The Wise Sloth

October 14, 2017

10 Signs You Should Stop Pretending To Be Christian

1: You’re a mean person.

I don’t know how many people I’ve met who simultaneously claim to be Christian yet are consistently hurtful to other people and who seem to take genuine satisfaction from tearing other people down. I cannot fathom how one brain can cultivate and contain enough cognitive dissonance to be mean and still claim to be a Christian. If Jesus really died for your sins, you’ll be the first to get thrown in Hell, not just for the inexcusable way you treated God’s children, but also for how irreparably you soiled Jesus’s name with your petty behavior.

Ephesians 4:31: Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice; Instead, be kind to each other, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.

Colossians 3:12: Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tender-hearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7: Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

2: You own expensive luxury items.

I’ve seen Jesus fish car magnets on Hummers, BMWs, Cadillacs, Mercedes and every other luxury automobile I’m too poor to afford. I’ve heard self-proclaimed Christians brag about how many Gucci purses they own. I’ve seen pastors wearing suits that cost more than my entire wardrobe. I’ve seen people wearing 24 karat gold “WWJD” jewelry without expressing a hint of irony.

I must have read a different Bible than these people; in the one I read, Jesus was penniless and consistently urged his followers to give up everything they owned so they could devote their lives to helping the poor. Owning expensive luxury items is so opposite of everything Jesus stood for that I can’t even really articulate how hypocritical that is other than to repeat what I just said slower and louder.

Obviously you’ve found some way to reconcile your hypocrisy in your own head and would be more than happy to use it to shoot down my accusations, but honestly, if you had that argument with Saint Peter at the pearly gates do you think he would be impressed by your mental gymnastics? He would probably tell you that a camel has a better chance of fitting through the eye of a needle than you do of entering the kingdom of Heaven. If you’re going to choose the way of the world then just run with it and live it up while you can. Quit wasting your time with pretenses.

1 Timothy 2:9: Likewise, I want the women to adorn themselves with respectable apparel, with modesty, and with self-control, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes,

3: You spend more time sitting in church than you do working in charity.

How many times did Jesus enter a church in the Bible, and what did he do when he was there? Off the top of my head, I can only think of 2 times he ever entered a church. The first time he was a child, and he was telling the religious leaders they were fools for putting too much importance on the law and not enough importance on people. He returned to church as an adult and went on a rampage over how profit-centric the church had become.

What about you? Do you just punch your time card with God every Sunday and then get back to taking care of your own family? Have you ever eaten with a homeless person? Did Jesus set up a $50 recurring direct deposit to the Roman equivalent of the Salvation Army and call himself a martyr? No…. because that’s borderline pointless, and if that’s what you do, then it’s pointless to call yourself a Christian.

Acts 17:24: The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man.

Matthew 19:21: Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.

Luke 18:22: On hearing this, Jesus told him, “You still lack one thing: Sell everything you own and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow Me.”

4: You habitually indulge in self-gratification.

I’ve had multiple religious arguments with self-proclaimed Christians while they were holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Their justification was that Jesus never said you couldn’t smoke. True. Jesus also never said you couldn’t buy season tickets to your favorite sports team. Jesus never said you shouldn’t watch professional wrestling. Jesus never said you shouldn’t eat so much processed food it gives you diabetes. Jesus never said a lot of things, but he did live a distinctly ascetic lifestyle.

Do you live a distinctly ascetic lifestyle or do you live more sumptuously than 2/3 of the world’s population? If you have to make excuses for your relative decadence, I don’t want to hear them because really, the only point in trying to justify yourself to me is to justify your actions to yourself. Tell your excuses to God. He’s the one you’re going to have to answer to anyway. But until you see the Lord face to face, you may want to stop telling people you base your life on the example Jesus set…. because you don’t, and it’s blatantly obvious to everyone but you.

Galatians 5:19-21: Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

5: You’re prejudiced.

Not all self-proclaimed Christians are prejudiced, but enough of them are that prejudice and Christianity have become synonymous. Hitler used Christianity to justify persecuting the Jews. The KKK used Christianity to justify persecuting African-Americans. The Westboro Baptist Church uses Christianity to justify persecuting homosexuals. These examples aren’t isolated anomalies. They’re merely the far extreme of a broad spectrum of intolerance in the name of Jesus.

Having said that, nobody would argue that Jesus was an intolerant, xenophobic racist at the end of his life. You could even argue that blind acceptance of our fellow-man was the crux of his message. So if you’re in favor of closed borders, segregation and the persecution of sinners and dissidents, find a different group to identify with than Christians, because that’s just not fair to people who do actually emulate the egalitarian beliefs and behaviors of Jesus.

Hebrews 12:14: Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

6: You don’t live in an egalitarian commune.

To be a Christian is to be Christ-like. This makes being a Christian hard because, from the time Jesus started his ministry, he basically lived as a traveling beggar and public speaker until his death. This isn’t a lifestyle choice we can make a categorical imperative out of. If everyone in the world sold everything they owned and traveled the world preaching to each other, the human race would die off in a generation from lack of productivity. So this is one instance where you really have to disregard Jesus’s example a little. This raises the question though, how much should a good Christian tone down Jesus’s fanaticism to arrive at a level that’s sustainable while still honoring the spirit of Jesus’s teachings?

Given that Jesus was penniless and an adamant advocated of asceticism and austerity, I would say that living in a $250,000+ house with a huge entertainment system in the living room, a luxury automobile in the parking lot and a golden safety net in the bank would be an extreme example of how not to be Christ-like. I would argue that Paul was closer to the mark in how he lived communally with his Christian brethren, owning nothing and sharing everything equally. I certainly can’t find any reason why Jesus would object to egalitarian communal lifestyle, but don’t take my word for it. There are millions of monks all over the world who have come to the same conclusion.

Acts 4:32-35: All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.³³With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all³⁴that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales ³⁵and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

7: You’re a pedophile.

You can be a child rapist or a Christian, but you can’t be both. If you try, you’ll only disappoint Jesus and hurt your entire religion’s reputation.

8: You support the military.

Jesus said if your enemy strikes you then you should turn the other cheek. However, I’ve heard it argued that Jesus intended to mobilize an armed insurrection against the Romans, but even if Jesus did support military action against the Caucasian, western imperialist nation that was building permanent military bases in the Middle East and setting up puppet leaders in the local governments, that would still set a precedent that Christians should stand opposed to military aggression, particularly in the Middle East.

Then again, Jesus never did lead an insurrection. He preached peace and allowed himself to be killed by Israel’s enemy even though he had the power to smite anyone. I’m not saying you shouldn’t own guns and defend your house. Just don’t call yourself a Christian. You certainly shouldn’t call yourself a Christian if you serve in a military that actively invades other countries. If you’re are in the military, you probably justify it to yourself by saying that you’re fighting for freedom, and that’s fine. You can call yourself a hero for that. Just don’t call yourself a Christian. If you aren’t in the military, but still support the military and the troops who do the killing, then by all means, call yourself a patriot, but don’t call yourself a Christian because you’re advocating the opposite of what Jesus’s teachings.

9: You don’t speak Aramaic, Hebrew or at least Latin or Greek or have an intimate knowledge of ancient Middle Eastern history.

