Sep
8
Jerry Coyne has posted a rebuttal to critics responding to the mounting evidence that there was no literal Adam and Eve, thus no Original Sin and no need for salvation by Jesus.
Sep
7
There exists in the Melbourne Jewish Community plenty of organisations, but lets face it, it’s a pretty small community1.
The arrest and charging of one David Samuel Cyprys, 43, a security guard at Melbourne’s Jewish boy school, Yeshivah College, is no doubt sending shock waves through the small community. I’ve blogged about it already today.
The Jewish organisation, the Anti-Defamation Commission has been quick to point the finger at the media, and say that they haven’t covered anything up at all. The ADC, according to their facebook page:
fights antisemitism and racism and promotes respect and justice.
For the Jewish population of Melbourne, I believe this is an important aspect to ensure that antisemitism is challenged wherever it occurs.
The ADC on their website say this:
ADC has acted to defend the Jewish community over implications that it covered up sexual abuse. Media coverage of the trial of David Cyprys on indecent assault charges has unfairly implicated the entire Jewish community after a court was told sections of the community had protected the alleged sex offender.
The article that I quoted from The Age said this:
PROMINENT members of the Melbourne Jewish community lied to the police, covered up an alleged sex scandal and protected a man accused of repeatedly molesting children from a school in St Kilda East, a court has been told.
But, just quickly, keeping in mind the size of the Melbourne Jewish Community, lets look at this. The chairman of the ADC is Anton Block, who was also a previous president of the JCCV. The president of the JCCV is John Searle, who is a previous chairman of the ADC.
The ADC, according to this blog from Mikeybear, is an arm of the JCCV. There also exists a community group called the CSG, the Community Security Group, that is controlled by the JCCV.
The CSG is voluntary, the webpage says:
The Community Security Group (CSG) is a team of skilled and dedicated volunteers who are carefully selected and appropriately trained.
My understanding is that Cyprys was involved in many ways within the community. He was a security guard, on the board at the Elwood Talmud Torah Congregation and taught karate.
While the ADC is quick to distance itself, they seem to be suggesting it’s the media that’s got it wrong. In fact, it seems to me that the media has reported information presented in court by the Police.
There’s some other questions here that should be asked and answered by these interconnected organistations that come under the stewardship of John Searle, who recently has been appointed to the role of chairperson of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission2. In the interest of not covering things up, let’s understand how far entrenched Cyprys was in this community. Did he have any involvement with the CSG? Did he collaborate with the JCCV? What other relationships did he have with members of the Executive of the JCCV? And where does his unnamed partner fit in?
With Searle going into such a high profile position, surely these questions need answers. The last thing VEOHRC needs is the scandal of a cover up.
Finally, without fully understanding how someone who has a known history of indecent assault managed to get involved in so much community action, why not hold the whole of the jewish community as responsible. Surely someone from the school or one of the other organisations knew and should have shared this information.
In The Age in July this year:
In 2000, Mr Waks said, he was horrified to see Mr Cyprys was still providing security for Yeshivah Centre.
Come on, how can this happen? Here’s someone asking the question and yet Cyprys continues for another 11 years. It’s really appalling and needs a full and proper investigation with the Melbourne Jewish community.
Related Posts
Sep
6
[SOURCE]
It goes to show that religious people are more inclined to be concerned with their own reputation than the safety of the children entrusted to them. In a previous blog I covered the way that some in the Melbourne Jewish community have attempted to keep all this hush hush.
From 1984 to 1991 this low life allegedly used his position to gain access to children and abuse them. It’s a story we see again and again in all walks of life, from the scouts to the catholics to schools and now, like a great big pelican dropping, the Jewish community.
And what do you think the community does? You’d hope that they would ring the police, but alas, the ”high-standing members of the Jewish community” did nothing.
”They failed to act in any way to protect children and the matter has been swept under the carpet,” Senior Constable Metcher told Melbourne Magistrates Court.
Why would that be? Why, years and years after the events, after all that has gone before in other religious based schools and institutions, would you continue to employ a person with such a history?
