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.

My God Wouldn’t Do That!

Immediately, the two major religions in the world, Christianity and Islam, are having a seizure at just the title of this article. In monotheistic religions such as these, there is only “The God.”

Well, my Islamic and Christian friends, there have actually been more than 2,500 gods of worship identified with the human psyche for at least 60,000 years. (Christians, make note of the additional “zero” in that statement).

More than 2,500 deities - from the more ancient gods of polytheistic societies like the Hittites, Sumerians, and Mesopotamians; to the more contemporary gods of your major monotheistic religions following God, Allah, or Yahweh.

More than 2,500 deities spanning thousands of cultures; just a few being the African peoples, Native Americans, Greeks, Germanic Tribes, Hindus, Celts, Shinto, Aztecs, Buddhists and many, many more.

There’s Abellio, the Tree god. Abellio was a Romano-Celtic god worshipped in the Garonne valley of southwestern France and thought to be associated with apple trees. In all of my research, I have yet to come across anyone committing acts of terror in the name of an apple tree.

There’s Hotei, a Japanese god of luck; one of seven gods of good fortune known in Shintoism. To the best of my readings, I cannot find a single incident of anyone trying to legislate away a woman’s private right to choice in the name of Hotei.

There’s Nebo, the god of writing and wisdom known to the western Semitics. I cannot recall a single incident of any grown man enslaving, raping, and marrying a veiled, 9-year old girl in the name of Nebo.

There’s Behanzin. Behanzin is the Fish god known to peoples in western Africa. There are no stories to be found of parents refusing medical treatment for their child in the name of Behanzin; or in the name of fish.

There’s Chibirias, a Chthonic earth goddess of the Mayans, who among other things is known as the patroness of weaving. Although the Mayans left us a long time ago, nothing in historical texts suggested that they ever demanded a tribal member string their rebellious teenager up to a loom and stone him to death in the name of weaving.

In fact, there are more than 2,000 more examples of gods who, as documented by their followers, stood for nothing of violence or oppression. (There are a few exceptions). Rather, they stood for simple things like personal reflection, lakes, corn or rain.

Nobody is running around infecting ideological chaos on the rest of the free-thinking, conscious society in the name of corn or rain.

On the other hand you have followers of Islam who claim a loving religion, while they kill each other and everyone else in the name of a god that commands them to enslave their women, mutilate the bodies of those who don’t believe, and stone the victims of rape. This site has a wonderful list of the hateful context of the Qur’an.

*Hypocrisy clause: The Qur’an, 24:2 “The adulterer and adulteress, scourge ye each of them with a hundred stripes (lashes). And let not pity for the twain withhold you from obedience to Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the last day. And let a party of believers witness their punishment.”

That interests me, because in cases of rape and adultery among the Muslim faiths, we never hear stories of the men being lashed as their great book would command, but the women surely and disgustingly take a beating. It’s also interesting that Allah would take such exception to adultery, but promise the men of his faithful 72 women upon their assent to him. Seems a bit duplicitous.

You have followers of Christianity who claim such righteousness while they themselves commit blasphemy against each other for their many different interpretations of a singular text filled with so much contradicting hate, love, justification, and oppressive narcissism. There are of course many websites that point these out, but this one is among my favorites.

*Hypocrisy clause: The Catholic Clergy, the largest sect of Christianity, take a vow of celibacy; which apparently has a clause that makes an exception for sexual acts with young boys in the confessional booth. (While at the same time, the same clergy pontificate the “abomination” of homosexuality).

This book might be one of the best I’ve ever picked up. It’s a little pricey if purchased brand new, but you can likely find a used version at a local book store or book exchange. It contains about 2,500 questions you can pose to those dogmatic pontificators of such loving monotheisms.

All of the gods in this book make for great stories, but the overwhelming majority do not have such an abundance of ignorant and asinine characters in their manuscripts as the fables of the faithfully monotheistic do.

The Christian Misunderstanding of America's Constitutional Foundation

Christians in America will assert time and time again that we are a country founded and adopted upon the Christian religion, even though nowhere in our US Constitution does it mention this. In fact, as it is well understood, the First Amendment specifically negates the establishment of any headmost religion.

American Christians will try to formulate the argument that while the Constitution may not acknowledge the Christian religion specifically, it doesn’t mean we are not a Christian-founded nation because it does not specifically state that we are NOT founded upon the Christian religion.

This is the routine backdoor argument whereby every ridiculous ambiguous assertion begins by American Christians who argue about our founding.

That’s where they begin, but let me share with you where it ends. As with all things that can be proven, it ends with definition. In the case of the ambiguity of our supposed, “assumed” Christian founding, it ends with the proof of our government’s direct and unanimous assertion that we are not established upon the Christian religion.

Few Americans know of, and even fewer Christians know of (or choose to acknowledge) the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli.

It was submitted to the Senate by President John Adams, receiving ratification unanimously from the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1797 and signed by Adams, taking effect as the law of the land on June 10, 1797.

