Before the modern age of antibiotics and vaccinations, people didn’t have much better than a 50/50 chance of making it from birth to adulthood. What, you think they were just all heathens or God would have healed them?? My, you ARE delusional. Religious fanatics have always been a dime a dozen.

Well, we had a similar case to this one in my home state. They convicted one of the parents of a lesser charge but then jurors complained they were misled into thinking this would teach them a lesson so they’d never do it again (it didn’t).

In the case cite here, the parents probably don’t have anything to worry about because they live in one of many states where there is a religious exemption to homicide laws: You’re allowed to kill your kids as long as you say Jesus told you to do it. Questions still linger over Carlton boy’s death.

Why is that? Well, as a former religious nut myself, I can tell you that there seems to be a lot of license involved in Christianity. Among fundamentalist pastors, it seems like everyone was porking everyone elses’ wives ..and no, I’m not exempting myself from the debauchery.

There is a general concept from Calvinism that God chose you, and therefore as a chosen one whatever you do will be forgiven and blessed. King David is often cited as an example of this. So then Jesus’ sacrifice has turned into permission to do whatever crazy shit comes into your head. It must be okay, after all, because God picked you over so many other people to be His special chosen child. And remember, it’s a blessing on whatever YOU do; you still get to sit in judgment of everyone else, especially non Christians. That whole judgment thing is the reward for being chosen.

It happens all the time. And as a matter of objective statistics, Christians are more likely than non-religious people to be arrested for spousal abuse, get divorced or murder a family member. The more religious a person is, the more likely they are to approve of war and torture as counterintuitive as that might seem. Or mabye it isn’t contraintuitive, it’s just contrary to the teachings of Jesus.

I think this all flows from a sense of moral superiority one acquires from believing that one has a unique insight into the true will of God and that one has God’s ear for ones prayers. What should be humbling becomes enabling.

Now whatever you think must be right because God is in you and your thoughts must be His thoughts.

There are and continue to be non-judgmental movements within Christianity but they haven’t seemed to be able to take hold for the last 2000 years. After all, taking the judging others and the sense of moral superiority out of Christianity takes all the fun out of being a Christian!

Clearly the average Christian – and in this case the average big-name EVANGELIST – doesn’t know jack shit about what Jesus actually taught and stood for. If they did they wouldn’t going off 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

When you can make up answers then it’s pretty easy, right? If I substituted “The Flying Spaghetti Monster” for “God” the creation museum folk would be offended, but they could not offer a plausible explanation as to why I can’t use that term instead of theirs. It’s all “faith” after all… also known as superstition.
Paleontologists brought to tears, laughter by Creation Museum

While visiting this post, I wanted to address a sincere but ignorant commenter:

“I have personally witnessed irrefutable miracle healings (i.e. stunted limb growing out to full length spontaneously in a matter of seconds,) in respone to prayer in the name of Jesus. I would guess there were close to 40 witnesses to this miracle healing, many of whom, including myself, were standing only 2 or 3 feet away from the man who was healed; some of whom I still know by first and/or last name.”

The short-leg illusion is one of the oldest tricks of faith healers. I’m surprised people still fall for it today since it is so well known but I will briefly address it here.

FAITH HEALING: LEG LENGTHENING ‘MIRACLES”

The set-up for the trick: The subject/victim/mark is told to sit in a chair and then lift their legs straight toward the “healer” … lo and behold, one leg is shorter! That must be the source of all of their problems! The “healer” then does his/her incantation, grabs the legs and tugs.. and miraculously, the “short” leg “grows out” to match the “normal” one! Proof of God! Give money!

More experienced “healers” may simply command the leg to grow, usually followed by some other exclamation, like “LOOK, IT’S GROWING!” And suddenly a “miracle” happens…

Here is the simple basis for why this short-leg growth trick always works as it does; people don’t sit perfectly straight when they sit down. They usually lean slightly toward one ass cheek or another and in fact it is hard to sit perfectly straight and balanced even when ordered to do so. Uneven weight distribution causes ones pelvis to tilt slightly, which of course also affects how long your legs APPEAR to be relative to each other. If you don’t understand this, you should probably read a first year anatomy book before proceeding.

