Category Archives: In God’s name

Human Sacrifice

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Swanson

Mesoamerican cultures would ritually kill other human beings to appease their gods. Thousands were sacrificed either willingly or under compulsion.

Thank goodness we have progressed beyond this. We no longer allow superstition to dictate that others should be deprived of their lives to curb gods’ anger and bless us instead.

Unless we’re Christians like pastor Kevin Swanson, pastor Phillip Kayser, Ted Shoebat (loony name, loony guy!) and pastor Rob Gallaty, who call for the execution of LGBT people. It’s gay people, they say, who are bringing down’s God’s wrath on the world because of their wicked ways. Judgement, destruction and death shall surely befall us – or America, anyway, as that’s the only place God has any interest in – because of the gay peril. Unless homosexuals repent, they must be put to death. Only then is God likely to back off.

And just in case you think I might be misrepresenting them, here are those loving, gentle Christian folk to tell you all about it in their own words:

Swanson:

Homosexuals are worthy of death… It’s not so much an issue of the death penalty. It’s an issue of God’s judgement that’s hanging upon this nation today.

This, Swanson says, is ‘the gospel of Jesus Christ’ of which he is not ashamed.

Kayser:

And if we love our country and we don’t want to see God’s intense wrath falling upon it, we cannot ignore the abominations found in the radical LGBTQ movement. It is not just the sinfulness of homosexuality that is known, but also the justice of the death penalty for homosexuality.

In fairness, Kayser also wants the death penalty for breaking the Sabbath, blasphemy and cursing God publicly, publicly sacrificing to other gods and apostasy. He’s nothing if not fair-minded.

Shoebat:

The sodomite, the atheist, the fanatic feminist, the Muslim — all such must be deemed as criminals and enemies to civilization, for they war against the Faith, promote death and hate life…
They should be told to leave their wicked ways under coercion, and if that does not work, then death and strong suppression is the only solution.

Gallaty:

God said that the sins of the people had infected the very land in which they live. So what happens to people who engage in this activity, this sexual immoral activity? Go to Leviticus 20, God gives us the punishment for engaging in these sins… ‘If a man sleeps with a man as with a woman, they have both committed a detestable thing. They must be put to death. And their blood is on their own hands.’

These enlightened men, and others, advocate a return to primitive, barbaric practices like that of the Aztec and Mayan cultures that sacrificed humans to imaginary gods. They have much in common with ISIS and the Taliban too, who are also motivated by religion to murder others. Perhaps we haven’t made as much progress as we like to think.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Steven Weinberg

You’re not as saved as you think

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God2So now you’re a Christian. You’ve listened to the street preacher or that Christian at work and you’ve accepted Christ. You’re saved and going to Heaven when you die.

Or are you? You’re not going to Heaven that’s for sure, because Heaven isn’t on offer – as we saw here, the Bible doesn’t promise an eternal life in Heaven. But are you even saved? Has ‘the most important decision of your life’ really made you one of God’s own?

If you think you’ve chosen God, you’re wrong. You don’t choose God, he chooses you (or not, as the case may be). And if he hasn’t chosen you, then any decision of yours is of no consequence. You can shout all you like about how you’re now saved, born again and a follower of Jesus but if God says you’re not, then you’re not.

How do we know this? Because the Word of God™ says so:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will… (Ephesians 1. 3-5)

In other words, you’re only saved if God decided you were going to be right back at the beginning of time. And if he didn’t, well, you can talk the talk and even walk the walk, but it will all be for nothing.

Jesus too is quite clear that it isn’t up to you whether or not you’re one of God’s chosen few. Here he is the middle of one of his tiresome parables about the Kingdom of God, where the King has told his slaves:

“Go… into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” His slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” For many are called, but few are chosen. (Matthew 22.9-14)

So, how do you know if you’re one of the special few hand-picked by God himself and not just one of those poor suckers who’s been invited along only to be thrown out? You don’t. Your capricious God won’t tell you till after you’ve died and you meet him face to face. There’s every possibility you’ll find out then that you’re not saved, because only a few of those called actually are. And then where will you be? Hell, that’s where. You’ll be no better off, according to the Bible anyway, than those who’ve not been duped by all of this nonsense.

