AW! Epistles
From Allison
Abstract
Monday, 01 November 2004
Mike, I have the following comments on: AskWhy! on Miracles—Christianity Revealed. You make some good points but I think that you are trying too hard. Most of your comments are not backed by hard facts but by your own interpretation. How do you know that there are records that have been destroyed? Were you there? My interpretation of your babbling is that you have too much time on your hands. And why is it so important to you to discount Christianity? Why not Buddism or Hinduism? Maybe, just maybe you are wrong. And I know that Jesus is still waiting for you open armed.
It is riotous that Christians should talk of hard facts—since they have none, and the hard facts about Christian history they will not entertain—but typical of their hypocrisy. It is also typical that you speak in generalisations. How am I supposed to know what you have in mind when you make blanket assertions? The one point you specify is about the erasure of records, and I write, to clarify your misinterpretation:
"We have to conclude that Jesus led an obscure life or his own followers have erased his history from the records."
To understand why that is the conclusion you should have read the page. If you want more solid evidence, there are plenty of pages from Jewish writings that are still extant with the inkblots and blue pen lines of the Christian censors through the writer’s words that Christians did not want to be read. In a book by Maimonides that speaks about Jesus, the censor has obliterated the words, and the owner has re-written them in the margin. A later Christian has struck out the marginal note!
Anyway, it seems that I am babbling, but Christians like yourself do not babble. If a criterion of babbling is that it bears little connexion with reality, then it is plainly Christians who babble. And indeed, I have time on my hands, although regrettably not as much as I would like. I am retired and spend my time criticising Christianity because no one else will. It is a convention of our society, that the present UK government want to reinforce with new blasphemy laws, that Christianity is beyond criticism. That is why Christians get away with the utter garbage they do.
It is important to discount Christianity because it is so evil, as its own history proves, and it continues to wreak havoc in the world, along with the other patriarchal religions that are its brother and parent. I do not know enough about Buddhism and Hinduism to write about them, having been brought up in Christendom by Christian parents and in Christian schools, like most of us. So, I can speak of Christianity from my own experience and upbringing. The difference between me and you is that I was curious or skeptical enough to want to check out what I was told. It is mainly untrue. Try a little skepticism yourself. You dare not because you know your beliefs are ill-founded and would soon evaporate if seriously challenged.
Maybe I am wrong, but at least I present evidence for my assertions. Christianity offers myths pretending to be history, and naturally uncorroborated by anything or anyone else.
Thank you for your lengthy reply and time spent on it. I am so sorry that you have let human beings destroy your belief in God. Christians will do bad and evil things in the name of God because they are human. It is not the faith that is imperfect.
Faith is not only imperfect, it is wrong. I speak of Chsristianity as the religion of second-hand car dealers. Perhaps you can guess why. Second-hand car dealers like us to believe that what they say about the car they are selling is true, whether it is or not. They do not like it to be challenged. To put your faith in second-hand car dealers, or anyone selling you something for which you have no independent evidence is wrong! The old proverb is that you should not buy a pig in a poke—a pig hidden in a sack so that you cannot inspect it. Those who do it are fooled. Yet people are willing to be sold falsehoods in the name of religion without the slightest attempt to consider whether what they are expected to believe is reasonable. Why? Some have been conditioned since childhood by parents and parsons, and now salivate, like Pavlov’s dogs, every time they hear the word Christ. Others are such cowards they cannot bear the thought of dying, even though it has to happen to us all, and like to fool themselves that they will wake up still alive! It is a sad delusion, but one that makes ministers and churches rich by exploiting an emotional deficiency in many people.
And you are correct… I have not investigated much about my faith but I have read books about people who have and they are convicted that Christ walked this earth and that He was the “One” that the prophets fortold would save us.
Have you ever heard of the blind leading the blind? You should have, being a believer in the Judaiao-Christian bible. That is how you are allowing yourself to be led. Christians are led by other Christians who begin by being cynical priests and parsons telling a tale for their own advantage, and then those persuaded by it tell the tale to others, often their own children. So long as no one questions it, it goes on like a chain letter.
You seem very intelligent and need cold hard facts. As do I. I am in the scientific field and want to know how and why all of the time. But the fact is as mere humans we are not able to phathom the mysteries of God… and God does not ask us to. He calls us to be like children in our faith.
