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I recently discussed an incident where a Mormon couple accidentally left their child to die in a hot car for 17 hours.

Did you notice that I mentioned their religion?

Why do writers of such stories feel the need to attach a person’s religion to a tragedy in order to somehow make it seem more poignant? We hear it all the time.

“So-and-so was an active member of his church before he was gunned down.” Awww, he must have been a good guy then, right?

Why does this happen? Why are people who attend church automatically hailed as the good guys?

Does being religious make a person’s death - or their life - more meaningful? And does it have to be a Christian here in America in order to get maximum impact? How would the response be if it were a Muslim couple that left their child in a car? Oh that’s a little better because those Muslims are so weird anyway, right? Or what about an atheist couple? That’s OK too because they have no morals.

I’m every bit the father Ward Cleaver was. Perhaps even better because I had no June Cleaver by my side to assist me. My kids are my life and I teach them what’s right and wrong. They’re good kids, and I’m all they’ve had for most of their lives. I spend quality time with them, I talk to them, and I’m raising them to be good, honest, respectful, and productive members of society.

And I’m an atheist. I have always told them that it is their choice to believe or not to believe in God. In no way to I ever try to persuade them to believe anything. How many religious parents do that?

If I were gunned down, the media story wouldn’t read, “An atheist father was murdered.” If they did say that, it would somehow present my death as less of a loss than a “Christian father” being murdered.

This is offensive on a level of epic proportions.

Sure, many churches are filled with good, honest people. But so is every other segment of society. And as with every segment of society, churches are also filled with phonies, wife beaters, pedophiles, and murderers.

Not convinced? Let’s take religion out of it.

Let’s say there’s a serial killer in the news and he’s killed 6 people in the last 6 days, right around your neighborhood. You’d be scared as hell. Then you find out those 6 people were all prostitutes. Not only would you breathe a sigh of relief (unless you were a prostitute), but you’d also somehow feel relieved that it was “only” hookers being killed.

When you hear that a prostitute is killed, more than likely you don’t feel as bad as if you hear a “Christian mother” is killed. Prostitutes sometimes have children, too. And yes, some prostitutes are even Christian mothers as well. And of course it’s not a safe or wise career, but these are humans with feelings as real as the rest of us.

Race is also a factor. Perhaps you’ve heard of Missing White Woman Syndrome, an obvious media bias toward sensationalizing missing white females who are cute, and virtually ignoring similar cases of missing non-white females.

If you are missing and you’re Elizabeth Smart, you have everything going for you: white, religious, wealthy, cute, and female.

If you’re a non-Christian non-white male and you’re missing, good luck ever getting any interest.

There’s a stereotype of those who practice Western religions as being holy, righteous, and good. Living in a religious society, it’s not surprising that these stereotypes are inserted at every opportunity by the media.

But when you get people who do nutty things in the name of religion (Jim Jones, Branch Davidians, Heaven’s Gate), or hide behind the veil of it (Dennis Rader, the BTK killer), the media brushes over the fact that these are not isolated anomalies.

How is it that religion, and especially Christianity in America, can have its cake and eat it too? They present themselves as persecuted victims, yet they are the ones holding all the cards. It’s impossible to hold a political office without belonging to a major religion. Atheists and those belonging to minor or fringe religions are the truly persecuted and ignored.

Religion doesn’t affect the value of a human life and should not be reported as part of a news story unless it’s directly relevant to the case.

In a country where people won’t even protest gasoline well over $4 a gallon and rising daily, it’s hard to imagine anyone ever protesting something as “trivial” as media manipulation of religion.

You found this article probably because you were online searching for information on a specific conspiracy theory, or even just looking for general conspiracy information. Maybe trying to find new conspiracy theories in which to subscribe?
If you were to find information contrary to what you already believe, would you read it and consider it with an open mind? Or would you dismiss it and believe the writer was crazy or misinformed.

Do you believe in many conspiracy theories?

Before you click the back button on your browser to go see what else Google can come up with to validate your opinion, think for yourself for a change and read on.

Most people searching the net for information on conspiracy theories are not looking for the whole truth, but merely whatever “facts” will validate their existing opinion. This is on both sides of the fence, the believers and non-believers. It just stands, however, that believers are much more zealous in their pursuit of their version of the truth, therefore spend more of their resources in their investigation.

Anyone who has ever argued religion or politics knows how frustrating it can be. Both sides are absolutely certain of their beliefs. In politics there is a little room for multiple opinions to actually be valid. However in the case of religious debate, someone must be wrong. Either there is a god or there isn’t. Believers are unwavering in their certainty of God’s existence. Non-believers are just as adamant. And neither can prove their case.
Conspiracy has become a sort of religion to many. Believers seek information to bolster their views and disregard anything they find to contradict these views. All dissenting opinions are from the misinformed, unenlightened, or even part of the conspiracy’s cover-up. Believers feel it is their duty to enlighten the masses to this secret to which they are privy.

Just remember that the world doesn’t always have to have grandiose explanations for everything.