Asked on what she based this, Senior Constable Metcher said: ”Based on the lies told to police and information that has been twisted and covered up.”
And when the truth starts to bubble to the surface this so-called community lies, twists and covers it up? How disgusting.
Is the well-being of the children of so little importance to the ‘high-standing members of the Jewish community’ that the reputation of a school should prevent them from taking proper action to deal with these things.
In the previous blog I quote the head of the JCCV:
“If there is sexual abuse, victims must be encouraged to make reports and must not be made to feel that they’re going to be ostracised or punished in any way whatsoever,” Mr Searle said.
That’s right, he wants the victims to be encouraged to make reports. Of course, what he should also have been doing is making sure that those with the knowledge, those in positions of authority, should have been fully co-operative with the investigation.
Everyone that covered this up should be held accountable, the high-standing should hang their heads in shame and resign. Their names should be spread across the community as collaborators to the alleged offender and they should no longer enjoy the trust of their community. They are now in the league of low-lifes too.
Related Posts
Sep
5
Austin Cline has posted on theology and its basic assumptions. This blogger fails to see how any open-minded individual can accept this field as a legitimate academic discipline.
Sep
3
Austin Cline has posted on the obvious and serious falseness of the Genesis account of the creation of light before creation of a light source. If the Bible is "Inspired" by a god instead of being a creation of primitive humans, how can this error be explained? This blogger puts this situation in the same category as Adam and Eve/Original Sin and scientific human origins ---- both are essentially deal-breakers for a thoughtful person accepting Christianity.
Sep
3
Hemant Mehta has posted an example of how a well-intentioned Christian can get it wrong regarding atheists.
Sep
2
[SOURCE]
Oh it’s getting so easy to upset the christians these days.
Now there’s a move to replace the use of BC and AD with BCE and CE. Not a biggy I wouldn’t have thought. It’s bad enough that we mark our years by counting the number of them since the birth of an imaginary figure. It’s time to grow up and understand that the world is much bigger than christianity. It’s crazy that we count our years this way, and it’s become the main system of counting around the globe. Considering that a vast majority of the world doesn’t actually believe in the christian or jewish god1 it seems somewhat arrogant of the likes of Peter Jensen, Archbitme for Sydney to say this:
Intellectually absurd attempt to write Christ out of human history
or the Opposition Liberal wanker and education spokesperson Christopher Pyne:
Kowtowing to political correctness by the embarrassing removal of AD and BC in our national curriculum is of a piece with the fundamental flaw of trying to deny who we are as a people.
How are christians being denied who they are? Nobody is trying to write this stupid jesus stuff out of history. What a lot of rot.
When I was at school back in the 1970′s (that’s CE) we were already using BCE and CE, it doesn’t seem to have stopped the catholics from believing this rubbish about god.
I suggest that we start counting the years based on the age of the earth, so we’re about 4,550,000,000, next year will be 4,550,000,001. Oh, that all sounds way too hard. Let’s do it based on the birth of me. Then we can have BBL and ABL.
Sounds delightful.
Related Posts
Aug
31
adaptation of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling by Tom Blackwell
J. Anderson Thomson is a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia. In a recent LA Times opinion post he expounds on the biological reasons we humans created the idea of God in the first place, and what role that belief serves psychologically.
I find these reasons for faith fascinating, and I see how they have been present in my own life.
Like our physiological DNA, the psychological mechanisms behind faith evolved over the eons through natural selection. They helped our ancestors work effectively in small groups and survive and reproduce, traits developed long before recorded history, from foundations deep in our mammalian, primate and African hunter-gatherer past.
For example, we are born with a powerful need for attachment, identified as long ago as the 1940s by psychiatrist John Bowlby and expanded on by psychologist Mary Ainsworth. Individual survival was enhanced by protectors, beginning with our mothers. Attachment is reinforced physiologically through brain chemistry, and we evolved and retain neural networks completely dedicated to it. We easily expand that inborn need for protectors to authority figures of any sort, including religious leaders and, more saliently, gods. God becomes a super parent, able to protect us and care for us even when our more corporeal support systems disappear, through death or distance.
