I won’t lie to you folks: things have been tough. My financial struggles notwithstanding, site troubles had conspired to sap the last ounce of enthusiasm I had about running this crazy operation. with the indignity of moving back in with my Mom (with a fiance in tow, no less), the humiliation seemed complete. There’s nothing like hitting rock bottom to learn that you’e a lot tougher than you expected.

Once the mild depression began to wear itself out I renewed my efforts writing the book. As time went on, I could feel the life coming back into my fingers. Every day the words seemed to come at me a little more effortlessly than a day before. So much so that I’ve seen the potential light at the end of the book tunnel. I now recognize the absolute necessity of completing “Bible Stories”, especially at a time when religionists continue to accuse atheists of being ignorant on some particular part of their belief. I admit as much, and it’s now become my immediate priority to become an expert at their specific nonsense to eliminate this wiggle-room we’ve allowed them. The book will be a complete eviceration of the bible, from its history to the messages behind the stories, I hope that by completing my study of this book, I will be able to offer every reader the most compelling and powerful ammunition against Bible thumpers. More importantly, the book will make a mockery of Judaism and it’s sister sect, Christianity. The use of humor and ridicule is the most powerful weapon we have against religion, and I intend on making “bible Stories” a cornerstone of this idea.

My plan, if all goes well, will be to complete the first chapter of the book and to offer it up for pre-sale (it seems to be the thing to do online). This is still a formidable challenge: I need about 1/4 of listeners to buy the book in advance to allow me the resources to devote myself to the project full time. As you may have guessed, the internet is not an easy place to get people to part with their hard earned money. This is why I plan on offering the free audiobook to anyone who pre-orders. Hopefully, this tactic will suffice in enticing you in supporting this new enterprise, but you never know.

I figured this way, I have literally no choice but to finish the book, and this allows me to save my precious site from becoming simply a repository of my past work. My priorities may still be geared towards the immediate, but I haven’t lost sight of the big goal. I began this whole project with a book in mind, and i’m going to finish it, no matter what obstacles!

Spread the outrage

There are two things that raced through my mind when I listened to this tragedy of a song:

#1. Why do so many white people think that to rap effectively, one has to be completely tone deaf? (I’m looking at you, Blondie)
#2. You can sell any piece of crap as long as you put a cross on it.
#3: Christianity is a creepy death cult. If it hadn’t been part of your culture for so long, you’d realize that their rapturous embrace of eschatology borders on insanity. The early church fathers were so convinced that Jesus was going to end the world that they discouraged people from marrying or having kids. Once that bearded hippy started looking like he wasn’t coming back, they switched gears a little, but their incessant need to believe in his return isn’t only crazy: it’s dangerous. Does no one accept the possibility that one day, one of these nutjobs with enough power might want to “speed things up” a little when it comes to the end of the world?

Spread the outrage

Here’s something I’ve learned in all my years of blogging: if you look for something hard enough, you’ll find it. In my case, it’s examples of religious stupidity that I zero in on. I realize that cheap laughs and easy jokes may not give the complete picture of a particular religion (usually Christianity or Islam), but if I was trying to be fair I wouldn’t be having any fun.

I want you to keep this in mind, as it might help clarify some of the frustration you might be feeling if you read Rebecca Watson’s new tirade on the evils of secular sexism entitled “Reddit makes me hate atheists“. The post focuses on the story of a 15 year old girl who received a barage of innapropriate comments after posting a picture of herself with a copy of Carl Sagan’s “Demon Haunted World”. I think this opening paragraph will help set the tone of the piece:

…R/atheism is very large, and so it is jam packed with assholes. And yet! I continue to read it every day. I read it even though I usually learn nothing new from it and it only serves to create and foster inside me an intense hatred of my fellow atheists.

While there are a variety of explinations as to why some of comments were so disparaging (her post made it to the front page of reddit, which extends far beyond the confines of r/atheism), her obsession with gender issues makes it seem as though the atheist reddit forums are a cesspool of misogyny. I couldn’t disagree more.

