Not all equal

Most Muslims are not Arabs. But because we in the west, particularly in America, equate Islam with Arabia, any anti-Islam talk gets shouted down and labeled racist and Islamophobic. Ben Affleck losing his shit on Bill Maher's show recently is a perfect example of this.

Where Islamic Sharia holds sway, you can count on it to be a horrible place to live, particularly if you are a woman or a non-Muslim. This is simply a fact and we should not ignore it in the name of religious tolerance.

How does one tolerate what they don't understand? Apologists for Islam insist on presenting it as just the same as other religions; that the central message is love and kindness, and that the barbarism is contextual as in other ancient religious texts. This, friends, is far from the truth.

The central message of Islam is not in line with the modern, secular values of human rights and civil liberties. Unlike the violent passages of the Old Testament, their equivalent in the Quran are typically open-ended, and therefore not limited to or bound by any historical context.

All this aside, the fact remains that it is overwhelmingly Muslims, not Jews or Buddhists, who are engaged in acts of violence across the globe by using religious justification. Christians, for all their faults and backwardness, are simply light-years ahead when it comes to how they view the world.

Many Christians may be homophobic, they may be bigoted, they may be anti-science and these are all things we should strive to overcome; but the Muslim parallel is all of those things plus acting on them violently. The losing battle Christians are having with modernity is fought on social media, and in businesses refusing to serve gay customers; a far cry from stoning a woman to death for being raped.

The problem is not, as I've said many times, the people - it is the ideology. It is simply too easy to justify barbaric behavior within an Islamic context. Holding a sign that says "God hates fags" is much, much better than torturing and killing anyone who openly admits to being gay. Don't believe me? Try it, try it anywhere from Tunisia to Turkey or Indonesia to Pakistan.

It is no surprise that you hear Christians talking about love all the time when discussing religion. With Muslims you almost never hear about love. Instead, you hear about obedience, respect, honor, jihad (of all varieties), submission - and the absurd level of defensiveness when anyone questions any aspect of the Islamic ideology.

It is also a lie that there are many forms of 'violent extremism' and that we should not single out Islam as the only religion which lends itself to violence. Muslim on Muslim violence, not to mention that of Muslim on Unbelievers, is piled high with bodies every single day. And then we are told by the apologists to consider the example of Timothy McVeigh and the like.

There simply is no comparison. The violence committed every day all around the world in the name of - or as mandated by - Islam simply dwarfs the other examples of extremist violence.

But for me, the worst part of Islam is the treatment of women. The Islamic doctrine has convinced hundreds of millions of Muslim women that they are inferior, that their fathers/brothers/husbands should speak for them, that they should never consider their own sexual desires. This all comes from how Muhammad treated women in general and his wives in particular. Is there misogyny in other religions? Undoubtedly, but it is not practiced to nearly the same insidious level as it is within Islam.

We need to wake up to these facts, and to stop pretending that all religions are equal. The view that they are (equal) is promoted by well-meaning idealists, liberal apologists, or Muslims lying through their teeth; and the people who want Islam and Sharia to utterly dominate the world are happy to let them continue doing so.

Islam is not a religion of peace, and it never will be. The peaceful Muslims of the world have tempered the doctrine of Islam with their own secular morality. The most peaceful Muslims are the ones who don't practice Islam in any real sense, who don't fully understand it, and who impose their own morality from the outside.

The 'Perfect' Book

Muslims, particularly Arab Muslims, are the first to proclaim the miracle that is the Quran. How do we know that it is a miracle? Because, supposedly, it is written in the purest Arabic; the style, form, grammar, and eloquence of which has never been matched. We are told that this point in particular is not up for debate.

Fine, let us take it to be true that the grammar of the Quran is without error - but what of its content? Why, when verses or entire chapters are highlighted as being obviously barbaric and misogynistic are we given the run-around? "You're misinterpreting, you don't understand the context, the language is too pure for our simple brains to decipher."

Really? And yet it is this very same language which is used to establish the truth and perfectness of the Quran in the first place, is it not? Why is it that a verse which says to give alms to the poor is decipherable, while a verse which stipulates beheading, slavery, and stoning are acceptable practices needs to be looked at 'in context.' What context? Did early Muslims spread Islam by killing and enslaving people or didn't they? History tells us this is undoubtedly true.

I don't care, and neither should you, that the Quran stipulates slave girls can be freed or even married to their masters, which apparently proves God's goodness. "Take slaves, sure, but after a while it's okay to free them or even marry them (against their will)." The point is that the book clearly condones slavery and numerous other actions which today are universally considered human rights abuses.

It's time to stop making excuses. Nothing will change until Muslims of all ethnic backgrounds admit, openly, that the Quran is NOT the perfect word of the creator of the universe.

Don't hold your breath.

Islamaphobia 2.0

How many groups like ISIS do you want to see pop up around the world before you start taking the issue of religion seriously?

Spare me your half-assed attempts to rationalize. "This is not religion." Sure it is, it just isn't your interpretation of religion. This is a direct result of the 'tolerance' you speak of. It is a direct result of the fallacy known as 'Islamophobia.' There is no such thing. Every time we allow these religious types to cow us into submission (be it Danish cartoons or forcing young girls to wear Hijab) we are giving up ground. Tolerance is not one group being allowed to walk all over another in the name of religion. Multiculturalism does not mean you are forced to tolerate an idea or a group for fear of violent backlash.

The idea of 'Islamophobia' is a new one, and it has been used by Muslims (whether you agree with their interpretation of Islam or not is immaterial, they see themselves as good, practicing Muslims) as a way to silence any perceived criticism or slight as 'racist' or 'intolerant.' There is nothing racist or intolerant with not wanting little girls covered head to toe, and forced down our throats as 'dignity' or 'cultural/religious values'; there is nothing racist or intolerant with caricaturing an ancient Arab warlord; there is nothing racist or intolerant with wanting women to be literate and to have control over their reproductive cycle.

No, intolerance is imposing your cultural or religious values on others by force or the threat of violence, and this is exactly what is happening in almost every major secular, democratic society by Muslim groups whose worldview would be pleasing to the likes of ISIS.

'Tolerating' religious moderation is not the answer. As I've said before, if you grant it for one group you must allow it for all; or we will forever be hedging our bets and arguing about who is allowed to claim they are following their religion and who isn't. Never mind that some Saudi sheikh condemned the beheadings; it was Saudi-style fundamentalist Islam that midwifed the birth of this group and countless others like it. And how dare Saudi Arabia claim the moral high ground? Theirs is a nation where women are not even allowed to leave the house, let alone drive, without male supervision.

