Radical Atheist

In an effort to rebuild our relationship with the United Nations, an effort that is being questioned by many Americans, the Obama administration has chosen to support an agenda that contradicts our own Constitution.

The United States has backed a new UN resolution on free expression which would be considered unconstitutional under its First Amendment — which protects freedom of expression and bans sanctioning of religions.

The UN Human Rights Council on 2 October adopted the resolution, which the US had co-sponsored with Egypt. The US had finally joined the Human Rights Council in June, and its support for the measure reflected the Obama administration’s stated aim to “re-engage” with the UN.

While the new resolution focuses on freedom of expression, it also condemns “negative stereotyping of religion”. Billed as a historic compromise between Western and Muslim nations, in the wake of controversies such the Danish Muhammed cartoons, the resolution caused concern among European members.

“The language of stereotyping only applies to stereotyping of individuals, I stress individuals, and must not protect ideologies, religions or abstract values,” said France’s representative, Jean-Baptiste Mattéi, speaking for the EU. “The EU rejects the concept of defamation of religion.”

France emphasised that international human rights law protects individual believers, not systems of belief. But European members, eager not be seen as compromise wreckers, reluctantly supported the measure.

On the other side of the fault line stood the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which lobbied for a measure against “religious defamation”.

“We firmly believe that the exercise of freedom of expression carries with it special responsibilities,” said Pakistan’s delegate, speaking for the OIC. The “defamation” of religion, he said, “results in negative stereotyping of the followers of this religion and belief and leads to incitement, discrimination, hatred and violence against them, therefore directly affecting their human rights.”

Following the OIC’s logic, one could equally apply the language of the resolution to Islamism, a political form which is arguably a “contemporary manifestation of religious hatred, discrimination and xenophobia. It results in negative stereotyping of the followers of other religions and beliefs and leads to incitement, discrimination, hatred and violence against them, therefore directly affecting their human rights.”

The EU also had other worries. European members felt that the provision in the resolution on “the moral and social responsibility of the press” was objectionable in that it went beyond the limited restrictions set out in article 19, the provision on free expression in the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights. (Source-Index on Censorship)

As Jonathan Turley comments at USAToday,

Thinly disguised blasphemy laws are often defended as necessary to protect the ideals of tolerance and pluralism. They ignore the fact that the laws achieve tolerance through the ultimate act of intolerance: criminalizing the ability of some individuals to denounce sacred or sensitive values. We do not need free speech to protect popular thoughts or popular people. It is designed to protect those who challenge the majority and its institutions. Criticism of religion is the very measure of the guarantee of free speech — the literal sacred institution of society.

While I respect the right of any person to believe as they wish, I also believe that the right to speak our minds freely and without fear of reprisal, intimidation or sanction is a hallmark of Western democracy. We should not surrender our rights in order to provide uncertain security in the face of violent opposition to contrary opinions. Ben Franklin wrote, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”.

There is no reason to provide special protection to religious beliefs. The fear that religious believers will suffer “incitement, discrimination, hatred and violence against them” is nonsensical. The majority of people on the planet are religious. Religious believers hold most of the positions of power in both the East and West. They have no reason to fear the opinions of the minority. The most immediate danger to any believer in a particular god are those who believe in another god.

Criticism is not necessarily an act of hatred. Quite often criticism is an act of love. If a family member has become enslaved to drug addiction, is it an act of discrimination or hatred to criticize their addiction? If I firmly believe my country, a country I willingly served to defend, is headed in a dangerous and unconstitutional direction, should I remain mute?

Religious belief in a generic sense is predominant among humans around the globe. But there is little agreement as to the nature of the god the religious believe in. What anti-blasphemy resolutions seek to achieve will result in the inability of Baptists to speak out against the Catholic Church or reasonable people to object to the foolishness of Scientology. We will have to remain silent when Iran decides to execute those who oppose their theocracy or happen to be homosexual. Any theocratic government will be exempt from criticism by anyone for any reason.

