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Monthly Archives: May 2012

Christians and their Delusional Stockholm Syndrome

31 Thursday May 2012

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Let me tell you a story about life on a certain planet in our galaxy.

On planet M there are billions of people. These beings are held captive by an evil dictator. Their dictator forces all the people to constantly praise him and to sing songs for him because apparently he has insecurity issues and needs to have his greatness constantly affirmed by the people.

This evil dictator does more than just force the people praise him. He also developed a seemingly arbitrary but very strict code of behavior that the people must obey. For example, people of group A are not allowed to marry people of group B. People of group C are not allowed to have physical contact with people of group D. Certain foods are off-limits to everybody, certain activities can only be done at specific times of the day, and to top it all off the dictator taxes the people at a ridiculous high rate.

This evil dictator, on top of demanding the unreasonable terms listed above, threatens disobedience and dissidence with torture for the rest of one’s life. Oh but it gets worse! Using proprietary technology, the dictator forces you to live forever so that he can torture you for the longest time possible.

Before you get the idea that we should fly over to this planet and kill the evil dictator you should know that you would receive significant resistance from the captives. These poor people are so deluded that they think their dictator is saving their lives. They believe that without the dictator, evil would run rampant across their beautiful little planet. For these reasons they love their dictator. They don’t love the dictator just because it’s one of his terms, no, they really do love him and they will do anything to keep him alive, in power, and in complete control of their lives.

So apparently, these people are suffering from a classic case of Stockholm Syndrome. This is a psychological phenomenon that we people of Earth discovered a long time ago. It is the strange phenomenon in which captives develop empathy and positive feelings for their captors. Now if only we could send these people a message – a message of enlightenment that tells them all about Stockholm Syndrome. Surely then they would realize what is really happening.

Or maybe not. This story just gets weirder because as it turns out, the dictator doesn’t actually exist. The inhabitants of planet M made him up a long time ago and now firmly believe him to exist despite all evidence to the contrary. The people of planet M go to great lengths to prove to their poor deluded minds that this dictator exists because it makes them feel better about themselves. So convinced are they of the dictator’s existence that they think life without the dictator would be pointless. We have more than just classic Stockholm Syndrome going on here, we have Delusional Stockholm Syndrome.

Such a thing couldn’t possibly happen on Earth could it? Of course not! Now let’s pray to God.

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Signs and Tests from God

30 Wednesday May 2012

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Probably all Christians view events in their life through the colored glasses of their faith. They tend to award undue significance to certain events because they think the event might be a sign from God. This behavior is particularly prolific among the Amish, who believe that God coordinates all events large and small. They believe that God causes specific events as signs to help guide you down the right path or as tests of your faith.

For example, if an Amish man started a new business and his buildings promptly burned down, many of the Amish would consider the possibility that the fire was a sign from God that starting a business was not the right thing for that man to do. On the other hand, if the aspiring businessman really wanted to succeed at the business he would be more likely to view the fire as a test – a test from God to see how much he wants to succeed at his business.

I remember when the 2010 Haiti earthquake occurred, several of my Amish friends suggested that the inhabitants of Haiti must be pretty evil for God to punish them like that. I suspect that this kind of shallow reasoning is a result of the flood story in the Bible.

On the other hand, don’t you think that faithful Christians living in Haiti at the time of the earthquake had quite a different interpretation of the event? Don’t you think they would have been more likely to view the quake as a test of their faith?

Every time there is a natural disaster there are Christians who have just lost their homes talking on television about how this test from God has only strengthened their faith. Elsewhere, there are Christians shaking their heads and wondering what evil these people did in their lives to be punished by God like that.

If something bad happens to anyone, the Amish that like the person interpret the event as a test of faith. The others interpret the event as a punishment from God. Nobody seems to notice how ridiculously subjective and judgmental these interpretations are.

Why Does God Require our Belief?

08 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in The Conversion

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For God it is not enough that we are good and moral people. For God, we must be good and moral people and believe in God, in order to escape hell. This fact is one that drove me from Christian to agnostic. I just plain don’t like the type of person that demands you believe in him while he hides from detection. What is he? Some kind of a**hole?

Pascal’s Wager: Is God the Safe Bet?

07 Monday May 2012

Posted by in The Conversion, The Questioning

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When I was younger and just beginning to question the existence of God, one of the arguments that always seemed to sway me back to Christianity is one that was first developed by Blaise Pascal; a philosopher, mathematician, and physicist that lived in the 17th century. The argument is called “Pascal’s Wager” and it goes something like this;

If you’re not sure that God exists it is still better to believe and live your life as if he exists than to not do those things. If you believe in God and he turns out to be nonexistent, you’ve lost nothing. If you believe in God and he does exist, you get eternal life. On the other hand, if you don’t believe in God and he turns out to be real, you’ll burn in hell forever. Obviously, the rational bet is to believe in God.

When I was talking with my Christian girlfriend about God recently, she brought up this argument and I was reminded of the fact that I have also used it. I started wondering why it no longer seems like a rational bet to me.

Pascal’s wager only makes sense if there is some evidence of God’s existence. It is only convincing to those that believe the odds of God actually existing are about 50/50 or better. As adults, we aren’t “good” simply on the off chance that Santa really exists. In much the same way, an atheist or an agnostic thinks the Christian God is such a ridiculous idea that it doesn’t merit even the slightest change in behavior on the off chance that God exists and that you’ll be rewarded for your behavior.

The Arbitrariness of the Amish Ordnung

06 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in The Amish, The Questioning

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Back when I was still an Amish kid, I was often frustrated with the arbitrariness of the Amish Ordnung (their set of rules). For example, our church banned the smoking of cigarettes because the body is supposedly a temple of God and should be treated that way. On the other hand, eating potato chips was perfectly fine. Shouldn’t obese people be punished if smokers are?

