I received a very interesting message in my Inbox the other day. Tagged as a mass mailing, its header claimed, "If you believe in religion, you have been deceived." (I've since discovered that this material is posted on the website of an atheist known as "Kind Extremist.") Given some of the assertions in this e-mail, I thought it might be helpful to give a line-by-line response. I'm not sure how much of this is satirical and how much genuine, or what effect it will have on the sender, but this little exercise may give both you and me a little help in handling such assaults.
One thing we discover in attacks like this is that they heap accusation upon accusation, so that it is impossible to set the person straight on everything. The key is to correct the errors on which the person's argument hinges, and ignore what is just rhetorically slanted language.
(Portions of the letter are in italics. Spelling and grammar are corrected, and profanity has been deleted in favor of suitable replacements.)
Religion is [Nonsense]. However, billions of self-proposed "rational human beings" still choose to adhere to primitive faiths that are so foul, corrupt, and often perverse that it makes me sick.
You're off to a good start. You might be surprised to learn that many Christians agree with you. The religions man has invented are indeed destructive and twisted, and it breaks our hearts how many people have turned to false religions to find fulfillment in life.
Imagine a game of Chinese whispers that involves tens of thousands of people and spans hundreds of years before documentation. Would the information be reliable? Absolutely not. Well, that scenario accurately reflects the birth and infancy of the Bible.
With the exceptions of Genesis and Job, the books of the Old Testament give evidence of being fairly contemporary with the events they describe. The knowledge of names and customs reveals that books such as Exodus, Daniel, and Esther were not written centuries later as some suppose. The history of Samuel-Kings and Chronicles is based on official records which are clearly cited after each king's reign. The prophetic writings also fit perfectly with the settings they claim for themselves. This is only the tiniest sample of our evidence for trusting the claimed authorship and dates for the Bible. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd like to see it.
The "facts" contained in the Bible therefore represent nothing but two thousand year old [nonsense], compiled in writing centuries after the lawful execution of Christ. What did you think? That Jesus had a scribe with him on his corrupt and vile journey to spread false religion and hate across the land? Well, he didn't, and for the sake of the countless pathetic brainwashed church-going drones that are stupid enough to believe but not question the perverse faiths they follow, the Bible was written by a bunch of drunk, depraved fools that desired to convert, control and inevitably abuse unruly populations. Their solution was the Bible, a compilation of [nonsense] and brimstone gathered wholly from bed time stories and ancient hearsay which was so ridiculous, childish and narrow minded that it should never have reached the printing press!
Since Christ was executed less than two thousand years ago, your numbers are a little off here. Perhaps you are not aware that we have thousands of ancient manuscripts of New Testament documents, some dating back to A.D. 200 or earlier. Quotations of the New Testament by early Christians reach back to within a lifetime of the crucifixion, and we have complete copies of the Bible from the fourth century onward, when Christianity had barely been legalized. For this reason, your proposed compilers of the Bible would have been in no position to control and abuse populations. It was the Romans who were trying to control and abuse the Christian churches. In any case, many church-goers have seriously questioned nearly every element of orthodox Christianity over the last few centuries, and for that purpose many well-written and scholarly defenses are readily available. Even scholars who have not embraced their traditional faith unquestioningly would still consider the Bible to be something more than bedtime stories and hearsay. For examples, read Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Oh, and I'm sure you know that the printing press wasn't invented until 1455, long after the Bible's composition.
Whilst the Bible did make it to print some centuries after the lawful execution of Christ, it was and is still being changed constantly. How is that, that the words God spoke could suddenly change to further reflect the prejudicial perversions of propaganda preaching prophets? The answer is simple...because it was [nonsense] to start with! None the less people across the globe still believe in ancient faiths that have periodically been altered by kings, Popes, Messiahs, tyrants, and/or try-hards who have eagerly twisted so-called "sacred words" to suit themselves.
