Category Archives: Christian Priorities

God’s Wrath (and those who direct it)

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typhoon-phillipines

The idea that natural disasters and death are punishments from God – for whatever we humans have done to offend him – is still with us. As I suggested here, such a notion has been around from the beginnings of religious belief. It, together with its counterpart – that we need to appease the god(s) who so afflict us – is responsible for the genesis of all religion. There are those today whose thinking is wilfully stranded in the ancient world-views of ‘sacred’ texts that embody this dual notion of punishment that’s somehow merited and the need to appease the deity dishing out the punishment.

Here it is expressed recently by bear of little brain, Sam Rohrer, who has it directly from the Lord that he, the Almighty, has turned his back on America because it does not force immigrants to believe in him. America, he says has

changed the historic biblical rules (regarding immigration) … this is a reason why God must discipline our country.

Looney tune Pat Robertson, with his direct hotline to the Almighty, insists that it’s abortion that’s going to bring down God’s wrath:

One day, a righteous, holy God is going to demand an accounting for every drop of blood that has been spilled of innocent, unborn babies. And we just keep it in mind, when it happens it’s going to be awful.

Andrew Bieszad, on the other hand, knows that Hurricane Matthew which struck Florida back in August was God punishing the State for its tolerance of ‘evil sodomites’ (you don’t get much more tolerant than that.):

Stop sinning, especially with sodomy, as it is one of the four sins in the Bible which cry out to God for vengeance, which we are seeing now.

And these are just a few examples. There are many more. According to his whack-job servants, God can punish us, entirely indiscriminately, by unleashing earthquakes, tsunamis and floods; he can turn his back on us so that we wallow in our own filth; he can show his distaste for our ‘sin’ by raining down death and destruction upon us.

Naturally there’s plenty of this kind of thinking in the Old Testament, where God is credited with drowning his entire creation when a few ancient tribesmen misbehave (Genesis 6); he’s made to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah after every male turns inexplicably violent-gay (Genesis 19) and he’s said to wipe out whole swathes of his chosen people because they don’t pay him enough attention (Exodus 32.28).

None of these things happened, of course. They’re stories, myths or legends that incorporate the primitive thinking of the pre-scientific people who devised them, people who could only explain violent events in terms of divine punishment. It is this same thinking that is perpetuated today by those whose development is similarly arrested: through exposure to these same stories, an unwillingness to think rationally, an unhealthy preoccupation with God-nonsense and an overweening sense of self-righteousness (‘don’t blame us; it’s those others that attract God’s wrath.’)

There is no correlation between the disasters that befall humankind and God. Not one of the self-appointed prophets who say there is offer a single scrap of evidence that they are inflicted by a deity. Not one of their cause-and-effect assertions has ever been tested, can ever be tested. And – the clincher – there is no God anyway. All of which renders appeasement unnecessary and is good enough reason not to believe a word from these misguided charlatans.

When the Salt of the Earth loses its flavour*

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linda-harvey

Embittered fanatic Linda Harvey (above) has it from the Lord that gay people are unnecessary. And even if there are those around who’ve ‘chosen’ this ‘lifestyle’, there’s absolutely no need for them to be having -yuk – sex together:

… as most well-informed Americans know (read: ‘as people who share my prejudices would agree’), no person is born “gay,” so this conduct is completely unnecessary… No male ever needs to engage in anal sex with another male, and we need to stop accommodating homosexual behavior and “gay” identity…”

How right you are, Linda, and I’m sure we can all look forward soon to reading about how how women of a certain age who don’t keep quiet like they’re supposed to (1 Timothy 2.12) are completely unnecessary too. And how there’s absolutely no need for them to wear make-up and jewellery or obsess about other people’s sex lives (Linda talks about little else). Equally, no-one needs to admire art, read a book or listen to music; survival doesn’t depend on these things so they are, by definition, ‘unnecessary’. Likewise driving, watching TV, drinking anything but water, celebrating Christmas. Since when does necessity determine what people can and can’t do? And who decides what’s necessary, anyway? Certainly not cranks like Linda.

