3 Stories of Sacrifice Way Better Than Christianity

The Christian narrative goes something like this:

Sin entered the world with Adam and Eve.

Four thousand years later that sin was paid for, and mankind redeemed, by the blood sacrifice of Jesus.

It’s all perfectly pleasant (unless you happened to be on the receiving end of Yahweh’s wrath in the 4,000-year interim), but did it really happen?

Fundamentalist Christians will blithely state (with zero justification) that it’s all historical fact.

Moderate Christians who (ironically) know their bible better than their fundy cousins, are more hesitant to do so.

That raises a problem though.

If it didn’t really happen, then what … ?

Is it just an elaborate metaphor? Is the mere story of Jesus’ sacrifice so iconic that it merits all this attention?

Surely not. As a sacrificial story, it’s far from impressive.

Despite Mel Gibson’s special effects budget, Jesus’ suffering was no worse than any other enemies of the Roman Empire.

And unlike his fellow crucifees, Jesus got to go home afterwards, as if nothing had happened! Some sacrifice.

If you really want to talk sacrifice, and I mean sacrifice with genuine human consequences, then I’ve got some stories much more worthy of analysis from the pulpit.

Casablanca [1942]

Stuck in an African backwater, Rick is given the opportunity to keep his long-lost love or contribute to the war effort. It tears him up inside but he chooses to give up both the girl and his sacred neutrality.

I’m fine, I’ve just got something in my eye.

Donnie Darko [2001]

To save Gretchen, Donnie has to give up his own life. But with time spinning around like a psychotic 4-year-old he has to do it before she ever actually meets him.

So she never knows what he does for her.

And finally …

The Dark Knight [2008]

Gotham needs its hero, but Batman will have to be that hero without any recognition. Worse, he’ll be hated and feared by the people he’s helping. He knows this, and he goes ahead and does it anyway.

I love this last one. It kind of makes Jesus’ constant demands to be revered and worshipped seem a little pathetic, doesn’t it?

Read the goddamn slogan, guys!

As a follow-up to their successful “There’s probably no god” campaign, the British Humanist Association has been busily putting these posters up all over the UK:

It’s a call to cease the indoctrination of children, and something that should be applauded. What’s more, you’ll notice that “atheist child”, “agnostic child” and “humanist child” all appear on the poster as inappropriate labels.

But in an amusing twist, some commentators on the pro-indoctrination team (such as neo-charismatic Gerald Coates) have gleefully pointed out that the kids in the advertisement are Evangelical Christians!

While this is just a moronic comment on one level (in other news, the girls in the Tampax ads aren’t really menstruating as they ride horses and frolic on the beach), it shows a much much deeper level of stupidity, or wilful obtuseness, on the part of people like Coates.

Way to spectacularly miss the point, guys.

Just let me get this straight … are you saying that … it’s a mistake to use these children because they’re … what’s the label you’re applying? … Evangelical Christians?

*facepalm*

Calling All Literalists

Religion seems to be on the minds of some of our politicians, and for once it’s something other than dog-whistling for easy conservative votes.

Last week Coalition leader-in-waiting Joe Hockey made a speech to the Sydney Institute about the evils of religious ‘literalism’, and this week senator Nick Xenophon called Scientology a ‘criminal organisation’ that should have its tax-exempt status revoked. (I agree, but why stop at Scientology?)

I’d like to think it’s because the increasingly vocal atheist community is getting noticed as a potential vote-winner … but sadly, ‘tis not the case.

Hockey has no time for atheists, despite taking the same line as Dawkins on fundamentalists. The interesting thing though, is that he has no time for theists either.

Hockey wants to promote a kind of touchy-feely deism, where scriptures can be accepted or ignored as you like and God doesn’t intervene in the world in any meaningful fashion.

Sounds a lot like atheism doesn’t it?

It strikes me that that’s what moderates like Hockey effectively are. They just choose to eschew the label.

Why? Maybe it’s the desire to distance themselves from the Dawkinses and Hitchenses of the movement. Or maybe it’s the inexplicable desire to continue considering the bible a source of meaning and purpose.