Article 11 of this treaty states, in its entirety:

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims) — and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

And so, for those who advocate for the complete separation of church and state, the article is seen as an early vindication of the position, especially since the treaty was approved by a Senate that recently approved the Bill of Rights.

Many Christians will try to make an argument that it pertains only to a difference between European Christians and American Christians, or that it was merely stated as a means to end conflicts with the Muslims in Tripoli and was a temporary revisionism.

Neither assertion is true, because neither assertion is made by the statement. Article 11 reads very clearly and had unanimous support of the United States President as well as The United States Senate. Nowhere does it offer any statement of revisionism or that the treaty is a temporary or subjective measure of difference between geographical Christianity. It pertains to The United States of America, as it is exactly written.

Christians will also assert, because the act of seeking treaty with the Muslim pirates of Tripoli began with President Washington, that the Treaty is invalid because Washington didn’t endorse it. This is simply ridiculous because Washington was not President when the treaty was ratified, Adams was. That argument is a bit like saying that our war with Japan never officially ended, because it was started with Roosevelt and Truman was President when the peace treaty was signed.

Christians will also assert that because the Muslim version of the treaty did not include Article 11, it does not apply. This is also an errant presumption, as the version of the treaty drafted, ratified and recognized by the United States is the English version which did include Article 11.

The most fundamental Christians in our country will do anything to try and twist, pervert or rewrite the history books. They just simply cannot. These are historically accurate and well-documented actions and statements of our founding government; and particularly with the Treaty of Tripoli, they are without any ambiguity at all.

God, the Bad and the Ugly.

This follows up to my blog yesterday about religion and behavior. Inconceivable to most who exercise critical thought, many who defend faith-based philosophies don’t want to acknowledge the obvious link between religion and action, unless of course it’s positive actions.

When religions do “wonderful” things (I parenthesize that because they are really just things that are generally considered humane, like opening a soup kitchen or consoling a victim of tragedy), it is always because of the love that is exhibited by that particular religion.

Christians are a group quick to pat their religion on the back for opening a shelter for battered women, while at the same time they lobby their representatives to vote against things like equal pay for women or a women’s equivocal right to confidential and noninvasive medical practices of their personal choice.

The faithful like to feel good about the passages of their books that promote love, but tell us that we cannot dare reference the ones that promote hate, murder, oppression and a myriad of other fantastically horrible things. (Because, by some inexplicable means, they were errantly placed in these texts and not truly representative or applicable.)

When science discovers a new way to heal a human’s cardiovascular disease, or it discovers that the physics of the sun’s gamma rays is different than we had thought, or it discovers that the biology of a frog is more complex than it had first hypothesized, textbooks are amended with this new and more accurately-stated information.

If the horrible parts of the Bible are in fact not applicable, why do they remain in the Bible century after century? If the horrible parts of the Quran are not an accurate representation of Islam, why are those parts not amended? Why do they remain in the Quran, century after century?

I digressed a bit from the intent of this blog, but that question is one that bewilders me most, and no follower of any faith has ever been able to explain it to me. So, until they do, or until their philosophy changes and the texts and teachings associated with it change also, I’ll continue to hold them accountable for all of it.

Returning to my original point, most religions will proudly display the humane things they do, and how those actions are the actions of “God’s” people.

However, when people behave according to the negative principles of their professed religion, the righteous followers of that religion refuse any connection between religion and action.

In this recent story by the New York Times, a statement is made that the suspects in Boston were radicalized by Islamic fundamentalists and used internet sources to gain the philosophical (philosophical is interchangeable with ideological, which is interchangeable with religious) beliefs that radicalized them. The surviving suspect admitted that they were motivated by their religious beliefs.

Still, the dogmatically-spoiled claim that religion is not to blame for their actions.

I'm profoundly baffled. How is it that everything is a part of some divine plan, but at the same time not a part of it? How is it not duplicitous to assert that good actions attributed to a religion are actions motivated by that religion, but bad actions attributed to a religion are not motivated by that religion?

There is a very dangerous disconnect with fundamental human logic among those who make these assertions.

Human beings are responsible for their actions, of course, but there are many factors that motivate those actions, which very much includes religious persuasion.

I posted on my blog’s Facebook page today the following thought:

“Circumstances are a product of conscious decisions (human action, however influenced), mathematical probabilities (chance), and timing (physics). Forfeiting this simple and logical formula to believe that everything exists in prayer and in god's plan is like grabbing the same empty water bottle every day and trying to take a drink from it, convinced that even though you can't see it, there must be water there. How dehydrated are you?”

Religion feels comfortable following something for which there is absolutely no evidence to substantiate. They believe that every circumstance of human action is faith, while at the same time absolving faith from human action. It’s a conundrum of hypocrisy that can really be summed up in one simple thought:

Faith is not a reason, it is believing without evidence which suggests it is believing for no reason, which is an agreement that one has no reason at all. This leads to people adopting more false beliefs than true ones, which makes one more likely to harm others through false beliefs.