Her Lord and Saviour had a go it’s true; nothing was necessary, he said, that didn’t advance the Kingdom of God (Matthew 6.33 etc). That’s the Kingdom he was sure was going to materialise some time in the first century (Matt 16.27-28; Luke 21.27-28, 33-34 etc) As for those activities he did think were necessary – selling your possessions, helping the poor, giving to all who ask, loving your enemy, not judging others – he was evidently wrong about, which is why Christians have long since abandoned them.

Which should make us ask: are Christians really necessary? Isn’t it long past time we stopped accommodating their misguided behaviour and their “holier than thou” identities?

* Matthew 5.13: “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

God sends New Savior!

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jesuscity

Well, Stateside Christians, you got your man. Donald Trump will be president come January and you’re largely responsible for that. 81% of you voted for him. By my reckoning that’s about 50% of his total vote; he couldn’t have done it without you. Now he’s going to be your nation’s savior. He’s going to make America great again. He’ll return the nation to Christian values and morals. He’ll honour God and bring him back into the public arena, just like you want him to.

Or will he? How do you get God-fearing Savior from a petulant, misogynistic individual who has repeatedly shown himself to be racist, sexist, xenophobic, divisive, adulterous, abusive, ignorant, vitriolic, dishonest and avaricious; a man who denies climate change, is full of his importance (and nothing else), who makes promises he can’t keep and probably had no intention of keeping even as he made them. A man who couldn’t name a single verse in his ‘favourite book’, the Bible; who admits he’s never asked God for forgiveness and who has shown no sign of any kind of Christian humility, compassion or morality; a man who is even now appointing the most reactionary, right-wing extremists to his transitional team (so much for draining the swamp!) How can this man be the one who is going to restore America to a glorious Christian past it never really had, and make it a truly God-fearing nation once again?

Someone with these ‘qualities’ cannot possibly turn America into the promised land, even though you’ve convinced yourselves he’s another King Cyrus, the heathen king in the Old Testament who helped God’s people in their time of need. Trump is no Cyrus, even if he is the 45th president and Cyrus’s story is told in Isaiah 45 (yes, some of you think this is significant). You have been duped, again, American believers. But it is not Trump who has deluded you; it is you yourselves. You have persuaded yourselves that despite all of the evidence, Trump is man who can be greatly used by God.

There was no divine guidance behind Trump’s campaign and God won’t be manipulating him into doing his bidding once he takes office. This is because, primarily, there is no God to do any these things, but even if there were, why would he? Why would he ensure a man whose values are the direct antithesis of all (you say) he stands for, became the leader of the free world? Why would he be interested in making a silk purse out of the sow’s ear that is Donald Trump? Wouldn’t your God of Reason start with someone who is already one of his own? Someone who is genuinely a Christian; someone, say, who has tacky pictures of himself and Jesus hanging in his house? Or an evangelical – let’s call him Mike Pence – who comes pre-packaged with genuine, and genuinely vicious, Christian faith and a necessary anti-abortion, anti-gay agenda?

It’s you and you alone, Christians, who have turned Trump into a Savior. It is you who have created the silk purse. You’ve ignored what has been in front of you throughout the presidential campaign and have projected on to an individual who has done nothing but tell you what you wanted to hear, a spiritual significance he does not have. You have made of Trump an artificial Man of God, just like your predecessors did two thousand years ago with that other imposter, Yeshua Bar Joseph. Like them, you’re going to find out that the man you’ve elevated to savior status is anything but, because the Donald Trump you’ve elected is a construct of your collective imaginations. You’re about to discover that the real Donald Trump is not the man you’ve deluded yourselves into thinking he is.

Rejecting Jesus the Christian way

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jesus2

I’m sometimes taken to task for pointing out that Christians don’t make much effort to live as their saviour says they should. The title of my first book, Why Christians Don’t Do What Jesus Tells Them To …And What They Believe Instead sums it up. Since the very beginning, believers have replaced the radical commands attributed to Jesus with mythology, mysticism and magic formulae, none of which he’d recognise and all of which are far less demanding than going the extra mile, turning the other cheek and loving enemies. So today, when confronted with what Jesus says is expected of his followers, believers are inclined to say, ‘what right have you to tell us how we should be living?’ to which the answer is, ‘it’s not I, nor any other commentator, who tells you how to live; it is your Lord and Saviour. All we do – all I do – is remind you of what that is.’

