Knowing my opinions on Christianity, you might think I would never show my face in a church. But you’d be wrong. On Xmas Eve I took my family to Father Bob Maguire’s quasi-interdenominational service.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mti1qJ18tIo]
Ahem. To all of my Christian friends, readers, listeners, and enemies, who keep telling me about what a good bloke their god, Yahweh, is. I even had one of them, in an email thread, tell me that Yahweh had never committed mass murder. Oh my… Darwin.
Steve Wells has done some math for us.
It’s impossible to say for sure, but plently. How many did God drown in the flood or burn to death in Sodom and Gomorrah? How many first-born Egyptians did he kill? There’s just no way to count them all.
But sometimes the Bible tells us exactly how many were killed by God. Here’s a list of those that I can find. (If you find any that I’ve missed, let me know and I’ll add them to the list.)
So far I come up with a total of 32.9 million (not including, at least in some cases, women and children).
Check out this link for the breakdown.
This is the god you choose to believe in? Out of all of the gods you could believe in, this is the one you’re picking? It is estimated that six million Jews died in the Holocaust but that was in the 20th Century. If you were to believe the OT, Yahweh committed his acts of genocide somewhere around 4000BCE – 400BCE when the population of the planet was far smaller. In fact, in the Great Flood, we’re supposed to believe he killed everyone on the planet except some sailor guy and his wife and kids. That’s genocide on a scale that Saddam Hussein could only DREAM of.
If I absolutely *had* to believe in a god… if my life depended on it… I’d pick Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, lust, beauty, and sexuality. Doesn’t that sound like a much better god to worship (if you’re into that kind of thing)?
Ze Frank talks about Free Will.
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
Macromantics
Kill Rock Stars
Hey How come nobody signed up for my promotion? You don’t want a free $50 Amazon voucher?
Mark Hallett, a researcher with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said, “Free will does exist, but it’s a perception, not a power or a driving force. People experience free will. They have the sense they are free.
“The more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don’t have it,†he said.
That is hardly a new thought. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, as Einstein paraphrased it, that “a human can very well do what he wants, but cannot will what he wants.â€
From a NYT article entitled “Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don’t” which I came across via Scott Adams’ blog.
Well we said we were going to do it last night and tonight, in our first attempt, we CURED OUR FIRST CHRISTIAN.
Here’s some links you might want to follow up.
Molly’s blog. Oh yeah Molly, you may have had to give up your belief in Christianity but you at least got a link out of it. The lengths some people will go to for their Googlerank.
Some resources you might find handy when you try to cure a Christian in your life:
The Bible and Jesus Myth.
The Skeptics Annotated Bible.
Help me “Cure A Christian” on future episodes! If you’re a Christian, and you want to be cured, come on the show or suggest a friend!
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed.
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
I can’t tell you how exhilarated I am tonight after watching Richard Dawkins’ two-part DVD “The Root Of All Evil?“. For years I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the feeling that I should just accept christianity as a reasonable viewpoint. Particularly as my boys grow up, I find it unreasonable that they should be told that the religious perspective is as equally valid a way of thinking about the world and their place in it as a rational, reason-based perspective which takes in all of the facts available to them.
Earlier today I also listened to the Point of Inquiry podcast with Sam Harris, author of “Letter To A Christian Nation” and it was equally as exhilarating. To finally have some highly erudite statesmen for the reason-based community is a relief and inspiration, even though the message they are delivering, that reason is on a slippery slope in the West at the moment, is one that is deeply concerning to me.
Humanity has had to endure thousands of years of persecution and being held back from progress as a result of the particular mythologies of the leaders of our societies. Too many millions of people had to die to get us to the privileged position we are in the 21st century, where we have the freedom to review the facts and make a reason-based decision on how the world works and our position in it.
The thought that religious zealots could reverse that trend, sending us back to the dark ages, should be terrifying to any sane person.
