Tag Archives: Demons

Assertions

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Don likes to take me to task for what he says are assertions in my arguments. I do make assertions, as do we all, because not all points in an argument need to be demonstrated every time they’re used. Indeed, not all assertions can be.

There are assertions that we all accept are likely to be true: the sun will ‘rise’ tomorrow; the Earth is a sphere; evidence is better than no evidence and so on. There are those who dispute these assertions but the onus is then on them to provide the evidence or argument that their counter-assertion is true. Yes, there may come a day when the sun doesn’t rise but it is statistically improbable; the Earth is demonstrably not flat; faith is not an reliable substitute for evidence. There is abundant evidence and sound argument why these things are not the case. But – and this is my point – this evidence does not have to be trotted out every time an argument relies on such probabilities; they can be asserted.

I write, and indeed live my life, on the basis of the fact (‘assertion’) that the supernatural does not exist. Over the last ten years, I’ve posted several arguments why this is the case. I frequently provide a link to these arguments when asserting that, outside of the human imagination, gods, spirits, angels, devils, demons, powers, principalities, ghosts, avatars, heaven and hell do not exist. These arguments form the backbone of any subsequent assertion that the supernatural is not real.

Nonetheless, the onus to ‘prove’ that this is the case does not rest with me. First, because it is impossible to prove a negative. Consider, for example, the Christians challenge to prove their God doesn’t exist. While there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that this is the case, there is no absolute ‘proof’ of God’s non-existence (as I’ve argued before, it all comes down to probability, or, in God’s case, improbability.) Absence of evidence is invariably evidence of absence.

The onus instead lies with the one making the incredible claim. Those who take it as fact that the supernatural and God are real need to demonstrate to the rest of us that this is the case. They have, in my long experience, failed to do this. The best they can do are the various arguments (the ontological, Kalam cosmological, teleological, fine-tuning and the argument from design) that suggest the possibility of the supernatural but fall far short of convincing evidence that the supernatural is real, and further still that the Christian God exists. They depend in the end on the feelings they have in their heads and the Bible (or some other holy book.) This is wholly inadequate. 

Consequently, I’ll continue to operate from and make my assertion that the supernatural does not exist until such time as Don or any other of his co-religionists demonstrate the probability that it does.

From my assertion, backed up, remember, by earlier arguments, a number of other facts follow:

With no supernatural, there are no gods; YHWH in all his incarnations is a God, therefore YHWH does not exist.

Much follows from this:

If YHWH does not exist, Jesus cannot have been either his avatar, Son or incarnation;

Jesus cannot have been raised from the dead by a being who doesn’t exist;

Stories that he did so must therefore be merely that: stories;

The celestial, eternal Jesus who sits at the right hand of God in heaven is not real;

Any experience people have of this being is entirely within their own imaginations;

The Bible is based on such imagined encounters with these imagined characters;

There is no after-life or judgment;

The Christian faith, including my own, cannot be explained in terms of the supernatural;

Only explanations that are rooted in naturalism, as in science, have any validity.

There are more implications that can be drawn from the premise that there is no supernatural, including the fact that the world makes much more sense (if it makes any sense at all) without drawing gods and demons into it.

Consequently, I shall continue to make my assertions, like those above, supported as always by previous argument. Any religious believer who wants to challenge them is welcome to do so, but must do more than point out the obvious, that they are assertions. They must provide the evidence for the supernatural, and all that follows from it, independent of the goings on in their heads and without reference to holy books written by those with similar subjective feelings.

The Trouble With Atheists: A Christian Sets Us Straight

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My friend Bruce Gerencser was good enough to repost my previous post on his blog. It prompted a comment from someone calling himself James Thompson, who Bruce says used a fake email address and quite possibly a false name. (These Christians; so fearless and honest in all their doings!) Here’s what ‘James’ had to say:

It’s because that’s what you live to do argue the truth. You’re not “atheists”. Antitheists yes. Agnosticism yes. A true atheist would not give a rip about the discussion on this blasphemous blog.

And atheists don’t go out seeking to remove Mickey Mouse from everything.

Or Buddha or Mohammed.

But they do Jesus Christ because Satan knows he is the only one who can bring salvation

I did respond to James on Bruce’s blog but wanted to address his garbled points, such as they are, more fully here. They’re typical of the low level thinking Christians and others use to defend their beliefs.

It’s because that’s what you live to do argue the truth.

