Bible Warning label

Chapter Nine; MY TEAM COMES TO PLAY part thirty-six

Of course I would insist that any course on world religion or religion in general have a section on atheists. It is clear that the atheist community has something to say about a great many number of subjects. Everything from climate change to fair housing, political corruption, good business policies, how the wars are being conducted, public funding of religious based organizations, equal rights for all Americans and so forth.

Keep in mind that while many atheists may actually take interest and have views on these and a great many more subjects the views held can be quite diverse. In Sam Harris' book The End of Faith, he makes great points about good reasons to minimize the influence of religion and why it should be minimized as much as possible. He spends a great deal of time dealing directly with Christianity, Islam and touching on Judaism and other faiths. But near the end of the book where he is trying to make his case for ending faith he slips out of the garden and begins trying really hard to justify a form of mysticism that separates the Conscience and objective awareness and the duality nature of our conscience existence.

I feel that Harris is either trying to hard to tie in a eastern philosophical view or exert his belief in some sort of a mystic world. While Harris went to some great lengths to try to make the connection to human happiness at the end of the book but he fails to make the step by step link cited in his book that, “spiritual experience, ethical behavior and strong communities are essential for human happiness.”

I would say that to a degree I found this distressing as he seemed to be endorsing a version of a spiritual nature possibility a forum of Buddhism. This however seemed to be the point of his book since he ends the main section of the book with his title. I would have to conclude that the end of faith would lead to a spiritual nature.

This is an example for me that atheists can agree with one another most of the time but have serious disagreements about other subjects. I thank Harris greatly for his book as it has done much for promoting a positive and a more concise view to the general public of what many atheist see as what is wrong with religion and why religious adherents can be use to hid more radical beliefs within the same general belief system. While the typical Methodist may disagree with abortion, it was that religious protection afford to the more radical Christian groups such and Operation Rescue and others that led a person like Scott Roeder to shoot and kill Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas while Tiller served as an usher at his Lutheran church. Roeder's radical views found a home in the radicalism of such organizations though I understand that he was almost universally condemned by even the abortion opponents. At least at the time. If some fellow Christian was to come against the views of Roeder, Roeder's defense could be something as simple as, “You don't understand what god wants to happen to Tiller.”

Statements like this in a religious context cannot be disputed. Yet I continue to be amazed by the religious adherents who will over and over again say that “they” are the only ones that has the “truth.” I would not expect to hear this if I was to speak about my objections to Harris' conclusion as I mentioned earlier. I feel as reasonable people Harris would at least attempt to listen to my reasons for disagreeing with him until he either determined I had no knowledge or comprehension of what he was talking about or he was able to see my perspective or some other alternative. Many believers also feel that if they were to loose their faith that they would have been a fool for all their life in which they based their actions upon their religion. I can see this but it brings to mind a story I heard where a researcher into some concept made a discovery breakthrough and when he did the presentation of the concept one professor that had been looking into an alternative view for several decades stood up in the audience and told him that he was thankful to him for reveling the errors of his ways. Then the professor led the applause for the presenter. I use this example to show that having accurate information is the goal of the rational thinker. While to the adherent, faith is the goal. So to destroy the faith is to destroy their world.

That is one great advantage to being a skeptic vis-a-vis an atheist. Disagreeing with each other and vigorous debate is a keystone of education and knowledge. But the acquisition of new reality based knowledge in religions either causes them to split, have war, or modify into a new belief system to accommodate the new reality. Believers that are convinced by themselves or by others that the actions they take in the name of their religion are right in spite of how they cause harm to their fellow man will stop at nothing to reach their goals. The actions that require one to have faith, rule out reason as faith rules out science. After all, “God” cannot have his followers second guess their actions or purposes with reason, logic, facts and science.

According the the book Atheists, Atheists are much more likely to support causes that have nothing to do with their belief system when it indicates an injustice. An atheist is also a more honest person than a person which holds dogmatic beliefs or are of a right wing mentality. There were other somewhat surprising but somewhat confirming results in the book that show atheists not only to be more honest and more self aware of the state of their behavior and mental state but are also more critical of people that both share and do not share their opinions. I would have to contend that this is in of itself a good definition of being a skeptic. If only the adherents in the religions were able to or encouraged to question those that provide the answers openly instead of having the same dogmatic message yelled into their brains or chanted week after week until they are mind numbed, we might have a much more peaceful and advance planet to live on. To wrap up this section I would like to just add;

GO ATHEISTS! YOU'RE NUMBER 1!

Coming Next Time;

Chapter Nine; FUNDAMENTALISTS, THE BIBLE IS NOT INEERENT part thirty-seven

Chapter Eight; THE BEST TEAM IN THE WORLD part thirty-two

Without a doubt Christianity is the largest team in the world. God has so blessed this religion that it can now be represented by hundreds of dogmatic denominations. Spanning from The Russian Orthodox Church to Shakers to Jehovah Witness to Episcopal to Westboro Baptist Church and all the variation in between. According to the website adherents.com Christianity makes up about 2.1 billion of the planets population.
Coming in at number two, but gaining fans fast, is the religion of Islam. They are made up of a bit more cohesive group since the only way you can really understand it is to learn a 1400 plus year old language that is suppose to be God's special way he talks to the rest of the billions of people on the planet. [ Just an aside, It seems God would have wrote this in the most commonly used language in the World. Or at least did it in multiple languages at the same time.] I am sure that what we call English did not even exist that long ago.

