Atheism Corner

Humanity in Progress

2011 Personal Daily Journal From the Stone Age

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While surfing the net yesterday I saw something that really caught my attention, and even though it is not my habit to pick on innocent bystanders but this one really shows the chains of religion on (what seems like) a young man who is trying to understand what is the right thing to do. When you read and understand this you will also understand how it is very possible for believers to murder babies in the name of god, since even their own mother will not escape the harsh religious and cultural sentence.

A link got me to a site called “turn to Islam”, a forum with people discussing many things, but this one looked special, check it out

Haram, My Mom is going to get Stoned

There is no information about this young man, but from the way he uses English I think its a safe bet to say that he is living in the West (“Blow off steam”), and it also seems like his mother has been divorced for a very long time, without it being a huge deal, also an indication that this post is not coming from someone living in Arabia. Even if this person is not living in the West it is still a testimony for the terrible problems that religions causes, in this case Islam, but to be honest it could have easily been any other religion.

“Zina” is a very strong word, it does not translate well into English and it carries with it very strong meaning of fornication and adultery, the punishment for this “crime” is death in some Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran (who knew, right?) and can also be imprisonment and lashing (separately or a combo), the normal procedure in the Arab world is stoning the couple.

This might be a good time to say that views differ on the subject of the punishment, and that it is much more a cultural thing then the actual word of God in the book, however it is done in the name of religion, and in the case before us it is very easy to understand that the writer is above all in a state of overwhelming fear that his mother will be stoned.

Let’s think for a moment about how this could play itself in a modern secular family. A young adult has a reason to believe that his mother is having sex with a guy who he know is still married, he could be concerned about the future, the guy’s intentions, his mother’s feelings etc. He might be brave enough to ask his mother to have a serious talk with him, and he might discover that the guy is getting a divorce, that his wife is actually cheating on him for years, or any other thing that would make the situation look differently. Our believing writer here does not have a chance.

He is torn between fear and the need to show solid evidence against his own mother so that his brothers and sisters come to his help in removing the sex offender from their home and lives, the whole part of him thinking about placing a hidden camera in his mother’s bedroom so he can film her having sex (!) only to show it to all his siblings and go after her with the proof he so desperately needs to save her from stoning.

The totalitarian nature of religion removes that thought of the individual, even of the group, we can see how he has no concern for his mother’s feelings and sexual needs, to the guy’s family or to anyone in this situation, he is obsessed with following the religious process and stamping his mother guilty.

Scroll down and you will see the sound advice other believers give him, “get your brothers and kick him out” is basically it, no one stands to protect that mother, no one gives pause to any kind of human feeling, its all God’s prescribed movements that they are taking, and we should all be very concerned that in November of 2011 this kind of robotic behavior is displayed, because if they care not for their own mothers that will not care for our children.

Glenn Beck Makes It So Easy to Be an Atheist

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Glenn Beck - Jesus and Meteorological Forecasts

You might think that an atheist like myself would not like Glenn Beck, for all kinds of reasons, well, its not true, I do like the man and he does make some sense sometimes. But Mr. Beck has a taste for the over drama and those critical moment when all eyes are focused on one point, to make his statements and go way, way over the top.

So Glenn Beck used the coming hurricane to explain to people that it is a message and that we should all understand this message, or else. And that is exactly why I love the man, he reminds us, in one swift press conference, of time long gone. It has not been a good hundred years since anyone from the church had come out to warn the people that god is mighty upset with their actions and is sending messages before he starts making us pay.

Hurricane “Irene” ended up being downgraded into a mere tropical storm when hitting New York City, but this should not divert attention from Glenn Beck’s warning and he efforts to get some more members in the church of latter day saints, who believe in an almost unblieveable collection of freaky versions to the old and new testaments, including Jesus’s visit to the Americas. The system is the same as it was in history, fear and panic serve religions and they are used to pointing the finger and blaming us humans for being very, very bad.

But let us consider for a moment that in fact every day on this blue planet is a mini disaster (or an actual disaster if you compare to the actual damage of this last hurricane) with thousands of children dieing from disease, hunger and wars. Young adults are raped and killed by the hundreds, and millions of people suffer from extreme weather conditions around the world. If god is indeed trying to grab our attention it has been doing so, consistently, for a couple of decades now, only to see how many of us let go of this idea and turn to the reality of this life.