No, friends, I will not have it. Groups like this would not exist without religion, and it is past time we realize it and do something about it. I invite you to join me in doing so.

Cognitive dissonance, logic, and protecting our children

Cognitive dissonance presents a very salient problem with which many of our brother and sister humans are faced every single day. There is also the problem of not understanding why it is important to value logic, reason, and evidence.

As Sam Harris puts it: "If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what possible logical argument could you invoke to show the importance of logic?"

This is, to put it mildly, quite the conundrum. I am not willing to give up on someone who makes faith claims and engages in mental gymnastics in order to reconcile their beliefs with the nature of reality; I would be lacking in my obligation to fellow members of my species were I to do so.

The only way we are ever going to rid ourselves of baseless supernatural claims is by relentlessly pointing out how ridiculous these ideas are and how delusional are those who hold them to be true. We must shame people, if we have to, into letting go of these beliefs.

What's more, we need to protect the children of our species. Here is something the faithful do not seem to understand: Your children are not your property. You don't, in fact, have the right to teach them whatever you want; you are simply custodians of their fragile, growing minds. And while you have considerable leeway in choosing how to raise them, forcing them to believe as you do, about things which you cannot possibly know, is a most egregious infraction on their personal and psychological integrity.

You are hijacking the mind of a child to conform to a worldview which is patently false. Is it not obvious from their incessant questions that your answers and circular logic are grossly inadequate? If you teach a child arithmetic, the child will question until he or she receives a sufficient answer. You can see for yourself that two and two make four; it is a fact, based in reality.

Children need to know as much about reality and the way things work in this reality, the only reality we know of. It is detrimental to confuse them with supernatural claims based on no evidence. You don't need religion to teach your children morality. In fact, religion is probably the worst way ever thought up to teach morality.

Please, stop lying to your children; we need them. We need them for the next great discovery, to keep moving humanity forward, and to ensure that all we've accomplished isn't lost. I implore all of you to think on these things.

No more reformations, please.

Religion, particularly Islam, doesn't need a 'reformation'. We've already tried that with Christianity, and we still have to argue about contraception and abortion and stem cells and homosexuals with 'Christians.' In every single major societal debate, you will invariably find that one side is arguing based on religious grounds - and they are always the wrong side from an objectively moral viewpoint.

Saying religion needs a reformation is like saying slavery needed a reformation. "It's not ALL of slavery that's evil and based on immorality and ignorance, we should just reform it so that it's more palatable to our modern sensibilities." Get real.

It is not the singling out of Islam, as I have said time and again. Any idea, if it is harmful, should not be allowed to persist.

The argument that "Christianity used to be the same" is a tired one, and it gets us nowhere. "Christians did the same things then that Muslims are doing now." That's a ridiculous argument because it justifies barbaric behavior. We don't live 'in past centuries.' We live now. And now, we know enough about the world and science and morality to discard ancient ignorance. We have secular rather than religious laws (excepting, of course, Muslim countries), and we shouldn't give Islam a pass because they didn't get the memo.

The information of every conceivable human endeavor since the dawn of history (the written word) is at our fingertips. It's my position that, given enough time, the information access bestowed upon us by modern technology will do away with these ancient myths; but we shouldn't just wait around in the meantime.

I will say it again: I am equally critical of other faiths and ideologies. To me, the Christian doctrine of vicarious redemption through human sacrifice is a wholly disgusting and immoral one; not to mention their ideas on compulsory love under pain of eternal torture, and theophagy, to name but a few.

Religion: Let it go...

I don't say that ridding ourselves of religion will solve all of our problems. If religion and mysticism were to disappear entirely from the face of the earth, tomorrow, we would still have all of our other issues to deal with. 
However, it should be obvious to everyone that the needless suffering and death of millions which takes place every single day in the name of religion would decline dramatically.

Religion is a far more divisive force than it is a unifying one. If everyone who believed in the God of Abraham - never mind the Hindus and the Buddhists and everyone else - if only the people who believed in the God of Abraham were able to get along and coexist peacefully, I would never have had a reason to be an outspoken critic of religious faith.

The reality, however, is that the very nature of religious faith precludes it from allowing its adherents to leave well enough alone. Even non-denominational believers FEEL that atheists and other non-believers (no matter that they are good people) need to eventually 'open their hearts to god.' No matter how you slice it, it leads to proselytizing; aggressive or otherwise, it makes no difference.

In a nutshell: If there were no problem with religion, there would be no problem with religion. That "Let it go" song from Frozen should be repackaged and marketed to adults who still believe in stupid, harmful, ridiculous, immoral, and ultimately evil myths.

A simple explanation of the contradictions within the Quran

It is telling that the Meccan verses of the Quran which say things like "there is no compulsion in religion" were 'revealed' to Mohammed when Islam was still a fledgling religion and its prophet had no power and a paltry few followers. This is what you'd expect one to say in a hostile environment. "No one is forcing you (much stronger Meccan pagans) to believe me." There is another early verse which says "be kind to your opponents." A verse which was revealed years later contradicts this by saying, "kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out like they drove you out." It is patently obvious what what this is referring to; Mohammed's persecution and escape from Mecca.

The reason there are so many contradictions is that the later Medinan verses were spoken by a man who had gained much power and influence over the course of 13 years or more by marrying a wealthy widow and moving to a different city. Once Mohammed's power base was firmly established, the earlier, kinder verses were superseded by much more violent ones. "Be kind to your opponents" became "Kill them all." There is no great mystery here, folks. A man with no power will say and do what he has to to survive. That same man then goes on to seek revenge and contradict all of his earlier teachings. This is not the behavior of a benevolent spiritual leader; but it is easily ascribed to a megalomaniac who was orphaned as a child and bullied/mocked as an adult.

Mohammed gives no justification for this discrepancy in the Quran and the change in Allah's mood from peaceful to militant and conciliatory to confrontational. Muslim apologists in the West present the kinder verses of the Quran or what is known as the Early Revelation. While Islamic scholars, with only Muslims as their audience, say that those softer verses of the Quran were abrogated and supplanted by harsher ones. The reason is obvious - Mohammad became strong enough to move from the stage of weakness to the stage of Jihad.

