God renigues on his sacrifice

The whole god sacrificing his son thing is truly the most obvious glitch in Christian logic. But ok, quirky eccentric god has his own weird rules to fulfil - fair 'nuff, and I'd sort of respect his 'incredible' sacrifice in a way, seeing as though he's cornered by his whole sacrificing scheme he'd set up with animals and turtledoves and shit... EXCEPT that he gave up after THREE DAYS!

Three days after the sacrifice he thought 'Frak it, i'm reanimating my boy'. Screw this sacrifice thing. Sure, he had victory over death but isn't that a cop out of universal proportions? He could resurrect the body but not heal the holes in his hand?

He renigued on the deal and then had the gall to call it a victory. Remember the Isaac story? In that story Isaac was going to do it, and without the three day reniguing chicken out. Isaac had balls, but this God/Jesus con-job is NOT a sacrifice. Just a torture and temporary death deal.

I bet you hardly ever gamble

I remember hearing it said in church that shares were just another form of gambling, but is gambling actually that sinful? It's probably stupid most of the time, but it's a fun way to lose money. Where's all the thou shalt not gamble scriptures? We used to get a verbal caning if we hinted at buying a scratchy ticket. I put a used scratch-it ticket in the tithe bag once.

What matters apparently is the gambler's receiving an undeserved gain while others lose. Gambling is, then, a violation of Jesus' most basic commandment. It seems then that praying for gain is just wrong but at the same time, the God Squad say that if we want peace in the Middle East, we should pray for it. So... praying to God for success at gambling cheapens religion and God - but then they already did that by telling people to pray to God for other things instead of putting in the effort to gain them by the sweat of their brow.

Praying for more mundane issues that people face on a daily basis is nothing more than the logical and expected conclusion of a process that started when people were asked to have faith in God rather than in themselves and their own hard work. - Austin Cline

Isn't bank investing just a gamble but with better odds... or any sort of investing? Life is a gamble. Going out for a drive is a big damn gamble sometimes. Our church members seemed to get sucked into every muli-level pyramid marketing scam that came our way - a product of a naive and overly trusting people? I've seen heaps of Christians lose many thousands to pyramid scams... over and over again! The definition of insanity?

Anyway, I remember most pastors in our area to be pretty shrewd stockmarket investers. They have to be, because, honestly, most people I knew didn't tithe much. Heck, as if giving away a good Sunday afternoon wasn't giving enough.

the odds are better with shares, but it's still a gamble. For that matter, buying real-estate can be a bit of a gamble, and many types of investments... and so can walking down King's Cross with a decent Nikes on. My point is - the bible doesn't directly forbid gambling and the actuality of what a gamble is is subjective to the punter.

The following website offers some scriptures, none of which directly forbid gambling. Perhaps this is one of those isues where you have to make up your own mind without tatooing a scripture to the back of your hand.

All I have belongs to God ("The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein" (Psalm 24:1).

The normal means of gaining money is through work ("Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands" - Ephesians 4:28).

It is better to earn money than to gain it quickly ("Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it" - Proverbs 13:11).

It's a miracle, I'm healed!

Once you've bought into the whole Christian belief system you start to believe in all the fringe benefits, like healing. Time to accessorise that amazing tongues trick with the other gifts, signs and fruits. Perhaps that dicky knee can be replaced... or the fatty tissues slowed down? Of course you could start eating properly and exercise, but a quick fix and a prayer line would make it all a whole lot easier.

Ah yes, take two prayers and see me in the morning if Cancer still persists. Guaranteed to sometimes work! You can realign your life and make resolutions fuelled by an amazing overnight healing that we can all suppose came from God above. Well, why not? The power of positive thinking, the placebo effect, that kind of thing. But psychologists report that the euphoria of the imagined healings will wear off in a short matter of time, and the failure to follow through on any of the promises they made to god for it will leave people even more demoralized than ever.

