Tuesday, May 31, 2016

God=Fail


The Common ways Gods fail to prove their existence:

When you cry out that God has failed you, when you take his name in vain, when you blaspheme! Does God show up, wag his finger and then smite you? If not then who does the punishing for these affronts? Answer: Other people.

Is your God Omnipotent? (some would say that’s the very definition of Godhood.)

Is your God Omniscient?

If your God is Omnipotent, then why does he need other people to do his punishing for him?
If your God is Omniscient, then why do you need to pray to him? Doesn’t he already know what you need and doesn’t he already know your heart?

Free Will or Predestination?
So your God has given you free will to damn or save yourself? If your God is also Omniscient, then he knows that you will be born, he knows when you’ll die and he knows whether you’ll save or damn yourself. My point is, nothing surprises an Omniscient God, so where exactly is this free will?
If you believe in an Omniscient God and in Free will then you are accepting an illusion and what your God really has is Predestination for all his people. He just hasn’t told any of you who is saved and who is damned. Why would your God lie by omission to his people?
Free Will wins
So you’ve decided that free will is more important than Omniscience anyway and maybe your God isn’t really Omniscient, or if he is, then he just doesn’t have an infinite amount of time to focus on all there is to know – so what? I guess that means he has a finite amount of knowledge he can pay attention to at one time? He’s starting to sound more human by the minute, but yes Infinite things are hard for the Human mind to grasp.

So if Free Will wins then why would anyone ever choose anything other than to save themselves? So when you find yourself in an untenable situation, your life is in danger and you must kill or be killed. Do you defend yourself and survive while the other person, your would be murder dies? What if you then die before you have a chance to confess or profess your sorrow, regret for the necessity of your killing act, and you die before you can be forgiven and redeemed?

Your Omniscient god knows your heart already and doesn’t need ceremonial prayers and priests, but I suppose if your god doesn’t have Omniscience then he doesn’t know you and shit cans you to hell anyway? Or purgatory? If he’s an Omnipotent god wouldn’t he have been able to stop that murderer from trying to kill you? If he didn’t, then why not? Oh right because he’s not Omniscient and for all he knows the other guy was holier than you, right? If he was Omnipotent wouldn’t he have the power to go back in time and watch the situation develop? Wouldn’t an All powerful God have the ability to then examine the hearts of both you and your would be killer and know that you deserved to be saved?

So at this point you are either worshipping a God who is not really Omnipotent, or he just doesn’t care that much for you, doesn’t care enough to find out where you really belong and has arbitrarily shit canned you to hell (or purgatory for an indefinite time which might as well be eternity b/c anything over a year may be nearly as intolerable as hell for some)

I personally don’t think there’s much point in being Omnipotent if you can’t also be Omniscient because you would be stuck running around fixing things after the fact instead of knowing ahead of time what to fix and what not to fix. I think if I was stuck doing that running and putting out fires all the time, then sooner or later I’d say fuck it and stop caring. So maybe that’s what happened to your Omnipotent God? Maybe he’s developed a “Shit happens” attitude.

Okay so your God is a dick, now what? Wait a minute! . . .What if you were wrong about that Predestination vs Free will thing?!

Okay so Predestination wins! and your God is back to being Omniscient and Omnipotent, though, he is still being kind of a dick about the illusion of Free will he expects you to accept. . .still you don’t have to accept the illusion. 

He’ll know of course that you see through the illusion of Free will and that you’re trying to figure out which you are predestined as “Saved” or “Damned”? Well if your God’s stipulated that there is Free will and that God’s word is law, then your disillusionment about Free will means you’re not accepting of God’s Law and therefore him – so you’re damned. Good to know, oh wait that kinda sucks doesn’t it? . . . Maybe if you pray to him to unknow about the illusion?

GOOD NEWS you’ve had a car accident and have suffered a bit of brain damage. . .what? oh why is that good news? oh no reason. . ..did I say good? I must have meant bad, my mouth is always doing that, maybe I have a little brain damage too. . .Ha ha! No the good news is you’re alive, not dead, so it’s a fresh start, right? So the other day, . . what was that you were telling me about your God?