I’m not saying that just because Jesus spoke Aramaic that you have to speak Aramaic too in order to be Christ-like. What I am saying is that in order to think and act like Jesus you need to understand where Jesus was coming from. The better you speak the language he spoke in, and the more you understand the culture he was raised in, the better you will understand his message. The less you understand these things the less you’ll understand his message and thus the less chance you’ll have of being able to follow his example. The less you understand the original context of the Bible the more you’ll subconsciously project your own context into it. When you do that, you end up reading what you want into the Bible, and all your Bible study accomplishes is to serve as a mirror with which you justify to yourself the modern values of the culture you were raised in.

In other words, don’t claim to be a die-hard, card-carrying member of the Shakespeare fan club if the only thing you know about Shakespeare was what you gathered from watching the Leonardo DiCaprio version of “Romeo and Juliet.”

10: It’s been thousands of years since Jesus died.

It has been 2000 years since Jesus supposedly lived. You live a life of luxury and privilege. You barely know anything about Jesus’s life and environment. You spend more time making excuses for why you don’t live like him than you actually do living like him. The only real Christians are Biblical scholars living in monasteries, and they’re no use to themselves, God or anyone else. They’re living in the past while you’re pretending to. Give up the charade. Admit you’re not a Christian, and take a more reasonable, logical, scientific approach to understanding the universe and improving yourself.

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

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Atheism

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Leave a comment | tags: acting like a christian, christian culture, christian lifestyle, how to be a good christian, real or fake christian, what is a christian | posted in christian culture

October 14, 2017

American Christians, You Don’t Believe Or Practice What The Bible Says About Marriage

By wise sloth

It’s absurd that Americans still quote the Bible at weddings and believe marriage is holy because the Bible says so. America’s beliefs and laws regarding marriage are so starkly different from the authors of the Bible, they’re irreconcilable.

In America, marriage usually works like this:

Two people of any gender, who are over the age of 18, pick someone freely, get to know them, have sex, fall in love, and move in together. One person then asks the other to marry them, and they go to a courthouse where they pay for a marriage certificate, pay someone with marriage-granting credentials to preside over a ceremony where vows are exchanged, and then both parties’ assets become legally tied to each other. If the marriage is heterosexual, the woman will usually replace her last name with her husband’s last name, though she’s under no obligation to. They can get divorced for any reason, but they have to apply for a divorce license and jump through so much legal red tape they have to hire a lawyer to manage all the paperwork until they finally stand in front of a judge who legally terminates their marriage and often sets new laws for one or both parties to follow such as child visitation schedules, child support, alimony, etc. Courts tend to rule in favor of women more than men.

In ancient Jewish culture and the Torah, marriage works like this:

Any woman who has sex before marriage is stoned to death. Depending on the circumstances, any man who has sex before marriage will either be stoned to death or he’ll have to pay the girl’s father a bunch of shekels of silver. If a man rapes an unwed virgin, he has to buy her for fifty shekels of silver and may never divorce her.

There’s no legal age of consent. When a man wants to marry a girl or woman, he goes to her father and asks if he will sell his daughter to him. They agree on a price, and the groom pays the father. There is a ceremony, after which the husband takes his wife to his home and has sex with her. If she is a virgin, her hymen will bleed when it’s broken. After consummating the marriage, the husband will bring the bloody bed sheet out of the house for the community to see, and they’ll parade it through the streets in celebration. If it’s found that the bride is not a virgin, she’ll be brought in front of her father’s house and stoned to death by the community. Then the bride’s father will have to return the groom’s money and pay him more shekels of silver to make amends for selling a used product that was advertised as new.

Men are allowed to buy multiple wives, and they can own female slaves who aren’t their wives and have sex with them legally if their wife is barren. When the baby is born, the mother lays under the slave as she gives birth so that the wife is giving birth symbolically. If you’re the king of the theocracy God intended to rule the world, you can own as many wives and sex slaves as the nation’s taxes will pay for… as long as your wives and slaves are of Jewish descent.

Also, if a man has sex with a woman who is on her period, then they both have to be exiled. If anyone has sex with an animal or a member of the same sex, they’re to be put to death.

There are a few circumstances where divorce is legal, like adultery. Though, it’s not really divorce since the adulterer will be stoned to death. But if a woman manages to leave her husband, she probably won’t be able to remarry since she’s no longer a virgin, and since she’s a second-class citizen with almost no rights, this pretty much leaves her with only two career paths: forager or slave.

Deuteronomy 22: 13-29

Leviticus 20:13

Leviticus 20:18

1 Kings 11:1-3

So when Americans say marriage is holy because the Bible says so, they prove two things: One, they don’t know what the Bible says about marriage. Two, their moral code is an un-researched, unconsidered assimilation of pop culture, which is ignorant but still better than Biblical dogma.

American Christians can try to justify their apostasy by saying Jesus made the Torah obsolete, but just because he forgave us for breaking the law, doesn’t mean he abolished the law. The only two things Jesus changed about marriage are that you shouldn’t kill adulterers anymore, and the only justification for divorce is adultery. He and his followers did, however, reconfirm that slavery is still the natural order of life.

John 8: 1-7

Matthew 19: 3-8

Matthew 5: 17-19

Dozens of passages from the Old and New Testament that condone slavery

American Christians only follow the rules in the Bible that coincide with their modern beliefs. They ignore and excuse the rest. The fact that they believe in customs and laws that contradict the Bible proves they don’t believe in the Bible.

Not only is it possible to use common sense and secular reasoning to create moral rules outside of divine intervention, but Americans have been doing it all along. That’s how our modern customs and culture evolved from the primitive barbarism of Jewish theocracy, and the world is better since Jews and Christians stopped obeying the Bible. The less they pretend to, the better the world gets. Imagine how much better life would be if they just dropped the whole charade altogether and let us all be free to do whatever works best for us.

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

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Leave a comment | tags: biblical marriage, christian marriage tradition, christian mythology, marriage traditions, obsolete customs, The Bible is Mythology | posted in christian culture

October 14, 2017

Christians, You Believe In Science

By wise sloth

New rule: Christians aren’t allowed to dismiss scientific evidence as here-say using the excuse “Science is just theories.” The reason you can’t use that excuse anymore is that you believe in science. You put your faith in science every moment of every day, and you sleep more securely at night because of the faith you have in science than because of your belief in the Bible.

You have faith that water will freeze when its temperature drops below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. You have faith that when you send an electric charge through a tube of halogen gas it’ll release light. You put your faith in science in action every time you take a drink of pasteurized milk. You don’t ask God what the five-day weather forecast is going to be. You ask a meteorologist.

The words you’re reading were typed on the Internet. The human race used everything it knew about the fundamental properties of electricity, light, atoms, gravity, physics, and problem-solving to create a machine that is literally wrapped around the entire globe directing rivers of beaming information packets that exist and yet don’t exist. All of this is built on scientific principles you take for granted.

Human beings have also successfully used science to send human beings to the moon and remote-controlled robots to Mars. Physics may be theories, but they’re reliable enough to send a rocket from one rotating, orbiting planet to another rotating, orbiting planet, and send back pictures. Every astronaut that has gone to space has bet their life on their faith in our understanding of physics, and if you’ve ever flown in a plane, rode a car or a roller coaster then you’ve bet your life on your faith in science too.

