At 97 Today I'm Wondering If I Can Book This Guy in Advance to Eulogize at My Funeral! LOL

Since I'm getting blasted in the comments below, supposedly because I may have made fun of a person with a mental disability, let me respond.

I found this video posted on TheologyWeb by a well-respected guy named Steve, so if you blast me then blast him too.

Besides, I never said exactly what it was that I found to be funny about this guy who talks like a drunken mentally retarded hobo, so let me spell it out now.

What I find hilarious is that the school allowed him to talk before the audience in the first place. That's it! They knew how he would talk on camera before he talked and they let him talk anyway! That's the hoot! So no, I would not want him to eulogize at my funeral for the same reasons the school leadership should not have let him talk before the audience. Why? Because it’s painful to hear him talk. He talks like he downed ten gallons of methilic alcohol! Do I need to be any clearer?

If an atheist wants to respond that we shouldn't care how talented someone is when it comes to speaking in a language understandable by sentient humanoids residing on planet Earth, and that knowledge in the subject is all we should ask, then let's do a review. People have gifts. Atheists say non-believers have individual gifts. This guy’s gift is NOT talking. So a responsible school leadership should not let him talk and/or debate a veteran before cameras and an audience. Any school leader who was this irresponsible should be fired. I know. I taught a school leadership class for a secular college. This is not indicative of good school leadership. Not only is it not edifying to the audience but it can also harm the guy who talked who will be ridiculed afterward.

Think of it this way. If solid knowledge is all that's important then why doesn’t the school hire this guy to be a professor and listen to him give lectures every week? Why not make him the treasurer of the LGBT club? Why not make him the debate team director? You see, knowledge is not enough when it comes to placing the right people with the right gifts in the right place. School leadership must be more responsible than this in identifying and properly placing people with the right gifts.

And that’s it. I find this incident absolutely hilarious for those reasons. It has nothing to do with whether or not this guy has a mental handicap. If he does I sympathize for him much more than that school did, for I would never have placed him in this situation in the first place. As a result, people would not be making fun of him in public like they are now.

So, let's have some more fun with this for the reasons I just stated

Doubting John Mental Breakdown tips

It is with great sadness that today we witness the mental breakdown of one John, son of Loftus. It is with equal sadness that I feel necessary to compose this supererogatorily loquacious prose, within which I include the best sage advice for the budding lunatic from the bottom of my bowels:

The John Loftus guide to a mental breakdown: a template:

[Start by insert a string of pejorative adjectives directed at your nemesis. Even if it's just one, make it plural. Not only will this give a Shakespearean tone to your mental breakdown, but it will also make it look as if many are against you, granting you bonus points for paranoia by making you look like the victim of some grand conspiracy]. I [always refer to yourself in the singular. Even if you have a coterie of followers just as insane as you are, referring to "us" or "we" spreads out the impact of your victimhood across different individuals and in turn decreases the strength of your breakdown. Do try to avoid any overt narcissism though, it makes you less sympathetic] have had enough[In an effort to increase sympathy for your plight, it is highly recommended that you try to rephrase "I have had enough" in as long a sentence as you can; This will give a magnified impression of your intellect and increase the tragedy of the downfall of such a brilliant mind]. The [insert a string of manners of injustice and offenses suffered; bonus points if you can compare your struggle to classical mythology like the legends of Atlas or Sisiphus; perfect score if you can make up a legend featuring yourself as the protagonist and publish it under a pseudonym]. Woe unto you [remember the list of pejoratives form the beginning? Time to expand them. You are, after all, suffering a mental breakdown and as you continue to write your final letter before the men in white lock you in your padded room, its contents should reflect that. "Woe unto you" is not only an allusion to Jesus, which gets you bonus point for a messianic/martyr complex, but is also easily enough recognized by the unwashed masses. Especially those dirty tekton orangutans]. Pity me [A sudden change of tone would help indicate an unstable mind so throw no direct attacks at your enemy. You should not, of course, actually say "pity me". Instead, lament about your unfair treatment, and how your good hearted attempts to reach out to your opposition were met with derision and scorn. Imagery of you in a fetal position with shadowy, demonic faces surrounding you and laughing at you would earn you bonus points.] Blaah baawfewiahfwfew [At this point, it would be a good idea to become completely incoherent. While you can still (and probably should) use normal words, make sure their sequence is either completely meaningless or clearly indicates an inability to make use of your intellectual functions in a manner similar to that of the average human. The effectiveness of this portion of your mental breakdown depends entirely on your ability to surprise and induce fear in the reader of your tirade.]

Sample mental breakdown provided below:

Monstrous! Despicable! Evil! A thousand curses to the name of the devil prince Holding and his fiendish entourage! No longer can the brave, intelligent and handsome yet humble soul that stands before you take this nightmarish abuse! Have these ravenous dogs no bottom to their hate of intellectualism? Has their masticating pestilence no end? I have been denigrated as fool, liar and adulterer by poisonous vipers and fundy nazis of lilliputian intellect.

Has any man ever had to suffer such burdens before I? If Christ caried a cross, do I not carry a lead filled giant darwin fish? If Heracles cleared the manure from the Aegean stables in one day, have I not filled it back up in one minute? If Atlas carried the very heavens on his shoulders, have I not carried Richard Carrier's ego on mine? Woe unto you Holding, for I shall mock people's dead pets and the handicapped. Woe unto you TBT, for you shall be used like a 2 cent whore. Woe unto you incestuous tekton troglodytes, for should you show your undoubtedly fat, pimple infested dateless faces I shall stomp on them like the winemakers stomp on the grapes that produce my booze, for oh yes, I am drinking tonight. And above all, woe unto you codewordconduit, for your treason shall not be taken lightly. Though the throne of heaven stands empty, I shall ascend and sit in it, and you shall all call me God. And for the unforgivable sin of inserting a tanto between God's ribs, so shall I insert my foot in your nose.

Oh heaven and hell WHY! What have I done to bring the unbearable hammer of despair above me? Though I reach out my hand in friendship, hounds tear at it until nothing but the bones remain. Though I raise the white flag in friendship, foul hands strangle me with it. Though I bow my head at the feet of my tormentors, cruel boots step on it and drive it into the ground. Is there any man on Earth as mistreated, hated and despised as I am?

wlcraig prayed and guess who came the tekton man in Jesus' name who left but then he came once more to find my arguments a bore i lie in fear my mouth ajar as wicked wit did raise the bar for I was watching 'neath the bed to see explode green matthews' head and when your face lie on the floor our holding hate relit once more and so I pledged to you that day the tekton cult would dearly pay and just as they put me with you I'll find and turn TBT too but there's someplace I need to start and that's with that CWC tart and when that's done I'll go off holding and then I'll watch his damn corpse moldingawfewfhwaofhwaoefwa.

Buy my book.

The Affectionate Motherly Love of One's Book

Many of you are probably wondering why I am so obsessed with promoting my book. Well...I'll tell you why, in my own special words: It's because I have the same affectionate love for my book as a mother does with her newborn baby. After all:

1) The book came from me.
2) I conceived it.
3) The book contains my thoughts, put into coherent sentence-structure.
4) The book has been recommended by some of the top Christian apologists out there.
5) The book has also gained affliation with Promotheus Books!
6) The book is mine.
7) Even though the book is mine, you can always go out on Amazon and get yourself a copy!