Our thousands of manuscripts (mentioned earlier) reveal that the text of the Bible has been remarkably unchanged since the time of Christ. The few known attempts to change the substantive teaching of the Bible have failed because there is too much counter-evidence (i.e., all the other copies of the Bible) to deceive people for long. But your comments do serve as a warning to some Bible translators who try to soften the text to appeal to modern sensibilities. If these really are "the words God spoke," how dare we change them? Popes, churches, and other powers that have added teachings to those in the Bible have indeed devastated cultures and lives. However, this does not make the Bible culpable for these errors any more than the US Constitution is to blame for the corruption of a public official who ignores it. As for other religions, they do have quite a habit of updating their scriptures and other revelations to suit the times.
But if it wasn't for these people, we would all be Jews or Muslim extremists, whose faiths are as primitive and stupid as the ancient bigamists that wrote them. Well these bushy, bearded [bozos] can kiss my [hindquarters] because I know for a fact that the world is over 5,000 years old. After all, religious [zealots] have been raping their followers for at least 6,000!
Judaism was never much of a "missionary religion," so I doubt you'd have to worry about that. As for Muslim extremism, it is true that the American brand of Islam is somewhat more peaceable than what we are seeing in the Middle East right now, and I'd agree with you that the "extremist" version is more in line with the authorial intent of the Koran. Bigamists? I think you mean bigots, but it is true that Abraham, Israel, and Muhammed each had multiple wives, or at least concubines. But that's sort of beside the point (as is their facial hair, by the way). The contention that the world is only a few thousand years old was not the historic teaching of Old Testament Judaism, and was not prominent in Christianity until a few hundred years ago. However, even most young-earth creationists will give a date for creation more along the lines of 10,000 to 30,000 years ago. And even this is not a core belief for most Bible-believing Christians. (I'm not aware of the prominence of young-earth creationism among Muslims.)
"God," the non-existent figment of a particularly retarded individual's imagination is nothing more than a merchant of indecent homosexual molestation. This "God" that pathetic people praise, invites you to his church, only to defile you through his priests. Don't believe me? Well, tell that to the kid that just got [molested] by the Reverend; or to the homeless person now suffering an anal hemorrhage after accepting a pedophile Priest's "charity." The uncanny correlation to being an altar boy and being forced to perform fellatio on the local Minister should be seen as a symbol of the very impure and indecent nature of those that preach.
The Bible's teachings against homosexuality don't quite line up with your contention that this is God's desire for His church. (In fact, few are more outspoken against homosexuality than Christians.) I'm not sure what to think about the prominence of pedophilia among the Roman clergy. My guess is that it has something to do with celibacy and a total lack of ministerial accountability. When you consider that there are over sixty million Catholics in this country, the percentage of people who've suffered in this way is very small. Nevertheless, I agree with you that such behavior reflects very poorly on God and has probably done more to damage Christianity's reputation than any other event in the last eighty years.
God's so-called son, Jesus, the repulsive messiah of molestation had his reasons for defiling the weak, enfeebled and disabled: he was a pervert that was true to his motto, "Do unto others as you would have them do to you!"–so he raped them! For the sick and grossly indecent practices Jesus callously performed, the Romans hung him out to dry. Hail Caesar!
All right, this is an unfounded accusation. The charge for which Jesus was crucified, by all accounts biblical and extrabiblical, was sedition against Roman authorities by claiming to be King of the Jews. Again, I would challenge you to provide evidence for claims of this sort, since I know of no ancient source that even suggests rape. My suspicion is that you may be projecting the behavior of the aforementioned Catholic priests onto Jesus to try to explain their behavior. You also need to explain how such a figure could have gained a fast-growing following that spread across the Roman Empire in twenty years or less, and how eyewitnesses of Jesus' ministry never spoke out in disagreement with the early church's presentation of Jesus.
However, Jesus may have been an innocent victim of circumstance, having been exposed to truly bizarre sociological factors from an early age. I mean, a guy doesn't have much of a chance in life if his legal father, Joseph, never [had normal marital relations with] his married mother Mary. Come on, what do the [gentlemen] that wrote, or the [fine people] that preach the Bible take us for? If Mary was a virgin, either she and her husband had some particularly pathetic sexual practices or someone raped her in her sleep. If "God" was this mysterious midnight molester (Who first coined the phrase like father, like son?), not only would this suggest our "Lord" is nothing more than a repulsive rapist, but it would dictate that billions of deluded religious fools are to this day worshipping nothing more than a sick celestial deviant.