I’ve been trolling the site for years now, watching the group grow from humble numbers to over 300,000 strong. While a great number of posts are usually rage comics, occasionally hilarious facebook threads and funny pictures, a significant portion of them are personal tales of individuals “coming out” to family members (I even remember one post from a redditor claiming to be Michel Behe’s atheit son). The support these people receive from their fellow redditors is almost universally positive. I’m constantly surprised by the patience, understanding and intelligence on display from members. Then again, I’m usually on the lookout for positive examples of human kindness on the site, so I’m not entirely surprised when I find what I’m looking for.

This, in a nutshell, is Rebecca’s problem; she’s actively looking for examples of mysoginy in the scene to justify her claim that sexism is rampant in the atheist community. While I don’t believe that our group is guiltless, I think the problem has been severely overstated. Do we have studies to show atheists are more sexist than believers? Is there any proof beyond a couple of anecdotal stories of misogyny? Seems to me like there’s a lot of speculation based on some extremely limited samples, colored by emotion and marred with anecdotal evidence. Sounds like a fucking nightmare to me.

I don’t want to claim to have more “journalistic credibility” than Rebecca, or anything equally silly (I’m more of a curmudgeon than a serious writer). Still, I think it’s important to recognize how much of your own perception is influenced by your pre-existing beliefs. Is the world as sexist as you think, or is there a chance that your preconceptions might be blinding you? I certainly wonder how anyone could visit r/atheism and develop an “intense hatred” of your fellow atheists (unless you hate rage comics, of course). Seems far more likely that this intense hatred might have been there all along…

Spread the outrage

I’ve written countless articles denouncing these Christian preachers in Nigeria for accusing innocent children of witchcraft; it’s one of the few times I’ve taken a subject so seriously. It isn’t only because of the images of these poor children -victims of a toxic mix of ancient superstition and organized religion- are seared into my brain. No, my passion comes mainly from the fact that this issue has been completely ignored by the mainstream media because of the obvious question it poses concerning Christianity’s influence in the Third World.

These videos are extremely hard to watch. The situation appears to be getting worse as Christianity’s influence grows. When that little girl starts crying when a person nearby admits to wanting to kill her, you’ll find it difficult to wake up happy tomorrow morning.

Spread the outrage

Can’t wait to hear that trumpet Sound, eh? and you wonder why people who haven’t been brainwashed by your bullshit think that Christianity is a creepy death cult. The sheer ecstasy you try to convey when talking about dying scares the fucking shit out of us, honestly.

Spread the outrage

It’s hilarious how most Muslims are convinced that their restrictive religious repression of women is somehow intended to protect them. You hear this all the time in Islamic countries; they think we let our women “run around unprotected” while they “bravely” restrict every part of their lives in the misguided belief that it’s really all for their own good. The culture of Islam makes women seem like dangerous, seductive weapons that clouds the judgement of men. Why else would they execute victims of rape, if not to vindicate the idea that it is always the woman’s fault for seducing the rapist in the first place?

In the light of this prism, the slavery of women is viewed as an extension of man’s submission to God, but as the old adage goes: ladies first! Rebelliousness, seen in any light, is to be extinguished, as was the case with actress Marzieh Vafamehr, who found out herself living out the plot of her new movie “My Tehran for Sale“. The scenario involves a young woman struggling to live in a country of contradictions, where young people live secret lives together in a brutal religious theocracy. This important movie is currently being distributed on the sly, since the country has banned it.

According to an interview with the director of the movie, the government sought a number of bogus charges, including failure to cover her hair with a hijab, consuming alcohol on set, and being part of the production (she wasn’t). The sentence is the kind of thing you’d expect from a theocratic and misogynistic society: 90 red-hot lashes and a whole year of rotting in jail, all for the “crime” of acting in someone else’s movie. Considering the number of women that often fail to survive the aftermath of such unnessasarry brutality, I hope she’s made of tougher stuff.

