The Resurgence: 8 things that didn't compel me to reject Jesus.

http://theresurgence.com/things_that_might_compel
The Resurgence is an attempt from Christians to restore faith in Jesus in America- as if there is a serious lack of faith happening here. We're one of the most Christian countries in the world, and the most religious first-world nation outside of the Vatican.
So we're got some resurging to do apparently- they've written a blog post about 8 things that might compel you to reject Jesus. These are listed below, with appropriate responses from me of course, being that this is my blog.
I'll be going through it, let's see if they can't save my soul by the end of the post, shall we?

1. Theology
This argument is rather weak- the quote is "Don’t reject him theologically." I am not sure exactly what they're trying to accomplish here; the paragraph has little meaning. The point is that Atheists reject theological teachings being that they aren't based in fact, but in speculation about ancient literature.

2. Control

The author attempts to make the point that people in Nazereth were desperate for miracles and divine intervention, and sought help from Jesus when he came by. He declined to do miracles and that was because he didn't want them to believe they had controlled him- and that this opinion is carried over to today, where, when Jesus or God aren't what we want them to be (kind, all-loving, consistent in their instructions?) then we get mad and throw a fit.

The supposed situation in Nazereth brings up an excellent point. People were poor, hungry and suffering from plagues. What they did was ask for help from someone who they were told, could help. If your child was dying of a disease and you had no hope of saving them, and a mysterious stranger rolls into town claiming to be able to heal the sick, what is the first thing you're going to do? Beg for help in the way you know how to, or that is culturally appropriate to you.

This is apparent given the hysteria surrounding the Autism Spectrum, people are jumping on the idea that vaccines cause Autism because we want something, anything to blame and some kind of control over the destiny of our children, and feeling like there is nothing that could have been or ever could be done is absolutely shattering. 

A desperate situation, and the savior of mankind walks in to town and is offended by pleas and demands for help? Especially when he seems to be uniquely in the position to lend support? 

Humans want things. We want to be able to live, and we want to be happy, and we have a strong desire to reproduce. These drives are what cause the cooperation of our civilization. If your neighbor had a cure for a disease ailing someone in your family, and he didn't share it with you, or tried to coerce you in some way with it, he would be regarded as an evil person.  Yet, when someone who claims to be God Himself refuses to help- this act isn't evil, it's him trying to teach us an important lesson about control.

The analogy drawn with Christianity is generally the parent-and-child one- so let's use it. If your child is trapped screaming under a pile of rocks, this is not the time to teach him to use his inside voice.

3. Greed

The foundation of society is Greed. It's the reason we have capitalism. Most of the Christian right hates socialism with a deep passion that rivals only their faith in the creator, but we'll try not to lump all Christians in one political pot for now.

Fighting against your strongest instinct- self-preservation- is hard. It's usually only possible when the life of your child is at risk, and so "to eat of her final meal before she starved to death." is an illustration that might be... inaccurate, to put it politely. But hey, it's a tenet of your religion, so let's work with that principle too.

So let me get this straight- Some guy tells you he's God. He won't help you not starve to death, and he seems to be a bit down on his luck. He also says not to be greedy, yet he takes food from a starving widow. In what universe does this make any sense at all? Let me reiterate- Jesus Christ Himself visits a town stricken with poverty and disease and uses as his ultimate test...hospitality?


Would you go to Haiti right now (sorry to use you like this Haiti... Please text 'HAITI' to 90999) and base your support on whether or not people hand over their food and water? Go from town to down with secret bags of rice and gallons of potable water but not hand them over until they pass a personality test? What kind of horrible human being could do that? I forget- the capacity of God is infinite.

4. Selfishness

This paragraph, really, is just a repeat of the last one. Greed is literally a synonym for selfishness. It's used in the definition. So you'll have to forgive me for not wasting your time. See above.

5. Familiarity

I believe what's being stated here is the staycation phenomenon that's sweeping the nation. Grew up in your hometown? Great! Why not visit it through the eyes of a tourist? New yorkers can have a lot of fun, but people in Waco, Texas aren't as lucky.

Basically, this deals with belief that already exists, or people who grew up in church culture that ultimately rejected it. 