(Harming can be understood as setting off bombs in a crowd of people, or legislating against the absolute, innate equality of every human being; or, washing the beautiful free mind of a child full of insane fairy tales with threats of eternal damnation).

The faithful want to adopt a measure of personal accountability (mental illness) for the perverse actions of their flock, but they don’t want it explained in any way. Like most things in their belief system, “they just are that way.”

Mental illness is not independent to itself, with absolutely no explanation for the variables that influence it. Repugnant behavior does not just magically occur on its own, for no reason at all.

Mental illness is much the same.

If this were the case, we could assert the following:

Drug addiction is all mental illness, with no contributing factors. The drugs, the pushers, the peer influence, the temporary emotional euphoria from the chemicals – none of those are responsible for the illness. It’s just independent mental illness motivated or caused by nothing at all. Much like “God’s” will.

PTSD is all mental illness, with no contributing factors. The physical or emotional trauma of war, rape, famine, assault, disaster, or loss - none of those are responsible for the illness. It’s just independent mental illness motivated or caused by nothing at all. Much like “God’s” will.

I could do this all day, but most of you reading this already understand both the point I’m making and the irrational system of varying accountability religion uses to self-justify or find not-guilty everything it does.

Conversely, the dogmatically-ill will read this, with veins popping out of their forfeited free minds and assert nothing more than, “It’s different. You’re twisting things around. You just can’t understand, because you don’t believe.” Or, they spend hours in redundant circles trying to explain the unexplainable to us.

The faithful forget that a significant percentage of us non-believers came from religion. Trying to explain it back to us is akin to trying to explain to a chemist how to work a Bunsen burner. This is precisely the reason we grew up (and away) from religion. Contrary to your argument, we understand it, and its dangers better than you do. We’ve evolved, dare I use that word.

The Argument of Religious Motivation versus Mental Illness

In recent months I’ve come across an increasingly used scapegoat by the religiously-afflicted. It’s one that you may be familiar with because it is an associative argument that parallels the debate on gun control in the United States. Proponents of gun rights increasingly assert that it’s not the gun, it’s the mentally ill person behind the gun responsible for the violence.

Three times now in recent weeks I’ve heard the same excuse as it pertains to hateful statements and actions at the hands of religious extremism:  “It’s not religion’s fault, the people who say or commit these egregious acts are mentally ill. You can’t blame the religion.”

First, I cannot deny support of that statement, at least in part. To willfully murder innocent people, or neglect children, or willfully allow individuals to suffer, or to persecute someone based upon their refusal to acknowledge a monotheistic approach to life is definitely a sign of mental incompetence. I don’t have a problem with stating that, because it’s true according to all basic methods of tolerant, human reasoning.

But, I have a problem when mental illness is used to absolve or deny the existence of any religious influence on those actions. Here in the United States, Christians are quick to label acts of violence by Muslims as nothing less than an ideology of Islamic terrorism. Yet, when Christians commit these acts, it has nothing to do with religion, it’s only that the individual is mentally ill. It doesn’t get more Machiavellian.

Let’s be clear, brainwash is a form of mental illness. At the very least, the ideology and the action are tethered by that common association.

There are two parts to this falsehood that religion in no way contributes to mental illness in the cases of extremism. First, the inappropriate and misunderstood use of the transitive property that the Christian ideology uses to generalize all other groups (and that Muslims use to generalize Christians; and that Jews use to generalize Muslims; and so on); and the second part is the argument of mental illness being independent of religion.

Let’s look at the first premise, the misuse of the transitive property.

Religion and violence are not always transitive – meaning that if someone is from Iraq that automatically makes them a Muslim, which automatically makes them a terrorist.

Not all people in Iraq are Muslims. Not all Muslims are terrorists. This is easily discernable. However, using this logic would mean we’d have to take into consideration the following:

Adam Lanza (Newtown killer) and Timothy McVeigh (OKC bomber); both Americans and Catholics, thereby Christians.

James Holmes (Aurora Theater killer) and Dylan Klebold (Columbine); both Americans and Lutherans, thereby Christians.

Jared Loughner (Tuscon killer), Eric Harris (Columbine), and Eric Rudolph (Atlanta Olympics bomber); all Americans and professed Christians.

Using the transitive property by which many Christians judge Muslims, and basically anyone who does not subscribe to Christianity, does this mean that since all of these acts of terrorism were committed by individuals who are all Americans, and all Christians, that all Americans and all Christians are terrorists?

Of course it doesn’t. That sounds completely asinine to us. So why do we find it an acceptable thought process for everyone except us?

Self-righteousness. Denial. Cognitive dissonance. Narcissism. And, fear of their own religiously-forfeited free will.

(Some may argue that some of these individuals were not charged with terrorism. Lose the vernacularism and just look at the raw definition of terrorism:  Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror); are perpetrated for a religious, political or, ideological goal; and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants/civilians).

All of the actions of these Americans in recent years clearly fall within an objective definition of terrorism.

The duplicitous righteousness of one group to use the transitive property against another while not holding themselves accountable to the same is moronically detached from all critical thought.

