsters. But the prize is bigger than any Powerball jackpot you could imagine: They’re playing for control of millions of believers. These guys are already fabulously wealthy; they’re playing for the grand prize of being Jesus’ personal spokesperson on Earth. Eventually, one of them will win, too. Because something always happens – it’s a matter of odds.
It isn’t THAT secret, really – most anti-rational rants are right out there where you can see them. But religionists can and do use back-door approaches that can be at least semi-effective.
With that in mind, we take a look at New Scientist’s guide: How to spot a hidden religious agenda.
This article deals primarily with the backdoor “Intelligent Design” jihad and covers such secret jihadist terms as “irreducible complexity” and “scientific materialism.” Rather than explain these terms in detail here, you should read the article. I will expand with my own thoughts below…
I will only add briefly to the discussion on the subject of irreducible complexity since the author glossed over it.
Irreducible Complexity is a philosophical argument from ignorance: Stripping away the verbiage, it all comes down to “I don’t understand how this could have happened, therefore it could not have happened naturally.”
Favorite Creationist/Intelligent Design arguments for complexity often involve things such as bananas and eyes. Bananas are supposed to be perfect for human consumption… but IDers apparently don’t realize that wild bananas are far from “ideal” for humans; they have tough skins, nasty seeds, and aren’t very sweet. Selective breeding brought us the bananas we see in the store today. People did that, not some diety.
Meanwhile, the eye seems pretty complex until you realize that all its components exist separately in nature: The shape of the eye is created by the well-known natural process called envagination (same as your stomach and every other pouch-like part of your body). Light sensitive cells exist all over in nature; creatures with pockets of light sensitive cells but no lens and even light-sensitive bacteria. In other words, no irreducible complexity here! And so it goes, always coming back to “I don’t know how that works, so God must have done it.”
Now let’s bear in mind that Intelligent Design/Creation science (hereafter referred to as “ID” for short) is not in ANY sense a science: There are no creationist laboratories, no creationist experiments. What would they test in such labs? New circular arguments?
ID consists solely of linguistic philosophical arguments which attempt to poke holes in scientific theory. ID’ers act as if the only alternative to evolution would be some god. They want you to believe in a God creator – that’s why they do what they do and that is why ID is religion not science – but since ID only tries to delegitimize scientific evidence and does not offer any proof of a particular alternative, you could just as well believe that life on earth arose because of advanced aliens, alternate-universe intrusion or the Flying Spaghetti Monster – should you choose to accept their arguments.
The typical ID argument is based around some vague idea that “life is just too complicated to have evolved…” Yeah, sure, life is too complicated to arise spontaneously… so then what… God created it? If that’s true, then wouldn’t such a God be even more complex than mere earth life, being infinite and all-powerful?
So if earth-life is too complicated to have evolved, then so must a living God be too complicated and therefore must have been created by an even more powerful super-being. ..who of course must have been created by yet another even bigger Super God.
Oh no, they would say, God just exists; he is perfect, infinite and eternal. He wasn’t created.
Okay, then life on earth wasn’t created either. Earth life is far from infinite and is nowhere near “perfect” so it is much easier to believe that life “just is” than it is to believe some unseen non-material Superman-God “just is.”
This would be obvious if you didn’t start your debate from a pro-religion bias.
And by the way, try explaining the perfection of creation to someone with a genetic disorder. Look at the baby born with no brain, or half a heart, and tell me how perfect it all is.
That’s right, if you bother to look around very much you’ll see just how imperfect, flawed and half-assed it all is. Life works, but barely. In every given population of anything, there are a lot of genetic failures. The religious person just refuses to open his eyes and see. In other words, if someone or something created all life, then he/she/it did a very crappy job. Evolution is what makes the most sense when all this information is taken into account.
As a philosopher and theologian, I love arguments along the lines of “why do I exist?” and “what is the meaning of life?” They’ve been my “bread and butter” for decades. These are philosophical arguments, however, and the attempt to turn such arguments into anti-science crusades will, ultimately, only bring harm to both religion and science ..as well as humanity.
Jesus on a rock, again explaining why he doesn’t have any time in his schedule for starving children and sick people. No further comment should be necessary but you’ll see true believers in the comment section of this story: Jesus in Rock: Alabama Woman Sees Image of Jesus in Rock
HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA – Shirley Maples of Madison County rides along Keel Mountain Road every day. But one day, while making this routine trip, she noticed something out of the ordinary. She says she spotted an image of Jesus Christ in a rock along the side of the road.
Another big church pastor bites the dust, more sexual impurity, more defenses by the church flock of their own moral failings: Willow Creek Chicago pastor resigns, admits to ‘sexual impurity’
Let’s stick to the basic reality, here: Big religion is probably the easiest way for hucksters to make a fast buck off of gullible people. Therefore, it attracts amoral people. That’s the simple bottom line. Especially in big churches, you’re going to get semi-criminals who are interested only in fleecing the flock and are willing to pretend to care about Jesus in order to do it.
You’d be much better off just ASSUMING that your pastor is a cheesy used car salesman interested only in separating you from your money rather than thinking he’s a spokesperson for God.
As a scam, big religion works flawlessly, unfailingly. I confess, even I am tempted sometimes; it’s such easy money and since I know how the scam works I could be a millionaire preacher right now. Only my own personal values restrain me. But I digress…
Church people rush to the defense of the pastor!
“Pastor Wu is like all of us, a sinner. He, too, can find forgiveness for his sin, just like King David of the Old Testament did. Pastor Wu knows the way, and he was very courageous and should be commended for confessing his sin.”
No, that’s where you make a liar out of yourself. I know! You claim to have BEEN sinners, who have been transformed by Christ. You use this alleged transformation to claim the authority to sit in judgment of others. That’s a fact and you know it.
Pick a side: if you claim to different than the rest of us because of your religiosity, if you claim some magical transformation, then you need to prove it by actually being better people.
If you are going to turn around and excuse acting this way by now saying you’re no different than all the rest of us, then get the hell off your moral high-horse and stop judging others!
If this were some atheist-godless-liberal instead of a church pastor you’d be saying, “See, that proves that those people hate America and family values. They need Jesus. That would make it so this stuff wouldn’t happen.”
And you know that you’d do that, so stop lying to yourself and others about it. That, my friends, is the hypocrisy of religion.