The contradictory nature of Iran is why there are really two pictures of this place: one filled with young women who live out their lives in a secret world that resembles our own, and the other populated by religious thugs who patrol the streets looking for these secret places. When these worlds clash, the only ones to bother talking about it tend to be Persian Christian Missionaries operating out of the Alpharetta, Georgia. Their presence there only exacerbates the situation of course; religion is precisely the problem in Iran. Another faith is hardly the solution.

We have to ask ourselves what we can do ourselves to expose the evils of this religion outside of the sphere of influence of Christianity. It’s our duty to see that the injustices of any faith are given the proper attention they deserve. Until we do, how can we continue to claim the moral high ground?

Spread the outrage

It ain’t easy being a Christian: sure, they might be the majority (for now), but every other day the faith is challenged by objective reality. While many Christians will scoff at the idea that their religion is in trouble, the truth is that countries like Canada, Sweden, and Australia are quickly shedding their religious coat in favor of a broader “spirituality” that doesn’t have to deal with the many inconsistencies or outright lies of organized religion. Over half of all Canadians, according to a recent survey, are convinced that religion does more harm than good.

Enter the Apologist. Their “job” is to try and defend their faith against the harshness of reality. Christian Apologetics have been around since the very forming of the religion; St. Paul was the first to begin the tradition when confronted by desert sheppards possessing some measure of skepticism. In the modern world, it’s much more difficult to defend the faith, and so a whole cottage industry has sprung up to meet the demands of increasingly skeptically-minded kids.

I spotted this article entitled “Top 10 Defences youth can give for their beliefs“, and I thought I might share with you the kind of “advice” they’re giving young Christians in a vain attempt to prevent them from leaving the religion in frustration. I think you’ll agree that any teenager attempting to use any of these arguments would be eaten alive by anyone with a moderate understanding of history or science:

1. How can you know for sure that anything is true?
Among your acquaintances are likely to be some people who don’t believe in truth. That is, they don’t believe truth can be known. However, that idea is easily refuted, as this fictional conversation in the 2011 novel, The Quest, illustrates:
It took a minute, but I finally realized what she was waiting for. “You’re saying that if I think that’s a true statement, then I’ve claimed to know something that is true….By saying truth can’t be known. I contradicted myself.”

Here the author tries to argue that if an agnostic claims that truth cannot be known, this itself is a truth-claim and the statement is therefore inconsistent. While it’s true that consistency is a desirable attribute of any philosophy, we have to examine what’s actually being argued instead of over-analysing the statement itself. What is truth? How do we determine what’s real and what isn’t? Humans create models to explain the natural world, and while they can be amazingly accurate, there is still much to discover. We must accept that our understanding of the Universe is limited, flawed, but constantly improving. To claim otherwise is only possible when one sees the world through the arrogant prism of religion.

2. Is God a human invention?
A popular view these days is the idea that humans invented God in order to meet their needs and fulfill their desires. But it is at least as reasonable to believe exactly the opposite: that the innate desire humans have for God exists because there is Someone who satisfies that desire.

“Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles.”- Voltaire. The fact that we have a tendency to see patternicity, agency and intentionality has more to do with our environment than some invisible man in the sky. For millions of years, our ancestors braved a cruel, violent world which placed survival above skepticism. As a result, we’ve inherited brains susceptible to superstition, and the persistence of religion in a world of scientific discovery is an excellent example of this.

3. Doesn’t the Big Bang disprove Creation?
There is a common misconception that the Big Bang has pretty much eliminated the idea that God created the heavens and the earth. But the opposite is true. Former atheist Antony Flew, in his book There Is a God, explained that the Big Bang model eventually led him to believe in a God who created the universe, because it pointed to a beginning point in the universe, and to something (or Someone) behind that beginning that was too big for science to explain.

So the Universe needs a beginning, but Super-Monkey doesn’t? The best science we have now tells us that a Universe can indeed come from nothing, so while the science we have today tells us that the Universe requires no supernatural “party-starter”, religionists can’t seem to abandon this lost “first” cause. I won’t pretend to know for certain that a God couldn’t have done this; however, our faithful opponents have still failed to provide a compelling explanation of their deity’s apparent ability to transcend the law of causality. Lastly, this idea that something can be “too big” for science is just an invitation to ignorance.

