Religion vs Death

Anyone who still thinks religion has been a benign force in this world need to read the compilation that James Haught made in a 1990 edition of the Skeptical Review.  Below is a segment to whet your appetite:

“– The Thirty Years’ War produced the largest religious death toll of all time. It began in 1618 when Protestant leaders threw two Catholic emissaries out of a Prague window into a dung heap. War flared between Catholic and Protestant princedoms, drawing in supportive religious armies from Germany, Spain, England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, France and Italy. Sweden’s Protestant soldiers sang Martin Luther’s “Ein ‘Feste Burg” in battle. Three decades of combat turned central Europe into a wasteland of misery. One estimate states that Germany’s population dropped from 18 million to 4 million. In the end nothing was settled, and too few people remained to rebuild cities, plant fields, or conduct education.”

I’ve had people tell me that it is men doing these dastardly deeds and not God or the religion.  I have to disagree with this interpretation.  There are passages in the Bible and Koran that are constantly interpreted / misinterpreted and used as an excuse to maim and kill those who believe differently.  The Catholics and Protestants still barely talk to each other, and the Muslims still kill anybody that disagrees with them.  The Muslims kill the Hindus and the Hindus kill the Muslims

“It’s fashionable among thinking people to say that religion isn’t the real cause of today’s strife in Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, India and Iran — that sects merely provide labels for combatants. Not so. Religion keeps the groups in hostile camps. Without it, divisions would blur with passing generations; children would adapt to new times, mingle, intermarry, forget ancient wounds. But religion keeps them alien to one another.

Anything that divides people breeds inhumanity. Religion serves that ugly purpose.”

Remember this was written before  9-11

A passing thought as I go to close this post.  The Republican Religious Right wing wants to return a measure of religious control to America

Muslims Kill Even More Christians

Nigeria, Africa will probably end up being a Muslim controlled country before long.  They have a group of Muslims who call themselves Boko Haram, and they’re out to kill any and all opposition to their wants…they started with the Christians.

 “Nigeria has been hit by a fresh wave of violence apparently targeting the country’s Christian communities. At least 17 people were killed in Mubi in Adamawa state as gunmen opened fire in a town hall where members of the Christian Igbo group were meeting.

There were also reports of a deadly attack in Adamawa’s capital, Yola.”  BBC Africa Here

I guess they figure if they get rid of the Christians there won’t be anyone left to stop their power grab.  Notice because they are Muslim’s they just kill instead of trying a democratic solutions…trying to win the hearts and minds maybe…instead of terror.

“Gunmen who are, from all indications, members of Boko Haram came in large numbers and have encircled police headquarters. They chanted ‘Allahu Akbar’ [God is Great] and fired indiscriminately,” a resident told AFP.

Boko Haram, whose name means ‘Western education is forbidden’, is fighting to overthrow the government and create an Islamic state.”

You know if atheism ruled there wouldn’t be any of this crap going on….:-)

Muslims Kill Christians

Well its happened again…those super friendly, religion of peace, and non-violent Muslims in Nigeria have killed some more Christians in their ongoing effort to rid the country of a competing religion.   Boy those Muslims, what a crack-up they are.  HERE
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The Fall of Man

The Fall of Man as seen by Thomas Paine

“The Christian Mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is then introduced into the Garden of Eden, in the shape of a snake or a serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation with Eve, who is no way surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of this tête-à-tête is that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the eating of that apple damns all mankind.

After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would have supposed that the Church Mythologists would have been kind enough to send him back again to the pit: or, if they had not done this, that they would have put a mountain upon him (for they say that their faith can remove a mountain), or have put him under a mountain, as the former mythologists had done, to prevent his getting again among the women and doing more mischief.

But instead of this they leave him at large, without even obliging him to give his parole—the secret of which is that they could not do without him; and after being at the trouble of making him, they bribed him to stay. They promised him ALL the Jews, ALL the Turks by anticipation, nine-tenths of the world beside, and Mahomet into the bargain. After this, who can doubt the bountifulness of the Christian Mythology?

Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in which none of the combatants could be either killed or wounded—put Satan into the pit—let him out again—gave him a triumph over the whole creation—damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, these Christian Mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. They represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both God and Man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing had eaten an apple. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Authors emphasis 

Merry Christmas Everyone

I see the “Religion of Peace”…Islam, has given a gift of murder and mayhem to Nigerian Christians this year.