But they'll be back. The people who fall for these things do so again and again. One woman seen at a Revival meeting seemed to see no irony in the fact that she'd been attending the same meetings regularly for three years without results. I've seen people convinced that God wanted to heal people and make idiots of themselves trying to heal someone of Cancer. Do they learn? Nope, they figure that they must have some sin, or something they've missed, not enough prayer, etc.

Sometimes prayer works. Sometimes it doesn't. I have heard many second-hand stories that open the possibilities that there was a dynamic involved that was not explainable by the doctor. Certainly never seen anything in my 35 years of wandering that looked slightly supernatural in any way.

I found the following story to be quite sobering when considering the magical properties we give to miracles that are not all that strange or miraculous in the first place.

Excerpt

(The) introduction is to help show that I was very active and believed that I was indeed, a "True Christian."And that's why when I had a miracle, I was extremely grateful, but not overly surprised. My god was a mighty god, after all, who reigned from heaven on high. Miracles were a normal part of my theology.

My daughter was running/toddling around our apartment, and in her clumsy exuberance, crashed headlong into the pointed corner of our coffee table. Her half-dozen teeth were crushed backwards into her face, blood was gushing everywhere, and her two young parents were hysterical. Her face was a wreck.

At the hospital, the doctors told us there was nothing anyone could do. Her teeth would probably fall out. All they could offer, they said, was something for the pain and to stop the bleeding. So, with our now deformed-mouthed little girl, we went home, laid hands on her, and prayed to the Lord of Hosts to heal our whimpering baby. The pain medicine made our daughter groggy, so we put her to bed. When she awoke the next morning, her teeth were perfectly straight, and except for a small scar where she'd bitten through her lip during the fall, she was completely healed. It was a miracle. God had healed our daughter. We spread the news far and wide, and used that experience to testify to the living reality of our God.That was 15 years ago.

About seven years ago, I started to severely question my faith. I eventually left Christianity and started this website.

So, what about that miracle? In the last couple of years I've noticed that when our daughter sings, her face lacks symmetry. This doesn't seem to affect her ability for music, but it is somewhat distracting to the people watching her sing. I took her to an orthodontist for an opinion and found out that one side of her jaw is longer than the other. The only way to correct the problem, he said, was to break her jaw and re-set it. When it healed, hopefully, the two sides of her face when singing would appear more symmetrical.

I asked what would have caused such a problem. He replied by asking if she'd had a hard fall when she was very young. "The coffee table!" I thought. The doctor explained that what probably had happened was that my daughter had damaged the jaw during the fall, which stunted the growth on one side. He assured us there was nothing anyone could have done, and there was no way to know the extent of the damage until our daughter grew up. We told him about her teeth being bashed into her mouth in the fall, and how the teeth had straightened over night. He said that things like that were not uncommon. The healing powers of the body, especially a young body, were amazing at times. What is my point with this little personal introspection?

Many Christians hang on to their faith based on some personal experience that they consider to be miraculous. I know Christians frequently do this, because I was one of those Christians. Typically, the so-called miracles are fairly minor events, events that could be easily explained by any number of natural causes. I know this, too, because my miracle mentioned here is a prime example. For those Christians who are sure that Christianity is true because someone was healed of a backache, or someone babbled in an unknown tongue, or some old lady left her wheel chair for an hour or two, or something equally routine, I challenge that person to ask why amputees never grow new limbs. Ask why people who have lungs removed, never grow new ones. Ask why all the so-called miracles of healing by almighty God are so easily mimicked by the natural healing powers of the body. Believing is nice. It gives a wonderful feeling of being watched over and protected, but it's all a lie.

Read more...

Demons, saints, angels and ghosts

According to most christian based beliefs there are many super-powered spiritual beings roaming around us and moving in between their universe and our universe. Sounds like great science fiction to me and a good premise for a movie or tv series, but unfortunately real life isn't like that - boring though that may seem. Even our kids work out sooner or later there is no Santa Claus or teletubbies.