If you believe in big government cover-ups, you probably don’t follow the news very closely. Every administration has insiders and whistle blowers who go to the Washington Post or NY Times with the first bit of juicy gossip they can find. Look how badly Nixon’s cover-up of Watergate went. Oftentimes you’ll hear a reporter say, “Anonymous sources at the White House tell us…” Every time a president gives a speech, the press already knows what he’ll say, even if the transcript hasn’t been released beforehand. If a conspiracy on the scale of some of the ones being promoted did exist, there would certainly be “anonymous sources” directing the media toward these truths.

And if you think the government is controlling the media, then how did you ever hear about the conspiracies to begin with? Wouldn’t they have suppressed Art Bell, Alex Jones, and other pro-conspiracy media figures, too? You can’t have it both ways. I have to laugh when a radio talk show host discusses how the government controls the media - when he is using the media to promote his conspiracy theories!

Those that promote conspiracies are akin to evangelists. They have an agenda. Think of the big conspiracy theorists. They make their livings promoting their skewed version of the truth. They have absolutely no reason to admit they’re wrong, even in the face of indisputable evidence. They make money by confusing you, presenting half-truths, propagating urban myths, and hiding or dismissing opposing views and evidence.

That is the real conspiracy.

Further Reading/Related Posts:
A satirical Coke conspiracy
The Real Conspiracy Behind the Revelation of the Method

Most religions teach some form of life after death, whether in the form of heaven or reincarnation. But the concept of life after death in a religious sense is the carrot dangled in front of believers, who think if they conform enough to the control being exercised over them, that they will hopefully achieve it.

There is no disputing that humans physically die. This is convenient for religion. Otherwise, promises of eternal life here on earth would no doubt be easy to disprove. Instead, Christianity, for example, chooses to promise eternal life in heaven as the Great Reward. (Problem is that even Christianity can’t decide if you can achieve salvation by works or by faith, but that’s for another discussion.)

Heaven and God are impossible to prove, and for that reason they are impossible to disprove as well. In fact, merely questioning God’s existence is often seen as blasphemy. In my church days, I would ask what seemed to be logical questions about the Bible, only to hear I shouldn’t question it.

I had to believe it, but I couldn’t question it. Every cult seems to take their blueprints from this Christian standard.

What does this have to do with life after death? It’s one of the main reasons I’m convinced people need to be “saved” from religion because they don’t live for the life they have here on earth, but some promised afterlife that won’t be there when they die. Believers are on the wrong path for these reasons:

• They are living for something that they don’t fully understand, can’t prove, and doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny – the Bible (or whatever religious book they believe).
• Everything they do is with “going to heaven” in mind, thus in some instances they don’t live today to the fullest.
• Christians promote selflessness, but isn’t a person’s whose life goal is to “make it to heaven” kind of being selfish? Would they do these “selfless” things if heaven wasn’t an option? Aren’t they only doing good deeds with their own agenda in mind?
• The Bible has no clear set of rules. There are the old “Mosaic” laws, there are things Jesus is quoted as saying that most Christians don’t even do (Give away all your possessions, for example), which really confuses new converts.

So many addicts have come from religious or quasi-religious families who put far too much pressure on their children to live up to unreasonable expectations. When problems did arise, they were laid at “God’s” feet. Put your faith in God and he will take care of everything. Live to the Christian standard. God will judge you if you don’t. Focus your life on God and you will be saved…. All of these pressures not only to conform, but to sometimes suppress natural human instincts is often too much to bear for some people. And God forbid if they didn’t interpret the Bible the way the rest of the church did.

For example, a man can’t look at a woman lustfully, or it is the same as if he had sex with her… at least according to the Bible. So say some hottie walks in the office, and ol’ Religious Tom sees her and runs back to the water cooler to avoid temptation. God forbid he gave her one second of admiration on a physical level or he’s on the fast track to H-E- double toothpicks.

What if ol’ Tom was still a single man and still a virgin? And horny? A good Christian would go home, take a cold shower, read the Bible and forget about these temptations. Sounds natural, eh? Problem is… what happens if he can’t resolve these physical feelings? No – he certainly can’t go home and “hand”le the situation for a little relief because that is sin. So what happens? The struggle between his religious beliefs and his natural sexual urges hit the battlefield. Even if he wins the battle, psychologically he’ll lose the war. The man becomes tormented by something that a five-minute stint in the bathroom could take care of.

If you’re a believer and have managed to get this far, I implore you… Go relieve yourself. Right now! Five minutes of “sin” would be far better than the torture you’ll go through if you try to just suppress your natural urges day in and day out. Get those five minutes out of the way, ask Santa, er um.. Jesus for forgiveness… and you can spend the next 23 hours and 55 minutes as a happy believer without those physical distractions.

How ridiculous is that anyway? But this leads me to the topic at hand (no pun intended), of the promises of life after death.

Living your life with promises of a reward in the afterlife is handing off the true enjoyment of being alive to something else - religion. Going outside on a beautiful spring day for a Christian is an appreciation of “God’s” work… in other words, it all goes back to earning enough brownie points to get into heaven. To a non-believer, it’s just a nice day to enjoy in all its glory – with no strings attached.

If you see a pretty girl, it’s not the devil tempting you in some sort of test that God is grading. It’s a pretty girl. That’s it. Admire that pretty face, flash her a smile, and move on. No strings attached.