Either way, I’d like to see more moderates calling out the literalists in their midst. But I can understand why many don’t.

After all, to remove the literalists from Christianity is to remove the movement’s core support base.

Without those who consider God an extant interventionist force, and the political and financial clout they bring with them, Christianity would be just another school of philosophy.

And not a particularly interesting one.

5 Terrible Arguments For Christianity

When discussing the merits of the Christian religion with Christians, the same arguments tend to come up again and again.

I’ve gathered here a few choice selections. Please feel free to offer any others you may think of in the comments.

1. Pascal's Wager

Indicative quote: “If a Christian is wrong about atheism they lose nothing, but if an atheist is wrong about Christianity they lose everything!”

Quite apart from its vaguely threatening tone, this is just a mess of logical fallacies. First, it’s a blatant appeal to consequences.

Second, it’s a false dichotomy. The wager implies that Christianity and Atheism are the only two possible choices. What about all those other thousands of religions?

If this argument were to be applied consistently then the “best” religion, and the one we should all follow, would be the religion that offers the best reward.

On that basis, I reckon Islam's 72 virgins would give Christianity's puritanical “heaven” a run for its money.

2. Playing the Numbers

Indicative quote: “So many people believe it! It must be true!”

This one is obviously trivial but I thought it was worth a mention, mainly because it’s particularly amusing when offered in support of Christianity.

While Christianity just scrapes in front of Islam as the religion with the most adherents, you have to combine everything from Greek Orthodoxy to Mormonism under the one banner to do it.

The appropriate response to this argument is therefore: “so many people believe ... what exactly?”.

3. Anything from the bible

Indicative quote: Anything from the bible.

Here’s the thing. No-one, except someone who already believes in the bible, accepts it as any kind of authority. So using the bible to justify the bible is the worst kind of circular reasoning.

It’s like using the Star Wars movies to justify the existence of Darth Vader. Or Hayden Christensen’s acting ability.

4. The Incoherence of Atheism

Indicative quote: “Atheism is incoherent / illogical / silly / inconsistent.”

This one is my favourite. It’s a lovely attempt to simply cut atheism off at the knees and give the arguer a pass to ignore anything an atheist says.

It’s a little subtle, but the basic argument goes like this:

Atheists believe in purely material things, but logic itself is immaterial. Logic exists therefore atheism is wrong and Jesus really was born to a virgin and came back from the dead and will be returning to the earth soon.

Sorry, which was the incoherent argument again?

5. “Evidence”

Indicative quote: “It's a miracle! It must have been God that healed me / produced this bacterial flagellum / put the image of Mary in this cream bun.”

This is the big one, and it covers a multitude of sins.

Back in the day we had medieval pieces of the “true cross” and the Shroud of Turin to gull the peasants. Now we're a bit more sophisticated with claims of the healing power of prayer and intelligent design.

It’s all the same, though. It’s still just cobbled-together chicanery and sleight-of-hand, none of which has ever stood up to serious investigation.

An interesting subset of “evidence” is the eyewitness account, which is a very important part of Christian lore.

Two of my favourites are this nasty little urban legend (which I once heard preached from the pulpit as if it were a true inspiring story) and the assertion that hundreds of people saw Christ after his resurrection, so it must be true.

This latter argument just shows an inability to tell the difference between characters in a story and real people, but when you get right down to it, isn't that the very essence of Christianity?

What Would Jesus NOT Do?

It doesn’t take much to scratch the surface of a religion and reveal it as man-made artifice.

In the case of Christianity, this video beautifully shows the man behind the curtain.

Homo-Christianity

Over at the blog “Apologia” I’ve been debating self-described Christian apologist Eric. The discussion has ranged over a wide spectrum, which was surprising given that Eric’s original post said he was sick of debating atheists.

Still, a few issues were passed over for lack of time, so I though I might pick them up here.

At one point in the discussion Eric made the comment

“It’s obvious to anyone who reads the Gospels that Jesus considered homosexuality to be a sin.”

This stopped me in my in my tracks for a moment, because it should be obvious to anyone who reads the Gospels that Jesus had precisely nothing to say about homosexuality.