The view that God had physical relations with Mary arises from Mormon tradition, not orthodox Christian teaching. And I find the suggestion as repulsive as you do. The Bible does claim that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus, and this is presented as a miracle (a breaking of natural law). If there is a God, then miracles of this sort should be possible, and so theists are not being irrational by accepting this teaching. However, the conception took place before she and Joseph were married, and the Bible also says that after Jesus' birth, Mary and Joseph had a normal married relationship and had other sons and daughters (Matthew 1:25; 13:55-56).
But, in the defense of his "immaculately conceived" son, Jesus, if a bunch of sickly, drunken old prophets worshiped [you] from the day you [were born], you would probably think you could walk on water too! You might go so far as to think you could molest several thousand followers and get away with it! Jesus did!
The only prophet in Jesus' day was John the Baptist, who (as far as we know) did not see Jesus until they were both adults. Jesus' only worshipers at His birth, according to the Bible, were shepherds and the politically powerful Magi, neither of which would have been sickly or drunk, and neither of which stayed around for long. The obscurity of Jesus' first thirty years indicates that He did not grow up being worshiped. Again, the contention that Jesus was a rapist is without evidence.
Anyone who looks closely or is not blinded can see the common ground between the Church (in all its variants) and the evil of Nazi fascism; the difference being that Hitler wanted people to subscribe to his will, whilst the Church maintains that you should subscribe to God's will; which of course means the Pope's will. After all the Pope is God's senile, decrepit representative on Earth.
The church "in all its variants" does not recognize the authority of the Pope; only the Roman Catholic Church does. If you wish to confine your comments to Catholicism's problems, then you cannot generalize them to all Christendom, regardless of the strength of your case (which so far consists only of unsupported claims). Not all Popes have been as old as the current one, and even Catholic authority has become functionally decentralized over the last century or so. Catholics no longer fear the wrath of the Pope should they depart from the church's teachings.
Undoubtedly both faiths [Naziism and Christianity] deserve credit for their accomplishments of pure evil but the Church wins the genocide head count hands down, having maintained a policy of hatred, discrimination and intolerance since the dawn of its foolishly immaculate conception. If you thought Mein Kampf was full of hatred and discrimination, you would be correct but [by] the same token, why don't you seriously think about the words contained in the hymns, psalms and prayers that you may well sing behind the closed doors of your vile, corrupt Church?
No offense, but given the tone of your e-mail, I have to wonder what you think hate-filled, intolerant language looks like. Anyway, if by genocide you refer to Catholicism's treatment of Jews and Muslims during the Middle Ages, I grant the comparison with Hitler's holocaust. The question we have to ask is whether the church was acting in accordance with the Bible's teachings, or against them. Your question about our hymns and prayers lacks specifics. Perhaps you could suggest a few Christian songs that remind you of Hitler. To save you the defilement of having to attend a church worship service, you can find the lyrics of most of our hymns on the Internet. I think you'll find very little in these songs that commends hatred or discrimination.
Or better yet, read your Bible with scrutiny, analyze the biblical stories of rape, murder and theft and then perhaps you'll realize that every prayer you squeal like an ignorant pig to God and Jesus may as well be a fascist salute to the Fuhrer!
The Bible does contain many stories of rape, murder, and theft–all of them as examples of man's disobedience and rebellion against God. God's will for human conduct is loving and gentle. Once more I have to ask for specifics. Where does the Bible condone rape, murder, or theft? You may be misunderstanding a particular passage, but I need to know what I'm defending before I can speak to the particular problem you're having here.
As for Mohammed and his countless maniac Muslim followers, this Islamic messiah is nothing more than a crazed Koran-preaching [individual] whose cruel curse, tainted with bloodshed, brainwashing, and bigamy, still corrupts the particularly polygamous, pathetic, and primitive across the planet. As Mohammed's mercenaries proudly massacre another metropolis, his deranged and deluded disciples sit poised to ravage this world in the sadistic splendour of a thermonuclear fireball. Not only does the Islamic faith fit the criteria of a devastating plague in its purest form, it represents an affront to the dignity of man and a disgrace to the intelligence of its brain dead believers who exert a medieval mentality worthy of a shallow grave.
