I’m back, finally.. Oh and religion is still dangerous!

The Sun is Shrinking, claims the ICR.  Gimme a f#%$ing break… here.

 

Where to begin? Even if the Sun was shrinking, its gravitational pull on Earth would not “weaken.”  What a joke to anyone who passed high-school physics! The gravitational pull of a spherically symmetric body is equivalent to that of a point mass located at its center – its radius is irrelevant, shrunk or otherwise. But it seems this is Russ Miller’s own idiosyncratic gaff. Other creationist versions like that of ICR, make no mention of weakened gravity. 

The ICR tale of the “Shrinking Sun” is more in tune with other arguments that use a reported measurement (often wrong), assume it’s constant, and extrapolate back in time with contradictory conclusions for an old earth. Other examples include changes in earth’s magnetic field, sea floor sediment accumulation (without plate tectonics!), and the amount of helium in the atmosphere. Not surprisingly, Russ Miller cites all of these embarassingly wrong claims in his FAQ page.      

 

The “Shrinking Sun” was born in 1979, when astronomers John Eddy and Aram Boornazian presented an abstract at an AAS meeting called, “Secular Decrease in the Solar Diameter, 1836-1953.” This over-interpretation of historical data was subsequently withdrawn by the authors (who never imagined extrapolating their result far back in time) and never submitted to a professional journal for publication. Nevertheless, ICR picked it up immediately and naively extended the shrinkage rate into the indefinite past. This led to a Sun too bright for life sometime within the last million years. The “Shrinking Sun” thus quickly became a part of creationist legend under the dubious assumption that it had always been shrinking at the claimed rate. I would address the obvious flaw in this reasoning, but it’s not necessary, because:      

The Sun is not shrinking.  Creationist Andrew Snelling chronicles some of the ensuing “debate” on the topic here, as does Old Earth creationist Howard J. Van Till.  More important, high-precision studies of helio-seismology have weighed in on the “shrinkage” question. Sverker Johannsson looked at the Shrinking Sun in the light of these observations here. It appears that the Sun has stopped shrinking!

Next.. because a lot of  you refuse to accept that homo sapiens (that’s us) were not the only species of man, I present the following. Genus Homo and it’s species. If you don’t know what Genus is or you think this is something about gay’s, stop being an ass. 

Species	Lived when (mya)	Lived where	Adult height	Adult mass	Brain volume (cm³)	Fossil record	Discovery / publication of name
H. habilis	2.2 – 1.6	Africa	1.0–1.5 m (3.3–4.9 ft)	33–55 kg (73–120 lb)	660	many	1960/1964
H. erectus	2 – 0.03	Africa, Eurasia (Java, China, Caucasus)	1.8 m (5.9 ft)	60 kg (130 lb)	850 (early) – 1100 (late)	many	1891/1892
H. rudolfensis	1.9	Kenya				1 skull	1972/1986
H. georgicus	1.8	Republic of Georgia			600	few	1999/2002
H. ergaster	1.9 – 1.4	E. and S. Africa	1.9 m (6.2 ft)		700–850	many	1975
H. antecessor	1.2 – 0.8	Spain	1.75 m (5.7 ft)	90 kg (200 lb)	1000	2 sites	1997
H. cepranensis	0.9 – 0.8?	Italy			1000	1 skull cap	1994/2003
H. heidelbergensis	0.6 – 0.25	Europe, Africa, China	1.8 m (5.9 ft)	60 kg (130 lb)	1100–1400	many	1908
H. neanderthalensis	0.35 – 0.03	Europe, W. Asia	1.6 m (5.2 ft)	55–70 kg (120–150 lb) (heavily built)	1200–1700	many	(1829)/1864
H. rhodesiensis	0.3 – 0.12	Zambia			1300	very few	1921
H. sapiens sapiens	0.2 – present	worldwide	1.4–1.9 m (4.6–6.2 ft)	50–100 kg (110–220 lb)	1000–1850	still living	—/1758
H. sapiens idaltu	0.16 – 0.15	Ethiopia			1450	3 craniums	1997/2003
H. floresiensis	0.10 – 0.012	Indonesia	1.0 m (3.3 ft)	25 kg (55 lb)	400	7 individuals	2003/2004

And more… age of the Earth according to the bible.. bah ha ha!

starting  from  Scripture  (NIV)	we find this timeline (values rounded to the closest year)  The cumulative uncertainty typically indexes up by +1 year due to the uncertainty of each father’s age.  Adam could have been exactly 130 years old when Seth was born, or 130 years plus 364 days.	Year
		cumulative uncertainty	from  Adam	from  Jesus’  Birth
Genesis 5:1	This is the written account of Adam’s line.	-0 / +0	0	4,414 BC
Genesis 5:3	Seth born when Adam is 130	-0 / +1	130	4,284 BC
Genesis 5:6	Enosh born when Seth is 105	-0 / +2	235	4,179 BC
Genesis 5:9	Kenan born when Enosh is 90	-0 / +3	325	4,089 BC
Genesis 5:12	Mahalalel born when Kenan is 70	-0 / +4	395	4,019 BC
Genesis 5:15	Jared born when Mahalalel is 65	-0 / +5	460	3,954 BC
Genesis 5:18	Enoch born when Jared is 162	-0 / +6	622	3,792 BC
Genesis 5:21	Methuselah born when Enoch is 65	-0 / +7	687	3,727 BC
Genesis 5:25	Lamech born when Methuselah is 187	-0 / +8	874	3,540 BC
Genesis 5:28	Noah born when Lamech is 182	-0 / +9	1,056	3,358 BC
Genesis 7:11	Flood starts when Noah is 600	-0 / +9	1,656	2,758 BC
Genesis 8:13	Ark comes to rest when Noah is 601 (actually only 87% of a year)	-0 / +9	1,657	2,757 BC
sub-total	Earth creation to Ark landing lasted for 1,657 years, -0 / +9
Genesis 11:10	Arphaxad born 2 years after the flood	-0 / +10	1,659	2,755 BC
Genesis 11:12	Shelah born when Arphaxad is 35	-0 / +11	1,694	2,720 BC
Genesis 11:14	Eber born when Shelah is 30	-0 / +12	1,724	2,690 BC
Genesis 11:16	Peleg born when Eber is 34	-0 / +13	1,758	2,656 BC
Genesis 11:18	Reu born when Peleg is 30	-0 / +14	1,788	2,626 BC
Genesis 11:20	Serug born when Reu is 32	-0 / +15	1,820	2,594 BC
Genesis 11:22	Nahor born when Serug is 30	-0 / +16	1,850	2,564 BC
Genesis 11:24	Terah born when Nahor is 29	-0 / +17	1,879	2,535 BC
Genesis 11:26	Abram, Nahor, & Haran born when Terah is 70	-0 / +18	1,949	2,465 BC
Genesis 21:5	Isaac born when Abram (now Abraham) is 100	-0 / +19	2,049	2,365 BC
Genesis 25:26	Jacob (a.k.a. Israel) born when Isaac is 60	-0 / +20	2,109	2,305 BC
Genesis 47:9	Jacob (a.k.a. Israel) enters Egypt at the age of 130	-0 / +21	2,239	2,175 BC
sub-total	Patriarch Period lasted for 582 years, -0 / +12
Exodus 12:40	Israel leaves Egypt 430 years later, to the day	-0 / +21	2,669	1,745 BC
Joshua 24:29	Joshua dies at 110 years  (Since he was Moses’ helper for 40 years, let’s assume Joshua was at least 20 years old when they left Egypt.  Also, assume that his reign was at least 20 years in the promised land.)  Let’s guess this period lasted 75, +/-15	-15 / +36	2,744	1,670 BC
Judges 2:10	The entire generation that crossed into the promised land dies.  (This must have been at least 40 years, but perhaps as much as 90 years (less than 20 years old would not count as the adult generation, and Joshua lived 110 years).)  Let’s guess this period lasted 65, +/-25	-40 / +61	2,809	1,605 BC
sub-total	The Slavery to the Loyal Generation Period lasts 570 years, -40 / +40
Judges 3:8	Israel is oppressed by King Cushan-Rishathaim for 8 years	-40 / +62	2,817	1,597 BC
Judges 3:11	Israel lives in devotion to the Lord under Judge Othniel for 40 years	-40 / +63	2,857	1,557 BC
Judges 3:14	Israel is oppressed by King Eglon for 18 years	-40 / +64	2,875	1,539 BC
Judges 3:30	Israel lives in devotion to the Lord under Judge Ehud & Judge Shamgar for 80 years	-40 / +65	2,955	1,459 BC
Judges 4:2	Israel is oppressed by King Jabin for 20 years	-40 / +66	2,975	1,439 BC
Judges 5:31	Israel lives in devotion to the Lord under Prophetess Deborah for 40 years	-40 / +67	3,015	1,399 BC
Judges 6:1	Israel is oppressed by the Midianites for 7 years	-40 / +68	3,022	1,392 BC
Judges 8:28	Israel lives in devotion to the Lord under Judge Gideon for 40 years	-40 / +69	3,062	1,352 BC
Judges 9:22	Israel is oppressed by King Abimelech for 3 years	-40 / +70	3,065	1,349 BC
Judges 10:1	Israel lives in devotion to the Lord under Judge Tola for 23 years	-40 / +71	3,088	1,326 BC
Judges 10:3	Israel lives in devotion to the Lord under Judge Jair for 22 years	-40 / +72	3,110	1,304 BC
Judges 10:7	Israel is oppressed by the Philistines and the Ammonites for 18 years	-40 / +73	3,128	1,286 BC
Judges 12:7	Israel lives in devotion to the Lord under Judge Jephthah for 6 years	-40 / +74	3,134	1,280 BC
Judges 12:9	Israel lives in devotion to the Lord under Judge Ibzan for 7 years	-40 / +75	3,141	1,273 BC
Judges 12:11	Israel lives in devotion to the Lord under Judge Elon for 10 years	-40 / +76	3,151	1,263 BC
Judges 12:13	Israel lives in devotion to the Lord under Judge Abdon for 8 years	-40 / +77	3,159	1,255 BC
Judges 13:1	Israel is oppressed by the Philistines for 40 years	-40 / +78	3,199	1,215 BC
Judges 16:29	Israel lives in devotion to the Lord under Judge Samson for 20 years	-40 / +79	3,219	1,195 BC
Judges 17	Israel has no Judge in force, and everyone does whatever they think is right in their own eyes.  Stories of Micah, attacks on the tribe of Benjamin by the other tribes, Mizpah, etc.  A very big guess is that this period lasts 30, +/-30	-70 / +109	3,249	1,165 BC
1 Samuel 4:18	Israel lives in devotion to the Lord under Judge Ili for 40 years	-70 / +110	3,289	1,125 BC
1 Samuel 6:1	Ark of the Covenant in Philistine possession for 7 months	-70 / +110	3,290	1,124 BC
1 Samuel 7:2	Ark of the Covenant in the care of the men of Kiriath Jearim for 20 years	-70 / +111	3,310	1,104 BC
1 Samuel 7:15	Samuel is Israel’s last Judge  A guess is that he judged while the Ark was in Kiriath Jearim, and for an additional 20 +/-20	-90 / +131	3,330	1,084 BC
sub-total	Judges Period lasts 521 years, -50 / +70 (377 good years / 144 bad years; see 1 Kings 6:1 for more Israeli Calendar data)
1 Samuel 13:1	King Saul rules Israel for 42 years	-90 / +132	3,372	1,042 BC
1 Kings 2:10	King David rules Israel for 40 years	-90 / +133	3,412	1,002 BC
1 Kings 11:42	King Solomon rules Israel for 40 years	-90 / +134	3,452	962 BC
1 Kings 14:19	King Jeroboam rules Israel for 22 years	-90 / +135	3,474	940 BC
1 Kings 15:25	King Nadab rules Israel for 2 years	-90 / +136	3,476	938 BC
1 Kings 15:33	King Baasha rules Israel for 24 years	-90 / +137	3,500	914 BC
1 Kings 16:8	King Elah rules Israel for 2 years	-90 / +138	3,502	912 BC
1 Kings 16:23	King Omri rules Israel for 12 years	-90 / +139	3,514	900 BC
1 Kings 16:29	King Ahab rules Israel for 22 years	-90 / +140	3,536	878 BC
1 Kings 22:51	King Ahaziah rules Israel for 2 years	-90 / +141	3,538	876 BC
2 Kings 3:1	King Joram rules Israel for 12 years	-90 / +142	3,550	864 BC
2 Kings 10:36	King Jehu rules Israel for 28 years	-90 / +143	3,578	836 BC
2 Kings 13:1	King Jehoahaz rules Israel for 17 years	-90 / +144	3,595	819 BC
2 Kings 13:10	King Jehoash rules Israel for 16 years	-90 / +145	3,611	803 BC
2 Kings 14:23	King Jeroboam II rules Israel for 41 years	-90 / +146	3,652	762 BC
2 Kings 15:8  2 Kings 15:13	King Zechariah (0.5 years) and then King Shallum (0.1 years) rule Israel for 0.6 years	-90 / +146	3,653	761 BC
2 Kings 15:17	King Menahem rules Israel for 10 years	-90 / +147	3,663	751 BC
2 Kings 15:23	King Pekahiah rules Israel for 2 years	-90 / +148	3,665	749 BC
2 Kings 15:27	King Pekah rules Israel for 20 years	-90 / +149	3,685	729 BC
2 Kings 17:1	King Hoshea rules Israel for 9 years (this is Israel’s last King)	-90 / +150	3,694	720 BC
2 Kings 18:1	King Hezekiah rules Judah for 29 years, starting in King Hoshea’s 3rd year.  Net= 29-9+3=23	-91 / +151	3,717	697 BC
2 Kings 21:1	King Manasseh rules Judah for 55 years	-91 / +152	3,772	642 BC
2 Kings 21:19	King Amon rules Judah for 2 years	-91 / +153	3,774	640 BC
2 Kings 22:1	King Josiah rules Judah for 31 years	-91 / +154	3,805	609 BC
2 Kings 23:31	King Jehoahaz rules Judah for 0.25 years	-91 / +154	3,805	609 BC
2 Kings 23:36	King Jehoiakim rules Judah for 11 years	-91 / +155	3,816	598 BC
2 Kings 24:8	King Jehoiahin rules Judah for 0.25 years	-91 / +155	3,816	598 BC
2 Kings 24:18	King Zedekiah rules Judah for 11 years, after which the first temple is burned down and destroyed (2 Kings 25:9)	-91 / +156	3,827	587 BC
sub-total	Kings Period lasts 497 years, -1 / +25
dates from the Life Application Bible	640 BC Josiah becomes Judah’s king (basis to fix TimeLine to present)  627 BC Jeremiah becomes a prophet  605 BC Daniel taken captive to Babylon  538 BC first Jewish exiles return to Jerusalem  516 BC new temple completed in Jerusalem  458 BC Ezra returns to Jerusalem  445 BC Nehemiah builds Jerusalem wall  430 BC Malachi becomes a prophet
In the year 2,009 AD   The earth is 6,423 (-91 / +156) years old, or from 6,332 to 6,579 years old The year of creation would be 4414 BC (-91 / +156) years, or created between 4,323 BC to 4,570 BC

