On Atheism

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Scream by James A. Haught Did you ever hear a rabbit scream? Bunnies make a heart-rending shriek when pierced by fangs of a fox or talons of a hawk. Did you ever see a child dying of leukemia trying to understand trying to be brave but doomed? Did you ever see families killed by a twister or an earthquake or a monsoon flood or a volcano? Did you ever watch a fawn in the jaws of a lion or a piglet coiled by a python or a seal ripped by a shark? Did you ever see the eyes of a woman when she's told she has breast cancer? All these horrors are nature at work And nature, you say, was designed by an all-loving all-merciful all-benevolent all-compassionate all-kind God. You want me to worship this designer? Are you crazy? Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it: Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invincible man living in the sky who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invincible man has a special list of 10 things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these 10 things, he has a special place: full of fire, and smoke, and burning, and torture, and anguish, where he will send you to live, and suffer, and burn, and choke, and scream, and cry forever and ever till the end of time! But he loves you. - Carlin   Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, To have lived light in the Spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done; To have advanced true friends and beat down baffling foes- That we must feign a bliss of doubtful future date, And while we dream on this, lose all our present state, And relegate to worlds...yet distant our repose? - Matthew Arnold Being Dead by Adrian Barnett I know that on my death, the atoms that have been my body and brain, and created my mind, will return to the universe. They'll stay around on Earth for millions of years, inhabiting the bodies of countless people and other organisms, but eventually, aeons from now, they will return to the great engines of creation that formed them. The stars. When the earth is a sterile, charred rock, my body will be part of stars, planets, comets' tails and brightly shining nebulae. Some of me will briefly fuel a distant sun and be burnt into energy, and the photons that were once me will skim the edges of the universe, spiral into black holes, and maybe illuminate the face of a child looking at the night sky for the very first time. This is immortality. This is life and this is death. This is me. Dear God I don't believe in you, You might be surprised to know. Does that shock you? Probably not. I am asked told ordered commanded to accept you, love you and devote my life to you. But this is a thing that I cannot do. You see... You just don't make sense. Belief in you inspires men and women to create great works of art to compose wonderful, uplifting music perform acts of selfless charity and goodness to travel to the darkest corners of the world spreading their good news. Belief in you also causes great pain the destruction of entire nations the killing of innocents the suppression of thought and word. Religion becomes a prison, both for believers and unbelievers. Religion explains everything, and in doing so it explains less than nothing. I am asked, told, ordered, commanded to accept that you know everything, but not some things you love us all, but send us to hell you are all-powerful, but cannot help us you hear our prayers, but will not act on them. you watch us suffer, but do nothing. Innocents die, for a mysterious greater good. Everything we are told about you Fits the description of something that does not cannot should not exist. Your attributes cancel each other out of existence. People shout Thou Shalt Not Kill as they slaughter and burn in your name. People scream Thou Shalt Not Steal as they plunder and pillage, until your temples creak under the weight of gold. People cry Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness as they deceive to convert, and silence the voice of science. They say God Is Love and tell us that our love is wrong and list those that God hates. Preaching tolerance they tolerate only those who conform. Christians tell us that You died on the cross to wash away our sins, and the seas filled with blood as your followers gouged and slashed their way to heaven. If Christ was a man, and no more, this makes a strange sort of sense. But if he was a god, it makes a mockery of reason. If I could believe in a God, I would be ashamed to be associated with any earthly religion. Faith asks me to accept the nonsensical the incoherent the twisted logic the hatred of difference the demonstrably false the inhuman the unacceptable. My mind tries to make it all fit mesh coalesce. The jigsaw pieces are all the wrong shapes. The whole is less than the sum of its parts. The rationalisations are too weak to form foundations. My destiny is mine to control. I can feel the Earth moving. My genes are older than stars. The world does make sense. Every moment of life is full of joy and wonder. And because of this I know that there is no god. My mind is free. My soul is my own. I am an atheist. I am human. (-Adrian Barnett)
Quotations "The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." - Abraham Lincoln "I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religion then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism." - Albert Einstein "Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?" - Arthur C. Clarke "Lighthouses are more helpful then churches." - Benjamin Franklin "I found nothing grand in the history of the Jews nor in the morals inculcated in the Pentateuch. Surely the writers had a very low idea of the nature of their god. They made him not only anthropomorphic, but of the very lowest type, jealous and revengeful, loving violence rather than mercy. I know of no other books that so fully teach the subjection and degradation of women." - Elizabeth Cady-Stanton "Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense." - Voltaire "I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse." - Isaac Asimov
"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." "The most serious parody I have ever heard was this: In the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God." "The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same time subjection, a self-derision, and self-mutilation." - Freidrich Nietzsche "We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." - Gene Roddenberry "It (the Bible) is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies." "A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows." "Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light by contrast." "I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force." - Mark Twain  SCARY BIBLE VERSES Psalm 137:9 "Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." Deuteronomy 28:53 "And thou shalt eat of the fruit of thine own body, that of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the LORD thy God hath given thee." 2 Kings 6:29 "So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son." Ezekiel 23:20 NIV "There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses." 1 Timothy 2:12-15 "...suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithsstanding she shall be saved in childbearing." 2 Kings 18:27 "Hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?" Ezekiel 4:12 The lord commanded: "And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight." Leviticus 20:9 "For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death." Leviticus 20:16 "And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast." Deuteronomy 25:11-12 "When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets; then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her." Deuteronomy 23:1 "He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD." 1 Kings 14:10 The lord promised: "Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall..." I Samuel 19:25-27 King Saul asked 100 foreskins in return for his daughter in marriage. David zealously pared off 200 Philistine prepuces to win his bride. Deuteronomy 21:18-21 "If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son. . . bring him out unto the elders of his city. . . And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you." Isaiah 16:11 "Wherefore my bowels shall sound like an harp for Moab, and mine inward parts for Kir-haresh." Malachi 2:3 "Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces." Exodus 33:23 "And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen." Deuteronomy 22:28-29 "If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silvers, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days." Numbers 31:17-18 Moses told his soldiers: "Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." Luke 19:27 "But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." Matthew 10:34 "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." Judges 19:25 "...so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and that they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning..." Genesis 19:8 The men of Sodom wanted to bugger two angels abiding with Lot. Lot said, "Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known a man; let me, I pray you, bring them unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes." Genesis 19:32 But the Sodomites preferred male angels. The Lot family escaped; Mrs. Lot looked back, became a pillar of salt; father Lot and daughters fled to a cave, at which time the elder daughter proposed: "Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father." I Corinthians 14:34-35 "Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church." back to top