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The very wonderful Bill Maher has a documentary coming out this autumn called ‘Religulous‘. I am so seeing this.

I am an atheist. I wasn’t raised in a religious household – though I did my first Communion and went to a couple Sunday School classes because my grandparents insisted- but certainly never believed in what I picked up about Christianity through osmosis. Before I starting thinking about it properly, I believed there was ‘something more’, but was never able to really define what that meant. I used to facetiously say that I believed in The Force.

When I was 19, I saw the film ‘Jesus Christ Superstar‘ (US) and said to my friend, ‘Judas is so cool!’. She laughed and I had no reason why. I hadn’t learned that Judas was hated by Christians for betraying Jesus. When I learned this, it seemed truly bizarre:
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… of the Dinosaurs.

Artwork by Derek Chatwood

This is so excellent.

[The Lawsuit] seeks a permanent injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.
…
In the lawsuit Chambers says he’s tried to contact God numerous times, “Plaintiff, despite reasonable efforts to effectuate personal service upon Defendant (“Come out, come out, wherever you are”) has been unable to do so.”
…
[The lawsuit] says God has caused, “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects, and the like.”
…
Chambers also says God “has manifested neither compassion nor remorse, proclaiming that Defendant “will laugh” when calamity comes.

He’s protesting frivolous lawsuits… and at the same time is making atheists chuckle.

What?! Are you trying to tell me that Jesus Christ didn’t rise up to Heaven body and soul and instead was just a guy… with a kid?

But. But. But.

He was resurrected! It says so in that book! I mean… This will just confuse things enormously.

via New York Times:

In surveys conducted in 2005, people in the United States and 32 European countries were asked whether to respond ”true,” ”false” or ”not sure” to this statement: ”Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.” The same question was posed to Japanese adults in 2001.

The United States had the second-highest percentage of adults who said the statement was false and the second-lowest percentage who said the statement was true, researchers reported in the current issue of Science.

Only adults in Turkey expressed more doubts on evolution. In Iceland, 85 percent agreed with the statement.”

Thanks to the ever lovely Bob Z…

God is God, right? By that I mean that the Christian God, the Jewish G*d, the Islamic God… they are all one in the same being. All three religions share similar stories, prophets, beliefs…

Why then would this God tell different people different things?

He tells the Jews they are His chosen people. He gives the Christians His son to die for their sins. He tells the Muslims to establish His kingdom on Earth. He says ‘Thou shalt not kill’ to Moses, but then has Mohammed proclaim, ‘The sword is the key of heaven and hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of Allah, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer…’

An omnipotent and omniscient being who created the Universe exists out of Space and Time (and, of course, SpaceTime). 1000BC, 30AD, 2006CE, ‘last week’ have no meaning to Him. The creator of the Universe exists at all Times and throughout all Space. He is the Alpha and the Omega. The Beginning and the End.

The word of God is the ‘Word of God’. The Creator of the Universe is perfect and cannot make mistakes. Clearly then what information he possess is correct at the first moment he reveals it to His Creation. He can’t ‘change His mind’.

The Torah, the Bible and the Koran are clearly all imperfect. One book says ‘An eye for an eye’, another says, ‘Turn the other cheek’. One book says that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, was crucified and ascended to Heaven, another says that he was a prophet, *wasn’t* killed, yet ascended to Heaven alive. One book says that Christ is the end of the law for everyone who believes, then 600 years later someone else comes along who’s actually ‘the final prophet’. One book says that anyone who believes in the Koran, the Torah and Jesus, and ‘work righteousness’, shall have their reward with the Lord, later on the same book says ‘slay them (the infidels) wherever you catch them.’

Now either God has made mistakes which, if I believed in Him, I’d think was pretty damned unacceptable and I’d be seeking some kind of investigation into His suitability as Ultimate Power Over The Universe and might even urge for an impeachment process to begin immediately OR, as is actually the case, all of those books were written by *humans* who, as is obvious to all, are capable of extreme error (look at Hitler, Milosevic, Saddam and Paul McCartney’s post-Wings career for some examples of this).

At what point are people of all religions going to understand that they can’t use their belief in the infallibility of *their* god as a justification for behaving badly against other human beings? At what point are they going to take responsibility for their own actions and stop blaming some made-up deity? At what point are religious people going to wake up and realise that they are wasting their one and only life on a fantasy world? At what point are they going to accept that they are wrong?

I’m fed up with them all.