I often hear people talk about how their god GIVES them terrible illnesses and other "challenges." How the hell people can believe their god gives them terrible illnesses, injuries and tragedies as sadistic burdens they must bear in order for this god to walk beside them as they are on their journey to healing?” It would be like a mother or father intentionally breaking the leg of their child so they can lovingly nurse that child back to health! Ludicrous! But this is what some of my friends and family believe, that god gives you these “crosses” as “burdens of his love”. I have often heard Xians say that “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” Those of us who have stopped to analyze the things Xians say understand how this statement implies that this god is some kind of torturer who sadistically brings pain and suffering on his creatures to get them to be closer to him, or some other “purpose”…and all-the-while they already are devout believers in him. Also, wouldn’t an omniscient, all-power god already know who is a “True Believer” and who is not?
While I will support my friends and family members in hard times, I just cannot stand hearing them talk about the challenges this god asshole is putting on them.
I found THIS on a Xian website “Good News Ministries”:
To serve Jesus, we must follow Him. Where did He go? To the cross! We’ve grown up with the illusion that happiness comes from being right and protecting ourselves from hurts and from crucifixion. To find true happiness in troubled relationships, we must allow these people to crucify us. It doesn’t make sense in the world’s view, but Jesus showed us from the cross that it makes perfect sense from the perspective of love. He said: Stop fighting AND offer no resistance.
Creepy, isn’t it? Their goal is to get the suffering and downhearted to believe that resistance is futile.
I have had that happen even to myself during my hospital stays in recent years. Xians swoop on in with their god crap, hoping to suck another into the god delusion by convincing them that they need the crutch of an imaginary friend instead of simply friends and family being there for them as human beings. That’s who is there to help in reality, anyway.
25 comments:
You know what gets me about Christianity is that Jesus supposedly had this phenomenal birth, but disappeared for 30 years.
Why wasn't the press following him?
Don't they get that is a complete fairy book story especially when compared to Dionysus?
And the rest of the conclusions based on the Jesus fable, should be treated like conclusions made after reading something from Dr. Seuss.
Baconeater,
I never stopped to consider that 30 year disappearance and nothing written about "God's son" at all as he was growing up. You would think that something would have been written somewhere like the Buddha boy over in India. The people all follow his every move over there because they believe he is special. But the god/child of Abraham was supposed to be the savior of mankind, and no news about him at all in his childhood, teenage and early adulthood? Yet we have writings of other things happening during that time about other important people. I supposed Christians can make up all the reasons they want to imagine to explain that away.
Yes, it's a fairy tale book. A mythology book full of fantasy from the imaginings of human beings. Most of the myths were real religions long ago. The ruins of their temples still remain though the beliefs have faded away. That's what will happen with today's religions. They will be the myths of the future...but humans will keep inventing new imaginary friends and stories for themselves.
What I think happened was Jesus was a man invented by Paul or someone like him in a dream.
As time went on, Jesus morphed into a real person by his followers. A history was created. At first focusing on him at 33, but then the Dionysus birth myth was added to give him even more extraordinary appearance.
Silly Christians weren't creative enough to give him a good story from 1-33 though.
At first focusing on him at 33, but then the Dionysus birth myth was added to give him even more extraordinary appearance.
Yep, Dionysus was born of a mortal woman and his father was king of the gods, Zeus. When you read the book of Genesis, God says "Let US create man in our imagine" and then in the commandments God says "have no other gods before me" which is an obvious indication that the humans writing the Bible were influenced by other mythologies.
The Dionysus myth may also be where the Xian "twice born" came from. Dionysus is borne by two "mothers" (Semele and Zeus), the second birth being via his god and his father in one.
I also think it's interesting that Dionysus is the "inspirer of ritual madness" back when people were worshiping him. And how similar is the Xian God/man...just consider all the insane Xian rituals there are.
This topic is a good idea for a post. I'm going to get started working on it. Thanks beaj!
Silly Christians weren't creative enough to give him a good story from 1-33 though.