 

 

WHISTLEBLOWER MAGAZINE: THE RISE OF ATHEIST AMERICA

Why almost half of voters polled say they’d support a God-denier for president
Posted: September 7, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

The signs are everywhere. Many of America’s top-selling books right now are angry, in-your-face, atheist manifestos. Judges try to outdo each other in banning references to God like the Ten Commandments and the “Under God” phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance. And nearly half of Americans, according to a recent Gallup poll, would be willing to vote for an atheist for president of the United States of America – a nation founded by devout Christians.

In its groundbreaking September edition, titled “THE RISE OF ATHEIST AMERICA,” WND’s monthly Whistleblower magazine provides a powerfully eye-opening analysis of what’s really behind the current atheist phenomenon.

“This is atheism’s moment,” brags David Steinberger, CEO of Perseus Books, celebrating the tremendous success of anti-God bestsellers like “God is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything” by journalist Christopher Hitchens and “The God Delusion” by Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. “Mr. Hitchens has written the category killer,” he says, “and we’re excited about having the next book.” That’s right – this fall the publishing world will further cash in on the anti-God juggernaut with the release of “The Pocket Atheist,” featuring the writings of famous atheists, edited by Hitchens.

In earlier eras, atheists were on the fringes of society, mistrusted by the mainstream. Those few who dared to publicly push their beliefs on society, like Madalyn Murray O’Hair, were widely regarded as malevolent kooks. But today, Hitchens’ No. 1 New York Times bestseller, which has dominated the nonfiction charts for months, boldly condemns religion – including Christianity – as “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.”

Indeed, arrogant denial of God and condemnation of religious people characterize today’s popular atheist books, which besides Hitchens’ and Dawkins’ bestsellers include “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris, sequel to his earlier bestseller “The End of Faith,” as well as “God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist” by Victor J. Stenger, “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon” by Daniel C. Dennett, “Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism” by David Mills and others.

“How can this be happening?,” you might wonder. “Hasn’t America always been a Christian nation?”

No question about it. America was founded by Christians. Its very purpose for being was the furtherance of biblical Christianity, according to the Pilgrims and succeeding generations. The nation’s school system was created for the express purpose of propagating the Christian faith. Almost all of the Founding Fathers who drafted and signed the Constitution were Christian believers. Even U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Josiah Brewer, in the high court’s 1892 “Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States” decision, proclaimed what was then considered obvious to just about everyone: “This is a Christian nation.”

Today, however, many Americans are infatuated with outright, full-bore atheism. In fact, Dawkins, the Oxford scientist who wrote “The God Delusion,” is even selling young people “Scarlet Letter” tee-shirts with a giant “A” – for “atheist” – on his website (and bumper stickers too). Somehow, atheism – just like homosexuality, which used to be considered shameful and something to hide – is now becoming hip, sophisticated, enlightened, even a badge of honor.

Here are just a few highlights of “THE RISE OF ATHEIST AMERICA”:

“When men forget God” by Joseph Farah
“How atheism is being sold to America” by David Kupelian, who takes readers on an eye-opening guided tour of the spiritual battlefield between faith and denial.
“Why atheist books are best-sellers” by Dennis Prager, who points out that worldwide Islamic jihad has “brought religious faith into terrible disrepute”
“Would you vote for an atheist as president?” – on the results of a surprising national survey
“How to outlaw Christianity” by Chuck Norris, who says 30 million Americans profess there is no God, and shows how atheist organizations are working to undermine Christianity
“Dawkins: Religion equals ‘child abuse,’” in which the Oxford scientist compares Moses to Hitler and calls the New Testament a “sado-masochistic doctrine”
“Separation of atheism and state” by Bob Just, who explores the nightmare scenario America is headed for – and also points the way out
“Atheist sues priest for claiming Jesus Christ existed” by Joe Kovacs, who profiles a bizarre case where the plaintiff demands proof Jesus was a real person
“Convict sues God for broken contract” – that’s right, criminal claims he expected divine protection from evil, but that instead, God “gave me to Satan”
“Teachers rebel over atheism promotion” by Bob Unruh, who profiles a school district that makes teachers dispense handouts promoting atheist summer camps for children
“A rabbi’s warning to U.S. Christians” by Rabbi Daniel Lapin
… and much more.

“Many Americans are becoming attracted to atheism,” said WND Managing Editor David Kupelian, “and there are real reasons for it – reasons we need to understand if we ever hope to see a return to ‘faith, hope and love.’ Whistleblower has managed to distill a lot of crucial information and insights into this very readable, thought-provoking and inspiring issue.”

How Atheism is being sold to America.

I just thought I’de share. )
——————————–

Written by: David Kupelian
Posted: October 11, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Religion – including Christianity and Judaism – is “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.” At least that’s according to the No. 1 New York Times bestseller “God is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything” by journalist Christopher Hitchens.

In the news business, we often cite a nation’s current top-selling books – for example, the popularity of anti-Semitic titles in Arab countries – as evidence of the mindset of the people.

Well, in the United States of America right now, some of the most-bought, most-read and most-discussed books are angry, in-your-face atheist manifestos.

Besides Hitchens’ book, which has dominated nonfiction bestseller charts for months, there’s the popular “Letter to a Christian Nation” by atheist author Sam Harris, sequel to his earlier tome “The End of Faith,” and Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” – all New York Times bestsellers.

Then there are other hot titles: “God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist” by Victor J. Stenger. “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon” by Daniel C. Dennett. “Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism” by David Mills. And so on.

“This is atheism’s moment,” crowed David Steinberger, CEO of Perseus Books in a Wall Street Journal interview. “Mr. Hitchens has written the category killer, and we’re excited about having the next book.” That’s right – this fall the publishing world will further cash in on the anti-God juggernaut with “The Pocket Atheist,” featuring the writings of famous atheists, edited by Hitchens.

“How can this be?,” you might wonder. “Hasn’t America always been a Christian nation?”

No question about it. America was founded by Christians. Its very purpose for being was the furtherance of biblical Christianity, according to the Pilgrims and succeeding generations. Our first school system was created expressly to propagate the Christian faith. Almost all the Founding Fathers who drafted and signed the Constitution were believers. Even Supreme Court Justice David Josiah Brewer, in the high court’s 1892 “Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States” decision, proclaimed the obvious: “This is a Christian nation.”

Today, however, many of us are infatuated with outright, outraged, full-bore atheism. Almost half of Americans – 45 percent according to a recent Gallup poll – say they’d be willing to vote for an atheist for president of the United States. Dawkins, the charismatic evolutionist-author, is even selling young people “Scarlet Letter” tee-shirts with a giant “A” – for “Atheist” – on his website (and bumper stickers too). Somehow, atheism – just like homosexuality, which used to be considered shameful and something to hide – is now becoming hip, sophisticated, even a badge of honor.

What is responsible for this blooming of atheism in America today?

Dennis Prager, the brilliant Jewish radio talker and columnist, ferrets out some key reasons.

“First and most significant,” he points out, “is the amount of evil coming from within Islam.” He explains:

Whether Islamists (or jihadists, Islamo-fascists or whatever else Muslims who slaughter innocents in the name of Islam are called) represent a small sliver of Muslims or considerably more than that, they have brought religious faith into terrible disrepute.
How could they not? The one recognized genocide in the world today is being carried out by religious Muslims in Sudan; liberty is exceedingly rare in any of the dozens of nations with Muslim majorities; treatment of women is frequently awful; and tolerance of people with different religious beliefs is largely nonexistent when Muslims dominate a society.

If the same were true of vegetarians – if mass murder and violent intolerance were carried out by vegetarians – there would be a backlash against vegetarianism even among people who previously had no strong feelings about the doctrine.

Remember, to atheists, Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all pretty much the same – dangerous monotheistic fairy tales that induce people to oppress and kill each other – the only difference being the particular myths, superstitions and rules they impose on followers based on each religion’s traditions and supposed “holy books.”

Thus, the pathological fanaticism and hair-trigger violence exhibited by brainwashed jihadists around the world today are easily associated by atheists with all religions, especially when they call to mind abuses committed in past centuries – say, the Inquisition or the Salem witch trials – in the name of Christianity.