Let me ask you a question about movies: Ever seen Alien, by director Ridley Scott? If you haven't, boy is it great. Not only does it demonstrate that, in a hypothetical future on a hypothetical spacecraft, that there is no God to save poor Ripley as her fellow crew gets devoured by a giant acid-puking insect, but it's also a great film about motherly love, which I want to attribute to my book (but only because I think it serves as the perfect analogy for this case).

Speaking of which, I have a great YouTube clip of the movie for your viewing pleasures!




Okay, okay, okay. So this is a clip from Spaceballs instead. I prefer to show that clip instead of the chest-bursting scene from Alien because it might entice Christians to go into a blood-hungry phase, and, well, the sight of gore makes me want to vomit. So boo hoo if I was misleading you in your expectations of what the clip would have turned out to be, but of course many people would criticize me on the basis of my lackof honesty. I'm sorry but I can't permit that type of criticism, not on the TheologyWeb discussion boards, and certaintly not here. This site isn't about me, but my arguments and my book. And that's where the Alien analogy comes into play. You see, the alien creature lunging from the internal containment of John Hurt's body is tied with me projecting a little bit of myself onto ink and dead trees. That's why I love my book so much. And ain't no one gonna take that away from me.

Now I guess if you wanted to be a movie-Nazi about the whole ordeal, you could point out that Aliens would have been a better choice, because we do see that there is a "Queen" so to speak that is responsible for the laying of the eggnest, thus furthering the alien cause. Which of course would make sense in relation to me because of the large demand in book sales, in that I further the "atheist" cause. And it's also true that the books are taking hold of some Christians and forcing them into serious reconciliation about the tenents of their faith, much like facegrabbers finding unsuspecting victims with which to impregnate them with the alien sperm, producing more alien offspring. For some people, like that deadbeat JP Holding, that is just too technical to explain and too incomprehensible for the average person to understand. So I keep things simple by sticking with the 'chest-burster analogy', as I fancy it, and it gives something for Christians to drool about.

You can't go wrong when it comes to my book. So, if for the love of godlessness, you should decide to further explore rationalism, I invite you to come participate in the eggnest of rational discussion, and, before making the final plunge, make sure that you endulge in heavy doses of sleeping pills. Deconverting isn't a simple process, and it takes allot of pain.

Sister Blogs!

Our funds and blog revenue is so incredibly low that it's taken us almost an entire year to raise enough money to put up two other new sites to add to our communications network. So, it is with great honor and pride that I now formally introduce our two new sister blogs, which serve their own additional functions and will work in conjuction with our original blog as well: Debunking Cretinism and Debunking Righteousness.

These sites are now available for open public access to the top-right handed side of your computer screen. These sites will further our cause and hopefully get more people convinced in just how stupid their primitive superstitions REALLY are. You won't be seeing much on these sites at first (althought DR currently has its first post up for reading), as I am still under strict 'computer-use' probation while I'm stuck here in this crummy mental institution. Apparently they threw me in for temporary evaluation because I went off my "mental radar" and started randomly flashing my body's nudity for my entire neighborhood to see. It is also reported that I kept a band of one's neighbor's newborn pups in one of my garbage cans, in which I was reserving their plump juicy bodies for fixing homemade meals for my houseguests. Aside from the alledged "flashing" the puppy's owners seems to be extremely upset with me, and, upon my release from this institution, I have been advised by my lawyers to settle for a distancing contract, and I may also be forced into providing steel reinforcement on my household's perimeter (this, of course, is coming out of my paycheck....).

TERRORISTS!!!!!!!!!!!!

NO NEED TO PANIC EVERYONE, BUT I'M HAVING A MELTDOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(The above picture is dedicated to Allah's one and only profit, Osama Bin Laden. Peace be upon him....)

As mentioned before, no need to panic. But as of now, I am officially putting the site on "Arab Alert." Never heard of it? It's basically a racist type of thing where I start going around banning any Muslim commentators from my blog, including Christians (that's because if it weren't for Christianity we wouldn't be having Islam RIGHT NOW).

Let me tell you something, you twisted sicko bastard commies: Come comment on my site, and I'll have you reported to Blogger. Simple as that. If you don't like it, TOO BAD! Personally it's of no consequence to me if you blow yourselves up for 72 virgins and start murdering abortion surgeons. It doesn't phase me at all, as long as you leave me the hell alone.

I know some of what you might have read above sounds a bit psychotic. That's because it is, and I don't give a damn what you "sane" people have to say. In fact, I am so without emotions I mine as well be a Muslim fundamentalist who blows up everything on site for the sake of Jihad. True, I don't know a whole lot about Islam, because as a philosopher and a former Christian, I don't care much for any religion besides Christianity. Christianity is the ROOT OF ALL EVIL, as we have come to discover, and we hope our readers are discovering this, too....

Lately I've accused myself of fraudulence and identity theft. Ain't that something? I think someone is literally trying to kill me. Why am I wasting my time typing everything out here? That's because I don't have anything better to do! Don't you know we are in an economic recession at the moment? ? Jeeze you people are subconcious. Sheesh.

Someone is trying to impersonate me and take away everything that I've given myself. I suspect that the person responsible for this is me. Oh, and my blow-up inflatable love-making doll, whom I've given the nickname "Mrs. Spankingworth" in honor of my favorite pancake syrup brand, Mrs. Butterworth.

Speaking of unsupported claims, let's talk about evidence, shall we? To start off, it's without a doubt that I know that I'm the perpetrator behind all of this vitrolic insanity. I've been enjoying posting pornographic images on this site (and whacking off to everything I sees), oh, and blaming other people who had absolutely nothing to do with these things on them, all because I can! It's the internet, I should be able to get away with falsely accusing others of site abuse and illegal behaviors, even though I'm the one responsible for it ALL! And I know just who to blame, too! OOOOH! Let's start with Frank Walton, because's he stupid and scientifically ignorant, and because he's a Christian. You damn religionists, you're all the same! Soon you will be exposed for the lying hypocrites that you are! DIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I probably voted for him but who wants to guess why we have Barack Obama as our new president? Any takers? It couldn't be that he's a religious person and 95% of this country are made up of religious people, is it? You all voted for a terrorist. And now you're going to get it. Expect all sorts of things to blow up. And I'm going to blow up too, to show the world that I'M ANGRY AND I MEAN IT!!!!!!!!!!!

I know what all of you Christians will do once you see this message. You will report it to the government and then we'll have the Saudis and Bin Laden's running Blogger.com. Then you'll be happy. Oh yes...you'll all be VERY happy. Won't you?

I won't stand for it. Neither you, nor Barack Hussein "Osama" Obama, are bringing me down! Just for the sake of my own personal gratification, I'm going to report all of my blog's dissenters to Blogger (which will soon fall under ownership of Saudi Arabia thanks to the terrorist in the White House) and let you know that I stand in the right. MY PLANSARE FOOLPROOF! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!
YOU'LL NEVER CATCH ME ALIVE!!!!!!!

