My pitch for a Reality TV Show

Ok, we have 'pastors' looking for noteriety by burning books held as holy doctrine by other faiths and the religious stupid keep banging on about how important the Bible is in telling us how to live our lives.

Even my locval Jehovanhs Witness Kingdom Hall is getting in on the act with a talk on; " Bible Principles, can they help us with todays problems?" I am willing to bet that they think they can.

I so want to turn up to that meeting (after all I am invited) with my male slave dressed in leather and on a lead. After all God doesn't have a problem with his people owning slaves. But he does have a problem with man-on-man love, namely anal sex. It is forbidden in Leviticus (twice) along with round haircuts, eating shellfish and the wearing of mixed fibres.

Perhaps I should turn up with a female slave, after all, womern are seen pretty much as property in the good book. Eve got us in to this mess in the first place and since then, women have had to know their place. They can be killed, raped and tortured under biblical law. If a woman is raped, she has to marry her rapist;

"If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her."

I could go on but here's the pitch. Find a bible-belt nutjob religious community something like Westboro and give them amnesty from the law of the land. Let them take their holy book into their own 'gated' community and get on with it. The men will be on a power trip, the women even more abused, the children damaged for life.

Drop a few weirdos in there as well, perhaps some people wanting redemption and if you want it to get really interesting have some other faiths in the mix. If there is some conflict, put it out to a public vote as to who gets stoned to death or has their hand cut off. We could even have a panel of 'Scholars' on TV each week to provide spiritual guidance (God seems to have lost interest lately). Would Anjam Choudray be the new Simon Cowell?

Some good must come from it. Religious people will surely wake up to the contradictory, sadistic, nasty piece of work for what the Abrahamic holy books are. Or will they continue to live the lie so they can look forward to eternal life?

"Dancing on Ice" could become "Dicing with Death". What do you think?

Does belief in God influence outcomes?

I follow a few people on Twitter who have religious delusions. They praise the lord, tell him how wonderful he is and how they follow him and thank him for lighting their lives. You know the kind of thing.

These people really do believe they have a deep and profound relationship with god. With some, like @MissRaissa @alexandrasmif the language is about feeling God inside her and being overwhelmed with his presence. It reads to me like they are really in love with Jesus and want him to fuck them. While they love Jesus and follow his doctrine, they aren't going to be getting any jiggy from any men. Let's hope the sex side is not a disappointment after they do get around to being married (for eternity).

Anyway I got to thinking that the people walking with god 'shining a light' on their fortune could be compared to people of a different faith or people of no faith. A study of groups of similar demographics or however statisticians do this stuff.

There could be information gathered on;

• The number of people
• becoming seriously ill and how many went on to a full recovery
• having a relative, friend, pet die
• experiencing promotion or a pay-rise if working.
• getting good grades in an exam
• able to give up smoking
• being adversely affected by quakes, floods, tempests etc.

I am sure you get the idea. I am trying to think of things that wouldn't be too subjective or be biased due to the person's perception of the situation. Now we know what the research would show, that good and bad things happen to people irrespective of what they do or don't believe in.

So that kind of scuppers the prayer thing as well. No evidence there. In fact the only clinical study I know showed prayer made people worse.

So God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are present in peoples' lives but there is no measurable difference in significant events happening to to them that don't happen to godless people. Does that then mean that these poor deluded people are in it for the eternal life thing? Or do they really believe that God is giving them a better deal that every non-xtian?

I really do wonder if they have a proper understanding of eternity. If someone was giving me the chance of eternal life without a body and in the company of a god that takes an unhealthy interest in my sex life, I would be bloody terrified.

Second-Hand Revelation

My comment on this blog

One could say that virtually every verse in the Bible, Qu’ran, or other holy text from a revealed religion could be preceded by "Some guy said God told him to tell you..." Millions have taken it for granted that an omnipotent God chose second-hand revelation as a primary method to communicate to us.

One seeming paradox of second-hand revelation is that God supposedly had a message for all of humanity, but God told just a few guys. For unexplained reasons, God apparently stopped communicating that way from then on, putting the burden on them to be messenger boys. Well, perhaps God didn’t stop entirely, as we continue to get claims of revelation periodically, but many revelations claim to be the final one and pronounce dire warnings to any who claim later ones. That might explain the tendency for many to accept ancient revelation over modern revelation.