We live in a world full of beauty and full of ugliness. Appreciate the beauty for what it is and acknowledge the ugly in the same manner.

Living with the thought that you are some kind of pawn being used between an invisible god and an invisible devil is just foolishness. Perhaps our ancestors needed to believe these things for some sort of comfort, or to fill in the blanks of the things they didn’t fully understand. We know better. So live your life to the fullest every day. Don’t hand it off to an imaginary friend and don’t make choices in life with promises of an afterlife dangling in front of you.

If there were a God that could make such promises, I guarantee you he would have made it very clear what he wanted us to do. He wouldn’t say he would return before all of his apostles tasted death, then relied on others to re-interpret that later. He wouldn’t say these are the end times… two thousand years ago. He wouldn’t allow science to disprove all of the scientifically disprovable references in the Bible. He wouldn’t allow dozens of religions to pop up. He wouldn’t allow the devil to traipse around messing up his creation.

Christians think that living for the moment is some sort of distraction by the devil, or some selfish mindset.

I believe there is no God, but that there is a devil of sorts. He steals people’s lives and fools them into false beliefs with false hopes.

The devil is religion.

Live every day to the fullest. Discover ways you can help humanity. Find ways to make yourself and others happy.

In other words, concentrate on life before death. Not after.

Wake up! We’re serving waffles today, and it’s only noon.

“The Revelation of the Method” is one of those “granddaddies of all conspiracy theories.” This is your standard elitist conspiracy theory in which an elite few are secretly pulling the strings on humanity and that they are slowly revealing this to us. We are becoming conditioned to learn and accept this control. Currently we are secret slaves to them, but over time we will become knowing slaves to them. This revelation is done in many ways, such as the “sacrifice” of Princess Diana, the events of 911, and hidden subliminal messages in the media.

It makes for great reading. Unfortunately some people actually believe it.

People like Art Bell and Michael A. Hoffman are among the leading conspiracy theorists in the country. If there is a conspiracy to be created or promoted, these guys are on the front lines. They aren’t objective parties because their livelihood banks on the promotion of these ideas. If they were to find indefensible evidence that one of their biggest conspiracy theories were false, how likely would they be to release this information, and essentially ruin their careers?

It’s easy to claim these secret societies exist – with no proof, or better to make wild inferences based on existing facts – and formulate all kinds of menacing correlations between leaders, world events, and these phantom societies. Anyone could do it. You could do it. Without rebuttal, they can be quite convincing.

Arguing that a secret society exists is much the same as arguing that God exists. It’s hard to prove that something doesn’t exist, especially if those promoting it claim it is being hidden on purpose. God doesn’t simply prove himself because following him blindly is far more virtuous, right?

This “hidden” element is the basis of all conspiracies, including religion - which itself could be called a conspiracy theory.

I recently watched a documentary debunking the theories claiming man never walked on the moon, and that it was all done on a sound stage on earth. They were able to easily re-create and explain the “inconsistencies” the conspiracy theorists promote. Independent thinkers would certainly nod in agreement that those explanations in the documentary were quite logical and satisfactory. But Art Bell and Michael Hoffman wannabes would never accept these explanations because their minds are already made up.

“Don’t confuse me with the truth!”

These guys have an agenda, and it’s not what they’re saying that they really care about… it’s the money they’re making peddling this misinformation. Conspiracy theorists are made from the same fabric as self help gurus, evangelists, and spiritual mediums. They all make fantastic claims and promises impossible to disprove, all while emptying the pockets of those that believe in them. Their careers rely on people believing what they say.

People believe what they want to believe.

I am somewhat OCD in my ability to link unrelated things in my mind, especially numbers and dates. People looking to link things together can always find something. With Princess Diana’s, we see an attempt at linking the events of her death to the numbers 3 and 13, which somehow “proves” the Revelation of the Method was behind her death. Three people died in the car… her unborn child was three months old… she died on the 31st, which is the mirror of 13… she died at the 13th pillar… and on and on. I wonder if anyone has figured out that she used the same brand of toilet paper as Saddam Hussein yet. Or that on her 13th birthday she had 13 candles on her cake? It must be related to a sinister plot!

There is even a website that links Diana’s death with coincidences surrounding Smith’s lead singer Morrisey. The site claims that these coincidences must be more than just coincidence!

Why?

It’s not unlike the coincidences surrounding Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon which syncs up nicely with the Wizard of Oz. Why it is so hard to believe that coincidences exist in this world? Why must everything be more than that?

How many times have you heard how two people met, and they mention how that there was a coincidence that they discovered about themselves… such as sharing the same birthday, or meeting in an unlikely scenario? Couples often see these as “signs” that this relationship must be different. People love to read meaning into coincidence that simply isn’t there.

Such is the nature of the Internet. A lot of people with a lot of time on their hands find correlations or coincidences and believe the most sinister explanation is appropriate. It also doesn’t hurt when they have a profit to make from it. Give me any two things and with enough time I could find sufficient coincidences to write a book. But coincidences alone are not enough, so I would have to make wild claims of hidden agendas, secret meanings, and governmental cover ups.

