Another Victory for Satan!

Okay, everyone's probably heard that gay/lesbian marriage is now legal in all 50 states. So much hoopla,  and all for what? All because people want to be treated equally? Truly bizarre, isn' it? And of course, now we need to be concerned that the "sanctity of marriage" is in grave danger. What I mean is, prepare yourself to see thousands and thousands of Christian husbands and wives lining up in divorce court(try to block out the fact that Christians had the highest divorce rate before this latest decision).

Yes, it's true, a percentage of my fellow male Americans are evidently secretly scared that certain male anatomy is really scrumptious after all.

This proves my hypothesis: Satan is GAY!

The Dregs of Religion

In order for the idea of "extreme" or "extremist" to have any meaning, you'd need examples of things or people that are ordinary. The reason being, you'd need ordinary to be able to show the contrast between "ordinary" and "extreme". This is just common sense.

Thus, the entirety of a group of people, by definition, cannot be "extremist". It makes zero sense, and so, when Christians and Muslims say, "We're not all extremists!", they are stating the obvious. Non-theists and those who speak out against religion already know that not all religious people are extremist nut-jobs. So, when/if you hear someone say this, feel free to point this out to them.

Moving on, the fastest growing religion is, you guessed it....non-religion. There's a pattern, though, and I can attest to this pattern, based, both on my own deconversion, and also having had literally thousands of conversations with others who've left the faith. Of course, there's usually exceptions to every rule, so I don't pretend to know every person's journey out of faith, but by and large, when it comes to Christianity, should doubt and/or cognitive dissonance occur within staunch believers who believe that the Bible is infallible, the process of working through these doubts is gradual and it happens in increments.

For instance, when believers get confronted with scientific facts that directly contradict their Bibles, say, for instance, the age of the universe, one of two things usually happens; either they are forced to look for ways to get around the contradictions, or they cling even harder to their faith---or as some would say, they jam their fingers in their ears and say, "Ah-la-la-la-lah...I can't hear you!".

So, yes, there are millions of Bible-believing Christians who accept the scientific explanation for the age of the universe, as there are millions who accept the theory (and fact) of evolution by natural selection. If, say, someone points out how the doctrine of "Hell" is immoral, the same applies. That is, if the new information causes dissonance in the believer's mind, one of two things will usually happen, which are, they'll either look for ways around it..e.g...say that "Hell" isn't a literal place or attempt to water it down and say it means "annihilation", OR, again, they'll cling to their faith even harder, possibly saying things like, "Sin must be punished!", "We send ourselves to Hell!", and the like.

For many people, myself included, the former approach quells doubts for a while, but it eventually fails, usually because there simply aren't any good reasons to believe that Christianity is true in any objective sense. The bits that we can salvage might be nice for a while, but even those aren't anything exclusive to the Christian faith. In other words, some of us can get "Christian Lite" to "work" for a while, but eventually even that gets ditched because it becomes indistinguishable from plain ol' water.

So, getting to the point-----we can reason together and see that a gradual progression is taking place, a progression by which, eventually, the only religious people left standing will be the most staunch, most dogmatic, most impervious to reason people out there.

And where will the religious "extremists" fit into all of this? It's a no brainer---they'll comfortably fit in right along side the above-mentioned people. What we'll be staring at are the dregs of religion, and I contend that it should be cause for concern. Who will be left to combat this highly foreseeable problem? Who? Will it be the apathetic atheists who hold to weak atheism? Will it be the passive, non-vocal agnostics? Hmmm....    

Ho, Ho, Ho....

Making the rounds again, I encountered a recent post where a Christian blogger attempts to encapsulate the position of former-believers-turned-Atheists, concluding that it "doesn't make sense".

They write...

I too have been having dialogues with atheists, many claiming to have been saved and now being abandoned by a God who doesn’t exist….yeah I know it doesn’t make sense to me either.

Okay, seriously, what in the heck is so difficult about the concept of changing one's mind??? Someone tell me.

Take the following proclamation: "I used to believe in Santa Claus, now I no longer believe."