“Boko Haram has carried out increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks in its campaign to implement strict Shariah law across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people. The group, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege” in the local Hausa language, is responsible for at least 504 killings this year alone, according to an Associated Press count.” From CBS News

Why am I not convinced that the Muslims are peaceful???
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Much of Religion is Falsifiable

Fal si fi a ble
“Able to be proven false, and therefore testable; as, most religious beliefs are not falsifiable and therefore outside the scope of experimental science”  Webster’s revised unabridged Dictionary

 The Christian religion makes many falsifiable claims about itself. It likes to tell its members that prayer is answered and is effective in curing sicknesses and helps in almost any situation.  Your pastor or priest or rabbi will not tell you about all the studies that have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that prayer is totally useless, other than as a ‘positive thinking’ or placebo exercise.

Those unlucky people who have had an arm or leg amputation, have never had their prayers answered to regrow said limb…in all of earthly recorded history.

Those two undeniable ‘facts’ completely falsify the Christian claim that prayer does work.  So I wonder why this is?  It seems that Christians would have caught on by now.  Remember Texas Governor Perry having his little prayer meeting trying to get some rain in the state to relieve a terrible drought?   The fires broke out and Texas has had the worst fire season ever…way to go god.

1.  Prayer is a falsifiable claim of Christianity. And it has been proven false.

Since the 1600’s or so science has been relentlessly working on many many projects that have inadvertently invaded the claims and assertions of religion.  Other than the people who write for the Biblical Archaeological Review the scientists whose field is archaeology, paleontology, biology, geology, physical anthropology, or radiometric dating do not work to try and prove the Bible…nor do they work to disprove it.  They simply do their job and report what they find without prejudice.

Likewise the field of genetics, although a relatively new science, it, along with other earth sciences, in just a few short years has made tremendous strides in defining our humanness and ancestry and giving us a sense of history that defies and falsifies what religion has been telling us for thousands of years.

What these sciences together have done is falsify most of the books of Genesis and Exodus.  We now have convincing scientific evidence that falsifies the stories that generation after generation was brainwashed with and told were true history.  From about 500+- AD when the Bible was canonized till the middle of the 20^th century, people who doubted the Christian religion and God were mostly without proofs of what they believed…not any longer.

Now we know where all of us humans came from…Africa…and most likely the Ethiopian area…and most likely about 50,000 + years ago.  Archaeologists and paleontologists have been saying this for years, and just in the last few years genetics and DNA has confirmed this. We have found proof that our ancestors mated successfully with Neanderthals.  There is new evidence (that is not fully confirmed yet), that our ancestors mated with some other ancient hominids.  The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable…we are not guessing anymore…we have the proof to back it up.

We don’t need a physical ‘missing link’ anymore…we can follow our history in the blood and DNA.  We are the last surviving representative of the genus Homo…which is estimated to be 2.3 to 2.4 million years old…we have really ancient ancestors, we can no longer deny this.  We are not related to a mythical ‘Adam and Eve’ or to the mythical sons of Noah.

2.  Adam and Eve is a falsified claim of Christianity…they are just a Biblical myth. ***

This is going to cost the Christian community a big case of heartburn.  Because of Paul inventing ‘Original Sin’ in the New Testament and placing the blame on Adam and Eve’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden.  ***There are additional falsified claims in Genesis.

Because of ‘Original Sin’ concept Christianity needs the first couple…badly.  The whole of the need for Jesus was Paul saying that through Adam and Eve’s disobedience and downfall, sin passed down to all of mankind, Jesus had to provide a blood-sacrifice to expiate the sins we humans all have.  Think of this…a blood sacrifice to a god…how insane and silly is that?

Does any of this sound suspicious and slightly familiar?  Didn’t the old civilizations in South America and the really old cultures in the Middle East, and elsewhere kill people as sacrifices to god or the god’s?  Blood sacrifices…like Jesus.

From Wikipedia:
“In Trinitarian Christian teaching, God became incarnate in Jesus Christ, sacrificing his first-born son to accomplish the reconciliation of God and humanity, which had separated itself from God through sin (see the concept of original sin). According to a view that has featured prominently in Western theology since early in the 2nd millennium, God’s justice required an atonement for sin from humanity if human beings were to be restored to their place in creation and saved from damnation. However, God knew limited human beings could not make sufficient atonement, for humanity’s offense to God was infinite, so God created a covenant with Abraham, which he fulfilled when he sent his only Son to become the sacrifice for the broken covenant. In Christian theology, this sacrifice replaced the insufficient animal sacrifice of the Old Covenant; Christ the “Lamb of God” replaced the lambs’ sacrifice of the ancient Korban Todah (the Rite of Thanksgiving), chief of which is the Passover in the Mosaic Law.