What is most ironic is that I believe a huge worldwide conspiracy actually exists. In fact, several conspiracy-based societies are elbowing for the same stage.

Alas, the biggest conspiracy in the world now is not advanced by some secret society, but by “societies” who place themselves on a public stage as often as they can: the conspiracy theorists themselves. Evangelists, spiritual mediums, conspiracy theorists, UFO groups, astrologers, et al… Every one of these groups jostles for position to enlist as many lemmings in society as they can. And, yes, racial leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton fall into this category, too. They promote racism far more than racists do. They fuel their followers to gain control over them, convincing them that they are victims of society. If they can sprinkle a few facts onto their claims, that makes them all the more convincing.

Take the Masons, for example. They are a “secret” society that conspiracy theorists claim are pulling the strings on our government, and only the highest level Masons know their “real” agenda. It’s ironic that the wool is not being pulled over the Mason’s eyes, but the very people who believe the accusations against them. The “highest levels” of these conspiracy circles know that these theories are fabricated in order to gain control over those who are apt to fall for this line of reasoning. And you can’t prove them wrong since no evidence exists. Any refutation by the Masons themselves is shot down as a conspiracy itself.

It’s like arguing religion. You can’t prove or disprove God. Similarly, any attempts to refute these claims about the Masons will yield the immediate rebuttals of a cover up. You can’t reason with someone who believes in something they can’t actually prove.

There’s little money to be made for a lack of belief in something. Atheists rarely congregate. Conspiracy debunkers don’t have huge followings. People rarely get fired up about not believing in something. Religious zealots and conspiracy believers, however, are driven and fueled by their leaders. They buy books and videos, and attend rallies. They are the real puppets in this game. The “secret society” fraud is the wool pulled over their eyes to line them up and relieve them of their hard-earned money, control them, and urge them to get involved in the political process.

Conspiracy leaders manufacture these scenarios and then urge their followers to rise up and fight. They often lend credibility to their accusations by weaving real facts into their fabrications.

Ingenious.

So getting back to the Revelation of the Method, it’s really just a consensus of all the other conspiracy theories. Hoffman throws in the kitchen sink. Everything, he claims, is part of a conspiracy to manipulate and control people. For example, I love how in his writings he talks about how World Trade Center building 7 “mysteriously fell” after the September 11 attacks because there was “no discernible attack” on it. It seems that falling debris from the twin towers, and the ensuing fires were not “plausible” explanations for him. When the public didn’t get out and protest the exposure of this supposed government cover up of 9/11, he cites that lack of protest as an indication of successful mind control over the masses… that somehow people accepted that the government did this and did nothing to protest.

Could it be that people just don’t buy your conspiracy-for-profit-theories, Mr. Hoffman?

What gets me is that you have Christians who also believe in the Revelation of the Method. Who do they believe is stronger, God or the secret Elite? They are so afraid of being controlled, that they have actually allowed themselves to be controlled twice, by two groups who have fueled that fear in them most.

Doubly ingenious.

When there are two explanations for something, most often the simplest explanation is more accurate.

People just don’t want to believe that events are random. They don’t want to think that terrible things happen by chance, or that a small group of people can bring chaos to large numbers of innocent victims.

So when they look for answers, they feel they must attribute this control to someone or something. Some feel that everything happens as part of “God’s Plan.” (You hear that a lot, but you won’t find that phrase in the Bible, will you?). When a loved one dies, well it must have been God’s Plan. It couldn’t have just been some random senseless death, right? A person doesn’t want to think that their 10-year old son just fell off his bike, for example, and cracked his head open and died. Nah… God must have wanted to bring him home to heaven instead. Sounds better at least…

When the September 11 attacks occurred, it was hard for people to accept that 20 young foreigners could outsmart the system and impose such havoc in the strongest country in the world. So it had to be a government plot. They’d prefer to think the powerful government would destroy buildings and kill thousands, and not a few dumb terrorists with box cutters.

Evangelists say we all must follow God’s will or burn in hell. Makes sense. It’s convenient that these evangelists happen to understand the Bible better than us poor uninformed masses. They also claim that Christians are being persecuted…everyone is against them, and they must stick together and be strong in the face of this.

Racial leaders look for racism anywhere they can find it, whether real or not. Everyone is against them, and they must stick together and be strong in the face of this.

Revelation of the Method theorists (and others like them) claim that the world around us is not real, that we are being controlled by the elite and this is slowly being revealed to us so we will come to accept it over time. In other words… Everyone is against us, and we must stick together and be strong in the face of this.

For UFO theorists, it’s the government and the aliens who are against us. For self-help gurus, its our own shortcomings and “they” have the “secrets” to save us.

Do you see a pattern here?

You’re too stupid to see the real world around you, and thankfully these people are there to show us the light, to inspire us, and to make us stronger. Oh, and to take our money.

Problem is… they’re lying.
They’re weakening you.
They’re controlling you.
They have an agenda.
They actually have the power over you they claim others have.
They are profiting from all of this.

If you scoff at religion, but believe the September 11 theories… or if you dismiss racial leaders but buy into Princess Diana conspiracies… you might want to look at your own beliefs again with an objective eye.

Before you laugh at those with the wool over their eyes, you might want to remove the wool from yours first.