4. How can an intelligent person not believe in evolution?

Atheist Richard Dawkins has famously written, “Beyond doubt evolution is a fact,”4 adding that no reputable scientist disputes it. However, neither statement is true. First, it is necessary to understand what people mean when they use the world “evolution,” because it can refer to both micro-evolution (the observable process by which change happens over time within species) and macro-evolution (the arguable claim that starting with a common ancestor, over time simple organisms have changed into the species that exist today). Macro-evolution is not as widely accepted as some claim. In fact, more than eight hundred world-class scientists have signed a formal dissent from Darwinian evolution.

So, you’re willing to accept that species gradually change over time, but somehow still can’t grasp that over geological time-frames (millions of years), these incremental changes would form entirely new species? Also, if you want to put this whole “over 800 scientists express doubt about evolution” number into perspective, there are currently over a million scientists working in the US alone. 90% of all the scientists who have ever lived are alive today. The fact that you have 800 dummies on your side only proves that education is no guarantee of intelligence.

5. How can you trust the Bible when it has been changed and corrupted so much through the centuries?
I aimed to show everyone that Christianity was nonsense. I thought it would be easy. It wasn’t. In fact, I discovered that the Bible is far and away the most meticulously preserved and widely attested documents of the ancient world. No other book even comes close (we go into greater detail on this subject in our book, Don’t Check Your Brains at the Door). This reliability was confirmed by the 1948 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which showed that after a thousand years of copying, the text as it appears in modern Bibles was more than ninety-five percent the same, word-for-word and letter-for-letter, as it had been three thousand years earlier! And what differences did exist were mainly spelling variations.

The relative consistency of nonsense is of little interest to us. The fact remains that the Bible is little more than a book of fairy-tales. The ancient stories of Gilgamesh and Enkidu have survived the ravages of time, and yet we do not believe that the ancient stories of Sumer are anything but poetic allegory. As a Christian, you’re far more likely to be asked “How can you trust the Bible to guide your morality when it advocates rape, incest, genocide, infanticide and cruelty?”. I’d try and work on the response for that one instead.

6. Hasn’t modern science pretty much disproved the Bible?
t’s hard to imagine anything that is farther from the truth than the idea that modern science has disproved the Bible. In fact, the science of archaeology, to name one field, has repeatedly confirmed the trustworthiness of the biblical accounts (we devote a chapter to this subject in our book, Don’t Check Your Brains at the Door). Archaeologist William F. Albright wrote,

The excessive skepticism shown toward the Bible by important historical schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, certain phases of which still appear periodically, has been progressively discredited. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details, and has brought increased recognition to the value of the Bible as a source of history

We don’t need 18th century skepticism to tell us the Bible is full of holes. Where do we begin? The creation story perhaps, or Noah’s Flood? Shall we discuss what science has to say about the possibility of Jonah living inside a giant fish for three days, or Samson killing thousands of men with a donkey’s jaw-bone? As for the Bible’s take on history, modern archaeology has found little in the way of proof. Take the “City of David“. While Israeli archaeologists acknowledge that there is no evidence linking David to the site, they anticipate eventually finding this proof, and as far as they are concerned, there is no way to convince them otherwise. Proof has remained elusive for Israel’s archaeologists, but it hasn’t prevented anyone there from trying to use it as a political tool to bolster Israel’s claim to ancient Palestine. Does this sound like good science to you?

7. Who even knows if Jesus ever really existed?

The existence of a man named Jesus who lived in Galilee and Judea in the early part of the first century is utterly indisputable from a historical standpoint. In fact, if you ever encounter such a view from a friend or teacher, invite that person to travel with you to Israel. In the land where Jesus once lived, everyone—Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists—consider the idea that never existed to be laughable. Why? Because the evidence of his historicity is a daily reality there.

