Last night humankind's savior was born!

A child born of man and god to "repair the breach" between God and humanity.

A being as perfect as God his Father. Who is simultaneously, God the Father. A divine being who is perfectly created like Adam – the first man, that somehow in his perfection was easily fooled and tempted to sin.

But never mind that, Jesus is now here. He has come to die for our sins, because God so loved the world he had to send his only begotten son. Of course, instead of sending chattel, God could just forgive – no, blood must be had and be had from the veins of the innocent.

Therefore today, celebrate the birth of the divine-chattel. And in a few months you can celebrate his torture death and rejoice in the blood and torture that is God's love you've come to respect, admire, and uncritically approve of.

And you dare to accuse atheists of arrogance and being ethically inferior?

Please.

Many people across the theological spectrum believe that when they die that their consciousness, or soul - the intangibles which make them tick, will be reunited with their bodies at some later date. Whether that body is a physical body, or an "astral-body" (a  "spiritual" projection of a physical body), the soul will have a new vehicle after death to animate it. 

A life after this life. A life that will never end. A life without pain. A life without trial. A life where you'll only make good decisions because there will be no bad stuff to corrupt you otherwise. A place where the soul shall never become permanently extinguished and will survive incorruptible through one eternity to the next.

It is the afterlife, of course.

Christianity posits such an afterlife, provided you believe the right things. If you don't believe the right things, you'll suffer an eternity in another, less happier address. A place to be tortured by fire for eternity - all by a loving God alleged to be omnibenevolent – the infinite expression of goodness and benevolence. Yet Hell, so egregiously inhumane, that many Christians I know, do not even wish the unbeliever in, despite their belief and tacit approval of this policy by a god they worship who exhibits less humanity, less love, than them.

My grandma died on Friday, December 5th, 2008. She lived a long, long life well into her late eighties and is survived by 9 surviving children, countless grandchildren and great grand-children.

Today is her funeral. Both Liberal Hammer and I will be attending. We are brothers, after all.

While my grandma did not have much material or financial wealth when she died, she had a very successful life. The very fact that she had a natural death is a success in itself, if you stop to consider the fecundity of life and the fecundity of death which unremittingly governs us all. You are more likely to die due to lack of resources, or succumb to disease or senility. Life is inherently hostile to itself.  A life, or universe, that has "precisely the properties we should expect if these is, at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."

My wife's mother was not so lucky to live into old age. My wife's mother died of cancer in her early forties. Even worse, my wife's brother died when he was just barely an adult - and frankly this makes me angry. I'll never get to meet them, or know them. They will never be able to take apart of our lives, nor I them, and get to form friendships and bonds with my side of the family.

I am happy and proud of my grandma. To the very end she was full of humor and verve, even though these last few years she was sometimes grouchy and difficult to deal with.

In short, her life is to be celebrated. And today I will celebrate the contributions she made to my life and to the great-grandchildren she raised as her own with unswerving dedication and unrelenting love.

As many of you know, I am an atheist. I have not been convinced of the supernatural, and as a logical consequence, the afterlife I do not believe in. I will never see my grandma again. She will never see me again. This is why her commitment she made to her great-grandchildren I find that much more admirable. It was the meaning she brought to her life.

The "meaning of life" is no great secret to those that don't seek it in ancient texts and moral codes of less civilized men and from less civilized societies. You bring meaning to life by living it. Hopefully, you'll do it by minimizing your impact on it and have fostered a better world to live in after you've occupied it, like my grandma.

I've heard the afterlife described as a never ending baseball game. Imagine a game with one inning after another for eternity. A never-ending groundhog's day of sport. Three up. Three down. Forever. Sisyphus at bat for eternity.

That's not much of an existence I'd want to be assigned to forever and ever.

The very fact that life ends makes it crucial and urgent.  Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's wife, stated about her husband that they lived "with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is" and that they "never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. . . . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind. . . ."

That's is why a afterlife beliefs only devalues the only life we have. In some cases, like the 9/11 bombers, the afterlife motivates people to do terrible, terrible things.

