While looking through my Bible the other day, I ran across a phrase I had seen before and questioned. I questioned it so because of how ambiguous it was and the fact that one could very easily see it two separate ways. I’m not saying contradictions and confusion aren’t common in the Bible, but this section in particular made me wonder.

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor,  Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

(Isaiah 9:6 NIV)

Now I see this as being read in two different ways. One from a Christian view and one from a Jewish view. I would guess most(if not al) Christians would read this as a prophecy for the coming birth of Christ. Couldn’t somebody just as easily interpret this as simply a new king of Israel to unite and deliver them? This type of thing was pretty common in the surrounding text. I guess my point is that a work like the Bible is so open to interpretation because of the way it is written. Guess that happens when you have a story written by many different authors across different continents over a long period of time though. Some people would assert that I am grasping at straws here, but I disagree. It is all too common for small things like this to cause great disputes among the believers. There are people blowing each other up due to a disagreement in the meaning of phrases in a collection of stories written long ago. If there was a God, why won’t He just pop in and straighten things out? Throughout the Bible, God has no problem talking with people and making His will crystal clear. Sure it destroys that whole faith principle, but wouldn’t it be worth it to help His people? How do you feel this passage reads? Doesn’t it seem weird that so many things in the Bible seem so prone to easy distortion? I guess I’ll conclude with another fun little bit from the Book of Isaiah:

¹⁵ Whoever is captured will be thrust through;
all who are caught will fall by the sword.

¹⁶ Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes;
their houses will be looted and their wives ravished.

(Isaiah 13:15-16 NIV)

I just find it strange that such a loving God is also such a malevolent dictator. There are plenty of good passages you can find about baby killing, looting, pillaging and the raping of wives. Damn this is beginning to sound like a tale of piracy.

This is the slogan for a new campaign I saw. The folks over at NotJesusFault.com have a nice shirt design displaying an image of Jesus and this phrase.

The message behind it is a good one. I’ll let them explain:

Jesus never intended to found a religion, much less be the object of its devotion.

The followers of Jesus — the disciples and the early Christian Church — made him into something else. The hierarchies of institutional religion made him God; doctrine and dogma distorted Jesus’ identity by making him divine. Church leaders enshrined this exceptional human being as “the only Son of God.”

But he wasn’t.

And it’s not his fault that Christianity has made him out that way. Jesus had nothing to do with the development of Christianity — nor has he had anything to do with the many stances and moral positions the Church has taken over the ages. In general, what has been done in Jesus’ name has been done completely without his knowledge or consent… and long after his death.

But this is clearly not consistent with Jesus’ message. Jesus reached out across different religious traditions to recognize and value each human being. His focus was not on promoting one religious perspective; rather, he emphasized our shared humanity and the interrelatedness of all people.

Jesus sought to unify rather than divide, and his intention was to promote freedom over unquestioning conformity to institutional authority. Jesus never intended to be the “founder” of a religion that would be oppressive and exclusionary.

In other words, Christianity isn’t Jesus’ fault. It’s ours. And, in the end, we’re the only ones who can fix it.

Basically, Jesus was a philosopher. He had no plans to create a religion or anything like that. Today’s Christianity is a perversion of his original teachings. Like they said, this shirt isn’t for the atheist OR the theist cause in particular. It is more about being a better person. Look at all the good and kindness that Jesus spread for inspiration, not some hodge-podge book of hatred. Also, if you buy a shirt 50% of their profit goes to non-religious charity!

This is one of MANY things that just makes me angry. I always overhear things like “Oh we are rasing her Christian”, “this is a Jewish child”. Absolutely bullshit. How the fuck can you decide what a young child is going to think? It just isn’t right. I’m not saying that “atheist child” is alright either. I abhor all forms of indoctrination. Religious/spiritual beliefs aren’t something most people decide lightly and everybody should have a choice. Ideally, I would have children raised Agnostic and when they are old enough let them decide for themselves. Then again, one of the Church’s last weapons is the indoctrination of young children. Religion can act as a bleach that destroys the faculties of logic and reason before they are even developed. Luckily I wasn’t forced to believe anything by my parents. I came to all the conclusions I hold true by myself. It’s only natural for a child to believe all that an adult says, except with Jesus children are never told its make believe like Santa or the Tooth Fairy.

The advertisement put out by the Humanists recently, sums up what exactly what I think. I’d love to see that graphic on some buses in my city.

This is the conclusion to yesterday’s post. If you missed the first part, go back and read it! This is definitely something that is worth your time to read.

Did none of the translators have an agenda that might cause them to falsify a bit on interpretation?  It would always be “For our own good,” of course.  “The ends justify the means” has been used very often in human affairs.  Consider the King James version of the bible.  Because the translators were being paid by King James, could it be that they were careful not to include anything that would offend his majesty?  For example, nothing in the bible addresses the “Divine right of Kings” either pro or con.  Could it be that something was conveniently omitted in this regard?

