Atheists shake with contempt at the thought of love and decency. Their whole lives are dedicated to nothingness, to the gaping void of pain that nihilism defines. Indeed, atheists love pain. They love pain in their sexual rituals, in their drug addictions and in their secret globalist power schemes. Why do we have war? It’s the atheists who spread contempt of God and invite such reckless notions of communism and Islam.
If I cared what those who push a Christian theocratic agenda thought about people like me who consider ourselves good without God, I might be upset. Instead, I’m going to use their delusions of adequacy to shine a spotlight on how the American Taliban has co-opted Christianity as a means of achieving and maintaining political and social control over the masses. If you believe yourself to be a morally superior being, a Light Unto The World blessed by Jesus Christ…well, I’m not certain we have enough time to do justice to examining your delusional self-righteousness…but I’ll give it a shot.
When faced with growing corruption within their own churches and faith communities, many Christians are doing what comes naturally to them: blaming atheists for their problems. To attribute all the evils of the world to atheists is to engage in some truly epic projection. The above comment is from a Facebook user named Georgia (she seems nice), but it illustrates my point. Rather than look at the growing number of megalomaniacal, power-mad grifters passing themselves off as preachers and asking why so little of what they “teach” has anything to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, closed-minded Christians shift blame onto those of us who live in a reality-based world.
Rather than depending on a malevolent external force without whose constant supervision and judgment I couldn’t hope to be a moral human being, my religion is easy and not dependent on outside agents. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, my religion is kindness…which is something the so-called “Christians” of the American Taliban could stand to learn a thing or six about. If we all endeavored to be kind to one another- free of doctrine, judgment, or theology- can there be any doubt but that this world would be a much different and far better place?
Calvinists and other fundamentalist theologians teach that humanity is “utterly depraved,” and that the only hope for our fallen world and for fallen individuals is the saving blood of Jesus. In the words of mega-minister Mark Driscoll, “If the resurrection didn’t literally happen, there are guns to shoot, there are people to shoot, there are parties to be had, there are women to be had.” (We can all be glad he believes in the resurrection.)
In this worldview, the architects of America’s much lamented moral decay are godless atheists, and the growth of secularism means the growth of moral bankruptcy. Modernity is a grim slide into an end-times world where everybody lies, cheats, and takes whatever they can get. And here in America, this dark tide can be held back only by Christians in high places.
An abiding faith in a Calivinist’s angry, judgmental God is not a requirement for leading a good life. If you need to believe that an invisible being is evaluating your every thought, word, and deed in order to lead a morally positive existence, you’re not a Christian; you’re very likely a sociopath.
I find the belief that humanity is by nature “utterly depraved” and able to be saved only by taking a bath in the blood of Jesus Christ (nice mental picture, eh?) to be horribly depressing. Christians call those of us who are good without God “nihilists,” as if the “total rejection of established laws and institutions” ipso facto translates to “rejecting God.” I don’t believe in God simply because the belief in an unseen, omniscient, omnipresent force sounds perilously close to believing in Santa Claus. I believe in the demonstrable and the provable- things whose existence make sense within a logical framework.
Then there’s the Bible, a book the American Taliban holds to be the immutable, irrefutable, and inviolate word of God. The belief that the Bible is the Word of God EXACTLY as it was relayed by the Almighty is so historically inaccurate as to barely be worthy of consideration. A holy book that’s been written, re-written, transcribed, and re-transcribed by many hands over hundreds of years cannot reasonably or credibly be described as the Literal Word of God. The Bible may have some good ideas in it, but it also forbids Christians from eating bacon, shrimp, and wearing garments made of mixed fibers (When I’m feeling like sinning, I eat bacon-wrapped shrimp. I’m going to Hell, aren’t I??). The idea that anyone could take such shoddy literary work to be Divinely Inspired defies rational understanding…or is God just that sloppy (that would certainly explain Donald Trump)?