Amazingly James has an uncanny insight into the minds of atheists; we live only to argue the truth, by which he means, presumably, critiquing his pet deity and magical saviour. Most of the time, most atheists barely give these two mythical beings a second thought; neither do I when I’m not blogging. I live for entirely different things.

You’re not “atheists”. Antitheists yes. Agnosticism yes.

But wait! People who don’t believe in his God aren’t, according to the omniscient James, atheists; they’re anti-theists. Okay, I concede; I am opposed to the notion that there’s a loving God somewhere out there who is interested in us and has made it possible for us to know him by, according to James and other deluded souls, making his only son a blood sacrifice. I dispute this silly idea, which has no evidence to support it, and is, as Jesus is made to say in Matthew 11.25, irrational and illogical. So yes, I’m an anti-theist. I’m also anti-theist because of what believers in the one true God (in his various guises) do terrible things to each other and to non-believers. And when they’re not doing that, they’re parading their ignorance, propagating their book of myths and spells, denying evolution, dumbing down children’s education, suppressing LGBT+ people and threatening everyone who doesn’t subscribe to their superstition with eternal damnation. I mean, what’s not to like?

 A true atheist would not give a rip about the discussion on this blasphemous blog.

And then James returns to his mind reading act. How does he know what a ‘true atheist’ might think of Bruce’s blog? There are plenty of atheists who comment there; whether they are ‘true’ atheists apparently only James knows.

And atheists don’t go out seeking to remove Mickey Mouse from everything.

It is true atheists (which we’re not, according to James) don’t seek to remove Mickey Mouse from everything, whatever this means. But then Mickey Mouse doesn’t start wars, condemn everyone as wicked sinners or try to control their sex lives. Disneyworld would quickly go out of business if he did. (That Donald Duck is a different kettle of fish however.)

Or Buddha or Mohammed.

James then scrapes the bottom of the cliché barrel: ‘You wouldn’t dare criticise the revered characters of other religions’. Yes, we would. As I said in my post, which evidently James didn’t read, there is no supernatural. All gods, ghosts, spirits, angels, demons, heaven and hells, from whichever religion or superstition they emanate, are figments of the imagination.

But they do Jesus Christ because Satan knows he is the only one who can bring salvation

These two as well. The Christ and his evil doppelganger, Satan, are human inventions. As fantasy figures they are open to as much ridicule and ‘removal’ as any other imaginary being. Perhaps more, given the damage they’ve caused and continue to cause.

James has been sold salvation snake-oil and thinks that because he’s been duped, everyone else should be too. Or at the very least should respect his delusion. Ain’t gonna happen, Jimmy boy. You need to grow up a little. And maybe also learn some grammar.

Slippin’ and Slidin’

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I’ve written before about how impossible it is to argue with Christians. It’s either that they have superior knowledge because an invisible ghost possesses them and is guiding them towards truths that non-believers can’t possibly perceive. Or it’s that the supernatural just cannot be understood in an evidential, naturalistic way. Science and empiricism – what we can detect with our own eyes, with specialist equipment that serves as an extension of those eyes or that can be mathematically demonstrated – just cannot detect, perceive or understand the supernatural. Gary Matson is currently experiencing this on Escaping Christian Fundamentalism, where a Catholic Christian (an oxymoron to many other religionists) is arguing that the things he believes in – hell specifically and his God generally – are just too sophisticated for the ignorant layman to understand. We’ve met this before too, from pseudo-intellectual Christians who think their faith, which its supposed founder said was best understood by becoming like a child, requires a degree or three in theology or philosophy.

It’s all a sleight of hand, and rather like wrestling with a jelly-fish. The assertion that the believer in the supernatural makes, that his or her particular brand of woo lies outside the purview of science, is mere flannel. ‘You can’t prove this because you haven’t the tools to’, applies to any form of magical belief – in heaven and hell, in an afterlife, in ghosts, and angels, gods who speak to mortals, mystical saints, flying horses, reptilian overlords, UFO abductions… you name it – does not stand up to scrutiny. If supernatural entities and states are outside the natural universe (and they are, by definition) then they will never be detected by science, observation and empirical measurement; but not because our means of detection is inadequate, but because they don’t exist. It isn’t that they are out there somewhere, detectable only with the right frame of mind or with the help of a spirit that itself has no physical presence; they are nowhere; they are not real. It is not the inadequacy of our means of detection that is at fault; it is that the invisible, non-physical and intangible have no substance outside the human imagination. As I’ve said before, remove human imagination from the equation and the supernatural goes with it. If humans were to become extinct tomorrow, so too would all the magical beings and places that humans have ever conjured up. They have no  existence independent of the human imagination.

