We'll start with Yahweh's representative on earth first who said:
"It is my fervent prayer that a firm commitment to justice and a global culture of solidarity will help rid the world of the grievances that so often give rise to acts of violence and will create the conditions for greater peace and prosperity, offering a brighter and more secure future."
It is a credible ambition and call to reason but it's clear that the Pope was referring to acts of terrorism being caused by "grievances". In other words, people do bad things because they are unhappy. And this is a view shared by Ron Paul who says that "U.S. intervention in the Middle East is a main motivation behind terrorist hostilities toward America, and that Islam is not a threat to the nation."
An argument that would gain credibility were it not for the very, very, very limited number of terrorist campaigns and incidents that occur. Extreme poverty, famine and oppression continues to exist in a number of sub-Saharan states yet these hard pressed people are not compelled to blow people up indiscriminately.
Indeed, the 9/11 hijackers did not come from hard pressed backgrounds at all being mainly middle class, privileged and seemingly "normal" in the grand scheme of things. Not only does this make Ron Paul's comment stupid but the Pope seems to be a worthy bedfellow.
The second comment from Anne Graham Lotz is fucking stupid beyond all doubt. It makes me want to vomit all over my keyboard. Twice. Lick it up. And then vomit three more times. And I feel like this any time I read the bullshit that comes from the religious mind wrapped up in unprovable shite.
She says:
"We've been telling him [god] to get out of our business, out of our government, out of our schools, out of our marketplace. And then when something like this [9/11] happens, we wonder where he is,"
No, no, no. We don't have to wonder where he is. The fact that he is absent from every single major and minor event over the past 4.6billion years gives a pretty good indication that he doesn't exist.
"The Bible says that there's only one way to God, and that's through Jesus."
More contradictory bullshit because if this was the case, what happened in 1BCE? How would people have reached god before Jesus stepped foot anywhere on the earth? And the date of the New Testament presents more friggin' problems. Not to mention the BILLIONS who never had a hope in hell of knowing the word of the bible because they were DYING of HIV given to them in the womb by the cuntish creator who felt it necessary to kill a child before they could KNOW of the Jesus in the bible.
These people really do not stop and think before writing something do they?
More nonsense about the "end of days"...
"We see that in the storms, the floods, the forest fires," she said. "They're not only occurring more frequently, but when they occur, they break the record of the last one."
She says:
"We've been telling him [god] to get out of our business, out of our government, out of our schools, out of our marketplace. And then when something like this [9/11] happens, we wonder where he is,"
No, no, no. We don't have to wonder where he is. The fact that he is absent from every single major and minor event over the past 4.6billion years gives a pretty good indication that he doesn't exist.
"The Bible says that there's only one way to God, and that's through Jesus."
More contradictory bullshit because if this was the case, what happened in 1BCE? How would people have reached god before Jesus stepped foot anywhere on the earth? And the date of the New Testament presents more friggin' problems. Not to mention the BILLIONS who never had a hope in hell of knowing the word of the bible because they were DYING of HIV given to them in the womb by the cuntish creator who felt it necessary to kill a child before they could KNOW of the Jesus in the bible.
These people really do not stop and think before writing something do they?
Fuck.
More nonsense about the "end of days"...
"We see that in the storms, the floods, the forest fires," she said. "They're not only occurring more frequently, but when they occur, they break the record of the last one."
Says who? Who says they break the record of the last one? Who says they are getting worse?
Research indicates that "wildfires" have actually decreased in the 20th century - http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n10/full/ngeo313.html
This graph shows that she is talking bollocks about hurricanes:
The only argument that could be made for an increasing number of reported storms/wildfires etc is exactly that... the fact that they are reported. You obtain a frequency by measuring storms in the same region.
You can't say in region A there were 10 storms in 2009 and in 2010 there were 5 storms in region A and 15 in region B and then use this data to suggest that storm rates have doubled...
I think that's a good place to end this... I've drunk far too much and I need some sleep... but I'll end on these.
Science flies you into space. Religion flies you into buildings.
Religion also makes normally kind and decent human beings say and do horrible and wicked things.
My thoughts and sympathies are with the people who lost their lives to mammals with far too much faith in fairy tales. If only mankind could learn a lesson from this that religion will keep making excuses for itself in the face of atrocities and fail miserably to attribute proper blame. And if they were indeed as faithful as they claim, they would find good reason for dropping the ridiculous ideas of bliss in the next life.
The reason the bombers took their own lives, as well as others that day, is because they thought that they were going to paradise. Most religions converge on this idea of another life. This happy medium and general consensus from religious moderates allows the idea to prevail that something else is waiting. A very dangerous idea indeed.
If they knew, and I mean really knew, that this is the only life that we have then those hijackers might have thought that this life, and the lives of their fellow travellers, was too precious to waste.
3 comments:
I share your frustration, although deistic faith (belief in some kind of peaceful existence beyond death) isn't, I suggest, a problem. The concept of 'holy' text, though, is another thing, because it not only speaks of that existence, but proffers ways of behaviour that must be adopted in order to reach it; consequently, nonsensical books are used to make the gullible commit atrocities such as 9/11.
My point, then, is that people can believe or disbelieve in an afterlife, but either way should reject all sacred text.
Anyway, like I said, I share your frustration!
Cool blog!
Thanks for your kind words Tony.
I don't agree that "peaceful existence after death" is relevant to deism itself; that seems to be an entirely different discussion on spirituality and the ability of the consciousness to survive 'death'.
The problem with religious deism is that the idea of 'god' is preconditioned and you are expected to behave in certain ways.
If you have a version of deism where the individual can make up their own mind about what this god looks and sounds like and what he expects from his believers you end up in cult territory because it is likely that others will not share you views. And if you manage to convince others, it is likely that you will only recruit a small number of followers (hence cult status).
All religions started off as cults of course but I think in this day and age a person running around saying god is speaking to them is likely to meet indifference, sympathy or ridicule.
I have no problem with people believing in the idea of consciousness surviving brain death although I do understand, in a limited way, that this would contravene the Laws of Thermodynamics. It sounds like another bad idea to consign to the dustbin of bad, or unprovable, ideas.
Thanks for commenting and I'm glad you like my blog :)
Ron Paul's reasoning is based on the expressed aim of Osama Bin Laden in one of the speeches he released after the bombing, attributing the action to US's intervention in the Middle East in the form of providing weapons of mass destruction and other military aid to Israel. I wouldn't normally agree with Ron Paul, but there's some concordance with an old ally of Hitchen's there, namely Chomsky. Of course, their views diverged at some point in the 90s.
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