Zero. Zip. Nada. Not a word.

And yet strangely, Eric’s view is very common. For so many Christians in the world today homosexuality is Public Enemy No. 1 when it comes to the nebulous field of “sexual immorality”.

And this is despite the fact that Jesus himself, the man supposedly at the centre of their religion, didn’t think it was important enough to mention.

Further damaging the Christian position is that the most common biblical quote thrown around (you know . . . “homosexuality is an abomination”) is from the Old Testament; that bit of the Bible that Christians mostly ignore.

Supposedly Christians are all about the New Testament. Or they’re supposed to be. That’s where Jesus came along and did away with all the old laws. This is, for example, why Christians don’t eat kosher.

But back to the Old Testament.

In the same section in which homosexuality is denounced we also have prohibitions against wearing clothes made from two different types of material (Lev 19:19), cutting the hair at the sides of your head (Lev 19:27) and sleeping with a menstruating woman (Lev 18:19 and 20:18).

These other things are obviously no longer important. But for some reason, homosexuality is an exception.

So what about the New Testament?

There are four references in the New Testament which could be regarded as relating to homosexuality. These were all made by Paul, the guy who took control of the nascent church after Christ’s death (and alleged resurrection) and in my mind, royally screwed up the humanist message Jesus was trying to deliver.

Each of these references is no more than a throw-away remark put in as a sideline to a different point he was making. None of them are decisive condemnations, and there’s a nice summary here (from a Christian website) of why they shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Modern Christianity’s obsession with and bigotry against homosexuals is one of the main causes of continued discrimination in our culture. The passing of the noxious Proposition 8 in California (largely because the Christian community mobilised to support it) is just the most recent example.

The sooner this attitude is seen as the irrelevant cultural relic that it is, and the sooner it’s recognised that even those who propound it have no reason to do so, even within their own doctrine, then the better off we’ll all be.

Proof That Jesus Heals

Well, that’s egg on my face.

 

Thanks, Jill. I mean Santa.

The Atheists Were Here First

Before the Winter Solstice was taken over by Christians and rebranded a celebration of Christ’s birth, it was a purely secular affair.

Actually, even more than that: it was an atheistic celebration of nature for nature’s sake. A joyful recognition of the abundance of our world and the importance of looking after it.

A lot of the symbols of the original festival have survived its Christianisation, most notably the Christmas tree, which for some reason few Christians even attempt to try to fit into their story.

Given the atheistic origins of the season, it’s endlessly amusing when Christians (particularly in the US) concoct arguments against a mythical “War on Christmas” supposedly being waged by those who would have religion turfed out of public life. Most probably don’t even know that they are the invaders here.

To illustrate the point, a plaque was erected in Olympia, Washington  reading:

“At this season of the Winter Solstice, may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no heaven or hell.  There is only our natural world.  Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

Of course it was torn down after an hour after it was erected.

Freedom of religious expression is a decidedly one-sided affair in the Land of the Free.

The Pope Apologises

Well, isn't that nice.

The pope has apologised to the people raped by members of his Catholic priesthood.

But let's remember that tomorrow, he and his followers will ritually cannibalise the dead flesh of the 2000-year-old zombie they worship.

So I'm not sure we should take anything he says too seriously.

Belief

It's been pointed out that my previous posts on religion are somewhat hostile.

Indeed they are. And I don't apologise for that.

But in the interest of openness and rational debate, I would like to clarify precisely which aspects of religion I am hostile towards. It's not the whole thing.

Once that's done, I lay myself open to your slings and arrows.

As a society we gain a great deal from religion. Studying our ancient myths and writings can give a real and genuine insight into morality and ethics, and it can teach us ways to build and sustain our communities. I don't for a moment question the great value of this.

But I want to make a clear distinction between this philosophical side of religion, and the belief side of religion, which is a very different thing.

Religious belief, specifically unfounded belief in the supernatural, is something that I have a very real problem with.

Now let me be very clear on this point: I am not talking about the spiritual beliefs of individuals. If a person chooses to believe that a deceased loved one is still present in their lives, or believes that Jesus is their saviour, and from that derive meaning and comfort, then I have no problem. These are personal views and no-one can tell anyone what they should think in that arena.