On Pope Francis "Excommunicating" Members of the Mafia

Yeah, like the Catholic Church has any moral authority. Any person with a shred of dignity or the merest semblance of a conscience long ago severed all ties to that despicable organization when we discovered they were sheltering an army of child rapists. The Church of Rome makes the Mafia look like the Girl Scouts.

"Excommunicated." Fuck you. "Because ours is the only true religion, you are now eternally damned unless you repent," that's what excommunicated means. What gives any man the right to say that or assume his authority is derived from the creator of the universe if there is one?

This is where that hypocrisy I was talking about comes in. Everyone is hailing Pope Francis as this wonderful person. He may have done some good things for the poor in South America, but so did dozens of charitable organizations, and they didn't have to proselytize in order to help the poor the way the church does.

I don't care how much love you have, how many charitable deeds you've done, how fatherly you look and behave, or any number of other things. If you belong to an organization that preaches the sinfulness of condom use, that kept people like Cardinal Bernard Law from facing Justice by hiding him in the Vatican, and that offers assistance with the caveat that you accept their faith; I'm sorry, you have no moral authority whatsoever. In fact, you symbolize the epitome of immorality, hypocrisy, and the propagation of hatred. If Francis had a conscience, he would have left the church decades ago and helped people any other way he could. But he didn't; he stayed, and still believes in all of the magic and fairy tales and that lying to children is okay.

The hypocrisy is this: The Catholic church says that it wants to reconcile with other faiths, while simultaneously holding as true the ideas that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ on Earth, and that he has the power to send people to eternal damnation and hell fire. You can't have it both ways; you can't say, "sure, be a Muslim or a Hindu or Jew, by all means, but know that you're wrong and the only way to salvation is through Holy Mother Church."

Again, and I can't state this emphatically enough, Fuck - You.

Civilization, Enlightenment, and the Ever-Present Religious Lie

To not believe in the divine is to know that it falls to us to make the world a better place. We have barely emerged from centuries of barbarism. It is not a surprise that there are shocking inequities in this world. It is hard work to climb down out of the trees, walk upright, and build a viable, global civilization when you start with technology that is made of rocks and sticks and fur. This is the largest project ever undertaken, and progress is difficult.

Just picture going back 50 generations within your own family. I don't care how cultured you are or how well-educated your family - you could be a Kennedy or a Vanderbilt - but if you go back far enough you will eventually come across someone who thinks that sacrificing their first-born child just might be a good way to control the weather.

These ideas, or what we call religion, have been handed down from generation to generation with no real discernible difference until the dawn of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. Enlightenment principles, movable type, and the translation/demystification  of the Bible from Latin into many different languages absolutely devastated the power and influence of religion in the west.

Enlightenment thinkers, hundreds of years ago now, easily spotted the absurdity of religious claims, and vehemently attacked organized religion and a theistic worldview. That an educated person today can hold that any religion is true, let alone that an all-knowing god intervenes in human affairs, is the very definition of delusional.

But religion (enforced ignorance of the masses) did not just roll over. It has continually reinvented itself in order to make itself more palatable to our modern, secular values. Why? Largely for the same reason any tyrant wishes to rule as an absolute dictator: wealth, power, and control.

You have been lied to, brainwashed, bamboozled, and - here's the kicker - this has been done to you by people who don't even realize that it has been done to them. We never get to see or hear what gets said behind closed doors at the Vatican or any other secret gathering of religious leaders. In the rare cases that we do, it is almost always a scandal of unconscionable proportions as in the case of the systemic rape of children by Catholic clergymen.

I don't doubt that many of your Rabbis, Imams, and Ministers are all convinced of their faith and believe they are doing God's work; but a lie based on ignorance is still a lie. If you go far enough up the hierarchical ladder in any faith, you will eventually come across the person or persons who know(s) that it's all bullshit, and will keep feeding it to you for as long as you are willing not to think for yourselves.

The exception to my point about religion reinventing itself in order to keep up with modernity is, of course, Islam. Islam remains the only major religion where the vast majority of its leaders and adherents still hold every word of their book to be literally true. How is anyone surprised at the violence and the barbarism and the rampant misogyny we see throughout Muslim societies? This is exactly what you would expect when you try (and often succeed) to impose 7th century values onto our modern civilization.

Faith Leads to Immorality

The theist is far more susceptible to immoral behavior than the atheist. A person who believes in a god who forgives can act any way they please knowing that they need only ask for forgiveness, and that they will be rewarded for a lifetime of immorality.

The common notion that 'if there is no God, then why should we be kind to one another?' begins with a false premise and assumes that humans are inherently evil. This is demonstrably untrue. IF there is a god, and all you have to do is believe in him, only then does someone behave as though they can either - A) Be a bad person but ask for forgiveness at the end, or - B) Be a good person who sometimes behaves immorally because they believe they are acting in a way which is pleasing to god.

The atheist, on the other hand, has to live with his/her conscience, with no thought or hope of being forgiven or rewarded in the hereafter by declaring belief in the divine. The atheist understands that he/she alone is responsible for his/her actions; there is no vicarious redemption, nor is there a fake ID stamped 'believer' which guarantees safe passage into heaven. There is nothing to fall back on, there is no safety net.

If we don't behave in a manner which reflects our innate moral compass, if we don't have compassion and human solidarity, then we have wasted the only life we have by adding to our own misery as well as to the misery of others. This is not to say that some atheists are not assholes or psychopaths or immoral, merely that lacking belief in god is not what leads them to immorality, while the reverse is often the case among theists, as explained in the first paragraph.

In sum, theists have a free pass to behave however they wish, atheists do not. Theists believe that, by virtue of their faith in god, they are axiomatically behaving morally even when they are not. Theists believe that god arbitrarily intervenes in human affairs, and often ignore societal problems which are easily corrected by saying, 'god must have wanted that to happen.' Any worldview which allows you to shirk your obligation to your fellow man is not a moral doctrine. By saying "it's in gods hands" you are complicit in the preventable, unnecessary suffering of others.

The evidence for the truth of what I have just explained is all around us, and we cannot go on letting people claim the moral high ground simply because we have erroneously allowed the suspension of reason (faith) to be considered a virtue, when it is patently obvious that faith leads to immorality.

This misconception of non-belief

Misconception: Non-belief is a choice which can be reversed by wishing hard enough. 