Another major, if more long-term, factor contributing to the popularity of atheist books, Prager notes, is the “secular indoctrination of a generation,” thanks to our de facto atheistic public school system:

Unless one receives a strong religious grounding in a religious school and/or religious home, the average young person in the Western world is immersed in a secular cocoon. From elementary school through graduate school, only one way of looking at the world – the secular – is presented. The typical individual in the Western world receives as secular an indoctrination as the typical European received a religious one in the Middle Ages. I have taught college students and have found that their ignorance not only of the Bible but of the most elementary religious arguments and concepts – such as the truism that if there is no God, morality is subjective – is total.
So the generation that has been secularly brainwashed is now buying books that reconfirm that brainwash – especially now, given the evil coming from religious people.

Finally, observes Prager, Christianity and Judaism have, with some notable exceptions, failed to effectively counter the ever-rising tide of atheistic secularism in the Western world. Pointing out that “it is virtually impossible to distinguish between a liberal Christian or Jew and a liberal secularist,” he notes that all three “regard the human fetus as morally worthless; regard the man-woman definition of marriage as a form of bigotry; and come close to holding pacifist beliefs, to cite but a few examples.”

Thus, with religious evil increasing in the world – thanks to Islam – and fewer and fewer people willing and able to confront it, Prager concludes “the case for atheism will seem even more compelling.”

‘Feigned knowing and a sneer’

Well, not that compelling. Even secular media bastion the Washington Post couldn’t miss the fatal flaws in “God Is Not Great.”

“Hitchens claims that some of his best friends are believers,” says Post reviewer and confessed Hitchens fan Stephen Prothero. “If so, he doesn’t know much about his best friends. He writes about religious people the way northern racists used to talk about ‘Negroes’ – with feigned knowing and a sneer. ‘God Is Not Great’ assumes a childish definition of religion and then criticizes religious people for believing such foolery.”

Noting that Hitchens “is a brilliant man” and even that “there is no living journalist I more enjoy reading,” the Post reviewer nevertheless goes for the throat: “But I have never encountered a book whose author is so fundamentally unacquainted with its subject. In the end, this maddeningly dogmatic book does little more than illustrate one of Hitchens’s pet themes – the ability of dogma to put reason to sleep.”

So, why then is Hitchens’ book so mesmerizing to so many?

Partly because he has a huge intellect, and most of us are impressed and frankly intimidated by superior intellect and knowledge – even if the bearer of those gifts is profoundly misguided. And partly because he’s a superb writer, and inherent in skilled and passionate writing is the power to persuade, to shake up, even convert. It’s a bit of magic, the way words strung together perfectly can play and dance on the brain, stimulating emotions and pulling on the strings of the mind in one direction or another.

And yet, upon close examination, what first appear to be powerfully logical atheist arguments turn out to be dust.

For instance, Hitchens boasts in Vanity Fair that on his nationwide book tour he says to his audiences: “My challenge: Name an ethical statement or action, made or performed by a person of faith, that could not have been made or performed by a nonbeliever. I have since asked this question at every stop and haven’t had a reply yet.”

Sam Harris makes the same argument, forcefully pointing out that human beings are born with an ethical sense of right and wrong – even if they don’t believe in God. And the atheist standard-bearers cite this as evidence no God exists.

Do they never pause to wonder whether God puts this moral sense, or conscience, into each person whether or not that person is aware of his Creator?

A little child innately knows it’s wrong to steal even though he’s too young to have any knowledge or belief about God. For most people, their inborn sense of justice and injustice operates as intended – just as their arms and legs and heart and lungs do – even if they’re not mindful of their Creator’s existence. When atheists see an old woman fall down in the middle of a street, they stop to help her as readily as anyone else. It’s called common decency.

Thus the very evidence of God – in the form of a mysterious moral sense of right and wrong that transcends time, place, culture and conditioning, a trait shared by no other animal – becomes for the atheist proof of just the opposite, that there is no God.

Here’s a funny one: If atheism is inherently so progressive and tolerant, and religion so ignorant and violent, as we’re told, how then do our atheist Pied Pipers explain the 100 million-plus innocent men, women and children slaughtered by their own atheist governments during communism’s 20th century reign of terror?

Simple. Hitchens simply declares atheistic communist dictatorships to be “religious.” Quoting his hero George Orwell, Hitchens says “a totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy,” thus making Stalin’s mass murders of tens of millions of his countrymen not the work of an atheist, but of religion! In North Korea today, the problem is not communism, but out-of-control Confucianism, insists Hitchens.

Uh-huh. And what about Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom Hitchens admires? How does he square the leader of the ’60s historic Civil Rights Movement with his having been a Christian minister? Well you see, explains Hitchens, whatever good King accomplished was due to his humanism, not Christianity. “In fact,” notes the Post, “King was not actually a Christian at all, argues Hitchens, since he rejected the sadism that characterizes the teachings of Jesus.”

So, the millions of innocents murdered by atheistic communists during the last century don’t count against atheism in Hitchens’ book, since communism isn’t really atheistic – its atheist leaders being so delusional that they’re sort of, you know, religious. But Rev. King, whom Hitchens likes, wasn’t really a Christian at all, since he didn’t embrace the “sadism” of the most compassionate, virtuous and self-sacrificial being ever to walk the earth.

And this passes for brilliant analysis?

Evolution, of course, is a key battleground for all of atheism’s champions. Dawkins, the Oxford evolutionary biologist often nicknamed “Darwin’s Rottweiler,” condemns people who believe in creationism as “evil.” (Strong, absolutist words for someone who doesn’t believe in God.) Hitchens mockingly catalogues various parts of the human body, taking witty pot shots at their “poor design.” And Harris – with stunning chutzpah – writes in “Letter to a Christian Nation” that “nature offers no compelling evidence for an intelligent designer and countless examples of unintelligent design.”

Sam, what are you thinking?

A single dandelion, considered from a strictly scientific, analytical perspective, contains more unimaginable complexity and spellbinding design brilliance – from its atomic and molecular design to its cellular and plant structure – than all the manmade supercomputers in the entire world combined.

“No compelling evidence for an intelligent designer”? Sounds like Harris has uncritically accepted a religious teaching that doesn’t square with reality.

That’s right, evolution is a religion, full of incredible and unproven beliefs about man’s origin, and by logical extension his destiny, and even his very nature. Any theory/philosophy – especially an unprovable one – having to do with explaining the origin, destiny and nature of man is, by definition, religious. If you don’t get that, you’re not thinking.

Ironically, many of the same human weaknesses and pressures that induce people to accept their religion unthinkingly also lead atheists to embrace evolution’s belief system just as mindlessly. Within the current science establishment there are overwhelming academic and professional pressures to embrace evolution – and persecution if one does not. No room for honest inquiry or, Heaven forbid, a good-faith challenge to current orthodoxy.

When Harris and other atheist-evolutionists protest there’s just no evidence of intelligent design, one has to laugh – just as history’s greatest scientists, from Galileo to Newton, would also laugh incredulously at today’s atheists for their conceit, arrogance and monumental blindness. In “The Marketing of Evil” I briefly explore this point:

From the beginning of human life until Darwin came along in the mid-19th century, human beings would step outside their homes and survey with their eyes and minds the wonders of nature. They’d see majestic 400-year-old redwood trees, hummingbirds that were able to hover, and honeybees that somehow knew how to do a special figure-eight dance that would communicate to all of the other worker bees the precise location of the dancer’s newly discovered nectar source.
Looking in every direction, we humans beheld not only fantastic complexity, diversity and order, but also the supreme intelligence behind creation, as brashly evident as the noonday sun.

This ubiquitous natural wonderland caused man to acknowledge and honor the Creator of creation, as Copernicus did when he wrote, “[The world] has been built for us by the Best and Most Orderly Workman of all.” Or as Galileo wrote, “God is known … by Nature in His works and by doctrine in His revealed word.” Or as Pasteur confessed, “The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.” Or Isaac Newton: “When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.”

Did not happen by chance?

Ever since Darwin and his successors succeeded in selling us on evolution – a fantastic theory for which there is no proof, and many serious problems – when we now walk outside and look at the created universe, what do many of us see? Chance!

Although our eyes survey the same wonders of God’s creation that inspired faith in our predecessors, in our minds today we see only the meaningless result of millions of years of random, chance mutation. That’s what our minds “see” – the eternal dance of purposeless recombination of ever-more-complex forms, but all without meaning, without spirit, without love. And by direct implication we also “see” that man is not a fallen being needful of God’s saving grace, but merely the cleverest, most evolved animal of all. Since evolution by definition always results in improvement and advancement, man and all of his violent and lustful and selfish drives are perfectly normal and natural and … advanced. There is no good and evil, no Heaven and Hell – and man, as a highly evolved monkey, has no sin and no guilt – as these are logical impossibilities from the evolutionary point of view.

In short, whatever else evolution may be, the driving force behind it today is the same as it has always been – a way to deny God’s existence.

I conducted a little thought experiment a while back, while looking out over the Pacific from the Oregon coast. Drinking in the vast expanse of the ocean, the pounding surf, the seagulls, the salt air – ultimate serenity and ultimate power all in one timeless moment – I asked myself: How can one experience all this magnificence without believing in a Creator?

So I tried, just as an experiment mind you, to conceptualize the existence of the fantastic creation I was beholding, yet without a Creator. I consciously tried to adopt an atheistic worldview, even for just a minute, to see what it was like.

What I got was a headache, a psychic shock, a momentary taste of another realm – an empty, prideful, appalling dimension of hell-on-earth, masquerading as enlightenment and freedom.

That’s why the conflict between theism and atheism is not just a philosophical topic for polite debate over tea. It’s a spiritual war of the worlds. That high anxiety I felt momentarily, as I tasted the “other dimension” that animates those who reject the very idea of God, was minor and passing. But I’m quite sure hard-core atheists feel agony when the opposite happens to them – that is, when they chance to experience a fleeting moment of realization that God exists, and that they are accountable ultimately to Him.

This would account for the near-explosive emotion that always seems to surround this “objective, scientific” subject. Underneath all the scientific pretension, it’s all about man being master of his own destiny, about freedom from accountability to God, about being released from Judeo-Christian sexual morality, about making up your own rules, about sustaining the life of pride and individual will.

In a very real sense, it’s about being your own god.

Rebelling against father

Another giant flaw in atheist thinking is plastered right on the cover of Hitchens’ book. His title is “God Is Not Great,” with the subtitle “How Religion Poisons Everything.” Hitchens is equating “God” with “religion.” Big mistake! God is God, but even true religion is full of imperfect people – often confused, and sometimes corrupt or even crazy.

So, are atheists rebelling against God – or against religion? Good question.

If genuinely against God, they have an unsolvable problem – unless they come to realize their error, as many do at some point in their lives. But if they’re rebelling against religion, then clearly they deserve a little sympathy.

After all, religion in the modern world is a mess. And I’m not talking just about the cancerous jihad movement metastasizing within Islam. Even within Christianity – an authentic “religion of peace” – you have major scandals like the Roman Catholic Church’s 10,000-plus cases (since 1950) of alleged child sexual abuse at the hands of predatory priests, as well as the Protestant world’s abundance of high-profile scandals, sexual and otherwise. Then you have the absurdly unbiblical, leftist agenda of many so-called “mainline” Protestant denominations, including their idiotic attacks on Israel, the ordination of homosexuals and lesbians as church leaders and so on.

But even more troubling than all of this is the shallowness and superficiality in far too much of the modern Christian church.

On a recent Saturday afternoon I was channel-surfing and ended up watching the notorious 2004 film “Saved,” a satire that mercilessly skewers evangelical Christianity and features in the lead role a vain, duplicitous and occasionally downright mean adolescent Christian girl. The movie has been understandably condemned by many Christians.

Just for a lark, during commercials I flipped over to some of the Christian television networks to catch a little “real” Christian programming. It was eerie, almost surreal, how similar the “real” Christian preachers, fund-raisers and sidekicks were to the “caricatures” of the same types portrayed mockingly in the film.