The philosophical and legal quagmire with such legislation centers around the definition of “blasphemy.” Practically every religion, sect and cult possesses concepts that are blasphemous to another. As an important example, while Christians believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, Muslims consider him a mere prophet, albeit an important one. Calling Christ the “Son of God,” however, is viewed as “blasphemous” within Islam, as is not believing in Mohammed as Allah’s final and most important prophet. Under such anti-blasphemy legislation, therefore, all Christian literature could be confiscated and Christians arrested, because at its very core, Christianity would represent “blasphemous material” that could cause—and has caused—outrage many times in the Muslim world, explaining in part why the Bible is banned in such fundamentalist Islamic countries as Saudi Arabia.

Beware Of “Defamation Of Religion” Censorship!

This subject both fascinates me and fills me with dread. It’s fairly obvious that Christians in the West are growing just as intolerant of criticism and challenge as the Muslims in the East. When our government bows to pressure from the theists and supports blasphemy laws that directly contradict our Constitution the groundwork is being laid for the further erosion of our freedom of speech. I worry for the future of our secular and pluralistic republic.

Pat Condell says it better than I can, as usual.

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If I may, I’d like to introduce into evidence the following letter, written by the founder of the FSM movement. Who should know better the purpose of the concept of the FSM than the person who created it?

Open Letter To Kansas School Board

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I’m sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.

Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don’t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.

I’m sure you now realize how important it is that your students are taught this alternate theory. It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this enough, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming too long. The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we don’t.

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

In conclusion, thank you for taking the time to hear our views and beliefs. I hope I was able to convey the importance of teaching this theory to your students. We will of course be able to train the teachers in this alternate theory. I am eagerly awaiting your response, and hope dearly that no legal action will need to be taken. I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.

Sincerely Yours,

Bobby Henderson, concerned citizen.

P.S. I have included an artistic drawing of Him creating a mountain, trees, and a midget. Remember, we are all His creatures.

http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/
(graph of relationship between the number of pirates and the global average temperature and a drawing of the FSM not included in this quote)

The concept has been borrowed by atheists and applied to religious faith in general, but the original focus of the parody was the Kansas School Board fiasco over the Intellectual Design movement.

Can satire ridicule and humiliate? Sure, watch Life of Brian and Monty Python and the Holy Grail sometime (both available from Netflix-awarded five stars by this reviewer). But satire is also useful in making people think instead of presume, to look at familiar situations from a different perspective.

When it comes to granting an unwarranted exemption-from-criticism to religious belief I agree with AC Grayling when he writes,

It is time to reverse the prevailing notion that religious commitment is intrinsically deserving of respect, and that it should be handled with kid gloves and protected by custom and in some cases law against criticism and ridicule.

It is time to refuse to tip-toe around people who claim respect, consideration, special treatment, or any other kind of immunity, on the grounds that they have a religious faith, as if having faith were a privilege-endowing virtue, as if it were noble to believe in unsupported claims and ancient superstitions. It is neither. Faith is a commitment to belief contrary to evidence and reason, as between them Kierkegaard and the tale of Doubting Thomas are at pains to show; their example should lay to rest the endeavours of some (from the Pope to the Southern Baptists) who try to argue that faith is other than at least non-rational, given that for Kierkegaard its virtue precisely lies in its irrationality.

On the contrary: to believe something in the face of evidence and against reason – to believe something by faith – is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect. It is time to say so.

Those who claim to be “hurt” or “offended” by the criticisms or ridicule of people who do not share their views, yet who seek to silence others by law or by threats of violence, are trebly in the wrong: they undermine the central and fundamental value of free speech, without which no other civil liberties are possible; they claim, on no justifiable ground, a right to special status and special treatment on the sole ground that they have chosen to believe a set of propositions; and they demand that people who do not accept their beliefs and practices should treat these latter in ways that implicitly accept their holder’s evaluation of them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/oct/19/acgrayling

It’s clear that the original intent of the FSM proposal was specifically to challenge the philosophical underpinnings of the ID movement in its attempt to infiltrate the Kansas high school science curriculum. I submit it could be successfully argued that the FSM has been co-opted by atheism to illustrate how religions are formed and how difficult they are to debunk. In neither case do I believe there is evidence of intent to ridicule or humiliate believers.