There is nothing sinister about that. It’s a relief. You can sleep well knowing your carbon monoxide/smoke detector will protect your family. You can have faith that chemists and biologists understand the theories behind the periodic table of elements and the human body well enough to design the vitamins and medicines you take. Every suburban parent has faith that if a child drinks Drano it will die. Most suburban parents probably couldn’t even explain the science behind why drinking Drano will kill a person, but they don’t need to know all the boring details because they have faith.

It’s not fair to put your faith in science 99.9% of the time, but the minute you need a vague, cop-out excuse to win an argument, then you make a big deal about how science is all of a sudden evil and unreliable. That’s not a valid argument; that’s a defense mechanism.

There’s no reason to even go there. Science isn’t the bad guy. It’s not out to get anyone. Science’s only agenda is reporting what it’s observed. It’s just looking at what’s happened in the past and saying, “I bet if we did that again the same thing would happen.” In some ways, science is just stating the obvious. Well, if people standing around pointing out the obvious are constantly disagreeing with you, then at some point you should take a step back and consider the possibility that the source of confusion isn’t that scientists have a sinister agenda; the source of the confusion might just be that you’re wrong.

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

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Leave a comment | posted in christian culture

October 14, 2017

Christian Billboards Atheists Should Make

By wise sloth

Note 1: These are all actual quotes taken from the Bible word for word.

Note 2: These quotes would make good refrigerator magnets as well.

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

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Leave a comment | tags: anti bible message, atheist billboards, atheist media, christian mythology, evil bible verses, immoral bible teachings, The Bible is Mythology | posted in Preaching, Witnessing and Arguing with Christians

October 13, 2017

It’s Time To Stop Mutilating Baby Boy’s Genitals

By wise sloth

Every year millions of baby boys around the world have the foreskin of their penis surgically removed in a procedure called circumcision. This surgery is almost never necessary. It’s purely cosmetic, and it’s done at the request of the parents. The baby has no input, no choice and doesn’t even know it’s happening. Every year hundreds of children die from infections following a circumcision or are permanently deformed from failed operations. There have even been cases where boys survived complications but lost their penis and were raised as girls causing them deep-rooted confusion and anxiety which often led to suicide.

Why do so many boys have their genitals mutilated during infancy? The main reason this practice ever caught on and became so widespread is because Judaism and Christianity caught on and became widespread. Those two religions assert that the following words were dictated by the creator of the universe, and says:

“Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” Genesis 17:9-14

So according to the book of Genesis, the creator of the universe demanded that all baby boys have their genitals mutilated, otherwise they would be cut off from His people for breaking His one-sided arrangement with humanity. It’s also worth drawing attention to the fact that verses 12 and 13 approve of slavery.

The book of Genesis doesn’t command that female children should have to suffer genital mutilation, but according to Deuteronomy 22:13-28, their burden in the covenant God made with humanity is that they have to submit to being sold into slavery by their fathers.

If it sounds odd to you that an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing, infinitely-intelligent being would request that baby boys have their genitals mutilated and girls be sold into slavery, then consider this alternative explanation: The Bible isn’t the word of God. It’s one of thousands of primitive mythologies our ancestors invented to explain things they didn’t understand and justify their existing culture.

Even if you hold firm that the Bible is the word of God, you would still never even consider the idea of selling your daughter into slavery regardless of what it says in Deuteronomy 22:13-28. Social Darwinism killed that cultural practice long ago and for obvious reasons. Every modern suburbanite has moved on from believing in something as barbaric as selling our daughters into slavery… yet we’re still holding onto the practice of mutilating our sons’ penises.

When you put aside supernatural justifications for mutilating baby boys’ penises, there are very few practical justifications left and none that stand the test of logical scrutiny. Some people say circumcised penises look better. That’s a matter of opinion, and one human being’s opinion doesn’t supersede another human being’s right to their body. It would be unconscionable to dictate that women should have her labia cut off because someone else thought it would be nice; if that’s true then it’s equally unconscionable for a baby boy to have his foreskin cut off at another person’s whim.

It has also been argued that it’s healthier for boys to have their foreskin removed because it prevents the risk of grime getting trapped in the groin area and becoming infected. This argument is weak for two reasons. First, if your lifestyle is so unsanitary that you’re not washing your penis, you were going to get an infection or worse somewhere anyway.

Second, it’s unlikely that the foreskin of the penis was a design flaw that requires human intervention to correct. The more you know about how the human body is designed the more it will amaze you. It’s so well designed that many people cite its miraculous complexity and efficiency as evidence that God exists. Regardless of whether or not God exists, the chances of the foreskin being a design flaw is slim to none.

To this, you might say, “God does exist. His name is Yahweh, and He divinely inspired the Bible. I may not understand why the creator of the universe would want us to mutilate our sons’ penises, but it’s not my place to question God. So that’s what I’m going to do.”

To that I would say, then why don’t you demand that your politicians pass a law reflecting what God commanded in Leviticus 19:20-22, which says that whenever a man sleeps with a female slave who is promised to another man, he must sacrifice a ram at the entrance to the local elders’ tent to make amends for his crime?

No sane, rational person would literally expect men who have sex with unwed slaves to have to sacrifice a ram at the entrance to their civic/religious leaders’ tent as penance. Atheists, agnostics and most Christians have already stopped accepting this because we know that God didn’t command it; it’s a barbaric concept that could only have been imagined by primitive tribesmen who believed in mythology. The same is true for male circumcision. It always has been and always will be. That’s why it’s long past time to stop mutilating baby boys’ genitals. Men’s penises aren’t broken, and fixing what isn’t broken only destroys it.

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

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Leave a comment | tags: christian culture, christian ethics. bible ethics, christian mythology, circumcision debate, male circumcision, The Bible is Mythology | posted in toxic christianity

October 13, 2017

15 Mind Control Techniques Both Churches And Cults Use

By wise sloth

Too Long; Didn’t Read: Watch the video below or read this list about cults and then think about how much of what they said applies to normal church services and doctrine.

1. Mandatory, regular attendance

Mind control techniques and hypnosis don’t last forever. Perpetual manipulation requires perpetual renewal. That’s why Coca~Cola won’t let you turn around without seeing a Coca~Cola billboard. Of course, no cult could send their followers to basic training every single week for a full re-indoctrination, but they don’t have to; all they need is one hour a week for refresher training.

2. Big, fancy, majestic buildings

A Catholic once told me that the reason Catholic churches are so majestic is it helped illiterate peasants understand the majesty of the Lord. Even if that were the intention (which I’m sure it wasn’t), the reality is that churches are artistic masterpieces meticulously designed to overwhelm the senses and make the viewer feel euphoric and humbled. Just standing in an empty cathedral can put you in a trance state.

If you’re surrounded by images of people who made bigger sacrifices than you to the in-group and were justly rewarded then you’ll feel pressure to conform with their ideology without anyone having to say a word to you. Also, your instinctively going to transfer your awe and respect for the building to the building’s owner or spokesperson.