Is this guy for real? I don’t find the idea laughable at all, and I’m not the only one. Some of the very first Christians, the Gnostics, didn’t believe in a historical Jesus either. You don’t hear much about these early Christians since, like the Aryans, they were mostly wiped out. Questioning the historicity of Jesus isn’t new; we just weren’t allowed to voice contrary opinions for a long time. To claim that everyone agrees on his historical existence is a pretty big disservice to Christian teens desperately trying to defend their bullshit, trust me.

8. Don’t you think Jesus could have been just a good teacher who didn’t intend to be worshiped a god?

Though Christianity and Christians can be pretty unpopular these days, Jesus remains widely admired… even by many people who don’t profess to believe in him or worship him. He is revered as a “good teacher,” as a “philosopher,” but not as who he said he was, according to the historical record. C. S. Lewis famously wrote about this phenomenon:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic— on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg— or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse…let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Creating this kind of dichotomy can’t possibly work in your favor, guys. Any person with a logical mind not indoctrinated to your cult would immediately realize that, if given the choice between God or madman, Jesus certainly fits the description of the latter. When he curses a fig tree for failing to give him fruit, the choice seems fairly obvious. When he claims that diseases are the result of demonic possession, we recognize the words of a loon. Giving him the status of godhood only serves to prove how little Jesus knew about the real world. If he did exist, he is no more remarkable than Apollonius of Tyana, who was claimed to have performed the exact same miracles as Jesus (with the added bonus of being able to pass through walls like David Copperfield).

9. Do you really believe that Jesus literally rose from the dead?
Many theories have been put forth to try to cast doubt on the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. All of  them are inadequate; some are even ludicrous (we devote three chapters to these theories in our book, Don’t Check Your Brains at the Door). In fact, the historical evidence for the resurrection is so overwhelming, historians have to become “anti-historical” in their efforts to build a case against it. As Lord Darling, a prominent English judge, once said, “No intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring in a verdict that the resurrection story is true.

Lord Darling, for any of you who gives a shit, was a minor historical figure of little importance, and little relevancy. Authority here, in any case, is not needed to contest the Resurrection of a Palestinian Jew 2000 years ago. Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence, and what little there is consist of “witness” accounts written decades after his supposed death by people who never even met the guy. If our standards for evidence are so low, than should we also believe that Perseus really did kill the Medusa, and Orpheus braved the underworld to rescue his beloved?

10. How can you believe in that stuff?

The most convincing evidence for the Christian faith is not historical, textual, or archaeological; it is the testimony of a changed life. When I (Josh) set out to disprove the Christian faith, my mind met unassailable facts… but my heart met irresistible love. I met a group of Christians at Kellogg College in Battle Creek, Michigan, who exposed me for the first time to the love of God. Oh, how they loved each other. And I wanted what they had. That love paved the road of faith for me, and thus began my journey of faith. All the evidence in the world—the most powerful arguments and most convincing proofs—probably wouldn’t have gotten through to me if the transforming power of God’s love had not reached my heart through that student group and others.

Always keep in mind that the same will be true of anyone who challenges or questions your faith. Your answers can help open their hearts, but the vibrant evidence of a changed life will always be the most convincing apologetic you can offer.

This is usually where arguments with Christians end: this idea that “a changed life” is somehow proof that their faith is real. While I don’t deny that their beliefs may be genuine, it has no bearing on reality whatsoever. The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 meters per second regardless of how I feel about it, or whether my life is transformed with such information. If relying on emotion is your idea of a strong defense in face of legitimate criticism, than there’s very little I can do to convince you otherwise. Of course, I can offer you this little piece of advice: don’t expect to blow anyone away with these kinds of pathetic arguments, boys and girls.

Spread the outrage

If you were hoping that China would be immune from faith-pimps because of their long history of non-belief, then I apologize in advance for shattering your delusion. Not only is there a strong tendency for superstition in the country, they also appear just as vulnerable as the rest of us to religious nonsense. How else can you explain the rise of Christianity in the East?

It is impossible to say how many Christians there are in China today, but no-one denies the numbers are exploding.