Christians don’t like this, primarily because they don’t like what Jesus commands – it’s too exacting, too radical, too impractical – and they want to go on disregarding it. It’s damned annoying being reminded of it and being challenged on how far they are from complying with it.

Have those of us who point out Christians’ failings any right to do so? Well, of course. Christians spend their time judging, castigating and condemning others and as Jesus himself points out, judging others leads to being judged in return (Matthew 7.1-5). He sees this as something of a natural consequence, a yin for a yang. But ‘judge not that ye be not judged’ is another of his commands his followers like to ignore. Even so, if Christians are going to insist on pointing out the speck in others’ eyes, they must expect others will have something to say about the plank in theirs. That’s the way it works – Jesus says so.

So, Christians, if you don’t like me and others challenging you on how far you fall short of your Lord’s expectations maybe you need to lay off atheists, LGBT people, those you consider to be sinners, those of other faiths and even fellow Christians you think haven’t got the right theology. Put your own house in order first and then maybe we’ll listen to you (or maybe not). But don’t say we’ve no right to look at how far you measure up to Jesus’ standards. We’ve every right to ask whether the so-called Salt of the Earth (Matthew 5.13) has any of its flavour left.

 

Call yourself a Christian?

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jc-prays

So you think you might be a Christian? Try this handy-dandy checklist to see if you’re a true follower of Jesus or just someone who’s paying lip-service. You’ll need to score big if you’re ever going to get into his exclusive club!

1) Have you relinquished all worldly goods as Jesus tells you to in Matt 19.21 & Luke 12.33?

If not, better get to it. It’s pretty important to him – he mentions it at least a dozen times in the gospels.

2) Have you forsaken your loved ones, taken to hating them even, the better to serve him and his Kingdom?

No? Than what are you thinking of? Not Luke 14. 26 & 33 that’s for sure.

3) Do you constantly go the extra mile, turn the other cheek, give to all who ask, love your enemies and forgive others repeatedly (Matthew 7.12; Luke 6.27 & 29; Matthew 6.14; Matthew 5.38 etc)? In short, are you perfect as he says you should be?

Some work to do here then, to come up to the expected standard?

4) Do you sacrificially serve others – the sick, the imprisoned, the homeless, the hungry, the naked (Matthew 25.34-46)?

Better get round to it as the only way to avoid Jesus’ blacklist.

5) Do you work tirelessly and exclusively to bring about God’s Kingdom on Earth (albeit in the first century) like Jesus commands in Matthew 6.33?

Why not? Get with the programme!

6) Have you stayed single, never marrying, and certainly never getting divorced?

You haven’t? Shame on you, because you can’t into the Kingdom with a spouse and definitely not with one you’ve discarded along the way (Luke 20.34-35).

7) Have you given up judging others?

If not, you can expect to be on the receiving end of a hell of a lot of judgement in return (Matthew 7.1-2).

8) When you throw a party do you invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind instead of your friends (Luke 14.12-14)?

I think we know the answer to this one.

9) Are you tireless in denigrating, campaigning against and ranting about same-sex relationships and marriage?

Well, good for you though this has nothing to do with being a follower of Jesus (see 7 above).

10) Do you believe in a magical incantation that is going to preserve the essential ‘you’ in Heaven forever?

Jesus didn’t.

So how did you do? Are you someone Jesus would say, ‘Well done you good and faithful servant’ to (Matthew 25.21), or would he insist he never knew you (Matthew 7.23)? –

0-2: Pathetic, especially if the two in question are 9 & 10.

3-7: You’re neither hot nor cold. Expect to be spewed out of his mouth (Revelation 3.16).

8-10: You’re getting there, but then, you didn’t really answer truthfully, did you? Your yes didn’t mean yes (Matthew 5.37).

Never mind, you can always get back to singing songs, waving your arms about and condemning others because they have a speck in their eye (Luke 6.42). Everybody knows that’s what being a Christian is really all about.

The Gospel of Hatred

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nasty

You might have seen the disturbing BBC documentary America’s Hate Preachers this week, featuring hunky Steven Anderson, pastor of ‘Faithful Word Baptist Church’ in Tempe, Arizona, and chunky street preacher Ruben Israel (above). If not, it’s available here for the next few months (and also, I understand, on YouTube, but of course I couldn’t possibly endorse that.)