3. Hierarchical leadership

Every cult has a hierarchical leadership structure because the point of having a cult is to have followers who will revere the leaders and give them all their money. Cult leaders get people to follow them by claiming to be envoys of God. Every church does this.

Many churches won’t allow you to officially join until you undergo a ritual that symbolically changes you from a member of the lost, miserable outsiders into a saved, superior member of the in-crowd. But you’ll only be allowed to be a follower at the servile end of the pyramid-shaped authority structure. The only way to become a leader is to either start your own cult or work your way up the ranks. This stacks the ranks with true believers who will defend the leader and give his social authority legitimacy.

4. Charismatic leaders

The biggest red flag you might be involved with a cult is if the organization revolves around a professional charismatic leader. When you go to church you’ll sit down and listen to a charismatic marketer give a 45-minute infomercial. Even if everyone from the preacher to the congregation has the best intentions, the end result is the same. Poor people are swindled out of their money, and the charismatic leader gets to live like a demigod surrounded by obedient followers.

5. Trance stimulation

When you enter your ornate church on Sunday morning, one of the first things you’ll do is sing hymns with the congregation. The majestic music, combined with the majestic building and the thrill of performing an action in unison with other members of the in-crowd will work you into a trance state that will make you susceptible to hypnosis. If you’re singing about being willfully obedient then you’re just hypnotizing yourself, and you’re hypnotizing the people standing around you listening to you sing about the virtue of willful obedience, servitude, sacrifice, and faith. Even if that’s not the intent, that’s the outcome. Even if you don’t know it’s happening, it’s happening. Even if everyone was forewarned and knew it was happening it would still work on some of the participants.

6. Repetitive drills and consequences for nonconformity

In addition to singing, a good cult would require its victims to perform rote physical drills like marching, dancing, kneeling or clapping. The moment you participate in a drill you’re being obedient. You didn’t just kneel or march or clap. You followed an order without thinking about it, and the more you do that the more likely you are to do it again. Eventually, the charismatic leader won’t be asking you to do calisthenics. He’ll be asking for money or a favor. What’s more interesting than that though. If you can get a group of people used to following your orders and acting in unison you can eventually give the whole group an order, and they’ll act in unison. That would give you the power to tell a group of people to go build a house or go burn a house down.

7. Separating the in-crowd from the non-believers

It’s common practice for cults to tell their recruits that the world can be divided into two kinds of people: those who are inside the group and those who are outside the group. The people inside the group are always saved and admirable. The people outside the group are always lost, unworthy and detestable.

If you believe this, then you’ll base your identity on your affiliation with the group, and you won’t want to spend time with people whose clearer perception of reality could endanger your faith in the group.

8. The call to action is to entrench yourself in the group and base your life on its doctrine.

Church can be a lot of fun, and you can experience a lot of genuine moments of happiness with the people you love, but the Sunday morning agenda always centers around the sermon. The point of the sermon is to deliver a message, and the message is that you need to base your self-worth on your membership in the group and demonstrate obedience to the group’s ideology. You’re told this will bring you closer to God. Mostly it brings you closer to the group and the offering plate.

9. The charismatic leader manipulates your emotions

Charismatic leaders will try to mesmerize you with the way they dress and talk. They guilt trip you. They make impossible promises and horrific threats. They get the crowd worked up into a vulnerable, irrational frenzy right before they deliver an ultimatum.

10. You’re pressured to take your commitment to the next level

The point of every cult service is to build up to the moment where the charismatic leader makes a call to action. The call for action is to either give money, take your commitment to the cult to the next level, humiliate yourself or at least honor those who do. This is brazen manipulation, and it works. Creepy cults leaders know that, and quaint suburban pastors know that.

11. You’re encouraged to confess, humiliate yourself and mimic others

If a cult leader can convince his flock that he has more spiritual authority than them and they are unworthy in the eyes of God, then his control over them is almost guaranteed, Then the followers will have total trust in their leader when he tells them that the only path to salvation is to do whatever the cult asks of them.

The more guilty a cult leader can make their followers feel, the more righteous it will make them look. When followers confess and fall to their knees in front of others, it makes the experience more real for the confessor and the audience.

12. You’re asked for money, and your worth is tied to the amount of money you give

Most church leaders don’t expect every member of the congregation to devote their lives to the church like a hardcore cult. Many preachers are happy if they can just get everyone to put money in the collection plate every week. That’s as unethical as selling people fake lottery tickets.

If anyone asks you for money…they probably just want your money. If they demand money from you and threaten you and your family for not paying up, then you’re can be even more sure they just want your money. If the person asking you for money is wearing a suit that cost more money than what you’re wearing…then don’t give that person any more money.

13. You’re encouraged to socialize with the in-crowd

The most effective way to control the minds of a group of followers would be to lock them in an isolated compound together where the charismatic leader could control every aspect of their lives like the military does to its members. In suburbia that’s just not possible. So the trick is to keep your in-group together as much as possible and get them to willfully ostracize themselves from the rest of society as much as possible.

I’m not saying that if you hang out with your bowling buddies when you’re not bowling then that means you’re forming a cult. But when a charismatic leader organizes constant events that keep his donors together… you can predict the outcome.

14. Using self-study, indoctrination techniques and policing your peers in your own time

The amount of Coca~Cola advertisements you’ve seen in your life attests to how quickly the effects of manipulation can fade and thus how important it is to constantly top-up your message in your victim’s short-term memory. One way television commercials do this is by getting a jingle stuck in your head. If you walk around all day repeating the advertiser’s custom-designed message in your head then you’re doing the advertiser’s job of reminding you of the message.

Churches tell you to read the Bible constantly and to fill your house with Biblically themed merchandise. If they can get you to eat, sleep and breathe church doctrine, then you’ll become your own snake oil salesman. Then you’ll do the charismatic leader’s job of manipulating you for him. If you police your peers, then you’ll practically force people to keep giving the cult money and obedience.

15. Recruitment

Cults need a constant stream of new victims in order to finance the charismatic leader’s lifestyle. So…if you run into an organization that is constantly having recruitment drives to get people to come listen to an infomercial where they’re asked to give money at the end…don’t go there. You know what’s going to happen, and it only ends well for the charismatic leader…assuming he doesn’t get too drunk on power and do something crazy.

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4 Comments | tags: christian mythology, church cult, church mind control, clergy conmen, cult red flags, The Bible is Mythology | posted in Preaching, Witnessing and Arguing with Christians

October 13, 2017

21 Reasons It’s Impossible To Argue With Christians

By wise sloth

1. Christians are close-minded.

This sounds insulting at first, but hear me out. Christianity demands its believers have faith. To have faith is to believe in your preconceived conclusion no matter what. Faith is the very definition of being closed-minded.

A good Christian isn’t supposed to consider divergent (aka heretical or blasphemous) points of view. So when a Christian tries to debate me I have to be suspicious as to whether or not they’re really trying to have an open-minded debate or simply trying to blindly argue against my position.

In my experience, the Christians I have debated never had any intention of considering my point of view. They just wanted to tear me down so they could feel secure in their dogma and hopefully convert me.