Many atheists (and from here on, I intend to use the more accurate term “humanist”) have felt moved to explain their philosophy…which is a good thing if done for the right reasons. Humanists need not justify their “lack” of religious convictions; indeed it should be Christians justifying their judgmental hypocrisy and logical incoherency. A bigger problem is that, even though it’s expressly proscribed by the Constitution, humanists are prohibited from holding elected office in at least seven states. Surveys have shown Americans trust rapists and pedophiles more than those who don’t have faith in what they believe to be an Imaginary Friend. Hating and oppressing those who call themselves humanists is one of the last acceptable forms of discrimination in America.
To my original point, though- if you can’t lead a moral life without fearing the wrath of an unseen malevolent being, you have bigger problems than you realize…and it has nothing to do with those of us who refuse to believe in your flavor of God. And if your arguments are based on lies, deception, and manufactured propaganda…well, you’re everything you hate humanists for.
After Christian abortion foes launched a blood-and-guts media campaign based on staged entrapment interviews with Planned Parenthood staff, public opinion wavered. Then the campaign crumbled as forensic experts found 42 splices, including in “unedited” videos, rendering them useless as evidence….
A John Oliver August expose of televangelists exposed so much corruption—from multi-million dollar tax-exempt parsonages, to personal trips on private jets, to manipulative but unfulfilled promises of healing—that if religion wasn’t exempt from truth-in-advertising laws the ministries in question would have their butts sued off. The wide blanket of “religious freedom” may provide legal cover for preachers like Robert Tilton or Joel Osteen [sp] but it can’t cover the up the fact that their ministries stink of moral rot.
There are far too many far too concerned with the morality and perceived misbehavior of others when what’s really needed is the willingness to live by the same standards they demand others adhere to. Hypocrisy isn’t a Christian value…or is it?
And then, of course, there’s the ongoing scandal surrounding Ashley Madison, the matchmaking site for would-be adulterers hacked by possible extortionists who released member names to the public. Early controversy focused on the membership of Christian patriarchy leader, Josh Duggar, whose teen pattern of molesting younger girls—and the family’s response—recently cost his parents their multi-million dollar reality show, 19 Kids and Counting. But a 2014 survey conducted by Ashley Madison itself revealed that a quarter of members surveyed identified themselves as Evangelical Christians while another 23 percent identified as Catholic. At least three of the hacked accounts had Vatican email addresses, and an estimated 400 accounts belong to church leaders including pastors, deacons and staff. “Family values” politicians like Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz, who flaunt their Christian credentials and loudly lament how gays and feminists are destroying marriage appear to have lost their voices when it comes to adultery, a sin that—in contrast to gay marriage or abortion—the Bible clearly condemns.
The question, at least in my mind, is whether this means Christianity has been demonstrated to have rotted from within, exposing its venality and carnality as equivalent to any other demographic? Or is it just that in the age of the Internet it’s much harder to keep a secret, and what’s happening now is that behavior with a long and sordid history is being uncovered and displayed in the light of day. I’m going with door number two, but because power, sex, and lack of integrity have always been separated by the finest of dividing lines. Religious hypocrisy is neither new nor original; it’s just seems more visible these days.
The failure of “family values” Republican to go after adulterers with the same fervor with which they attack same-sex marriage is proof positive of the selective outrage and rank hypocrisy at work on the Far Right. The Bible says nothing about same-sex marriage, but the Seventh Commandment (“Thou shalt not commit adultery”) is right there in black and white. Of course, if “Christian” politicians eschewed the support of adulterers, they’d be lucky to get a job managing a Dairy Queen.
So what’s the moral of this story? Perhaps it’s that your time can (and should) be most productively spent policing yourself, instead of demanding others adhere to standards you’d never dream of holding yourself to. Or perhaps it’s that openly maintaining double standards only proves you to be a hypocrite. Or maybe even that before you begin raving on about “moral depravity” or the evil of “godless atheists,” it might be a helluva good idea to be certain your own house is in order. Just sayin’….