Let's say they're right. Let's say that there are angels and saints busy working for God. That means they're not doing a great job, because there's pain and misery everywhere and they hardly seem to be lifing a finger to do anything about it. Even Superman and Batman would try to make some impact. Some of the blame has to be shared out to all the superspirits who just aren't cutting the mustard.

Apart from the tri-une God (Father, Spirit and the kid) there are numerous Saints for Catholics to pray to and angels of many ranks to depend on in an emergancy. God is a great one for delegation it seems and has stuff going on everywhere in the minds of Catholics.

I'm sure Mary was a top chick, but yeah she's very dead. I don't believe that she's floating around the cosmos relaying messages onto Jesus. Some people find Jesus a bit intimidating to send prayer requests to so they go through his mum hoping that being a female she will be more sympathetic to their needs and put in a good word.

Mainstream Christians really embrace the concept of demons and angels flittering about above and around them. They personalise the demons and angels in much the same way the Greeks and Egyptions had all sort of various demi-gods for different purposes. Mainstream christians believe free will can be taken from people and replaced with possessing demons. On the whole they are a pretty fearful lot who go on ghostdemon hunts often. Too scared to watch Pokemon, Sesame street, Buffy, Harry Potter, Scooby Doo.. lest a demon find a way into their consciousness and trick them into something unholy.

Jump to my other article

On the 145th hour God rested

I've only until recently been unsure of which way is more likely, Creation or Evolution/chance but after listening to far too many religious nutters try to defend a six-day creation, there's one thing I am sure of:

We're slowly de-evolving!

There seem to be more stupid people every day and sooner or later we're gonna have to go to war and wipe out the weaker species or we're simply going to de-evolve back to primates. It'll be freakin' Planet of the Apes but instead of talking and putting humans in bamboo cages and building little cities we'll be playing with out own poo and speaking in tongues.

And no, I don't feel like discussing why I don't believe the world was created in 144 hours with a 24 hour rest for the big guy afterwards. It's just too exhausting, and will only further out de-evolution.

You can't baptise cats

I still can't believe it when modern churches continue to emulate the symbolic rituals of these ancient times by re-enacting all the overly dramatic little practices. Immersing yourselves under the water to make a big public show of how super-duper they are by following all of Jeebus' commandments. Would people jump off cliffs if he told them to? Yeah probably. This one should also be followed and sadly, often is, when he said, "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother...he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26). Yep... of course the ancient Oxford dictionary will probably have a good reason why the original words for hate meant something else and black is actually white and yin is quite possibly yang.

Some churches even include regular foot washing in their meetings to make real the analogy of serving your brethren and yadda yadda yadda. And where's the anointing oil? Huh... come on, there's another symbolic gesture that was good enough for Jesus. Is it good enough for you Chris7. 'CAUSE IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR JESUS, SO IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU EH? Get your anointing oil out and go slippery sloppery crazy.

The scared bloody literalists are so frightened to miss what they believe is part of the salvation initiation process that they have to install big fibreglass baptismal tanks into their back rooms to accommodate the sin cleansing act... it doesn't even wash the sins away... it just symbolises it. Then they have to drag people into their churches water tanks before they get hit by buses and miss out on an infinity of worship music and golden mansions.

Sorry people, angels don't exist

I think some people remain Christians because they are left feeling bored and empty when they consider that the world may not have a supernatural dimension. To them, life can seem much more dramatic and dynamic when they imagine that this world is like a giant chess board....with angels and demons intervening into the lives of men and all that...eternal souls at stake...

That is classic 'hitting nail right on the head with a satisfying thud' stuff! I think churches are FULL of drama queens (and kings) who love to profess themselves as demonology experts because they couldn't afford a degree in real life. People who do all this 'farting around' in the spirit (ecstatic languages, slain backwards, laughter fits on the floor) are attention seeking and a bit sad, but also bloody funny.

Often I played along with these demon Vs. angel conversations and play along rather than arguing because it's like playing Dungeons and Dragons. Fun and scary! I remember reading Billy Graham's ridiculous book on angels. He woke in the middle of the night, wandered past his loungeroom and saw a heap of angels in there, battle planning... I imagine lots of whiteboards and furrowed angel faces concerned about a new wave of demons or some crud. Billy G - what a wank.