This is patently false. Non-believers and atheists are simply not capable of flipping a switch and all of a sudden believing in god and heaven and miracles and all the rest of it. I can't FORCE myself to believe in something which doesn't make sense and for which there is no evidence. If I said I did believe, I would be lying to you and to myself. Don't cite examples of atheists who 'found chirst'. Please. Those people had an experience which they chose to attribute to Jesus rather than to what it was, a deeply moving experience which all humans are capable of and which had nothing to do with the god of Abraham or any other quasi-historical ancient superheroes.

What's more, you don't have information which is denied to me. By now it should be obvious that I have studied religion and faith and belief at great length, and thought about these things far more in depth than many of you have. I have read and heard every conceivable argument for faith, and none of it has caused me to think, 'that's it, that's the one, I believe!' I have studied the various religions at great length, more so than many 'believers' ever will because they don't want to read or think about anything which could shatter their faith, which I think is a cowardly way to go about living if you fall into that category.

The problem with faith is that you are brought up with these preconceived notions which fly in the face of everything we know about the nature of reality. If your starting point is the supernatural rather than the natural, it will lead and has led to copious amounts of confusion and nonsensical arguments. If you begin with myth, and hold it as true (probably because of childhood indoctrination, no matter how much or how little) you arrive at a terminal point of pseudo-intellectual chaos. If, however, your starting point is reality, using reason and logic, it will eventually become clear to you why the numinous is nothing more than wishful thinking and serves no purpose.

Why Hell Is Such An Appalling Notion

I have said before that if I were forced to choose, if I had absolutely no say in the matter and had to pick an afterlife, then I would like to spend it in a sort-of star trek kind of way, traveling from star-system to star-system and throughout this and other galaxies learning about every conceivable thing. The problem with this is the conundrum which affected the Q; at some point there is nothing new left to discover. An eternity of anything would be tedious and boring eventually.

Which brings us to hell. This is a preposterous idea to tell anyone. If I told a woman that she deserved to be raped for wearing a miniskirt, and that she deserved to get aids and pregnant from the rape, I would be seen as a monster. The rape and the aids and the unwanted pregnancy would surely destroy her life and leave her miserable and eventually dead.

But that same woman can tell me that because I don't believe in god, I therefore deserve to be TORTURED FOR AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF TIME. This is appalling on the grandest scale, and by comparison her rape and aids and pregnancy are absolutely nothing, zero. You can't conceivably compare the two. Yet people are not only allowed to say that I deserve to be tortured forever, they are not seen as monsters for wishing this upon me. Why? Because of the ridiculous and unwarranted respect we accord religious faith.

Reaching for the stars...

The idea of a deity and an afterlife came from the same people who wrote our barbaric scriptures, and they plagiarized it from the civilization that came before them. It is an after-effect of centuries of dogmatism and mass delusion. It is an old idea, and not a very good one, and it has been hanging around because people give in to cultural, parental, and religious bullying too easily. (More on this a little later).

Secularism has been around, in one form or another, as far back as the ancient Greeks. All of the great minds of discovery had no choice but to feign belief in the divine. Why? Because they valued their lives and thought they were doing important work, which they were. Speaking out against the gods or the god of Abraham was an automatic death sentence, and still is today in many parts of the world.

Still, when we speak of great discoveries, we credit the mind and not the religion, and that is as it should be. If anyone believes that Newton was a great physicist because he was a Christian (a Unitarian who denied the trinity and the divinity of Jesus), or that Alhazan was a great polymath because he was Muslim, you are sadly mistaken. Their ideas flew in the face of the rigidity and dogmatism of their faith, and it was very hard to reconcile the two. To the extent that they were scientific geniuses, it's to the extent that they were NOT religious. And in the case of Newton, perhaps the greatest genius who ever lived, he too was susceptible to mass delusion as evidenced by his lack of inquiry and skepticism in his later years. His work stopped the moment he started attributing the unknown to the divine.

Thankfully, modern scientists live in an age where openly stating disbelief in ancient ideas is not a death sentence as long as you live in a secular society. There is that word again, secular. I think we forget how important that word is. I think we forget how bad it was, and is, to live in religious societies. I think we forget that religion is a fucking stupid idea which has caused more harm and misery than anyone will ever know. And, even today, I think we forget that it's science, skepticism, and free inquiry which has allowed these secular societies to flourish.

Our current understanding of nature has changed. We have learned things since claims (god, afterlife, creation myths, etc) were made by Iron Age peasants who didn't know anything about the nature of the world. Our modern morality supersedes theirs BECAUSE OF our greater understanding. We know that other races and women are not inferior; we know that homosexuality occurs at the same rate across most mammalian species; we know that stoning people to death constitutes cruel and unusual punishment; we know that piling sins on a goat and chasing it out of the city does not relieve us of personal responsibility.

The people who gave us the ideas of gods and an afterlife are the same people who tell us, across the generations (just pick up any bible) that it was completely acceptable to massacre all the men in a village and keep the women and girls as slaves. When Genghis Khan did the same, at least he said it was because he liked fucking and he didn't want the boys to grow up and take their revenge; not because an imaginary god told his ancestors, one of whom wrote it down in a book full of other barbaric and crazy stories no child would believe if it were not for outside pressure. We simply know much more, and we don't need these ideas which were born in the infancy of our species.

Don't take anything on faith. Ask questions, demand evidence, and use the tools of logic and reason which took 4.5 Billion years to evolve. Don't throw away the only weapon you have, don't throw away your mind for a notion as ridiculous as faith. Faith means believing in something on insufficient evidence for inadequate reasons. Faith is an insult to humanity, and to the work of all the great minds who propelled us from wretched ignorance to reaching for the stars.

Religious 'Interpretation'

The reason places like Turkey and Indonesia and Bangladesh are the way they are is because they are Muslims in name only, they memorize Quran and Hadith but don't actually understand it; which is, evidently, a very good thing. Because if they understood the Arabic, Indonesia and Turkey and Bangladesh would look like Saudi Arabia and Iraq and Sudan. In some of the other Arabic-speaking societies, Islam and Sharia have been tempered by secularism and multiculturalism. It's no coincidence that Tunisians and Lebanese aren't very good Muslims; they think they're French. That's just one example.  