This in of itself brings in difficulties with the words of The Qur'an. First the mere concept of using words to transmit meaning to other humans is one of the poorer methods that can be used. The closer a person is to the person talking to them the more likely they are to understand the words that are being told to them. Face to face discussions are the best. And we all know how bad those can be. But they help to see the facial expressions of the person plus you can ask questions to make sure the message is received properly. Next would be a visual or recorded message. Again the receiver of the message would be able to see the facial expressions of the person speaking but not ask questions of them.

Other better ways of communication than text include the phone, audio messages and pictures. All of these have advantages over simple text communications. Most people have experienced the situation when reading a message and having to ask the person that wrote the note to help decipher the message. That is just a level one transmission of a message. Imagine how much more chances for errors in understanding as the distance from the person creating the message increases in both space and time to the reader. Of course this is an allegorical example but one that we know for certain is that through time words develop more and different meanings. My own language, English, would not be at all recognizable to me as not only did the words have different meanings but the characters to write the words used a different alphabet at that time. English started out using a runic alphabet. At the time Muhammad was getting his dictation lessons from the Angel Gabriel anything written in what we would call English would be mostly unreadable to Today's readers. For an example try reading Beowulf in the original form.

So this is one area that the users of Arabic have an handicap with and hence with The Qur'an itself. Common sense would indicate the passage of time would change the words and meanings of words from the original text. Even if this text was kept as accurate as possible. The passage of time would lead readers of The Qur'an to have a more modern and hence different meanings of this work of ancient literature. One could argue that if this message was so important to have accurate for all time for the salvation of humanity, the best way to do it would be in the age of modern media where much more than written text could be used to enhance and help make the message truly timeless and clear. After all, an all powerful God should be able to save people that have already died too. No need to risk getting the message wrong by the silly humans that God created. This way God could really be his own man and run the whole production of the message from start to finish.

Anyway, the Muslims have their own sects and divisions as well but due to the language thing it keeps them a bit more on track than Christianity. But even with that in mind there are more than a dozen dialects of Arabic. Some of these speakers are not able to converse with one another while speaking the same language. That would be as if talking to a person from England couldn't understand the English that a person from Texas or South Africa was speaking. But if you wondered how one becomes a Muslim all you have to do is say; “There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet.” Oh, I think you have to say it in Arabic for it to really count though.

Some of the more common division in Islam include the Shiite and Sunnis. From there you have divisions that include Al-Quada, Hamas, Sufis, Druze and other religious and political Islamic groups.

This group is indeed a go getter when they take the field. They have a special way of governing where they can get enough control to be a government. They invoke sharia law. This special law would be like Christians going back to the Old Testament and carrying out the laws of Leviticus and the rest of the Old Testament. There team believes that Allah is so worried that his faithful male followers are so unable to control their minds when it comes to women that he must have all woman that wish to avoid being raped cover up themselves from head to toe except for their eyes and hands and feet.

I don't know about how powerful Allah is but I have been reading his book and it seems to say he is pretty strong. One would think that a God that can assure 40 to 72 virgins after you die for him would have no problem having his male followers control themselves around women that are naked or any other level of clothing off or on. I wouldn't think that Allah would let that slip his mind when making his literary masterpiece in the desert with the Angel Gabriel.

But on this team uniforms are very important, one would go as far to say life and death for the women that subject to the dogma of Islam. I am not sure if there is a certain color they have to be but I have seen both light blue and black. I would think the Detroit Lions would fit in well with this color scheme. This particular religion is such a slave to fashion, or lack there of, will even hold women that are not from their religion to the same insane standards as the woman that believe in their religion. (See the section DOES ALLAH REALLY CARE? REALLY? in part twenty-seven.)

So the Muslin world has about 1.1 billion to 1.5 billion adherents around the world. Most, of course, are in the Middle East. They also have a large number of adherents in southwest Asia and growing across Europe also. Islam adherents want to have the entire world either become adherents or die. At least their goals are clear enough. Of course this comes at different levels of fortitude of the adherents themselves. But The Qur'an teaches that the eventual position of the infidel is to convert or submit to Islam. The unbeliever is not highly regarded in the religion of Islam. 

Coming Next Time:

BELIEVE WHAT? part thirty-three

 

Chapter Three; THE RISE OF SCIENCE part seven

As mentioned before, the level of my religious experiences could fill many pages. So, while there is much more to be said, most is going to be skipped for now. I am just going to touch on a five main areas of why Christianity lost its hold on me.