So when the mark/victim/subject holds his/her legs out straight, the pelvis angle will make it appear that one leg is shorter than another. When the “healer” tugs on the legs it causes the victim to shift his/her weight and sit straighter, changing the angle of the pelvis, so the short leg “grows.”

In the command (no touch) method of this trick, there is some loud declaration of a miracle happening right now! This is screeched so that the victim/subject/mark will lean forward to see if his her leg is actually growing – it is the leaning forward that causes the victim/mark’s weight to shift so the miraculous “growth” can occur.

In the unlikely event that the victim/mark accidentally manages to sit completely flat in the beginning so that both legs are viewed as the same length, the Christian miracle worker always has a backup plan: The faith healer simply pulls slightly on one shoe as he/she lifts the legs up, pulling one heel out and making one leg appear longer temporarily than the other. The Man/Woman of God then slides the shoe back into place again as he/she prays, making the legs suddenly appear the same length. This takes a little practice at sleight of hand work so that nobody sees what you are doing, but it’s still pretty easy.

A certain amount of showmanship is required to make this trick work well: You have to get everyone watching to believe that one leg is shorter FIRST, then you have to make enough noise and motion with your hands as the “miracle” happens so that nobody sees what you are really doing.

This is an observational trick easily confirmed by YOU: The reader can get together with his/her friends and try it. But please don’t be unethical – don’t be a liar – like these Christian “healers” and claim it is a miracle of God. It’s just a trick and a pretty cheesy one at that.

As a former ardent religious zealot, I was present and personally witnessed this trick being performed on a number of occasions. Some of these events were performed by famous evangelists including the healing duo popular in the 80′s, “The Hunters” – Charles and Frances.

This particular piece of cheesy stage magic is covered in the book “The Faith Healers” by James Randi (pages 128-130, complete with pictures). As bad as it is, however, it appears that tens of thousands of people are still fooled.

The faith healers, of course, have to learn how to do the trick before they can perform it. Not that this is hard – I mean, I just taught you how to do it in three paragraphs! But that also means that they KNOW it is a trick and they KNOW they are fooling the believers into thinking they have power from God.

I realize that some people would say f’ em for being that gullible, but I don’t think that you should take advantage of people just because they really want to believe in something.

You should ask yourself – If these faith healers have real power, why can’t they make an amputated leg grow back, hmm? Why is it that a “true miracle” can only be performed by stage magic methods? Believers dare not ask themselves this question, I guess.

Unfortunately, this reliance on stage magic strongly suggests that Christianity itself is false, because the proponents must resort to to the use of tricks to prove the validity of their faith. If what they claim to believe had any truth to it whatsoever, stage magic would not be required.

As a side note; although most people’s legs aren’t exactly the same length, pelvic tilt compensates for any differences in 99 percent of the cases. For people who have a difference that is really a medical problem, faith healers can’t do a thing.

How can we be sure? All you have to do is see the daily “Jesus on toast” stories that inundate the TV and print news to realize that if there were even one genuine miracle – EVER – it would get 24 hour news coverage. The fact that Christians have to lean on the “I saw someone tug on a leg once and it got longer” stories strongly suggests that they have nothing real to offer.

Additional discussions of the Scientists at the Creation Museum story: Paleontology and Creationism Meet but Don’t Mesh – NYTimes.com and Daily Kos: Scientists Visit the Creation Museum

Approving of war and torture (see previous post) isn’t that far a step from murder: Doctor murdered in Church and right-wing fundamentalist Christians are celebrating. … And lest you think that this is an isolated nut I remind you that there is a murder-target Christian hit list on the web, and Randall Terry who runs this says his only regret was that the doctor didn’t have time to convert to Christ first and that the President might use this to crack-down on ‘Pro-Life’ terrorists.. You know, the murder victim was a Lutheran, not a real Christian as defined by the dominant forces of Christian America.

As I’ve said before, I don’t really know what horrible evil cancer ate up American Christianity and I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know if it CAN be fixed or if it will remain a menacing and violent force in our country forever.

I DO know that once again we have proof that the so-called “Pro-Life” movement is anything BUT …the same people who overwhelmingly approve of torture and war are celebrating murder. No surprise. We need to start calling them what they really are; the “FORCED PREGNANCY MOVEMENT” – that’s what they want. The ‘pro-life’ name is just a bullshit cover story. That, or Christian Terrorists – also apt.