Your abilities at alliteration are unparalleled, and your characterization of Islam applies well to some elements in the religion. I am puzzled as to your problem with polygamy. (This is the third time you've mentioned it, and far from the last.) Certainly you don't reject it on the basis of Christian sexual morality. Is there some natural-law principle leading you to detest it? Is this just not your custom? What is your standard for good and bad behavior?
Take the Taliban of Afghanistan, for example. Besides what they do to their women, they whip you for trimming your beard, using electricity, or reading a newspaper. Almost every ludicrous practice you could imagine is condoned by the Koran and amongst a Muslim man's many wives and concubines, there lies a seriously disturbed individual. Trust logic, not lunacy, as any God that makes you pray countless times a day and then like a cruel corrupt butcher [mutilates] several of your many wives has a serious problem!
The Taliban were universally recognized as extreme, and so not a good choice for an example. As I understand it, their requirements were stricter than the teachings of the Koran itself. (The Koran predates electricity and newspapers, after all.) But as you yourself suggest, the Koran is known more for what it forbids than for what it condones. Islam commands prayer only five times a day (not countless if you use your fingers), and I believe it is certain African tribal religions, certainly not mainstream Islam, that practice female circumcision. I know it's difficult to keep all these religions straight, but it is necessary if you hope to make a persuasive case.
As for God's other children, which includes such wonderful people as David Koresh, Joseph Smith, and Jim Jones; they too had what it took to be a true Jesus-Christ-incarnate; after all, their religious practices included: polygamy, pedophilia, bigamy, [nonsense], ritual group [orgies], treason, delusions of grandeur, and to top it all off a bunch of weak, narrow minded followers that eagerly set out to spread the vile words of corruption they were stupid enough to believe.
Again we have a long list of accusations with no support. Bigamy is polygamy, I'm sure you know. (I'm still not clear as to why that's against your ethic.) Of the men you mentioned, Koresh is the only one I know of charged with pedophilia and orgy-like behavior. But hardly anyone denies that there are subversive, dangerous cults out there that use religion to deceive people.
Take Joe Smith for example. He walked into the desert a deeply depraved [young man] and returned not only with a brilliant memory based solely on fiction, but he was soon able to legally marry a dozen women and molest a dozen more, whilst copulating with and converting a tribe of perverts that bred with such proficiency they soon founded a State! Nonetheless his Mormon religion, which maintains that blacks are inferior, has spread far beyond your doorstep and now plagues Africa almost as severely as the AIDS epidemic!
In order to "plague" Africa, the Latter-Day Saints had to give up their notion of the inferiority of the black people. And while the early Mormons did practice polygamy, other sexual perversion was not a common practice among them. It's clear, however, that you're an "equal-opportunity" accuser, and exempt no religious group from your claim that religion is a license for sexual immorality.
Always amusing are the ignorant religious idiots that like to draw an imaginary distinction between being "religious" and merely believing in "God." Obviously, the former suggets a depraved church-going devotion that is truly retarded, whilst the latter reflects a feeling of comfort in the foolish and deluded promise of an afterlife. Whilst the somewhat uncommitted believers are not quite as stupid as their hard-core religious counterparts, they should nonetheless ask themselves some serious questions because they are plainly blind to what they believe in. They harbor ridiculous delusions of grandeur toward a "God" without the devotion, conviction, morbid curiosity, or good sense to actually go to church and listen to the [nonsense] they are brainwashed by.
You and I appear to have an uncomfortable number of ideas in common. In a sense, I share your bewilderment at the huge percentage (30%-plus) of people in the US who claim to believe in God but don't do anything about it. Are they not even slightly curious who this God is? Might not God care how they live, and if so, how should this affect their behavior? With all these religions out there, one would expect that the true God would make sure He was represented. And so if there is a God, one of those religions ought to be His. Unattached "believers in God" ought to be scrambling to find out which religion that might be.
The fact is that they don't attend church (God's house) because it's a faith completely out of touch with reality. Its theory of evolution is a joke–it's boring, insane, prejudicial, preposterous, insultive, unamusing and often besotted with frightening fallacies of fire and brimstone that sing sacrilege like a canary with its eyes plucked out.