- John W. Locust (Currently under direct computer-use supervision on behalf of Pinewood Trees Mental Institution for the psychologically imbalanced, paranoid, and delusional). NOTE: Social security numbers, home addresses, phone numbers, and credit card numbers have all been wiped out from John's official text document, in order to protect the best interests of John's personal acqaintances. We sincerely apologize if we mispelled that fancy word which means "friends" but we are not really interested in your grammar pickiness so please go screw yourself.

Christians exposed as filthy fascists

Christians are filthy fascists that say people can't have bum sex and gays can't get married .
A student here was exposed in his speech which was filled with the most hateful vile speech ever spoken in the classroom.

The lawsuit says that a student at the college, Jonathan Lopez, was giving an in-class presentation last November that involved “reading the dictionary definition of marriage and reciting two Bible verses” when he was interrupted by his professor.

How dare he talk about the definitions of words and read that odious document. It is clear that Christians want to impose their fascist definitions on everyone else. The professor responded appropriately.

The professor, John Matteson, insulted the student and later refused to give him a grade, the suit says, instead writing on an evaluation that Mr. Lopez should “ask God what your grade is.”

Christians and dirty pictures on John's book

Those Christians couldn't refute any of the airtight arguments in John's book- so they resorted to posting scare tactics and dirty pictures of themselves on Amazon.This was posted by someone called dan under the images in Amazon. See how Dan is clutching his bible huddling in fear of John Loftus' intellectual superiority?
Dan caused the sales on John's book to drop to 220000th after that picture made its way in.
He also shows he has no arguments when he says

"Are you sure you want to go down the path John chose? Eternity is a very long time, you do understand. Your choice, the religion of atheism or follow the Creator of all called Christianity."

His grammar isn't even right. Dan clearly is scared of our irrefutable arguments.
Our attitude is summed up in one of those posts by Michael at amazon.

KC James says author John W. Loftus is abrasive for calling William Lane Craig 'delusional' and believers 'fools'. But what else would you call believers in the Flat Earth theory? For the arguments against Christianity are as strong as those against the delusional Flat Earth theory, believers in which most Christians would also call fools (although the bible writers with their 'four corners of the Earth' reveal themselves as Flat Earthers!), so Mr Loftus is not insulting believers, but merely stating a fact about them and their mental state.
-Michael

Farrell Till Diagnosed with Terminal Brain Damage

Extranational News report that Farrell Till's brain collapsed according to a Canton General Hospital nurse of 30 years. Family and friends have noticed Farrell Till had been acting weird for the past few years, waking up in the middle of the night soaked in a pool of his own sweat screaming "Holding" at the top of his lungs. The past few months in particular have been especially nightmarish as Farrell Till's "Holding" phantasm appered more and more often. Despite the total and complete loss of his brain, doctors expect Mr. Till to make a full and complete recovery.

"Mr. Till's brain was merely a vestigial organ, and removing it was much like removing one's appendix" said Canton General's oldest brain surgeon, the philosopher king Richard Carrier.

"I have full confidence in Mr. Carrier's abilites" said an exhausted but cheerful Mr. Till. "Any man who puts Aristotle to shame with his interdisciplinary insights is welcome to do with my brain as he wishes".

Mr. Till will be released this Thursday. The absence of a brain is not expected to impair his work in the realms of religion, philosophy and history in any way.

Atheist Critics

Okay, so this may be a bit of really old news by now, but my latest entrance onto the YouTube platform seems to have received some negative reviews from fellow YouTuber atheists on the horizon:

fritleyfrisp May 25, 2008
I think you're parodying ex Christians but I can't be quite sure. Your writing is shockingly bad and you can't argue for bunk. I'm not usually this forward with people but I'm putting you alongside Mike Wright and other parody websites. I could be wrong though and if I am...so what?

You can find all of this at my official YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/user/Johnwloftus

Something I have learned to acknowledge over the years is the fact that all great authors and philosophers will always have their dissenters (that is how you spell it, right?) and hard core critics. Socrates had his critics, Jesus had his critics, Ghandi had his critics, and even to this day Mother Teresa is being criticized for her apparent lack of faith or belief in God (I happen to be one of those critics but that's a different point altogether for now).

The point is, we know that the messages of these major figureheads carried were profoundly sound (except for the religion aspect to it, i.e., Jesus, Ghandi, and Mother Teresa). Jesus himself was even criticized by members of his own family as described in the New Testament. Now, a question I have for all of you readers out there is this: Just because a fellow atheist criticizes the methods and style of another unbeliever, does that mean that there is something to "fix" or something wrong with the person being criticized and his arguments? The utlimate answer, to put it bluntly, is NO. In which case I have no reason to think otherwise when it applies to my case. As far as I can tell, my arguments are withholding and I have not heard a single good refutation of them which has set my record straight. I'd say I'm on a pretty balanced diet of sound logic and philosophical principles. After all, logic is my trade, so when I suspect that someone is criticising me because of that, I simply assume that they are ignorant of philosophy and need to be educated in it before finding the gall to spout off nonsense that would only come from an ignoramus.

And I truly believe that most of the audiences here which subscribe to this blog are without judgmental biases and could tell you in a straightforward manner that I have presented a good solid case to doubt the central tenents of Christianity and theism in general (God belief). Theism leads to dangerous thinking, even to the point where you can use it as a justification for anything. So, I believe I am not only justified on the reasoning of my sound arguments, I am also doing this world a favor by presenting those sound arguments in hopes of deconverting Christians and pulling the wool covering the eyes hence blinding them from reality and ultimate truth.

WARNING: Impostering impersonators on the prowl!

As of lately it seems that I've been getting some forms of cheeky mockery from the Holdingnites over at TheologyWeb. As childish as they may be, I can't stand and allow for such conduct to be permissable as I continue to have complete and full administration of this blog and the content within its comments from warm-hearted opengly welcome guests and daily commentators.

Some people apparently can't get over their own insecurities when someone has the nerve to put them up for questioning and ridicule. Way in the beginning of when my relations with Holding as a new member of TheologyWeb had taken place, and our acquaintances had become familiarized with passing time, I had a much higher standard of respect for the likes of Holding. But as you can see, Holding is a hyena bent on breeding his own cult-following just to get more hyenas like himself to form a sort of mob-mentality complex, completely and willfully ignoring the very words of Christ himself: "Those without sin may cast the first stone."

I'll be blunt here, as this here blog's administrator and head author, I'm fed up with dealing with the crap. Those who don't know better are going to fall under the impression that this is some sort of parody blog based on a much older blog that existed a couple of years before this one was even spawned into its own existence. We don't need to get technical here, because it should be obvious to anyone that's beside the point here. What is the point here is that Holding and his groupies are up to no good, and further confirmation of this comes from a comment left by an 'Anonymous' user. Now, unlike the other "DC" blog, I allow for anonymous commentators to leave their food for thought in this little diary of mine and my fellow colleagues/former fundamental devout religionists. But some of the comments are going to leave deceptive impressions of what this blog is all about and its functioning relevance to modern day cultural society. I have no doubts Holding and comrades have something to do with these types of comments (as seen below), but my guess is that such comments come from a motivation to divert our actively-reading audiences in some sort of childish game of sandbox. For someone that is "Holier than art thou", I am beginning to suspect a rat, a very insecure and emotionally disturbed rat:

Anonymous said...