Wednesday, August 26, 2015

FYI - Activisim is long road

August 26, 1920: The 19th Amendment is quietly signed into law by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, granting women the right to vote. Suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt summarized the effort involved in securing passage of the 19th Amendment:
"To get the word 'male' in effect out of the Constitution cost the women of the country fifty-two years of pauseless campaign... During that time they were forced to conduct fifty-six campaigns of referenda to male voters; 480 campaigns to get Legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters; 47 campaigns to get State constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into state constitutions; 277 campaigns to get State party conventions to include woman suffrage planks in party platforms, and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses."
1921: American Birth Control League is founded by Margaret Sanger


Change takes a long time - I've often wondered if part of the reason it takes so long is all the waiting for old stodgy people who are set in their ways to die off so new ways can finally be embraced without shame over "what would Father say?!"  as a part of the equation.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Traditional Marriage and the Cycle of Religious Suppression of Women

Understanding the reason why our culture needs to move on from the idea of “Traditional” marriage :

What does “Traditional Marriage” mean to you? Does it evoke ideas of the supposed ideal family of Man+Woman and 1.5 children? Does it mean to you a heterosexual pairing tied together spiritually by God in front of a community of like minded individuals?
Regardless of whatever ideals you cling to, if you go far enough back in history you’ll find examples that defy your “Traditional” definitions. Marriage and family has ever been a changing thing with our species and it continues to grow and change. For instance, the idea of a “white wedding” is a rather novel part of our culture, dating back from early 20th century. Before then, a white dress was thought to be a stupid thing to have, and a symbol of wealth since it invariably would get dirty and look like crap faster than any other color.
There are those who claim Marriage is dead, or should die, or that it’s a bad deal for men, or women but yet people keep wanting it don’t they? Unfortunately there isn’t any one simple fix for any problems with marriage but one thing we can do is objectively look at where we came from with religion in the mix, since the idea of “Traditional Marriage” is tied up so intimately with religion.
Note however, religion is only part of the problem as I see it, much of the rest is the promotion of unhealthy masculine gender identity as emphasized by a heterosexual norm biased culture. Religion only reinforces these ideals but it doesn’t have to, and it’s time that it was changed, whether by individual choice or our society developing beyond these archaic beliefs.


Friday, June 26, 2015

Yes, Atheism = Optimism

smiling-atheist.blogspot.com
http://thesmilingskeptic.wordpress.com/

Pessimism and or Atheism? (spoiler alert! - yes, Atheists are actually optimists usually)
I don’t believe in “isms” – as words they’re useful but otherwise they’re just buckets of terminology that our lazy minds like to shove things into.

So yeah, a lot of Atheists are colored in a negative light, for obvious reasons by the religious, but I’m only interested in discussing the less obvious right now: the association of the atheist with negativity. Atheists might use the word “no” when asked about their belief in God, they might negate or belittle pathetic evidence supporting the existence of a god, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that all Atheists are negative nannys full of active hatred for the religious and religious things. Many Atheists don’t even call themselves “Atheist” because it has a pejorative flavor to it, and they don’t wish to evoke that reaction in the people around them.
Most Atheists live out their lives the same way the religious do except they avoid the time sucking waste of going to services in church or other religious time sucking nonsense. Some of these Atheists don’t even think to use the word Atheist to describe themselves – but even those who do won’t necessarily do anything a religious person needs to be afraid of, like violence or criminal acts. Atheists won’t come a knocking on your door to try to push their ideas down your throat. If they gather in large groups, they’ll probably be very civil about it and only engage religious who engage them first in some manner, such as making ridiculous claims about hell or some such other BS.
There are no Atheist brain washing boot camps for troubled teenagers, but there are for religion. There are no cults of Atheists. (No Cult of Dusty https://www.youtube.com/user/CultOfDusty