Now, it may be true that the violence in the middle east and the treatment of women there is a tribal or cultural thing, but it is false to say that it is only a cultural phenomenon. Islam does indeed espouse some very barbaric things. Yes, other religions do as well, but today even the fundamentalists of those religions are peaceful when compared to Islam. If, as some argue, Islam can be interpreted differently by different people, then they have no leg to stand on. Fundamentalists are, axiomatically, interpreting their religion properly. And when Islam is interpreted from a fundamentalist viewpoint, you get things like Hezbollah and Al Qaeda and Ansar Al Sharia. Almost nothing they do or say is forbidden anywhere in the Quran or Hadith, quite the opposite actually. Islam makes it easy to become a terrorist.

Muslim moderates have no right to say that fundamentalists have grossly misinterpreted the faith. And since that is apparently the case, I see no reason why anyone should expect the problem of violent extremism within Islam to stop. Islamic fundamentalism is clashing with modernity, and Muslim moderates are exacerbating the issue by defending Islam. Rather than saying, "Yes, it IS a problem and we shouldn't take the Quran literally," they argue that a happy middle ground can be found. This is simply not the case. If the Quran is the perfect word of God, then violent, external jihad against the infidel is a valid interpretation. Your personal interpretation might be something along the lines of "Jihad is an internal struggle," but if we allow you your interpretation we must allow the jihadists theirs. Are you beginning to see the problem?

If Christians and Jews were fundamentalists the way Muslims are, then they would also be subjugating women and stoning people to death; it says to in the Bible. I'll grant you that Israeli Jews have behaved monstrously in many instances toward Palestinian Arabs, but they are not forcing their women to live in cloth bags as illiterate servants in the name of Judaism. That said, it is patently obvious that the situation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is in fact a Muslim-Jewish conflict. There are people on both sides who believe that God promised them this land. If this were only a politically motivated territorial dispute, it would have been solved by now. The ongoing conflict over a patch of desert in the Levant will continue to be a problem as long as we go on pretending that it is not a religious issue. 

Arguing interpretation of verses is as ridiculous as it gets. This is the point. If you take the 'nice' verses and ignore the 'bad' ones, then you are not in fact practicing Islam; you are cherry-picking, as Christians and Jews have been doing for quite some time now. I would love to do away with religions all-together, but there is a reason the Quran is still a dangerous text in a way the Old Testament is not - because Jews and Christians don't still hold that every word of the book is true and that people are simply misinterpreting it. Go to any secular society in the west and start reading from Leviticus to well-educated people and they will look at you like you've lost your mind. Do the same with the Quran in the middle east, and everyone will listen quietly and nod their heads and say "Ameen." And that, friends, is the problem. 

The Plight of Women in Islam

The problem is that there are enough educated people pretending there is no problem with religion. These people know better, and they have an obligation to destroy this notion of moral relativism.

It is true, for example, that a sizable percentage of women in Muslim societies agree that they should be subservient to their husbands. That they believe this way does not relieve us of our moral obligation to point out how and why this is wrong. This is nothing more than Stockholm Syndrome on a much larger scale; these women have been held hostage, literally and figuratively, since birth. They have been held hostage by misogynistic men who get their ideas from a correct reading of religious texts and teachings.

I never get any push back when I criticize the atrocity that is North Korea. We all agree that North Koreans live under an oppressive and tyrannical regime. North Korea is a religious state if ever there was one; you must submit completely to the will of the supreme leader and acknowledge his right to demand obedience. Indeed, we attack and condemn the government of North Korea at every opportunity. No one for a second would ever hold their tongue in chastising the leadership of North Korea for the treatment of its citizens, even though many North Koreans would be appalled to hear us say such things if they had access to outside information.

Why then do you remain silent on the situation of women living under Islamic tyranny? If it is because you fear violent backlash from within the Muslim community, now we're getting somewhere. If, however, it is because you argue from the viewpoint of moral relativism then you are a hypocrite, as evidenced by my North Korea example. No one would ever be tempted to say, "North Koreans have a right to believe that Kim Jong-Un can treat them however he pleases. Who are you to say their ideas are wrong?"

And so it goes with women living under Islam.

The Bible is NOT Inspired

Any god who 'inspires' people to commit genocide and condone slavery and the subjugation of women can go fuck himself. 

Deuteronomy 2:34 "And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none alive."

1 Peter 2:18: "Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel."

Ephesians 6:5 "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ."

Ephesians 5:22, "Wives, submit to you husbands as to the Lord"

How many more 'inspired' verses do I need to quote before you see how ridiculous your views are? Any god who inspires people to act in such a way and then to compile it in a book which purports to be the epitome of moral truth is, in a word, insane.

You cannot use the argument that the New Testament supersedes the barbarity of the Old Testament. The New Testament is far more barbaric because, along with the above verses, it introduces the idea of Hell. At least in the Old Testament you could fucking DIE to get out of the bondage of slavery and escape the rampant misogyny. Only when gentle Jesus (meek and mild) appears are we told that we deserve an eternity of torment for imaginary crimes.

Spare me your rationalizations about how Jesus is love. The same Jesus who would condemn billions to an eternity of torture for living moral lives and not lying to their children? That's not love. The torments of hell, vicarious redemption through human sacrifice, original sin...these are not moral teachings. But, these ARE ideas which are easily ascribed to Iron Age, semi-literate peasants. 

When you read the bible for what it is, the ramblings of primitive goatherds, it ceases to be mysterious. "Why would god inspire and condone slavery, approve of sexism, and call for the mass murder of infants?"
The answer is, plainly, he wouldn't. It's all make-believe - just like God.

Old Father Hubbard

For my second mother, Syndi.

Some things are self-evident: Murder is wrong; kindness is good; 75 million years ago a ruler of a Galactic Confederacy rounded up billions of his own citizens and shipped them to Earth (then called Teegeeack), tied them to volcanoes and used hydrogen bombs to blow up their bodies; adultery is bad; lying is wrong...

L Ron Hubbard was a despicable human being and a charlatan. He was a failed writer of science fiction and was convicted of fraud. He took one of his alien spaceship stories and turned it into a tax-free ponzi scheme by claiming it was a religion.

Delusional people are the reason the Hubbards of the world are remembered at all. He should be no more than a footnote in a long list of failed writers who couldn't hack it.

People desperate to believe in something because they think they have to are how all religions are formed; not just the modern cults of Scientology and Mormonism, but all of them. L Ron simply did what countless other 'prophets' did before him: tell people a fairy tale.

Apparently, it's easier to get people to listen to everything you say and to pay you vast sums of money if you make up a story about flying horses or walking on water or Xenu the leader of the Galactic Confederacy. In fact, with what we know about the universe, the Xenu story is actually more plausible because we know horses don't fly and people can't walk on water; at least, not on earth.