Arguing that this isn’t so is to assume your conclusion in your premise: ‘Of course supernatural things exist, you just can’t see them. But I can prove them with my argument/philosophy/faith’. This, however, is a demonstration of irrationality, not of the supernatural. In any case, the fact the supernatural has to be argued for at all is evidence that it doesn’t exist. Nothing real has to be argued for, it can be detected, shown, demonstrated and measured by the senses, by instruments, by mathematical proofs. That gods and ghosts can’t be, but have to be argued for, tells us they are not real – not that they are beyond the scope of our capabilities.

Prophets At A Loss (again)

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What a joy it is to witness the prophets of the Lord who a few weeks ago assured the world that Jesus had told them Donald Trump was going to win the US presidential election. Look at them floundering now to explain away their foolishness:

Pat Robertson on 20th October: ‘Without question, Trump is going to win the election.’

After the election: ‘Here is my take on the election. In my opinion I think Trump won it. That may shock you… There are cases being filed in many courts but I don’t give them much chance of winning.’

Paula White on 5th November: I hear a sound of victory. I hear a sound of abundance of rain. I hear a sound of victory. The Lord says it is done. The Lord says it is done. The Lord says it is done.

After the election: ‘God’s decision has been made… the church must enforce some things in the realm of the Earth. We must take authority over every demonic spirit, every high thing.’

Kat Kerr on 24th October: ‘Trump will win. He will be president of the United States. He will sit in that office for four more years and God will have his way in this country.’

After the election: ‘One of the things [God] had me say was that Trump would win by a landslide… But many times, as we know in the Word or even just from experience ourselves — especially as a prophet — that doesn’t ever mean what man thinks that means.’

Jeremiah Johnson on 30th September: ‘I had a dream… God showed me… President Trump will be re-elected.’

After the election: ‘There has been a chorus of mature and tested prophets in America with a proven track record that have predicted Donald J. Trump would be re-elected President of the United States. I am one of them… Either a lying spirit has filled the mouths of numerous trusted prophetic voices in America or Donald J. Trump really has won the Presidency and we are witnessing a diabolical and evil plan unfold to steal the Election. I believe with all my heart that the latter is true.’

Denise Goulet on 19th October, speaking to Trump in person: ‘The Lord showed me today that you are going to get a second wind…another in-filling of the Holy Spirit…because the Holy Spirit makes you able to finish, to take this to the end, Mr President.’

After the election: f*** all.

It’s demons! An evil plan! I meant something else! I still think I’m right! I hope everyone forgets what I said.

Friendly Atheist Hermant Mehta has a whole lot more. These people are either frauds or self-deluded idiots. It’s stating the obvious to say that God and Jesus do not communicate directly with them. They haven’t been singled out to receive divine messages. Yet that is what they believe, or claim to anyway. They know no more about the future or God’s intentions than a typical house fly does. Yet the gullible, those caught in the same pretence that is Christianity, believe them. Yes, there are smart arse discerning Christians out there who say they never fall for these charlatans. Yet they do.

In Jesus Eclipsed, David Chumney cites Eugene Boring who, he says, ‘catalogs dozens of sayings ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels that very likely originated with later Christian prophets’ (my emphasis). Yet the writers of the gospels pass off these ‘spiritual insights’ as though they were Jesus’ own. Those who first read the gospels believed they were. Christian’s today assume the same. They’re not. They’re the words of religious zealots making things up as they went along. Some, most perhaps, no doubt believed what they were channelling the words of the Lord. Others wouldn’t have been quite so sincere.

There is no such thing as a prophet. God doesn’t make his intentions known through cranks and fraudsters. There’s no God and no Eternal Jesus to do such a thing, as today’s holy con-artists so ably demonstrated with their predictions of a Trump victory.

 

Will the real Jesus please stand up? (part 2)

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What evidence is there in the Bible that Jesus really existed? Let’s take a look*:

Paul’s Christ – imaginary (only in his head)

The crucifixion – invented (structured around and based on selected parts of the Old Testament. These aren’t prophecies of his death, they’re used as the template for people writing centuries later)

The Resurrection stories – made up (following various visions and ‘revelations’. The stories themselves are not in Paul or Mark; they’re made up later)

The empty tomb – imaginary (added to bolster resurrection stories. Unknown to Paul)

Miracles – made up (not in Mark where Jesus flatly refuses to perform them. Later miracles all have symbolic meaning. They are symbolic)

Nativity stories – make-believe (the two accounts in Matthew and Luke conflict and have all the properties of myth)

Jesus’ ‘I Am’ statements – invented (only in John: missing entirely from the other gospels. How did they miss them?)