However, we all know that intent does not guarantee a particular outcome. Similarly, intent does not protect against mis-perceptions. If offense is taken by satire directed against religious belief, it must be understood that this is a choice, the insulted party is responsible for their perception. No one knows another mind completely. If one chooses to take offense the intent of the “offender” matters little.

There are many people I go out of my way not to offend. I respect them and feel they deserve this from me. Some of them I know as individuals while others are members of groups that as a group earn respect.

Religious believers is not a group that has earned respect, and loses points of respect every time I hear them demanding it or threatening what they’ll do if they don’t get it. Atheists are expected to passively submit to frequent postings on the internet and statements by people with whom we associate that portray atheists as evil, devil worshipers, Satanists, Communists, molesters, rapists, doomed to hell to suffer eternal torment for having the audacity to question the gods and to laugh at the belief in them. And while not taking offense ourselves, we’re expected to offer respect to those who espouse and announce such judgmental ignorance. In fact, we’re further castigated for not showing respect to our overlords, just another sin added to an already long list. Sure, that sounds reasonable. Let me throw myself in the mud so that you may step on me and avoid becoming soiled, my lord.

Theism is horrified by the realization that atheism has finally developed into a formidable foe. There is a growing number of atheists who can defend their opinion with intelligence and citations. A growing number of “celebrity atheists” are emerging, outspoken and out of the closet, the beginning of a well prepared counterforce to the Jim Bakkers and Pat Robertsons we’ve had since the beginning of this nation. And the FSM is one of those celebrity atheists. Some branches of theism despise cartoons about their prophets and gods, but now atheism has its own.

The FSM is an appropriate satire on several levels. It was successful in exposing the true intentions of Dembski, Behe and their fellows. It’s equally effective when used by atheists to draw attention to the often overlooked weaknesses in the arguments supporting the notion that gods exist.

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I despair when I encounter people like this in RL and on the net. They should be the punchlines of jokes, they ought to be caricatures. But they’re real, they really exist, really vote, really have kids and most likely an active sex life. THAT RIGHT THERE PROVES THERE’S NO JUSTICE IN THIS LIFE!!

I feel so sad for humanity knowing people who “think” like this are still around. These are the guys who fly planes into buildings, or would if they could and if Christian fanatics had as big a pair of balls as the Muslims. Instead they kill doctors and innocents, justifying it by blaming it on god, using an idea to excuse their inhumanity.

Beliefs like these stifle human progress, they retard our evolution. Religious belief is essentially retarded (note: I’m not calling believers retarded, not explicitly anyway). It can never advance in understanding past its origin 2000 years ago (or less depending on the religion). At the time Christianity was invented, for example, it proclaimed itself to be the ultimate truth, the zenith of knowledge. Implicit in that belief is the sad fact that nothing more could be added to the “wisdom” in the Bible. Access to further knowledge and understanding of our universe was closed. Everything you needed to know, would ever need to know, was in the Bible. Of course not just anyone could read and interpret the holy writings. We needed a priest class to act as intermediaries between just the words claimed to be god’s and humanity. Others claimed to be intermediaries between the god itself and humanity. Lay people, ministers and theologians have been at each other’s throats ever since.

Humanists and atheists don’t accept limitations on knowledge. We confess our ignorance of so much. But we, like everyone else, have a standard that has to be met when it comes to what we’ll accept as truth. Not absolute truth, conditional truth is as good as it gets. Our standards are high, our tolerance for bullshit low. If we’ve listened to what you have to say (and I don’t know an American who hasn’t heard what Christians have to say), and we’ve dismissed it as inadequate, don’t be obnoxious and try to imply there’s any aspect to your religion we haven’t already considered and discarded. It’s a done deal. Unlike Christians, we don’t want to answer 21st century questions with 2000 year old answers. Humans have developed tools and techniques unknown to ancient goat herders that allow us to answer questions we didn’t even have 5 years ago.

Yet humanity, by and large, prefers to embrace superstitions rather than face realities.