L Ron tried to get people to read what he had to say and failed, so he simply changed the genre of one of his stories from Fiction to Non-fiction. Yes, that is how gullible people are, including anyone who follows any form of religion.

The Impact of Mass Delusion on Society

There is nothing more important than emancipating humankind from its mass delusion in the numinous. The reason is that doing so will also allow us to cure ourselves of countless other societal ills, not least of which are abject poverty and the ill-treatment of women. 

It is no coincidence that many of the most impoverished societies on earth, and those where women are treated as chattel, are almost entirely religious. In every age, it has been true that where the clergy enjoy too great an influence in political or social matters, you will invariably find that enforced ignorance and poverty are rampant, and that women have no say, no choice, and, perhaps most importantly, no control over their reproductive cycle. You tacitly lend approval to these highly immoral actions when you defend religion or religious faith in any form. 

We are allowed to recognize that religion only has the influence it has now because of the much greater influence it had in the past. We are allowed to recognize how barbarically religion behaved when it was strong. Don't be fooled by the modern face of religion with its outstretched hands and ingratiating smiles; that way lies only madness. 

Enough is Enough.

How many Boko Haram groups do you want to see pop up around the world before you start taking the issue of religion seriously?

Spare me your half-assed attempts to rationalize. "This is not religion." Sure it is, it just isn't your interpretation of religion. This is a direct result of the 'tolerance' you speak of. It is a direct result of the fallacy known as 'Islamophobia.' There is no such thing. Every time we allow these religious types to cow us into submission (be it Danish cartoons or forcing young girls to wear Hijab) we are giving up ground. Tolerance is not one group being allowed to walk all over another in the name of religion. Multiculturalism does not mean you are forced to tolerate an idea or a group for fear of violent backlash. 

The idea of 'Islamophobia' is a new one, and it has been used by Muslims (whether you agree with their interpretation of Islam or not is immaterial, they see themselves as good, practicing Muslims) as a way to silence any perceived criticism or slight as 'racist' or 'intolerant.' There is nothing racist or intolerant with not wanting little girls covered head to toe, and forced down our throats as 'dignity' or 'cultural/religious values'; there is nothing racist or intolerant with caricaturing an ancient Arab warlord; there is nothing racist or intolerant with wanting women to be literate and to have control over their reproductive cycle. 

No, intolerance is imposing your cultural or religious values on others by force or the threat of violence, and this is exactly what is happening in almost every major secular, democratic society by Muslim groups whose worldview would be pleasing to the likes of Boko Haram.

'Tolerating' religious moderation is not the answer. As I've said before, if you grant it for one group you must allow it for all; or we will forever be hedging our bets and arguing about who is allowed to claim they are following their religion and who isn't. Never mind that some Saudi sheikh condemned the kidnappings; it was Saudi-style Wahhabi Islam that midwifed the birth of this group and countless others like it. And how dare Saudi Arabia claim the moral high ground? Theirs is a nation where women are not even allowed to leave the house, let alone drive, without male supervision.

No, friends, I will not have it. Groups like this would not exist without religion, and it is past time we realize it and do something about it. I invite you to join me in doing so.

Freedom of Speech and Faith

There is an inverse relationship between freedom of speech and faith. I believe there ought not to be a limit on freedom of speech. However, if you grant the same for faith, I don’t think you want that any more than I do. Many of you have what appears to be a very lax, non-harmful form of faith; or so it seems to you. Your morality has been tempered by secular ideas and has pushed back at many (but not all) bad ideas associated with religion and faith. What you are saying, however, when you say people should be allowed to believe whatever they want, what you mean is “whatever they want, within limits.” And the closer to your worldview and ideas about faith the better. 

So you have your faith, you largely keep it to yourself, and you don’t take it too seriously. You also feel a connection or sympathy to others who are like-minded. Fine. But saying people should be allowed to believe whatever they want, one of the most common, albeit weak, rebuttals I come across, gives implicit approval to anyone to believe anything. “Let people believe what they want, with the following exceptions that aren’t in line with my worldview…” 

This is not a moral stance, or acceptance, or tolerance. Because you, like me, don’t want to be neighbors with people who believe a suicide mission will bring glory to their family and will allow them to ascend straight to heaven as a martyr. You don’t want your neighbors and friends to believe God cures diseases and thereby forego medical treatment. You don’t want people who believe that their leader, either religious or political, speaks for god and therefore anything they say or do is good and right by definition, no matter how immoral.You can’t just shrug them off and say, “that’s not what I meant, those ideas are crazy.” Is every Mormon crazy? Was every suicide bomber crazy? Was every Nazi crazy for that matter? No, and yet their BELIEFS allowed them to rationalize their clearly psychotic behavior. Shall I go on? Shall I insult you further?

I don’t mean to insult your intelligence, but I feel I have to hammer this point home. I think you know that specific beliefs matter, and you don’t want to allow anyone to believe anything any more than I do. But, as with freedom of speech, if you grant it for one you must allow it for all. Do be careful what you wish for.

False Consolation and Our Place in the Universe.

It is a very consoling thought that when we die we get to be with our loved ones for eternity. The fact that it is consoling does not make it true, or even likely. We should learn how to grieve rather than lying to ourselves and to each other. We should console ourselves with how lucky we are to be here in the first place, and to experience life. As far as we know, we are the only lifeforms capable of understanding our place in the universe and how we came to be here. When we look up at the night sky we are looking at our own history, and that is a truly wondrous and majestic idea. We are all here by accident. There are any number of circumstances which could have led to my not being born, dating back to the beginning of the universe and the formation of the first stars. 

People who say they can't imagine what it would be like to not exist after we die just aren't trying hard enough. It's not as though you will be stuck in an eternal state of conscious darkness. I think it was Mark Twain who said, "I was not alive for billions of years before I was born, and yet I was not inconvenienced in the slightest." 

That life should begin at all was by no means a guarantee all those billions of years ago when the Earth was little more than a proto-planet. There was no oxygen atmosphere, the surface was constantly bombarded by asteroids and harmful UV rays. It is truly mind-boggling that in such a harsh environment a simple strand of protein was able to duplicate itself; and here we find ourselves some four billion years later.