Life is like those nine, crucial innings of America's favorite past-time.

There is no afterlife. There is no scientific evidence and there are no philosophical arguments which make the survival of one's consciousness possible.

Draw your loved ones close. Realize this is the only time you have. Make every day crucial and urgent.

You've got nine innings, and if the game is tied or not at the close of the nineth, it is still all you'll get.

I love you Grandma Rische.

Goodbye and thanks!

It's painfully apparent to many of you that I do not hide my lack of belief in the supernatural, god(s), and outright deny BibleGod. Actually, on these boards I am quite strident about my lack of belief and in my ridicule of other specious beliefs like big foot, visiting extraterrestrials, 911 conspiracies, compassionate conservatism, creationism and other woo. Yes, that's correct - belief in God is in the same category as these other crank beliefs.

For this - as you would expect, I get some attention for blogging in a community that is largely conservative Christian and historically Republican. This attention is usually from the soul-winner, busy-body Christian that assumes that I would want to spend an eternity with them. I am not complaining though. We non-believers and religious freethinkers, up until recently, have been a silent minority. To paraphrase PZ Meyers, it's about time we push our arms out and made room for ourselves in this society.

Invariably, the soul-winner fails to have a convincing counter-argument against the incoherence of their beliefs. Instead, the tactic they resort to is to prey on me. I mean, pray for me. Where no evidence or sound reasoning is offered, emotional blackmail is substituted. As insulting as this is, I am still open to the possibility that BibleGod will intervene and answer the Christian's prayer.

Awhile back, I was informed by different Christians on this board that they would pray for me. I challenged them to do so.

Here's an email conversation between myself and a Christian from June. I'll pick up the discussion where the attempt to convince me by prayer begins. I've annotated some of the responses for brevity and clarity sake and will keep the identity of the emailer anonymous. The busy-body is in bold. I'm in regular.

(NOTE TO READERS: I read the Bible literally like a Christian fundamentalist and take the view that the Bible is inerrant because it is God's word. In this respect, I am a fundamentalist. By doing so, I lay waste to the argument that I am interpreting, which liberals and moderates are so guilty of doing. IMO, fundamentalist Christian are the only true Christians - which makes them hostile to a free, civil society.)

Off to pray. And yes, I do pray for nonbelievers like you. You may have a serious problem if God and Jesus do in fact exist. Can't wait until the end, it will be too late for all.

Good luck with your prayers! Hey, instead of praying for all apostates like myself, just pray for me to come to God. When it fails, could you tell me why God has not intervene to reveal himself to me like Paul on his way to Damascus? Yes, I will end up in hell. But your going to Muslim Hell anyway as you believe that Jesus is divine. Whereas you reject Islam's threat of Hell, I go one step further and reject both. And don't throw free-will in the mix, as I will answer that if I don't not have full knowledge of God's existence, then how can I truly be making an informed choice?

I did pray for you again today. But God has come to you. You just won't accept it or admit it. I will go to no ones hell. I know I have a place with God in heaven.

Prayer. I guess your not a true Christian. Shucks...

How would you know Matt?

Well, for the Bible tells me so. "I tell you therefore: everything you ask and pray for, believe that you have it already, and it will be yours. ..(Mark 11:20-25). I have to ask you, where is your faith in Jesus? Only by having a true faith, will Jesus words as reported by Mark come true. We know that God never lies and that everything in the Bible is the inspired word of God. "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (2 Tim 3:16) Otherwise, all of the Bible is unreliable. Christians can not pick and choose what of the Bible is allegory.

But you already know of this. I'm sure you read your Bible and not just have it didactically feed back to you at Sunday only.

Since I have not come to your faith and threats and allusions of eternity in Hell "You may have a serious problem if God and Jesus do in fact exist." and after apologizing for calling me a liar, you go on to say in the course of this discussion "You just won't accept it or admit it."

You're way off base with this one.