What I'm talking about is the Church's institutionalisation of supernatural belief, where preaching and dogmatism changes a belief from being a mere framework for discussion and comfort, into edict and law and an irrational basis for discrimination and punishment.

Let me use my own experience of Christianity as an example.

Christians claim, as I claimed once upon a time, that there is an entity called God that watches us and cares for us and listens to our prayers. That's fine and comforting and harmless.

Then, they go on to claim that this God has a purpose for us and that we need to follow the instructions he's laid down. Anyone who doesn't follow these instructions is damned to an eternity of hellfire or to a harsh sentence on Judgement Day, depending on which flavour of Christianity you prefer.

In individuals, this kind of belief might still be harmless. But propped up by the authority and ritual of the Church, this kind of supernatural carrot-and-stick starts directing the actions of people who wouldn't come up with this stuff on their own.

I know this from firsthand experience. When you're focused on an apocalyptic endgame, particularly what God will say to you on Judgement Day, then treating someone well here on Earth quickly becomes secondary to helping them, or helping yourself, secure a place in Heaven.

At a personal level, the worst thing it generally does is lead to obnoxious behaviour, of which I was as guilty as anyone.

If anyone annoyed me by saying my beliefs were bogus, I'd get a twinge of anticipatory schadenfreude from the thought of them burning in hellfire. I even said as much to some people. Charming, I know. And far from charitable.

At a community level, I’ve seen this sort of fixation overwhelm all the very valuable social justice teachings in the Bible. I've seen friendships and families torn apart because of disagreements over meaningless supernatural minutiae.

Ironically, this fixation means that a lot of Christians, and I was included in this group, don't end up following the core teaching of Jesus at all, which was to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you".

But, you might say, people do so many good things because of their beliefs. They act charitably and selflessly because they believe that's what God wants and there's the promise of a greater reward after death. Surely, on balance, the good outweighs the bad?

No, it doesn't. Of course religious people do good things in the name of God. But without God, these people would do good things anyway.

We don't need to conjure a mysterious God to make people be nice to each other. It's just not necessary. The benefits of co-operative behaviour are self-evident to all but the sociopathically insane.

We can see around us a functioning society built on the secular values of mutual respect and community spirit and basic common courtesy. Most of us don't do it because we believe it'll get us into Heaven. We just do it because it's the easiest thing to do.

Of course there are sociopaths among us, but for the extremes of bad behaviour we have a secular system of laws and punishments. And that's all we need.

There is no inherent upside to making rules based on supernatural beliefs.

But there is a genuine downside. It can make good people do evil things, and often with the best of intentions.

There a thousand examples of this, but to take just one: Mother Teresa refused to provide contraception to women in third-world countries. This caused unnecessary pain and suffering for thousands of women, through infection and unwanted pregnancies. And why? Because the Catholic Church teaches that God doesn't want people to use contraception, and will punish anyone who does.

Mother Teresa, driven by love and compassion and genuinely believing it was the right thing to do, followed this irrational rule and it achieved nothing but suffering.

My point is that taking a hard moral stance about anything because it's 'what God thinks', is nonsense. Stating that a particular behaviour is wrong because ‘God says so’, is just nonsense.

When we think about morals and ethics, we should only consider how our behaviour affects ourselves, how it affects others, and how it affects our communities and our world.

The opinions of our religious leaders are very valuable here, because they think about this stuff a lot. But we must never bow to an invocation of 'God's will' as a reason to do anything.

If following what we believe to be God's teachings leads us into doing good works, then that’s a great thing. But we need to realise that those good things are worth doing because of their own inherent value. That we can come to the same conclusion without invoking God.

And we need to realise that if an idea doesn’t stand on its own earthly merits then we don't need it, regardless of how many people believe God said it was so.

Doing anything purely to please God is irrational and dangerous, and can lead to arbitrary acts that are really damaging.

This is the part of religion that I'm hostile towards.

And when I talk about religion being evil, this is what I mean.