Crazy Christian Lies

Thanking Slacktivist for the Link to the Site...I just had to say, I love this shirt. I mean, its so completely true. Except when it isn't.

I Got... Physical Mail

So, today I got in the  mail a copy of both Ray Comfort's You Can Lead an Atheist... (complete with illegible "Autograph")  and The Atheist Bible courtesy of an anonymous donor to Ray Comfort's ministry. Since I have not gotten ahold of the next book I will be reviewing yet, my plan is to look through The Atheist Bible and, if there's anything notable, ripping the hell into its points while waiting to get ahold of the other book. Money just hasn't been there for adding to the blog of late. Just the way things go sometimes. 

McLeroy Nomination Rejected... Barely

So, its finally an almost respectable day to live in Texas. While I'm extatic that this guy won't be leading the SBOE, I'm highly perturbed by the margin by which the block was able to occur.

Ah well... take the victories where you can find them in Texas.

Darwinius Masillae: Seriously Overblown

Everyone's already heard all about Darwinius Masillae the 47 million year old primate fossil. While I agree with scientists that the find is incredible, particularly in its age and completeness, I have to agree with PZ Myers on this one. Incredible as the find may be, its not a missing link, and there really aren't any missing links. We already know pretty clearly that evolution happened. Its obvious when looking at even partial evidence. This find doesn't make or break the ToE, it simply adds to the growing list of transitional forms that creationists pretend don't exist.

I've said it before, but I'm no scientist. I simply find this subject fascinating, mostly due to the denialism and the recalcitrant idiocy of the fundy camp. Frankly though, I get far too frustrated with "teh stoopid". I mean, working on these people and trying to get them to understand that their claims about science and whatnot are wrong and ludicrous is completely a waste of time. They don't understand because they don't want to. We make concessions regarding the fact that we don't claim to have absolute knowledge god doesn't exist etc, and they will always twist it around into a claim of something its not. The cognitive dissonance is so harsh it hurts. So, I'm not sure I'll be dealing directly with the tools on their own blogs anymore, but that doesn't mean I'm done here.

Quickie Post

Your holy book "prediciting" that Christianity would face opposition and persecution with its doctrines against the status quo and being militantly evangelist is roughly as prophetic as me watching you walk into the rain and telling you you're going to get wet.

Absurdities in Genesis: Well, shit... that was quick.

So... yeah. Just post that I'm on a brief hiatus and BAM, I land on AiG and see this:







I mean... really? Come on, this is just beyond pointless. Do these whackjobs completely lack any understanding for what a metaphor is?


Derka derka. I mean, lets be honest here, nobody outside of various animistic pagan groups are you usually going to find someone who literally considers the earth their "mother." For the rest of us it is an obvious metaphor with clear implications regarding what the Earth is to us as a species, and to us as a biosphere. The earth takes care of us by providing us with what we need to survive, and we should be good children and not defile her. Whether you believe it is god causing those crops to grow or placing those animals there is of no consequence, nor does it detract from the metaphorical implications.


The only conclusion i can come to is completely unsavory and that is that these people literally believe that doing -ANYTHING- without the mention of god is implicitly bad or explicitly trying to deliberately sideline their god which is completely ridiculous with things like this that have, in common parlance, no religious connotation any more than me saying "goddamnit" means I believe in god.


And this is the kind of semantic bullshit that frustrates me about the religious debates. They nitpick the stupidest things, but then so do some of ours. How many times has an atheist tried to throw the "bats aren't birds" thing into an argument? The only classification systems that humans still use weren't even codified till thousands of years after the bible was written. Its silly semantic crap. I mean, pi=3 is a valid complaint, and so is the "pillars of the earth" and such. But lets keep it on the level here. If you want to argue semantics, they're going to keep throwing them back.

Taking a week off

Having made it to my hundredth post I'm going to take a little time off from the blog so I don't burn myself out. It'll give me some time to get my creativity back up. Might do some posts if I see something that screams needing a response, but other than that, I'll still be on SMRT.

100th Post: The Septuagint and Eternal Punishment

So, I'm already at my 100th post. Arbitrary marker, I know, But I decided I'd make this an interesting one. I want to discuss eternal punishment with you. Why eternal punishment? Because eternal punishment in hell is one of the most commonly used methods of intimidating people into believing the lies of evangelical christians.

The evangelical christians love the idea of eternal hell. It puts the impetus on a potential convert to either choose to believe or be potentially tortured forever. Its a great big initimidation con, and no doubt gets alot of weak converts from those who are afraid of that potential torture. That said, even so, I will set out to show that the idea of everlasting punishment is not only ridiculous as a doctrine, but completely unbiblical.

In this instance we should look at both the New and Old Testaments, but first the new. Yeshua, in those scriptures, which as best we can tell were initially published in Greek used the words Aionoios Kolasis to describe the eventual comeuppance of sinners and unbelievers. Now, while kolasis does equate to some kind of punishment for a crime or the rehabilitation, aionios is a bit trickier,a nd far more at odds with the fundies.

Aionios means "long enduring" based on all the greek sources that I can muster. It does not imply everlasting, and can be as short as a few years or a few centuries, but it is not eternal even in its implication. The term aionios is used dozens of times in the Septuagint (which Yeshua quoted from) in fact, and every single time it is in its meaning of "long enduring" not eternal. At least, not until you get to the New Testament where translators in the late Roman era and early middle ages decided that it meant eternal.

Highly conservative churches of course hate this idea, because it smacks of Origen's ideas about universal salvation, and of course, if you're going to be saved in the end regardless, alot of people aren't going to back the church, and the church's purpose of getting people to their salvation is completely shot, and many people would lose their purpose of living while not actually having to contribute productively. The very idea of universal salvation was very prevalent in early Christian communities, in fact, and even Augustine makes note of such doctrines and their popularity.

So, maybe I've misread something, but I cannot find anything to dispute this. Even if hell were to exist, I would not fear it because I would know it to be only for some time. Of course, as I don't believe in hell at all I fear it even less. But I highly recommend hitting fundies with that one every once in a while, as they really need a reality check, and watching them twitch in the throes of their cognitivie dissonance can be terribly amusing.

While I was researching all this I came upon a book called The Jerome Conspiracy which I recommend people check out. Its not a long read, and puts this all in a more comprehensive narrative. I actually wish I had come upon this source first, since most of my information is also therein.