LOL! They would have to do a lot more work making up stories about the magical boy and probably wouldn't be as exciting. Like Superman...they try to do series and movies about Superboy growing up but they just don't do as well.
stardust said: Their goal is to get the suffering and downhearted to believe that resistance is futile.
Personally, I think resistance is character building... [grin]
Cyberkitten, yes, resistance is character building. Following the herd and what some nobody pastor says (who usually knows less about life than the sheeple he is preaching to) is brain rot.
Conformity is the mind killer [with apologies to Frank Herbert].
Well, the Gospel of Luke does have a vignette about Jesus when he was about 12.
On the other hand, rather than not being able to make stuff up about Jesus, maybe they had to delete a lot.
"Oh yeah, I remember that weird Jesus fellow. I remember when he was 15, that crazy fucker kept trying to..."
"Hey guys, we can't keep that part in the gospels!"
IIRC, one of the Gnostic gospels features Jesus as a child doing all sorts of mischief with his powers.
One thing I was pondering when I started to question my faith a couple of decades earlier, I was thinking about Christians being mad at the Jews of Jerusalem back then for rejecting Jesus as their messiah. I remember thinking, what was there about him to make them think he was? All they would have known about him was that he was some charismatic preacher from the Galilee who had a temper tantrum in the Temple. What could anyone at the time, assuming the story is true, be realistically expected to have thought about him?
Like most atheists, the issue of people believing in God bothers them greatly. What is it about atheists that we would spend so much time, attention, and energy refuting something that we don't believe even exists?! What causes us to do that?
Atheists, attribute their intentions as caring for those poor, delusional people...to help them realize their hope was completely ill-founded.
To be honest, They also seem to have another motive. As they challenge those who believe in God, They are deeply curious to see if they could be convinced otherwise.
Part of the quest is to become free from the question of God (so it seems). If they could conclusively prove to believers that they were wrong, then the issue is off the table, and they would be free to go about their life.
Like most atheists, the issue of people believing in God bothers them greatly.
Wrong, the issue of people forcing their beliefs on others bothers many atheists greatly. God believers are the ones knocking on our doors and waking us up on Saturday morning to tell us about their mythological beliefs. They are the ones who have their nose in the sexual activities of people in their own bedrooms. They are the ones who want to interject their superstitious beliefs into our SECULAR government. That is the problem we have with believers. It's a free country and you are free to believe whatever you want. And there are a zillion different beliefs in our country alone.
What is it about atheists that we would spend so much time, attention, and energy refuting something that we don't believe even exists?! What causes us to do that?
We are not refuting anything, we are just merely pointing out the futility of it all. And what causes us to do this is because as I repeat what I stated above...the religious come to us telling atheists that we need some kind of delusion to get along in life, and each Xian has their own version of the delusion they are peddling. Just like we would critique and review any other "product" people are peddling, we speak out when we see a scam.
Atheists, attribute their intentions as caring for those poor, delusional people...to help them realize their hope was completely ill-founded.
Wrong again. We attribute our intentions to get believers to keep their delusions to themselves. They cannot even see that it is they who want to "help us poor faithless heathens" to find your imaginary friend so the bastard doesn't send us to eternal torment and flames for simply not saying some magic words.
To be honest, They also seem to have another motive. As they challenge those who believe in God, They are deeply curious to see if they could be convinced otherwise.
We don't go door knocking, and as for me, I do not go to theist blogs and start preaching and questioning them as you have done here. I don't need to be seeking anything else because after 30 years of being a Xian, I realize it's all mythology like all mythologies from all the ages and societies. It is the Xian who is curious about our blogs. They come here to see how we get through life without the crutch. And a couple of Xians who have frequented my blog have come to see the light and give up at least the crazy zombie beliefs and are now deist and agnostic.
Part of the quest is to become free from the question of God (so it seems).
No, the quest is to get you folks to do like other religions and believe what you do, go to your mythology temples and stop trying to interject your religion into our secular government and stop pushing your version of god beliefs into our faces.