It’s not unfair to say “Christians are closed-minded,” because believing in Christianity doesn’t require passive faith in the absence of evidence. Believing in Christianity requires active denial of evidence that proves you’re wrong. The next 20 items on this list are ways Christians use logical fallacies and cognitive dissonance to sidestep the evidence that Christianity is mythology.

Belief in Christianity isn’t one of those issues where everyone gets to believe what they want and everyone else should respect that. Christianity deserves no more reverence or patience than the mythologies Pacific Islanders made up thousands of years ago. Jesus is no more the savior of mankind than Maui is the hero who pulled New Zealand out of the sea with a fishing pole. Believing either of those stories requires one to deny mountains of evidence. So yes, it’s an accurate generalization to say that Christians are close-minded.

I know this sounds harsh, but that’s only because the truth hurts. You don’t have to take my word for it. Anyone can put Christianity to the test. As long as they don’t hide behind logical fallacies and mental gymnastics, they can discover for themselves the Bible doesn’t hold up.

Real photo of a sign in front of a church that says, "Don't be so open-minded your brains fall out."

2. Christians don’t play by the rules of logic.

The sane way to think is to analyze the facts in front of you and try to find meaningful and consistent connections in the data to draw consistently reproducible conclusion from. Then, once you’ve come to a conclusion, you should be eager to test it against new evidence to see if it still holds up. If it doesn’t, you should update your conclusion until new evidence disproves that conclusion in part or in whole. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. If both members of a debate do that, then two people can start with opposing conclusions, analyze the data and agree on a reasonably objective conclusion.

Christians start from the assumption that the Bible is fact and look for evidence to support that conclusion. There’s no point having a debate with someone who doesn’t question their own data or objectively analyze their opponent’s data. It’s even more pointless to argue with someone who reverse-engineers fantasy data to negate actual, empirical data.

Creationism is full of examples of reverse engineered fantasy data. You can’t win a debate with a creationist because your hands are tied with reason and evidence while creationists have free reign to make up unverifiable data on the fly. They can even use data that is objectively, empirically false, and they all they have to say to back it up is, “No. You’re wrong,” whereas a scientific thinker will have to use the scientific method to prove they’re right.

Cooking evidence to support your preconceived conclusion gives you a powerful advantage in an argument. Since you’re not bound by the rules of logic, you can say anything you want, twist anything how you want it, and makes excuses to dismiss actual logic or evidence. After having a number of Christians use this style of debate against me I’ve become extremely hesitant to debate Christians because it’s unfair, unproductive, immoral and insulting.

3. There’s a good chance they’ll use hearsay and/or dubious sources to back up their claims.

Even when I was a Christian attending an overpriced Christian university I recognized that half the statistics and secondary sources my Christian brethren quoted were unreliable. So I was very hesitant to use Christian literature to back up my arguments.

Now that I’m on the other side of the fence, I’ve argued against Christians who quote statistics and facts from unverified and unverifiable sources, which is effectively the same as just making up the data on their own. Two people can’t have a productive argument when one of them is using made up data.

Similarly, Christians will often use subjective experiences to back up their argument. For instance, they’ll say, “I prayed that I would get better from a disease, and I did. So Jesus must have healed me.” or “I survived a car wreck, and it surprised the doctors in the emergency room.” or “I felt a strong heavenly presence once. So Jesus must be real.” These are all examples of basing decisions on emotional experiences, and attributing divine intervention to secular events… especially in cases where doctors saved someone’s life using scientific principles. I can’t use reason and evidence to argue a point against someone who uses subjective emotions to make decisions that ignore facts.

4. Christians will make stuff up and interpret scriptures however is convenient.

If you ask a Christian how an all loving god could fill the books of Exodus and Leviticus with barbaric rules such as when it’s okay to beat your slaves and when you should kill your children they’ll quote Mathew 5:17 ““Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” Then they’ll say, “See, that passage erases all the laws of the Old Testament… except the ones we want to keep, like the Ten Commandments.”

This passage could mean that modern people don’t have to follow all the barbaric and inconvenient laws in the Old Testament, but nobody really knows that for sure. At the end of the day, Christians just interpret this passage however is convenient for them and declare dogmatically that they’re unquestionably right.

I told a Christian once that the Bible was chauvinistic. He got offended and said that wasn’t true. So I pointed out 1 Corinthians 14:34 “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.” The Christian laughed and said, “No, no, no. Paul was only directing that comment to a single group of unruly woman at the church he was writing to.” Maybe, but there’s no way to back that claim up. That was just a convenient argument he, or someone else, made up and accepted as fact.

A lot of times Christians’ arguments sound reasonable, especially when they deliver them so confidently, but a lot of times, when you scratch the surface, you’ll find they can’t back their arguments up, because they’re just convenient excuses someone invented.

5. The Bible is true because it says so.

How do Christians know the Bible is true? Because the Bible says so, or at least it implies it. You can’t argue with that. It’s logic proof. It’s sanity proof. There’s no point arguing with someone who can always prove that they’re right by pointing at a piece of paper that says they’re right. So why argue at all when I’ve lost the argument before I’ve even started?

6. Every Christian is an expert. Every non-Christian needs to study more.

It doesn’t matter how long I was a Christian, how many times I read the Bible, how many books I’ve read about the Bible and ancient Middle Eastern culture or how logical my observations on the Bible are. Nor does it matter how little any given Christian understands the Bible. In my experience with debating Christians, it doesn’t matter what I say or how much supporting evidence I give, because most of my arguments have ended with them saying, “I don’t know the rebuttals to your arguments, but I know you’re wrong, because if you really understood the Bible, you’d believe it. So you need to go back and study the Bible more.”

If I respond, “Maybe you don’t understand the Bible,” they’ll just say, “No, you don’t. Pray to God, and He’ll show you the truth.” There’s no amount of evidence I could find to prove the Bible is mythology, because as long as I don’t believe in its divinity, I’ll always be unqualified to debate it.

7. Non-Christians take every passage out of context.

No matter what passage you pick out of the Bible to criticize, Christians tend to dismiss you by saying, “You’re taking that passage out of context.” It doesn’t matter how qualified the Christian is to interpret that passage. It doesn’t matter how many passages before and after the verse in question you include in the argument. It doesn’t matter how cut and dry the message in the passage is. If I debate passages in the Bible with a Christian, there’s a good chance they’re going to tell me I took it out of context, and there’s no argument I can use to prove to them that my stance has any validity because they assume that my lack of faith is proof of lack of understanding.

8.The Bible contradicts itself.

Whenever I try to point out to Christians how absurd the Bible is, they prove I don’t understand the passages in question and am taking them out of context by quoting other passages that contradict the ones I bring up. Then they’ll say, “See. You’re wrong.” Call me crazy, but I believe the 63, 779 documented contradictions in the Bible, make it less credible and impossible to debate.

9. The Old Testament is obsolete…except when its the word of God.

As I mentioned earlier, if you quote an illogical or absurd passage from the Old Testament there’s a good chance the Christian you’re talking to will wipe away thousands of years of their own religious history and thousands of pages of their religious book by saying the Old Testament doesn’t count, because Jesus made it obsolete.

Therefore, non-Christians can’t introduce any passage from the Old Testament into an argument. However, if a Christian ever needs to quote a passage from the Old Testament to prove a point, then any passage they choose will automatically become the unerring and eternal word of God and would be blasphemous to question.