I'm off base? I based my answer in the Bible and from what other apologists tell me. I was a Christian once. If you reject my answer as to why you are not a true Christian, then please take it up with God - he wrote the Bible.

My answer speaks volumes and speaks for itself.

I see. Well, it speaks to you, but to you only. Too bad that you can not write volumes based upon that "speaking" as well. I was looking forward to a good Biblical debate. :( 

Well, keep praying.

My reason is the one you never thought of: you don't want to learn about God and I'm not the type to shove it down your throat. But even more important is the fact that I know very few atheists and have had few, if any, conversation like this. I could see shortly on that you have no intention of believing in God. And it's not my job to go further to convince you. The nonbelievers I have met were all through our church. And they converted due to what I said has already happened to you: A sign from God.

I would love to learn about God. But first you must present your best evidence in order to convince me. You sitting on the other side of the internets stating that I've already received this revelation is silly. Did God communicate to you what this revelation was? If so please tell me.

You also assume that I have not tried to learn about God. My wife thinks I am obsessed with god, but really I'm obsessed with religion. It's a variety of human expression and experience and its been nearly the only way to speculate on the supernatural. Well, until science came along and we were able to determine more about the universe we live in.

Also, it makes me quite angry that you keep stating that I am lying in some way.

Turning from this, if you would like to present your best evidence or argument for God, please do. Feel free to cite the Bible or any other exegesis you like. If you would like to present your personal experiences, you may do so as well. However, what would be the point if you presented your personal experience only after I came to god? Is your evidence from personal experience not convincing enough? Apparently it must not be, and you seem to realize this anyway. Functionally, you make an appeal to blind faith. I am asking you to justify that faith on reason.

I really appreciate you taking the time to reply to me. If the courage of your convictions can not weather my objections, then perhaps you should a) refrain from implying that I am lying b) threatening my soul with hell, and c) give me your best argument. 

I never called you a lair in these recent emails or suggested it.

You are quite unreasonable and I've been more than patient with you.

These are examples where you imply that I am a liar:

01. "Hi Matt...I did pray for you again today. But God has come to you. You just won't accept it or admit it."
02. "I could see shortly on that you have no intention of believing in God..."
03.  "And they converted due to what I said has already happened to you: A sign from God."

You keep asserting that some proof has come to me and that I am denying it. So am I a liar or not?

And in this quote you try to extort me with the threat of Hell:

"You may have a serious problem if God and Jesus do in fact exist."

There is nothing that I said about Christian belief that is not in concordance with what Christians largely believe.  

The reasoning of the busy-body is transparently hollow. When this emotional blackmail fails - the busy-body believer is left alienating the person he hopes to convince and possibly convert.

In nearly all facets of life we demand evidence.

Existence of big foot? Sure, possible - but a carcass of the animal would be conclusive proof. On the scale of unbelievable claims, big foot is on the lower end. Immaterial beings with no testable or identifiable characteristics that exist outside the normal universe and not beholden to its physical laws is on the extreme upper end. Off the scale, actually.

Yet, when the non-believer requests evidence for the existence of God, we are told by the believer to expect none and that faith without evidence is sufficient enough. It is this type of faith which is further reinforced as a virtue. In fact, all that is being reinforced is ignorance.

It was this pursuit of evidence that I had requested nicely of this busy-body what this "sign from God" was. Perhaps he did receive a revelation. That would be exciting! I would have evidence. And the more explicit this believer could be, the more likely that a god could exist.***

Instead, I was insulted and my non-existent afterlife threatened for a very reasonable request. 

Any they wonder why they fail?

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

***There are caveats to this however. Failed explanation of one thing does not necessarily make another explanation more plausible. When this plead is made, we formally have an argument from ignorance. More on that later.
 

The end?

Nope. Even though the end of the world has been prophesied since Daniel was first penned, and later given illustrative reality by the Mad Monk John's ranting polemic against the Roman Empire. For some reason, that book is some great revelation? By the way, isn't funny that many, many Christians pray for the mother-of-all holocausts? Unfortunately, for the eschatologist in our midsts – the world has not ended.