Hi Mike. The book you're after can be found here although there has been a slight delay in publishing it but don't worry as it'll be worth the wait. The previous book was recommended by Norman Geisler amongst others so you can always get that whilst you're waiting. Just ignore the J P Holding groupies here.

May 1, 2008 9:40 AM

Let this post serve as an indication to the audience that from here on out if you come across these types of comments under the alias of 'Anonymous' or anything that may arise suspicision, that these comments are more than likely coming from a propagandist jackle who needs serious dire fufillment in his life.

Another Retarded Review of My Book

I have said that if you want to debate me then get my book and review it, and I will enage you. Otherwise, you're just an ignoramus who wouldn't know philosophy even if it stared you straight in the face. A young disabled cripple named Nick decided to do that. He's not only plauged with physical disabilities, but that's precisely why he's been given moderator priveleges over at TheologyWeb. Anyways he's been reviewing it my book chapter by chapter and I've been making some comments about it from time to time. But today he decided to review my chapter on the atonement and I am speechless. I don't know where to begin with such ignorance. I'm so speechless in fact I don't even offer any responses or rebuttals to his review! See what you think:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why I Rejected Christianity Review: Why Did Jesus Suffer?

Our review of Loftus’s book continues with a look at
the atonement. Why did it happen? The theory he chooses to address and I will defend as it’s the one I hold is the penal substitution view. It is the view that Christ took our place on the cross and he received our punishment and we in turn receive his righteousness. There is a brief history of various atonement theories before this (With some left out), but that is not relevant to the point at hand.

He starts out with asking about why this is? If the claim of Christianity is true, then Loftus does admit that he goes to Hell because of his sins. However, what has anyone ever done to deserve that? He states “All through my entire life I have never met, nor even heard of one person, who deserved such a punishment. Never.

I guess that settles it. Judge Loftus has spoken.

I beg to differ of course. First off, let me state my view of Hell. My view is not a fiery torture chamber. It is a place of darkness and isolation. In effect, it is eternal quarantine. God lets people go there and he leaves them alone. The worst suffering will be internal. People in Hell will know for all eternity that they have blown it.

Now who deserves eternal separation from God? I see someone every morning when I get up and look in the mirror who does. And I think this is shocking to some because we’ve lost what sin is.

To begin with, it’s not breaking an abstract rule. It’s violating the person of God. Consider God as the most awesome, holy, good, loving, powerful, intelligent being that there is. As Anselm would say, you can’t conceive of anyone greater than he is.

Sin is telling that one that he is not what he says he is. In fact, every sin is ultimately the sin of Satan. Every sin is choosing your own good over the good of God. In effect, it is you telling yourself that you will be God instead of him. It is divine treason and it cuts one off from the source of goodness and life. God simply cannot allow that sin in his presence.

Now Loftus says that in our modern society we are humane in our punishments. Perhaps we are, and perhaps that is the problem. C.S. Lewis wrote on how we seek to cure criminals rather than punish them long ago. http://www.angelfire.com/pro/lewiscs/humanitarian.html

The question is, is it just?Loftus mentions the death penalty. I support it. I know I probably lost some readers for that, but I do. I believe man is in the image of God and to murder a man is an attack on that image of God. I believe the murderer is to pay the price by having his own life be forfeit. Of course, this is when it’s shown beyond theshadow of a doubt that the accused did commit the crime. I have this strange belief that crime should be punished.

Loftus goes on to ask if it’s fair that he suffer eternally for one little white lie.

I’d like to meet the person whose only sin is one little white lie.

Loftus’s sins are at the beginning of his book. I have no need to go into them. My stance has been that they really don’t matter as long as one doesn’t live in them. I think they need to be confessed and repented of and the blame squarely accepted, but after that, I do believe in divine forgiveness. I know my sins and they’re not just little white lies either. We have all lived in constant rebellion against the Almighty and what we get is what we deserve.

Loftus says that we see in Scripture that God is willing to forgive if people will confess.

Yes. Absolutely. Getting out of Hell is quite simple. Just trust Christ. God does desire mercy and not sacrifice, but God is also just. He gives mercy to those who want it.

Loftus also wants to know since he became like us, why he can’t see sin from our perspective.

Let’s not consider that we shouldn’t want God to see it
from our perspective. I don’t want him to. I want him to see it from his perspective. Why? It’s the true one. How do I want to view something like myself even? Do I want to see me as I see me or do I want to see me as God sees me? It would obviously be the latter because that would be the true view.

Now we may intend God no wrong in sinning, but it does not matter. We have sinned and it cannot be ignored. Even Levitical Law had a sacrifice for unintentional sins. Death was still the price. (And frankly, I know I’ve committed sins in the past knowing they were sins and I seriously doubt anyone reading my blog is in a different position.)

For the third one, did Jesus pay an infinite price?
First off, Jesus did pay the price. Hebrews tells us that. The Son went and offered up his blood in the holiest sanctuary of all and God was pleased. What was the one who offered the sacrifice allowed to do with what was offered to him? Whatever he wanted. God restored the sacrifice he was given of the Son and
glorified him.

How does this work? I can only imagine that on some
level, there is an eternal reality in God of what happened on the cross. The Son is spoken of as the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. Do I understand this entirely? Of course not. I doubt anyone does. It doesn’t mean though that I throw out the whole thing as nonsensical. (Makes you wonder if
since there’s no understood theory of naturalistic evolution out there why that isn’t thrown out as well.)

The next point is that supposedly, forgiveness doesn’t
require punishment.

On a human court, that’s true, however, there are still
consequences. If someone hits my car for instance, I can forgive them and tell them not to worry, but that car will still be damaged and someone will still have to fix it. On a divine level, we are violating justice itself and the price for being cut off from life is death. Someone has to die. God can’t put his holiness on a secondary level. He must treat himself as the greatest good of all.
So what happens at the cross? His justice is satisfied
and his mercy is offered to all.

The fifth objection is really along the same lines.

He then asks if we die outside of the faith, what reason does God have to punish us?

Ooooooh. Let me guess. We’re sinners? Sounds like a good reason to me.

And yes, God does understand us perfectly and he does
know about the moral law on our hearts. If there were any circumstances that put the sin in a lesser degree, God would know them better than we would. In the end, there is no one biblically who will be able to say “It was not fair.” Creation shows us that God exists plainly and the moral law on our hearts tells us that some things are right and some are wrong.

Loftus also asks where sin abides in us. This is one of
those things that just makes me wonder what kind of theology was being taught. Sin is an action. Actions do not abide in us. They affect our character though and our souls. The same happens with good actions. It is those of us that do not choose to live to be what we were meant to be who get eternity apart from God.

Another theory is commented on later, but it is not the atonement theory I hold, thus I will stick to what has been said thus far. I do not find anything here that really gives me pause. I look and see “Did Jesus die on the cross? Did he rise from the dead?” Then even if I don’t understand it all, I understand that it does work, for God has told us so himself.

Ancient People Was Stupid, Part Duh!

One of the tenets of skepticism is that the ancients were idiots. It really helps us bolster our faith in atheism to believe that we're the cream of the evolutionary crop and so much more enlightened than those knuckle-dragging sheepherders that lived several thousand years ago. Then something like the Antikythera mechanism comes along and rocks our world:

When it came to making cogs and gears, the ancient Greeks got there more than a millennium before anyone else, scientists say.