Nothing in this world will more readily turn even decent people away from God (at least for a time) than religious leaders who are phonies. Unfortunately, it’s easy for guilty, denial-steeped people, those who aren’t yet ready to genuinely face themselves, to clothe themselves with the appearance of religiosity, while secretly – perhaps unconsciously – preserving their selfish, sinful nature. This is what we call hypocrisy. And it’s very confusing to people who are looking up to such prideful leaders for guidance and example.

In the same way, when parents are religious hypocrites, or emotionally “high” on their religion, or pretentious, or impatient and willful, or just confidently parroting “truth” they’ve heard but don’t really understand – their kids can sense something wrong, at first anyway. But because children are not yet mature and are easily influenced, they almost always end up either conforming (out of intimidation) to their parents’ mold and becoming just like them, or (eventually) rejecting religion altogether. Of course, the more such confusing parents try to “help” their rebel children, the more their kids resent them and become even more rebellious.

I know these are tough words, but if we’re ever going to understand why so many people are turning not only to atheism, but to Wicca and paganism and New Age religions and myriad other strange spiritual philosophies and practices – then we need to face the sad state of the modern church. Many thoughtful analysts say the church today is more in need of overhaul than it was at the time of the Protestant Reformation.

Yelling at God

Let’s move on now and focus on the No. 1 argument, not only today but throughout history, against the existence of God: “If there’s a loving and all-powerful God, how can He allow the human race – His children, made in His image – to suffer so terribly?” This question has often been called “the rock of atheism.”

In “Letter to a Christian Nation,” atheist scientist Sam Harris hammers this point into the ground:

“At this very moment,” he writes, “millions of sentient people are suffering unimaginable physical and mental afflictions, in circumstances where the compassion of God is nowhere to be seen, and the compassion of human beings is often hobbled by preposterous ideas about sin and salvation.”

Attempting to rub the reader’s nose in the age-old mystery of suffering, Harris goes on: “Somewhere in the world, a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe – as you believe – that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this. Is it good that they believe this?”

“No,” answers Harris, who adds, cryptically: “The entirety of atheism is contained in this response.”

From the day’s news, Harris calls forth still more examples of great suffering as evidence that God doesn’t exist: “The city of New Orleans, for instance, was recently destroyed by a hurricane. More than a thousand people died; tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions; and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Hurricane Katrina struck shared your belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while Katrina laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Do you have the courage to admit the obvious? These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend.”

Mankind has grappled for millennia with the mystery of suffering, and how it can possibly be compatible with an all-powerful and benevolent God. Let’s explore this question together for a few minutes and see if perhaps we can catch a glimpse of a greater reality.

To begin with, let’s consider one more famous voice angrily condemning God as cruel and sadistic. See if you can guess who the speaker is:

What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive, “good”? Doesn’t all the prima facie evidence suggest exactly the opposite? …
If God’s goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine.

So, who do you think this is ranting and raving against God? The ever-fuming journalist Christopher Hitchens? The haughty Oxford professor Richard Dawkins?

No, actually it’s another Oxford professor, far more famous than Dawkins, and whose intellect and writing ability dwarf Hitchens’. It’s C.S. Lewis, one of the 20th century’s most influential defenders of the Christian faith.

As you may know, Lewis was an atheist for the first part of his life. Through a gradual spiritual awakening during his early 30s, he first became convinced of the existence of God, and later – with the help of “Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien and another colleague – embraced the Christian faith. Through his books, like “Mere Christianity” (voted the best Christian book of the 20th century by Christianity Today in 2000), “The Screwtape Letters” (now being made into a feature film for 2008 release) and many others – including of course his beloved “Chronicles of Narnia” series – he helped, and continues to help, countless people in their journey toward God.

“So,” you must be thinking, “these angry anti-God words from the great C.S. Lewis must have come from his early, whacked-out atheist years – right?”

Wrong.

They were written after “Narnia,” after “Mere Christianity,” after all the acclaim of an appreciative Christian world. They were written, to be precise, after the 1960 death of Lewis’s wife, Joy, in his book “A Grief Observed.”

For most of his life, well into his 50s, Lewis the author, literature professor at Oxford and Cambridge and celebrated Christian apologist, had been a bachelor. Then he met Helen Joy Davidman, an unusually gifted American writer and poet of Jewish background who had converted from atheistic communism to Christianity, in part due to Lewis’s writings. After they corresponded for several years, she moved to England and they married in 1956, when Lewis was 57.

Both of them knew Joy had bone cancer. In fact, they were married at Joy’s hospital bedside.

Amazingly, Joy experienced a dramatic remission, during which time the couple lived together happily, traveled and enjoyed each other to the fullest. But this blissful period was short-lived, and Joy died when her cancer returned with a vengeance in 1960.

In his 1961 book, “A Grief Observed,” Lewis records for posterity his intense bereavement – including his very real angers and doubts about everything he had written and taught about God for decades – and does it in such a raw and uncensored manner that he originally released the book under the pseudonym of N.W. Clerk, so readers wouldn’t associate it with him.

But let’s see how Lewis responded to this severe personal suffering – and what conclusions he ultimately came to about God. He begins, understandably enough, poignantly grieving the loss of his beloved (whom he referred to in the book as “H,” for Helen):

… The most precious gift that marriage gave me was this constant impact of something very close and intimate yet all the time unmistakably other, resistant – in a word, real. Is all that work to be undone? Is what I shall still call [Helen] to sink back horribly into being not much more than one of my old bachelor pipedreams? Oh my dear, my dear, come back for one moment and drive that miserable phantom away. Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back – to be sucked back – into it? …
… What pitiable cant to say, “She will live forever in my memory!” Live? That is exactly what she won’t do. You might as well think like the old Egyptians that you can keep the dead by embalming them. Will nothing persuade us that they are gone? What’s left? A corpse, a memory, and (in some versions) a ghost. All mockeries or horrors. Three more ways of spelling the word dead. It was H. I loved. As if I wanted to fall in love with my memory of her, an image in my own mind! It would be a sort of incest. …

Meanwhile, asks Lewis, where on earth is God?

This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be – or so it feels – welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. …
Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not “So there’s no God after all,” but “So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”

Now Lewis zeroes in on the key question:

… Sooner or later I must face the question in plain language. What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive, “good”? Doesn’t all the prima facie evidence suggest exactly the opposite? What have we to set against it?
We set Christ against it. But how if He were mistaken? Almost His last words may have a perfectly clear meaning. He had found that the Being He called Father was horribly and infinitely different from what He had supposed. The trap, so long and carefully prepared and so subtly baited, was at last sprung, on the cross. The vile practical joke had succeeded.

In his despair, Lewis goes on to speculate darkly about the “vile practical joke” played on him and his beloved.

What chokes every prayer and every hope is the memory of all the prayers H. and I offered and all the false hopes we had. Not hopes raised merely by our own wishful thinking, hopes encouraged, even forced upon us, by false diagnoses, by X-ray photographs, by strange remissions, by one temporary recovery that might have ranked as a miracle. Step by step we were “led up the garden path.” Time after time, when He seemed most gracious He was really preparing the next torture.
The next morning, Lewis thinks better of his agonized rant.

I wrote that last night. It was a yell rather than a thought. Let me try it over again. Is it rational to believe in a bad God? Anyway, in a God so bad as all that? The Cosmic Sadist, the spiteful imbecile?
And coming to his senses, he asks:

Why do I make room in my mind for such filth and nonsense? Do I hope that if feeling disguises itself as thought I shall feel less? Aren’t all these notes the senseless writhings of a man who won’t accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it? Who still thinks there is some device (if only he could find it) which will make pain not to be pain. It doesn’t really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist’s chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.
‘Knocked silly’

Eventually, after fully expressing his anger, inconsolable grief and doubts about God, Lewis starts to turn a major corner.

… Something quite unexpected has happened. It came this morning early. For various reasons, not in themselves at all mysterious, my heart was lighter than it had been for many weeks. For one thing, I suppose I am recovering physically from a good deal of mere exhaustion. … And suddenly, at the very moment when, so far, I mourned H. least, I remembered her best. Indeed, it was something (almost) better than memory; an instantaneous, unanswerable impression. To say it was like a meeting would be going too far. Yet there was that in it which tempts one to use those words. It was as if the lifting of the sorrow removed a barrier.
… How far have I got? Just as far, I think, as a widower of another sort who would stop, leaning on his spade, and say in answer to the inquiry, “Thank’ee. Mustn’t grumble. I do miss her something dreadful. But they say these things are sent to try us.” We have come to the same point; he with his spade, and I, who am not now much good at digging, with my own instrument. But of course, one must take “sent to try us” in the right way. God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box and the bench all at once.

Lewis finally admits a shattering but also liberating personal truth …

He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize that fact was to knock it down. …
… And he offers a useful metaphor to explain the powerfully redemptive use God makes of human suffering.

… Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game, “or else people won’t take it seriously.” Apparently it’s like that. Your bid – for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity – will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high; until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world.
Nothing less will shake a man – or at any rate a man like me – out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses.

In the afterglow of this profound realization, Lewis, in a moment of story-telling brilliance, confides in God:

Sometimes, Lord, one is tempted to say that if you wanted us to behave like the lilies of the field you might have given us an organization more like theirs. But that, I suppose, is just your grand experiment. Or no; not an experiment, for you have no need to find things out. Rather your grand enterprise. To make an organism which is also spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a “spiritual animal.” To take a poor primate, a beast with nerve-endings all over it, a creature with a stomach that wants to be filled, a breeding animal that wants its mate, and say, “Now get on with it. Become a god.”
Why do you suppose one person who suffers a tremendous personal loss also loses his belief in God, while another goes through the same experience and – despite all his transient doubts and angers – emerges with his faith intact, and stronger than ever?

Why did some people survive the Nazi holocaust only to conclude there is no God – or no God worth knowing if He would allow such suffering – while other Holocaust survivors emerged from that ordeal with a far deeper faith in the Almighty?

What words can describe this mysterious quality? Humility, faith, blessedness, grace? It’s actually beyond words – perhaps some secret mystical connection between our soul and God, some back-channel that enables us to keep attuned to a proper perspective regardless of difficult circumstances.

That special quality – C.S. Lewis had it – is the secret ingredient that makes the good things that happen to us truly good, and the bad things that happen to us also good, because God uses them to perfect our character. In the same way, for people who live from the energy and motivation of pride (which in turn is connected to the invisible realm of evil), the bad things that happen remain bad (non-redemptive), but even the “good” things (success, wealth, fame) aren’t good either, because they just build pride, in ever-increasing conflict with God.

Our life is a gift – including the suffering. It’s time we stopped spitting at the gift-Giver. Atheists who rant pompously against God are a little like ants, muttering and sputtering furiously against man, believing themselves superior to him (if he even exists!).

Life is not only a gift from God, but it’s supposed to be magical – or maybe “miraculous” is a better word – and full of adventure and discovery. I’m not referring to our outer journey of life, which may or may not be particularly exciting, but to the inner adventure we’re meant to experience – a journey of discovery whereby through progressive realization and repentance our character is gradually perfected for the Creator’s purpose. The enchantment of such a life is subtle and private – no one else will know about it – but it’s more magical than anything in “Harry Potter” or “The Lord of the Rings” or “The Narnia Chronicles” or any other fantasy from the mind of man. Because we are living characters, set in a story not from the mind of man, but from the mind of God. And that story is full of wonder.

An acorn falls to the ground, dies to itself, and effortlessly grows into a towering oak tree – a transformation which, if it occurred in a few seconds, we’d consider pure magic. But, since that same magic unfolds in slow motion over the course of 50 years, we think nothing of it. We walk past such marvels constantly and shrug, just as we bypass the potential miracles of character growth within each of us – dying and being reborn – because we don’t understand God’s methods. Sometimes there is miraculous transformation in suffering – but only if we endure it with patience and dignity, and not with resentment.