Well? Can any grownup keep a straight face and tell me that they are actually stumped by that statement? Is anyone saying to themselves, "Hey, that just doesn't make sense!!"????

I seriously hope not. But just in case, let's back up and start from the beginning:

Once upon a time when I was wee-little child, my parents told me a story about a fat, bearded man in a red suit who went around in a reindeer-powered sleigh, leaving all sorts of wonderful toys for the children who behaved. The children who didn't behave wouldn't get any toys. To convince me that this story was true, one December 24th a long time ago when my brother and I had gone to bed for the night, my parents wrapped toys that they had purchased and stuck them under a tree that my mom had decorated. They also stuffed the two stockings that were hung on the mantel. When my brother and I woke up the next day, we were like, "Wow! This is awesome"[or a reaction very similar]

The "clues" had convinced my brother and me that Santa Claus was in fact real. We believed it with every fiber of our being. 

For years, each time December rolled around, this went on. My mom would even get clever and put out cookies and milk for Santa, and lo and behold, when we'd wake up, the cookies and milk would be gone
and trail of cookie crumbs would lead straight to where else? Yes!... the chimney! Wow! I mean, what else could it be, right?

Wrong. See, these are the signs that had me, and millions more children too young to think for themselves, fooled into believing that Santa really existed and that he watches our every move.

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Fast foreword into adulthood and we recognize that the sane and intelligent among us know that Santa has no referent in reality. Santa doesn't exist. We know this. Being the gullible children that we were, we had been duped.

But who, here, would take serious the person who said, "Well, I've been having some dialogues with people, many claiming to have received toys in their stockings, but who now claim that they've been overlooked by a Santa that they no longer believe exists. Yeah, I know, it doesn't make sense to me, either"

Okay, let's get real, can we? Would you not think that the person who utters such things was slightly off his or her rocker?

It's a simple concept: There was once a time that we believed that Santa existed, and now we no longer do. We changed our minds on the proposition that Santa exists, similar to how former believers in "God" changed their minds on the proposition that "God" exists.

In the same way that I don't believe that Santa "abandoned" me, I don't feel that God "abandoned" me, albeit, at the time that I still believed that there was a "God" actually there, yes, I felt "abandoned".

Well, those feelings were misguided and built upon incomplete information. The "feelings" were real, yes; the basis of those "feelings" was not real.

Why don't Christians "get" this? By their "logic", an ex-wife was never really married, to which I can only say, 'Ho, Ho, Ho!'.

Two Cakes

I've been occasionally peering in on the whole "Bruce"/"Caitlyn" internet saga. The way I see it, the "guy" just doesn't feel comfortable as a man; "she" feels comfortable as a woman. Whatever. Do I find it a tad bizarre? Yeah, I do. But we can observe things waaay more bizarre than that in the human species. Let's see, there's people born with two heads, and in rare cases, they actually survive and share a body. There's babies born with no brain, only a brain stem. And list goes on. (I'll come back to this in a minute).

I see Christians chiming in on the "Bruce"/Caitlyn" debate, saying that "God doesn't make mistakes", yadda, yadda, their reasoning of course being that Caitlyn was born a man(Bruce), so becoming a woman is/was therefore a "sin" and goes against what God intended. In other words, God just wouldn't make a mistake as heinous as putting a woman in a man's body. While they say they aren't judging and are only passing along God's perspective on it(never mind that they can never seem to agree on what that perspective is), what I contend is that, um, yeah, most of them are judging, but most revealing, they are wanting their cake and to eat it, too. In other words, time and time again the Christian "solution" is to make two cakes.

Caitlyn does not feel comfortable in her own skin(as the male gender) and never has, and Christians just cannot (refuse to?) wrap their minds around it. They go on about how God doesn't make mistakes, but when they do this, they clearly want things both ways.