Using advanced new imaging techniques, scientists have reconstructed the gear structure of the mysterious Antikythera mechanism—one of the world's oldest computers.

. . .

The device employs an elaborate arrangement of more than 30 gears for its calculations. The level of miniaturization and complexity is remarkable, with some parts resembling those used by 18th-century clockmakers.

"It is extraordinarily sophisticated," said Stephen Johnston, an expert on astronomical calculators from the Museum of the History of Science at the University of Oxford in England.

"In its complexity it exceeds medieval cathedral clocks, which were developed over a thousand years later."

-National Geographic News

Wow! What do we say about that? Obviously the ancients weren't quite as stupid as some of us would like! Well, don't worry. A genius by the name of Harry McCall addressed this point so eloquently that I have to quote his words in full:

the ancient Greek were MUCH more intelligent than the dumb Biblical writers. Classical Greeks such as Plato, Socrates, Aristotle were the exceptions. I web noted that this gadget was Greaco-Roman and not Biblical.

It reads like poetry, doesn't it? So now we can safely conclude that not all ancient people was stupid, just the ones we need to be.

How I Make Sure I’ll NEVER Believe the Resurrection Happened!

There are two chief reasons I do not believe that the resurrection happened in history. First of all, God never got me a girlfriend. Second, because I set the bar so high that supernatural/miraculous claims require what I call supernatural/miraculous forms of evidence to support them. (Actually, that may just be one reason if you think about it; if you knew what a jerk I was, you’d know why I never had a girlfriend!) If you think this is too demanding criteria, well, let me just put it this way, I don’t care what you think, quite honestly!

First, I have to explain what I mean by natural and the "supernatural" as well as the logical axiom that I made up out of thin air, that "supernatural" claims require "supernatural" forms of evidence. (Actually, Carl Sagan made it up, but who cares?)

The Natural and the Supernatural

I believe that the only honest way of conducting investigations for any historian is deny miracles can ever happen and to make up as many rules for accepting something as historical as we can – especially if we don’t like what happened. I’d kill myself if anyone ever proved that Jesus rose from the dead, so I have a bunch of rules I’ve made up to ensure that no one can ever prove to me it happened.

The critical-historical method (the one I like most) must be based on what I call the "Principle of Uniformity". This principle states that only things we have personally seen and experienced ourselves, or only things like those sorts of things, can be historical. This makes it easy to dismiss the resurrection, since I have never seen one. In fact, even if I do see one, I can dismiss Jesus’ resurrection because I might see a resurrection happen, say, in a Corvette; but Jesus’ resurrection happened in a tomb, so seeing a resurrection in a Corvette doesn’t help prove Jesus rose. As you can see, using your own personal experience as a gauge for what is historical makes it convenient and easy to not believe what you don’t want to believe!

Anyway, if I go to read the Histories of Herodotus or any of the works of Livy, I assume that my experience governs what they say happened, and that if they report something I’ve never experienced (like a resurrection, or a healing, or a date where the girl didn’t walk out within 5 minutes after the guy burped in her face) then I assume that they’re either lying or stupid. This axiom, that my limited sphere of experience is the ultimate test of historicity, is what I use when I study history, science, or philosophy. This principle of uniformity is to me a necessary axiom that underlies all my scientific, historical, and philosophical study. It underlies all rationality and anyone who doesn’t use these same rules is an idiot. This axiom, the principle of uniformity, is one that I assume a priori in my approach to studying history, and if you don’t like it, you can go &^%$# yourself.

Anyway, the founding of the United States of America, to me is an event that I attribute solely to the actions of mere men acting collectively as I do the founding of the Roman Republic, Egyptian dynasties, the victories of certain battles fought in war. None of this do I attribute to the actions of any divine, angelic, or spiritual beings. I should point out that I do not rule out the possibility of the “supernatural” or the “miraculous,” I just make up so many rules before I’ll believe in it that it’s the same thing as ruling it out. That’s the essence of being a freethinker: You come up with the best ways you can to obscure your a priori assumptions from ignorant Christians. (That means all of them, of course.) I don't see the logical necessity of the principle of uniformity of ruling out the existence of anything regarded as “supernatural.” I just don’t like it, and have never seen any personally, and since the world revolves around me, I automatically dismiss it.

However, I do operate on a further axiom: that the standard rules of evidence used in places like courtrooms ought to be discarded when it comes to supernatural stuff, and we should instead use the rule made up by Carl Sagan that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” What this means is, if I decide an event is extraordinary – using my limited experiential horizon as a gauge – then I can demand more evidence that any standard rules would require to believe it is true. If I was told by a friend of mine that my friend saw a being coming out of the sky and claiming that it was “Ahura-Mazda” (the Zoroastrian god of Japanese vehicles) and that it had a warning that a nuclear war was going to happen in the year 2015 between the United States and Iran and that it could be averted if all Americans in the state of California prayed to Ahura-Mazda asking that it be averted, I would be skeptical of my friend telling me this. The reason I would be skeptical is that I am a social misfit who doesn’t have any friends, and anyone claiming to be my friend is obviously a loony toon.

But the point is, Christians are obviously all stupid people who believed stuff like the Resurrection based on no evidence. I’m a smart freethinker who checks these things. I’d ask questions like, Is my friend under the influence of some intoxicating substance? Is my friend going insane, perhaps the sad victim of a hallucinatory mental disease? Is my friend's mind being affected somehow by an external cause such as radiation, poison, or some substance that is causing my friend to hallucinate and seriously believe that a Persian deity visited him with this apocalyptic message? Perhaps my friend saw a vision of what appeared to be “Ahura-Mazda” but was fooled by some kind of very advanced holographic projection system. Perhaps my friend's drink was drugged or my friend was hypnotized by someone or multiple people acting in concert. Maybe someone is trying to convince my friend that s/he is going crazy and these people are working to have my friend committed- what better way than to have my friend convinced that s/he was the recipient of a divine message? But if I was to rule out the possibility of delusion whether by natural or human means, I'd then have to consider the possibility that my friend is suffering a delusion that is paranormal in origin. If the cause is not natural or human, then perhaps it is superhuman in some sense. Perhaps my friend is being subjected to testing by alien visitors who are doing experiments on human brains for their scientific curiosity, or perhaps it is a mean or amusing prank being carried out by alien visitors who are infatuated with the idea of making human beings think that they're crazy.

Ruling out natural causes of these sorts would buy me so much time that I’d never have to come to the conclusion that a miracle actually happened, if I play my cards right. The bottom line is, I would have to have this same deity reveal himself/herself/itself to me and persuade me that s/he/it revealed him/her/itself to my friend. I would, of course, demand that I be supplied evidence of some sort that I wasn't, myself, hallucinating in some way or that I wasn't the victim of a prank or scientific experiment. But if I was to receive such a “revelation”, I would look for more ways to put off a decision. I would write up the event as I believe I experienced it and I would submit it to scientists, historians, philosophers, to Skeptics and skeptical organizations and scientific organizations. I would submit such a report to the Scientific Community for the Investigation of the Paranormal and I would ask that any such supernatural being reveal him/her/itself to these scientific and skeptical organizations and be willing to provide any such proofs that they request of him/her/it that I would. I would demand that the Scientific Community for the Investigation of the Paranormal prove that they are not aliens, a hallucination, or didn’t drug my drink, or covert Christians. I would ask that any such being be willing to provide adequate proofs of some sort that I and others are, indeed, the subjects of any supernatural revelation. I’d go through every name in the New York City phone book, asking for their opinion. This is what I mean by raising the bar as high as I can to avoid believing something.

