This text sees Judas dying as a martyr—because the other disciples hate him so much that they kill him! But the Gospel of Judas challenges the idea that God wants people to die as martyrs—just as it challenges the idea that God wanted Jesus to die. Whoever wrote this gospel—and the author is anonymous—is challenging …
…..the more important a particular belief is to us, the more strongly we will ignore or reject evidence suggesting that we are wrong. So what are the most central beliefs that people hold? Their religious beliefs, their political beliefs. Certainly many scientists have held beliefs deeply that have taken a few hundred years to overturn, …
Continue reading ‘Is the Dawkins-Hitchens PR campaign against religion worth the effort?’ »
Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the …
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth the beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are of dust, and all …
Humans evolved on the savannah recognizing movement and potential threat. Our brains are primed to presume the presence of agents that determine potential pursuits, attacks and escapes. What cannot be explained physically has to be explained by the supernatural. Secondly, our brains are primed to look for answers …….to unusual events. “Luck is too miss …
“America, it turns out , is not one nation under one God. We answer, in actuality, to four Gods. In an intriguing new survey by Gallop for Baylor University, Americans were asked how they conceived of the deity. The most popular God, backed by 31%, is an “authoritarian” father figure who takes a very hands-on …
"..But I had been born a unbeliever. I took no pleasure in religious ceremonies. They were too long, and the food came only at the end. I did not understand the language – it was as if our elders expected that our understanding would be instinctive – and no one explained the prayers or the …
If Jesus was the Son of God and the all-knowing God created Heaven and the Earth, choosing man above all animals on the Earth, why did he say nothing about DNA, dinosaurs, gravity, the fact that the earth revolves around the Sun and a thousand other things. He could have saved 2000 years of hard …
1Timothy, Chapter 2, 11-15Verse:11. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.12. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.13. For Adam was first formed, then Eve.14. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.15. Notwithstanding …
One person`s reaction to Christian outrage expressed over a chocolate statue of Jesus: I will never forget your attempts to force your religious superstitions into the public sphere. I will always remember your crusades to pollute our government with a bunch of moralistic hogwash, and the billions of dollars every year that go uncollected in …
Corn syrup is being added to every food under the sun, including bread and (excuse me!) soup! Why would you sweeten soup? Corn syrup is a major cause of obesity and related crippling and even fatal diseases. It is a public health hazard. In my Epicurean garden it is spotted quickly and banned where possible.
EVOLUTION Only 40% of adults in the United States believe evolution to be “true”. A third of American adults positively believe it to be false, presumably believing that God delivered man and woman, fully formed, to the Garden of Eden five thousand years ago, as per one of the Hebrew creation myths (there were two …
Continue reading ‘Evolution (Epicurus turned out to be right)’ »
Rabbi Daniel Lapin, who introduced Jack Abramoff to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, warns a “propaganda blitzkrieg that is eerily reminiscent of how effectively the Goebbels propaganda machine softened up the German people for what was to come”. He talks of a “persecuted majority” (!). Whereupon he launches a propaganda blitzkrieg that is eerily …
No less than three of our personal friends have told us that religion is under sustained attack by atheists and liberals, presumably because the rational among us have been fighting back against the intrusion of religion into politics and many other aspects of life in the United States. As a case in point the following …
Why is it necessary to WORSHIP God? A grown-up God doesn’t need to be worshipped. A grown-up God can see through the self-interested words used in a hundred tongues to curry favor? Were God to exist, would not the Sunday worship of millions not be an insult to His mighty and overwhelming intelligence? Do the …