Well, folks, something must give---that is, either, a)  God doesn't make mistakes, and therefore, two-headed people, conjoined twins, anephecalic babies, people born with extra limbs, people born with extra chromosomes, transgendered people, and everyone else and all in between, are "perfect" and precisely the way that God intended them, or b) God makes mistakes(a crap-load of them), and therefore isn't "perfect", in which case, he's not worthy of the title "God", and certainly not worthy of my worship or admiration.

Look, if it's "okay" for conjoined twins to feel as though they were born in the "wrong body" and to choose to be surgically separated, then it should be "okay" for people who identify as transgender to feel that they were born in the "wrong body", and thus, choose to be "separated" from that old gender. 'Thoughts?

Illuminating Truth

On a social networking site, the news feed is blowin' up over the whole Bruce Jenner "change" controversy.

Anyhow, I stumbled upon a blog called, "Illuminating Truth", on which the owner/operator authored a recent post, titled: "Bruce Jenner is Not a Hero"

The young female author writes...

 Today, Bruce Jenner appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, dressed as a woman and introducing himself to the world as “Caitlyn Jenner.” You see, he has decided that he is a woman and that by saying it and probably some very extensive surgery, he can make it so. In today’s world, we think gender is something we get to choose, like our career path or our clothes. So, people across the nation have lauded him as a hero. Certainly, this is the current opinion of the masses, but I have to say it. The emperor has no clothes and Bruce Jenner is not a woman.

Now, I don't care to dive into the whole sex vs gender debate or whether or not one can choose such things. No. I want to touch on something else I read, which was in the comments.

The author, who also appears to be a young female, writes:

Just to address something you said, Christians aren’t called to tolerate and accept sin. Yes, we are called to unconditionally love everyone. BUT that means sharing the truth of the Gospel, which means telling people they are sinful and in need of Christ. We don’t believe we’re better than anyone, because we are just as broken and sinful as everyone else. But we’ve tasted and seen the goodness of God and want to share this eternal hope with everyone. We know the way of redemption and are we really loving people if we’re not being completely honest with them? I’m willing to step on a few toes if it means God can save a few souls.

So, this little mini-sermon is just another prime example of why religious indoctrination needs to be stamped out. Here we have a young girl, who, as best as I can tell, is in her early to mid-teens, and she is telling me and the rest of world how we are "sinful" and "in need of Christ". If anyone were to ask her how she would know such a thing, dollars to doughnuts, she would say, "because that's what the Gospel says!". She goes on to say that she, like the rest of her brothers and sisters in Christ, have "tasted and seen the goodness of God", and how she wants to, "share this eternal hope with everyone".

Well, no. What she wants to share is the beliefs that she was force-fed for most of her young life, which in all likelihood, started when she was in diapers. What we're talking about here is some good ol' fashioned religious indoctrination. Part of that indoctrination process, an integral part - in fact, a part so integral that the Christian meme would not survive without it - is the belief that if they don't show others this supposed "Truth" of theirs, aka, spreading "The Word", that this somehow means they aren't being loving.

Well, young lady, it might begin to look loving if you could actually demonstrate that what you believe has a referent in reality. But as it stands, it just makes you look like a little self-righteous bigoted robot, repeating what your parents and Sunday school teacher taught you. I need that kind of "love" like I need four flat tires. In fact, until/unless you or any other Christian can provide some compelling, extra-biblical evidence that I am in need of "saving", your "good news" would be on equal ground with a scenario in which I saw you walking down the sidewalk, and like a linebacker, and I came running up behind you and shoved you into a wall. And when you ask, "Hey!?...why'd you do that?", I would answer, "Because!... there's an evil imp driving a big invisible bus around town, and he just about ran you over! I saved you because I love you!"

Argument from False Analogy

When theists and non-theists discuss/debate, it is common for them to use analogy in an attempt to better understand each other's position. An analogy is an inductive type of argument, so, while analogies don't prove anything(nor are they meant to prove anything), they can be very helpful in demonstrating to others what we believe to be true, and why.