This is one of the chief reasons I disbelieve that miracles have occurred in history. If I read in the New Testament that Jesus rose from the dead, that he was transfigured on a mountain in front of his disciples, that he walked on water, that he raised Jairus' daughter or that he healed folks who were blind, I see no reason to believe that such events occurred because they are supernatural events and to claim such events occurred requires all the evidence I demand in order to validate them. If Yahweh really did appear to Moses, then for me to believe that this happened, I would require that Yahweh appear to me as well and provide me with supernatural evidence that he really does exist and really did appear to Moses. If he doesn’t appear, he can go %^$# himself.

I don't see any miracles happening today. I asked God for a girlfriend and He never gave me one. I prayed for a new sports car once and nothing happened. God is obviously a selfish jerk if He even exists. So ^%$ Him. I want more. That bastard owes me big time. I have never seen a miracle happen all of my life and so I will conclude with a uniform degree of probability that such, in all likelihood has never happened, and probably will never happen, because the universe revolves around me. So there.

I’ll be back later to explain why else you Christians are so stupid for believing in the Resurrection.

Kissing Hank's WHOOP!

This is a great piece by James Booger, and citing it is much easier than answering arguments!

This morning as I was picking the wings off of flies to see if I could get evolution moving a little faster, there was a knock at my door. When I answered the door I found a well groomed, nicely dressed couple. The man spoke first:

Fred: "Hi! I'm Fred, and this is Wilma."

Wilma: "Hi! We're here to invite you to come express loyalty to Hank with us."

Me: "Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who's Hank, and why would I want to express my loyalty to him?"

Fred: "If you are loyal to Hank, He'll give you the natural reward for loyalty; just like if you work for a company for long time and do well, they rightly reward you. And if you aren't, He won’t give you any rewards, but He will just leave you on your own to your own shame.”

Me: "What? Is this some sort of bizarre mob shake-down?"

Fred: "Hank is a billionaire philanthropist. Hank built this town. Hank owns this town. He can do whatever He wants, and what He wants is to give you a reward for loyalty, but He can't until you are loyal to him."

Me: "That doesn't make any sense. Why..."

Wilma: "What do you mean, ‘that doesn’t make any sense’? Do you think these houses built themselves? Don’t you think you should be thankful to the person who built it and let you live here?”

Me: "Well no, I think these houses just sort of flew together in a storm one day."

Fred: "I can see why this doesn’t make sense to you then."

Me: "Do you show loyalty to this ‘Hank’ often?"

Wilma: "Oh yes, all the time..."

Me: "And has He given you a million dollars?"

Fred: "Well no. We don’t serve Hank for the reward. We serve Hank because He has earned our trust and loyalty.”

Me: "Huh? But I wanted money."

Wilma: "I suppose if you think these houses came out of nowhere, that’s to be expected."

Me: "Well gosh. It sounds like there’s really nothing in it for me. Do you know anyone who was loyal to Hank, left town, and got the rewards?"

Fred: "Does it really matter? The rewards are not the issue; it is that Hank is a real person who did real things like build your house.”

Me: "Yeah, but I want money, man. Have you seen the price of beer lately?”

Fred: "I’m sorry, but your priorities seem a bit skewed. Remember, if you don't follow Hank he’ll leave you alone…but you won’t be able to achieve your fullest potential that Hank intends. He’ll leave to spend the rest of your existence in boredom and disgrace.”

Me: "Maybe if I could see Hank, talk to Him, get the details straight from Him..."

Wilma: “What makes you think you’d hear any different? Aren’t you just fudging to create a problem?"

Me: "Then how do you show loyalty to Hank if you don’t see him?"

Fred: "We serve Him and His interests. Don’t tell me you need to see and talk to a person to work for them. Have you ever seen the President of this country?”

Me: "Well, no, but --"

Wilma: "We learned about Hank by the record of what He did in history. The records taught us all about Hank and why we should be loyal to Him – because of all that He did, and because He is who He is."

Me: "Huh. And you just took these records at their word when they said there was a Hank, that Hank wanted you to be loyal to him, and that Hank did all this stuff?"

Fred: "No, we checked out the validity of the record and what it said, and compared it to other records. One of Hank’s officers, Karl, wrote down some of it; there were others, too, but here's a copy of what Karl wrote; see for yourself."

From the Desk of Karl
Be loyal to Hank for He has earned your loyalty by providing you with life and all you have.
Use alcohol in moderation.
Pursue righteousness. Don’t misuse this as an excuse to define “righteousness” in your own image.
Eat right.
Hank dictated this list Himself.
The moon is white and shining.
Everything Hank says is right.
Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.
Don't use alcohol if it becomes too strong.
Eat your wieners on buns, no condiments.
Be loyal to Hank or He'll leave you to your own devices.

Me: "This appears to be written on Karl's letterhead."

Wilma: "What’s your point?"

Me: "I have a hunch that if we checked we'd find this is Karl's handwriting."

Fred: "So what? When Karl wrote this 95% of people in this town couldn’t read anyway. Most communication was by dictation. Do you have a problem with that? Why not just address the epistemic validity of what is written?"

Me: "I thought you said no one gets to see Hank?"

Wilma: "Not now, but years ago He would talk to some people."

Me: "I thought you said He was a philanthropist. What sort of philanthropist hurts of people just because they're different?"

Wilma: "So you think that Hank ought to give rewards to ungrateful people?"

Me: "Maybe your friend Karl just made the whole thing up."

Fred: "So prove it. We did our research and we found that all that Karl wrote is sound.”

Me: "But 9 says 'Don't use alcohol.' which doesn't quite go with item 2, and 6 says 'The moon is white and shining,' which is just plain wrong."

Fred: "See, you haven’t done your homework at all. 2 and 9 were both written before alcohol was strong enough to knock your socks off. As far as 6 goes, I suppose you don’t use the word ‘sunset’ in your vocabulary.”

Me: "Scientists have pretty firmly established that the moon reflects light, not that it shines..."

Wilma: "They’ve also established that the sun doesn’t ‘set’. So what is the problem, exactly? Do you have a problem with phenomenological language?"

Me: "I'm not really an expert. I don’t even know what that word means."

Fred: "Obviously not.”

Me: "Item 7 is a real trip, though.”

Wilma: "Why?”

Me: "You can use it to say Hank's always right because the list says so, the list is right because Hank dictated it, and we know that Hank dictated it because the list says so. That's circular logic, no different than saying 'Hank's right because He says He's right.'"

Fred: "Well, sorry to disappoint you, but we did check out the claims and as far as we have found, item 7 is valid. If you think it isn’t you need to explain why.”

Me: "Maybe later. I need a beer. What's the deal with wieners?"