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I spend quite a bit of time in forums. I can attest to the reality of the following video. I have seen these same comments, most likely copy/pasted from some religious site, being posted as either evidence for the Christian god or as a challenge to atheists.

They really write this shit. Now here’s what this inanity sounds like when spoken by young, white, apparently sane young men:

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To accept any brand of theism entails accepting certain assumptions as established fact. All religious belief systems have a creation story. It may be interpreted literally or figuratively, but the underlying assumption that the universe was created by a particular god must be accepted as literal truth and fact to be a member of any particular sect of religious belief.

In rejecting religious belief, atheists also dismiss the presumption that any god created the universe.

However, beyond implying the rejection of religious creation stories, atheism does not provide further guidance as to what to think about the manner in which the universe came in to being. Unlike the vast majority of religions, atheism isn’t a belief system. Atheism is a single point of disagreement with other people over the idea that it’s plausible that any particular god exists. There are many things that atheists believe and disbelieve. The fact we’re atheists only pertains to a single one of the disbeliefs.

Some atheists just don’t give a damn about philosophy or science. They could care less how we got here. They have lives to lead and no time for foolish speculation about things we can’t possibly know at this point in time. We tend to call folks like this practical and level headed.

Others of us are fascinated with understanding how everything works and what it all means. There are many names for us, one or two are complimentary. We follow the findings of scientists, philosophers and thinkers who enlighten us and increase our knowledge, which we expect to result in wisdom.

Accepting scientific explanations about life and the universe and philosophical musings on our place in nature are not obligatory. No atheist is obligated to agree with science. It’s an option, one of many that don’t entail believing in gods.

Scientific explanations of reality are incomplete and never absolute. Some people can’t tolerate a lack of absolutes, so they invent them then proclaim their inventions to be absolute. “It is because we say it is.” Not a convincing argument. My standards for belief and agreement are too high to be satisfied by religious belief. I was a theist, I’ve been there, I’ve walked that road in total sincerity and with unbridled passion for many years. Theism in general and Christianity in particular are not unknown to me. I’ve made their arguments and fought for their validity. I’m completely comfortable with dismissing them as irrelevant in the quest to understand nature on their own merits. Having scientific and philosophical explanations that hold together better and explain nature in terms that don’t require a suspension of good sense and skepticism is an added bonus. It’s nice to have but isn’t the reason for my rejection of belief in gods.

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All across the world wide web are comments from theists of every stripe denouncing science as an attempt by the ungodly to disprove their god or gods. In their never-quenched thirst to be seen as persecuted victims of a world-gone-wild (without taking any responsibility for it, even though they brag about the universality of their beliefs), they try to convince the uncritical and uncertain that science is determined to prove gods do not exist. They make it sound like a holy quest, though we know only believers can enjoy those. Religious believers refuse to acknowledge that the best evidence against the possible existence of any particular god is the gross lack of any evidence for one. We have yet to discover any credible, physical evidence that can only be explained by the existence of a certain god and that god’s intervention in our natural world. Science isn’t trying to disprove god, science simply hasn’t found any evidence that irrefutably proves there is one.

Even if we could somehow learn to a 99% certainty that the universe began this way or that, that knowledge will not kill off the idea of god.

Science will never make an absolute declaration that it knows how the universe came into being. Definitive, absolute proof doesn’t exist. Science is not religion. It can only draw tentative conclusions from what evidence we can collect. Scientific conclusions are only as valid as the data. As we come across more information, science has to adjust its conclusions. Religions pretend to know absolute truths, yet they require us to accept these truths on faith.
If science were to state that all the evidence leads us to believe that the universe started in this or that manner, there will always be room to squeeze in religious belief. We’ve already seen in history how religions adapt to current reality in an effort to stay relevant and retain their power over people. In all probability science can’t and won’t put an end to superstitious belief. With our complex brains otherwise intelligent people believe in luck and fate. Beliefs can exist beside knowledge without being eradicated by that knowledge. No matter how smart we become about reality, superstition will survive. There are many theories as to why humans develop and believe in superstitions, but history leads me to accept that every human has them. Religious belief will no doubt change subtlety, as it has before, to accommodate secular knowledge, but it will unfortunately be with us for a long time yet. It is, after all, just another superstitious belief.