Next and finally, the scapegoat that these actions are independent of religion, and only a sign of mental illness. Religion and mental illness are also not always transitive, but in the cases of religious extremism they couldn't be more closely connected.

To believe that religious fundamentalism is not connected to actions of the mentally ill, you’d have to believe that the terrorists who flew planes into New York and Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11^th, 2001, acted only out of mental illness and nothing of their actions was religiously motivated.

You’d have to believe that sectarian violence that has gone on between conflicting views of Islam for hundreds of centuries (Sunnis and Shias) is only due to mental illness and not motivated by religion.

You’d have to believe that the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were only due to mental illness, and had nothing to do with religious fear or persecution of pagans.

You’d have to believe that the slaughter of many indigenous Native Americans was done at the hands of thousands of mentally ill Americans and had nothing to do with religious motivation or territorial conquest.

You’d have to believe that the Inquisitions were performed by millions of mentally ill people and had nothing to do with religious motivation.

You’d have to believe that the Crusades were the actions of millions of mentally ill Catholics and not motivated by religious domination.

In other words, you’d have to be completely ignorant of the history of not only our own country, but also of the world. And, I didn’t even touch on the dozens of genocides across the African or Asian Continents.

Make no mistake, religion is just as responsible for these atrocities as are the people who committed them in the name of their religions. One has to sit in a dark closet, blinded by extreme cognitive dissonance to deny this.

Approximately 100 billion people have ever lived in the history of our human civilization. This would mean, according to the many Christian assertions of mental illness being the problem and not religion, that billions of people have been born with mental illness. That just isn’t possible on that scale.

Human beings are not generally born with extreme mental illness on that scale. When history clearly documents the acts mentioned, and some of the ones not mentioned (honor killings, raping and enslaving minors, denying medical treatment in the name of your faith, etc.), there is an indoctrination that brings a common denominator upon the acts and the ideology. What is that common denominator?

Have these billions of people across centuries been born into the same social circumstances? Have they all been physically abused or neglected by the same parents? Have tens of billions of people been outcast by the same society, spanning thousands of miles and cultures across thousands of years?

It’s absurd to believe any of those could possibly be true. The common denominator is an ideology that supports the actions of those particular individuals.

I’d be willing to accept the religious scapegoat of mental illness as long as we include brainwash in the bucket of mental illnesses, but I’m just going to guess that the followers of dogma will never accept the term brainwash. This is why they won’t accept history, reality, or the direct link between religion and mental illness in this argument and among the cases I’ve stated.  

One of the best pieces I’ve read about the righteous assertions of disassociation between action and ideology was stated by Austin Cline. I’ll paraphrase some of his statements.

“Religious believers often hold individuals, being inescapably free and sinful by disposition, responsible for everything that goes wrong, and credit God for everything that goes right.”

Such explanations certainly take the lazy way out of the dilemma between action and ideology. They avert the nurturing of critical thought and their own professed morality.  They limit themselves from being able to intelligently negotiate their lives in today's world.

They render themselves unable to concretely analyze specific situations, so as to sort through how global events are shaped by our own actions, those of others, social systems, chance, and yes, ideology.

Cline says again, and I quote, “This is no less true of those whose popular religion frequently refers to "God's plan," or who turn to prayer automatically when facing the inexplicable, unacceptable, or uncontrollable. One of the primary religious dogmas of American conservatism is Personal Responsibility. It's almost a fetish, it's valued so highly. It's also a fundamental ingredient of American culture, a premise in the teachings that we can be whatever we want, that our fates are dependent only on our own determination, etc. But then the same people promoting this will turn around and tell us that we must pray to God, put our lives in God's hands, etc.”

You have to wonder if those so influenced by dogma completely forget everything they've been saying from one thought to the next.

Perhaps they don't even pay any attention to what they are saying at all - in which case, why should we?

When you’re Too Stupid to Breed

One of the extremist practices of the moronically-detached that I have always taken the greatest exception to is the ignorant act of “faith-healing.” Yet, droves of people consciously believe that this is the solution to those who suffer around them.

Another story now surfaces of a child dying because their parents believed that “wishing them better” was a more responsible decision than taking them to a doctor to be treated for common and treatable ailments.

These dogmatic, senseless and brainless fools have now done this to a second child! They killed their first one much the same way only four years ago. These people are an exception to the human species; a species whose greatest advantage is having a higher intelligence than others on the planet. They are not human. They belong in a cage tossing their own fecal matter at each other for the remainder of their days. Actually, that’s an insult to our more responsible primate cousins.

At the least, neuter these irresponsible, consciously-detached human animals and then lock them away until they die. And should they become ill, do not afford them medical care. Just tell them to pray. Coughing up blood? Sorry to hear that. Ask God for help. He’s the guy in the sky wearing the surgical mask with a stethoscope around his ghostly image. Good luck.