Both Men of God™ claim they’re preaching the gospel, which is strange when all they have to offer is bile, hatred and self-aggrandisment. Anderson actually says at the end of the programme that he does what he does – mainly reviling gay people – because he wants to ‘do something big with (his) life.’ Maybe that’s what the gospel is – bile and hatred mixed with self-promotion. There’s nothing of the good news attributed to Jesus or Paul’s ‘love-is-all’ message in the vitriol spewed forth by these two sorry individuals and their various acolytes.

The gospel they preach and the Jesus they convey is spiteful, judgemental and unforgiving. Who knows, maybe that’s what he was. But if you claim to believe in Jesus, all you self-righteous souls, all you grandstanding screwballs, then fine, so long as you do as he tells you: sell all you have and give to the poor; hate your father and mother; remain unmarried; tend to the sick, the needy and the imprisoned; give to anyone who asks; turn the other cheek, go the extra mile and be perfect. Do you do these things? Are you faithful to these words? If not, then you don’t really believe in him either.

People like Anderson and Israel take what little good there is in the Bible and poison it all the more with their own prejudices, their own putrification, their own sour self-hatred. This is the fruit we see in them and in others like them, which would also be fine if they kept it to themselves. But they can’t. They are compelled to try to infect the rest of us with their nasty perversion of a gospel.

 

 

 

The stuff Christians say… God Gave Us Free-will

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freewill

Did he really? He doesn’t mention it in his ineffable, infallible, inerrant Word and you’d think he would when it’s so important. It’s a favourite cliché of Christians whenever they’re challenged about why God has let the world get in such a mess, why he allows children to die, why there are hurricanes and earthquakes, that kind of thing. These are all, they like to tell us, the result of humans using the ‘free-will’ God gave them to make the wrong choices – which are anything that’s not God himself. When that happens, he deserts us, abandoning any idea of a duty of care. But that’s not his fault – oh, no – it’s ours for using the free-will he gave us… freely.

So even though we have free-will, we’re in big trouble if we use it any other than the way God thinks we should. Of all the options available to us, only one is any good; there are so many penalties for choosing anything other than him. It’s as if he says to us, ‘obey me or I’ll abandon you, make everything shit and ultimately torture you’. And you’d be right to ask how this is in any way ‘free’ will. Imagine a human father saying, ‘Now, kids, choose to do as I say or else I’ll throw you on the fire.’ Would children presented with a choice of this kind really be ‘free’ to make their decision?

Still, apparently we are, and wouldn’t you know it, we choose the wrong things. This might have something to do with there being far more ‘wrong’ things than ‘right’ ones, but that’s how God has set things up and who are we to point out the inconsistency of his mysterious way?

More than this, God has handicapped us by making us ‘slaves of sin’ and ‘servants to corruption’ (John 8.34 & 2 Peter 2.19) which naturally disposes us to use our free-will in such a way that almost always leads to the wrong decisions. How about that? Not only does he say ‘obey me or I’ll abandon you, make everything shit and ultimately torture you’, God has given us up to our base desires and so impaired our ability to make the ‘right’ choices.

Ultimately, the idea of ‘free-will’ is a Gordian knot created by Christians, who, finding themselves unable to explain why a loving God would allow everything to be far from perfect, added it to their already shaky theology. But free-will isn’t scriptural; as we’ve seen, the Bible teaches that God does the choosing not us. Nor does it stand up to  scrutiny in the real world. Science tells us that free-will doesn’t exist, it’s an illusion. Our subconscious mind makes our decisions before informing our conscious mind of what these are. This means our decision-making is neither free – our subconscious mind is shaped and constrained by environment, genes and upbringing – nor the product of our conscious mind, our ‘will’.

Still, this is of little interest to Christians who cling tenaciously and blindly to the notion of ‘free-will’. They’ve made the right decision by opting for God and in so doing have surrendered the free-will they otherwise insist is crucial in explaining the state of the world. They’re not going to need it in heaven, I don’t suppose, sitting around praising God all day long. Given though that they’ve made the right decision, why is it the world continues to be such a muddle? Why is life for believers not noticeably better than for the rest of us? Why are they as subject to life’s tragedies and calamities – cancer, disease, death – just the same as the rest of us? Shouldn’t their free-will decision nullify the disasterous effects of rejecting God so that we can see some overall improvement in the state of the world, or at the very least in the lives of God’s Chosen themselves? Why doesn’t it? What good is ‘free-will’ which, even when exercised in the ‘right’ way, appears to make no difference at all?