I have a bad attitude towards 6000 - 6 day creationists as well. I have some contempt for them and, call me a prick, but I just don't like people who try and fit dinosaurs into their 6-day creation mythology or a freaking world wide flood. I wouldn't even buy them a McDonald's 40 cent cone because it would just annoy me too much to try and not throw it at them. I just generally have no time at all for creationist nutters who won't budge. Can't stands 'em I doesn't.

Looking for the perfect church

I see many Christians leaving and joining churches looking for the closest to perfect one they can find, or at least the closest set of doctrines to the ones they've come to believe in. I think it's a quest for the Holy Grail and that they will die trying to find it. Part of the problem, I believe, is that churches try to set themselves up as little spiritual aquariums, where they drag their fishy friends into. A place that is safe, pseudo-happy and holy. Meanwhile, outside the tank, the real church of life is moving along. Stuttering and bumbling along... in all its beauty, horror, harmony and chaos - yeah it's real and often sucks... but that's life.

Find a church that manages to recreate the glory of God within its walls... sets up rules... doctrines... hierarchy... specialist meetings for every age and etc... and what you will end up with is a place with some level of control.

Part of the fun of setting up an aquarium or greenhouse is to control the environment within and hope you can keep the contents alive. Outside the tank... in the estuaries and the sea... the fish are happy and free.

Douglas Adams was a very famous atheist. I used to hate him for it. Now, after reading his journals and books many times I respect his belief and I really love the guy - dead as he is. He really saw the utter ridiculousness of religion and God. That Earth is actually a long running program is how I see churches. Billions of people running around in confusion and trying to work out the meaning to the question to the answer of the meaning of life... victory, loss, mistakes, learning, redemption, sacrifice, faith.. all part of the program.

Hell is Wholly Here

I think most who promote the idea of hell as this 'very very bad place' that exists outside of this reality haven't actually tasted of the real heaven and hell that already exists in this reality.

Heaven and hell are here... Have you felt the soul crushing pain of losing a loved one?... Have you fallen in love with someone so much it hurts only to have to let them go forever? Have you had a family member move overseas? Have you lost function of a body part due to sickness? Had your kids reject you? The list goes on and on... Surely we've all felt the reality of hell or the consequence of sin/karma? For every action there is an opposing and equal reaction... that is the nature of the universe.

Q. You know what I notice from the list in the last paragraph?
A. Separation

When we're separated from those we love.. sometimes forever... it's hell! Someone we love is taken from us due to death or whatever.. and we're forced to live separated from them. Hell is separation and, Oh yeah.. hell exists here and now ladies and gentlemen and it sucks and it hurts... it hurts like hell.

Many heathen religions and 'blah' had their legends and folklores of subterranean punishment scapes brought on by angry gods... and many used the O.T. Sheol references to frame the idea around, but heck, even Moses never mentioned such an idea of eternal recompense. By the time Jesus started roaming the planet these hellish concepts were in full flight... but they didn't come from the Old Testament!! Yah, Ian is right.. Jesus borrowed them from the uninspired heathens. The Pagans et. al. held Hades to be a place of eternal torment after death... this was their idea!!

Then came the whacky Christians who loved to muddy their own waters with doses of heathen ideas. Artists and poets alike revelled in the romanticised images of the writhing damned (yes these are my own words - lol). The idea caught on like wildfire (pun fully intended) and many christians have been vexed and confused ever since.

Hell, what a stupid stupid concept. If it's true and we get sent there... well, at least we'll have our memories of better times to remember, unless they get wiped, but what would be the good of that? There'd be nothing to feel sorry and tormented over. And what the fuck would punishment be good for if nothing was to be learnt from it? So no one dies... eveyone gets eternal life... it just happens to be better for some than others. For most Christians in their point of view, even good ol' Steve Irwin will be tormented for years for wasting so much time looking after the environment rather than reading the word and preaching the good news.