I’ve had headaches, colds, flus, and any number of other systematic adversities in my lifetime. I’ve often said, “Damn, I wish I felt better.” The difference is that for most human beings with an IQ of at least 50, we're aware that that form of wishing is nothing more than a psychological aversion to not feeling well.

I wished I didn’t feel so well, but I knew I needed the benefit of medicine, in the year 2013, to return to health. (Actually, I've known this my entire life. And my parents did for their entire life. It just keeps going back like that).

Never once have I considered that I might wish myself better, and a magical wave of telepathy would jump out of my brain and shoot across billions of light years reaching a mystical voice in the sky who would then telepathically, from billions of light years away, cure my diarrhea with the snap of his fingers. (Maybe that's what thunder really is? "God's" anti-diarrheal remedy?)

No. I didn’t do that. Instead, I opted for the “miracle” of Imodium and wallah!  I was cured. The only thing that suffered was my reading time.

People who are this brainwashed should be institutionalized. They represent a danger to society, to themselves, and particularly to children. They are among the feeblest minds to exist on our planet and by the many thousands they infect the minds of children while also wilfully watching those children suffer and sadly, some passing away only due to the neglect of their mindless "guardians."

Human beings do not behave that way. Parents do not behave that way. Hell, most non-human animal species take greater care of their young than the human pigs in this story.

I’ll give them the benefit of their bible in this case. Put them in the center of town and cast rocks upon them until they fall. People who abuse children, physically, intellectually, emotionally, or neglectfully are the worst types of animals on the planet.

Deserving the Fear of Your Chosen Beliefs

I recently blogged about child abuse, but this story of a woman who locked her three very young children in a room like animals, and then left the house, a house that started on fire and her children burned to death in, is the worst form of child abuse humanly possible.

I couldn’t make it through this story without throwing up. It still turns my stomach as I write this blog. This is partially due to the fact that I actually knew who this woman was, at least to the extent that you know most social media acquaintances, and partially because she acted as an otherwise socially adept human being who continually showcased a slideshow of “love” for the beautiful children whose death she is now directly responsible for.

If she wasn’t filling the pages of social media full of pictures of her loving and “conscious motherhood,” she was continually professing messages about the grace of god and how he gave her strength to be a woman and mother of strength and example. An example of what, exactly?

A god-fearing woman who time and time again, as the story is now unfolding, neglected her children. Two of them mentally handicapped. She apparently locked them in cars and left them to run free in public parking lots; and reportedly reared them in an environment where they would defecate all over her house. Then one day, last Thursday, she finally bolted them shut in a room that would catch on fire, killing children that were 4 and 5 years old. A devout Christian behaved this way.

Then, she would initially lie, this person of god, and attempt to shift the blame to someone else. A family member. Such fine and upstanding Christian values she upheld.

Make no mistake, this animal acted on her own. This was no act of god and it wasn’t any act of instruction by her religion. I am not lambasting her belief in god in this blog. Nor am I begrudging those who attempt to compassionately follow of any number of ideologies. It’s ironically quite the opposite.

In this case, I’m profoundly happy that she maintains an implied belief in heaven and hell.

Unfortunately, she won’t spend eternity boiling in a lake of imaginary fire. Better than that, though, she’ll spend the rest of her days believing that is where she is going for what she did. She will be tormented with that fear. And that conscious, emotional hell is precisely where she belongs for the rest of her life. Behind the full weight of her conscious belief in hell. Each and every time she closes her eyes and sees the eyes of the children she basically imprisoned, left alone, and allowed to burn to death. Children who likely screamed for their mother, for help, until their last breath. Their innocent bodies burned beyond recognition. The video of the story is heartbreaking.

Some of you may find this blog without compassion for what this mother is going through or without an understanding as to why she did it. You’re right, I have none of that, because I choose to reserve my compassion for the children who lost their lives by her willful neglect. And there is no reason (understanding) for ever bolting your mentally handicapped children in a room, let alone leaving them there alone to burn to death, no matter the cause of the fire. She was nothing of a parent or guardian that day.

So many people cannot have children. They cannot know the joy and humility a child brings to your life. This woman was able to have several, and she treated them with complete disregard. Repeatedly. May she enjoy her fear of Hades.

Dogma and Child Abuse

When biology works unchallenged, a child exists in the womb at 38 to 40 weeks. It enters the world without any preconceived notions, simply marveled at its new environment. It quickly knows hunger, love and trust. It knows not much else. Its greatest gift, perhaps, is being absent the influence of indoctrinated fear and intentional religious programming.

Children are born absent any ideological doctrine. They are born with an open mind ready to discover the world in a loving and compassionate way, tolerant of all others who show them the same love and trust regardless of their circumstances in life. And where we keep them that way, we often learn more about ourselves in the process of keeping our children free from ideological obedience.

Children are not born knowing any threat of burning in hell if they do wrong. Children are not born knowing that following any superstitious obedience will guarantee them an ability to walk among the clouds in some obscure afterlife.

Children are not born understanding any instruction that they should kill innocent people to earn a harem of virgins and an alternatively obscure afterlife. Or that they should become one of those virgins for the belonging of someone else who would commit such evil.