God wants you to beg

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beggar2 What do God and the Queen have in common?

Neither of them do money. Famously, Queen Elizabeth II never carries cash. It’s not like she’s ever going to find herself out of milk so that she has to dash to shop for some. Even if she did, she wouldn’t be expected to pay for it. So she doesn’t need to bother with money.

Same with God. He’s less likely to run out of milk, it’s true, but he does lots of important work in the world and a bit like the Queen, who is funded in large part by the British tax payer, he expects everyone else to cough up what’s needed.

Though he’s a God of abundance who supplies whatever is asked of him, he just can’t bring himself to do money. We know this because those humans who work for him here on earth constantly have to beg other people for it. When they’re busy getting his Word™ out to those who don’t have a Bible of their own, the Lord refuses to pay a penny. Likewise, he declines to assist the brave souls who work tirelessly protecting one-man-one-woman marriage, which, as they tell us, was all his idea in the first place. Nor does he support building Noah’s Arks theme parks ($18 million in tax perks helped with that one), church maintenance (tithes anyone?), helping the persecuted or feeding the hungry. He’ll do all he can to help, naturally, just so long as he doesn’t have to put his hands in his pockets and get them grubby handling cash.

No, what all these noble causes need they have to raise themselves, which is why every single Christian enterprise begs for money, not from God who they know won’t help, but from fellow human beings. ‘Search your heart,’ they tell the gullible, ‘and ask the Lord what he would have you give us.’ Could this the same God of whom Paul says, “He is able to make every blessing of yours overflow for you, so that in every situation you will always have all you need for any good work” (2 Corinthians 9.8)? It surely could. And this being so, why, when he specifically directs his people to create projects that will make his Kingdom a reality, does the money not come pouring in to the point where it ‘overflows’? God being God could make it happen supernaturally or, if that’s a little too ostentatious, by more mundane means. But he doesn’t, hence all the begging.

Like his love, God’s provision is met only through other human beings, be it money, food, love or, most importantly of all, spreading the Word™. You have to wonder, when he finds himself incapable of supporting even his own causes – and they are his own causes because those who operate them on his behalf tell us so – whether he has the remotest interest in any of them.

Which might just be because it’s all a delusion.

The Lord really wants you to support the efforts of this site. Send cash only in a plain brown envelope and he will surely bless you.

 

 

Let’s Talk About Sex

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Green&Daley

Oh, go on let’s…

The average person has sex about 2,500 times in their lives and produces an average of 2 children. In other words, a mere 0.08% of the sex they have leads to procreation. This means that the remaining 99.92% is entirely recreational. People have sex together because it feels good or helps them be close to someone they love or because they enjoy it, or all three, plus a multitude of other reasons. Even if we were to increase tenfold the number of occasions when sex is intended to produce babies but doesn’t, that still leaves 99.2% of the time when sex is just sex.

So why is it, holy readers of this unholy blog, do you insist that sex is only for procreation (like you do here, here and here)? If that’s all it’s for, shouldn’t you produce more offspring every time you and your partner have sex? Yet you don’t. Even those extremists among you who have 8 or 12 children still have sex a hell of lot of times when it doesn’t result in another kid and isn’t meant to. Most of you use contraception to actively prevent procreation and have all the fun sex you want, whenever you want, without risking another pregnancy. Surely your God can’t possibly approve when he made sex exclusively for reproduction.

Catholics – you don’t get off the hook either; you have lot of sex that doesn’t lead to babies too (or you’d be clocking up kids by the dozen by now). How’d you manage that, I wonder? Same way everybody else does, I’d guess. And what about all the jerking off to porn that macho Christian men enjoy? That for procreative purposes too?