3.  The need for Jesus as a blood sacrifice for ‘Original Sin’ is falsified by the non-existence of Adam and Eve.

Most archaeologists and earth scientists have known for years that there was never any evidence of the Hebrews (a million + strong) living in and subsequently leaving Egypt.  Repeated surveys of the Sinai desert by the best scientists in their field has never found the slightest bit of evidence for the Hebrew passage and their camping out for 40 years. There are no Egyptian records or writings supporting the myth of half or more of their population leaving suddenly. This is a non-event…it has no scientific attestation at all.

4.  The truth of the Exodus and the supernatural events that follow in the myth has been falsified by over a hundred years of searching for the slightest evidence…and not finding any.

In the thousands of years of human history, magical or supernatural explanations of phenomena have never once been proved…and natural explanations have ALWAYS worked. Never the other way round.

There is more to all of this, but it’s past my bedtime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleontology
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/forensics.shtml
http://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/BioBookDNAMOLGEN.html
https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/lan/en/atlas.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution
http://humanorigins.si.edu/
http://www.becominghuman.org/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life/human/human_evolution/index.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice#Judaism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_violence.

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God is Either Impotent or Evil

“Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either he can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities or he does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If he exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.”  Sam Harris, 2005

We Are All Children of Africa

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ALL the evidence from ALL the relevant sciences just keeps pointing to Africa, and that the early hominids are our ancestors.  Religionists of course have been denying this for over a hundred years…but the science is relentless and cohesive, we humans are products of evolution, not created ex-nihilo by some imaginary Jewish God 6000 years ago.

Priests, rabbi’s, pastors, Mullah’s, and  theologians on all sides can make all the Grand Pronouncements and split all the hairs they want for eternity, and all we atheists need to do is point to humankind’s KNOWN past and the KNOWN path we took to get where we are today.  And of course the evidence for our ancestry kinda’ kills the mainline established Christian dogma…we now know the old stories are impossible to fit into KNOWN history.

Christianity, as we know it, is on it’s last legs, it cannot integrate the knowledge we now have without major changes to all denominations and theological thought.

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Vandalize Cars If Displaying Darwin Symbol

Apparently religious zealots have decided that biology teachers at the University of Florida needed to be humbled and shown that religion, not evolution, rules in Gainesville, Florida.   Of course Christians have doing this kind of crap for many, many years.  Our US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who happen to be atheist (yes there are atheists in foxholes) have been beaten up and denied advancement.  I haven’t heard about any deaths yet, but it probably will happen at some point.

“Letters, nails, and vehicular sabotage haven’t kept two University of Florida biology professors from expressing their belief in evolution.  In a string of events occurring over the past four months, the professors’ cars, which were parked in the Bartram-Carr Hall parking lot, were vandalized.

First, religious letters were left on the cars, and then pro-evolution bumper stickers and Darwin-fish emblems were scraped and torn from the vehicles. Most recently, nails were put into the tires.”   Independent Florida Alligator:

Yeah those God Lovin’ Christians just can’t stand someone who doesn’t agree with their magical sky-God.  And they keep that falsehood going about how nice and loving their religion is…not like the Muslims.  Thing is when Christianity ruled the Western world it was every bit as bad as Islam is now…don’t look now, but the Christian right (Republicans) are trying to re-establish Biblical rule
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The Christian Right Wants What Muslims Want

What is the agenda of the Muslim extremists, other than killing infidels?  Well we know that they are anti-woman’s rights and anti-gay rights.  They will kill women who step out of line and kill any person exhibiting gay behavior.  Their countries are generally controlled by religion and have no separation of church and state.

Funny thing…the Christian Right has pretty much the same agenda.  Women are considered second class citizens by the church hierarchy of most Christian denominations.  All but a handful of Christian churches condemn the homosexuals to burn in hell forever…and several evil fundamentalist movements want us Americans to be ruled by Old Testament law, which essentially means no separation of church and state.

So it seems that the Christian right wants exactly what the Muslim extremists want…they both want to take over America and make us slaves to their religion.

Fundamentalist Religion of any kind is evil, and bad for our country’s future.  As civilized, thinking, and caring people we need to recognize the threat these evil people present to us and our country and do our best to dissuade them from what they are trying to do.  They need to be exposed for what they are…a deadly and real threat to civilization.
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