He’s coming! For those who believe in him and who have been good, Santa will come and give his wondrous gifts. Billions believe in him, and you should too! If you are on his “good” list, you will receive his gifts on the appointed day, but you never know when he’ll show up. He knows everything – even your thoughts - and can tell if you’ve been good or bad. He loves everyone and wants everyone to be good. He lives forever and sits on a throne atop the world.

All hail Santa!

Now… let’s change two words in the paragraph above…

He’s coming! For those who believe in him and who have been good, Jesus will come and give his wondrous gifts. Billions believe in him, and you should too! If you are on his “good” list, you will receive his gifts on the appointed day, but you never know when he’ll show up. He knows everything – even your thoughts - and can tell if you’ve been good or bad. He loves everyone and wants everyone to be good. He lives forever and sits on a throne atop the world.

All hail Jesus!

True Christians don’t like the concept of Santa Claus, because he is a lie and never really existed. Atheists say the same about Jesus, mind you. And as you can see above, Santa replaces Jesus in quasi-Christian families.

To non-believers, however, Santa is merely the training wheels on the road to blind faith, and belief in many lies and deities that lie ahead.

Also see this cartoon.

The 2008 Republican campaign dealt a well-deserved blow to the Religious Right of the Republican party. But didn’t they see it coming? The presumed front-runner throughout all of 2007 was Rudy Giuliani, who was the only vocal pro-choice candidate. After his disastrous wait-for-Florida strategy put him out of the race, we were left with Mormon Mitt Romney, moderate and 2000 also-ran John McCain, and ordained Baptist minister Mike Huckabee. With a split in evangelical votes, McCain surprised everyone on the right and pried the nomination away from the right wing of the party.

For the record, I am a Republican. A moderate, and proud of it.

The likes of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are beside themselves with no “true” conservative to support. In other words, McCain doesn’t pander to the right wing of the party. This is supposed to be a bad thing?

What the Religious Right fails to realize is that they are not the only Republicans. There are fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. It’s not always a happy marriage.

Why is it that whenever a moderate Republican is poised to be President, we hear how he has to appease the conservatives. Why is that? Why don’t we ever hear how a conservative has to appease the moderates? Rush Limbaugh recently stated that conservatives are the base of the party, implying that they somehow earn special treatment. He also said that moderates are essentially those who can’t make up their minds.

It’s rarely fiscal or foreign policy issues that split the Republican party, but social issues. Evangelicals have an agenda that extends far beyond politics and can be found in the pages of the Holy Bible. So much for separation of church and state? Even conservative hero Barry Goldwater warned for years of religion crossing over in to politics.

Let’s consider two imaginary Republicans: a non-church going CEO of a large company, and a deeply religious middle-class school teacher. Both are Republicans, but for completely different reasons. The CEO wants tax breaks, and business-friendly politicians in office. Abortion is probably the last thing on his mind. He might even be pro-choice, but it isn’t an issue he votes on. The teacher could care less about business friendly politicians, but wants someone who will represent his core values, one of them being a pro-life stance.

The Religious Right cries of being persecuted and discriminated against, yet they are often the ones with the most power. If a minister walked into a room of atheists and said he believed in God, he’d probably be ignored. If an atheist walked into a room of believers and expressed his disbelief, he would find a crowd of believers attempting to “save” him from his belief.

It’s the Republican party, not the Christian Party or the Religious Party. Secular Moderates have every reason to be Republicans and to strongly believe whatever they desire. And just because they happen to agree with the Religious Right on fiscal and foreign policy issues, doesn’t mean that they embrace every element of the party platform.

Most Republicans believe in state’s rights, smaller government, lower taxes, strong defense, a free-market system, oppose labor unions, and wish to halt the avalanche of illegal immigration into our country. I rarely find a Republican who doesn’t agree on all of those issues.

On the other hand, social issues such as prayer in public school, teaching creationism, abortion, and a rejection of stem cell research are brought to the tables for religious reasons alone.

Prayer in public school
I just don’t get this one. If someone wants to bow their head and silently say a prayer, more power to them. Why does this have to be legislated? It was never a problem when I was a kid… and there was no prayer in school. If someone wanted to pray to himself, no one minded either way.

Teaching creationism
If you take the Genesis fable out of the picture, where else can scholars go to learn of this? What do you want a science teacher to say? “Some people believe that God created man, I just have no evidence or scientific data to back this theory up.” Or should he just go grab the Bible and start reading Genesis? Even some Christians have jumped off the creationism bandwagon and call it an allegory. Problem is that Jesus traced his lineage back to Adam.

Abortion
This is a big issue promoted by modern Christians via Biblical interpretation. I won’t go into it here, but you can easily debate if aborting a few cells early in a pregnancy amounts to “murder” as outlined in the Bible. Recent polls suggest that around 60% of Americans think abortion should be legal in some or all cases. A full 70% of Americans said they would vote for a president if they agreed with all issues except abortion with him. In other words, this is a big issue with evangelicals, but most people are content with abortion being legal.