If they could conclusively prove to believers that they were wrong, then the issue is off the table, and they would be free to go about their life.
We are free to go about our lives already, as we do. But we cannot sit back and hide away. We are here, and theists are just going to have to get used to it.
If the issue of this god crap was off the table, then all of humankind would have a lot more time to deal with the real problems of the world and would work together so much better without the fundies worrying about who they are going to try to "save" from their evil gods.
Stardust, I never thought of it that way. It really is horrific isn't it. It is like a parent inflicting some sort of pain or horrible burden on a child to "build character".
Actually, that does happen in the real world, it's called child abuse.
doubtfuldaughter, yes it is absolutely horrific and then people like FreeThinker drive by here and ask atheists why we have a problem with god belief. They comment without reading and comprehending what is written. This god they have created for themselves is a sadistic bastard. And yes, when human beings do these things it is indeed child abuse and people are arrested and go to jail. Thank human justice.
And another point to make to FreeThinker is that we must keep watch on the fundamentalists because they are the ones who would burn witches, stone people etc if it weren't for the laws of the land preventing them from doing so.
People like FreeThinker come by here and never address the issue being discussed when it concerns their god doing something bad to them and others when if humans do it, believers are right there supporting the harshest sentences against the abuser/killer.
In response to Tommy. I wish I could be more specific, but I'm trying to remember something my religion teacher told us some 20+ years ago.
He had said that there were manuscripts that had been found (much like the dead sea scrolls) that depicted Jesus as a child (10-ish?). In them it said he created a bird out of mud and for some reason killed the bird. Supposedly they (whoever "they" were) decided they weren't the true gospels or whatever because "Jesus wouldn't do that".
Like I said, fuzzy on the details. I also didn't pay much attention in that class. Maybe if I had I would have come to my atheism sooner.
Interestingly, I did a google search for "jesus bird mud". And came to a site that says that jesus is mentioned in the qur'an and one of the mentions (most of the way down) is about how he "determined out of clay a thing like the form of a bird".
Funny thing, my teacher was probably dissing islam at the time but we had no clue.
doubtfuldaughter, I had a book at one time that supposedly was about Jesus'childhood years. I don't think I read much of it as I was a Xian then and after being told that it was just a bunch of crap, I chucked it into the trash heap. Now I wish I would have kept the thing. I can't remember the title anymore.
The day I chose to acknowledge God's existence, my prayer began with, "Ok, you win..." It might be that the underlying reason atheists are bothered by people believing in God is because God is actively pursuing them.
I am not the only one who has experienced this. Malcolm Muggeridge, socialist and philosophical author, wrote, "I had a notion that somehow, besides questing, I was being pursued." C.S. Lewis said he remembered, "...night after night, feeling whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England."
Lewis went on to write a book titled, "Surprised by Joy" as a result of knowing God.
The day I chose to acknowledge God's existence, my prayer began with, "Ok, you win..." It might be that the underlying reason atheists are bothered by people believing in God is because God is actively pursuing them.
It's not "god's existence" that bothers the atheist because we cannot be bothered by something for which there is absolutely zero evidence for the existence of. God is a figment of human imagination. Those who "find" this god simply choose to start believing for whatever reasons, fear of death, difficulties coping with circumstances in life, etc. There is no more a god "pursuing" us than there is a boogeyman living under our bed or in our closet. The idea of an all-knowing god who sees you when your sleeping, going potty, masturbating, whatever is ludicrous. The idea of an all knowing, all seeing god who keeps track of billions of people past, present and future is absurd.
The truth is that nothing happens without human action or inaction. If humans don't help after disasters strike, no god comes. If people don't take their sick children and themselves to the doctor, no help comes. If you are stuck on a deserted island and no humans are around and you are in need of life and death help...you die. No gods come. None.
Believing you are "being pursued" or chased by some sadistic megalomaniac magic man who lives in another dimension is absolutely and utterly absurd.