Wilma: She rolls her eyes.

Fred: "Oh, yes., Wieners, in buns, no condiments. It was written at a time when there were serious problems with condiments being poisoned by poor processing methods, so Hank included a ban on condiments. Buns are required because when this was written, there were no napkins, and people got the grease from the wieners on their fingers and it caused a lot of accidents. These days since we have napkins and better sanitation, we don’t worry about that law.”

Me: "What if I didn't have a bun?"

Fred: "What kind of silly question is that? I told you why the bun was needed. Are you so selfish that you’d risk hurting people just so you don’t have to put up with a bun?"

Me: "No relish? No Mustard?"

Wilma: “Didn’t you hear a word he said? Relish and mustard at the time this was written was deadly.”

Me: (I stick my fingers in her ears.)"I am not listening to this. La la la, la la, la la la."

Fred: "I can see we’re wasting our time with someone who lives in his own little world.”

With this, Fred escorted Wilma to their waiting car, and sped off. I went back inside for a beer.

I Hope JP Holding DIES! Several times!

That did it! I'm so mad now! That J. P . Holding and his buddies are making fun of my kiss kiss hero John Locust again (see last lovable blog entry by my dear sweet buddy)! And he called my other kiss kiss hero Dr. Hectoring Avalost a name -- "Dr. Stupid"! What an intellectual crook!

Hey, look! I see no problem in apologizing for errors, whether slight or serious, and I am open-minded to accepting legitimate criticisms from people should I make an error as long as people are civil in their criticisms. By that I mean, I won't accept correction until you agree to let me roll down my pants so you can plant some lip gloss! You better be super nice to me when I make a mistake, or I'll kill you!

I don’t claim to be an intellectual nor do I try to pass myself off a serious scholar. I try to make people think I am one in more subtle ways than that. It's how I got away with stuff as a kid. Sometimes.

Aw heck, I'm getting off topic! Let me get to the main point. Holding's slip-up. I mean,

Holding’s Slip-Up

That's better! There was a time on TWeb when I asked Holding to explain what he meant by something, and Holding explained it, and even changed his article to make it clear in case someone else had the same question I did. Well, you see the slip-up? Come on, it's right there! Holding was so stupid he didn't anticipate my problem with comprehension before I explained it to him!

I am so sorry that I pointed this out to him! If I had never pointed this out to him, I could use this as deadly ammunition to destroy his apologetic argument for the resurrection. The atheist community has one less club to beat Holding with no thanks to me!

But here's the real point! I am confident that this will not be the last time that Mr. Holding slips up! There will come a time in the future where Mr. Holding will slip-up and make such a damaging error that it will completely destroy a big argument of his for the Christian faith. It may not be on the topic of the resurrection but it will be sufficient to damage, irreparably, his apologetics for the Christian faith. I am predicting that he will slip-up big time again! I'm going to check his stupid Tekton website 100 times a day waiting for that to happen! I am quite confident that this will happen! When it happens, I will e-mail Hectoring Avalosost and show him it! Perhaps with a confident declaration of scholarly expertise, Dr. Avalos will judge Mr. Holding to be not just an amateur but an “intellectual crook”. When Mr. Holding makes his slip-up, I will be right here waiting to rub his nose in it. I'll take out ads in the New York Times! I'll tattoo a description of the slip-up on my rear end and take photographs and post them all over the world! I'll tell John Locust! I'll tell my mommy! I'll dance in the street and scream about it! Wheeeeeeee!

Huh? Where was I?

Oh. Never mind. See you next time.

The Uncritical Thinking of TWeb!

As some of you may already know, TWeb (an abbreviation for "TheologyWeb") is a pro right-win Christian conservative website that is hostile to almost every type of skeptic or non-Holding supporter you can think of. Every time I go onto those forums, I get ganged up on, asked tough questions that are hard to understand, and my arguments get treated as if they were idiotic.

I'll tell you what's idiotic! Holding and his supporters, THAT'S WHO! Holding likes idiots. He caters to them. He feeds off of them. They think he's something else. Well he is; he lives in the sewer.

Recently I decided to entertain their lusts for insults against me, being that I myself, am a skeptic of Christianity and an opposer of JP Holding (the filthy scum that runs Tektonics.org). If anyone wants to know why I don't link to TWeb where Holding squats, check out the thinking skills they exhibit. Here is a thread where Holding asked people to come up with mock slogans about DC. He's fixated on us. I'm Doubting John. You can pick up the debate that ensued on this page, and read though the next few pages by successively clicking on the next numbered one.

As you can plainly see, TWeb is not a place for civil discussion. Most if not all who are skeptical of their beliefs and in disagreement with them will not be tolerated, especially if you disagree with Holding. TWeb is perhaps the only Christian website I can think of where believers will gain up on you and try to intimidate you to conform to their mores and behaviors. TWeb is a catalyst for the cult following of Tektonics.org. Christians like ApologiaPhoenix, Mountain Man, JB, lilpixieofterror (all moderators of TWeb, respectively but not in any respective order), JonLanceBarker, Teluog, and especially one particular user known as "Truth be Told" (a loving and altruistic Christian that created an anti-Acharya S website filled with nothing but vinegar and vitroilic comments) are nothing more than Holdingnite jackels. It's sad to know that so many of them are duped into following someone who worships dead animals (a prohibited act as commanded in the Bible!).

If anyone takes the time read further they will see that the moderators deleted some of my comments because I accused Holding of lying. The sad thing is I don't have any evidence to prove it. But he did. I consider him to be a liar. Then they deleted another coment because I argued against deleting my prior comment. There's no fairness there. They are a pack of hyenas; idiots. Is there something truly wrong with accusing someone of lying and not being capable of providing evidence? Well, apparently on TWeb, it certaintly is. That's a problem. Holding is crafty like a fox, he is able to shake your hand in the darkness, and somehow withdrawing that handshake in the brightness of light.

And if you read further you'll see where Holding supports one of his ignorant followers when he argued that in order for me to criticize God for creating this universe I must be able to create a better one...in one week! Is that not ridiculous? I can criticize a contractor for his work without being able to build a house! But rather than telling this stupid supporter of his that he was wrong, which is the decent educational thing to do, Holding thought his argued was a good one!

Nevertheless, would I get them back for their childishness. This time, I was not going to stand by and play the role of innocence and humility, and I would get them good this time. I entered the fray one page earlier than I linked to where I provided my own slogan for DC:

Give us the guilt ridden, the brow beaten, the outcasts, the wounded soldiers, and we shall heal thee. Give us the religiously wicked, the victimizers, and the defenders of Biblical atrocities, and we shall beat thee down. Give us the brainwashed, the superstitious, the ignorant, and we shall teach thee. Give us the masters of gerrymandering who are exhausted from intellectual feats like spinning several plates up on several sticks, and we shall give thee rest.

The way things are going at this point, I may start considering putting this slogan into effect. This will demonstrate the digusting acts of Holding and his supporters, and will thus further my case in debunking Christianity.

Almost every time I go there I say to myself "never again." And then I somehow find the forgiveness to humble myself before them giving them their crave for attention returning to the boards typically around little more or just around a week when I'll say "I'm outta here" or "I'm leaving you all."