God Loves You (Not You, You!)

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The idea that you can be special without doing anything special, without any effort or thought, just by being, is one we have to credit religions with. After all it is the Jewish faith that explicitly tells Jewish believers that they are the “chosen people” and that god has a special relationship with them, this has spread more in the last couple of years and being used by religious Jews on non religious ones to try and get them closer to this organized religion. It is not surprising that these religious Jews use things like “you are the son/daughter of god/the king” or “we are the people of the book” to put non religious people to shame, to try and morally oppress people who do not register the faith and to make them think that they should act or be diferent because god has special plans for them.

And this includes everyone, that is the beauty of it, Jewish murderers, rapists, thieves and lie tellers are all included in this pact, it is a categorically choice of god and no one can be excluded from it, if you are Jewish you are a part of the chosen people and you should act like one. What that actually means I have no idea, but rest assure that the behavior that is expected of Jews by Jewish religious leaders changes from one branch of this faith to the other, from Ashkenazim to Sapharadic (Jews from Western Europe and from Africa and Arabia) and from one political party to the other.

Same with Islam, only not as explicit as in the Jewish example, Islam does not tell his believers that they are chosen, or that they have a special relationship from birth with the almighty, mainly because Islam is a religion that is propagated and spread, so telling people that only if they were born Muslim they have this bond with god would not help much – new people will not join for fear of being excluded on this one, so Islam simply tells its followers that they are the best of all people.

It is important to note that Islam does refer to the Jews as the chosen people from time to time (only to be followed by a “kill them all” notion in later episodes) but there is no doubt that Islam – to the Muslim – is much better than being Jewish, because Muslims are told that they are the best people on earth, and that there is no one better.

And once again this is applied on everyone, the killers and the terrorists, the child molesters and the rapists… only that in Islam law you need to adjust your dictionary and learn that a rape (for example) is not really a rape if it one on one, it needs to have a few participants in it, you will also learn that a Muslim is allowed to lie freely in certain situations, and that stealing is really a question of how what and when.

So the Jews are the chosen people, and Muslim are the best of people, god loves them both and somehow you are supposed to make an educated conclusion and join only one of the religions, I am confused. Christians make it much easier, Jesus loves you, he died on the cross for your sins, even though you were born 2,000 after his death, so that shows you how much he loves you, now you only need to walk around with that guilt for the rest of your life.

Israel and Its Problems

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Israel has got to be a problem for any atheist out there. A country that has been formed around one religion with the express idea of having it as a safe place for all Jews to come to is one that should be almost ridiculous to anyone who has no faith or does not accepts religion dogma. Its almost like you would have “Pinocchio land” for all of those who believe in the story and want to live by it (praising whales, never burning wood furniture and so on).

On the other hand this country was formed as a result of mass genocide that has lasted for hundreds of years in almost any country around the world in one form or another, and which resulted in the systematic mass murder of the European Jewish population by the Nazis. Mass murder is not stranger to humans, it is believed that this kind of killing started with the dawn of man, and Jews are not the only ones who have been persecuted and killed, there were many other nations (that disappeared because of it) and many modern nations have been through this, however Jews are the only ones to have suffered a systematic, almost mechanic method of exterminating humans beings with the direct purpose to eliminate them and take advantage of anything the have or own. The state of Israel was established on the smoking ashes of millions of Jews and the global understanding that these people better have a country for themselves otherwise this thing could repeat itself.

Feeling hostility to Israel and what it stands for (Jewish state) is pretty normal from any atheist, but let us not forget the many Muslim states that have been there even before the Jewish state. These countries have not been established as a result of mass killing or persecution, but rather have been there as tribes who have evolved a sense of culture or common bloodline. And while Israel is a democracy that allows freedom of religion and expression, many Muslim states do not allow any new Churches or Synagogues built, and old ones can not be fixed or maintained, meaning that eventually there will be only Muslim masques.

Israel is a result of religious hatred and religious persecution over hundreds of years, it is a result of one nation that did not break even though it was exported out of its country and spread across half of the globe. Its people wanted to go back to their original land and practice their religion, as strange as it can sound to anyone who does not believe.