You are a poor scientist. Why should you make exceptions to the rule of questioning everything? Here you make an exception because God says so, meaning that you have accepted without question that some human words somewhere have been uttered somehow by God. Surely you can see that your point about being children is to prevent questioning. Children are gullible and have not developed their critical faculties. That is why the Christian vampires always like to get at them young, especially below the age of seven, according to Ignatius Loyola, and as vulnerable teenagers according to the disgusting and dangerous modern charismatic evangelicals. Adults ought to have developed their critical faculties, especially when they boast they are scientists. Try it!
There is a love out there that is so great and powerful that it cannot come from anything else. I have felt its healing power.
You have felt some psychological need fulfilled. Sugar pills famously can do it. Why do you have to believe something impossible when there are simple, and well established reasons for things. Love is an emotion meant to bond creatures together, whether for procreation or for security. An almighty and eternal god does not need either of these and so cannot experience love. It is utterly delusional for any one with scientific training to see love as some weird, supernatural God-given power. It is a way of ensuring the survival of the species. It is natural, and naturally explained. It is unnatural, not supernatural to love your enemies. Bush and Blair obviously do not, though they are meretricious Christians, and the world’s Christian leaders latterly have mouthed their protests against these two powerful Christian leaders of the vengeful western world. We should respect all life not be forced artificially to say we love it. Thus we should respect our human opponents, and accept that they have a view that might not match our own. Just as you say here:
Of course everyone on this earth has the right to believe whatever they want… but I do believe there is a purpose to this life and a calling for each and every one of us.
You are using words imbued with false connotations like “calling”, implying someone is calling us. We all have a purpose in life, but it is up to us to decide upon what it is. Naturally, it should benefit and not harm the world we live in because whatever does harm it eventually harms us—it is where we live!
I too struggle with my faith occasionally… but when I pray and I see God working in my life I am reconfirmed. I know that you think you have basis for your disbelief… but many have a powerful argument for belief also. God bless you.
I have a much sounder and consistent basis for my own beliefs than you have for yours. Prayer is a psychological tapping of what is already within you waiting to be tapped. God has nothing to do with it, and logic proves it. If God is all omniscient, then He already knows what you will pray for before you prayed for it. A good God would therefore have answered your prayer before you ever had reason to pray. On the other hand, if God has foreseen your prayer but has nevertheless not removed the reason for it, then His will is fixed and your prayer can make no difference to it. Either that or God is not good because He likes to let you suffer, but not enough to destroy you. That is cruelty. If prayer is an appeal to your own untapped strength, then it makes much more sense than an all seeing almighty God answering it. If prayer then is the powerful argument you have for belief, then you are easily satisfied. I suggest you do not buy any second-hand cars.
If you do not believe in God… then how did the first speck of dirt come to be? Can you go to your laboratory and make a speck of dirt… just a speck? Absolutely not.
I found in my lifetime that my kids and animals like cows and dogs nake many specks of dirt. It seems all too easy. Let me be serious. All of you creationists either will not or cannot envisage change. The world to you all must be static, despite the plain evidence of your own senses. Specks of dirt, like everything else in the world, evolved from something preceding it, and ultimately from the event commonly called, these days, The Big Bang. The world was not originally a lot of specks of dust as you seem to think. The specks of dust evolved from other things, including the matter inside stars. It might be too hard for you to understand, but that is no reason to wilfully ignore the truth.
There was a beginning. There is a Creator. To create physical things.
Scientists accept that the evidence of cosmology is that there was a beginning, but it was not in the least like the beginning described in that ancient book of stories, the bible. But a beginning does not imply a creator. That is another thing you cannot understand.
Life is what we strive for, but we all die. But there is life beyond the physical. Our spirit.
If there is a life beyond the physical, and it is a better life, then why should anyone want to strive for this inadequate life that we live and write emails in. At one time, Christians would commit suicide as soon as they were baptized, expecting to go straight to heaven, just as the Moslem martyrs entertain the same expectation in voluntarily dying in a Jihad. Quite rightly, no Christians really believe it any more. You comfort yourselves with the belief in an afterlife because you are scared to die, not because you look forward to it.
You are relying on your own brain to piece through exactly why God does not exist. Do you think that your intelligence is sufficient to prove that God does not exist?
