10 Reasons For Apostasy: An essay

TheJollyNihilist
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10 Reasons For Apostasy: An essay

The following is adapted from a blog posting I made on Christmas. It was entitled, "10 Reasons For Apostasy on Christmas Day." Hope you enjoy it!

Having finished Sam Harris’ The End of Faith, I have moved on to his second work, Letter to a Christian Nation. The book only is about 100 pages, so I am already about halfway through. Although he, once again, sinks deep into the morality morass, he nevertheless presents a tremendously strong argument for apostasy from the Christian mythology. So, it seemed to me that Christmas Day [a holiday with pagan roots just as significant as its biblical ones] would be the ideal occasion to present 10 reasons to leave the Christian faith. This list is inspired by Mr. Harris’ book, and items on the list often will be direct quotes from Harris. After my brief rundown, I will share five choice Bible passages, which should make apostasy a bit easier. Enjoy!

1. Christianity, in all denominations from sea to shining sea, is illogical, irrational, unreasonable and, most importantly, unscientific. From virgin birth to talking non-human animals, and from corpse resurrection to immaterial souls, this particular brand of mythology is unscientific to its core. Various absurdities, found in both the Old and New Testaments, simply cannot be reconciled with scientific reality.

2. The Bible, in the not-too-distant past, has reasonably been interpreted to permit—or even condone—“witch” burnings, slavery, torture, female subservience and all manner of detestable horror. True, some passages in the Good Book speak about love, charity, forgiveness and brotherhood. But, other passages—equally numerous—prescribe stoning people to death for fictitious offenses.

3. The Bible’s dating of the earth’s age—that it was created in 4004 BC—is ludicrously incorrect. As Harris observes, “This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue.” A 6000-year-old earth is so absurdly in conflict with the evidence as to make the proposition completely laughable and unworthy of serious attention.

4. Atheism is the only consistent position with respect to religion. Christians, for example, are atheistic with respect to every religion except Christianity. How oddly inconsistent. Muslims, too, reject every world religion save for Islam, which has a monopoly on absolute Truth. How is it reasonable to reject, quite literally, thousands of religions, yet cling to the absolute authority of one?

5. Historic “heroes” of Christianity are worthy neither of respect nor reverence. Harris writes, “It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews and witches.” Here we return, once again, to severe punishments prescribed for fictitious offenses.

6. Yahweh is woefully unworthy of worship. As portrayed in the Old Testament, he is the very embodiment of human frailty: vicious, vengeful, jealous, egotistical, insecure and, most frighteningly, endlessly murderous. Yahweh also seems to have difficulty separating the important from the trivial, as evidenced in the Ten Commandments. Harris writes, “And what are we to make of the fact that, in bringing his treatise to a close, the creator of our universe could think of no human concerns more pressing and durable than the coveting of servants and livestock?” Indeed, why do cursing and working on Sunday make the list, anyway?

7. No God, whether the Christian conception or not, should be worshipped given the results with which we live. If Yahweh is real, then cancer, smallpox, AIDS, malaria and polio all are the products of his cloud-enshrouded laboratory. “Acts of God” such as Hurricane Katrina and the devastating tsunami of a few years ago are exactly that—the life-extinguishing playthings of the Creator. Then there is starvation, homelessness, birth defects, genetic disease….

8. Piety can result in mass death. Harris writes, “Christian missionaries have been known to preach the sinfulness of condom use in villages where no other information about condoms is available. This kind of piety is genocidal.” He continues, in a note, “If you can believe it, the Vatican is currently opposed to condom use even to prevent the spread of HIV from one married partner to another.” Truly sickening, folks.

9. Virulent Christian anti-Semitism helped create the environment in which the Holocaust took place. Harris writes, “…the anti-Semitism that built the Nazi death camps was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity. For centuries, Christian Europeans had viewed the Jews as the worst species of heretics and attributed every societal ill to their continued presence among the faithful. While the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominantly secular way, its roots were religious, and the explicitly religious demonization of the Jews of Europe continued throughout the period. The Vatican itself perpetuated the blood libel in its newspapers as late as 1914. And both Catholic and Protestant churches have a shameful record of complicity with the Nazi genocide.”