10. The Bible is the word of God…except when it’s not.

Christians tend to use another, similar technique on the Old and New Testament alike. If they like a passage in the Bible they’ll simply say it’s the unerring and eternal word of God and that it’s blasphemous to question it. However, any passages they don’t like, they’ll dismiss by saying that fallible humans acted as God’s pen to write the Bible. So you have to take that into consideration and use prayer, reason and common sense to determine which parts you have to listen to.

I’ve had several Christians tell me that the Bible never even hinted that it was unerring or that you have to have complete faith in it. It’s extremely frustrating to argue with someone who can constantly pick and choose which of the statements made in their premise are open to argument. It’s enough to make me extremely hesitant to debate Christians.

11. Everything is a metaphor…when it’s convenient.

Try telling a Christian that you can’t live in the belly of a whale for 3 days. Long hair doesn’t give you magical powers. There was never a talking snake in a magic garden passing out magic fruit to mammals with no belly buttons. Nobody saw God and Satan taking juvenile bets on Job’s faith. Donkeys don’t talk. The world wasn’t flooded, and two of every animal didn’t fit on one boat for forty days.

Christians tend to sidestep these absurdities by saying, “That wasn’t meant to be taken literally. That was a metaphor.” But if they want to take any of those, or any other passage, literally, then will, and I can’t prove that they’re wrong. You can’t argue with someone who can dismiss any of their own premises as a metaphor.

And another thing, if everything in the Bible is a metaphor, then maybe the story of Jesus was just a metaphor too.

12. Christianity is a moving target

Every point I’ve made about how Christians argue is wrong, and every criticism I have about Christianity is wrong… to someone. That’s because the Bible never explicitly states what Christianity is, and no two Christians will agree 100% on every aspect of Christianity. I can’t say, “This belief of Christianity is illogical and absurd,” because some Christian out there will say, “That’s not what true Christians believe.” If I say, “A lot of Christians believe it.” They can say, “Well, they’re not true Christians.” And

Every Christian has to use the No True Scotsman argument eventually because there are no true Christians. There’s just a bunch of people projecting their own cultural values into a foreign, obsolete book they’ll never understand.

When you go into a debate with a Christian you have no idea how they define Christianity. So you have no idea what they’ll claim or dismiss. It doesn’t matter how accepted the beliefs you’re arguing against are, if you say Christianity is anything other than exactly what they believe it is, then they’ll shoot you down for not understanding what Christianity really is. So fighting Christianity is like fighting a shape-shifting ghost with multiple personality disorders who is in denial.

13. If all else fails, you’re going to hell and/or you’re a fool.

Psalm 14:1 states, “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.”

1 Corinthians 2:14 states, “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” or

1 Corinthians 3:19 states “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God.”

If you’re a non-Christian, it doesn’t matter how knowledgeable you are about the textual or historical context in the Bible. Your point of view is invalid, because why would a Christian listen to a Hell-bound servant of Satan? By Biblical standards, they shouldn’t. The Bible says to have faith and put Satan behind them.

It’s circular logic to say that any criticism of the Bible is foolish because the Bible says that any criticisms of the Bible are foolish. Not only that, but these passages teach Christians that losing an argument proves you’re right. That’s logic-proof. It’s impossible to debate someone if the premise of their argument is that you and all your evidence are automatically invalid.

14. Faith and reason are apples and oranges.

Back a Christian into a corner with enough facts and logic, and they’ll eventually resort to sidestepping reality by saying that faith/religion fills a void that logic/science can’t.

The idea is that logic and science can only take you so far in understanding this giant, bizarre universe we’ve all found ourselves stranded in; and when those tools fail, faith/religion pick up the trail and fill in the gaps. Therefore, you can not and should not tread on the domain of religion, because it’s exempt from logical criticisms.

On its own, this argument sounds nice. It ties up the universe in a pretty package with a nice bow on top. In reality, this argument is meaningless. Remember that religion is merely an expression of a primitive society’s cultural values. So faith in religion is not a transcendental experience. It’s just refusing to think about what you’ve been told. Choosing faith over logic is ultimately just choosing ignorance over awareness.

So yes, faith and logic are separate languages, but faith is the language of insanity. Math is the language of science, and logic is the language of sanity. Since I don’t have the psychiatric training to communicate effectively with people who demonize sanity, I can’t debate Christians about the difference between their antiquated delusions and scientific reality.

15. What would we argue about anyway?

Christianity is mythology, and every single page of the Bible contains evidence to support this conclusion. Debating individual passages in the Bible is like debating individual passages in Mein Kampf. Even Hitler was right about a few things. That doesn’t mean I’m joining the Third Reich. (Fun fact, do you know what the First Reich was? The Holy Roman Empire.)

The only debate I could possibly have with a Christian would be me trying to convince them they’ve accidentally based their life on an embarrassing mythology, while my Christian opponent would try to convince me to ignore all the glaring evidence in the Bible that reveals it as a primitive culture’s mythology. Well, I’m not going to abandon reason, and Christians aren’t going to abandon their faith over the course of a debate. So we really don’t have much to discuss anyway.

16. Why would I argue about a book you don’t completely believe in or follow yourself?

As pointed out in reason #10, every self-proclaimed Christian believes Christianity is something different. But if we can’t agree on anything else about Christianity I have to assume that being a Christian means being Christ-like. Being a Christian means asking yourself, “What would Jesus do?” and then actually doing what Jesus would do.

This raises the question, what did Jesus do? Jesus gave away everything he owned and devoted his life to helping people in need and publicly advocating forgiveness, acceptance, and love. By that definition, I’ve never met a single Christian in my entire life. Not even close.

All the Christians I’ve met make up for their lack of walking the walk by talking louder and meaner. If you’re not going to walk the walk then I don’t want to hear you talk the talk. Don’t tell me I need to devote my life to a cause you won’t devote yours too. Even without living like Christ, Christians don’t even believe in the Bible.

As pointed out in reason #10, before I can have a discussion with a Christian I have to establish all the passages you’ve dismissed as being metaphors or obsolete until the only teachings in the Bible left for you to follow are the ones that coincide with your modern cultural values, and we already share most of those. Don’t tell me to take a step backward when you’re already an apostate yourself.

17. When all else fails they just shout.

If you read enough arguments between Christians and non-believers on the internet you’ll see Christians who, unable to make a logical argument, will just type something like, “JESUS IS LORD!” as if it were fact. Shouting that your conclusion is right and walking away doesn’t prove you’re right. It’s not even good witnessing. What it does do is make you look like a lunatic and underscore the fact that you have no real argument to make.

18…. or they’ll accuse you of being judgmental

Christian mythology drives people insane, makes them immoral and ruins society. Those are strong words, but they’re true. Christian mythology is crippling humanity. I don’t say this to be mean. I say it because I value humanity, and I want every single human to fulfill their potential, but humanity can’t fulfill its potential as long as it’s being crippled by Christian mythology.

I don’t say these things because I’m a smug, condescending, judgmental jerk who enjoys tearing down other people just to see them hurt. I hate the insanity that Christian mythology plagues humanity with, but I don’t hate the Christian who has been brainwashed and driven insane by it.