The facts are that there is not one bit of evidence to support religion and creationism while there are millions of pieces of evidence to support science and evolution.  Similarly, there is no evidence to support a protective, loving god and plenty of evidence to support a random, chaotic universe albeit with some clearly defined laws such as gravity, conservation of energy, and causality.  Even these, as Steven Hawking postulates, may only be local phenomena.

Take the issue of prayer, would an omniscient, omnipotent being cared if we prayed to it or notice the posture we adopted?  That would be is if one of us expected an amoeba to worship us and flex its cell in a certain manner as it did.  Such demands would be unworthy of the deity we are supposed to believe in as ruling our lives.

Another basic tenant of religion is to instill guilt in people for any conduct not specifically approved by that particular creed.  The first area all religions and other repressive organizations attempt to control is sexual conduct.  Perhaps this is because the religionists know that if they control when, where, and how people are permitted sex, controlling the rest is easy.  Sex is the most natural and necessary of human functions and to restrict it is to ensure false guilt and great anguish in people.  One might as well say that breathing is wrong and should be rigidly controlled and permitted only under certain circumstances.

Perhaps a basic part of human nature is a need to feel superior to others.  If so, imposing artificial standards of conduct and then condemning anyone who fails to meet those standards would appeal to many people.  Does religion play well upon this tendency?  It would certainly appear to do so.  It teaches forgiveness and tolerance but practices these virtues only rarely and then only to those whom agree with the other principles of that religion.  The same people that condemn others are very often guilty of the same or worse “sins” themselves.  To quote Robert A. Heinlein, “The only real sin is hurting someone else unnecessarily.  Everything else is invented nonsense.”

If we examine the past and current practices of major religions, we can see that tolerance and acceptance are only given lip service but not practiced.  Take the words of Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham. “Islam is an evil and very wicked religion.”  Not much tolerance or “Christian” love there, is there?  On the other side of the same coin, it is Islamic Mullahs that refer to the United States as “the great Satan” and urge followers to commit suicide bombings.  Neither religion contains much in terms of deeds to inspire people to be better human beings.  Israel, of all nations, should understand the need for a homeland and self-rule for people.  Yet, it has consistently denied the Palestinians the right to the same.  This is toward a people that share much in terms of race and religious background with them; no matter how much both deny it.

In Northern Ireland, Catholics and Protestants have been killing each other for many years even though they are both supposedly “Christian” and obviously are all Irish.  All of this is in the name of “God” as in “God Bless America” or “Got Mit Uns” (the German motto in WW I) and “Allah Akbar,” the universal Islamic credo.  So we are looking at conflicts where both sides are firmly convinced that “God” is supporting their cause and so will smite the infidels.

Having said all that, it is likely there are natural forces in the universe that we do not understand.  The writer, Richard Bach, once wrote an essay that stated the ancient Egyptians could fly.  They had bamboo, paper, linen, and all the components needed to build gliders.  The Nile Valley has good thermals and reliable winds so they could have had gliders that traveled hundreds of miles in their day.  But we know they didn’t because they were ignorant of the laws of aerodynamics even though those laws were as true then as they are now.  They didn’t know, so they didn’t go.

Could it be that there are other natural laws and forces of which we are now ignorant?  Experience in the martial arts has shown me that there are energies in the human body that are not well understood but work all the same.   We have all heard feats like little old ladies suddenly lifting a burning car off of a trapped child.  Physically, this should be impossible, the tendons and muscles of a human should not be able to do this.  But it still happens.  How?  Choose your own interpretation.  I believe it is chi, piranha, psychic energy, or “the force”.  Whatever you call it, some unknown but tangible effect of humans under stress.  Not magic, as the Egyptians would have regarded flight.  Someday, we might understand this as well as we know the laws of aerodynamics.

Today I have a guest post from James Smith. Recently he has been quite active in the comments on another post. His responses frequently featured smart rhetorics and great arguments. The post will be split up over two days as it is quite long, but well worth a read. If you like this, check his blog out.

Reading history, it is apparent that organized religion exists to make it easy for a small group of people to control a larger group.  Organized religion has been responsible for more human suffering, both physical and mental, and death than plagues, natural disasters, and wars. (many of which were about religion)

Consider that most religionists will not allow dissent or debate on their core issues.  If someone does dare disagree, they are invariably shouted down and condemned as “Godless Heathen”, “infidels”, “pagans”, shunned, or even killed.  Is this the command of a loving, protective god or the whim of an immature, vengeful deity?  “For I am a jealous god.”  “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”  But isn’t there only supposed to be one god?