So, the fact that we're all here for such a short amount of time, against astounding odds, I think shows that wasting time on wishful thinking and ancient superstition is idiotic and not in the least bit helpful. Do the best you can to ease the suffering of others, to find some joy and happiness in the world, and you will have lived an admirable life. Hoping against hope that there is something better after we die is to take your life for granted. It is to look back at the evolution and the majesty of the entire Cosmos and say, "No, thank you. I have a better explanation - I know the unknowable, because I can't imagine not existing, and it says so in my favorite book."

We can't allow people to believe whatever they want.

If your argument is just to let people believe whatever they want, then there is nothing you can say against the Westboro Baptist Church, Scientology, or suicide bombers. These people actually believe that what they are doing is good and right in the eyes of god. There is nothing you can say against people who refuse to vaccinate their children or seek medical attention for completely curable disease because they believe god will cure them. There is nothing you can say against people who believe stoning someone to death for premarital sex and adultery is completely justified. I could go on for hours compiling this list, but I hope you get the point by now. 

Believing in something that would otherwise be thought insane, were it not protected from scrutiny by the respect we accord religious faith, is a direct result of not criticizing bad ideas. If you don't think this is a serious argument with global ramifications for the future of humanity, you are simply mistaken. While your idea of faith may seem harmless on the surface, I assure you it is anything but. As I've stated elsewhere, the 'extremism' vs 'moderate' view simply does not work. Religious extremists are just better at their religion, and believe more deeply that god is truly on their side. People who kill gays or blow themselves up on buses are often perfectly normal people driven to psychotic behavior because they believe with conviction they are in the right. Stop pretending people don't actually believe these things, or that this behavior is solely the result of economic desperation or a damaged brain. It isn't. Religious people of the world are telling us, ad nauseam, that they really do believe in some very crazy and dangerous ideas, and that we are not allowed to criticize their faith. This is a problem. 

And hyper-sensitive liberals in the west are just as much to blame for this as anyone. Those of us who live in secular societies appreciate the centuries-long struggle and commitment it has taken to stop religion from running our lives. Why then do you kowtow to those whose views and morals are in complete opposition to your own? There is no room in modern, secular morality for acceptance, tolerance, or respect of beliefs which fly in the face of that very morality. How dare you say you support gays and women's rights, and in the same breath defend religions and people who torment and kill homosexuals, and force their women to live in cloth bags as illiterate baby-making machines? "Respecting" religion gives these people license to get away with far too much, and you are giving up too much ground that countless others fought and died for. Our secularism was born in the renaissance and in the revolutions of the 18th century against the divine right of kings, which for centuries was propped up by religion. We have long since emancipated ourselves from the shackles of ancient barbarism. But when you take offense on behalf of people who would love nothing more than to see your secular morality replaced with religious law and send us back to the Iron Age, you epitomize hypocrisy.

In Man's Image.

I think we need to clarify our argument. Just because something can't yet be proven to NOT exist, does not mean it therefore DOES exist. It is erroneous, therefore, to argue along the lines of, "You can't disprove the divinity of Jesus." The burden of proof does not lie with me; I am not the one making fantastical claims about the suspension of the natural order. 
Another false equivalency is when people say, "there is just as much evidence to substantiate the existence of Jesus as there was for Socrates." 

The problem with this reasoning is that if it were proven Socrates did not exist, it makes no difference. However, if it were conclusively proven that Jesus didn't perform miracles, wasn't born of a virgin, or whose historical personage was a complete fabrication; this poses not only a crisis of faith, but a crisis of reality to billions of people who claim to follow the teachings of the historical Jesus. Their entire worldview would be shattered. The odd part is that there is not one shred of evidence beyond second and third-hand attestations to these supposed miracles which 'prove' he is divine and his teachings therefore true; and yet no one seems to require anything more by way of proof. Herein lies another inherent contradiction. We are told we must come to god or Jesus through faith alone; yet he had to physically prove to people 2000 years ago that he was god by performing miracles on every street corner. They didn't have to take it on faith; they got to witness the cheap parlor tricks, I mean Miracles, first-hand. Where is the faith in that?

The reason you're so good at coming up for answers to all these questions is that you're an expert at rationalizing the inconsistencies found within your faith because you've been at it for so long. The reason that there are so many inconsistencies and that they don't gel with everything we know about history, biology, chemistry, physics, and cosmology, is because they are nothing more than ancient myths. If you make the correct assumption that religion is man-made, then the books and teachings and the idea of faith for faith's sake cease to be mysterious; the ideas came from ignorance. 

The only reason religion and faith are such problems and conflict with rationality and reason is because you make the false assumption that an all-knowing creator had some hand in the affairs of man. Once you come to the realization that all the stories, all the supernatural claims, all the views of the afterlife, and all the theories of god(s) were fabricated by primitive men, they cease to be mysterious. "Why would god condemn homosexuality when it exists throughout nature? Why would god again and again explain exactly how and why women are an inferior creation? Why would god destroy every living creature in a flood? Why would god speak in riddles and condone such barbarity?" The answer is, plainly, he wouldn't. It's all make-believe.

Faith and Obesity.

I’m quite fond of analogies as you may know by now. I find that people of faith share a problem with people who are obese. The obese among us, once the medical community identified obesity as a disease, breathed a great, collective sigh of relief and thought, “See, it’s a disease, it’s out of my control.” It’s a way of shirking responsibility for your actions. Of course, what doctors were thinking was that if people thought of it as a disease, they would then try to CURE themselves of it. Needless to say that’s not what happened, as one in three Americans are now obese. 

Similarly, people of faith are more than happy to shirk their responsibility to the rest of humankind. We hear it all the time, “It’s in God’s hands now.” This highlights the problem of religious faith, because it can be used to justify anything at any time for any reason. “God must have wanted this atrocity to happen” or “God gave us free will.” The free will argument only gets you so far, however. People of faith are constantly thanking God for the positives while simultaneously relieving him of responsibility for earthquakes and holocausts. It’s awfully convenient to be able to stop thinking about a problem and to fail to come up with a solution if you can attribute anything and everything to the will of God. 

This is why faith is bad; it allows perfectly good people to ignore the problems of the world and do nothing, just as obese people go on eating and not exercising and using the ‘disease’ angle as an excuse.  

What it means to be an atheist.

Sky pixie worshipers seem to have an obsession with classifying atheism and atheists. They seem desperate to imply that there is a core set of beliefs that unites all of us or at least some of us. They are forever creating terms like "militant atheist" or "folk atheist".