That's all I got to say, but hopefully this post will speak out to anyone with a clear thinking mind and a good moral conciousness. Regardless of whether you are a believer or skeptic.

God and smiting

It finally took pinching myself and a bit of a self-arm-twisting, but I finally visited my local DVD store and picked up a copy of the Steve Corall's latest DVD release, Evan Almighty. This film is obviously a sequel to those who know about the first film, Bruce Almighty starring Jim Carrey (whom also plays a character role in the film Dumb & Dumber, just to give people notice).

Okay, so if you're not familiar with the first film it goes something like this: God (played by Morgan Freeman) finally answers "Bruce" and his prayers for a better life. To make a long story short, God gives Bruce his powers to see what it might be like having unlimited domain in the universe for a temporary amount of time until Bruce comes to the "moral" of the story that human beings can't do God's job as well as God can. Yeah, I know, it's pretty stupid stuff and I know just exactly what you might be thinking at this point: Well, why the hell not? After all, doesn't it say in the Bible that God made man a "perfect" creation? Is God so smug that he puts us to a limitation scale and boasts of his universally sovereign power? If that's the case, God is a real smug cornhole, and that's that.

Alright, so the second film focuses more on a character from the first film known as Evan Backster whom becomes the main character of the second film running into contact with God, blah, blah, blah. In the movie, Evan is elected Congressman and hopes that his campaign will "change the world." Then, God comes into the scene to tell Evan to build an ark. Yep, this takes after the mythical story of Noah's Ark as found within Genesis (if you take a look at some of the "Special Features" on the DVD rom you'll hear an interesting bit where the director wanted the ark used in the film to match "historical records" which tells you allot about who is behind the production of this film and how they are planning to continually push Creationist propaganda into the media and elsewhere just for a little profit for their Jesus-camps and pedophile priests). And this is where it gets interesting. Now, maybe the director didn't take a good enough look at the book of Genesis when he sought out writing the script to this movie, but according to the Bible it says that God promised Noah via a rainbow that he would never send such a destructive flood to mankind ever again:

Genesis 9:14-15

14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.

Despite what the Bible says however, and being that the film's director is most likely a fundamentalist Christian, the producers of the film wanted to have God create a second global flood. What makes this even worse is that God describes the Noah myth as "a story of love" not of His wrath upon the sinful. That's how it goes throughout the rest of the movie: God is showing "love" by destroying the Earth with a great quantity of water. If you're a Christian and this somehow doesn't register well with you, perhaps you should be reading more of your Bible.

That's right folks. The Bible contains all of the same wishy washy garbage as does the movie itself. Somehow, God demonstrated his "love" to Abraham when he commands him to kill his own son and then to have that backfire as a sort of brutal strip tease (I know how those are, and believe me, they ain't pretty), and most importantly for Christianity, God shows "love" by sending himself in human form only to be nailed to a cross just to please his own deviance. Talk about a ridiculous fairy tale. Sheesh.

As an atheist I willingly choose to reject such doctrines. But, more importatingly aside from my own personal affairs, you have to wonder why there are such things as "Christian apologists". These type of people know what the Bible says inside and out, letter for letter, word for word, page by page. Yet, they continue to defend the notions that love comes about through torture, genocide, and crucifixion. If the Christian God does exist, he is the type of being that psychopathic freaks like Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka Kansas and Michael Jackson talk about when they use the word "God."

And besides all of the nasty theological implications in the film, the directing and scripting is just godawful. For one, the director picks a black man to portray the role of God? The director of course did this in the first film, but I mean, for sheesh's sake. A black man? Isn't God supposed to be the god of the Jews? How many Jews do you know that are black? Seriously....

My second issue with the moviescripting is the flood scene: There was no "global flood". In fact, the only flood in that film was one that destroyed the city dam and the city's urban areas. Then the water just literally dried up. What a waste of money! They didn't even have the nerve to create a global flood effect! Those cheapskakes, sheesh!

What I set out to do in this article was to explore pre-Christian theology. Christians are always hung up on the idea of their God being "merciful", "forgiving" and "all loving." It's almost as if they completely ignore the Old Testament. Why? I thought the entire Bible was the inerrant divinely inspired Word of God? And the Christians that do acknowledge the OT's content dismiss it as being of a "different time period." Well, I'll tell you what I think: I'm disturbed by it all, each and every part of it. The fact that we still live in a society where most people do not accept evolutionary biology is frightening in itself. I fear we may at some point regress back to Old Testament times, and I can only hope I will be long dead before then.

Like, the most devastating argument ever, Man!

Like... during an acid trip I got to thinkin'...

-Jesus was a dude and so were the 12 Apostles
-You can't have that many dudes in one area at once without having a fart joke cracked
-Christians believe that Fart Jokes are Immoral
-Therefore, Jesus was an Immoral Hypocrite and Christianity is False

You can't get much more devastating than that, man!

Like, now if you'll excuse me, I have some two-bit drug dealer to pummel for selling me bum drugs, man. He gave me Splenda instead of Coke...

The Sugary Foods Argument

I recall the moments of my childhood in which I was forced to consume healthy foods such as squash, beans, and liver before ever leaving the dinner table and or getting any desert afterwards. Despite the fact that our parents are usually well-meaning in their efforts to get children to eat food that is healthy to their growing bodies, we all agree as children that the particular food of healthy choice does not make for an exciting eat, nor is it usually expected to have a satisfactory taste. Here is where I will now begin to present my philosophical argument and how it has relations with the Christian God of the Bible.

So, here it goes: If the God of the Bible was a loving god of omnibolevence, then why on Earth did he create foods that are of good health to be in such BAD TASTE? If you are a parent with kids you know what it is I'm talking about. When you ask you're kids about what they think about chopped chicken liver or fried beans, chances are the response you are going to get go along the lines of this: "EWWW! Yuck! No way!"

Surely if God existed he would have provided us with foods that are healthy that are of good taste, instead of bad. He would also create the bad foods to taste bad instead of good. Get where I am going with this? There seems to be a problem as evidenced by realistic perception and one in which God's all-powerful will has once again seemed to have fallen short. "Why?" I ask. Why would God do this? Surely an omnipotent god had the power to modify and perfect our tastebuds before he even put us together in his "Grand Scheme of Life."

Today the United States is one of the leading countries in the world with some of the highest ratings in obesity contrasted with the general population. America's addiction for sweets and candy products has reached such a peak that it has begun to interfere with the health of our younger generation, i.e., the future leaders and workers of our future. I suspect that if "God Bless America" was a true statement, God might have actually designed us in such a way where healthy foods were more appealing to the taste buds, and not things that lead to higher rates of obesity and high blood pressure. Because of these events having currently taking place in our present time period, there are three possibilities to why this is so:

• 1) God is not omnibolevelent and does not care for humans. In other words, God is actually the god of deism, an impersonal god.
• 2) God is a liar.
• 3) God does not exist outside the realm of our imaginations.

If the first two are correct and the Christian God does in fact exist, then I want nothing to do with Christianity. Jesus and the Holy Spirit can have their sick fun watching people getting fatter and lazy while they sit back and do nothing. I would rather go to Hell with the Devil than to Heaven with a malovelent, lying, bully. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a wrap.