Yes, he loves you so so so so much.. more than one could love a son. Heh, but they say there's a time coming soon when he'll judge his children (and what? cast them into death?). Heck, I know many mortal parents who have real unconditional love for their children, so much that they'd be merciful even if rejected by them. Your God should be so loving.

The Hell believers say... "the tme comes when you find that the time of mercy that is available to you has passed", but the Bible says... "his mercy never comes to an end. They are new every morning." Lamentations 3:22

Confusing isn't it! Come on, does the Lord's mercy end or not?

God cannot send to eternal pain a man who has done something toward improving the condition of his fellow-man. If he can, I had rather go to hell than to heaven and keep company with such a god. -Robert Ingersoll

An idea, which has terrified millions, claims that some of us will go to a place called Hell, where we will suffer eternal torture. This does not scare me because, when I try to imagine a Mind behind this universe, I cannot conceive that Mind, usually called "God," as totally mad. I mean, guys, compare that "God" with the worst monsters you can think of -- Adolph Hitler, Joe Stalin, that sort of guy. None of them ever inflicted more than finite pain on their victims. Even de Sade, in his sado-masochistic fantasy novels, never devised an unlimited torture. The idea that the Mind of Creation (if such exists) wants to torture some of its critters for endless infinities of infinities seems too absurd to take seriously. Such a deranged Mind could not create a mud hut, much less the exquisitely mathematical universe around us. - Robert Anton Wilson

The first rainbow? - Noah's ark is mythology and nothing more

The narrative bible concerning Noah and his Ark is mythology and it's amazing to have to explain that to people.

There is a problem with the theory that a mist covered the earth until a flood that happened approximately five thousand years ago. It's painfully sad to know that Christians follop around themselves to get all this to make sense for them. What about all the countless varieties of animal/plant life that live in desert environments. Why did camels have the water storing humps if there were no deserts? and we wouldn't have had deserts or desert animals at all if the whole earth was a greenhouse with no rain. Some plants depend on fire to seed. Was there another creation of desert life three thousand years ago, after the flood, when the mists went away? No rain? It's crazy when you do the math. Rain feeds rivers and gets things flowing - it's called the water cycle. There's so much more I could say, but it's a big of a waste of time eh? We're very adapt at believing myths and legends it seems.

And was it the very first rainbow they tell us. I thought a mist would have refracted the sun's light and created many rainbows if you go with the mist theory - did the laws of refractive light and the fundamentals of physics get a do over.

There are literally thousands of animals that have been incredibly designed from the inside out to live and flourish in hot dry desert conditions (See Website). Also there are many plants that necessitate fire to sprout their seeds. Forest fires have been a normal and necessary regeneratory cycle for life... hard to have fire in a greenhouse like the one that hardline 7-day creationists believe in.

Quote:

It will probably never be clear what the Genesis author had in mind when he told us the story of Noah's rainbow, but it seems likely that he meant for us to believe that the bow created by the Lord was, indeed, the very first rainbow. If it hadn't been the first rainbow, then the entire story loses its symbolic impact--even if the bow had been the best rainbow, ever. In order to explain how that rainbow could have been the first one, inerrantists must explain how water droplets in the air would not have refracted sunlight.

There are three possibilities:

• No water in the air
• No sunlight
• No law of refraction

The first possibility requires too many improbables: no water condensation of evaporated lake and ocean water, no waterfalls, and no rainfall. The second is just as unlikely as the first. Since God let there be light on the first day, and created the sun on the fourth, inerrantists would have to argue that there was a continual cloud cover from the time of creation until just after end of the flood. The third explanation might seem at first to be the simplest. All the inerrantist has to do to harmonize the rainbow story is assert that God must have suspended his law of refraction of electromagnetic radiation until he awarded Noah his bow in the sky.

