Scientology Has Got To Be Stopped

So the church of the credulous is at it yet again. Over 4000 videos on YouTube had to be taken down because of the litigious dim wittery of the Church of Scientology. It is one thing to believe in something so stupid as L. Ron Hubbard's dumbass cult, but it is quite another to try and tell other people that they can't speak out against L. Ron Hubbard's dumbass cult.

I can't add anything more to the overwhelming amount of evidence that shows Scientology to be nothing more than a shitty science fiction writer's money con, so I won't go down that particular avenue. But I can say that the rights of the intelligent should not be infringed upon by the stupid. This country is already circling the drain, do we really have the time to entertain the frivolous lawsuits of people who believe that Xenu is real? Come on people, seriously.

Life is not an inherently difficult enterprise, stop making it that way.

-Cludge

Another Link to Expelled Exposed

"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed", the movie that is a turd in the diaper of the psuedo science world. Here's the site that let's people with rational thought processes know the real deal: Expelled Exposed

-Cludge

The Psychology of "Heaven"

So, follow me on this one: If Heaven exists then our existence is completely useless.

Here is my argument:

Assume that Heaven exists and that Christian believers are admitted.

Next assume that you are cognizant of yourself and others, and you still have your memories.

Lastly, assume that your personality remains intact, and that Heaven is "perfect".

Now, moving forward with these assumptions, being in Heaven implies a perfect happiness. But if you are still you, and others are still themselves, then conflict will still arise. Maybe you remember the robber that killed your spouse and then got "saved" and was admitted into Heaven, etc.

The only way to prevent this conflict is for God to "change" you upon admittance. So if a change would have to be made such that you don't feel sadness, anguish over a loved one not being in heaven, etc., then what was the point of your initial earth bound existence? Because if it's not really "you" in Heaven, then the whole prior life on earth was in fact pointless, God could have just made the heavenly automatons he wanted to begin with.

Because, here is a neat thought: The supposedly first two people on the planet had free will, and they fucked it up the rest of us. So to prevent that from logically happening again, your free will must be removed upon your heavenly admittance. So something somewhere has to give...

Chew on that one for a while.

Lastly, what happens to infants, children, or extremely old people? If you have the misfortune to die as a baby (but you have been baptised) then are you just this drooling, toothless lump for all eternity? Or if you elderly, are you then former decrepit shell of your former self for ever? These "little" details seem to have been conveniently neglected by the authors of this fantasy land.

-Cludge

Ya' Gotta Love This Guy

Why Jesus' True Last Words Are So Important

I was just conversing with one of my co-workers about the importance of the contradiction of the Bible's reporting of Jesus' last words. He said that it did not matter, because it would not change his belief system.

So I began to explain why it does matter. Aside from the fact that it is a contradiction in a "perfect" book, let's assume that the now infamous "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?", quote was the true last words of Jesus. Now let's look at the implications of that set of words.

The first implication is that the holy Trinity does not exist. If you are your father, thus God, then you know why he has "forsaken" you. You are him. His knowledge is your knowledge.

The next and probably the more important implication, is that Jesus' statement, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." is false. Being forsaken and being sacrificed for all of humanity are wildly different things. In fact they are completely opposite.

So if he was lying, or just plain insane is anyone's guess. But what is apparent is that any belief system founded on the teachings of a person like this, is suspect at best. That belief system could even cause you problems down the road if say, the Islamics are correct(which they aren't).

Or, better yet, let's assume the old testament is correct. "You shall have no other gods before me." is saying that any claim by another entity to be God, is wrong. Maybe that is why Jesus was forsaken, dying on that cross, in the hot sun. That is certainly what one would expect of a jealous and vengeful god.

An Elegant Explanation Of An Annoyingly Recurrent Question

"If we evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?" I hear this question a lot in my conversations. This article is a very well written explanation of the answer. It should be accessible to those without math or biology degrees. The author, Rob Brown, does not try to offend, nor does he pander to anyone. He simply states the theory in a manner that has you nodding your head and smiling inwardly to yourself before you are even done reading it. Do yourself a favor, read at least this article, if not the whole series.