So, you can believe all you like that God loves you. You can make all the right noises, study your Bible, pray, imagine you hear God’s voice in your head, go to church, sing the right songs and defend God’s standards, but there’s still a very good chance you’re not saved.

Jesus again:

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” Then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.” (Matthew 7.21-23)

But don’t worry, you were never ‘saved’ in the first place, nor lost, nor in need of Jesus; none of this mad fairy tale is real. Your only mistake – and it was a big one – was to think it was.

You’re all sinners!

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BabyYou are a sinner. You deserve the wrath of God. After you die, you will meet God face to face and because of your sin he will throw you into the pit of hell for all eternity. But repent of your sin and believe the gospel and instead he will cast your sin away from you, as far as east is from west.

Or so said the street preacher in the centre of town at the weekend (yes, our old friend Dale McAlpine; he who suffers excessively from religion-virus).

I’m not a sinner. And neither, dear reader, are you. Sometimes in my life I’ve behaved badly, it’s true. I’ve hurt other people, though usually unintentionally, and I’ve been thoughtless. I’ve been unappreciative of loved ones and haven’t done enough for others. I’ve said things I shouldn’t and have occasionally lost my temper. I’ve even had sex when it wasn’t for making babies.

Maybe you’ve done similar things and, like me, have transgressed the moral law (which is entirely of human making) in all of these minor ways. Others have transgressed it, and the societal laws it gives rise to, in far worse ways, by deliberately hurting or abusing others, raping and murdering.

But still neither they nor us are sinners. Whether we have behaved reprehensibly or only a little thoughtlessly, we are still not sinners. We are human and we behave as humans behave; as evolved apes our developed brains jostle with animal natures, and we act as our distinct environments have taught us. ‘Sin’, on the other hand, is a distinctly religious concept, a component of a fantasy perspective of life with no purchase outside of its religious context. The problem with it is, however, that it has intruded for the best part of a two thousand years into reality, into life as it is lived by most people most of the time, and we’ve grown used to it. We give it credence when it’s talked about or preached from pulpit or soap box. But it is a meaningless concept.

The word for sin that is used most frequently in the New Testament (221 times) is ‘hamartia’, an archery term meaning ‘to miss the mark’. It means not being as good as we could be; not coming up to God’s standard: ‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,’ as old wingnut Paul puts it in Romans 3.23. And this is the secondary – some would say primary – application of the idea of sin; it denotes our separation from God. The thinking behind this idea goes as follows: there must be a reason God always seems so distant, remote, far away, elusive and absent from us. And because he’s God and so wouldn’t behave in such a cold-hearted way if we didn’t deserve it, it can only be our fault. His distance, therefore, can only be because of sin, our failure to behave and be, from the moment of our birth, as he would want us to. Yes, sin really is God’s kryptonite and, according to Christian doctrine, Jesus came to be the lead lining that blocks its rays.

But this is an unnecessarily convoluted way to account for the perceived divine distance. It is much better explained by God’s existential and literal absence. It’s not our fault he’s so far away – or rather it is, but not because we sin. In our childish need to have someone out there who both explained everything and cared for us, we made him up. We anthropomorphised an insentient, indifferent universe, which could only ever lead to a God who felt distant and remote.

So, as Dale was recommending on Saturday, free yourself from ‘sin’. Recognise that you don’t fall short of the glory of God, because no such thing exists, and that you behave as you do because you’re human. And then you will be free indeed.

Loose Threads

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FamilyPick a thread. Any thread. And start pulling. Gently does it, no need for force. A gentle pull on any of the loose ends of faith and the whole fabric will come apart quickly.