1.The age of rocks on the Earth and the amount of time it takes for light to travel through space couldn't be rectified with text in the Bible. The best answer I received was, “God put all the things there when he created The Universe.” This seemed like a very poor answer. I never accepted it. There are other Christians that have issue with the reality of “light flight” and the Bible. Needless to say, you cannot reasonably believe the Sun is nine light minutes from Earth and that the Earth is 6,000 to 12,000 years old. These two facts are totally incompatible with each other. Please read The Greatest Show on Earth for a much better explanation of this idea.i One could always use the improper translation answer. That the word translated as to mean an indeterminate amount of time. This could work for some people, but the legions of literalistic adherents cannot have a day any more or less than 24 hours long. I really wanted to learn Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Aramaic at one time in my life. I was certain that if I learned those languages, I would be able to know the true scriptures and not have to deal with translating the text into English.
2.There was also the “Bible” answer; in Psalms 90:4. The verse says, “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.”ii This is one I liked a lot. It gives a believer basically any amount of time they wish. Prior to hearing about Creationism and Intelligent Design, I figured that the Earth was about 12,000 to 15,000 years old. [Don't ask how I figured that out.]
3.Followers of Jesus just didn't seem to get the idea to follow Jesus. It was amazing how someone, including myself, would know what to do, according to the Bible, and darn well not do it. The Bible has all sorts of rules and plans that you can use to guide your life so you can feel good about being a follower. Inversely, they can know something not to do and darn well do it. The knowledge that forgiveness of sins was just a prayer away can be a good way out of doing what one thinks is sin. There was a sermon that I recently heard where the pastor was saying that prior to being killed in prison, Jeffery Dalmer converted to Christianity. He went on to say that there were both Christians and secular people that decried his conversion since he had lived such a heinous life. He said that there shouldn't have been any problem with a person like Dalmer becoming a Christian since God's love could forgive all sins. I told him that I thought his sermon was giving people the license to do anything evil and use god as a way to justify it to themselves. He couldn't understand the relationship and said I was missing the point of his sermon, which I wasn't. He just failed to recognize that it is moderate preachers like him that help radical adherents who “whorenize” the Bible to people that they would otherwise have no concern about these radical issues what-so-ever.
4.In the past, I had participated in many door to door evangelical missions. I even led people to Jesus. [Sorry everyone.] What was so hard about following Jesus was trying to obey the seemingly impossible rules that were provided for a good godly life. It was truly a conflict with my human nature to try to follow these archaic rules. Of course, volumes have been written about this. One book I read many years ago was Hinds Feet in High Places, by Hannah Hurnard. But there are others and they are easy to find. The amount of Christian fiction fills several rows in just about any bookstore in America. Most of the stories make the point that “we” cannot know God's will and that it will all work out in the end. The worse part was to see the opportunity come and the adherents let them slip on by. This didn't have the effect that many presume. Instead of seeing it as a lack of faith or a weak spirit of the person, I saw it as the weakness of God's Holy Spirit to do what the Bible says it can do. Eventually, I began looking back over the areas of the Bible where I gave latitude in the inconsistencies. A world wide flood? Oh really? All people at one time all spoke the same language? What was that language and how do we know this for sure. When did this happen? Plus, what happened to that tower? So, the Earth stood still and then started up again just because someone raised their arms? Let me get this right? Just his arms? These must be some huge arms. I can only think about all the havoc it cause on the entire face of planet. Walls fell down due to the acoustic sounds of trumpets and people yelling? I don't think so. Walking on water? Turning water into wine? Healing the blind with mud? Dying for sins of others? Two of every animal on Earth on your boat?
5.This was a big deal in my escape from religion: If we are governed by freewill then God is either impotent or vindictive and cannot or will not help man. If there is no freewill then He is a liar, an antagonist, a provoker, arrogant, manipulative, sadistic, petty, uncaring, sexist, racist, murderer that should be the first to suffer the ills that the Bible claims are from his, so called, creation. Why? Because He creates humans with the full foreknowledge that he will be rejected and will torture us knowing we are helpless to fight His will. If not that, He is totally powerless to influence our lives as to the reality of His existence. In this case, He is not worthy of worship any more than a piece of dirt. Look, we have enough fairy stories that we can enjoy without them controlling our lives. We don't need to continue to look upon these fables as anymore real than Peter and The Wolf , Cinderella , The Iliad, Paul Bunyan, Hazel and Gretel or any other of the thousands and thousands of work of fiction. If faith means to believe in ridiculous stories, in spite of the real world evidence, that they are not real, then there is really nothing to believe in.

These are just five areas that touch on some of the topics I found that faith in the supernatural had lost any meaning to me in reality. I hope that if you still believe in God that you would think about these things so that you can move from the land of fantasy to the wide Universe of reality.

xi Chapter Four: The Greatest Show on Earth Evidence for Evolution By Richard Dawkins ©2009 Free Press
xii International Bible Societyhttp://www.tniv.info/bible/passagesearch.php?passage_request=Psalm%2090:4&tniv=yes  © 2009 International Bible Society
xiii http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/index.php?action=getVersionInfo&vid=45