Sermon on the Mount – made up by Matthew (not in Mark but suddenly in Matthew where it is clearly a literary construct)

Jesus’ teaching – invented (next to none of it is original, based as it is on Paul’s teaching, Old Testament ‘wisdom’ and what the gospel writers needed him to say to fit their agendas)

Cult rules – made up (by members of the early cult church)

The Beloved Disciple/Lazarus and Nicodemus – imaginary (not in the other three gospels. How could they not know about Jesus’ most impressive miracle, the raising of Lazarus?)

The woman caught in adultery – invented (a very late addition to the fourth gospel; possibly as late as 350CE)

The Ascension – make-believe (I mean, really?)

Paul’s adventures in Acts – made up (largely incompatible with what Paul himself relates)

Revelation – total lunacy (made up in its entirety: Jesus didn’t say any of the things attributed to him there: he didn’t dictate letters to churches, isn’t a cosmic warlord, hasn’t brought a celestial city to the Earth, etc, etc)

Satan, demons, angels, spirits, powers and principalities – imagined (all non-existent)

Old Testament tales – made up (Creation, Adam & Eve, Tower of Babel, Noah, the Exodus, Job, Jonah, Daniel. Too many to list)

Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 2 Peter, James, Jude, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus – forgeries

Jesus – imaginary? It makes you wonder. So much is demonstrably made up about him. If he did exist, he has been buried under layers of make-believe, myth and other fiction; a grave from which he will never rise.

To be continued…

* Examples derived from my own considerations, Richard Carrier’s On The Historicity of Jesus, Bart D. Ehrman’s Forged and Did Jesus Exist?, Michael J. Alter’s The Resurrection, Barrie Wilson’s How Jesus Became Christian &  Freke and Gandy’s The Jesus Mysteries, amongst others.

 

Will the real Jesus please stand up? (part 1)

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Over the last week or so I’ve encountered a couple of Christians online (here and here) who’ve made the point that Jesus must’ve existed because

  • Early Christians wouldn’t have died for a lie. (I’ve covered this before so all I’ll say here is that yes, they would – as zealots still do today – especially if they were convinced the lie was true.)

  • They themselves know Jesus as their personal saviour, and

  • The Bible tells us about him so no-one in their right mind could possibly believe he was imaginary.

These last two are interesting and related. Susceptible people have always believed in imaginary beings. All of the pantheons that have ever existed – Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Norse, Aztec, Hindu and numerous others – have had their adherents; people who lived with the conviction that supernatural beings were real and would respond, help or judge them in some way when they themselves acted in specific ways. Yet none of these beings existed. Why not Jesus?

Christians today don’t believe in Jesus alone, however. They subscribe to an entire company of invisible beings and places: God himself, of course, spirits – holy and otherwise – angels, Satan, demons, hell, heaven as well as a celestial being called ‘the Christ’ who sits at the right hand of God and who may or may not be related to an historical Jesus. Evangelicals and other believers build their entire worldview around such mythical beings, worshipping some of them; turn on your God channels any night of the week and see trance-like Christians telling Jesus how amazing, wonderful and worthy of praise he is. Yet this is a Jesus who is wholly imaginary.

Many of the posts on this blog are about how Christians aren’t very much concerned with the Jesus of the synoptic gospels, who tells his followers to sell all they have, give to everyone who asks and to turn the other cheek. They are only interested in his supernatural alter-ego, ‘the Lord Jesus Christ’, who makes no demands on them, but who, they think, listens and blesses them from on high. For all they care, any other Jesus may just as well be imaginary.

So if the Christ contemporary Christians worship isn’t real, why are they so insistent that the Jesus of the gospels must have been? It is equally likely that, the same as them, the earliest Christians also worshipped a made-up supernatural being.  

We’ll take a look next time at just what the Bible says about Jesus, and what it doesn’t.