Here, pull on this one marked ‘the infallibility of the Bible‘. See how easily it comes loose as soon as you realise that most of it, Old and New Testament alike, was written long after the events it purports to describe, some of it by imposters and forgers.

Or this one – the salvation thread, much of it stitched into place by an excitable chap prone to hallucinations. Pull it and see how its pattern is nothing like the one proposed by the man it claims to be about.

Pull the magic threads, the ones about Gods, supernatural beings, heaven and hell, eternal life. Watch them disintegrate in your fingers once they’re teased out into the real world.

Take hold of the threads about Resurrections, Second Comings, Raptures and Judgements; so fragile, these break away as soon as they’re touched. The only miracle is that they’ve lasted this long.

Then there’s the promises threads, about how believers are going to do fantastic miracles and heal the sick and raise the dead. Imaginative and colourful, these have never really fitted in.

Then there’s the prayer threads, whose embroidery tells us how prayer works, how God will give us whatever we ask for. Downright embarrassing, these – yank ’em out.

And how about the strands that those who say they love the cloth pick out themselves and throw away? You know the ones; the threads which tell them how to live their lives that they just don’t like the look of and think spoil the overall effect. These have definitely got to go.

What about the threads that weren’t originally there – the ones about ‘defending God’s standards‘ and having a ‘relationship‘ with a dead person? These grubby, greasy threads have been added in to replace the ones those who love the cloth have pulled out for themselves.

Choose any number of other threads – the ones that clash with other bits of the pattern, the ugly brutal ones, the fantastic, the ignorant – and give them a tug. Oh, look. They come away too.

And before you know it, the entire fabric has come apart in your hands. All that’s left is a pile of worthless, brittle threads, good for nothing but throwing in the bin.

Once in a Blood Moon

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HageeSomething’s going to happen today. Or maybe tomorrow. Maybe something happens every day. But evangelical pastor John Hagee says that because of last night’s Blood Moon and lunar eclipse, something special’s going to happen real soon. He can’t say whether it’s something good or something bad, but it’s something, okay? Because predictable lunar events are really secret messages from God, telling us he’s pissed  off again and warning us something big is going to happen, whether that’s something good or something bad. Who knows. But you will know when you see it and you’ll be able to say, ‘So this is what John Hagee warned/promised us would happen!’ He really can’t lose; ‘prophecy’ with the details filled in after the event – any event – is prophecy that can’t fail.

Christians, you are being short-changed. Your teachers and leaders, including, in all probability, those you sat listening to in church yesterday (maybe even writing down what they said) are feeding you inanities. The rest of us see it whenever we look at the God channels or stumble upon the pronouncements of the likes of Hagee or Robertson or Meyer. These people have nothing to say of any substance, sense or meaning. This isn’t just someone in an ‘unregenerate’ state saying so – analyse what they tell you for yourself and let your eyes be opened. See through the thin veneer of derisible pop-psychology and lunatic make-believe (pun intended) to the vacuousness at the heart of Christian ‘teaching’. Admittedly, this will entail doing some thinking for yourself rather then just absorbing uncritically the drivel these people send your way – but it will be worth it. Then you’ll finally see: the emperor’s self-appointed spokespersons really don’t have any clothes on.

Meanwhile look out for something happening today. Or tomorrow. Or some other damn time.

Idiotic Stuff Jesus Said 13: We Don’t Need No Educashun

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MegaBut you are not to be called rabbi (teacher), for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Matthew 23:8-12

Evidently these words were put into Jesus’ mouth by the community that produced Matthew’s gospel and reflect the egalitarianism and communism that characterised it. The phrase that gives away their origins is ‘you have one instructor; the Christ’. ‘The Christ’, as we know, was a creation of the early church and it is highly unlikely Jesus would have referred to himself in such a way. In the synoptic gospels he is reticent even about claiming the Jewish title of Messiah for himself. In any case, the reference is patently to a third party, and is by an author or interpolator who subscribes to the later, supernatural Christ.