Criticizing the obvious flaws in Christian mythology is like pointing out the broccoli in a friend’s teeth. It’s constructive criticism. To say it’s doing Christians a favor is an understatement. I’m trying to save Christians from wasting their lives and bringing the rest of humanity down with them.

But since Christian mythology exploits brainwashing techniques that shut down your ability to reason, when I try to tell my fellow human beings the truth and set them free, they respond that I’m just being judgmental, and I think I’m better than everyone else, and I should just let people have the right to believe what they want to believe. And they’ll say this completely ignoring the fact that the premise of their belief system says that I’m such a terrible person that I deserve to burn for eternity, and every Christian is obligated to cram their beliefs down my throat for the rest of my life.

19. Even when Christians admit defeat they still refuse to admit that they’re wrong.

You can overwhelm a Christian with evidence and arguments supporting the conclusion that Christianity is mythology, and even after they’ve been completely proven wrong they’ll still say something like, “I don’t care if I’m wrong. I don’t care if nothing I’m saying makes sense and it contradicts a million facts. I feel safe as a Christian. My beliefs help me get through life, and as long as that doesn’t hurt anybody then you should let me go on living my life even if it’s not true.”

It’s disheartening to show someone the light and have them look straight at it and say, “Nah, I’d rather continue living a white lie.” As Jesus put it, it’s like throwing pearls to swine. Jesus himself said not to bother wasting your time trying to enlighten those who have chosen to embrace ignorance. Granted, I still argue with Christians sometimes in the hopes that even though I’m almost guaranteed to lose the argument, I may still be able to plant a seed of doubt that will blossom later.

20. Sometimes their arguments just don’t make sense.

Rarely, but sometimes, you’ll argue with a Christian and they’ll say something like, “God is one, and we know the one because all are one! Those who are not of that which is will be without when the lamb of Judea shows his face within, and there will be no argument then!” I’ll argue with more rational, eloquent Christians, but someone who speaks in fanatical prose can’t be reasoned with, and experience has taught me not to try.

21. The smarter the Christian, the better they are at reverse engineering excuses to justify their preconceived conclusion.

There are many extremely intelligent people who believe in Christianity and can give you extremely well thought-out explanations for all the hard questions the Bible raises, but no matter how convincing those explanations sound, they’re reverse-engineered to support a preconceived conclusion.

It would take a Christian thousands, if not millions of words to answer the Bible’s hard questions, but a skeptic can explain every single one of those questions in just four words, “The Bible is mythology.” You can find evidence of it on every page of the Bible, and it answers all of the Bible’s hard questions completely, succinctly, elegant, and in a way the conforms to humanity’s collective scientific understanding of the observable universe.

Christians have to spend thousands of words on their explanations because they have to reverse engineer their way around evidence that conflicts with their preconceived conclusion. The smarter the Christian, the better mental gymnastics they can do.

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2 Comments | tags: arguing religion, christian apologetics, christian mythology, cognitive dissonance, religious debate, The Bible is Mythology | posted in Preaching, Witnessing and Arguing with Christians

October 13, 2017

3 Ways Christianity Was Largely Responsible For The Holocaust

By wise sloth

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While Christianity wasn’t the sole catalyst for the Holocaust, there is no doubt in my mind that Christianity set the stage for the Holocaust to happen to the extent that the Holocaust couldn’t have happened without Christianity.

1: Christianity financially and emotionally oppressed Germans leading up to WWII.

Churches exploited German Christians financially by requiring tithes, encouraging donations, selling indulgences and charging fees for breaking moral laws. This siphoned off much-needed income from the poor and gave it to the aristocracy of the Christian theocracy. Not only did this hurt the poor’s chances of living well in the present, but that lost income couldn’t be saved, invested or passed on to future generations. So over the course of several generations, the consequences of lost income compounded.

The church mentally abused the German populace by forbidding behavior that deviated from Church doctrine. People were put in the stocks for gossiping, ostracized for adultery and killed for witchcraft. If you go to any medieval torture museum in Germany today, most of the instruments of misery were used by the state to enforce Biblical morality. Medieval Germany under Christian rule was like Saudi Arabia is today under Islam. Everyone was forced to walk the line, and punishment for deviation was harsh.

2: Christianity was culturally oppressive to the Jews but economically favorable to them.

In the eyes of the Christian church, Jews were heretics and Jesus-killers. Since they rejected the teachings of salvation, they deserved to go to Hell. As a result, the good Christians ostracized them and forced them to form tight-knit, insular communities with other Jews.

Ostracizing the Jews taught them to be frugal and save their money for hard times to come. It also meant Jews had close business relationships with each other and could count on one another for financial support.

At the same time, Christianity practically handed the banking industry to the Jewish community. The New Testament forbid charging interest on loans. Since Christians couldn’t charge interest, they had no incentive to open banks. People still needed loans though. So the Jews stepped in and filled the need. Once the Jews had their hand in the financial sector, then money beget money, and the income gap between Jews and Christians grew.

3: Hitler hijacked German Christians’ existing prejudice towards Jews.

Your average Christians living in Germany saw they were the “have-nots” and the Jews were the “haves,” but they didn’t understand why. They just thought Jews were Jesus-killing, heretic, big-nose, stingy thieves… because that’s how the church had always taught Christians to see the Jews. Anti-Jew riots occurred in Germany well before World War II because Christianity had already established a well-defined environment for distrust, resentment, and hate.

After World War I, life in Germany was even more destitute for poor Christians than ever. Of course, the church didn’t open it coffers and give back all the money it had been taking from the poor for generations. So the masses stayed poor and disgruntled while the Jews kept getting richer.

That’s when Hitler stepped in and said, “I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator by defending myself against the Jew. I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”

Hitler merely played on the prejudices created by Christianity to blame the problems that were largely created by Christianity, on the Jews. Thus, Christianity played a central role in setting the stage for the Holocaust.

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Leave a comment | tags: christian culture, christian ethics. bible ethics, christian mythology, christianity holocaust, jewish persecution by christians, jews vs christians, The Bible is Mythology, toxic christianity | posted in toxic christianity

October 13, 2017

Never Forget Chick-Fil-A’s Inequality Appreciation Day

By wise sloth

Dan Carthy, COO of the American fast-food restaurant, Chick-Fil-A recently reconfirmed that the company opposes same-sex marriages. This led several American mayors to respond by saying that new Chick-Fil-A restaurants weren’t welcome in their cities. This led Fox News employee and controversy profiteer, Mike Huckabee to coordinate a Chick-Fil-A appreciation day on August 1st, 2012 in which conservative Americans were encouraged to buy fast food from Chick-Fil-A to show that they support free speech and the sanctity of traditional marriage. The publicity stunt was so successful that Chick-Fil-A broke its sales records that day.