Demons, demons everywhere…

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I wonder if any Christians out there can help me understand something. I know that not all of you believe in demons; some of you are far too rational to believe in non-existent supernatural beings! I know too that when the bible mentions demons, as it does often, you know it’s as a metaphor, for sin perhaps, or as the personification of evil. Presumably, you reach this conclusion with the help of the Holy Spirit (you do believe in him, don’t you?)

And yet other, lesser brethren are led by that same Spirit to see demons as 100% real.

Take this guy, Jeremiah Johnson, a preacher/prophet/author from Florida who recently had a real live conversation with a demon:

On the night of May 30th, while praying and pacing over the United States in my home around 2 am, a demonic entity appeared right before me in an open vision. This type of encounter has only ever happened one other time while I was ministering in a foreign country in 2015. I have always engaged in this type of spiritual warfare while asleep and dreaming prophetically, but rarely if ever to this degree while awake.

This demonic entity had a visible and deep scar underneath its right eye, but it also had the ability to mutate or rather change forms. I watched this “being” morph several times right in front of me, yet the gash below its right eye remained.

As I see it, there are three options here. Either –

a) This really happened, or

b) Jeremiah made it up, or

c) It happened but entirely within Jeremiah’s disturbed mind

Can you advise me which it is? I’m leaning towards b) or c). I say ‘leaning’ when what I mean is I rule out a) entirely, though I’d be interested to know which conclusion the Holy Spirit is leading you to. (Actually, reading the comments following Jeremiah’s posting of his ‘Urgent Prophetic Alert and Warning’ on Facebook, I already know what 4 thousand of you think: you fall for this crapola hook, line and sinker.)

Of course, not all supernatural encounters are with demons. Sometimes your fellow believers have encounters with angels, or dead people from the bible. Here’s an example of that:

I kneeled down, and prayed, saying, ‘O Lord, what Church shall I join?’ Directly I saw a light, and then a glorious Personage in the light, and then another personage, and the first personage said [of] the second, ‘Behold this is my beloved Son, hear him’” 

Wow, that sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Joseph Smith recounting his first ‘vision’.

Again, you’ve got three options:

Either:

a) This really happened, or

b) Joseph made it up, or

c) It happened but entirely within Joseph’s disturbed mind.

If you’re a Mormon, the Holy Ghost will have led you to embrace option a). I lean myself towards b), possibly c). If you’re an evangelical Christian, however, you probably think Smith’s vision was demonically inspired. Can I ask you why you think this? Is it because that’s what your version of the Holy Ghost tells you? Ain’t it amazing how ‘he’ always confirms what you already believe?

With that in mind, let’s look at one final example:

When Jesus stepped out of the boat, a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. 

When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; and he shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!”  Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.”  He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; and the unclean spirits begged him, “Send us into the swine; let us enter them.” So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea. (Mark 5.1-20)

Either:

a) This really happened, or

b) Mark made it up, or

c) Mark made it up but it’s a metaphor for something or other.

I’m guessing most of you, including those who regard yourselves as rational Christians, opted for a): you think this really happened in some form. Why? Because this time it’s your hero, Jesus, who’s involved.

However, and this is my point, Jesus’ encounter with a demon – and it’s not the only one in the gospels – is no different in kind from Jeremiah Johnson’s or Joseph Smith’s. If you believe one really happened – the Jesus one – you really haven’t any reason not to believe the other two. And yet, my Christian friends, you reject at least one of the other two, don’t you. You dismiss Smith’s encounter with God and Jesus as, at best, a delusion and at worst, a fiction intended to dupe others. You may, as I’ve suggested, see it as demonically inspired (even though no actual demons appear, unlike in the Jesus and Johnson accounts.)

You may also, if you’ve half a brain, dismiss Johnson’s ridiculous story too. I hope so. So why persist in believing that Jesus met with demons? It’s not the Holy Spirit who convinces you that this story is the only plausible one of the three. The Holy Spirit is only as real as Johnson’s morphing demon. No, the only reason you give Jesus a free pass, but not Smith or Johnson (possibly), is that the Jesus story is in the bible.

So, what’s the answer to the question at the top of this post: which of those men, Jeremiah Johnson, Joseph Smith and Mark’s Jesus, is deluded? The answer is… all of them. And at least two of them are frauds.

Myself, I’m leaning towards all three.

 

Can you be a Christian and … a Realist?

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If you’ve been reading this series of posts, you’ll pretty much know how this one’s going to go. You can’t really be Christian if you have, as the old song goes, half a brain. Still, it won’t hurt to see how compatible faith is with reality as we know it. You never know, we might be surprised.