You have not been attending to what you have been reading. Science cannot prove or disprove that whatever you imagine in your febrile brain is real. Whether you believe in Santa Claus or God almighty makes no difference. They are products of your brain and science has no need to take a view on them vis-a-vis their independent existence. When there is no evidence of anything, science takes the view that there is no need to make hypotheses about it, and every reason to be skeptical. Santa and God are both in that class. I do not believe that God exists not because I can prove it, but because there is no evidence of it.
God is on the other side… the spiritual side that we cannot see or touch… but occasionally, with faith, can FEEL.
People who are deranged feel all sorts of things that do not exist. Indeed, modern science has shown that feelings of God and ghosts or aliens can be produced in the brain by physical forces acting on it. If that is so, then there is no reason to think that God is real, or ghosts or aliens either.
And God came here in human form so that we could believe that He is still out there and that He is love.
God Himself told you this when He came to visit you, right? I think not! You are merely relating what a load of crooks have told you or your parents. You are indoctrinated by human beings not by God. God, so you must believe, gave you your brain expecting you to use it. You refuse. Is He meant to be pleased by that? Did He give you a brain so that He could then say that you should not use it on any account in case it interferes with your faith? You are the gullible tool of rogues.
You are breathing because God is willing it. He created the air that you breath. He also offers a gift of eternal life… this life is only a speck of what God has in store for us. What is important is where we go after we die. Because our spirit does not die.
And you are rambling in your desperation to kid yourself. You are desperate to avoid death at the price of any lie. There is no need to fear it, nor will you avoid it. Death is itself the peace that is yours for eternity.
You are quick on your feet and witty with your words… but wit will not detour me or break me. I differ in opinion from you and I do not believe that either of our opinions make us a worse person. I cannot see how you could call someone like Mother Theresa “evil” just because she believes in something. Take a chill pill and let people believe what they want. I wont be any better of a person believing what you have to say even if you think we Christians are imbeciles.
In what way am I stopping senseless people from believing what they want? You can believe what you like, but, if I am to cease offering my alternative to your fantasy, why don’t all you Christians stop forcing your baloney on the world? Mother Theresa extracted large amounts of money from people thinking she was helping the homeless sick of Calcutta to get well. She simply took them off the streets to die, an inadequate kindness considering the resources she had. The money she collected was spent on expanding the Church via her own order (1). That is precisely why I say believers are gullible, and the people who tell them what to think are crooks. You and your fellow “imbeciles” might not be able to understand what I am getting at because of your fear and emotional involvement in the life-after-death industry you have opted for, and maybe you will not be a better person to realise your error, but you will have a better chance of being honest with yourself and with others.
Added Note—Mother Theresa
In popular imagery, Mother Teresa, an Albanian Catholic missionary, Christian saint and role model for women, devoted her life to caring for the homeless, the poor and the sick on the streets of Calcutta, and won the Nobel Peace Prize for it in 1979. Although she died in 1997, her mission continues in more than 25 countries worldwide, and, “the mythic persona which she and her handlers had so assiduously cultivated is still alive”, as William J Bennetta wrote in The Textbook Letter of November-December 1998 (online at the Textbook League’s website):
“She never met a dollar she didn’t like. She was ignorant and superstitious, but she never lacked for craftiness or cunning. She spouted slogans about compassion and humility while she built a commercial empire and a personal cult by exploiting the poorest of the poor. With help from publicity agents and a phony “miracle”, she became an international celebrity and used her fame to promote the Vatican’s political aims.”
Christopher Hitchens (The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, Verso, 1995) described what really happened to destitute people who fell under the “care” of Mother Theresa and her Missionaries of Charity, exposed her commercial methods and operations, and revealed her connections with a gaggle of scoundrels from pension fund plunderer, Robert Maxwell, to the tyrannical Duvaliers of Haiti.
One of them was Charles Keating who, in the 1980s, specialized in swindling small investors. In those days, Mother Theresa accepted over $1 million from Keating while allowing the swindler to use her kudos as publicity for his scams. Keating was brought to trial in Los Angeles in 1992. Mother Theresa begged the judge for clemency for the crook, evidently indifferent to the people he had swindled as long as some of the money went to the Catholic Church. Paul Turley, a deputy district attorney, told her by letter that she had been accepting stolen money from Keating, and offered to help her return the money. The Catholic saint never replied.
