If you are not yet convinced that many Christian (in name only) fundamentalists are truly sick, demented individuals, here is an article that should give you pause:
Horror Stories From Tough-Love Teen Homes
What REALLY makes me mad is that if you or I, as parents or grandparents, treated our kids or grandkids even one 0ne-tenth as abusively as these teen homes treat kids, Child Protective Services would be all over us like flies on shit. Yet places like this are allowed to exist in the United States of America, and they hide behind “freedom of religion” as a way to escape investigation and punishment. And where the hell is the mainstream news media when this stuff goes on?
I personally believe that the god of the old testament was not what most people think of when they think of God, but was in fact an imposter, an EXTREMELY vile and evil being that probably came from another planet or dimension. Any God that truly loved his creation would have stepped in by now and stopped some of the abuses that are happening in his name. And don’t even say those folks will be punished in the future – the suffering is happening here, right now, on this earth, and either the god of the old testament no longer has any power to do a thing about it or he just doesn’t give a damn, assuming he’s even still alive (which there’s a good chance he isn’t, because the ancient texts say that the “gods” started aging a LOT faster once they arrived on this planet. They were never immortal to begin with, but only appeared so due to their extremely long lifespans compared to us, but there’s something about our planet that shortened their lifespans, which is probably why they eventually departed).
And for those who wonder what I think about Jesus, I will just say this much – we don’t really know that much about him because the original Christians (who had much different beliefs than today’s Christians in Name Only – for one thing, many of them accepted reincarnation as part of the natural cycle of death and life) pretty much disappeared after Constantine basically pulled a stunt worthy of a George Orwell novel, and effectively renamed the paganism of the time as Christianity and made it the new state religion (it might be more correct to say he and other religious leaders of that time put a thin Christian veneer over the old paganism, which is why old pagan festivals like winter solstice and the spring fertility festival became Christmas and Easter). And there is no reason to believe that those folks did not heavily edit and revise what later became the Bible. I know, the fundies have one verse they fall back on (written by the fake apostle Paul) that says that all scripture is inspired by God, but anyone could say that everything they write is inspired by God, yet that would not make it so. And anyway, inspiration is not the same as dictation (inspiration leaves a lot of room for the writer to add his own views and opinions before setting quill to parchment) and then there is the small matter that when new testament writers referred to “scripture”, they were probably referring to the Jewish Torah, not their own writings! And to top it all off, there is nothing in that verse that says that scripture will not or cannot be revised after it has been written, by those with evil intent. Sometimes leaving out one verse or changing one word can make a huge difference in the meaning of a section.
I am not one of those atheists that insists that neither a true God nor Jesus ever existed, but I just think that the entire Christian religion has been corrupted and perverted (and I use that last word very deliberately) over the centuries. Many people who attend churches today are being led by some very evil, sick people and they don’t even realize it. They keep looking for the coming of the antichrist and false prophet (to fulfill prophecy – see below) without realizing that if such things exist, they are more likely to be some prominent “Christian” leaders that they love and trust, than some beings that come at them out of a pit somewhere. Anyway, I can accept that perhaps Jesus was a spiritually enlightened being that may even have had some advanced technology at his disposal, but I’m starting to have a real problem with going much beyond that because again, if he is a God (or a part of the “one true God”, as many believe, again because of things the fake apostle Paul wrote, and not things that Jesus himself said) then why has he allowed so many atrocities to be committed in his name, by people who have the unmitigated gall to say they are followers of him?
(That question is NOT an invitation for some fucktard “Christian apologist” to post a response trying to justify the sins of the church, or the inaction by the “god” of Christianity in the face of unspeakable evil, to which he sometimes was an instigator or a participant).
I think maybe we may be reaching the point (if not now, within a generation or two) where the Constitution may need to be revised. What most people want now is not freedom OF religion, it is freedom FROM religion, and there is a huge difference. Religious people should not be able to impose their beliefs on the rest of society, not should they be exempted from the laws and regulations (and, yes, taxes) that apply to everyone else in society. I’m not saying the government should be able to just shut down churches (unless there are significant violations of the laws we all have to live by taking place), but why would the government want to? Freedom of speech and freedom of association would still protect most churches, but we need to be able to put an end to some of the despicable practices that are now not investigated nor prosecuted because government officials are too afraid of stepping on someone’s freedom of religion.
(By the way, I will leave you with a thought about prophecy. Let’s just for a moment pretend that you are an evil alien being with a very long lifespan, and you have a long-term plan for the Earth that at times includes some form of death or destruction. Then you use your advanced technology to beam graphic images of what you plan to do into the head of someone who is gullible enough to think of themself as a prophet. Centuries later, you (from your position off-world) set in motion events that will bring your plan to fruition. You will have then convinced a certain segment of people that your chosen “prophet” actually had the gift of prophecy, and a smaller subset of those people will be convinced that everything that “prophet” said, whether about the future, religion, morality, etc. must be correct. Of course, maybe you might choose to deliberately lie to your chosen “prophet” about some of those things, but as long as you step in at appropriate times and make sure you do your part to see that at least some of your “prophecies” (plans) are fulfilled, people will become convinced that everything the “prophet” says must be true. Of course, something may happen to stop you from completing your evil plan, but that the people who believe the prophecies won’t know that, and they may keep repeating the no-longer-relevant prophecies for centuries. The point is, you as an individual have no way of knowing if someone has a true gift of prophecy, or if they are just repeating some long-term plans that were whispered to them, so to speak. But either way, even if a prophecy is fulfilled, that does NOT necessarily make that “prophet” an authority on matters of religion or morality.)
Related articles
- Emma Goldman – The Failure of Christianity (anhsyxia.wordpress.com)