Speaking of songs, I always liked Billy Joel’s ‘An Innocent Man’ from the album of the same name. Of course, by Christian reckoning there’s no such thing as an innocent man, nor woman or child – no, not one – because all have fallen short and are worthy only of death (Romans 3:23 & 6:23). All the same, we’ll give Billy the benefit of the doubt. In a song of insightful lyrics, the lines I particularly like are

Some people hope for a miracle cure
Some people just accept the world as it is
But I’m not willing to lay down and die
Because I am an innocent man

Christians seem to have such difficulty accepting the world as it is. They’re constantly upset that the world, which I’m taking to be synonymous with reality, does not and will not conform to what they expect of it. And when it doesn’t, it’s the world that’s at fault, that has it all wrong.

When the evidence is presented for climate change and our contribution to it, some believers announce, with no hint of irony, that God will never let it happen. He’ll step in, just like he always does, to prevent it. So take that Australia with your bush fires, Java with your floods and all you polar bears with your melting icebergs: God’s got it all in hand.

When a Hollywood movie depicts a same sex couple in the background of a scene for a nano-second, the born-again are apoplectic about the world’s immorality. When two female performers wiggle their bits, Franklin Graham – arch-supporter of the Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief – has the hypocrisy to claim, ‘I don’t expect the world to act like the church, but our country has had a sense of moral decency on prime time television in order to protect children.’ Clearly he does expect the world to act like the church (which as we know is both spotless and sinless.) All these modern-day Jeremiah’s do.

Reality doesn’t, and won’t, conform to what Christians want it to be. So what to do? Either join with Graham and those other evangelicals railing pointlessly against reality, like Don Quixote and his damn windmills, or (and this a much more comfortable position to adopt) be like those climate change deniers and tell yourself that whatever sort of state the world is in, God will be step in any time soon to sort it all out. After all, this is what Jesus believed. He didn’t rant and rave about the state of things, brutal Romans and all, he just had a simple, smug faith that his Father was going to set everything right real soon and put him in charge.

Christianity demands that Jesus’ disciples deny the world; reject it, despise it. The faith has denial at its core, even of oneself. It demands reality be replaced with a fantasy version of the world.

As I’ve written before:

Christians, even moderate ones

Those older links could easily be replaced with up-to-date, reality-denying ones. This is what it’s like in the Christian bubble; with all this denial taking up space, there’s no room for accepting the world as it is, and trying to change what needs changing and improve what needs improving.

Again as I’ve said before, truth, reality and other people are the casualties of religion’s life-denying efforts at self-preservation. Fantasy and reality are just not compatible.

The Gods of Christianity

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Christians who argue that only their God is real and that life is futile without him, are like the person who jumps up and down on thin ice insisting the ground beneath him is solid.

The various forms of Yahweh belief have rarely been monotheistic. While Isaiah declares there is only one God, the Jewish scriptures also refer to ‘him’ as ‘Elohim’ and ‘Adonai’, plurals meaning ‘deities’ and ‘my lords’ respectively. Other gods abound, with Psalm 82.1 relating how Yahweh presides over an assembly of other deities. From the beginning – certainly the beginning of the bible – a belief in other supernatural agents has been a requirement; Satan and angels are both present in Genesis and throughout the Old Testament. There are also the cherubim and seraphim of Genesis 3.24 and Isaiah 6:1-8 who do Yahweh’s dirty work for him. All of these beings are supernatural entities of immense power; gods in everything but name.

And this is before we get to the New Testament where several new superhuman characters are introduced. Most notable, of course, is the Christ, the invention of cultist Paul. This eternal being is capable of rescuing human beings from the wrath of God and has the power to resurrect them after death. He is, in Paul’s eyes, on an equal footing with Yahweh himself, a god in his own right (Philippians 2.6-11). While the Christ himself has resided in heaven for the past two thousand years (or for eternity, give or take thirty years), his spirit haunts the Earth to this day, possessing members of the Christ cult. The three of them together – the Christ, the Spirit and Yahweh (re-imagined as ‘The Father’) – are the chief gods of Christianity. The church has spent almost two millennia trying to explain how there is only one god who is simultaneously three distinct deities. The Vatican declares the Trinity to be the greatest mystery of all, though of course it is only a mystery in the same way something that makes no sense whatever can be considered a mystery.