Already there are Christian groups that have managed to incorporate scientific conclusions into their dogma. They accept the Big Bang as the best explanation for the beginning of the universe that can currently be drawn from available evidence and still credit their god with having set it all in motion. They give reverence to the Bible, but as an allegorical work rather than literal truth. Scientology is another example of a religion that has incorporated some science into their otherwise wildly fantastical belief system.

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Courtesy of the New York Times:

A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

Enlarge This Image

Dominic Buettner for The New York Times

When David Jeselsohn bought an ancient tablet, above, he was unaware of its significance.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.

Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.

“Some Christians will find it shocking — a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology — while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism,” Mr. Boyarin said.

Oddly, the stone is not really a new discovery. It was found about a decade ago and bought from a Jordanian antiquities dealer by an Israeli-Swiss collector who kept it in his Zurich home. When an Israeli scholar examined it closely a few years ago and wrote a paper on it last year, interest began to rise. There is now a spate of scholarly articles on the stone, with several due to be published in the coming months.

“I couldn’t make much out of it when I got it,” said David Jeselsohn, the owner, who is himself an expert in antiquities. “I didn’t realize how significant it was until I showed it to Ada Yardeni, who specializes in Hebrew writing, a few years ago. She was overwhelmed. ‘You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,’ she told me.”

Much of the text, a vision of the apocalypse transmitted by the angel Gabriel, draws on the Old Testament, especially the prophets Daniel, Zechariah and Haggai.

It was in Cathedra that Israel Knohl, an iconoclastic professor of Bible studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, first heard of the stone, which Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur dubbed “Gabriel’s Revelation,” also the title of their article. Mr. Knohl posited in a book published in 2000 the idea of a suffering messiah before Jesus, using a variety of rabbinic and early apocalyptic literature as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. But his theory did not shake the world of Christology as he had hoped, partly because he had no textual evidence from before Jesus.

When he read “Gabriel’s Revelation,” he said, he believed he saw what he needed to solidify his thesis, and he has published his argument in the latest issue of The Journal of Religion.

Mr. Knohl is part of a larger scholarly movement that focuses on the political atmosphere in Jesus’ day as an important explanation of that era’s messianic spirit. As he notes, after the death of Herod, Jewish rebels sought to throw off the yoke of the Rome-supported monarchy, so the rise of a major Jewish independence fighter could take on messianic overtones.

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Watch this, if you can:

Then read this excerpt from Sam Harris’ The End of Faith:

While moderation in religion may seem a reasonable position to stake out, in light of all that we have (and have not) learned about the universe, it offers no bulwark against religious extremism and religious violence. From the perspective of those seeking to live by the letter of the texts, the religious moderate is nothing more than a failed fundamentalist. He is, in all likelihood, going to wind up in hell with the rest of the unbelievers. The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism. We cannot say that fundamentalists are crazy, because they are merely practicing their freedom of belief; we cannot even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivaled. All we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don’t like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of scripture imposes on us. This is not a new form of faith, or even a new species of scriptural exegesis; it is simply a capitulation to a variety of all-too-human interests that have nothing, in principle, to do with God. Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance and it has no bona fides, in religious terms, to put it on a par with fundamentalism. The texts themselves are unequivocal: they are perfect in all their parts. By their light, religious moderation appears to be nothing more than an unwillingness to fully submit to God’s law. By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally. Unless the core dogmas of faith are called into question (i.e., that we know there is a God, and that we know what he wants from us) religious moderation will do nothing to lead us out of the wilderness.

The next time you encounter moderate Christians who claim Phelps is not a “true Christian”, ask them to read this post and respond.  Their expectations of tolerance from non-believers is what empowers unevolved life forms like Phelps, in the same way pleas for acceptance from moderate Muslims is what allows bin Laden to practice terrorism and hatred.

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There’s a debate going on in a forum I belong to regarding Jesus as a man, an ordinary human, and whether or not he existed.

