The Chosen Separation from Reason

A little more than two weeks ago, I created this blog with the very first article as an objective response to Tricia Raymond, whose website, “Liberty Aloud” is full of misleading propaganda and whose blogs are loaded with both inaccurate information and the typical musings of an individual dangerously detached from basic remedial reasoning. (She’s even got an article in defense of Rush Limbaugh, if that is any measure of how fundamentally-challenged she is toward understanding humanity).

I have to wonder, Mrs. Raymond, how exactly does Stockholm syndrome feel?

I have asked her pointed questions but she merely responds with “I disagree.” No answers. No explanations. No thoughts at all. No seeming ability to have a conscious recognition of history of any kind. She seems to posture politeness, at least. Still, she lacks even the most remedial ability to provide reason or support her very own statements by answering my questions of them. And, her response to others is, as expected, circular.

In only a couple of weeks, my blog and Facebook page have started to gain momentum and have expanded to calling out other forms of repugnant religious thought and behavior that distress the brains of those trapped behind the insecurities and false fears of their chosen invisible monster.

I thank all of you who have started to join the cause to share and expand the more prudent cause of rational thought. In fact, antithetical to one of Mrs. Raymond’s more recent articles, it is the freedom from religion, not god, that will free humanity. “God” (pick one) is precisely the reason behind much of the famine, genocide, war, rape, oppression and any number of insane human behaviors across the globe.

Mrs. Raymond would not want you to continue to fight. In fact, she’s the type of dogmatic pontificator who believes herself narcissistically infallible, and who encourages her trolls to strike at our pages and our call to rational reason with her flock’s delusional and inexplicable biblical ramble that still remains without falsifiability and missing one key ingredient, proof.

I’d normally recognize the polemic irresponsibility she offers up and not give her the attention she craves, but everyone who stands on a podium for what they believe to be right needs an opponent to keep them both humble and passionate, in addition to their own reasonable motivations. I believe I have found my opponent in Mrs. Raymond. Perhaps I picked an easy one, but then again, aren’t they all?

Her type will explain that non-believers cannot prove the "big bang," or that science is not without fault. This is of course true, as science is a system of testability and because it benefits from the processes of testability it can be found wrong, improved, restated, and continually retested. That’s its entire appeal to those of us who accept its more critically-thought behaviors.

Only recently have we been able to develop the technology to further explore and understand the concepts of astrophysics that in fact do explain the deeper context of universal, celestial creation.

Furthermore, and I'm keeping this example simple for Mrs. Raymond, when I turn water into vapor, it’s merely the fact that I effected its physical properties (scientifically-determined) by heating it to its boiling point, and surely not an act of god. (This same type of scientific, logical reasoning can be used to explain things such as rain, wind, medicine, paleontology, and yes, even evolution. Just to name a few).

Conversely, religion has had thousands of years to question and find itself false, but has refused to do this. They want to be speak to their highest virtues (remember that term, for a moment), but be completely absent any accountability for the grossly negative ones that come with it. I spoke to that point in one of my recent articles about their refusal to amend the negative parts of their texts that they continually aver are no longer applicable. You'd think you'd get tired of trying to defend what you simply cannot and just get rid of it?

In the last paragraph in one of her latest articles, “Freedom and God: One and the Same,” Mrs. Raymond actually instructs the core of her following to come to the defense of Christianity, particularly in public forums such as the social media networks or blogs pertaining to non-belief, where Christianity is called out for its well-documented negative virtues. A leader of trolls indeed.

Might I make a suggestion to follow her idea of standing up for the principles one believes to be right, namely the ones where reason is found without duplicitous and nauseating hypocrisy. Mrs. Raymond needs to hear the voices of reason instead of the voices in her head.

I have no problem exchanging banter with the trolls of Christianity or any emotionally-stunted human being coming to the defense of their imaginary friend or self-justified belief to spread a singular hatred; particularly when only one side can demonstrate reason, and the other side ignores history and even elementary-level education.

It doesn’t take but reading just a few paragraphs of her writing to realize that she has intentionally forfeited her personal will and conscious ability to think in favor of the inexplicable need to believe and pervert all that is written in history in order to defend the crutch of her faith.

I experienced a bit of euphoria when I saw that she dared to reference Deuteronomy for a passage to define freedom. I’m wondering how she missed all of that book’s passages on slavery.

Skip ahead, skip ahead.

There is much in her article that I would like to dismantle, but in order to keep this as short of a read for all of you, I’m going to only briefly mention two more points she made. At one point she states,

“Surely, Christ sets us free from addictions, sicknesses, and sin.”  

Please explain how Christ sets us free from all of this, while we see a planet full of addictions (religion included), sickness and sin? For someone with all of the answers, that should be a simple question to answer, Mrs. Raymond.

Lastly I’d like to address her following statement, a thought I asked you to hold onto a few paragraphs ago about virtue. According to Mrs. Raymond:

“Virtue cannot arise from within man.  Virtue can only arise from religion and in America, that religion has historically been Christianity.”

As a former Marine, one of the first things that I recalled was a quote made of Marines who served on Iwo Jima in World War II, “Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue.” I imagine the men who were lucky enough to survive that fight would argue with Mrs. Raymond’s assertion that their fallen brothers-in-arms found no virtuosity from within themselves.

“Virtue,” by a universally-understood definition, is a positive trait or quality deemed to be morally good and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being. Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting collective and individual greatness.

According to Mrs. Raymond, men and women like Rosalind Franklin, Thomas Paine, Earnest Hemmingway, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain or Susan B. Anthony, just to name a few, had no personal morals.

(And once again, Mrs. Raymond, we are not founded on the bible.)

Proponents of religion like Mrs. Raymond continue to think that morals are only possible with a belief in a monster who threatens you to adopt those archaic morals, "or else."

Ironically, Mrs. Raymond, the opposite of virtue is a vice. You are living your life according to a vice, and infecting human minds with false belief, false hope, and completely conflicting definitions between what you think you stand for and what you actually stand for, which is nothing less than singular oppressive thought on a podium of absolute persecution.