Seen this? “Everything I need to know about Islam I learned on 9/11”

Well, then, I could just as easily say: Everything I need to know about Christianity I learned from the crusades.

Islam has a lot of problem in it, as do all religions. Islam isn’t that much different, it’s only newer and there’s been no reformation. Hatred and violence are in the Bible just as the Koran. Don’t get me wrong, I do not defend Islam. I also don’t defend Christianity or Judaism.

However, Islam may be a bigger problem because its horrors from it are happening now. The crusades were 800-900 years ago. The doings of Islam are more prevalent in today’s world. While Islam is a bigger issue, if I said the latter, “Everything I need to know about Christianity I learned from the crusades,” there’d be a barrage of negative comments from Christians telling me why that “logic” is false.

Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land.

Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material.

After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect it.

“The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue,” he said. [Read more.]

When the Nazis burned books, it was an atrocity. Aren’t we better than that now?

I understand PZ Myer’s point regarding the burning of the Koran. No books are holy and no one should really be offended by the burning of these books. I’m a little on the fence here because the protest that has been planned as a September 11th memorial. Pastor Terry Jones readily confused this act expressing this freedom to protest with the building of the Mosque/Community Center (with an undetermined range of distance it can exist from Ground Zero). While I don’t think the Koran is holy, as I don’t with any book, I also loathe the idea of burning books a la Fahrenheit 451 style. There is also the argument that we largely live in a post paper society. Does book burning hold any real meaning anymore anyway? Or is it about the symbolism?

Whether it’s Jews burning the Bible or Christians burning the Koran, I fail to see how it’s a good way to protest. How about reading these books and criticizing them? That works, too.

I have a hard time comprehending how the fear of something judging you has anything to do with morals. How is fear ethical? How can belief in a god and the afterlife be the only thing keeping one from murdering and stealing? Why aren’t these believers raping and enslaving everyone they see? Surely, some people are better with belief, but its not the belief itself. I would gather its more of a belief in belief, as Daniel Dennett puts it. The notion of a belief makes people feel warm and fuzzy. With sparkles in your eyes and a light shining down on you, how could you not be good? Hmm. This, of course, excludes when God’s followers aren’t killing and harassing in his name. So I wonder if one’s really “good” with belief in god. Isn’t that just a conscience and the fear of law within?  Isn’t god just an add-on? For what ever purpose necessary, god is not the driving force – and should not be.

I certainly do not mean to imply that believers aren’t good but that many aren’t good due to their belief, but that little voice in their heads called a conscience. We treat people a certain way because that is how we would like to live: in a society where people are kind. Its common sense to me, that murder is wrong. It is also common sense to me that slavery, rape, and torture are wrong. Do I have a better sense of morals than God? Perhaps I am the messiah my people are still waiting for! ;)

If belief enables one to be a better person, its perfectly expected in society. I can’t wait for the day when the same is expected for nonbelievers; where everyone is honest about being good for goodness sake.

If one U.S. Congressman has his way, 2010 will be the Year of the Bible. Georgia Republican Paul Broun has introduced legislation asking the President:

“to issue a proclamation calling upon citizens of all faiths to rediscover and apply the priceless, timeless message of the Holy Scripture which has profoundly influenced and shaped the United States and its great democratic form of government.”

Did you say you are calling upon citizens of all faiths to convert to Christianity through means of government? What is so hard about the separation of Church and State, everything our founding fathers and mothers fought for? This is insulting.

One of the critiques for such a measure:

“The bill is but one more reminder of all the silly legislation that Congress so often spends its time passing, honoring this or that sports team, re-naming French fries and the like. It purposefully thumbs its nose at the idea of a separation between church and state, and plays favorites with one particular faith.”
[David Knowles, Editors of Politics Daily]

Does evolution by natural selection rob life of purpose, as so many have feared? The answer is no. On the contrary, Charles Darwin has made it possible to understand how purpose, like life, builds from small beginnings, from the ground up. In a very real sense, evolution creates purpose.

Simply put. No. Evolution does not rob any meaning from life. In fact, evolution only adds to it. He goes on:

Evolution generates problems and solutions as it generates life. Rocks may crack and erode, but they do not have problems. Amoebas and apes do. Natural selection creates complex new possibilities, and therefore new problems, as it assembles self-sustaining organisms piecemeal, cycle after cycle, by generating partial solutions, testing them, and regenerating from the basis of the best solutions available in the current cycle. In time, it can create richer solutions to richer problems.