Children, particularly girls aren’t born believing that they are in anyway subservient because of their gender. They aren’t born feeble-minded and conformist to an ideology that would ultimately dictate nearly every aspect of their life.

All of these ideals are learned; they are taught at the hands of dogmatically fearful slaves to any extremist and unsubstantiated ideology on the planet.

The worst form of dogma exists in brainwashing a child’s free mind full of an imaginary disease while at the same time you try to convince them of an imaginary cure.

Ideology is man-made. Perpetuating these superstitious ideals into the beautiful free minds of children is nothing short of child abuse.

Productive people with humane values serve others on this planet every day, absent any instruction to do so outside of their own good conscious. Yet, those who believe religion is the only cause for such acts would assert that unless they accept a specific god as their master, they are hell-bound.

People of indigenous tribes, who have never heard of God, Allah or any number of other oppressive deities should know hell merely because their geographic circumstances have prevented them from knowing such fables existed?

Atheist doctors, philanthropists, educators, counselors, volunteers at a soup kitchen, or any number of productive and compassionate, law-abiding citizens should burn in hell simply because they do not believe in the irrationalities and hypocrisies of religion?

However, you may be a pedophile, rapist, murderer or any other general cyst on society and still have acceptance among the flock of self-righteous pontificators of delusion simply by professing your obedience to their way and their god.

That is nothing short of gross, irresponsible, and lethally dangerous to the values of a humanity gifted with higher intelligence.

We don’t need religion to be a good people; but we certainly use it to justify our reasons to be a bad people.

We wring our hands in bafflement at the seeming decline of our human civilization, while the solution is quite simple. Stop brainwashing your children full of hateful dogma, and start to see the world become the example of an understanding, moral humanity that they deserve to grow up in.

Dogma is Merely a Perpetuation of Myth

The earliest known existence of ceremonial rites dates back more than 300,000 years ago to burial practices of Hominids walking the earth at that time.

In fact, the more righteous religions of today would have you believe that the world is no more than five or maybe six thousand years old. There has been overwhelming scientific evidence to dispel that notion over the past few centuries.

So why do religions such as Christianity and Islam cling so tightly to the mythologies and superstitions that compel them to believe in a variance that spans hundreds of thousands of years?

It’s simple, really. Religions are a construct of man, and have been altered by man over the course of hundreds and even thousands of years. Furthermore, when you’ve got a niche that brings you unquestioning obedience and extraordinary wealth, why ruin a good thing?

Make no mistake, gods were invented by humans out of very logical, primitive fears. Most of these fears were due to the misunderstanding of the incredible forces of nature that could not yet be explained in scientific terms. “Making the Break” by Dr. Reginald Exton puts this in very reasonable perspective.

In nearly every case, whether the teachings of Ra, The Book of the Dead, Judaism, the Papyrus of Ani, Confucianism, Christianity or Islam, the stories and myths were most often handed down orally, and then written down years (often centuries) later.

That alone should provide enough evidence for the existence of error and inaccuracy in these ancient beliefs. Imagine standing up in a room of 50 people and whispering, “I just saw a small fly” to the person next to you. Have them repeat this until it reaches the 50^th person and see just how much that simple sentence has changed. Now, imagine entire belief systems, ones that take up volumes of books, being passed down among millions of people over hundreds of years before a decided documentation is accepted. (The First Counsel of Nicea is just one example). The overt perversion to the origin of these fear-based faiths is head spinning.

Ancient peoples (particularly sided to dogmatic faith) lacked the tools or systems of knowledge to understand the seismic causes for earthquakes, the atmospheric conditions for extreme weather, or even the premise of space rocks burning up in our atmosphere (shooting stars, or more accurately, meteors). It was merely a fear of nature and a deep lack of understanding of the sky that perpetuated the need for a belief system for personal comfort.

Today’s more organized religions are merely sophisticated extensions of ancient fears. Those who continue to live in fear according to the origins of those religions remain in denial of the advances of not only scientific evidence, but the evolution of human thought that has allowed us the ability to be able to now reason with what were once fears, but are now very well understood causes for natural phenomenon.

Among the dogmatic followers of today’s religions, their conscious choice to avert knowledge and free will perpetuates their religious rhetoric that is persuasive enough to keep them happy. Very often, because of these misunderstood and inaccurate, ancient beliefs, their dogmata interferes with politics and finds more modern ways to oppress those who refuse to fall victim to their same inability to grasp reason.

It’s worth mentioning that there is a difference between spirituality and religious dogma, just as there is a difference between those who live their lives according to the compassionate principles of their chosen religion and those who follow ancient texts as a guideline for their life and everyone else’s.

Even objectively, I struggle to understand the reason for one to associate in any way to a belief system that has parallel teachings of evil and righteous oppression, but it seems that in the fight to rid the world of the extreme danger of dogma, our greatest allies are perhaps those who follow the more peaceful and understanding premises of their chosen religion, regardless of what that religion may be. – So long as that following does not impede on the free will of those who do not believe in those particular ideologies. Religious persecution stemming from any theological system reverts right back to those loose, ancient fears.