If God uses a few selected scribes to reveal all-important truths to the rest of us, we are essentially stuck taking their word for it. To me, it seems ironic and contradictory that God allegedly would want a personal relationship but then use bronze-age tribesmen as agents to obtain it.

Why would an omnipotent being choose this method in the first place, with all the risks of translation error, copy error, miscommunication, cross-cultural differences, appearance of favoritism, inherent limits of human language, and so on? It can’t be more trouble to simply speak to us directly, if omnipotence is a reality.

Why are conflicting revelations allowed?

Some claim that the path to eternal salvation lies in second-hand revelation. If so, wouldn't that place your salvation into the hands a fallible human? It seems odd that this arguably most important of truths would be communicated indirectly by fallible humans, especially when God is said to be omnipotent.

Would the originating force behind the entire universe choose a method so fraught with potential for trouble? As if God needed a spokesguy... In the churches of my youth, we simply took it for granted and never gave it a second thought. Is that common?

JANUARY 2, 2010 4:03 PM

And a reply from Bob A, who said...

Philip, I believe your thoughts cross many minds that really want to seek the truth. I remember I wrestled with the same questions when I was first introduced to the Bible. But the more I read, the more I saw within His word that it was the simple things that God chose to confound the wise (1 Corinthians 1:26-28 26Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are,….).

Unless this book is a series of our-right lies (it has withstood the test and punishment of man and time without a scratch), we need to take it for what it says it is…the truth (Jer.34:12; 2Tim 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-21; Rev. 1:1; 14:13..and my favorite 1 John 5:13) …..this is of course where faith comes in….but not blind faith…..faith that believes on evidence and reason.

There are so many scholars that spend their lives searching and defending the Bible through apologetics. I have found a great source to be Josh McDowel’s “The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict”. Also check out Dr. James White on his website, http://aomin.org/ he's great.

I guess for me the testimony of the inspired men of God that became martyrs for their beliefs gave me the historical evidence I needed combined with reason, logic, the laws of evidence and faith…Paul seems to have summed it up for me.....

Galatians 1:6-24 No Other Gospel
“ 6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! 9As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!
10Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.
Paul Called by God
11I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. 12I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

I would say it is common for the world to look at God’s word this way…….I would say it is unfortunately, but what is common to man is not common to God.. 1 Corinthians 10:13
“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful……”.

1 Corinthians 2:15-16 15The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment: 16"For who has known the mind of the Lord
that he may instruct him?"[a] But we have the mind of Christ.

Aren’t you glad He chose us to be able to look at the things of God His Way?!

JANUARY 4, 2010 4:23 PM

I am beginning to find that there is no debating with people like Bob A, no inch that they are prepared to give, no admission that their beliefs could appear to be absurd and then they pull answers out of the bible to show me they are right.

I'm just as bad because I know I am right. There can be no concept of me being wrong either unless god is a sadist. And then which god? Now that's given me an idea, "Which God? - We test all the major religions and come up with a best buy and recommended".

I must need faith

I get accused of making posts in christian forums that reflect my atheist stance because I'm really there looking for god. That my attacking their ridiculous beliefs is really down to my unmet need for god's love. The dialoge below is lifted from a blog that I set up on a really well laid out faith site which only seems to have a handful of posters, however they really don't like me but seem to be letting me hang out there in the hope of converting me.

Why do I feel the need to make posts in opposition camps about the stupidity of religion? I'm not sure. It started with a letter to my local paper when I was 15 about the requirement for schools to hold a religious assembly every day, something I believe they are still required to do. Some replies were, "One only has to look at the flowers and the trees to know there is a god" and another reader blamed my lack of belief on "All the shameful sex and violence we see on TV".

The internet has really opened up the debate and is bringing atheists together and channeling the evidence in ways that were not possible before. Organised faith has its wealth, heirachy, media spin and hype. Religion is big business. Look at the catholic church. What about the "please donate now" pastors?

So why do I challenge their comfort zones? Possibly because I want to develop my challenging skills, to get them to look at things from a different angle, I'm not sure.

It scares me that there are adults out there who believe in Adam, Eve and a talking snake, that a God made everything and listens to our prayers before deciding to ignore them.