Same Sex Marriage
There is mention of homosexuality being wrong in the Bible, so I actually understand why someone who believes the Bible will be against this. This leads me to something my cousin said to me today… If Christians want to stop being “persecuted” (as they think they are), they should stop trying to tell everyone else what to do. With same sex marriage – who really cares what two consenting adults choose to do? I know… Christians feel that acceptance of this will lead to moral decay and doesn’t preserve the values by which our country was founded. Of course many of these same Christians by no means follow the Bible to the letter… but they certainly are willing to take the moral reins, flaws and all, and lead those of us they deem morally impotent around. Why are these hypocrites so set on forcing their set values – which they themselves often break – down everyone else’s throats?

I attended the Nevada Republican Caucus this year. Each precinct had its own meeting, and people from each pricinct were asked if they wanted to say anything about the candidates they supported. A woman got up and started talking about Mike Huckabee, and said, “He represents the evangelical views that I hold…” I looked around and noticed some people lit up like a Christmas tree, while others rolled their eyes. The Republican divide is real.

Should McCain win the election, it will be interesting to see if evangelical Republicans can twist his arm enough to make him take a couple steps to the right. Arm twisting (among other things) didn’t work in the Hanoi Hilton, but maybe 40 years later he’ll crack.

I created this blog for many reasons. First and foremost, I want to help people in different ways. So when people see me as blasting religion, they ask how that is helping.

So I must blog on why those blogs are helpful. And I will have to go down a rather long tangent to make my point.

Christians refer to themselves as “saved” and seem set on “saving” those of us they believe are shielded from the “truth” of the Bible. Problem is, former Christians who have seen the light, such as myself, see it quite differently. In fact, it’s those very Christians who are the ones who need saving by introducing them to the very truth they choose to ignore… the history of the Bible itself.

When I was involved in the church, the questions I asked are what started my ascent out of Christianity. I have always been a very curious person. I had already read the Bible several times over and was interested in the history of it. This is something most – not many, but most – Christians fail to do. They can quote obscure passages and know how many gray hairs were in Jesus’ beard, but they haven’t the slightest idea when the Bible was written or who wrote it. In fact, you rarely hear pastors/preachers/ministers/priests really pushing the history of the Bible. And when they do talk about the history of the Bible, they only quote the Bible itself as proof!

Doesn’t it seem that if you’re going to stake your entire existence on a book that you might want to know a little about where it came from?

I did.

A good friend loaned me “The Evidence for Jesus” which is a pro-Christian book. Problem is, after reading the book, I felt less convinced than ever that the Bible was a valid historical document. Even the pro-Christian spin can’t whittle down the gap between Jesus’ supposed existence with the time the 4 gospels, or the earliest historical citiations, were written. The most conservative estimates are 30 years after the fact.

Time for a tangent.

The Woodstock music festival was less than 40 years ago. If you were to take a poll across the country of who attended Woodstock, you’d probably get about 5 million people who said they did. A slight exaggeration. If you were to poll the people around Roswell about what they saw in 1948, you’d hear all kinds of crazy UFO stories.

Moral of that tangent: Urban legends spread like wildfire, even in the modern age. How do you think legends spread 2000 years ago?

30 years after a legend sprouted up – even possibly based on some real, earthly events – one can imagine how the gospels evolved orally until someone wrote down an early version of Mark.

But it gets worse.

Aside from the Bible itself, there are no… ZERO… historical writings from the time Jesus supposedly lived to support it. The most ardent defenders will point to writings by historians decades after the fact, and who weren’t there. The events of Jesus were in a time and place that was heavily documented by historians of the day. If miracles were being performed in front of thousands, it’s hard to imagine someone not going to investigate and write about it. It’s not until about 70 years later that anything independently is written about Jesus, and even those earliest mentions are questioned as being later insertions.

And we have no idea who the actual authors of the Bible were. The names ascribed to the gospels are simply pseudonyms attached to anonymous authors.

We don’t know who wrote it and it wasn’t written when the events supposedly took place. And there is no independent historical record to support any of the events of Jesus’ life.

Christian scholars have answers to all of these questions, but they have to really tap dance with the facts to come up with anything.

And don’t get me started on the “perfect” Bible which is completely riddled with contradictions and confusing dogma. Or some of the “logic” that has evolved to explain away obvious questions that tear at the heart of Christianity.

I’ve had Seventh Day and Mormon visitors at my door. I feel sorry for them actually. They seem sooooo brainwashed, don’t they? Even “regular” Christians see them that way. (ALL Christians seem that way to me). They are usually surprised when I answer the door and start asking polite, yet biting, Biblical questions that they simply can’t answer, or have to make something up quickly.

This is fodder for another blog, but here are a few questions (out of many dozens) that Christians have never been able to answer fully to me:

• If God is omniscient and omnipotent (all knowing and all powerful), wouldn’t he want to destroy evil and the devil? Why let Satan traipse around f’ing things up for people? Any good parent would stop someone from leading their children down a bad path in life.
• Does the Bible say we make it to heaven via works or by faith? (It says both – which is it?)
• Why does God even bother to create people he knows will end up in hell for eternity? Doesn’t that seem rather cruel?
• When people of other cultures ask God to reveal himself to them, why do different people find different gods? Shouldn’t God be more powerful than the devil and reveal himself to them, as he promised when Jesus said, “Ask and you shall receive.”?
• Why are portions of the Bible incomprehensible and open to wild speculation, such as Revelation? Why include such texts if it isn’t clear to everyone who reads them?
• Why would sacred texts include misreferences, non-canonical quotes, and “prophecies” taken out of context (such as the virgin birth from Isaiah 7:14)

Anyone who says there are no inconsistencies in the Bible is in complete denial.