We have evolved to be smarter, more adaptable creatures with amazing resources and technological advances available to us in order to logically understand the fears that once led our ancestral human beings to create gods and myths as the only reason to explain the world around us. We’re wiser now, we don’t need myths to explain what we have testable means to prove or disprove.  We need to negate fear-based dogma that is not falsifiable and only creates more fear and judgment at the hands of the religiously detached extremists among any sect.  

You're Not Required to be Gay

Mrs Raymond,

I once again find myself consuming Rolaids by the case full as I try to stomach the extremely hateful rhetoric you offer up in a blog that is truly an insult to the act of responsible writing. Your March 21, 2013, blog about gay marriage is perhaps one of the most disgustingly hateful things I have ever read in my entire life. Ironically, you title it "Love, A Many Gendered Thing."

The following paragraph from your article is so full of nonsense that I'm convinced you have been irreparably brainwashed and sent here in a time capsule by Constantine himself.

You say:

"Attacks on one man/one woman marriage are meant to strike at the very heart of the Christian religion.  Nothing could be more abominable to Bible believing Christians (and we are legion) than the thought of America, a nation founded on Christian principles, legalizing something that is in direct opposition to a foundational Christian teaching.  It could not be clearer that God does not approve of homosexuality.  Well, that’s too tame a description.  God detests homosexuality.

Please note: God hates the act of homosexuality, but not the person who is homosexual.  Christians should take the same stance."

To the contrary, your extremism is an attack on humanity. Nobody is requiring Christians to become gay. If you want to live your life according to your admittedly hateful prophecies, that's your choice. DOMA doesn't make it a law that you have to marry a woman, it simply allows those who do not judge a person's individual preferences to enjoy the same freedoms you have, and it's incredibly shortsighted of you to be blind to that.

(And your backpedaling statement of god hating the act but not those who commit the act is laughable and very, very weak. The two go hand-in-hand. By your logic, would it be safe to say that god hates murder, but not the murderer?) 

What exactly is it that frightens you about all humans having equal rights? Do you share conflicting tendencies? I'm sure some prayer will cure you of those "impure thoughts," right?

The irony for me comes in the fact that you cite the bible with exhausting redundancy, but you seem to forget every passage that clearly instructs you, as a Christian, not to judge. That everything is "God's" judgment in the end. Furthermore, Jesus Christ said that as you treat your neighbor, you surely treat him.

You are perhaps the most hypocritical Christian I have ever enjoyed reading the vitriol of. And that's a compliment, because there are so many just like you; absolutely blind to the fact that as they pontificate so much from the great book, they behave in complete antithesis of it. Or maybe you don't. Maybe you live just as perfectly hateful as your loving Christianity teaches you.

You offer another quote:

"And if you want to throw the Old Testament argument at me, Jesus came to fulfill the law (Old Testament) and His watchword was: love one another.  In other words, respect everyone no matter their gender.  Live in peace with them.  That is what Christians have been doing and will continue to do.

But, don’t ask for a redefinition of marriage.  You are overstepping.  It’s like asking for your cake and eating it too."

I suggest you spend some time with the term "cognitive dissonance." In fact, you are an expert at that. Live in peace with everyone, but hate them also? Just how conflicted are you. And, what gives you the right to self righteously define that a conscious and compassionate humanity is overstepping its bounds? You are a narcissistic, hateful woman who should be exorcised by your very religion for the demons clearly possessing your blackened soul.

Finally, people like you call to the ultimate support of our rights, while you suppress the very same rights of others. You enjoy your freedom of speech, but you take away that very right from others when they challenge your point of view. That tells me more than I need to know about your complete lack of integrity. You're too intellectually weak to substantiate your hate when challenged about it; and your self-righteous narcissism is only validated when people who share your extremely detached delusions pat you on the back. You continually remove my comments from your website, as you do others who take exception to your delusions.

Your blogs are archaic, feeble-minded, backwards, insubstantial, and lacking the objective critical thought they require because you're too much of a coward to allow your points to be challenged and to engage those of us who would clearly like to understand how exactly you feel justified to behave as intolerantly as you do.

Your dislike of a greater and more accepting humanity is not only disgusting, but it's also completely perverse to the greater Christian principles you seem to hold so dear. 

Finally, there's a reason your culture of biblical values is hurling down at "breakneck speeds" as you put it. Ironically, the reason for that is found in every thought you put to paper. Christianity is in decline because rational human beings are simply tired of listening to the insensible ramblings of the dogmatically brainwashed.

Misleading Persecution

Dear Mrs. Raymond,

I read your article very carefully before deciding to respond. It was difficult to find a starting point because there is so much contradiction in your statements that it became hard to follow, with the exception of clearly understanding what your end point was:  that anyone who is not a follower of the Christian God of the Bible should essentially be damned as the reason for all that is wrong with society, even as you seem to pontificate how we need to love each other more and be a better and more compassionate, understanding American people.
 