Among the psychological adaptations related to religion are our need for reciprocity, our tendency to attribute unknown events to human agency, our capacity for romantic love, our fierce “out-group” hatreds and just as fierce loyalties to the in groups of kin and allies. Religion hijacks these traits.
In addition to these adaptations, humans have developed the remarkable ability to think about what goes on in other people’s minds and create and rehearse complex interactions with an unseen other. In our minds we can de-couple cognition from time, place and circumstance. We consider what someone else might do in our place; we project future scenarios; we replay past events. It’s an easy jump to say, conversing with the dead or to conjuring gods and praying to them.
I know (quite acutely, in fact) that I have a great need for attachment and a sense of another authority; I also possess a tendency to be intuitive or over-analytical about what someone else is thinking and feeling. I have certainly assigned motives and reasons to events that have no human agent.
All of these factors only encompass what I know consciously about myself and how faith has played a role in my life in the past. The chemistry of my brain and the more subtle evolutionary reasons for belief–well, those cannot be controlled. I can only use my reasoning and understanding to choose a different reaction when confronted with the concepts of a great “Other” or supernatural events.
“God” and faith are crafted to fulfill some of our needs and natural inclinations. They are presented to us as a catch-all solution to these inborn “problems.” Do you need love and someone to care for you? God will do it! Do you have a tendency to cling to a group and fear the “others?” Religion is perfect for you! Do you get that tingly feeling that someone is in the room with you when you meditate? That’s a god!
This, of course, doesn’t mean gods are real, but it does illustrate that we have a desire to answer questions and fulfill needs that come naturally to us. When we supply imaginary beings as the answer to the human condition, we’re doing ourselves and our descendants a disservice. It’s much more difficult to see the world objectively and accept the fact that we’re on our own, but it’s empowering and spurs on positive change in society. Why take personal responsibility when it’s much more comforting to know someone else is in charge of the rules who wants us to succeed? Because we will be a better, more altruistic society if we take charge of our actions and how they affect others.
We can be better as a species if we recognize religion as a man-made construct. We owe it to ourselves to at least consider the real roots of religious belief, so we can deal with life as it is, taking advantage of perhaps our mind’s greatest adaptation: our ability to use reason.
I agree!
Aug
30
[SOURCE]
Earlier this week, Brigadier Jim Wallace, head of the Australian Christian Lobby appeared on morning television to debate with Dr Kerryn Phelps about why churches are opposed to marriage equality.
Jim, now after several blunders, renamed General Wally, said this:
And I find it absolutely amazing that at a time in our history when we’re jumping through hoops to try to make sure that every tree on the planet has its natural environment so that it can flourish that we would be challenging the definition of marriage which creates exactly that environment for a child requiring that its between a man and a woman.
More waffle, and then this
… the reality is here we’re about holding up an aspirational mode in society which government has the right to do to make sure that – to make sure that children can flourish in the same way we are demanding for trees.
So, marriage is to be treated the same as trees? There’s only one reason we care so much about the trees. We need them, it’s a selfish act and has nothing to do with the natural order of the world, but it has to do with preservation. Our preservation. And like marriage, trees come in lots of varieties. Some of them require fire to germinate, some required bees, some require animals to shit out their seed. Why some trees are even reproduced by grafting parts of another tree onto them. If you want to compare trees to marriage, then you need to understand that we don’t want trees to just grow where ever they like, we want to dictate where they grow, how long they grow for, and when they’re ready, cut them down and burn them or build houses out of them. A bit like christian marriage, the likes of General Wally want you to only have the marriage he prescribes, that only trees (or marriage) that is allowed to flourish is what he wants. It’s all for purely selfish reasons, because for his faith to continue to exist it needs more people, and he knows that they can’t be grown outside traditional marriage. It’s not about tree conservation, or marriage conservation, it’s about religion conservation. Where’s the next generation of fuckwits to come from?
Wally would have us think that the only forest that the world needs are those planted by christian right-wing fuckwits, to be nurtured how they see fit and cut down and burned when they want. I suggest the likes of General Wally should diversify their crop and plant a few marijuana plants.