So let me get back to the question at hand. Why do I go after the Bible and Christianity instead of just leaving them alone and let them believe what they want?

I respect everyone’s beliefs, believe it or not. But I’ve had a lot of marginal believers who I’ve pointed out a few facts to, and had them realize it was nothing more than the Santa Claus effect. They wanted to believe, and Christianity is the particular flavor our culture embraces. But it’s a fraud, a scam, and there are a lot of people who hand their lives over to this lie.

Christians do not lead the most righteous lives in our culture. They have a higher divorce rate than atheists, and many addicts grew up in highly religious families – only to feel like failures in attempting to live up to unrealistic moral standards.

Like sex.

Why do you think so many Catholic priests end up molesting boys? Could it be that they suppressed their sexual thoughts and urges so long that they ended up blowing a gasket and humping the nearest flesh they could get their hands on?

They would have been better off just “hand”ling it themselves, but alas… that is “sin” too.

Didn’t God create everything? Then he created evil and lust, too.

Huh?

Conservative broadcaster Sean Hannity often says he wonders where non-believers get their moral code from. He apparently doesn’t realize that the moral standards he gets from the Bible are cherry-picked among many other currently taboo standards. Does he treat women as second-class citizens, as the Bible promotes? Does he follow the old Mosaic laws? Does he speak in tongues or require his wife to wear head coverings? Did he do as Jesus said, and give away everything he has and simply followed God? Why do modern Christians only seem to follow the things they want to follow in the Bible, and simply ignore the rest? Then point their fingers and speak of atheists as morally bankrupt scum of society.

But to answer his question, I believe there is a basic human sense of what is right and wrong. Other religions and secular societies all agree on these basic principles. Murder, rape, and theft are wrong. I have no doubt most humans have felt that way long before any religious writings ever existed. Most mammals have a sense of right or wrong, which is why they take care of their young and rarely kill those close to them, or family members. Even many insects (like ants) seem to “know” not to kill their own kind, and I doubt they believe in the Bible.

So while I respect anyone’s beliefs, I am entitled to my opinion as well. I also see the Religious Right trying to wrestle power away from middle America and I am offended by it. They don’t represent me or my beliefs. Their holier-than-thou attitude is even more offensive. I believe most of them don’t even represent or understand the book they think they believe. Not to mention they are being puppeted by religious leaders with an agenda.

They’re a group of cherry-picking lemmings who never bothered to ask “Where did the Bible come from?”

There are as many as 1 billion Christians, or at least people who call themselves Christians. We know that the number of faithful practicing Christians is much smaller. But let’s say there are a billion practicing, active Christians in the world today. There are 6.5 billion humans alive today, which means there are 5.5 billion people who reject Christianity. 

So according to Christian thinking, God created 5.5 billion people who he KNEW would burn in hell for eternity. Remember that God is omniscient, when means he knows everything. He knew before you were created that I would burn in hell for eternity for not accepting him, yet still created me anyway. Of course God’s omniscience can be debated using Biblical passages, but that’s fodder for another discussion.

Many Christians will jump in and say, “Well God gives us free will to make our own decisions.” That is highly debatable (free will in this context isn’t covered much in the Bible, and many of the passages that do pertain to it imply that people don’t have free will). And it is a moot point. No matter what we choose, an omniscient God will know beforehand what our choices are. A truly merciful God would not bring us into existence in order to avoid an eternity in hell as punishment for a few misguided years on earth. (Billions upon untold billions of years of punishment in hell for a couple of decades of non-belief? That’s hardly the punishment fitting the crime!) Free will or not – he should know my choice but lets it all happen anyway. So in other words, if free will exists, God sits on his hands and lets us take the wrong path, and then punishes us for it in the end. If free will doesn’t exist, we were put here for the sole reason to burn in hell forever. NICE!

Apparently the author of Jude was reading a different Bible than that of modern Christians. In Jude 1:14-15 we read: “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these [men], saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” 

Enoch 1:9 reads: “And behold! He cometh with ten thousands of His holy ones To execute judgment upon all, And to destroy all the ungodly: And to convict all flesh Of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed, And of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” 

If Jude’s words are scripture, and inspired by God, why would he be inspired to quote such a book? Shouldn’t the author of an inspired work know that he is quoting a work that would not be included in the canon? Or should Enoch have been included in the Bible? If so, why would God allow it to be snubbed?

So what if Jude did quote this book? It doesn’t change the meaning of the New Testament. Well, if Jude gives credibility to the Book of Enoch, then you must take the entire book as scripture. If that’s the case, then you must consider such concepts as fallen angels to be a part of Christianity. And remember that Enoch was regarded as scripture for hundreds of years. Did all of those Christians follow a false book?