The government says 25 million, 18 million Protestants and six million Catholics. Independent estimates all agree this is a vast underestimate. A conservative figure is 60 million. There are already more Chinese at church on a Sunday than in the whole of Europe.

Keep in mind that everything in China is just “larger” because of their huge population difference, so while 60 million sounds like an impressive figure to us, it still represents a tiny fraction of their population. Still, I won’t deny that the religion is growing, and that this may have more to do with a lost sense of community than anything else. In countries with a lot of corruption, it’s difficult to trust any institution. Religions have always done a good job of providing that assurance and trust where none exists. Why should we be surprised that the poor and indigent -increasingly ignored by their government- would turn to the comfort of religious dogma to escape their sorrow and to connect with others like them?

What can our rational unbelief offer these people? We need to do more if we’re to win the hearts and minds of people. Merely disproving the tenants of faith doesn’t diminish the feelings of community, hope and certainty that religion offers. If we had to debate which side had the better argument to win over people, then we’d be all set. Unfortunately for us, humans aren’t rational. They don’t make up their minds after careful consideration of all the facts. Instead, they rely on intuition, feelings, and emotions to make their decisions for them, and only later intellectually justify these beliefs (we still want to THINK we’re rational, after all).

Education isn’t enough. We need to stop being gigantic pussies about it and take the “institutional” plunge. We need to develop international support networks of the same complexity and devotion as our religious counterparts. We need to offer more than cold comfort, and we certainly can’t ignore all the roles filled by religion. If we truly want religion gone, then we’ll need to stop ignoring what works well for them, and instead embrace the positive attribute and appropriate them for ourselves (with a rational twist, of course).

Spread the outrage

About 40% of adults in America believe that Adam and Eve existed. This means that almost half of your population is functionally retarded. And you wonder why your economy is tanking…

In an effort not to ignore scientific truth forever, some evangelicals are starting to question the existence of Adam and Eve in order to finally catch up to the rest of us who have embraced the methodology of science. They naively believe -as Francis Collins does- that science and faith are compatible. I’m sure it appears to them this way, but only so long as their cognitive dissonance is in full swing. The twisted logic at work trying to rectify religious believe and the evidence of our evolution is astounding. It’s a step in the right direction, perhaps:

[Brian] Venema is part of a growing cadre of Christian scholars who say they want their faith to come into the 21st century. Another one is John Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College in Michigan until recently. He says it’s time to face facts: There was no historical Adam and Eve, no serpent, no apple, no fall that toppled man from a state of innocence.

Yeah, if you do that, you have a major problem: without the fall, Jesus’ sacrifice is pointless (well, it was always pointless, but now more so). Original sin is of paramount importance to the faith. Don’t get me wrong; I love the idea of these people starting to accept that our species evolved from other primates. The problem is that they’ve simply refused to accept the conclusion of evolution. Of course, most evangelicals realize that abandoning this dogma would have serious repercussions to their belief:

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, says that rebellious choice infected all of humankind.

“When Adam sinned, he sinned for us,” Mohler says. “And it’s that very sinfulness that sets up our understanding of our need for a savior.”

Humanity “infected” by sin? That’s the Christianity we know and despise. As far as Jesus-lovers are concerned, humanity is a filthy pile of sin that’s barely worthy of God’s love. Only those slavish enough in their devotion to ignore reality can enter super-magic-fun-playland-in-the-clouds when they die. The rest, those unbelievers, will be tortured forever in a lake of fire for denying the divinity of someone who, if they existed today, would be put in a sanatorium. Christianity isn’t really a “people first” doctrine. As far as they are concerned, we’re all pieces of shit that disobeyed God at one time or another and have been punished ever since.

Let me put this another way: if Adam and Eve didn’t exist, then according to a bunch of very sexist Bible-belt assholes, there would be no justification for men ruling over the lives of women. That means that ladies would be able to control not only their own lives, but their reproductive cycles as well. Do you have any idea how terrifying that prospect is for an old white guy?

Spread the outrage