In the unlikely event, then, that these words emanated from Jesus himself, all they achieve is to demonstrate his lack of understanding of human psychology. Even as ‘Matthew’ set about recording them, the newly founded church was already ignoring them, which is perhaps why he felt the need to have Jesus say them. Here’s Ephesians 4.11, written by someone pretending to be Paul round about 80-100CE, contradicting them:

Christ gave (us) the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers…

The imposter who wrote 1 Timothy (5:17) up to a hundred years after Jesus’ death goes further, endorsing the exaltation of those who teach and rule others:

Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honour, especially those who labour in preaching and teaching.

Why? Because human beings like hierarchies. Almost all human societies are hierarchical in nature and groups invariably arrange themselves hierarchically. There will always be people who see themselves as leaders and teachers and still others who look to those who’ve set themselves up as authorities to tell them what to do.

Despite what Jesus or ‘Matthew’ might have preferred – everyone being equal while those who ‘exalt’ themselves are humbled – it just doesn’t happen in human culture. It certainly wasn’t happening in the movement that emerged following Jesus’ death, in the church that existed by the time Matthew was making Jesus say that the only authority Christians should recognise was God’s and his own. The institution that was appearing in place of the end of the age – an institution that Jesus neither anticipated nor instigated – could not function effectively as the simple band of ‘brothers’ he is made to suggest. It was in need of structure, and a hierarchy was it.

And so it was that, before long, the first popes emerged – ‘pope’ deriving from the Latin for ‘papa’. Each of these exalted figures would come to be referred to as ‘Holy Father’, a title still in use today. With complete disregard for Jesus’ instructions, other priests (meaning ‘elders’) in the Catholic church also assumed the title ‘father’. Evangelical churches, lest they think the Catholic church is the only guilty party, have their ‘pastors’, meaning ‘shepherds’, who, by definition, lead others. A common or garden ‘clergyman’ is a ‘learned man’, while a bishop is one who ‘looks down from above’. An archbishop is chief look-downer and exalted indeed. Elsewhere, showmen preachers in mega-churches ‘teach’ with a mixture of anecdote, wild conjecture and stuff they make up as they go along; tune into TV’s God channels for a taste of this particular brand of humility. The church in all its manifestations has, from the beginning, been hierarchical from top to bottom.

Jesus, however, didn’t want there to be a top or bottom; if Matthew 23.8-12 is to be believed, he commanded there shouldn’t be. He envisaged his followers living in harmony with everyone equal under his and God’s authority. No-one was to set themselves up as teacher or leader; no-one was to exalt themselves above others. If any did, they would need to be humbled. But this isn’t how human beings organise themselves, and never how the church has conducted itself. Shouldn’t he have known that?

Who Decides?

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DavisI’ve written before about how some parts of the Bible are more important than others; about how Christians relegate some of it – ironically much of what Jesus is purported to have said – while elevating other bits. These latter aspects trump the former, so that if there’s ever any dispute about how Christians should behave in a given context, they’ll happily cite the elevated parts while overlooking those that are less to their liking. This happened recently in the Kim Davis case,* which I talked about last time. In that context, the verses from Romans I quoted, in which Paul instructs believers to obey civil authorities, are explained away and dismissed in favour of other passages. Here are commenters doing just that on the crackpot Christian site, World Net Daily:

Have you not read Acts 4:19 and 5:29? There is a time when God’s authority trumps human authority. In this case, Kim Davis stood up for God’s authority. God’s word calls homosexuality an abomination. Ephesians 5:11 teaches that Christians must have nothing to do with the works of darkness, but instead expose them.

and

Sometimes…when you give to God…what is God’s…you will have to disobey the civil authorities that are over you. Kind of like Paul…refused to stop preaching and jailed…God took care of him, though, I do believe. Although never truly jailed, except at the end…didn’t Jesus disobey the “law”, Mosaic Law, when He preached?