There’s an amazing process here at work; an amalgam of cycles and paths. It’s not that simple, yet it is. I find comfort in the simplest definition of evolution as well as the more detailed elongated version.

Creationism is off-putting, to say the least. The notion that every species has been hand-molded by clay and/or dirt is an unpleasant thought to me. As a feminist, I find it even more disturbing than as a skeptical atheist. The bible makes it clear that women came after men. However, in the developmental stages, we are all basically the same until differentiation. The biblical order of things places men above women in a crude, unacceptable way. Males and females are different biologically, yet no gender is better or worse.

Evolution speaks to the equality that naturally exists, in addition to purpose.

Darwin’s explanation of evolution by natural selection shocked, and still shocks, because it appears to deny purpose. We think of purpose as something prior to decision and action: I want to raise my arm, and, unless I am paralyzed or restrained, I do. But in fact purpose emerges slowly, in the species and in the individual. My capacity to move my arm in as many ways as I can depends on things like the evolution of forelegs into arms early in the primate line, the evolution millions of years later of a rotating socket in the shoulder of great apes, to enable swinging in trees, and the further freeing up of arm movements after early hominids became fully bipedal. Babies flail their arms uncontrolledly and purposelessly for months before they can direct them in a particular way for a particular purpose.

Before me, I see an amazing process. How we have evolved from cavepeople to revolutionaries to civilized citizens – how we evolve from babies to adults – how we evolve from fearful to fearless in our daily lives. Religion is constantly evolving, as well as art.

Everything rests within evolution’s hands. Evolution is not this big scary stand-alone act, but an intertwining force we encounter in every aspect of our lives.

I even received an unrelated story that was submitted (I can only speculate why) to make the site look bad. I foolishly posted a story, without thoroughly reading it (completely my fault!). I later realized (due to someone nicely contacting me to let me know) that it was just a sad attempt to make the site look bad. It was a short story, but I have received a short story before that was actually a close-to-true story that was very good, so I assumed it was something of that nature and did not have enough time to fully read it. Silly me! I will just have to spend more time being more attentive to what is posted on the Coming Out Godless site.

Needless to say, the stories will no longer be numbered in the case that one needs to be removed, so don’t mind the absence of #61.

The spam comments are to be expected to a certain degree but when I receive spam story submissions (and not just the kind advertising for some new hotel or penis enlarging pills), it becomes slightly vexing.

So, over the weekend I received a story submission and didn’t even look at it until this morning (I had a busy weekend). The title “Religion is the source of world’s problem” seemed fine (other than a few grammatical errors) until I read it. It was a jumble of mish-mash, confusing me with a ton of statistics and seemingly atheist leanings, but with conspicuous use if “His” mid-sentence. I’m not opposed to statistics if it flows with the story, nor am I opposed to it being stripped from a site (if it’s your own), but this clearly wasn’t. I followed the original link and the story had a different author (at least the names given are different). Not only is it Christian spam, but whoever submitted it is plagiarizing by taking credit for someone else’s story. Now, that’s not just low… it’s also illegal. But who knows, it could have been the same person who was just too embarrassed to leave his real name (or the non de plume he uses on the actual blog).

The story was about how even though Christians have committed atrocities, atheists have committed far more, full of bad statistics (including absolute power regimes such as acts committed by Mussolini and communist Russia and China), while using the bible as one of his “sources”. The bible should never be used as a source for proving a point in Christian blogs and writings; its circular logic within itself and can never be backed up, other than with those who have written his/her own book, truly believing every word of it. If one has something to say about Christianity, it is best to use a source outside the bible, for it can only make one’s point seem (more) valid.

Forgive me for not linking, but I don’t want to give him anymore traffic than he already has (if any). Its not like he allows any comments, so what’s the use?

Now, let me leave you with the very last sentence of this blog just for shifts ‘n googles: “The Bible says that people are evil (and the statistics on this page support this claim), but that they can become transformed through the power of the Holy Spirit to live lives of love, joy and peace.”

Have you ever wanted to kick Noah’s ass, pimp slap Mary or beat Jesus to a bloody pulp? Here’s your chance. Biblical icons battle it out in the world’s greatest immortal combat. That’s Rad!