I contend it’s not an important part of my atheism to know whether or not he is a fictional or factual historical figure. All I nned to know is that no one has been able to support the idea that he was a god.

So I received this reply recently:

if you’re going to try to show Christians inconsistancies in their religion, then why not go for the only one that matters: the idea that they think there was a Jesus who in reality never existed?

To which I replied:

The reason I won’t bother trying to “prove” Jesus never existed as a man is that, with the historical record being incomplete and heavily adulterated by the early church, there is no definitive proof one way or the other. All you can do is present more likely scenarios than the Christians. I’ve seen your evidence and while it’s compelling, it’s not convincing. Supposition is not proof, no matter how logical.

Another reason I don’t bother is that Jesus’ existence as a man is not important to Christian faith. It’s his having supposedly been a god that they base their religion on. Debunking the idea that gods exist makes the issue of Jesus having once existed as a man or whether the Pope is god’s ambassador on Earth irrelevant. Atheism extends further than just a disbelief in the Christian theology. Debunk Jesus and the Christian becomes a Jew. Debunk gods and a Christian sees that all religions are nonsensical.

So what’s your opinion? Is it necessary to debunk the idea that Jesus existed as a man to discredit Christianity, or is it a hopeless cause and unimportant to explaining atheism to theists?

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I’m convinced that in order to become a Christian these days one must not only accept Jesus as your personal lord and savior but also renounce sin and divest yourself of your sense of humor.  I’m not sure how I managed to get through my period of religious belief and escape with my sense of humor intact.  Perhaps that’s a sign that I was never really accepted by god.

Nothing’s funny to Jesus.  And if you love Jesus, nothing should be funny, enjoyable or humorous to you, either.

Let’s look to the fine Christian folk of Reedsburg, Wisconsin for an example of sacred seriousness.

An elementary-school event in which kids were encouraged to dress as members of the opposite gender drew the ire of a Christian radio group, whose angry broadcast prompted outraged calls to the district office.

Students at Pineview Elementary in Reedsburg had been dressing in costume all last week as part of an annual school tradition called Wacky Week. On Friday, students were encouraged to dress either as senior citizens or as members of the opposite sex.

A local resident informed the Voice of Christian Youth America on Friday. The Milwaukee-based radio network responded by interrupting its morning programming for a special broadcast that aired on nine radio stations throughout Wisconsin. The broadcast criticized the dress-up day and accused the district of promoting alternative lifestyles.

“We believe it’s the wrong message to send to elementary students,” said Jim Schneider, the network’s program director. “Our station is one that promotes traditional family values. It concerns us when a school district strikes at the heart and core of the Biblical values. To promote this to elementary-school students is a great error.”

Schneider co-hosts “Crosstalk,” a nationally syndicated call-in Christian radio show.

After the program aired, both the school and Reedsburg School District office were flooded with calls complaining about the event.

The response surprised Principal Tammy Hayes, who said no one had raised any objections beforehand. She said a flier detailing Wacky Week had been sent home with children the prior week, and an announcement was also included in teacher newsletters.

The dress-up day was not an attempt to promote cross-dressing, homosexuality or alternative gender roles, district administrator Tom Benson said.

“The promotion of transgenderism – that was not our purpose,” Benson told the Baraboo News Republic. “Our purpose was to have a Wacky Week, mixing in a bit of silliness with our reading, writing and arithmetic.”

Obviously this sacrilegious abomination was the work of Satanical, homosexual, liberal, anti-war, godless heathens.  Right?

The theme for Friday’s dress-up day came from students, Hayes said.

“It’s different every year. They basically present the ideas, and they vote on what they would like from Monday through Friday,” Hayes said. “… They did not mean anything by this day. They were trying to have fun and come up with a fun dress-up day.”

Oh well, anyway, this is a prime example of how being lighthearted and having fun can lead right into the main gate of the devil’s garden.  If god had wanted us to enjoy life, he would have said so.  And I don’t see where Jesus ever said, “Go forth and have a good time”.

(Source of quoted material)

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