God works miracles through the things we suffer. Even Christ, the perfect Son of God, learned obedience that way, Scripture tells us.

“Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.” (Hebrews 5:8-9 KJV)

So, even if we suffer, even if we need to be “knocked silly” like C.S. Lewis, even if we lose everything like Job, what of it? The magic of redemption is in the air when we suffer with patience and humility and without anger – and allow God to transform us at our core, into the giant oak. This is a great mystery.

And what of the atheist? He also breathes a kind of magic air, but of a very different variety. He is his own god, or so it seems. That kind of freedom has a sort of sweet stench – a little like those green Christmas-tree-shaped air fresheners that people hang from their car’s rear-view mirror, meant to make the car smell better but which actually emit an offensive odor. Just so, the “sweetness” of pride, of being your own god and master of your destiny, has a spiritual scent that is noxious to sincere seekers of truth.

Meanwhile, as atheist authors write books and lecture and travel to and fro persuading as many of us as possible to abandon our faith, lift up your gaze: The enemy is amassing and heading for the city’s gates. The global Islamic jihad movement, which is single-mindedly focused on spreading Islam over the world at the point of a sword – or a gun or a bomb or a suitcase nuke – has awakened after centuries of relative dormancy and is on the prowl again, seeking whom it may devour. The waning of genuine Christian faith in America is like a pheromone, a sweet scent this predator can’t resist. And yet – just as God brought ancient Israel back to life over and over, don’t count us out.

It’s been said it takes a religion to fight a religion. Thus, however many angry and clever books atheists write expounding their arguments, they’ll never make any headway in countering radical Islam. You see, genuine belief in God – the God Who inspired the Holy Bible and sustained America’s soldiers throughout all the righteous wars we have fought for freedom, not just for ourselves but for others too – is what has given strength and muscle and sinew to America up until now. And without genuine faith in God, we will never be able to defeat the Islamists in the coming battle. Why? Because their belief – and therefore their determination, persistence and willingness to suffer for the sake of obedience to their god – will be more powerful than ours.

God and Science, BFF’s? Not so much…

Ok, I admit, I go around finding post of religious people defending their beliefs and laugh, often. Sometimes, I come across one that I just can’t let slide. The following is one such post. My responses are in bold, below his/hers/whoever.

And FYI, before you read, like most of my post I keep my responses simple, short and to the point, if at anytime you feel the need for a more in depth explanation or response, comment or contact me… I’ll be happy to oblige.

SCIENTIFIC FACTS THAT PROVE THE EXISTENSE OF GOD.
Already this is fcking hilarious

(1) The scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports that the universe exploded into being out of nothing. Either someone created something out of nothing (the Christian view), or no one created something out of nothing (the atheistic view). Which view is more reasonable? The Christian view. Which view requires more faith? The atheistic view.

The Big Bang is the cosmological model of the universe whose primary assertion is that the universe has expanded into its current state from a primordial condition of enormous density and temperature. The term is also used in a narrower sense to describe the fundamental “fireball” that erupted at or close to an initial timepoint in the history of our observed spacetime.

Theoretical support for the Big Bang comes from mathematical models, called Friedmann models. These models show that a Big Bang is consistent with general relativity and with the cosmological principle, which states that the properties of the universe should be independent of position or orientation.

Observational evidence for the Big Bang includes the analysis of the spectrum of light from galaxies, which reveal a shift towards longer wavelengths proportional to each galaxy’s distance in a relationship described by Hubble’s law. Combined with the assumption that observers located anywhere in the universe would make similar observations (the Copernican principle), this suggests that space itself is expanding. The next most important observational evidence was the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964. This had been predicted as a relic from when hot ionized plasma of the early universe first cooled sufficiently to form neutral hydrogen and allow space to become transparent to light, and its discovery led to general acceptance among physicists that the Big Bang is the best model for the origin and evolution of the universe. A third important line of evidence is the relative proportion of light elements in the universe, which is a close match to predictions for the formation of light elements in the first minutes of the universe, according to Big Bang nucleosynthesis.

(2) The simplest life form contains the information-equivalent of 1000 encyclopedias. Christians believe only an intelligent being can create a life form containing the equivalent of 1000 encyclopedias. Atheists believe non-intelligent natural forces can do it. Christians have evidence to support their conclusion. Since atheists don’t have any such evidence, their belief requires a lot more faith.

Wow… uh, right. Ok so, you’re evidence, the Christian evidence is what, a snap of some mythical fingers, or? How is difficult to understand that the natural progression for anything to survive would be to evolve? Here I’ll make it super simple for you. I’ll walk through reversing evolution, take you and all your Christian pals out in the forest somewhere with nothing and stay there for oh, 10,000 years, $20 says you get more hairy, stronger, etc.

(3) The 2nd law of thermodynamics (which every self-respecting scientist believes) states among other things, that the universe is running out of usable energy. Take for instance the sun as an example. The sun is running out of energy and getting smaller every day. Atheists believe that the universe is billions of billions years old (they make this claim to support their theory of evolution which they say takes billions for life to “evolve”). If you take that into account and started counting backwards starting from today, the size of the sun would be so great that it would be touching the earth! Which simply means that the universe cannot be billions (or millions) of years old. Christians believe that God spoke the universe into existence somewhere around 6,000 years ago (according to the time line recorded in Genesis).

Holy Christ… are you for real with this shit? Ok, so here is your homework, understand the very basic of star birth (the Sun is a star). Second, what is so wrong with thinking like took so long to evolve? It’s amazing how far we’ve come from what initially was here on earth; imagine (if you will, because believe you Christians have amazing imaginations) where we will be in another 10,000 years as a species. Hell yeah! (We’ll be flying and teleporting and shit, that’ll rock!) Ok that was a little facetious but you get my point. Third, Genesis is wrong, with a capital W-R-O-N-G, WRONG! We can prove that all the time, everywhere with Carbon 14 dating.

(4) The way the universe is built shows that it had a ‘designer’. For life to exist here on planet earth there are some very defined constants that point to an intelligent Designer: Here are a few (there are over 100 different constants).

Yeah dude.. a lot more the 100 constants, that prove dick-shit for the existence of a God, but please, continue.

(a) If the centrifugal force of planetary movements did not precisely balance the gravitational forces, nothing could be held in orbit around the sun. I believe you never heard of the centripetal force that balances an object during circular motion. Tie a ball to a string and swirl it over your head, why does it not crash into your hand, because the force you are using though the string (similar to gravity) is balanced by the force bue to the motion of the ball (centripetal force).

Applause

(b) If the universe had expanded at a rate one millionth more slowly than it did, expansion would have stopped, and the universe would have collapsed on itself before any stars had formed. If it had expanded faster, then no galaxies would have been formed.

Amen, brotha!

(c) If water vapor levels in the atmosphere were greater than they are now, a runaway greenhouse effect would cause temperatures to rise too high for human life; it they were Less, an insufficient greenhouse effect would make the earth too cold to support human life.

“water vapor levels in the atmosphere were greater than they are now, a runaway greenhouse effect would cause temprature to rise too high for human life” Douchebag, when it gets to high, it rains.. likewise, to cold, it snows!

(d) If Jupiter were not in its current orbit, the earth would be bombarded with space material. Jupiter’s gravitational field acts as a cosmic vacuum cleaner, attracting asteroids and comets that might otherwise strike earth.

Wrong, but sure, I’ll give this one to you… I’m still waiting on God proof, or scientific proof of God, maybe that’s coming next?

(e) If the thickness of the earth’s crust were greater, too much oxygen would be transferred to the crust to support life. If it were thinner, volcanic and tectonic activity would make life impossible.

OMG, shut up with the proof of evolution, I thought you trying to prove God existed… lol! Anyway, Chief, it’s a fact that the Earth was once a lava field, if you will, eventually it cooled down and a crust was formed, and then… BING-BANG-BOOM WE’RE UPRIGHT AND TALKING! Oh, wait…

(5) Hundreds of years before hand, ancient writings foretold the coming of a man who would actually be God. This man-God, it was foretold, would be born in a particular city from a particular blood line, suffer in a particular way, die at a particular time, and rise from the dead to atone for the sins of the world. Immediately after the predicated time, multiple eyewitnesses proclaimed and later recorded that those predicted events had actually occurred. Those eyewitnesses endured persecution and death when they could have saved themselves by denying the events. Thousands of people in Jerusalem were then converted after seeing or hearing of these events, and this belief swept across the ancient world. Ancient historians and writers allude to or confirm these events, and archeology corroborates them. Having seen evidence from creation that God exists, (point 1 above) Christians believe these multiple lines of evidence show beyond a reasonable doubt that God had a hand in these events. Atheists must have a lot more faith to explain away the predictions, the eyewitness testimony, the willingness of the eyewitnesses to suffer and die, the origin of the Christian church, and the corroborating testimony of the other writers, archeological finds, and other evidence.

Hey, Hoss, A lot of tribes, cultures, societies, all had the same beliefs for what was unexplained at the time. And in response to the “eyewitnesses”, If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make sound? Ummm.. Dude, Jesus was born to a virgin, so blood line of David, probably not.

And now for my $.02

Somebody, anybody, please tell me that Christians do not believe that Science can back up their faith in God or Creation. It does not work that way, IT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY! Faith has survived because of the ignorance of so many, intelligence directly conflicts with Faith in God. God’s very survival is dependent upon believers not thinking!!

Get the facts… Bush sucks & if like him so do you!

Get the facts.

1) Bush’s tax cuts overwhelmingly favor the wealthy. The top 1% will save more than $30,000 per year while 31% save nothing at all. Source: Citizens for Tax Justice and AFL/CIO

2) The nation faces a record $500 billion deficit. The biggest cause of the deficit is Bush’s tax cuts. Source: www.govexec.com

3) The Bush Administration is systematically turning back 30 years of environmental progress. Source: Sierra Club

4) President Bush is under-funding education with the smallest percentage increase in funding in eight years. Source: Committee on Education and the Workforce

5) 2.9 million jobs have been lost under the Bush Administration. Source: New York Times

6) Bush misled the public about the reasons for going to war with Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction have been found. Source: The Guardian

7) Bush’s Medicare bill helps corporations, not the elderly. 43.6 million U.S. citizens do not have health care. Source: www.misleader.org

8 ) Halliburton, the company where Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO, was given multi-billion dollar contracts in Iraq without competitive bidding. Source: New York Review of Books

9) Pentagon officials found that Halliburton overcharged the U.S. government by $61 million for gasoline in Iraq. Source: Associated Press

10) Bush has tried to roll back more than 200 of America ’s environmental laws. The United States emits more greenhouse gases than any other country. Source: Rolling Stone

Bush: The Warrior
2 – Number of nations George W. Bush has attacked and taken over since coming into office.

130 – Approximate number of countries (out of a total of 191 recognized by the United Nations) with a U.S. military presence.

10 million – Estimated number of people worldwide who took to the streets in opposition to the invasion of Iraq , setting an all-time record for simultaneous protest.

$451,189,977,577 – Estimated cost of the war in Iraq to U.S. citizens. Source: http://costofwar.com.

104 – Number of American combat deaths in Iraq between May 2003 (when Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and declared an end to the open conflict and the middle of October 2003.