So many people in this country call themselves Christians. When someone they love dies, they say that person is in heaven. YET, how many people also think their loved one is somehow watching over them and visits them? My ex-wife’s family talks about her departed sister as if SHE is God. Something falls over – that’s her. Something good happens – that’s her. She is watching us. They practically pray to her when times are tough. So is the person in heaven or is the person floating around my living room? Which is it? I could be mistaken, but I thought that if a loved one is a ghost… that would mean they aren’t in heaven. Or are they just all floating around waiting for the resurrection? I don’t think people have any damned idea what they’re talking about. That’s why ghouls like John Edward sicken me. That bastard preys on people’s grief and cold-reads his way into their beliefs. He should be strung up by his balls until he admits he’s a fake.

So when someone dies, people say they’re in a better place, right? Well have you noticed that those same people say stuff like, “I think she’s here watching me” or “I felt a cold feeling when I went into her room” or “She gave me a sign” or “I thought I saw something move by her room” - stuff like that? Well… those are ghosts! You can’t have it both ways. A person can’t be up in heaven and also be roaming around their old stomping grounds.

To me that also confirms my theory that people “find” religion as an act of desperation in such times. The same way they grasp onto the idea of their ghost loved ones. That’s why jerks like John Edward have become so popular. That ass uses cold reading techniques (and savvy editing on his TV show) to make people think he’s communicating with their dead relatives. It’s ghoulish, but you see how desperate these people are. Shouldn’t there be a distinct line between ghosts and heaven? There should but there’s not. I guess people like to cover their bases by believing in both at the same time. Does the Bible support the idea of ghosts? And I don’t mean demonic spirits. I mean - if a person is going to heaven, does the Bible support the idea that they can communicate or somehow still be in the vicinity of this world? Eh hem.. No.

Sylvia Brown was once approached by a couple on the Montel Williams show. They said their son had been kidnapped and wanted to know if he was still alive. Sylvia said that he was dead and the person responsible had dreadlocks. Well a few years later who would have guessed that this boy turned up alive in a high profile case, and his kidnapper was a regular old fat white dude. The kid’s name was Shawn Hornbeck.

I’m an extremely skeptical person, and get more skeptical every day. I said it before… I think there is more evidence for UFO’s and ghosts than there is for the reliability of the Bible as an historical document. There is certainly more to the world that we can sense. (We know that’s true – X-rays, gamma rays, frequencies we can’t hear, etc.) Maybe that’s not ghosts though.

And what about expelling demons or ghosts? Most religions deal with ghosts/possessions. I think it’s odd how a witch doctor in Africa can expel ghosts just as efficiently as a Catholic priest. Does that mean both of their gods are relevant? Why would ghosts respond to more than one god during exorcisms in different cultures? If Jesus’ name can expel them, why are they also expelled by Kabuto the God of Dirty Feet? Anyway…

I wonder how many demons/spirits/ghosts (I’ll refer to them as DSG’s from here on out) throughout the world have been successfully rebuked in the name of Allah, Buddah, Mohammad, etc. If a DSG has been driven out in the name of a false god, does that render the entire process moot? I don’t think using the name of Jesus would scare a ghost, unless somehow that ghost believed in him too. But why would a ghost believe in Jesus? Can you give me any non-Biblical citations of ghosts/demons/spirits being driven out in Jesus’ name? How about non-Catholic? Why do the Catholics believe in possession but the non-Catholics don’t? Someone is wrong there.

I can get creeped out at times about the thought of ghosts, but I think if they do exist they’re no more powerful than we are. Probably less. I mean moving a chair or knocking stuff over isn’t exactly my idea of powerful. My twins did that when they were toddlers. Didn’t really scare me. If ghosts do exist, I think they’re just as stuck in their world as we are in ours. And maybe they don’t even know what they are or what we are. It could be ghost sightings are random chance encounters where the energy from both planes materialize to each other. Think about it – if we all turned out to be ghosts without realizing it, we would be “haunting” certain areas that we spend most of our time – our living rooms and our bedrooms, computer rooms, etc. Who’s to say that my bedroom is the lobby of a hotel in some other dimension, and they occasionally see my energy walk by? Do I believe that? Hell no! But who knows? I’ve considered the possibility that ghosts are actually living people from different times whose energy somehow becomes apparent to us. How about the possibility that we’re seeing our OWN energy from days, months, or years past? I can create as many crazy theories as the next guy.

For the most part, I’m just not scared until I have something to be scared of. If I ever come face to face with a ghost, I’ll 100% believe. If I ever come face to face with God, I’ll 100% believe. (That reminds me of another Bible contradiction. In some parts, God appears, but in other parts we are told no one has ever seen God. Haha.). I do believe that there is more to the universe that we can sense, as that is proven. I also believe that most of the time UFO’s, ghosts, etc. end up being people’s imagination run wild, and these things can be fueled by conspiracy theorists themselves. Sometimes I think ghosts are the adult version of the boogeyman and God is the adult version of Santa Claus. Of course I still love watching UFO and “mystery” shows out of sheer curiosity, too, so what do I know…

I wonder… if a DSG is just a form of energy, would a big electromagnetic pulse blast ‘em to smithereens?