According to the gospels, Jesus himself believed in yet another collection of supernatural agents; demons who caused all manner of illness and mischief, opposing Jesus wherever he went. According to the writer of Ephesians (6.12), these ‘wicked spirits’ and ‘principalities’ rival God in terms of power, and are, together with their overlord, Satan, the real rulers of this world

For Catholics, this pantheon of three-in-one gods, angels, devils and demons is supplemented by another layer of super-beings. These are humans who have attained the status of divine immortality, and who are prayed to and worshipped by acolytes on Earth. Mary, the supposed ‘mother of God’ is the most significant, followed by ‘saints’ who have been translated to Heaven and now have free access to the chief gods, ‘interceding’ with them on behalf of ordinary mortals. While no doubt Catholics would dispute that these figures are themselves gods, it’s difficult to see how they are not: they’re immortal, eternal, possessed of great power and in direct communication with the Big Three. They are the equivalent of the Titans’ offspring in Greek mythology.

There is nothing monotheistic about Christianity (nor Judaism) despite the protestations of those who claim to follow the one true God™. Christianity has, like most of its predecessors, a pantheon of gods. This not surprising when history repeatedly demonstrates the extent to which humans are inclined towards ensemble theistic imaginings.

So, beware those who tells us they know what the one true God wants, what he approves of and what he condemns: that ice is exceedingly thin and already cracked. It has been from the very beginning.

Why I Can’t Believe in the ‘Lord Jesus Christ’: 2. Demons, demons everywhere

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They tell you all you need to do is accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour. But it’s not true. You also have to accept on faith all sorts of peripheral nonsense. Nonsense like demons. And the ever-present malevolent Force that will pressurise you into misbehaving and compromising your commitment to the Lord. This Force is ‘The Enemy’, a.k.a. Satan or the Devil, and leading Christians astray is its/his principal occupation. The Enemy and his minions, the demons, are everywhere! All over the internet for a start, mainly on Christian sites. While the Church of Lucifer has an online presence, it’s Christians who love the bad guys the most.

According to some, Satan and his demons are in charge of this reality (though it could be God who’s got the whole world in his hands.) When they’re not attacking true believers, demons are doing their damnedest to bring America to its knees, mainly through ‘The Homosexual Agenda‘™ and abortion rights.

Perhaps it’s possible to ignore this aspect of the faith and still be a Christian, but to do so is to disregard the significant presence the devil and his demons have in the New Testament. Jesus himself has a cosy chat with Satan during his time in the wilderness, or so Matthew 4.1-11 would have us believe. Throughout the synoptic gospels, Jesus speaks very much as if he believes Satan to be an actual being, not merely a metaphorical personification of evil (eg: Luke 11:14-26). He also exorcises a significant number of individuals possessed by demons.

Steve Hayes on Triablogue blithely suggests that ‘when friends and relatives brought people to Jesus to be exorcized, that reflects their diagnosis, not his. They think the individual is possessed – which doesn’t imply that Jesus always shared their suspicions.’ But of course it does; to imply he was God and therefore would have known better is to impose a perspective that had yet to develop when the synoptic gospels were written – that, and a modern sensibility onto a first-century conditioned mind. If Jesus didn’t regard those brought to him to be possessed by demons, he would have said so. He is quick enough to correct his disciples elsewhere when they ascribe the wrong reasons to the causes of illness (John 9.1-3). Inventing ways to excuse Jesus’ ignorance is to avoid what the text clearly indicates; Jesus believed in demons. When he diagnoses a disturbed mind himself he doesn’t hesitate to conclude they are involved; he even engages in conversation with them (Luke 8.30-35).

We know now, and have known for some time, that illness and mental conditions are not caused by demons. We know too that same-sex relationships are not Satanic. There are no supernatural forces trying to debase America. There are no supernatural forces, full stop. It follows that Jesus’ mission couldn’t have been to magically defeat the devil by dying on the cross (Hebrew 2.14); his supposed sacrifice couldn’t have been the beginning of the end of the devil’s reign (Romans 16.20). Neither can there be any of the spiritual warfare against ‘powers and principalities’ of the air that dimwitted Christians imagine themselves to be engaged in (Ephesians 6.12).

Christianity is nothing without its imagined adversaries. With them it is nothing more than a superstition, which its founders ignorantly subscribed to and worked hard to perpetuate. Christians are about the same business today.

As for me, I cannot believe in a ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ who was so primitive, so uneducated and so ignorant he regarded Satan and his demonic forces to be real.