Saturday, June 08, 2013

Atheism - A Question of God


Writer: Dennis Sweatt - June 08, 2013
 
Derived from my discussions with Christians, I have constructed a thesis based on what the believers believe about non-believers.

'Christian Conservative' dogma: “The difference between believing in God and not believing in God is the simple distinction of assigning a cause. Those that believe in God believe there was a causative agent that set forth the miracle of creation, which spoke the universe into existence. Those that don't believe in God conversely believe all that exists is simply a matter of accident.”  
Atheist non-dogma: "No claim can be made there is a God, as no claim can be made there isn't one. The origin of the universe is still in question but measurable causes such as thermal dynamics, expansion, redshift, and entropy are extensively more acceptable than an unproven deity.
A theory is the highest form of understanding and intentionally questioned and peer-reviewed in the avoidance of absolutism.
Absolute claims require absolute evidence and no one is absolutely sure of the origin of the universe."

This is one of those dividing assumptions that create a chasm between your theologies’ and the rest of us.

As atheists, we are open to causation for the universe, just not some spaghetti monster in the sky value to creation. Perhaps there is a prime mover of all things but do you actually believe sheepherders in the desert are the arbiters of this knowledge?

Men wrote the bible, it isn't the WORD of God; it is the assumptive hearsay of men. If God is infinite, then the creation of the universe wasn't a miracle, it was just on the 'to do' list.

“The Bible was not handed to mankind by God, nor was it dictated to human stenographers by God. It has nothing to do with God. In actuality, the Bible was VOTED to be the word of God by a group of men during the 4th century.

According to Professor John Crossan of Biblical Studies at DePaul University the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (274-337 CE), who was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, needed a single canon to be agreed upon by the Christian leaders to help him unify the remains of the Roman Empire. Until this time the various Christian leaders could not decide which books would be considered "holy" and thus "the word of God" and which ones would be excluded and not considered the word of God.” 
Source: http://www.deism.com/bibleorigins.htm

Christians, you have formed an assumption, based on zero research, that those atheist ' nonbelievers' believe we are here by chance. But most egg heads and philosophers do not think the universe was an accident. You yourself are an atheist, although perhaps unaware of it.

"The truth is, you know exactly what it is like to be an atheist with respect to the beliefs of Muslims. Isn't it obvious that Muslims are fooling themselves? Isn't it obvious that anyone who thinks that the Koran is the perfect word of the creator of the universe has not read the book critically? Isn't it obvious that the doctrine of Islam represents a near perfect barrier to honest inquiry? Yes, these things are obvious. Understand that the way you view Islam is precisely the way devout Muslims view Christianity. And it is the way I view all religions." Sam Harris – Open Letter to Christians

I was there 


Grace Baptist church, Tracy California; saved, devout, baptized of my own volition, as religious as any of you from the age of 10 to15yrs old. I went to church camp, choir, summer school, events, baptisms, sermons.

I left the church because of blatant hypocrisy, but I did not leave the 'indoctrination' until I was 45. That's how long it took to overcome the fear of it, and like a tumor remove the guilt of god.

If a man was actually allowed into some kind of heaven, a passing through the veil, Christians I have met would fall far short of the requirements described in the scripture they call holy.

Where is the Christian man who will suffer even 20 days, let alone 40, in the desert in meditation to contemplate this holy father?

Devotion was lost when Christ was presumably crucified for our sins. The Christian has but to apologize to his invisible father figure and begin anew. How is this considered moral accountability?

Easy Peasy


I have been told that I am already saved because of my baptism.
Are you kidding, I winked at a Lotto Machine and won the whole jackpot?

I tell just about everyone within listening distance, I am atheistic and take the time to explain how they are the ones who are lost, and why. They call me the angry atheist but when you are the only one standing in a field of lost sheep and they are all wearing iPod's from heaven with the music turned up to 10, it gets frustrating.

There's no devotion because there isn't any worry about ascension.

Why would there be, it's all taken care of for me?
This is the easiest religion on the planet. Perfect for recruiting (!)
But listen to them go on about the war on Christmas like they are real martyrs, oh how they suffer from the thorny crowns of their imagination. Jesus was beaten to within an inch of his life and the best you can do to stop the decline in Christian followers is to bitch about a commercial holiday. Jesus would be so proud.

Infinite regression


How could the universe have begun unless God had sprung in action?
But who sprung God?
Which came first, the spring maker or the spring?

Perhaps what we really worship, and what we actually fear, is the infinite. Maybe the forever is so scary we were forced to create a father figure to tell us it will be ok.

But if we had created God in the now, would God have been a woman?

Wouldn't it be far more soothing to be coddled out of our dread of death by a motherly figure instead of a grumpy grandpa with a white beard and ironically white skin who would drown mothers, infants, the elderly in a great flood, out of a rage?

Of course, you may actually have faith, an unshakable belief that ‘He who is I am’ is everywhere, watching over you.

Maybe you have faith because you have an unanswerable question.



A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.

If it cannot discover the claims to existence of the objects of its questioning, it will deny them all reality, the mere formulation of the problem already implying an inclination to negative solutions.

But in so doing it will become void of all positive content and, finding nothing which offers it resistance, will launch itself perforce into the emptiness of inner revery. 
Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

Did The Founding Fathers Want America To Be A Christian Nation?

22 quotes from our founding fathers!

The 1796 Treaty with Tripoli states that the United States was "not in any sense founded on the Christian religion" (see the image on the right). This was not an idle statement meant to satisfy muslims-- they believed it and meant it. This treaty was written under the presidency of George Washington and signed under the presidency of John Adams.
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1. "Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man"- Thomas Jefferson

2. "The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs." -Thomas Jefferson

3. "It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet the one is not three, and the three are not one- Thomas Jefferson

4. "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors."- Thomas Jefferson

5. "There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites."- Thomas Jefferson

6. "Lighthouses are more useful than churches."- Ben Franklin
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7. "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."- Ben Franklin

8. "I looked around for God's judgments, but saw no signs of them."- Ben Franklin

9. "In the affairs of the world, men are saved not by faith, but by the lack of it."- Ben Franklin

10. "This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it"- John Adams



11. "The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.'- Thomas Paine

12. "Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."- Thomas Paine

13. "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."- Thomas Paine

14. "Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies."- Thomas Paine

15. "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."- Thomas Paine

16. "It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene.”- Thomas Paine

17. "Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by the difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be depreciated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society."- George Washington

18. "The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my profession."- Abraham Lincoln

19. "It may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to unsurpastion onone side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov't from interfence in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others."- James Madison

20. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." - James Madison
21. "Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.  Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by the difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be depreciated.  I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society." - George Washington 
22. "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." - George Washington





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