You can’t live life without subjecting your body to harmful substances and situations. Even hard physical labor can be harmful to the body. Where do you draw the line, I wondered. How about leaving it up to the individuals to self-impose arbitrary rules? Anything else just causes discontent due to the restriction of personal freedom.

The Amish focus on the bad possibilities of technology (e.g. Oh no! You can watch porn on computers – computers must be banned!) while completely disregarding the vast good that technology can bring. With technology, the Amish mentality is to blame the gun instead of the person that pulled the trigger.

On the other hand, they are arbitrary even with that mentality – they don’t apply it to everything. When Amish church members are caught having sex with farm animals, no one blames it on the cow. No one says the cows are being too flirtatious – no one advocates banning cows.

Blogging Bananas Exist!

05 Saturday May 2012

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This blog is written and maintained by a banana. Blogging bananas exist!

Some people claim that God exists because the Bible says so. They also believe that the Bible is true because God wrote it.

To be honest… that’s just fu**ing stupid!

Why? Because it’s circular. If the Bible is your evidence for the existence of God, then you can’t validly use the claim that “God wrote it” as proof of the truth of the Bible.

I’m using the same logic when I say that, “This blog is written and maintained by a banana. Blogging bananas exist!”. Now, do you believe in blogging bananas?

Am I Unstable?

04 Friday May 2012

Posted by in The Amish

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During my 10-year transition from Christian to atheist, my belief system has undergone a number of significant changes. At first, I believed the Bible to be the inerrant and literal word of God. After discovering that some of the “facts” therein are just plain incompatible with reality as we know it, I transitioned to believing the Bible to be the metaphorical but divinely inspired word of God. Eventually I decided that the Bible is of little use and that God couldn’t possibly be like he is described therein. I started believing in a form of pantheism. Later I dropped that and became an agnostic – believing that there is not enough information to know whether God exists or not. Recently, I became an atheist – believing the complete lack of evidence for the existence of God does not justify being open to his existence any more than we should be open to the existence of Santa Claus – despite the possibility of the actual existence of God and Santa Claus.

Most Amish people would consider me unstable for changing my belief system so often. They’d use the word “unstable” in a manner that makes you think of a person with no mind of their own – extremely gullible and easily fooled by evil people. They use the word degradingly – as if speaking of an inferior person.

They warn people away from sites like this one in the fear that an “unstable” Christian reads it and becomes convinced that there is no God.

What the Amish call “unstable” is actually the result of “learning” and not of arbitrariness. Learning involves the acquisition of new information and the continual modification of one’s belief system based on the new information that is assimilated. To call a person “unstable” simply because they changed their belief system, is the equivalent of saying “learning is dumb”.

The Intelligence of Atheists

03 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in Early Life, The Questioning

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When I was a child (maybe 9 or 10 years old) my Dad while reading the newspaper stated matter-of-factly that, “There are no smart criminals.”

His reasoning was simply this; Criminals always go to jail. Nobody (not even criminals) wants to be in jail. Therefore, criminals are stupid.

Me, bright kid that I was, took that logic and applied it to atheists. My reasoning was this; Atheists go to hell, Nobody (not even atheists) wants to be in hell. Therefore, atheists are stupid.

However, it did not take me long to discard this as faulty logic when I discovered the disturbing fact that some very smart people are atheists. Einstein was a hero of mine and when I discovered that he didn’t believe in a personal God, it troubled me. Later, when I really started delving into the forbidden territories (e.g. learning about evolution) I realized that these people were very smart and they knew a lot more than I did.

Later, my Dad again made that same claim about there being no smart criminals. This time I disputed him. My reasoning was that some criminals plan and successfully commit intricate crimes and it would take a very smart person to plan such a thing and pull it off. He admitted that I could be right.

Before the Beginning of Time…

02 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in Epistemology, My Philosophy

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The word “before” is commonly defined something like this, “During the period of time preceding a particular event, date, or time”.

Let us consider, for a moment, the question; What was before the beginning of time? This question is relevant to many Christians because they believe that God existed before time and that God created time. Their answer to the question is, “Before time, there was God.”

Many Christians also believe that time will end and after that, the good people go to heaven and the bad people go to hell. It is the belief of many Christians that time itself is a small portion of eternity. They might imagine eternity as being a line that stretches infinitely in both directions and that time is only a small section of this line. A section that has beginning and end.

The Christian’s beliefs about time do not make sense and here’s why; Logically, you cannot refer to ‘before the beginning of time’ or ‘after the end of time’. Any statement that does this, is nonsensical – it’s logically senseless.

There cannot be a ‘before’ the beginning of time. The word “before” implies the passage of time but when used in reference to the beginning of time, we are basically asking, “What happened in that period of time before there were periods of time?” It’s a bit like asking, “What is north of the north pole?” or “What was I doing ten years before I was born?” The question is logically nonsensical – it is an example of an invalid question. For the same reason, there cannot be a ‘after’ the end of time.

The idea of eternity is also logically problematic for Christians. Most Christians believe there was a beginning of time, there will be an end of time, and there is eternity. It is however, logically impossible to have all three. You cannot have eternity if there is a beginning of time and an end of time.

It is not uncommon for people to ask what was before the beginning of time, or what was before the universe or the multiverse. It’s not that we don’t know the answer to the question, it’s simply that there is no answer. There cannot logically be a statement that truthfully answers that question, given our definitions of the terms used.

That doesn’t make us feel any better about it, of course, but there you have it.