The "giving in" you and others write about is that some just decide to join the sheeple herd of self delusion because they cannot stand the fact that we are alone in the vastness of the chaotic universe.They cannot deal with the fact that even the Earth and Sun one day will not exist...poof...gone. Your gods that you create for yourselves cannot stop it.
To add to my above comment, interesting how Xians make stuff up about "god pursuing us" and all that melodramatic crap like I pointed out before, without even a shred of concrete evidence for the existence of their god. What bothers me as an atheist is that so many people in this world are willing to drink the Kool-aid.
Xatheist: Buy a clue. Actually watch this video:)
God recently chased someone in Canada on a bus, and got the guy to cut off the head of another passenger.
I believe you are confusing the two. Cults and Christians. Many people who "drank the Kool-aid" were in fact murdered and injected with the "Kool-Aid". To even bring this up is in poor tatse.
I've studied Atheism and it does not speak of spewing hatred and ridicule at believers. You speak of Christians knocking on your door. Are you in the South? When is the last time such an incident occured?Do you set a tree for Christmas, share Easter holiday with others, or ever say God Damn It? For I know many Atheists who do.
You claim God is a figment of human imagination. Impressive,how you know this as "fact",when in fact science nor yourself can explain how light and matter collided "magically" and it appears no one will ever be able to.Yet you believe in this miracle,oddity of human
nature,before there was a human nature or universe alone.The impression laid out for all to read,does not sound in no way,any less crazy than Jim Jones himself,considering the way you spoke of your "friends and family". It comes off as hatred.
I opine here as an Athiest. Peace be with you Stardust
First of all, I believe that FreeThinker, XAtheist and Curious Atheist are all the same person and that you are a Christian. All have the same link to no profile, and I see the same IP show up on the sitemeter around the same time, and your writing style is the same.
I believe you are confusing the two. Cults and Christians. Many people who "drank the Kool-aid" were in fact murdered and injected with the "Kool-Aid". To even bring this up is in poor tatse.
I have lived long enough to understand what a cult is. And though most will not admit it, all religions are called cults when they do something crazy. They don't want to accept "those people" as part of their own for they were not "True Believers".
About the Kool-aid analogy. I do not think it is in poor taste,and many...even Christians have used Jonestown as examples in their sermons...and when I was a Christian at the time I sat through some of them.
"Drinking the Kool-aid" is just a saying that illustrates how people will follow their leaders unquestioningly, sometimes many will until it is too late. God believers of all varieties drink various dilutions of the "kool-aid" being a metaphor for bullshit and lies. The Lutherans and Presbyterians drink a diluted type of Kool-aid, many of them sort of sipping and wondering if maybe it's all not real, and then at the other end there are the Evangelicals and Fundamentalists who drink large amounts of Kool-aid to the point of even deluding themselves about the realities of scientific facts. These are people one step away from a cult.
I've studied Atheism and it does not speak of spewing hatred and ridicule at believers.
You "studied" atheism? If you "studied atheism" it must have been from a stupid pastor's point of view, or going by what other believers tell you.
There is no one kind of "atheism". Atheism simply means WITHOUT god beliefs. This "spewing hatred" you talk about is simply criticism. Those who find it as spewing hatred have a persecution complex and go into boo hoo mode instead of listening to reason. Christians and Muslims, in particular, "spew" a hateful story repeatedly in their mythology temples week after week, aimed at those who do not believe what they do. Mostly the fundamentalists, of which they are large in numbers. They preach to themselves and to us, many times knocking on the doors of our private residences to tell us that we are bad and going to burn in hell if we do not accept what they say as truth.
Are you in the South? When is the last time such an incident occured
No, as you can see from my profile, I live in Chicagoland. The last incident occurred just not that long ago, even though our town has a no door-knocking rule. Nothing stops these people, not even threat of fines.