3776 – Number of U.S. deaths in Iraq as of September 13, 2007.
19,469 – Wounded – No Medical Air Transport Required as of September 13, 2007.
8,298 – Wounded – Medical Air Transport Required as of September 13, 2007.
28,645 – NON-HOSTILE-RELATED MEDICAL AIR TRANSPORTS as of September 13, 2007.
7,533 – Non-Hostile Injuries – Medical Air Transport Required as of September 13, 2007.
21,112 – Diseases/Other Medical – Medical Air Transport Required as of September 13, 2007.
36,943 – MEDICAL AIR TRANSPORTS (HOSTILE AND NON-HOSTILE) as of September 13, 2007.
122 – Self Inflicted Deaths as of September 13, 2007.
Source: http://icasualties.org/oif/.

37 – Percentage of Americans who approve of Bush’s handling of the situation with Iraq. Source: NY Times

95 – Percentage of Army Reserve Soldiers in Iraq and other Middle East bases experiencing significant pay problems. Source: GAO report.

36%: Increase in the number of desertions from the US army since 1999 (as of January 20, 2004). Source: The Independent, UK, reprinted: here.

What the bipartisan 9/11 commission said on the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda: “We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.”

Bush: Money Manager
$28 billion – Amount of proposed cuts to veterans’ benefits in the congressional Republicans’ budget resolution for fiscal year 2004.

$127 billion – Amount of U.S. budget surplus in fiscal year 2001, the last year Clinton was president.

$374 billion – Amount of U.S. budget deficit in fiscal year 2003.

#1 – This year’s deficit will be the biggest in U.S. history.

$7.29 trillion – Current national debt.

$1.98 billion – Amount on average the national debt increases each day.

$23,396 – Amount of each citizen’s share of the national debt as of October 21, 2003.

#1 – Record for most bankruptcies filed in a single year (1.57 million) set in 2002.

#1 – Set record in 2003, for most residential real-estate foreclosures in a one-quarter period.

1.6 – Percentage increase in economic growth since Bush took office, the slowest rate of increase over an equivalent period for any administration in 50 years.

Bush: Has Lots of Friends
$11.5 million – Amount of hard money Bush raised through the controversial “Pioneer” program. Pioneers pledged to raise at least $100,000 by bundling together checks from friends and family.

212 – Total number of Pioneers identified by the Bush 2000 campaign.

524 – Total number of Pioneers later revealed through court documents.

61 – Number of Pioneers subsequently named to government posts.

19 – Number of Pioneers subsequently appointed as U.S. ambassadors.

2 – Number of Pioneers subsequently appointed to the Cabinet .

$5.3 million – Amount Bush raised this past September 30 toward his re-election campaign, breaking the one-day record he himself set.

Bush: The Environment
58 million- Number of acres of public lands Bush has opened to road building, logging, and drilling.

200 – Number of public-health and environmental laws Bush has worked to downgrade or weaken since taking office.

#1: Rank of the US worldwide in terms of greenhouse gas emissions per capita. Source: The Independent, UK, reprinted: here.

Bush: More Like the French Than He Would Care to Admit
28 – Number of vacation days Bush took in August this year, the second-longest
vacation of any president in U.S. history (Record holder: Richard M. Nixon.)

13 – Number of vacation days the average American receives each year.

Bush: Loves to Travel
65 – Approximate number of fund-raisers attended in 2002.

0 – Number of trips taken to Afghanistan before waging war against that country.

0 – Number of trips taken to Iraq before waging war against that country.

0 – Number of funerals or memorials Bush has attended for soldiers killed in Iraq.

Bush: Tough On Crime
#1 – First president to execute a federal prisoner in the last 40 years.

8 – Number of days after that first execution that a second federal prisoner was
executed.

#1 – As governor of Texas , executed more prisoners (152) than any governor in modern U.S. history.

Bush: Employment Record
2.4 million – Number of Americans who lost their jobs during the first two and half years of the Bush administration.

9 million – Number of workers unemployed as of September 2003.

#1 – The administration is well on its way to being the first since Herbert Hoover’s to preside over an overall loss of jobs during its complete term in office.

+6%: Percentage change since 2001 in the number of US families in poverty (as of January 20, 2004). Source: The Independent, UK, reprinted: here.

Bush: Helping the Rich
#1 – Has assembled the wealthiest Cabinet in U.S. history.

$10.9 million – Average wealth of the members of Bush’s original 16-person Cabinet.

75 – Percentage of Americans unaffected by Bush’s 2003 cuts in the capital-gains and dividend taxes.

$42,000 – Average savings members of Bush’s Cabinet are expected to receive this year as a result of cuts in capital-gains and dividends taxes.

$42,228 – Median household income in the U.S. in 2001.

$116,000 – Amount Vice President Dick Cheney is expected to save each year in taxes.

9 – Number of members of Bush’s Defense Policy Board who also sit on the corporate board of, or advise, at least one defense contractor.

Bush: Helping the Poor
43.6 million – Number of Americans without health insurance as of 2002.

$300 million – Amount cut in December 2002 from the federal program that provides subsidies to poor families so they can heat their homes during the winter.

Bush: Foreign Relationships
35 – Number of countries to which U.S. has suspended military assistance after they failed to sign agreements giving Americans immunity from prosecution before the International Criminal Court.

#1 – First American president to ignore the Geneva Convention on warfare (by refusing to allow inspectors access to U.S.-held prisoners of war).

Bush: Public Opinion
90 – Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president on September 26th , 2001.

67 – Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president on September 26th , 2002.

54 – Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president on September 30th , 2003.

50 – Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president on October 15th , 2003.

10 million: Estimated number of people worldwide who took to the streets in opposition to the invasion of Iraq, setting an all-time record for simultaneous protest. Source: The Independent, UK, reprinted: here.

Impeach Bush Sites
http://www.impeachbush.org/site/PageServer

http://www.impeachbush.tv/

http://impeachforpeace.org/ImpeachNow.html

http://impeachpac.org/

http://impeachbush.meetup.com/

Jesus in the fast lane.

So, often I find myself stuck in rush hour traffic, anyone familiar with the traffic in Phoenix Metro, knows you just want to die… it’s about 700,000 people going 6mph!

Anyway, I always am tempted to get into the HOV lane, especially since my car is all blacked out and nobody could see in. But I don’t, it’s on the honor system. However, I always see those cars with one person in them, and the Jesus Fish on the back, I see those same Jesus Fish on the cars that turn right on red, where it posted not to. I see them speeding and basically just not following the law. That is my observation and here is my question. Are they going to hell? It’s not moral and they are breaking the law, I know it’s not that big of a deal to break traffic laws, but it’s still illegal, so what’s the measurement for what they have to confess to in order to go to heaven and what part of the law is ok to break?

Oh, and before I continue, if you have a Jesus Fish on your car, please know you are displaying a Pagan Symbol, which stands for the reproductive organs of a woman, specifically the womb. It was in use as a symbol for the “the Great Mother” long before your religion was around. Anyway….

Religion has a lot of leniency, especially where it convenient, so I’m sure traffic laws, divorce, making idols of heavenly figures, preaching in public, praying in public and flooding government with religion are all under the umbrella of the hypocrisy that is allowed, which is cool with me (not even a little), I’m just trying to figure it out.

And before you start, I’m more than aware of the hypocrisy arguments in the way the bible is written, a lot gets lost in translation, and what I’m referring to above as nothing to do with the way it is written. I’m speaking directly to the way it preached and translated.

Adults with imaginary friends are stupid… but you will be forgiven.

Ok first off let me just say, any argument I put forth in this RANT is simplified, but that doesn’t change the message.

I want to start with informing you about what an imaginary friend is. An imaginary friend is an invented person, animal, or character that is created. The term ordinarily refers to such characters created by children, but the same phenomenon is observable in adults. The inventor will act as if the imaginary being is physically present by talking to it. If told that the friend is non-existent, the inventor will often retaliate in a defensive manner by stating that the imaginary friend is invisible, or in some cases questioning the vision of the person. If you haven’t caught on yet I’m stating that adults who believe in the super natural (invisible characters or people) are, well, stupid.

People may invent imaginary friends for companionship. Imaginary friends can serve as an important source of companionship to some adults. Especially when the need to cope with stress and/or difficult life events occur.

I might get a off the trail here, because I just thought of something. I want to paint a picture and ask a question.

A person punishes animals, makes them fight and breed and kills them if they do not perform in a manner that is profitable. How do you feel about this person?

The same person I spoke about above, finds Jesus and has turned his life over to God. How do you feel about this person now?

I can tell you how Jesus feels about this person, he loves this person, accepts this person, and God will welcome this person to heaven. You see, here is the great dilemma with religion. That person will now find leniency in our “Justice” system and in our society. How sad that someone can be so brutal and by a simple statement and a few Sundays at church can be welcomed back into society, get a ticket to heaven and be forgiven for what they have done. You see, if you believe in God , if you believe in Jesus, then you have no option but to forgive this person for their sins and love them.

After tons of searching on where heinous people go for help (advice) I constantly found this one site coming up and being recommended. So I found the following for people such as the person above (and child abusers) and all other heinous people in prison for murder, etc… this is apparently there out. Located here jesus is the answer

No matter what terrible situation you are in, JESUS is the answer!
No matter what difficult problems you may face, JESUS is the answer!
Even if you have sinned badly and feel unworthy to receive any help, JESUS is the answer!
For every problem in your life, JESUS is the answer!

The Bible says if you call on the name of the Lord, you will be saved.

“For whosoever shall call upon the name of
the LORD shall be saved.” Romans 10:13 (KJV)

Here is how to do it, for you . . .

PRAY THIS PRAYER, DIRECTLY TO JESUS CHRIST, WHO WILL HEAR YOU

“Lord Jesus, I need You.
Lord Jesus, please have mercy on me, a sinner.
As You forgave the woman caught in adultery, please forgive me.
Lord Jesus, I know You can help me if You choose to do it.
Lord Jesus, here is my request:

(Then tell Him what you are asking for.)

Thank you, Lord. I need Your help. Amen”

Okay, now, honestly, who buys this shit? I mean really, wow! I’m rarely at a loss for words, so I’m going to try and push through this so I can put into words the tangled knot this has caused in my mind. So hypothetically, I can go commit murder, harm animals, cheat, lie and steal and do any other act I feel like and then I pray to Jesus for forgiveness and that’s it? Or worse, by committing such acts, I could potentially be sending those people to heaven through their suffering and because I’m not punished by God for my acts, I could make a case that I’m right in doing so and continue along my path of destruction.

Well that really begs the question then, what am I doing living an honorable life with integrity, morals and ethics, when everyone knows being bad is more fun. Before I die I can just pray to Jesus and off to heaven I go. That is GOD DAMN fabulous news! Maybe we Atheist have it all wrong, really. When I do something that is harmful to others or I make a mistake or temptation gets the best of me, I have to mull it over, deal with it internally, go through depression and guilt, admit my faults to the ones I hurt and because I don’t find Jesus, be punished more so than if I did find Jesus.

Let’s just face facts (i use that term loosely when religion is involved), you cannot believe in the bible and not agree with what is said above, you just can’t, unless you use that wonderful ability of picking and choosing what’s fact and what to believe. If you believe in God and Jesus the way the bible represents them, then anyone that does any unspeakable act can and will be saved by Jesus, if you only pray to him and admit your sin(s). THAT IS THE MOST RIDICULOUS THING I HAVE EVER READ/HEARD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. IF YOU DON’T AGREE WITH ME, THAT IT IS INSANITY, THEN I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU NEED TO HEAR.

I remember when I was kid, a friend told me little fairies live in the gardens and they make the flowers bloom, that shit makes the exact same sense as God or Jesus and I can use every argument for the existence of God and Jesus to defend my garden fairies. The same illogical diarrhea of the mouth works to defend, garden fairies, orange unicorns or my pets stealing food from my fridge and speaking when I’m not around to hear it, and any other ridiculous fictional story I feel like creating. Nothing, NOTHING about religion is concrete except the following, it causes wars, death, destruction, makes a lot of money, keeps you under control and above all else, gives those that cannot find meaning in life something, anything to turn to. Pathetic.