I'd love to go into the fantastic amount of detail and environmental, physical, emotional and geographical variables that lead into a decision to reject Jesus, and perhaps I will- or maybe you can just head over to http://recoveringfundamentalists.com/ and read some stories of why people stop believing.

Just know that it's almost never "I just didn't get excited enough".

6. Comfort

I'm sure for some people, it's easier to just be an Atheist. Maybe up north, or out west. I live in the bible belt. I live in Dallas Texas. Within a mile of my house (and I live DOWNTOWN) there are no less than 38 churches. That's just google maps- not every church is listed there.

I have lost jobs, friends, family and even lovers to prejudice. I have been spit on, slapped, kicked out of cars and had bibles thrown at me. My cousin was left at school for three days until child protective services came and picked him up, and had a long talk with my aunt, because he said he didn't believe in God.

Being an Atheist isn't easy. You can't do something bad and ask for forgiveness- you have to live with that guilt until you die. Knowing you're going to die, and that there isn't anything after that is terrifying. Knowing that shit could go south at any moment- the sun could flare, a rock could hit us, a disease could kill us, a supervolcano could block the sun and we'd all freeze or starve- the certainty that Christians have- the ignorance is something I wish I could capture. But I can't. I know how science works, and that a healthy skeptical attitude has saved me from many an ill. Honestly, I don't see what's so hard about being a Christian, except believing in something you have no idea is true or not. Living by a book that's a good 7 or 8 empires old is hard enough, but no one (including the author of "The Resurgence") lives by ALL of it... they pick and choose what is and isn't important. Honestly, if I could be a Christian, I might try it out. But I can't- they haven't met my threshold for proof (which is apparently pretty low- I do believe in evolution after all...) and so I stay abstinent from theology.

7. Embarrassment

Again, apparently NO ONE is a Christian and it just SUCKS. They're completely persecuted and they never get 'cool points'. Oh No. I feel SO sorry for you.

Try saying "No, I don't go to church, or believe in God" at your next job interview. Go on, try it.

8. Religion

I absolutely LOVE when Christians try to make it seem like their faith isn't a religion. It's not a religion, they say, it's a relationship. 

Yeah, quacks like a duck, has feathers and a beak. Floats on the water. 

It's a religion. 

Religion: a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny;
Relationship: a relation between people;

Which one of these defines what you do every Sunday, and what you talk about in scripture, and the book you read from? You're not speaking to a physical person, you're describing how you feel about an abstract concept(infinity) that was supposed to somehow be represented somehow in a person who could be killed- through some arbitrary rules He Himself made up, about how He had to die in order to save us all. 

This is not a relationship- this is a religion- and it makes no damn sense.

And that is why I reject Jesus. 

That, and people who write stupid posts like these.

How to convert an Atheist: Part Two - Miracles

Today I will be dealing with a contested subject among Atheists and Christians alike.
Miracles.
This proof that will indeed convert me very quickly is extremely difficult to produce depending on your definition of a miracle. Since you're trying to convert me specifically here, we'll use my definition and then I'll go about converting the rest of those stubborn unbelievers.

Item the Second: Miracles
Conversion Status: Absolute until proven false
Ease of Evidence: Difficult

Well you're off to a good start- every religion claims miracles were done(and usually are the basis for the religion in the first place), and that miracles happen frequently still.
I'd like to see one.
Here's how you do it: Predict when and where a miracle will occur(you can use prophecy here for a double whammy) and get me there to witness it. OR if your particular religion grants YOU the ability to perform one, simply throw one down right there.
But Liz, you ask, what miracle would you like us to do? I can speak in tongues or attest that the sun rises every day- isn't that enough to inspire your faith?
No. Let's define a miracle, shall we?
"A miracle is a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature, such that can be explained by divine intervention, and is sometimes associated with a miracle-worker." This is from Wikipedia, which is a website I can only assume Christians have seen and had a chance to edit- thusly it's the accepted definition.
I have previously defined what does not count as a miracle- things that have explanations you just don't understand, or things that are mundane but "good" (finding your car keys or overcoming a disease) and things that have been proven not to be miracles, but are established phenomena of the human psyche or emotional reactions.
So- while your mother overcoming cancer is not a miracle, everyone in an entire hospital suddenly overcoming their ailments with no medical explanation might be.
Here are some examples:
Amputee Limb Regrowth
Verifiable Resurrection (not just brain death- but total cessation of life processes and decomposition begins)
Translocation or Transmutation of objects(again, verifiable only please)
Demonstration of abilities not possibly possessed by an individual- heavy investigation required