So, why is it you keep telling the rest of us that sex is only for procreation? Let me tell you – because it’s part of your anti-gay agenda. ‘Filthy gays,’ you’re saying, ‘having all that sex that can’t possibly lead to procreation, sex that’s just for fun, that might be with more partners than I’ll ever manage’ (though multiple partners and sex outside those ‘one man/one woman’ marriages you care so much about are pretty common among Christians – but you don’t want that mentioned either). While it may come as a surprise, most gay people are not infertile; they are quite capable of ‘procreating’; given the problems of overpopulation, shouldn’t you be grateful many don’t? Or maybe, like spiteful nutjob Stephen Green in his recent rant about Tom Daley, you like to make the bleedin’ obvious point that gay men need ‘a girl’ in order to reproduce… just like straight men do.

‘But,’ you say, ‘gay sex is between two men – maybe more – or two women (maybe more) and that’s so downright distasteful and disgusting. The Bible says so and I believe it.’ Of course, you’d believe it even if the Bible didn’t say so. So what if it does? Do you honestly think the rest of us care what a bunch of ancient tribesmen and other sex-obsessed fanatics thought?

For men and women who are gay, sex with each other is far from disgusting or distasteful. It’s every bit as exciting, loving and fulfilling as all the fun sex you have. Unless of course, yours isn’t.

Your ranting about recreational sex, gay or otherwise, is just so much hypocrisy. You like it yourself, or else you wouldn’t do it (and you do do it) yet you don’t want the rest of us doing it with the consenting adults we find attractive. Until you’re prepared to give up sex so Jesus will let you in his Magic Kingdom (like he says you should in Matthew 19.10-15 and Luke 20.34-35) then do us all a favour and shut the fuck up about all the great sex the rest of us are having.

 

 

Imagine… no religion

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Jimenez2People say, like, you know, “Aren’t you sad that 50 superstitious nut-jobs died?” Here’s the problem with that. It’s like the equivalent of asking me, you know, what if you asked me, “Hey, are you sad that 50 Christians were killed today?” Um, no, I think that’s great! I think that helps society! You know, I think the world is a little safer tonight!…

The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die… because these people are predators! They are abusers! They take advantage of people! And look, as Rationalists, we need to take the stand that it is not our job to sit there and say, “Oh, this is a tragedy” or “Oh, this is something we mourn.” Look, everything tells us these are deluded, wicked people. These are evil people.

… People sometimes will say, “You guys are advocating violence!” We’re not advocating violence! We’re not saying we should go do this! But we’re just saying this: If we lived in a rational nation with a rational government, then the government should be taking them… I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a firing wall, put a firing squad in front of them, and blow their brains out. If we lived under a truly secular government that loved rationality and loved children, and wanted to protect them, that’s what we’d do.

Hate speech? Certainly. But not mine. The original, which you can find here, is about the Orlando shootings a few weeks ago, and is directed at gay people. I’ve simply replaced gentle ‘Pastor’ Jimenez’s use of ‘sodomite’ and ‘paedophile’, which he disingenuously uses interchangeably, with ‘Christians’ and ‘religious nut-jobs’, and his use of ‘God’ and ‘righteous’ with ‘superstition’ and ‘rational’. Jimenez, emissary of a religion of love (Matthew 5.44 etc), would like to see his government exterminate LGBT people.

But, you know, maybe there’s also a case to be made for eliminating the superstitious and irrational from among us. Those of us who have adopted a rational basis for our lives would be happy to see the end of religion and superstition, the removal from the Earth of the religious and the superstitious (I use the terms interchangeably). After all, what do believers in mumbo-jumbo add to the world that is any way positive? What can those who are unable to engage with reality without the crutch of make-believe possibly have to give? On top of their general uselessness, they’re also dangerous and predatory.

Maybe there is a case to be made. But I’m not making it. Any philosophy, ideology or religion that preaches the extermination of other people is wrong, debased, corrupt (you’d think, wouldn’t you, that we’d have learnt that by now.) If you subscribe to such a view – be it from a Christian, Islamic or Jewish perspective – you are wrong. No-one, whatever magic books may say about them, merits death simply because those magic books say so (ratified, of course, by the dim-witted prejudices of those who subscribe to them). Rationality and a secular perspective, on the other hand, eschew hatred and are philosophically opposed to harming those who might not agree with them. Yes, even the religious.

In this way it is vastly superior to religion – your religion, whatever that happens to be.