It’s not as if Paul was writing about ‘authorities’ that conducted themselves in considered or considerate ways; this was the Romans, after all. They would eventually execute Paul – so much for God taking care of him! – just as they had Jesus himself. Nonetheless, Paul tells the brethren they must honour Roman authorities. But somehow, if Christians today are to be believed, he just didn’t understand what it’s like to obey civil (in both senses of the word) secular authorities in the 21st century. They consider his teaching in the early part of Romans 13 to be invalid, no longer applicable, irrelevant to the very situation it was designed to address. Other passages from the Bible are far more important and therefore trounce it easily.

But who decides this? Who decides, in what these same Christians deem to be the literal Word of God, which words are less literal than others; less applicable; less relevant? And, consequently, which are more important, more applicable, more ‘of God’?

The evidence would suggest it’s the individual Christian who does, led, no doubt, by the Holy Spirit, who inexplicably leads different believers to different conclusions about the same source material. There’s no ‘free-will’ involved in this process, however; individual interpretations of scripture are informed by the consensus of the church or the movement with which individual Christians align themselves. But who in these institutions determines the order of priority for the Bible’s many confused and often contradictory injunctions?

Determining what is important in the Bible, and what isn’t, is the result of a consensus of prejudices and biases. It’s easy to find ‘teaching’ in the Bible that supports one’s own views and opinions and equally easy to find that which doesn’t and is incompatible with the position one already holds. To reconcile the two, and to deal with the discomfort of any cognitive dissonance, Christians demote any teaching that doesn’t correspond with their pre-existent world-view – sorry, Paul, but this includes your silly suggestion that we should obey the authorities – while promoting those ideas that conform to and confirm that outlook (so hurray for those verses that say gay people are abominations and have no place in the Kingdom of God!) The very words of God are ranked according to the whims and prejudices of those reading them.

Again, I’ve written before about Christian priorities, about how those parts of the Bible they find unpalatable and challenging – such as those that say they should give away all they have and love their enemies – are explained away or ignored. But as for those passages that tell Christians how superior they are while excoriating others as ‘works of darkness’ – well, now you’re talking!  

 

*While Davis claims all her husband swapping took place before she met Jesus, she was a member of the Baptist church while she was busy trying them all on for size. At least three of her wedding ceremonies were conducted by Baptist ministers. All that happened in 2011 was that she joined the more extreme pentecostal movement, which empowered her to ignore the log in her eye and concentrate on the speck in others’.

Modern Day Martyr #94

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A&ECherry picking had been a problem right from the start.

In case you missed it last time it happened, Christianity has been criminalised again. Yup, despite all the imprisonment of Jesus’ followers only a few short months ago (or was it weeks?) they’re all being rounded up again for no other reason than they’re Bible-believin’ Christians. True, they might have been incarcerated because they’re public officials who refuse to do their job because they believe God doesn’t want them to. True, they might have been divorced three times, married four and engaged in a little adultery along the way. But come on, be reasonable: ‘God’s standards’ don’t apply to Christians themselves; they’re for clobbering others with.

Naturally this isn’t how Christians themselves see it. Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky charged with issuing marriage certificates, has been imprisoned – by a Christian judge at that – because she won’t issue them to same-sex couples. And that, according to Christo-fascist Matt Barber makes her a martyr. Plus, you know, the end of the world and what-not:

For the first time in American history a woman has been imprisoned by the government for merely exercising her Christian faith. War has been declared on Christ and His followers. And there’s no turning back.

Davis’s lawyer and fellow-believer, Matt Staver, goes even further. He equates her situation with the Nazis’ extermination of 6 million Jews:

Back in the 1930s, it began with the Jews, where they were evicted from public employment, then boycotted in their private employment, then stigmatized and that led to the gas chambers. This is the new persecution of Christians here in this country (the USA).