10. Turning, just for a moment, to David Mills’ Atheist Universe: “The Church angrily denounced the introduction of medicines, antibiotics, anesthesia, surgery, blood transfusions, birth control, transplants, in vitro fertilization and most forms of pain killers. Supposedly, these scientific tools interfered with nature and were therefore against God’s will.” The Church’s modern-day anti-science positions, obviously, should be no shock. Human suffering never has been a high-level concern.

Five Classic Bible Passages – a special bonus:

So Moses said, "This is what the LORD says: 'About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again.
Exodus 11:4-6

" 'Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property.
Leviticus 25:44-45

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.
Ephesians 6:5

If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, "Let us go and worship other gods" (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.
Deuteronomy 13:6-11

And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.'
Mark 7:9-10

Season's greetings!

--end--


Ripple
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Who wrote the Bible? Who

Who wrote the Bible? Who wrote the History Books? Did God? Did you? Where all the events that were supposedly the Word of God, did those things happen? Does a Rational God want you to really believe those things happened? Or did he just write a fucking book for you guys, so you can see moral examples(book of Job, Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel) and then to show you, your ignorance, in believing everything else, and even believing in Noah's Ark. They're fucking stories. The whole thing that makes this run full circle, is none of that shit happened in real life. No fucking flood, no tower to heaven. History is how we(think) we know it to be in the past 2 millenia. So look at the past millenia or two and ask yourself some questions. What role has religion played in world affairs? What role does religion continue to play in world affairs. Why have the things being done "in the name of Christ" been little but corruption and bad deeds. Did God convict Christians to do such things. If Christians are fully believing in God and Jesus Christ, then they MUST believe in Satan(Dogma right?) So what influence has Satan been putting upon the world? Has he been the Field Marshall of the Crusades the whole time? Who exactly are we, as rational people convicting and blaming the worlds problems on? Blaming it on Jesus? Satan? Or the Jesus Christ and Satan(a fucking angel in pre-Biblical sense) that is lieing deep within each an every one of us? Someone please don't ask me to get an MRI to see Jesus Christ and Satan inside of me, because you are only asking ridiculous things of such a simple person. I only ask ridiculous things that might hold a lot of truth if they were just explored.

1 in 5 Americans believe we live in a Geocentric solar system. Who do you blame for that? God? I blame god.


TheJollyNihilist
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On the "flood"

One thing is for sure...

If there was a destructive global flood a few thousand years ago, several civilizations were so ignorant that they did not even notice their own extermination. After all, extensive written historical records were uninterrupted by this cataclysmic flood

Interesting...

The road to truth is paved with evidence.


carlmalaski
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End of Faith

Very good book. I agree with a lot of what this book says. I believe that religion will be done away with in the very near future.

 

I am a believer in the Bible but I am a Jehovah's Witness. I have studied all of the world's major religions. The only religion that I have found which is not built upon blind faith and ignorance of the Bible is the Jehovah's Witnesses. History clearly shows that mainstream "Christianity" is false to their monopoly of the Bible as the Word of God.

 

Google Constantine, "homoousios" doctrine and the Council of Nicaea.

 

Bible prophecy foretells the end of false religion. 99.9 percent of the world's religions borrowed their teachings from ancient pagan mystery religions.  Hence Mystery Babylon the Great depicted in the Bible as a prostitute religious system which originated in ancient Babylon. The Bible foretells that the governments of this world, depicted in the Bible as a "beast" will turn against false religion, depicted as a prostitute riding on the back of a beast-like political system. (Revelation chapter 17) Even though these religions may call themselves "Christian" their actions and bad fruitage prove them to be un-Christian both in word and in deed.

 The governments will eventually view religion as the number 1 threat to worldwide peace and security. The war on terrorism is a religiously influenced war, is it not?

 

Spiritual groups such as the Jehovah's Witnesses have been warning the world for nearly 100 years about this eventual clash between government and religion.

 

Books such as Sam Harris' "The End of Faith" prove where mankind is currently headed towards, a great worldwide war which will have cataclysmic implications worldwide

 


Angelic_Atheist
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carlmalaski, are you my

carlmalaski, are you my ex-husband?? I thought you were going to start your own cult, not join another. ROTF

 

Sorry...couldn't help myself 

We must favor verifiable evidence over private feeling. Otherwise we leave ourselves vulnerable to those who would obscure the truth.
~ Richard Dawkins


Vastet
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Ah yes. The vacuum salesmen.

Ah yes. The vacuum salesmen. I must say it is quite annoying to open the door to someone who ends up trying to preach to you.

Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.