In my last post about Calvinism and how I entered into a discussion with a Calvinist blogger, the conversation that was taking place on this person's blog came to a swift end with little to no common ground being achieved. Of course, this isn't entirely shocking, because when dealing with *people who have convictions, specifically, religious and/or spiritual convictions, the chances that we will change their minds are practically zilch.

*people will invariably say, "Gee, boomslang, it seems like you have a conviction, too". Well, I can sort of understand why they might think that, but ultimately, I don't fit that description, because I spent 2/3rds of my life on the other side. So, in other words, I changed my mind once, and I'll do it again under the right conditions. And yes, it was peering in on discussions just like these that changed my mind.


A lot of times when we blog and we feel that we've reach a dead end in certain discussions, we may start a new post in an attempt to encapsulate and/or recap our positions. Well, this is precisely what the aforementioned blogger has done, here:

http://susanflutterbys.blogspot.com/2015/06/gods-timing-and-gods-will-vs-mans-will.html


In a brand new post, this woman, henceforth, Susan, has attempted to re-address the contentions I raised regarding the internal contradiction between an omniscient God who knows the future, and a merciful God who, in the Calvinist's case, has something called "Irresistible Grace".

Susan writes....

The Bible likens the believer's relationship to a child and a Father. A child can demand all kinds of things at every whim or fancy, but does that obligate the father to give in to the child at that moment of the request? 

The short answer is "no", the father is not required to give into the child's every demand.

Now, with that out of the way, Susan's use of analogy is inapt. Her analogy is incongruent with her faith; it doesn't coincide with the (supposed) relationship between man and God as described in the bible. It's not analogous. It just isn't.

In order for Susan's analogy to be truly analogous, the child in her analogy would have to be in grave danger of some sort. {This grave danger would represent the biblical "hell"}

Next, the father in Susan's analogy would have to know that the child is in grave danger, and further, this father would have to refuse to act, and I reiterate, REFUSE TO ACT on the child's behalf until/unless the child asks to be saved from the grave danger. {This would represent how the biblical God sits hidden in the clouds with arms folded, knowing that his (supposed) children are in grave danger of being tossed into a "lake of fire"}

Now, the sane and compassionate among us know that it is absolutely, positively never okay to sit idly by when our children are in grave danger. Yes, we occasionally teach our children lessons by letting them make their own mistakes, but no parent knowingly lets their child make the mistake of doing something that will get them burned alive. No parent sits back and smugly says, "I might save you, or I might not, but if I do, it will be on my own time!"

It is for these very reasons that I contend that each and every one of you, including Susan, are a better parent(or would make a better parent) than the God described in Bible, the very God that Susan attempts to defend with her "father/son" analogy.

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Moving on to "God's Timing", etc., Susan attempts to reconcile a God who acts in time(His own time, according to her), and a God who, by a process known as "election", picks and chooses who he will save and who he will not, and this has also failed. Remember, Susan's God has already determined who he will save and who he will let suffer in "Hell", and according to Susan's Calvinist faith, this election process took place before time ever existed, described by John Calvin himself as, before the foundation of the world.

 Did you catch that? Before the foundation of the world.

So, right this second as you are reading this, the God that Susan worships knows who he has elected and who he has not elected. He knows who's bound for "Heaven" and who's bound for "Hell". He KNOWS.

Thus, for those of us who actually value things like reason and logic, we know that Susan's version of God, a God who has a knowledge of the future, carries some very serious implications. One of the more obvious implications is that God cannot change his mind. No amount of "irresistible grace" is going to matter if God has already decided that I'll die an Atheist.

Thus, when Susan ministers to her readership about how God does things on his own time, etc., etc., it directly contradicts her Calvinist faith.

Let's have a look at John Calvin's own words:

"All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death."  

So, there it is in unambiguous, crystal clear language.

Susan?

More damning:

It is categorically stated by the principle founder and developer of Christian Theology, later, Calvinism, that it is God's Will that some people be created for the sole purpose of an eternal existence of hell fire and damnation. Preordained death.

I really have to ask how people like Susan sleep at night. But alas, that's what religious faith is for----it allows us to believe what we know deep down isn't true.