Things that do not represent a miracle-
Things that have no apparent cause(investigate. Don't draw a conclusion first, then test for it.)
Mundane Occurrences
Occurrences that through denial of established scientific fact, then lack a cause
Things that have a natural or explainable cause

Proofs I will accept for a miracle:
Witnessing it personally
Testimony of multiple witnesses that were not in a highly-emotional state, at least one who is/was a skeptic, with correlating evidence(pictures, video footage, the end result of the miracle) - this will be investigated thoroughly.
Cataclysmic evidence (IE, mountains that have actually moved, geological evidence, must be material)

Proofs that I will not accept:
Your personal testimony
Testimony from ancient texts
Testimony from a large group of people in a highly-emotional state
Testimony from individuals unable to think critically about other things
Video evidence alone, or pictures alone, or transmogrified object alone.
Proofs of non-miracles, or miracles that could be fakes(stigmata, speaking in tongues, telepathy) - you will have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is true, due to the ubiquitous nature of falsehoods surrounding these.

The idea of a miracle is however, difficult to maintain. As the late, great Arthur C. Clarke once said- "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." and rightly so. I could travel back to any point before 200 years ago and perform magic with only the knowledge of today- not even the technology. Miracles performed in ancient times could only be the result of lack of knowledge about the world around them leading them to believe in a supernatural cause.
Do not be surprised if a miracle you have come to believe in gets debunked or explained- this is only the march of progress. It does not disprove your faith, only fails to affirm it, and returns to you the burden of positive proof, a reason to believe.

Negligent Parents and Our Heavenly Father

I hear more and more every day about negligent parents who turn to prayer at the exclusion of medical treatment or even insulin for diabetic children.
Why is this allowed to happen? This isn't religious freedom- this is negligent homicide.
I am angry. I am angry that in this country, people who listen to the wrong kind of music, or are too young, or are going through a divorce can lose their kids for the slightest of wrongs but parents who refuse medical treatment are untouchable until the child dies. I understand if you take your kid off into the wilderness- live off the grid or in very small towns this might go by unnoticed. But not in Phoenix, Arizona. Not in Pittsburgh. Not in Detroit. These are only few of far too many cases of children being killed or disfigured due to "Christian Science", Fundementalism and overall anti-intellectualism.
These parents are unfit- and people who believe they know better than a medical professional(seeking second opinions is fine. But look for someone who has the same credentials and not just anyone) and turn to things that have been proven ineffective for treatment of their most precious charges should be declared thus.

Speaking of unfit parents- why hasn't the cosmic child protective services placed us in a foster home? I am sure a nice loving Buddha or Ra would love to have us(as long as they don't live together).

Seriously though- the analogy of the "father" falls very short here- allowing your children to learn the hard way is nothing new- but even us flawed humans grab our children before they fall to their deaths- we bail them out of prison and give them a stern talking to or at least try to discern why they were there in the first place- why are we not better taken care of? Why exactly is prayer so ineffectual?
Looking at the world, seeing the horrors we inflict on each other- one might say that God gave us Free Will and, like a child playing with matches- we hurt ourselves time and time again. It's a learning experience. But what about natural disasters where children and innocents die? What about all the thousands of times that pure bad luck or a series of unfortunate events results in the death of torture of people who have done nothing wrong?
I man, these people ARE Christians lots of times- they DO pray and there are many avenues for God to intervene(like making it more apparent that they should have gone left instead of right- or causing them not to sneeze while the nazis are downstairs?) so what happens? Does God just not care? Or can he not intervene? Or does the Free Will limitation apply in Chaos Theory? You chose not to dust the attic and so now you must sneeze- off to the camps with you!
But people who ARE "blessed"- blessed by something like a movie to cheer them up or a 5 dollar bill on the ground so they could grab some coffee- these things are fair game for God to claim but the bad things that happen by coincidence are somehow our fault. God can inspire people to write bibles, can kill the firstborn of an entire village, can come down from heaven and traipse about the countryside of one very small area spreading the only way to get to heaven to a very select few small villages while neglecting to mention anything that would permanently validate the religion to the rest of the world and then die, knowing full well the message would not be spread far and wide for hundreds of years, effectively damning most of the population of the earth for thouands of years to hell- he can do all of that, but he can't inspire people not to sell children into slavery or have a change of heart when they purposefully addict teens to heroin- he can do that but still 1 in every 120 children is born with a servere, life altering birth defect from which they may never recover.