Liberal churches have done some funny things with evolution (which is a joke regardless of who promotes it). As for your other statements here, they are all value judgments, not factual claims. And I can't help but point out that calling a belief in hell "sacrilege" denotes that there is some real, religious code that the doctrine of hell violates. What code might that be, if all religious systems are as phony as you claim?
The sad thing is, You could well be just another [nonsense] propaganda-preaching follower like them; another lamb, led astray by promises of greener pastures amongst a stolen flock of sheep lining up for the slaughter.
Yep. That's me to a 'T.' (See Romans 8:36.)
Well, if "God" is your Shepherd, that makes You a sheep and it's time for the sheep to take a good look around this cruel slaughterhouse of a world and start thinking for themselves. This is not the Dark Ages and you no longer have to become an irrational religious slave to a non-existent being simply because someone told you it's real. Question what you are told, because if Jesus died to end our sin, he really [messed up] big time!
You seem to agree with the Christian teaching that there is a lot of evil out there. Our weaknesses make us all analogous to sheep, who have few natural defenses, many predators, and don't have an inner sense of what's best for them. The only question is whether you have a shepherd or not. I'm blessed to have a good one. As for "thinking for ourselves," this is what Jesus meant when He said, "I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves" (Matthew 10:16). Your last statement betrays an overrealized eschatology. Why does this sin-filled world continue after the death of Christ? Primarily so you and I would have an opportunity to turn to God and do our part to serve God in a place that needs service. Most of these "fatal flaws" you're finding in religion have simple explanations that come with little more than a general knowledge of the Bible.
But what more would you expect from a spoilt schizophrenic boy brainwashed by a dozen drunk, bearded pedophiles into believing he was the son of God?! The sad fact is that if you consider yourself to be close to God, then you have an imaginary friend and are simply too weak, frightened or stupid to rationally comprehend the cruel world you live in. But, don't feel too bad if you're religious, you've been brainwashed, that's all!
Gee, He really isn't that bad once you get to know Him. I still don't know how you came to the conclusion that Jesus was brainwashed by other people. The Gospels plainly teach that He taught with His own authority, to the consternation of the religious leaders of the day, whom He spent most of His ministry rebuking. If you're suggesting He was corrupted by His disciples, the Gospels present them as pretty dull and not aware of His status as Son of God until very late in His ministry. Even then, they didn't really believe until after His earthly ministry was completed. (I doubt the disciples would've fabricated so negative a depiction of themselves.) If you're suggesting that the Pharisees hoped to shape Jesus into a political Messiah to deliver them from the Romans and gain political power for them, and then killed Him when He refused to live up to the hype, you have an interesting reconstruction. But one more time I'll ask: where is your evidence? How do you know this? I say this not as a blindly following sheep, but as someone who questions what he is being told. Finally, it also bears mention that Pharisees' power came from their perceived holiness, and so wouldn't have risked the public scandal that drunkenness or pedophilia would've brought. What's your problem with beards, by the way? They didn't exactly have Gilette Sensor back then.
There is still some hope for those of you out there that have so far wasted your lives adhering to the drunk, bigoted words of perverse ancient story tellers compiled in the Bible. Turn your back on your [worthless] faith. Feel free to burn your Bible without fear of reprisal, commit heresy for the homeland, tell your religious colleagues that their prophet is a pedophile, blaspheme until the cows come home. Live a Life, Not a Lie. Turn Your Back on Religion.
It's a free country, and so you need fear no legal action in the US for changing your religion. This applies to you as well as to us. When you've gone as far as an irreligious life will take you, when you realize your needs are still not met, when you begin to wonder whether this religion stuff is true after all... when you want an answer for both the good and the bad you see in the world, and the purpose to live through it all, when you start to look at yourself as a sheep who needs a shepherd: God is there, and He has made it clear how you can turn around. And when you do, you'll find not ridicule or superior attitudes, nor vindictiveness, but a God who forgives you and accepts you as His own, and a people who welcome you into their family and rejoice in your new-found faith. You'll also discover that a rigorous Christian life involves as much thought, questioning, and self-discovery as any philosopher or skeptic could ever hope for.
For a statement of my beliefs, see my Declaration of Faith.