What melodrama! If only there was something in God’s Word™ that could’ve told Kimmy what to do before everything got out of hand.

Oh wait. What’s this in Romans 13?

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgement on themselves… it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience (Romans 13.1-2 & 5).

Jeez, if only it were possible for Christians to ignore the bits of the Bible they don’t like.

Oh, I forgot… it is!

The imprisonment of a public servant who declines to serve the public and refuses to comply with the law does not mark the start of any war. It is not the fore-runner of a persecution such as we’ve never seen before. It is, rather, the predictable consequence of the same old Christian hypocrisy.

Rejecting Jesus – The Book

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RJCoverIt’s a miracle! Rejecting Jesus is now in book form! And on Kindle too.

ScrollWell, not quite – sorry JC.

But you can now read Rejecting Jesus posts in the format the Son of God would surely have preferred if books had existed then the way they do now. The pictures are all present and correct too, in glorious B&W, for all first-century messiahs to enjoy.

Available here and here and also all over the world. Go, buy it, make disciples of all nations.

 

The Holy Spirit: transparently nonsense

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CageIf anything is unsubstantiated fantasy, it’s the Holy Spirit. It – I know Christians prefer ‘he’, but the pronoun used in the Greek of the New Testament is more often neutral – it began life as the comforting, fuzzy feeling the early believers got when they remembered their recently deceased leader. The same feeling that convinced them he was alive again in a sort of not-really-alive but as-good-as kind of way:

“He’s, like, alive-in-our-hearts and, hoo boy, what a buzz there is when a few of us get together and share that vibe at the same time. Far out, man. Hey, let’s put it in the story that this is exactly what he said it would be like when he was still alive!” (Matthew 18.20, sort of)

High on this feeling some believers started imagining they were actually in the dead leader’s presence and – miracle of miracles – could see him and commune with him (1 Corinthians 15.5-8). Such an experience, they felt, could only be from God and must, in some inexplicable way, actually be a part of God (1 Corinthians 2.10). And so the Holy Spirit – the capital letter version – was born. Spiritual highs had taken on independent existence as an aspect of God.

Except, of course, they didn’t. They remained feelings, amplified in and by a communal setting. And that’s what they are today. Which is how, when a Christian tells you the Holy Spirit prompts him or her to say or do certain things, the result is always in line with the teaching of his or her particular church or sect. So, for example, the interpretation of the scriptures to which the Holy Spirit leads a group of believers is fully in keeping with that of their denomination, church and pastor. Dissent is actively discouraged and those with different views are apostate, deceived by the devil and not led by the Spirit at all. Maybe, they’re told, they were never really Christians in the first place, which is remarkable, when the dissenters’ experience of the Spirit is every bit as real as the rest of the community’s. Experiencing one’s own thoughts and feelings usually is.

It never seems to occur to Christians how odd it is that this supposed aspect of God, the Spirit, leads different groups of believers down different, often contradictory, paths. How could it do that if it was truly of God? Why would it do that? It’s erratic, idiosyncratic methods are clear evidence of the human origin of its ‘working’. The Holy Spirit’s prompting is, as it was in the beginning, a communal feeling given ’embodiment’ by corporate consent. It even works effectively when believers are separated from each other, social pressure producing conformity.

Experiencing the Holy Spirit is not unlike the way those involved in a séance or in a ‘haunted’ house convince each other there is a presence in the room. These ‘ghosts’ are socially constructed too, from shared feelings and often not a little ‘guidance’ from those who claim to know better. The Holy Spirit is ‘realised’ in the same way, most clearly among a ‘worshipful’ group of Christians whipped up into a state of euphoria attributed to the work of the Spirit.

But the Holy Spirit is without independent existence in both origin and manifestation. It is human make-believe through and through. Any Christians who think otherwise are invited to provide evidence of the Spirit’s independent existence, separate from human emotions and imagination.