They both are! But see the difference for yourselves:
I've been critical of PZ Myers for five principled reasons: 1) he doesn't understand the mind of the believer, 2) he treats people who disagree as if they are morons, 3) he's a divisive force within the ranks of atheism, 4) he panders to the younger baser type atheist audience, and 5) he doesn't much value the contributions of people like me who deal with Christians on their own terms. I don't understand his motivations. He may like the power and the money that come from having a large audience. Or, it just may be his personality. He may be an ideologue by nature, an extremist, the type of person who can usually make a big difference. Can he change his ways? Should he? That's the question here. One thing is sure, more atheists are speaking out against him and his ways. John Draper, an important Canadian atheist blogger known as the Cobourg Atheist, recently said of him:
Christian theology tells us that the whole reason Jesus came into the world was to redeem fallen humanity (Jesus himself in Matthew 16: 21 – 23 and especially the Paul letters). He was born from a virgin by the power of God, healed the sick, raised the dead, walked on water, casted out demons, fed 4,000 / 5,000 people with just a few fish and loafs of bread - all this with his supernatural God given power. Moreover, Jesus even talked with Moses and Elijah on the Mt. of Transfiguration where the Gospels tell us he shone as bright as the sun and where both he and his disciples (Peter, James and John) heard God preach: “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him. (Matt. 17: 5)
As I am going on holiday for a week, I thought I'd leave you with a couple of my videos on the inconsistencies of the idea of heaven. Heaven, in the normal understanding of the notion, seems wildly logically incongruous. As an idea that seems to have developed late in Jewish theology, it appears more likely to have been contrived by human minds seeking to justify why good people could die so harshly, particularly during the time of the Maccabean Revolt when Jews were being persecuted in the Seleucid Empire. Its development appears also to mirror the development of the idea of an eternal soul, stolen off the Greeks. With heaven, hell and the eternal soul, any earthly injustices are suddenly sorted out. These seem such fundamental pieces of theology that it is a wonder they are not investigated earlier in the Bible. Unless, of course, they hadn't been made up or stolen by that point... Feel free to elucidate any points of interest with regards to heaven:
Hemant Mehta posted this. Whether or not Marcus Aurelius said it or not is beside the point. We have nothing to lose if we live a good life with or without a god:
There has been a great deal of talk by secular women about the need to support women and women's issues. I endorse that goal most emphatically. Let me tell my readers about the tragic case of Professor Andrea M. Weisberger. She is on a short list of atheist scholars I admire the most. She first introduced me to the problem of animal suffering that I have written so much about. Have you heard her story? You should.
Almost everything we know about God can be seen in what he did not do to avert this mass killing. God's inaction here is indistinguishable from him not caring at all, or not being powerful at all, or not being present at all, or not knowing anything at all. In fact, his inaction leads us to think he doesn't exist at all. David Hume suggested a line of argument that works very well here. If an Omni-God exists then he could have caused James Holmes to have a heart attack before leaving his apartment that day. He could have caused all of his guns to jam. He could have caused Holmes to suffer severe nausea at the very thought of doing this terrible deed, every time he thought of it. He could have had an accident on the way caused by a brake line leak. For believers to argue God remains hidden so as not to force obedience upon us, there is nothing about any of these suggested actions that would alert us to his presence. For believers to rhetorically ask how we know God doesn't intervene in other cases, the fact that he didn't intervene here, there, and so many many times elsewhere is strong evidence he doesn't act at all.
Innumerable things could have been done by this God to stop Holmes. But God was silent just exactly as if he doesn't exist at all. There is no noticeable difference in this present world where God is believed to exist from one where he doesn't exist at all. The notion of free will does not get believers off the hook either, unless they want to admit that this same God does not answer prayers. For surely there are believers across America and in every city and family praying every day for the safe protection of their loved ones and for people in general. So I put it to you. Either God's activity in our world is indistinguishable from his non-existence or he does not answer prayers. That's merely one of the many problems of belief in the light of this human tragedy.
Today my wife and I attended a Unitarian Universalist church and we loved it. I am tired of people on both sides of the fence trying to pigeon hole me, trying to ostracize those who differ, trying to make people take sides on the most minute of details. While I differ with this Unitarian church group on issues concerning faith and spirituality I'll take their acceptance and desire for dialogue any day over the PZ Myers types. I'm out. Fuck them. Fuck them all, that is, until they become human beings who think of the rest of us as human beings.