Do you set a tree for Christmas
A tree for festivities of the Winter Solstice was stolen by the Christians from the Pagans. It's a purely pagan tradition, so yes, I do set a tree and any Xian who does is going against their Bible...I will have to look it up, but it says in there not to do as the pagans do and put up a tree with silver and gold, etc.
share Easter holiday with others
Easter also was originally a PAGAN holiday to celebrate the Vernal Equinox and the coming of springtime. The Christians again stole this and made it their own gruesome "zombie day."
Our family celebrates it as a day we all can get together as a family since we don't get together very often and it's very enjoyable. We have dinner with no mention of anyone's beliefs or god, etc. We do not get together and celebrate the gory Easter myth of bloody zombie Jesus coming back from the grave so we can symbolically eat him.
or ever say God Damn It? For I know many Atheists who do.
I personally don't. And if they do, so what? All sorts of stuff comes out of people's mouths when they are pissed off. Usually I just say shit, or some other four-letter word. Saying goddamn it doesn't mean a god exists. (That's a hilarious new attempt at evidence for god...he said God damn it, therefore god exists! LOL!) It's no different than a person I knew who said Great Zeus! Does that mean Zeus exists when someone says that?
You claim God is a figment of human imagination. Impressive,how you know this as "fact",when in fact science nor yourself can explain how light and matter collided "magically" and it appears no one will ever be able to.Y
Gods have always been figments of human imagination. Just look at the ruins in Athens. Many, many people believed these gods to be real and worshiped these creations they had made. And just because we cannot explain something doesn't mean goddidit. It just means you do not know, and may never know. But god believers cannot accept that so invent their own answers.
And it is not hatred at all I speak of these things about religion. But telling people they must burn in hell for simply not believing something is indeed hateful. It's as if the fundamentalists rub their hands together and relish the thought. These are the ones I am talking mostly about. The ones who are in my face, would want to tell me how to live my life according to their personal imaginations and want to interject their delusions into our secular government.
If you read anything at all here, you are purposely avoiding the points I make about no god ever showing up...EVER. Nothing happens without human intervention, bad things happen when humans do bad things, sickness is cured by human endeavor, advances in technology are made via human endeavor. If you are alone and disaster strikes, your god does not help you. You have to figure out a way to help yourself or you die.
No god stops disaster, no god cleans up disasters, no god stops the innocent child from being abused or murdered, no god helps the homeless, the starving, the oppressed. No god ever comes. People must do something or nothing happens. Pray till the cows come home, but it is futile if human beings, believers or not, decide to take action.
Gods are mythology. Take a mythology course and you will see the comparisons between myths created way before Christianity came along and you will see many similarities and see that humans invent their gods to accommodate their most desired wishes, even the most dreadful evil ones of vengeance, vindictiveness and hate for those who hold different worldviews.
Now that the atheists are stepping up to speak out against religious oppression and stand up for reason and freethought, the religious are threatened and going to start crying persecution because someone begs to differ with them.
Here are the passages about decorating trees. Many Christians will try to weasel the interpretation of this because they so do love those pretty, pagan traditions!
Jeremiah 10:2-4
"Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not." (KJV).
And, December 25th was originally the birthday of the god Mithras, and Constantine just kept that date as Jesus birthday. It's just one of the many other myths Christians have stolen from other places to form their own mythology. In time, Christianity will be recognized as just another chapter in a mythology text. (And hopefully humankind will have stopped inventing gods for themselves to believe in.)
What is it about atheists that we would spend so much time, attention, and energy refuting something that we don't believe even exists?!
I always use global warming deniers as my stock answer. If they don't believe global warming is happening, then why do they spend so much time trying to refute global warming?
They also seem to have another motive. As they challenge those who believe in God, They are deeply curious to see if they could be convinced otherwise.
Really? Then why is it that it always seems to be Christians commenting on atheist blogs and trying to challenge atheists and not the other way around?
Dude, its obvious why there is nothing about ages 1-33. JC was a party guy, ended up in AA and then saw the light and focused on his mission to be tortured and killed so school children would be beaten and molested by priests.
JC didn't want beatings and molestation of children, but the other 2/3 of the Trinity, out voted him, and he had to do it.
dsawahoo that's hilarious!
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