-Cludge

"God would not do that"

OK, I heard a person that I know say something extremely stupid recently. His statement was, "God would not do that." It was in reference to something he thought was heinous.
So, I began to think about that. To say that you worship the proverbial omniscient god and then turn right around and say what that entity would or would not do is far more arrogant than Richard Dawkins could ever be.

Think about it for a second. To say that your chosen entity knows all, and for you to say what it would do, implies that you know the mind of the entity and all that it knows. Else, how could you "know" that it would not do something. The reason is that you would have to know all of the choices it has and all of the reasons for making those choices. Obviously an impossible feat.

The real reason for the statement is, of course, not that we have people running around with knowledge senior to that of some deity, but that it is a rationalization of a flawed belief system.
If you are the type of person that needs religion to tell you not to harm other people, or steal things, or whatever, then you should remove yourself from this world so that the rest of us with brains do not have to be hampered by your silly existence.

Free will can't exist under an omniscient entity

If you believe in an omniscient god, then you by definition can't have free will. Here is my argument:
Your omniscient god (hereafter og) knows all (by definition).
Your og knows how you are going to die and when.
Your og knows what you were doing 1 millisecond before you died.
Your og knows what you were doing 1 year before you died.
And so on until we get to creation. If all was known prior to your
existence, then you actually had no free will, it only appeared that way to you.
Q.E.D.

Apologetics (Christian)

"Apologetics deals with answering critics who oppose or question the revelation of God in Christ and the Bible. The purpose of this class is helping the Christian to "always be ready to make a defense to everyone who asks them to give an account for the hope they have". It touches on the key issues of our Christian faith."

This quote came from this site.
Well, the biggest stumbling block to the Christians' defense of their faith is the very book on which they place so much credence. If the Bible were perfect, it should not need a "new" testament. The original should been just fine, perfect actually. But that is clearly not the case.
Next, the Bible is riddled with so many contradictions (and these) that it could not be used as a textbook of any credible value. I mean would you use a math book where in the first chapter, 2 + 2 = 3, and then in the next section, 2 + 2 = 8.721?
Lastly, why are there so many versions? I don't see the need for more than one version of "perfection".

It is annoying to me to hear Christians say, "I have read the Bible and.... <insert mindless drivel here>" when unless you can read ancient Hebrew, Greek, and oh yeah, Aramaic, you haven't read shit but some other ass wompler's translation.
I was recently asked by a friend of mine who teaches apologetics at his church's Sunday school class, "What would you consider a perfect book? (meaning the Bible)" My reply was that if you had a book that "magically" was readable by any person holding it at the time, regardless of that person's actual language, then you would have a book that not only did not need to be translated, but would also irrefutably prove the existence of God. He said that was stupid.
Riiiiiiiight. My fault.

My prayer is useless conjecture:

I am the type of person that likes to think I can think. That may sound silly at first, but mull it over, it will come to you. That having been said, I think that if anyone seriously sat down and divorced themselves from their emotions and vicarious beliefs long enough, they would come to this same conclusion: Prayer is useless.

I don't mean it is useless because all credible studies find it unable to cure illness. No, I mean that the idea of prayer itself is contradictory to a faithful's belief system.
Think about this way: Suppose that God is perfect and omniscient(this is the mainstay of Christians). Now suppose that God has a plan (another mainstay). So by the supposition that your God is perfect, that entity's plan must also be perfect. Therefore, I find it immensely amusing that someone would pray for a chosen outcome to any situation, or attempt to simply inform their chosen entity of how they are feeling.

If the perfect plan calls for death, that death will happen, else you have persuaded a perfect entity with a perfect plan to change its mind, hence reevaluate its plan, exposing imperfection.
Next, you need not inform an entity that already knows how you feel, about how you feel. It already knows that, by your own definition.

I know that this argument has probably been proffered before, but I came up with it myself while conversing with a friend of mine who is deeply religious.
So, given that the idea of thinking is just a way to find out as much about yourself as it is to find out about things around you, I don't understand why more people don't do it.

-Life is not an inherently difficult enterprise, stupid people make it that way......