I could leave my response at just that, because it says everything about what is wrong with your entire article. But, it would seem more fun to dislodge your entire thesis to a greater and more intelligible extent.

I am continually confused by the profound hypocrisy that Christians like you seem to think is acceptable as you walk around infecting society with a perceived morality that you instantly negate with nearly everything that comes out of your mouth.

Near the beginning of your article you make a statement that our nation is miserable and, “All we do is argue.” “We can’t get along.” Yet you enable that exact divisiveness by writing an article that is obnoxiously judgmental, historically inaccurate, and presumptively nauseating. You seem to claim that you are persecuted while at the same time you persecute more than 5 billion other people on the planet.

My response to your article is going to be more about the overwhelming contradictions and laughable intolerance you exhibit throughout your writing, and less about the Pledge of Allegiance. I’m a non-believer and could care less whether God is in it or not. The Pledge is about a loyalty to our country and our freedom, and (which) has nothing to do with God. When attending my daughter’s school functions, I’ve said the pledge with her. It doesn’t bother me to utter the word “God” because it means nothing to me. It’s just another word. I could say “one nation, under a stack of turtles” and it would mean about the same thing.

It doesn’t offend me, but people like you do.

You really drive home the misunderstanding that we are a free people and the holders of rights because of “God,” and that our freedoms come specifically from the Christian God and not from man. You said exactly that.

Have you forgotten, in your persecution of every other belief or non-belief system on the planet, that the entire premise of our freedom was in fact the antithesis of that, the freedom from religious persecution that comes with the same extreme and singular dogmata you mislead your readers with?

First, I’d be curious what the millions who have spilled their blood in defense of our nation’s freedoms would have to say about your assertion that their actions had nothing to do with the preservation of our American dream over the past 238 years. American servicemen and servicewomen who were not all followers of “The God.” (You’re aware that there have been more than 2,000 documented “gods” over the past 6,000 years, going all the way back to the Sumerians, right? “The God” is a pretty narrow-minded and narcissistic statement).

American patriots are from all belief and non-belief systems. Perhaps you’ve forgotten about the Navajo “Wind-Talkers” of World War II; or, The many Hindus that served alongside of our allies in that same war to preserve measures of freedom that are not just unique to Americans. They are of no value to our American way of life and the freedoms we enjoy because they didn’t worship the Christian God? You’re really, truly that ignorant?

Those are just two examples of many, many more. In your article you speak to an American disconnect with history, but it would appear that you have quite a bit of catching up to do as well. You seem adept at being able to use the internet to research. I might recommend you spend some more time with that before your next homily of self-righteous bigotry.

Also, please remind us all where exactly it’s written that God wants all people to be free?  Other than the tale about helping Moses get the Jews out of Egypt, there seems to be as much evidence he wanted slavish, unquestioning obedience. Today that’s known as Papal infallibility. (It’s also interesting that he’d want freedom for the Jews, but then a couple millennia later he’d allow more than 6 million Jews to be slaughtered by followers of his very same Christianity).

You state: “Non-believers need to be reminded that the God they want to get rid of is the God that allows them the freedom to not believe He exists.” (It’s interesting how often you emphasize, through capitalization, the existence of but one deity. You know what this makes you? It makes you as much a non-believer as I am, the only difference is that I believe in one less god than you do.)

The Christian God did not allow people the freedom to “not believe” he existed. Not only are you detached from our American history, but you are also dangerously detached from the history of the very religion you profess is the “guardrail” of all that is right in society. Browse the pages of Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy or Judges and then come back and tell us all what “God’s” real intent for non-believers was; torture and ultimately murder. I could cite dozens of passages from these books that make your god’s homicidal tendencies very clear.

The rest of your article is filled with much the same pattern of someone who bleeds cognitive dissonance.  You write about how good and god-fearing your generation is, but then write about all of the “injustices, racism, infidelity, rape and abuse” that were a part of your generation. You write about any number of “vices and sins and wrongdoings” of your generation, but then follow it with a paragraph that states there were guardrails (your “God”) put up in society that told everyone what was acceptable behavior and “everyone respected them.”

How is this? Which is it? How is it that “everyone respected” those guardrails yet you admittedly point out all of their wrongdoings at the same time?

How can everything be a part of his divine plan, but at the same time not be a part of it?

You seem to believe that all is God’s will, and that we are a good people only because of him, but when we act against the principles you (inaccurately) believe he stood for, he has nothing to do with it.

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent [all-powerful]. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent [malicious]. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” - Epicurus

Indeed you are a product of the very same hypocritical brainwash that you try to inject into the minds of others. Please stop. You are embarrassing yourself and I suspect many Christians who don’t live their lives under the same umbrella of absolutes, dismissing the rest of the alternatively worshipping (or non-worshipping) American people.

To rebut your closing; freedom and god are not synonymous. In fact, they are literal opposites. You’ve quite accurately made a case for that.

Regards,

- A logical and free-thinking American