There simply isn't any need for this kind of classification and it just reflects the obvious lack of imagination and capacity for rational thinking that theists all share. They simply can't conceive of people living their lives without any hint of religious beliefs. They desperately want to believe that the absence of belief is some kind of religion in itself. It's quite pathetic and really shouldn't be encouraged.

How did Jon Stewart put it when he was on Fox? “Because the soup you swim in is agenda-driven, you can't conceive of a scenario where that is NOT the case.” I believe this holds true with the vast majority of theists. Because they are more than happy to define themselves and be defined by others (the narrower the definition the better, it would seem), it's impossible for them to understand that, for some people, no definition or label is necessary. The term atheist is misused and misunderstood. Sam Harris uses the example of, "we don't have a term for non-astrologers." Atheists don't wake up in the morning going, "I don't believe, I don't believe..." the way that many religious people almost certainly spend a lot of time trying to convince themselves of their faith. The only thing that links all atheists is that they do not believe in a supreme being on insufficient evidence. Other than that, there is no linkage. 

There is no church of atheism, there is no dogmatic ideology. They are just people who go about their day not worrying about superstitious nonsense and eternal salvation and the indoctrination of children.

That's all for now.

Science Vs Con Artists.

"Science must confine its inquiry only to things belonging to the human senses, while spiritualism transcends the senses. If you want to understand the nature of spiritual power you can do so only through the path of spirituality and not science. What science has been able to unravel is merely a fraction of the cosmic phenomena ..." - Sathya Sai Baba

First of all, science tells us far more about things we can't detect with the senses than anyone thought possible only a century or two ago. The electromagnetic spectrum is just one of countless examples. I will, however, agree with the last sentence of his quote. We know that the observable universe is only 4% matter and the rest is dark matter. But science tells us more in every age, does it not? 

Newtonian Physics isn’t wrong, it was just the beginning of modern physics. We have also advanced our medicine, our biology, our chemistry, and our mathematics considerably since then. The first automobiles weren't incorrect in their design, but they are primitive by today's standards. We have outgrown alchemy and astrology, both considered scientific fields just a few short centuries ago. Improving upon past discoveries does not make those discoveries wrong, it just means that we understand more. Consider the germ theory of disease - do you think when that was first proposed we knew everything we know now about the nature and variety of viruses and bacteria? Of course not, but the idea that microscopic organisms cause illness isn't being called into question. Similarly, just because Einstein came along and gave us relativity does not mean that the planets don't orbit the sun in an ellipse. Relativity gave us the concept of the 'fabric' of space-time and explained that the Sun is actually warping this 'fabric' and causing the planets to be drawn toward it. Newton made the initial observations and calculations, without which there would be no modern physics.

At any rate, the scientific explanation of the profound sense of wonder people feel and describe as 'spiritual experiences' does not, I think, take away from that experience. Knowing how stars are formed does not take away from admiring their beauty. Understanding the brain does not diminish a person's sense of euphoria either. And con-men like Sathya Sai Baba come along every so many years claiming to just 'know' things they can't possibly know, and people buy it. This is not good for the world.

No Golden Age

By virtue of our place in history, we simply know more about the world and the way things work than every generation that came before us. There was no Golden Age, the ancients were not privy to divine secrets of which we are ignorant. Every single piece of evidence found throughout human history points to the fact that we have superseded every creation myth and every view of the natural word that were once thought to be universal truths. These facts are not to be ignored, they exist in reality whether you like it or not. 

There is no book of divine commandments, ancient spiritual leaders didn't know more than we do, God didn't directly meddle in human affairs for a couple thousand years and then suddenly stop. The fact that people across all faiths can have and have had deeply spiritual and life-changing experiences proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the individual precepts of those religions are wrong. Under the right set of circumstances, a Christian is just as likely as a Muslim or a Hindu to have a once-in-a-lifetime spiritual experience. There are certain practices where focusing the mind can lead to a feeling of oneness with everything; I don't doubt that the plasticity of the human mind easily allows for such experiences. 

That someone has such an experience in no way suggests that the precepts of their religious faith are thereby justified as true. Your mind may be particularly labile and allow you to experience consciousness in a way that others can't. Again, I don't say these things are not possible, and you can even go on calling them 'religious experiences' if you wish; but they are no such thing. They are 'Human Experiences'. And that, to me, is far more beautiful and compelling than ascribing it to metaphysics or the supernatural.

Attacking ideas is not the same as attacking people.

In my criticism on religion and dogma I know that I am offending people. But I'm also telling them that they're wrong to be offended. Rational people aren't offended when their view of something is disproved or challenged; that's just not how rational minds operate when they're really trying to get at what's true in the world. Religions purport to be representing reality, and yet there's this peevish, tribal, and ultimately dangerous reflexive response to having their beliefs challenged.

There is no polite way to say to somebody, "You've wasted your life believing these things." Religion gives you comfort? There is comfort outside of religion. Religion gives your life meaning or a sense of purpose? Non-religious people have shown that religion is not necessary for either. Religion is the cause for so much good in the world? The most charitable societies and countries on the planet are non-religious. Religion is a source of morality? Not only is that laughable, but objective morality exists quite independently of religion.

There are thousands of examples of how science has given us answers where we previously looked to religion. There is not one where religion has disproved science. The problem is delusion compounded by ego. We can look back at successive points throughout human history where science trumped religion, and where the religious of the time still held to their beliefs in spite of overwhelming evidence. It's also a problem of scale. We are far too short-sighted and we don't have an adequate concept of the passage of time. We live for a few decades, we are inculcated with stories and myths from a young age, and we spend our lives clinging to them rather than breaking the bonds of superstitious nonsense. In every age, religious people have pointed to the 'gap' which science can't explain. This is known as "the god of the gaps." And in every age, another gap is filled by a scientific explanation where once there was none. Our generation is no different. We are not special. 

There are millions of dead who believed that a glorious rapture would occur in their lifetime. There are millions who believe it today. A majority of Americans believe Jesus will return In Their Lifetime. The arrogance of holding such a belief is staggering, to say the least. The Sun will be here for another few billion years. That humans will make it another few hundred years is by no means guaranteed, and we are on the precipice of either catapulting ourselves into a new renaissance or allowing our delusions to destroy us.

Doctrine, dogma, and faith are impediments to progress; they always have been. And I submit to you that reason, rationality, and logic are the only way forward. There is no middle ground. 'Tolerating' religious delusion is no longer acceptable.