This was a hollow victory for America. August 1st, 2012 will be remembered as a dark day in American history for several solid reasons. Most importantly, it doesn’t matter what your reasons are for opposing gay marriage. It doesn’t matter how good they sound on paper. If you prevent another human being from having the same rights as you then you oppose equal rights. “Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day” was nothing more than “Inequality Appreciation Day.” Americans turned out in droves on August 1st to celebrate their opposition to equality. That’s not something to be proud of. That’s shameful. This is how “Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day” looks to the rest of the world:

That’s a hollow victory, made even more hollow by the fact that it was a response to American mayors stating that Chick-Fil-A would not be welcome in their cities. That’s not a threat that any American mayor could (or would) have ever actually followed through on. The comments of those mayors were merely publicity stunts that put their names and faces on international news in an attempt to win liberal voters, but there was no liberal conspiracy behind their remarks. Their remarks weren’t proof that liberals are oppressing conservatives. The only people who have, are and will be oppressed throughout this whole ordeal are homosexuals, and it’s conservatives who are doing the oppressing. The ignorant threats made by these mayors only prove one thing: that the America’s political election system is so flawed that it allows ignorant people to be elected to positions of incredible power, and the three primary qualifications one needs in order to win these jobs are money, charisma, and lack of integrity. This whole Chick-Fil-A debacle should have rallied conservatives around the cause of election reform. Instead, conservatives are ignoring the root of the problem and fighting a phantom war against a liberal conspiracy that doesn’t exist at the expense of homosexuals…or as I like to call them, “human beings.” Nobody should be congratulating themselves for this.

Conservatives may have won a battle in their minds, but they’ve lost the war. If the war is to preserve the sanctity of Biblical teachings, then conservative America surrendered centuries ago. Americans are just pretending to be Christians. I hate pointing out the obvious, but apparently, it needs to be done. So let’s look at some quotes from the Bible:

Genesis 3:16- “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
Genesis 4:19- And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.
Genesis 26: 34- And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite.
Genesis 32:22- And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two women slaves, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok.
Exodus 21:2-27 These are the laws you are to set before them:If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him.If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free, then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life. If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do.If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter.If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights.If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money. Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death. However, if it is not done intentionally, but God lets it happen, they are to flee to a place I will designate. But if anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately, that person is to be taken from my altar and put to death. Anyone who attacks their father or mother is to be put to death. Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession. Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property. If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. An owner who hits a male or female slave in the eye and destroys it must let the slave go free to compensate for the eye. And an owner who knocks out the tooth of a male or female slave must let the slave go free to compensate for the tooth.
Exodus 22:25 If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.
Exodus 35:2-3- Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you a holy day, a sabbath of rest to the lord: whoever doeth work therein shall be put to death. Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day.
1 Corinthians 14:34-35 As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.”
1 Timothy 2:9 In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;
Mark 2:9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. (This is saying divorce is supposed to be illegal.)
Leviticus 19: 20 Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee. And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman, that is a bondmaid, betrothed to a husband, and not at all redeemed, nor freedom given her; she shall be scourged; they shall not be put to death, because she was not free.
Matthew 7:1-4 Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

I could go on, but this is enough to get the point across. American Christians already violate the sanctity of marriage, polygamy, slavery, interest-free loans, chauvinism, the Sabbath, and even clothing. Yet you draw the line at homosexuality. Why? When you break every other rule in the Bible, why bother putting your foot down on this one issue? You’re already going to hell yourself.

Actually, that’s not true. Read back through these passages from the Bible that I’ve quoted. Do these things sound like commandments that the creator of the universe would really give people? Or do they sound more like cultural standards primitive tribesmen wrote down after they were already being practiced and the authors just gave credit to God after the fact so these civil laws would have unquestionable authority backing them up?

Face it, Christianity is mythology. Cherry picking Christian doctrine and legally oppressing other people (in violation of the principle of separation of church and state) isn’t doing God’s work. It’s merely cherry picking and preserving an obsolete, primitive culture’s misunderstandings and lies. Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day wasn’t a victory for family values or spiritual righteousness. It was a victory for mythology. It was a victory for upholding beliefs that aren’t true. Believing in something that isn’t true is insanity. Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day was literally a victory for insanity. That’s not cause to celebrate. That’s cause to be afraid.

If you’re a conservative American and you’ve read this far, I don’t expect anything I’ve said will overturn your beliefs. So if you don’t take anything else away from this post, focus on this one fact: If conservative America spent half as much time and money on advocating electoral reform and anti-corruption legislation as it does oppressing minorities we could actually live in a safer, healthier, more prosperous world, but don’t you ever expect the world to get any better as long as oppression is the only cause that gets you off the couch and the farthest it gets you is the nearest fast food restaurant.

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October 13, 2017

It’s Time To Stop Celebrating Christmas

By wise sloth

It’s time to stop celebrating Christmas. It’s a ridiculous holiday, and it does more harm than good. Christmas was originally a Pagan holiday that celebrated the winter solstice, but 300 years after Jesus’s death, the Roman Christian theocrats made up a lie that Jesus was born on the winter solstice to steal the appeal of the celebration and undermine their competition. It’s one mythology telling a lie to undermine another mythology.

In the 1920’s marketers working for Coca~Cola invented the modern version of Santa Clause in order to co-op the grandeur of Christmas from the Christians and use it to indoctrinate gross consumerism into children, which is a distinctly un-Christian and un-Pagan practice. So Christmas is a celebration of irresponsibility, lies, and mythology. This holiday is an exercise in, and a celebration of, insanity.

Humanity is smart enough to lay this obsolete holiday to rest and move on. I suggest we replace Christmas with a new holiday called, “Just Help Someone Day.” You don’t kill a coniferous tree or spoil your children on Just Help Someone Day. You don’t dress up like a Pagan monster. You don’t put up lights or lawn decorations. You just go help somebody. The reason you celebrate Just Help Somebody Day is because it’s rational and empathetic. It’s what you should be doing anyway. If you simply must have presents and festive traditions then we could have Present Day, Hot Chocolate Day or Silly Hats Day. Let’s just celebrate life without pretending to believe in mythology and lies.

If we keep raising kids on absurd, irresponsible, anti-intellectual traditions they’ll keep living in a warped reality and acting accordingly foolish. If we get kids used to thinking critically and helping people, maybe they’ll retain those cultural practices into adulthood and pass them on to their kids. First, we have to raise the bar and stop celebrating Christmas.

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The Wise Sloth

1: You’re a mean person.

2: You own expensive luxury items.

3: You spend more time sitting in church than you do working in charity.

4: You habitually indulge in self-gratification.

5: You’re prejudiced.

6: You don’t live in an egalitarian commune.

7: You’re a pedophile.

8: You support the military.

9: You don’t speak Aramaic, Hebrew or at least Latin or Greek or have an intimate knowledge of ancient Middle Eastern history.

10: It’s been thousands of years since Jesus died.

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In America, marriage usually works like this:

In ancient Jewish culture and the Torah, marriage works like this:

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Note 1: These are all actual quotes taken from the Bible word for word.

Note 2: These quotes would make good refrigerator magnets as well.

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1. Mandatory, regular attendance

2. Big, fancy, majestic buildings

3. Hierarchical leadership

4. Charismatic leaders

5. Trance stimulation

6. Repetitive drills and consequences for nonconformity

7. Separating the in-crowd from the non-believers

8. The call to action is to entrench yourself in the group and base your life on its doctrine.

9. The charismatic leader manipulates your emotions

10. You’re pressured to take your commitment to the next level