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 might be going too far, (and I am definately going to Hell for this), but it’s funny, right?

If this isn’t polytheism, what do you call it? I mean it seems to be more than one God to me….

When I saw this image, I quickly found myself able to relate to it. I’m sure many atheists have been hit with something to this extent. So much for being morally superior… The thing is, atheists are also guilty of this. I’ve even seen this tendancy in myself to take this approach. Really it gets us nowhere. Screaming that somebody is an idiot or a dumbass won’t convince anybody, it will just enrage them. Discussions should atleast have some class to them if anybody wishes to be successful.

What I believe to be one of the funniest billboards ever, is attracting all kinds of controversy.

How awesome is that? Sadly, a good Christian in New Zealand didn’t agree.

Within hours of the billboard being erected outside the Anglican church of St Matthew’s in the City, in central Auckland, it had been attacked by a man who clambered on to the roof of his car to smear brown paint over it.

The thing is, this was put up by the church. They are trying to get people to rethink their ideas on God. It’s just a parody of those who would take every passage in the Bible as literal truth. As you can probably guess, some Christians do not see it that way.

Among leading critics was Lyndsay Freer, a spokesman for the Catholic Church, who said: “This is disrespectful and offensive to all Christians.

“It’s flying in the face of our 2,000-year-old beliefs,” she said.

Maybe the problem Lyndsay Freer has is that her ideas are 2000 YEARS OLD. If you haven’t changed your mind recently, are you sure you still have one?

Personally, I think this is pretty funny. There is only one other billboard I’ve seen recently that’s made me laugh.

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.