When your position will not allow argument or debate, the problem is not with the debate but with the position.  If you cannot defend your beliefs with facts, you should examine your beliefs and not mindlessly spout what you have been told.  A basic truth in life is that “Beliefs, no matter how sincerely held, do not alter facts.”

Religion does not encourage free speech or thought.  People thinking for themselves and discussing their thinking would be the destruction of organized religion.  Obviously, this cannot be permitted so they have priests, shaman, and clerics to tell us what to think and believe.  To quote H. L. Menken, “I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.”

Even so, people will ignore the most obvious of facts to cling to their illusions.  Think about all the people who still smoke in spite of the often-repeated facts that they are killing themselves and others.  What about drug users?  People still start on drugs even when they have seen horrible examples of famous, wealthy people destroying themselves and even dying from drug use.  Most people believe and do what they want no matter what facts and evidence against it may be.  This one human characteristic can account for the existence of organized religion more than any other.  There is also the human tendency to want to believe there is something that will enable them to overcome their condition without any real effort on their part.  “God will save us if we only pray hard enough.”

Think about this.  If you knew of someone that was aware of a great evil being performed and that person could stop it with no danger or real effort to himself, yet does nothing.  Would you consider him to be as bad as those performing the evil acts?  More than likely, you would.  Yet, that is exactly what all deities do: nothing in the face of great evil and suffering.  Still, we are supposed to consider them to be loving, protective gods.  In human behavior, we call this being “an accessory after the fact” and you can go to prison for it in many countries.

The Christian/Jewish/Islamic tradition is of an omnipotent father figure taking care of each of us.  There is no evidence of this at all.  They all say you must “have faith.”  Does that mean believing in something we know can’t be true?  Then they say they have the torah/bible/koran.  These all were written by men, usually decades or centuries after the time they portray and have been translated many times from many languages.  Are no errors ever made?  Most languages use idioms and allegories that change over time.  Totally understanding these in a language not one’s own and that may no longer be spoken is not possible.  To attempt it is to invite errors of major proportions.  A good example is the English phrase, “putting on the dog” meaning to ostentatiously overdo something.  It is not universally used, even in English.  As a phrase, it makes no sense at all.  A translator, believing it to be the word of God, might assume we are to wear live dogs as part of a religious ceremony.  Admittedly, that makes as much sense as wearing gold robes and miters to “Glorify God.”  Ask yourself, “Would an omnipotent deity need or even desire any glorification from us?”  If there were a god, it appears that rather than being an omniscient, protective being we are seeing a juvenile, vindictive, cruel despot.

I really like this as a symbol for atheism. I’m sure many people have read The Scarlet Letter before. Basically, an adulterer is required to wear a giant red A to show they are an evil sinner. What could better symbolize atheism? We are a group that has been oppressed for centuries and classified as simply evil. Why not come out and proudly display it? Atheists should be proud to be heretics and so called sinners. I appreciate the irony of wearing a giant red A, because in my life I am able to be a sensible person without God.  If anything, atheists need to make their prescence known to be recognized. Visit outcampaign.org for more information. Hopefully I can get an A on a necklace one day to wear… Is there a symbol that you think would better symbolize atheism? Christians have the crucifix, I think we need something to show us as an organized group. Then again atheism is different from a church, the only requirement is disbelief in the supernatural. What do you think?

Well the last one isn’t a job but you get the point.

So what are you?

I see people always with these bracelets on. What WOULD Jesus do? How about in Luke. 14:26 where we are told to hate our family to be his disciple:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.

You will even be rewarded for abandoning your family:

Matthew 19:29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.

Jesus also would solve his problems with some good old fashioned ass kicking. With the weapon of choice, a sword:

Matthew 10:34 Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

In fact, he encourages you to get a sword. Sell your clothes even.

Luke 22:36 He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.”

I’d say its pretty easy to see exactly what Jesus would do. Piss him off, and you are going to get cut. Here is one of my favorite things that Jesus said:

Luke 19:27 But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them–bring them here and kill them in front of me

So all you atheists and sinners, Jesus would happily have you slain. I wonder why all these Christians don’t do so? It says so in their Bible, the infallible word of God. Actually he would kill a lot of people:

You should not let a sorceress live. (Exodus 22:17 NAB)

“If a man lies with a male as with a women, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives.” (Leviticus 20:13 NAB)

Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death.  Such evil must be purged from Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:12 NLT)

Whoever strikes his father or mother shall be put to death. (Exodus 21:15 NAB)

If a man still prophesies, his parents, father and mother, shall say to him, “You shall not live, because you have spoken a lie in the name of the Lord.”  When he prophesies, his parents, father and mother, shall thrust him through. (Zechariah 13:3 NAB)

Because the LORD considers it a holy day, anyone who works on the Sabbath must be put to death.” Numbers 15:32-36

The Bible. Good stuff right there.