I won't link to what PZ said because he already makes over $3000 per month on Freethought Blogs alone. But let's see what he has to say about something our own Cathy Cooper wrote. Writing about the Christian killer James Holmes, PZ opined:
It's nice to be in good company:
“My hair is really starting to thin on top,” I say to myself as I’m tiredly leaning over the sink, having already noticed my “crow’s feet.”
“My nads are hanging down further,” yet another indication of my age, I think.
“And why is the hum of that vent so pleasing when taking a dump and you just woke up?” These are natural thoughts, along with:
“This mouthwash tastes good! Why haven’t I been buying it all this time?” There are no right or wrong thoughts in the downtime of the bathroom, looking at the dried toothpaste stuck to the rim of the sink and those few stray hairs from the clipper still lying around. Just as surely as you are staring at that same oddly cut-off floral design on the wallpaper while doing “number two,” you are contemplating what it all means and why you should get up in the morning in the first place.
Habits, we all have them—some good and some bad--and our habits are our tendencies or dispositions to act in certain ways in certain situations. It is our beliefs, or what we hold to be true (even if it isn't) that shape our habits. Being taught that blacks and women are inferior for instance, shaped the “belief” that they are—even if this is not true--which results in the “habitual discrimination” of women and people of color. This is where doubt comes in.
WEST NEW YORK, N.J. "People are flocking to a tree in northern New Jersey where some say they see the image of the
Virgin Mary. Makeshift shrines have sprung up by the tree.
People have been praying, crying and leaving flowers and candles as they look at the small opening where the bark was stripped away.
A fence and other barricades also have been set up around the tree, which is in a sidewalk along a commercial strip." (AP News)
This also is the mentality of Christian faith represented by some of the people who come to
DC to argue for the truth of the Bible. (
If believers can see the Virgin Mary in a damaged tree trunk, it sure didn’t take as much imagination to claim Jesus arose from the dead!)
Recently, elsewhere, I have been discussing the contradictions of the Bible. Many are fairly irrelevant in the scheme of things and don’t really invalidate the core claims of the Bible, only the claims of inerrancy. What it does show, however, is the rationalisation process of the average Christian. Not only is the process hilarious to watch, but the answers given vary so widely amongst defenders of inerrancy (and even amongst liberal defenders who instinctively try to protect the Bible's accuracy) that it seems fairly obvious as to the ad hoc nature of the defences.
One such example is the use of Gadarenes and Gerasenes which I will look into in more depth in this post and show how bad such attempted harmonisations can be.
When Christians get all choked up and teary eyed by New Testament texts (such as John 3:16), they would do well to consider the history from the Old Testament of God’s lust for human blood and life as the real basis for Jesus’ sacrificial atonement.
So Christian, if you thought of God as your loving Heavenly Father, think again!
“
He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind." (1 Samuel 15: 29)
(The following section is from a much longer article I wrote on human sacrifice in the Bible)
While I have presented this information in a paper, this post was inspired by a
podcast by Credo House in their failed attempt to explain the difficult passages of Genesis 6:1-4, which speaks of the “sons of god” who TOOK women and had children with them:
I'm best known for the things I stand against. This is by design. I am a contrarian, a gadfly. I'm not going to mention all of the kinds of things that democratic loving civilized people are against, like first degree murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, rape, child molesting, child pornography, slavery, corporate greed and the ensuing poverty of lower classes, religious and secular militant governments and gangs, Naziism, obstruction of justice, perjury, con artist scams, and so on, since that list is long. I do however, stand against some things that are controversial.
When thinking about subjects like the fine-tuning argument it becomes apparent that the theist loves to have their cake and eat it. They thrive off a “heads I win, tails you lose" scenario.
Author of atheist blog announces she will become Catholic.
“
I’m really sure that morality is objective, human-independent, something we uncover like archeologists, not something we build like architects… And Christianity offered an explanation which I came to find compelling.”
Well so much for a “milk toast” atheist (if she was ever was an atheist). Read her story and give your opinion (
You can even leave your comment on her site .)
Using gender-neutral language in translating the Bible so it can speak to everyone is like rearranging chairs on the Titanic, it will not help at all. The ship will still sink.