The reason why the third explanation doesn't work is that Noah and his family would not have been able to see without refraction; all light through their eyes' lenses would pass right through to the retina without bending to a sharp focus. Noah and his family would have been living in a world filled with very blurry objects indeed, and they surely would have noticed and reported the sudden change in clarity once God had made the law of refraction operable.

My Evolving Evolution ideas

I haven't seen enough missing links to convince me that we went from Captain Caveman to Pamela Anderson in a process of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Why did we get all this smooth hairless skin apart from a mane of locks from our scalp? Why would we lose all that protective 'fur' only to have to sew the skin from other animals to keep us warm and protect our genitals from the thorn bushes. Wouldn't the Jews have evolved circumsized penises after many generations of foreskin removals (so my old pastor used to say)?

While all monkeys within their species look the same, I find it remarkable that all humans look completely different from each other. Different hair colours, face structures, body types, hair styles, Two women rarely even have similar looking mamory glands or labias.. so much diversity.. fingerprints are even all different. Survival of the fittest should have weeded out all of the ugly people too, yet here I am!

Of all the bones we dig up I never see a progression of skeletal structures from T-Rex to crocodile or whatever. Where's the pre-chicken or the pre-bunny rabbit? I only see fully designed T-Rexs or Brontosauruses. How did eyes evolve? Did we keep walking into trees until our long line of begats developed photosensitive neural receptors? Nah, I don't buy it and I just personally don't believe in Darwin's theory. Nothing makes sense to me apart from the absurd notion of a creative and pre-existing omnipotent 'Q' sort of being.

Ok on the OTHER hand now: If there is a God and he was to reproduce himself to his creation in a way that wouldn't melt their eyes everytime they beheld him walkin' around, it seems to gel that he would stroll around amongst us and show off his super powers. Whatever happened, it was significant and sent the following message to us:

GOD - "Hey, I lowered myself to come down and visit but you turkeys thought I was big-noting myself and you hammered me into a tree! Bad form; bad form humans! But I understand... nobody likes a know-it-all and it made you feel pretty insecure. The message continues, "Look guys, all I was trying to say is that we at upper-management understand that life can suck under the law so we're doing a compromise. You let out your thousands of years of frustration whipping the skin off of my back and ram my arms with nails into the cross... feel better now? It hurt like hell! Do your worst and I'll pop back up, as good as new, to go on with the message I came down to tell you in the first place."

GOD - (That message) "We apologise for the inconvenience. All sins are forgiven but just TRY to treat each other nice, OK? I have other advice which we'll put into the book. My name is my word and if you believe in it you'll be just fine"

Adultery... for adults only

The notion that a divorced woman should have to wait until her ol' man inserts his penis into another woman's vagina before she is free to pursue another suitor is completely ridiculous. Now Jesus said, "If a man even looks at a woman to lust after her, he has committed adultery". The johnson has been taken out of the equation here. According the the Bible, it's not about the cock-a-doodle-do.

Wise guy Jesus was smart enough and spiritual enough to know that it isn't the slapping together of body parts that annuls a relationship. It's all about the heart attitude, baby. What if you use a thick enough condom and don't actually 'touch' the partner? Is that considered sex or just a rather deep rubber gloved handshake?

Sheeesh, rubbing uglies allows a righteous marriage annulment and then allowable remarriage? pfft. Of course, even if you can't find the loopholes for remarrying before an ex does the hippidy dippity with someone else, you can always ask for forgiveness for your 'mistake' and move on.

Oh and I love the ten virgins story - The five wise and five unwise virgins who had lamp issues - the dude ends up with FIVE wives! A New Testament justification of polygamy!

Ezekiel 23:20 (NIV) - There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.


I saw a documentary on National Geographic channel about a sexually promiscuous tribe who really don't seem to have a problem with sex outside of marriage. They marry but they also share the love around and don't 'seem' to have a problem with it. What I am asking is, is that immoral? No one gets hurt and it's just a fact of life for them. I guess I am again asking, is it the rule itself that has labelled it as immoral? If the rule was never there then would it be wrong? If we were raised in a culture where adultery was acceptable for both men and women, would it still be immoral?