Someone, please get us out of here.

implications != truth value

This is a symptom of people who either do not think critically or people who hold off on thinking critically about certain aspects of their lives.
You know the people I am talking about- people who refuse to believe something or even consider it because of "what it would mean".
This is such a strong cultural phenomenon that it has become a common plot point and aspect of stereotypical characters.

The problem with this argument is that no matter what the consequences of something being true are, they do not make it any less true.
For a bad example, holocaust deniers are not always white supremacists- sometimes they are people who are simply nieve. People who don't want to believe the horrible things that happened because that would simply mean that horrible things have happened in the past- unimaginably horrible things.
For a more realistic example, most western Christians deny a lot of things to themselves, but one strikes me as particularly offensive. That Atheists have morals that are equal to or even better than their own, and that they follow them. That can't be, because that would mean they either aren't morally superior, or that they don't have a monopoly on morality, or that morals are a conclusion you can come to on your own, without God's intercession.
This idea is so frightening that it is more often than not shut completely out of their thoughts, dismissed as an impossibility.
Another disturbing example is one of creationism- people taking the oversimplification of it too far and then being offended that they may share a common ancestry with many modern primates today or "that my grandma was a monkey".
Or that we are not "any different than the animals"(of course, larger brains and better adaptability, as well as culture and language makes us completely the same as animals.) and thusly not "special".
This kind of thinking is infantile at best, and destructive at worst.
The scary part is that they are allowed to teach this to their children.

Car Keys are not a miracle.

I could go over a very long and exhaustive list over what does not count as a miracle and why but that would seriously inhibit my productivity at work(moreso than it is now).
I'll go over a list of the most common things, and explain them, and then I'll define a miracle and explain why if one were to ever happen most Freethinkers would convert on the spot.

Finding something that was lost
Misplacing something is the act of putting it somewhere and forgetting where you put it, or having someone else come along behind you and move that object, and failing to update you on where they moved it to. God does not update your brain on where the location is, you simply start looking in likely places or are looking for another thing when you come across it.

Overcoming a disease
People overcome diseases every day. They also die horribly from completely preventable diseases every day. The act of going to a doctor for something else and finding out you have caught something early enough to treat it is also not a miracle, as many people die from things that, if caught early, can be easily treated(meningitis, tuberculosis).
Many of these people are devout Christians, of all sects and faiths, and you had better believe that many of them believe the same thing you do- they just didn't have the fortune you did.

Babies
Animals are born every day- are they miracles? And so are bugs- are they? Bacteria split in your intestinal tract every second- is that a miracle? Where do you draw the line that new life is or is not a miracle? How about the baby that dies in childbirth? Or the mother? What about the baby that is born to an eleven year old child who was not ready for this to happen to her?

Surviving A Natural Disaster
Obviously, surviving a natural disaster is not a miracle, as if it were a true miracle, no one would have died. Or, only the sinful would have died(which is everyone) or only non-Christians(or the saved, or those who go to church every day, or people of a particular sect) would have died(which is horribly hypocritical) and that would render it not a natural disaster, but a super-natural one.
Point being, why did you(or the subject) survive while others did not.


Needless to say, many people attribute these occurrences as miracles when they are simply not. Or, you bring up the problem of evil/god's great plan. This of course brings up chaos theory which I will address in a later post.

However, miracles are defined neatly for us and it is easy to put any thing to the test if we are simply consistent in our definition. From the great Wikipedia: "A miracle is a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature, such that can be explained by divine intervention, and is sometimes associated with a miracle-worker."
Being that all of the things in this list and many, many others attributed to god or miracles are very explainable and occur in nature frequently we can conclude that miracles DO(not) happen every day and we (don't) need to be thankful for them.

Freethinkers however, upon being presented with evidence of a departure from the laws of nature or something that is unexplainable(not "hasn't been explained" and not "once this happened to me...") by anyone, they will convert to whatever religious explanation actually fits. Here is a video that really explains that, and why.