If at any point you sensed sarcasm or that religion really doesn’t make that much sense logically then you still have a brain and you can likely break away from religion.

My beef with religion, why won’t you just wake the fck up!?

Christians, Catholics and the like believe in the Bible first, and the real world second. If the real world doesn’t fall in line with the Bible then reality is wrong, as the Bible can only be right.

Creationism

I am constantly blown away that anyone can just disregard science when it is convenient to do so, to keep the existence of God intact. Creationism has everything to do with religion, and little or nothing to do with science. For example the age of the earth, with Carbon-14 dating, we can tell factually that the earth is over 4.5billion years old, that is a lot of time! (it should be noted that Carbon-14 Dating which measures carbon decay is the same method scientist use for nuclear power plants, basically, you can’t have it both ways, it works or it doesn’t and I think we all know what the answer is, IT WORKS) I don’t understand how the ICR (Institute of Creation Design) once called Intelligent Design, can dismiss the science that refutes Creationism and accept science that is favorable to Creationism, IT’S THE SAME SCIENCE! Science takes what we know today and uses that to test which is unexplained currently. Over the centuries we have explained the stars (heavens), the sun, the speed of light (which is apparently God either placed already near us since some stars are BILLIONS of light years away, or he sped it up and then slowed it down [BOTH HAVE MAJOR FLAWS]) and we can explain evolution. The ICR states that reptiles came after birds, when science can absolutely disprove this.

How does believing a 300 million year-old rock is only 6,000 years old become dangerous? It is a reflection of where and how we find answers. A 300 million year-old rock is the answer resulting from decades of observation, research, field study, laboratory testing, comparative studies and critical thinking. A 6,000 year old rock is the answer because God said so.

Is the accurate age of a rock really important? Interesting, yes, but important? Maybe not. But what if the question is about Polio? Should we seek an answer from decades of observation, research and field study, discover a vaccine and destroy a worldwide plague or does the answer lie in God’s plan?

What if the question is about food? Decades of observation, research and field study have shown us there is only so much arable land that can produce only so many calories of food energy. Currently, we burn 10 calories of oil energy to make 1 calorie of food energy. Our world population of 6 billion people is barely sustainable, let alone the 12 billion projected in another 40 years. Should we answer with conservation or with prayer?

What about your right to vote or just your rights in general? Eons of history, research, comparative studies and critical thinking have brought us to the advantages of a representative democracy based on individual rights and the checks and balances of limited governmental power. Is government of, by, and for the people the answer for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness or would we prefer one nation, under God, defined by his will and authority?

Let’s think about this: If, as many people are demanding today, we want our government to be based on God’s authority, the first problem is to decide exactly which God we want to follow. There are many. God is a very ambiguous, schizophrenic deity. This is why, as Carl Sagan explained, “When you ask, ‘Do you believe in God’, if I say yes or if I say no, you have learned absolutely nothing.” So we have to be more specific. How do we get 300 million people to agree to a specific definition of God’s identity and will? We can’t, of course. A democratic populace with the freedom to think for itself never will. Okay, forget individual freedoms. The answer is a theocratic dictatorship that can force the people to live according to its particular interpretation of God’s will.

And that’s how a 6,000 year old rock becomes dangerous.

Global Warming or now “Climate Change” so that church can get behind it.
Global Warming Information Site

I will admit that earth is in a 30 year cycle of heightened Hurricane activity. However it is important to understand that is only the number of hurricanes not the intensity. And hurricanes are much more intense that any previous records show. I will also admit that the earth is in a natural cycle of warming. However you need to understand that the earth is heating much more rapidly than any previous time in the past almost 1 million years and it is heating past that point which is natural. I get into this discussion all the time and I always get the same weak rebuttals. Here is what I get 90% of the time.

“The earth is in a natural cycle.” (see above)

“Humans aren’t having any more effect on the earth than it naturally did before” WHAT!?

“Global Warming is just a theory” Really? Hmmm.. Here’s the deal, I get that God is going to take care of us all, well the believers, and you’ll be safe. And hey even if Global Warming is real and you die, you’re going to a better place right? So I get that you really aren’t concerned. But for me and the rest of us that live in a reality and can clearly see the changes to the climate in the past 20yrs and even more so today because of the rapid pace of the destruction it is important to WAKE UP and see what is going on! The earth is being destroyed, now nature may on some level be able to combat this by the stronger hurricanes, wild fires, intense down pours in a shorter length and eventually a dramatic cooling phase among other things. But if one thing about humans is true, it’s this “Whatever we touch, we destroy.” We are not the same as we once were; we have science, facts and the ability to correct what we’ve done. BUT, 8.5 million estimated Atheist cannot tackle this alone in the USA. Which brings me to my next rant.

Wake the fck up!

Eventually religion catches up to science and eventually religious people catch up to non-believers, it is very unfortunate that it takes so damn long.

Here are my questions;

1) How can anyone honestly believe that the earth is a mere 6,000 years old?

2) How can anyone believe that the Creation Museum is accurate in having two prehistoric children playing in a waterfall with Dinosaurs freely roaming around near them, either they are suggesting we existed at the same time in harmony with them, or they were our pets? (I’m confused)

3) Why would anyone put up with this life if you are going to a better place?

4) Why if you are a true believer and whole-heartedly believe God will take care of you, your family and loved ones, work so hard for material things?

5) If you are going to a better place, why would you fear death? I would think that you would welcome it.

6) If global warming is a theory, explain to me the irrefutable facts and examples of it.

and finally my last point…

click the link above that list the wars from religion, k thx!

Why become an Atheist or Anti-theist?

Most atheists would offer some of the arguments in the following text as their reason for being an Atheist. I offer these up as reason to be an Atheist or Anti-theist.

The arguments and counter-arguments I’m presenting here are vastly over-simplified. Anyone interested in the meat of the debate should look in a philosophy textbook or contact me.

Reason number 1: Intellectual

Non-Intellectual
Many people are atheists not because they’ve reasoned things out like that, but because of the way they were brought up or educated, or because they have simply adopted the beliefs of the culture in which they grew up. It’s the same for many believers. So someone raised in Communist China is likely to have no belief in God, because they rarely if ever, meet a believer, and because the education system and pressure from the people they meet make being an atheist the natural thing to do. Other people are atheists because they just feel that atheism is right. In the same way, many people of faith hold their beliefs because they just seem right to them.

Reason number 2: Lack of evidence, Law of probabilities

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. Many people are atheists because they think there is no evidence for God’s existence – or at least no reliable evidence. They argue that a person should only believe in things for which they have good evidence.

A philosopher might say that they start from the presumption of Atheism. They say that there is as much evidence for the existence of God (any particular god at all) as there is for the existence of unicorns.

And although they might be more polite about it, someone who follows a particular faith may have the same sort of opinion about the existence of the gods of other faiths.

Believers disagree with this in several ways:

People accept many other things as true without insisting on good evidence. Good evidence may be difficult and complicated to understand and thus not appear to be good evidence. Many of the “truths” at the cutting edge of science are based on “evidence” only by a complicated chain of reasoning. Good evidence needn’t provide certainty; it’s sufficient for it to make something probable.

And the atheists reply:

But “people accept many things as true” without evidence on good, reliable authority, assuming that a trustworthy source has good evidence – but ultimately they require evidence. Good evidence may be complicated – but scientists etc can understand it and are good authorities. Theologians from the various religions are not such good authorities – disagreeing with each other even within the same religion. Probability is OK if it is the best you can get, but the evidence does not even begin to make God probable

The presumption of Atheism
This is an argument about where to begin the discussion of whether or not God exists. It says that we should assume that God does not exist, and make it the duty of people who believe in God to to prove that God does exist.

We should adopt the same policy that we do with people who insist the Loch Ness Monster exists:

Start by assuming that the Loch Ness Monster doesn’t exist. Form an idea of what would constitute the Loch Ness Monster. Then see if there’s anything that “proves” that particular thing exists.

The philosopher Anthony Flew who wrote an article on this said:

If it is to be established that there is a God, then we have to have good grounds for believing that this is indeed so. Until and unless some such grounds are produced we have literally no reason at all for believing; and in that situation the only reasonable posture must be that of either the negative atheist or the agnostic. So the onus of proof has to rest on the proposition. It must be up to them: first, to give whatever sense they choose to the word ‘God’, meeting any objection that so defined it would relate only to an incoherent pseudo-concept; and, second, to bring forward sufficient reasons to warrant their claim that, in their present sense of the word ‘God’, there is a God.

Reason number 3: God is unnecessary, Science explains everything

Atheists argue that because everything in the universe can be explained in a satisfactory way without using God as part of the explanation, then there is no point in saying that God exists.

Occam’s Razor
The argument is based on a philosophical idea called Occam’s Razor, popularized by William of Occam in the 14th century.

In Latin it goes Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitateor in English… “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily”.

This is usually simplified to say that the simplest answer is the best answer.

The Atheist and Occam’s Razor
So, says the atheist, since the entire universe, and all of creation can be explained by evolution and scientific cosmology, we don’t need the existence of another entity called God.

Therefore God doesn’t exist.

Does this prove God doesn’t exist?
No it doesn’t. It merely proves that the assumption that God exists isn’t needed, and so can be abandoned.

What would William have said?
William of Occam would not have agreed; he was a Franciscan monk who never doubted the existence of God.

But in his century he wasn’t breaking the rule named after him. 14th century science knew nothing about evolution or how the universe came into being. God was the only explanation available, and thus very necessary.

What William would think if he lived now is another matter…

Reason number 4: Not convincing, weakness of the proofs that God Exists
There are a number of traditional ways of proving that God exists. None of them convince atheists. Here they are:

The Argument from Design
The universe is such a beautiful and orderly thing that it must have been designed. Only God could have designed it. Therefore since the universe exists, God must exist.

Actually the universe is not particularly beautiful and orderly. And even if it was, why should there be a designer? And modern science shows that most of the natural things we think of as designed are just the products of processes like evolution.

The “Ontological” Argument
We think of God as a perfect being. If God didn’t exist he wouldn’t be perfect. God is perfect, therefore God exists.

But the Atheist replies:

Most atheists think this argument is so feeble they don’t bother dealing with it.

Professional philosophers usually reject it on the grounds that existence is not a property of beings.

The First Cause Argument
Everything that happens has a cause. Therefore the universe must have had a cause. That cause must have been God. Therefore since the universe exists, God must exist in order to have caused it to exist.

The Atheist replies:

Then what caused God? (And what caused the cause of God, and so on.) And if God didn’t need a cause, then maybe the universe didn’t need a cause either. If God was already perfect before he created the universe, why did he create it? How did it` benefit him? Why would he bother? And if the universe was caused, perhaps something other than God caused it? Sorry, but I’m still not convinced.

Reason number 5: The problem of evil
The Argument from Evil
The existence of evil in the world is a problem for those who believe that God is wholly good, and can do anything, because the existence of evil seems inconsistent with the existence of such a God.

The argument goes like this:

Most religions say that God is completely good, knows everything, and is all-powerful. But the world is full of wickedness and bad things keep happening. This can only happen if…

God is unwilling to prevent evil, in which case he is not good or
God doesn’t know about evil, in which case he does not know everything or
God can’t prevent evil, in which case he is not all powerful or
Some combination of the above
And so there is no being that is completely good, knows everything, and is all powerful. And so, there is no God.

Theologians and philosophers have provided various answers to this argument. They all agree that it should be taken very seriously, and that responding to it gives useful insights into the nature of God, evil, and belief.

Believers usually respond by saying that God has good reasons for not preventing evil.

Reason number 6: Science explains, the best explanation

For most of human history God was the best explanation for the existence and nature of the physical universe.

But during the last few centuries, scientists have developed explanations that are much more logical, more consistent, and better supported by evidence.