Nope, instead we get something to the effect of “oh he was really bad off, but not as sick as the doctors thought he MIGHT be..so there you go, it’s a miracle from God. Catholics investigating possible miracle in New Jersey.

Carmelite Sisters superior general Mother Mark Louis Randall says the possible miracle involves a family who prayed to McCrory after their unborn child was diagnosed with a genetic abnormality. Randall says the defect was not present in the degree it had been expected when the child was born.

I must ask believers… have you no shame? Believe what you want because it makes you feel good about yourself. Fine. But please stop the idiocy. You are an embarrassment to the human race.

And the church’s defense? They didn’t know priests’ abuse was crime.
They might be right. Those poor persecuted Christians are feeling so sorry for themselves that the government will let them get away with torture and rape so as not to hurt their little Christian feelings.

But it’s the military chaplains who have been criticized for allegedly force-feeding soldiers a form of fundamentalist Christianity originating from highly controversial, apocalyptic “End Times” evangelists and their mega-churches.

The most telling element, however, is that Catholics and evangelical Christians are the sub groups MOST LIKELY to love torture. Hard to believe, but it is the church-goers themselves who have told us this. Mmmm……Jesus just LOVES torturing people (apparently).

Catholics are the biggest lovers of war crimes, and those who attend services at LEAST monthly are the most likely to salivate over the prospect of hurting people.

You can read the breakdown of numbers here: Pew Poll:The Religious Dimensions of the Torture Debate.

So what does this tell us? Well, evangelical Christians and Catholics may be unusually ignorant about torture and its victims. Or perhaps Catholics and evangelical Christians are particularly ignorant of the law. Maybe members of these religious groups know the law but have utter disrespect for it. OR, finally, evangelical Christians and Catholics may have a strong sadistic streak in their religion. Take your pick.

Whatever else you derive from this information, know that it is not outsiders attacking religion! What we have here, is a case of Christians condemning themselves.

There is a general rule in logic which says that you cannot prove a negative. Example… So if I say that there are extraterrestrial parrots living on Mars, you know it’s stupid, ridiculous (and I’m either delusional or lying my ass off) but you can’t prove it isn’t true. But there is a reason why this is a rule rather than a law…

If I say that there are parrots living on Mars and I know this because they broadcast a radio show on a certain frequency, THAT can be checked.

I can say that you still haven’t proved that the Martian parrots don’t exist but that’s an irrelevant argument now; my only evidence supporting their existence has been shot down, so I have nothing; there isn’t a single reason to believe me.

Likewise, while you can’t prove that some vague, generic non-defined GOD really doesn’t exist, you can certainly test claims that are more specific.

There are a couple of typical tests in this area; the Parsimony test looks at the claim (in Christianity) that God has the characteristics of being all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. We then look at real life and discover, hey, you know what? At least one of those things can’t be true, otherwise life on earth would be very different from the reality in which we live.

The other way – which is the approach used in this article – is to look at the Bible, which is supposedly THE evidence for the existence of the Judeo-Christian god, and see how it stacks up to its own claims.

The beauty of the article cited here is not so much in the arguments but rather in the response of religionists in the comments section: The imperviousness to logic is priceless. Such is the fallibility of human nature, though; we have a great deal of trouble seeing the flaws in our own preconceptions.

Instead of trying to use blunt-force logic, I always suggest to people that you turn arguments around: If you say that “you can’t prove God doesn’t exist” and you think that this is a devastatingly effective argument – then saying that “the earth is 4.5 billion years old and you can’t prove it isn’t true” must be equally effective: They rely on the same logic.

Yes, I know you still won’t get anywhere; religionists by nature are only interested in arguments that support their beliefs. They aren’t really searching for truth. I know this with absolute certainty because as an ex-religionist I’ve already learned that there is no truth behind the tales of religion (ANY religion) and I know that the information that led to discovering my own error is out there and available to all. Those who think otherwise simply don’t want to find out what is real and what isn’t.

But again, that’s just part of human nature. Like it or not, we all have to live with it.