In the meantime, there is news in the world that is hopeful, ridiculous, and some that is just plain 'ole despair that makes this rationalist laugh, cringe, and cry.

An Atheist President? A British PM?
Sometimes its damn, right hard to be an atheist in a society of hyper-religiosity. When your not being called a liar to your face, snickered behind your back as arrogant, damned to hell, or discriminated from office... your still one of the most despised minorities in the country. Gays are just as likely to despise you as much as Fred Phelps!

However, every so often this atheist will read something that just makes my day. In light of the debate whether or not to disestablish the Anglican Church, AC Grayling points out several advantages of an atheist PM over a Christian – like Tony Blair.

Any of his observations equally apply to the United States.

• Atheist leaders are not going to think they are getting messages from Beyond telling them to go to war.
• Atheist leaders will be sceptical about the claims of religious groups to be more important than other civil society organisations in doing good...
• Atheist leaders are going to be more sceptical about inculcating sectarian beliefs into small children ghettoised into publicly funded faith-based schools...
• Atheist leaders will, by definition, be neutral between the different religious pressure groups in society, and will have no temptation not to be even-handed because of an allegiance to the outlook of just one of those groups
• Atheist leaders are more likely to take a literally down-to-earth view of the needs, interests and circumstances of people in the here and now, and will not be influenced by the belief that present sufferings and inequalities will be compensated in some posthumous dispensation.
• Atheist leaders will not be tempted to think they are the messenger of any good news from above, or the agent of any higher purpose on earth.

Imagine electing a President who was not a Christian, who did not bend-over-backwards to satiate those that ground their politics in the oracle of their religious beliefs? Perhaps, we could then approach matters with more temporal urgency.

File this one under hopeful.

What's in the Water Joe?
This video has made the rounds on the skeptical blogs for the last couple of weeks.

It's still just too good to pass up.


- Watch more free videos

This gal is the mother-of-all conspiracy theorists. Ever argue against a conspiracy theorist? Frankly, you can not win. Evidence against the conspiracy, in the mind of the person, is also positive evidence of the conspiracy. This goes for every media, 911, global warming, moon-landing, anti-vaccination nut out there.

And you wonder why there is concern by educators and in the business community over the U.S.A not being a leader in math and sciences, while Jesusland relentlessly grips our country in its faith-based pseudoscience?

That aside, I think this video demonstrates the appalling lack of scientific education in our country. Or national priorities have us more invested in the question of whether or not the Decalogue states murder or kill. (Actually its both - depending on what sect's interpretation.)

File this one under ridiculous.

Ask a Sociologist, or a Catholic Priest?

Remember the spinning head of little girl in the Exorcist? My head spins when I read this stuff. Are we to take this Priest seriously? Basically, every social ill is positioned as a repudiation of secularity. Satan, apparently, has dug his cloven heels into modernity, according to this Priest.

"Even heterosexual promiscuity is a perversion; and intercourse, which belongs in the sanctuary of married love, can become a pathway not only for disease but also for evil spirits."

What I love the most about this article, which spun-up my irony alarm:

"Fr. Davies also warns in his book against so-called New Age and occult practices, as well as trendy exercise and "spiritual healing" regimens derived from eastern religions."

Uh, yeah. Which religion believes that when you mumble magic words, bread and wine automagically becomes someone's flesh and blood...that you eat? (See 1215 Latren Council) Which sectarian variety of that same religion allows it's children to die because of the doctrine of faith healing? Trendy exercise? Yeah, Satan figured out that Yoga is a great way to turn the pious Christian away from Jesus. Such is the unintelligibility of faith.

File this one under ridiculous.

What doesn't offend Islam?
Apparently, everything. Birthdays, anniversary's and mother's day. They offend Islam's 'righteousness' according to a Saudi Arabian top cleric, rebuffing the statement made earlier by a lesser religious official.

How righteous can a religion be if it is offended by a Hallmark holiday?

File this one too under ridiculous and despair.