Atheist’s say that these explain the world so much better than the existence of God that there is no longer any need for anyone to believe in God.

They also say that far from God being a good explanation for the world, it’s God that now requires explaining.

Before Science
In olden times – and still today in some traditional societies – natural phenomena that people didn’t understand, such as the weather, sunrise and sunset, and so on, were seen as the work of gods or spirits.

Bible Times
The Old Testament portrays the world as something controlled by God.

Where we would see the weather as obeying meteorological principles, people in those days saw it as demonstrating God at work. And it was the same with all the other natural phenomena; they just showed God doing things.

The Greeks
“Everything is full of Gods”
The Greek philosopher Thales moved things on by suggesting that the gods were actually an essential part of things, rather than external puppeteers pulling strings to make the world work.

Myth and Magic
But there was more to these ancient explanations than gods doing things in or to the world. People saw the whole universe in a religiously structured way; they had no other way to see it at that time.

For the ancients, God provided the power that made the universe work, and God provided the structure within which the universe worked and human beings lived.

Astrology
Ideas like that survive in modern astrology. Many people believe that their lives are in some way influenced by the movements of heavenly bodies. And the heavenly bodies concerned have names taken from mythology and religion.

Modern Religion
And you’ll find similar ideas in most popular religious thinking. Many people still believe, or want to believe, in the idea of God as puppeteer.

They believe that God is able to do things in the world: he can divide the waters of the Red Sea to save the Israelites from Pharaoh, he can respond to prayer by healing an illness or getting someone through an exam.

Cosmology
Cosmology is the study of the origin and nature of the universe.

Nowadays it’s a branch of astronomy and physics, but in pre-scientific times it was a religious subject, organizing the universe in terms of almost military ranks of beings. God was at the top, and human beings came pretty much at the bottom.

In some cosmologies there was also an inverted hierarchy of evil beings going down from humanity to the source of wickedness, the devil, at the bottom.

Power
These religious cosmologies were rigid; each being had its place worked out for it in the structure that God had provided, and that was where it stayed.

Looking at the universe like this provided great support for the hierarchical power structures of earthly nations and tribes: Everyone in a nation or tribe had their place, and the power came from the top.

And if God had decided to organize the universe in such a hierarchy, this provided a strong argument against anyone who wanted to suggest that society could be organized in a fairer and more equal way – God had shown us the perfect way to organize things, and those who were ruling did so by a right given by God.

It was also very good news for whichever religion was followed in a particular nation: since the power all came from God, religion was bound to be given high status.

The Mechanical Universe The idea that God was a heavenly bus driver, steering everything in the universe as he saw fit, was demolished by the discovery that there were natural laws obeyed by objects in the universe.

Galileo Galilei
Galileo, for example, discovered that the universe followed laws that could be written down mathematically.

This suggested that there was logic and engineering throughout creation. The universe behaved in a consistent manner and was not subject to gods pulling a string here and there, or some unexplained influences from astrological bodies.

This didn’t give Galileo any religious problems (although it annoyed the church greatly and they eventually made him keep quiet about some of his conclusions) because he believed that God had written the scientific rules.

And around this time scientists began to come up with new ways of assessing whether certain things were true. Things were expected to happen in a repeatable, testable way, which could be written down in equations.

God the Engineer
Although scientific discovery began to explain more and more, it didn’t cause large numbers of people to become less religious.

Even many – probably most – scientists still had a place for God in the universe. At the very least, he had started the whole thing going, and he had created the rules that his universe was shown to obey.

This halfway house between religion and science still had problems for the faithful, since it didn’t seem to leave much room for God to intervene in the universe – and certainly it didn’t need God to keep things ticking over.

God the Creator
But the halfway house also provided some support for the faithful. They could look at the universe and see how beautifully made it was, and be reassured that God had demonstrated his existence by creating such a wonderful place.

And since science, until the late 18th, and 19th centuries, hadn’t produced any good explanation of how things began, religion still had an important place in explaining how the world was the way it was.

God Takes a Back Seat
God’s role as an explanation for the way things are took a serious knock from the sciences of geology and evolution.

Geologists discovered that the earth was hundreds of millions of years old, and not just 6,000 years old as was generally believed at that time.

They showed that the rocks that make up the earth had been laid down in layers at different times; a deeper layer (by and large) came from an earlier time than a shallow layer.

In each layer were fossils that showed that different species of animals had lived in different eras. Not only were many no longer in existence but some didn’t appear until relatively recent times.

This was incompatible with the idea that God completely created the world in 6 days and so scientists with a faith came up with another compromise – the 6 days of biblical creation were a poetic way of describing long periods of millions of years during which God worked on the world.

Evolution
“Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”
The theory of evolution explains the variety of life forms on earth without any reference to God.

It says that from very simple beginnings, processes of genetic variation and selection (i.e. new forms of life keep appearing, and some forms of life don’t survive and become extinct), working for hundreds of millions of years, generated the range of plants and animals that exist today.

These processes are not directed by any being, they are just the way the world works; God is unnecessary.

The result of this for God has been explained by Stephen Jay Gould:

“No intervening spirit watches lovingly over the affairs of nature (though Newton’s clock-winding god might have set up the machinery at the beginning of time and then let it run). No vital forces propel evolutionary change. And whatever we think of God, his existence is not manifest in the products of nature.”

Reason number 7: God is meaningless
Relative Philosophy
Some philosophers think that religious language doesn’t mean anything at all, and therefore that there’s no point in asking whether God exists.

They would say that a sentence like “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” is neither true nor false, it’s meaningless; in the same way that “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is meaningless.

Logical Positivism, or Verificationism
Logical Positivists argued that a sentence was meaningless if it wasn’t either true or false, and they said that a sentence would only be true or false if

If it could be tested by an experiment,

OR

If it was true by definition

A more accurate version of this idea can be found here

Since you couldn’t verify the existence of God by any sort of “sense experience”, and it wasn’t true by definition (e.g. in the way “a triangle has 3 sides” is true), the logical positivists argued that it was pointless asking the question since it could not be answered true or false.

These particular philosophers didn’t only say that religious talk was meaningless, they thought that much of philosophical discussion, metaphysics for example, was meaningless too. This philosophical theory is no longer popular, and attention has returned to the issues of what “God” means and whether “God” exists.

This is how one prominent philosopher put it:

We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express-that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject is as being false.
Ayer actually preferred a weaker version of the theory, because since no empirical proof could be totally conclusive, almost every statement about the world would have to be regarded as meaningless.

“A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the strong sense of the term, if, and only if, its truth could be conclusively established in experience. But it is verifiable, in the weak sense, if it is possible for experience to render it probable.”
And this led Ayer to dispose of the God question rather brusquely:

“…There can be no way of proving that the existence of a god…is even probable. “For if the existence of such a god were probable, then the proposition that he existed would be an empirical hypothesis. And in that case it would be possible to deduce from it, and other empirical hypotheses, certain experiential propositions that were not deducible from those other hypotheses alone. “But in fact this is not possible…For to say that “God Exists” is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be either true or false.”

Reason number 8: God is in the mind, Psychological Explanations of Religion
Psychologists have long been fascinated by religion as something that exists in all societies.

They ask whether ‘religion’ is actually a name given to various psychological drives, rather than a response to the existence of God or gods.

Such a belief is clearly atheistic.

Religion, to the common man, is a “system of doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains to him the riddles of this world with enviable completeness, and, on the other, assures him that a careful Providence will watch over his life and will compensate him in a future existence for any frustrations he suffers here.”

Religion comes from Emotions Human beings believe in God because they want:

A father figure to protect them from this frightening world
Someone who gives their lives meaning and purpose
Something that stops death being the end
To believe that they are an important part of the universe, and that some component of the universe (God) cares for and respects them
These beliefs are strongly held because they enable human beings to cope with some of their most basic fears.

Even if this is true (which it probably is) this doesn’t mean that God doesn’t exist, but merely that we are psychologically likely to believe in God whether or not he exists.

Atheists argue that since religion is just a psychological fantasy, human beings should abandon it so that they can grow to respond appropriately to deal with the world as it is.

Freud
Sigmund Freud tackled religion in great detail and had several ideas about it.

One of his theories was that religion stems from the individual’s experience of having being a helpless baby totally dependent on its parents. The infant sees its parents as all-powerful beings who show it great love and satisfy all its needs. This experience is almost identical to the way human beings portray their relationship with God.

Freud also suggested that childhood experiences caused people to have very complex feelings about their parents and themselves, and religion and religious rituals provide a respectable mechanism for working these out.

Freud also described religion as a mass-delusion that reshaped reality to provide a certainty of happiness and a protection from suffering.

Reason number 9: God is a social function, Sociological Explanations of Religion

Some people think that religions and belief in God fulfill functions in human society, rather than being the result of God actually existing.

Ludwig Feuerbach
Ludwig Feuerbach was a 19th century German philosopher who proposed that religion was just a human being’s consciousness of the infinite.

He said that human ideas about God were no more than the projection of humanity’s ideas about man onto an imaginary supernatural being.

Emile Durkheim
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), a French sociologist, thought that religion was something produced by human society, and had nothing supernatural about it.

Religious force is nothing other than the collective and anonymous force of the clan.
He believed that religion existed, but he did not agree that the reality that lay behind it was the same reality that believers’ thought existed.

Religion helped people to form close-knit groups, in which they could find a place in society. Religious rituals created mental states in those taking part, which were helpful to the group.

To put it another way; religious rituals do not do anything other than strengthen the beliefs of the group taking part and reinforce the collective consciousness.

Religion fulfilled the functions of:

Giving a meaning and purpose to life
Binding people together in groups
Supporting the moral code of the group
Supporting the social code of the group
Durkheim thought that this was enough to give people a feeling that there was something supernatural going on.

“Since it is in spiritual ways that social pressure exercises itself, it could not fail to give men the idea that outside themselves there exist one or several powers, both moral and, at the same time, efficacious, upon which they depend.”
Durkheim said that religious beliefs divided experiences into the profane and the sacred – the profane were the routine experiences of everyday life, while the sacred were beyond the everyday and likely to inspire reverence.

Objects could become sacred, not because of any inherent supernatural resonance but because the group fixed certain “collective ideals” on an object.

Karl Marx
Karl Marx thought that religion was an illusion, with no real God or supernatural reality standing in the background. Religion was a force that stopped human societies from changing.

A social institution:
Marx believed that religion was a social institution, and reflected and sustained the particular society in which it flourished.

He went further. Religion was a tool used by the capitalists to keep the working-class under control.

Religion provided the working-class with comfort in their miserable oppressed circumstances, and by focusing attention on the joys to come after death, it distracted the workers from trying to make this life better.

Religion cheats human beings:
Furthermore; it took the noblest human ideals and gave them to a non-existent God, thus cheating human beings of realizing their own greatness and potential.

Religion disguises the true wrongs:
Marx argued that the illusory happiness provided by religion should be eliminated by putting right the economic conditions that caused people to need this illusion to make their lives bearable.

Religion was like a pain-killer (hence Marx’s famous reference to it as “the opium of the people), but what was needed was to cure the sickness, not sedate the patient.

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

Target: Christianity
The Marxist analysis of religion was principally aimed at Christianity. There are other religions, which do not provide as much comfort for the oppressed.

However, as Christianity was the dominant faith in the industrial societies, which Marx was criticizing, his remarks were entirely relevant in the specified context.

Reason number 10: God is not apparent

God is Loving

This is one of the more unusual arguments used to show that God can’t exist:

God is perfectly loving, God knows that human beings would be happier if they were aware of the existence of a loving God. So if such a God existed, he would make sure that everyone knew it. There are lots of people who aren’t aware of the existence of a loving God. Therefore such a God does not exist.

Until I can get everything moved over…

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