Related Posts
Aug
30
For all you fans of Man Church, there’s another church joining in on the machismo craze. If you want to grunt and cheer and feel guilty about lusting after ladies or being a lazy dad, there’s a Christian “Men’s Conference” down in Texas you might be interested in!
The Men’s Conference is 24 hours of testosterone fueled MAN STUFF. Combining intensity, entertainment, teaching and worship; it’s the kind of weekend that will make you high five a total stranger!
Do you think they’d high five an atheist or just body slam him on the mat?
[Hat tip Friendly Atheist]
Aug
30
Al Stefanelli has posted an attempt to prove that there is no god. This blogger is not sure that this attempt is valid but it is interesting.
Aug
29
[SOURCE]
I’m all for education! But I did splutter when I read that the Melbourne College of Divinity(MCD) has been has been given permission to operate as a Specialist University.
Now MCD have been operating for 100 years, set up by a bunch of christian cultists from various sects to educate their people in their ways. But they don’t do any serious education at all. A look at their courses makes this quite clear.
Associate Diploma in Ministry
Diploma in Ministry
Diploma in Theology
Advanced Diploma in Ministry
Advanced Diploma in Theology
There’s plenty more listed on their website. All really good useless diplomas. Not contributing anything useful to the world at all. You can get government assistance if you undertake studies at MCD, even a research grant, and it’s good to know that our important research funding is being spent on things like:
Tracing the Pulse: An investigation into vitality in Australian Catholic parishes and the capacity of a social capital theory framework to identify it.
The Scandal of the Scandal of Particularity
Homecoming in Haizi: the resonance of the Gospel and the Chinese soul-search.
The Skilled Caregivers: Tending God’s People in the Myanmar Context.
It all adds so much to bettering the world by finding justification for the dogma of religion.
Australia, and Victoria, makes a mockery of education by granting MCD this special status. It undermines the serious educational value of real universities.
Related Posts
Aug
27
This video summarizes the conflict between evolutionary biology and the Adam & Eve story. After watching this video, do you think Christian theology needs Adam & Eve? Have your fundamental views of Christianity been changed?
Aug
25
[SOURCE]
Young man, Daniel Jang, was driving home one wet dark night when he took a corner too quickly, his car spun around and ended up on the footpath. Luckily for him, his seat belt held him in place and good road construction prevented him from flying over the edge of a bridge.
Sliding momentum brought the right back wheel to smash the kerb. The impact was so severe that the right wheel bent inward, the whole back axle shifted toward the left and the entire body of the car to move up onto the raised footpath. Remarkably, I found myself, inside the car with the seatbelt firmly fastened, and it happened in the blink of an eye. The car on the footpath…. The fence behind my car absorbed the momentum and helped stop the car in that exact position. I was terrified when I got of the car and saw what was behind the fence. There was a cliff and the rail track underneath! The very ‘positioning’ of my car after this incident was in itself, in my view a miracle. I just had to give thanks to God for His protection. It could have been far worse.
So, we have seat belt laws, thank the foresight of the Victorian Government for mandating that in 1970,1 road traffic authorities have knowledge about their roads and are clever enough to put barriers where people are likely to fall off the road, you know, on bridges where there’s a train line underneath2. They construct these barriers to make sure they minimise damage to people and property, so why would you be surprised when they do their job of stopping the car before it fell off the cliff and on to a railway line.
So, on both counts you can’t thank your god for any of this. It took years and years of thinking for people to come up with ways to minimise damage caused by road traffic accidents. Seat belts and road barriers are something your god should have provided before allowing his people to go hurling around in cars at 100 km/h or faster. You could start by thanking the engineers who no doubt solved these matters by trial and error, not by prayer.
But, it gets worse. God had another magic trick for tonight. It seems this christian boy who was going too fast in his car because god hadn’t told him to slow the fuck down, had a bible in the boot. What a surprise. When a friend came to help him and opened the boot to get the tyre lever he found the book.
Surprisingly, he uncovered two books hidden under the tyre. One was a Good News Bible, and believe or not, the title of the other book was, “There’s A God in Heaven”!
Yeah, what a surprise. I wonder how those books got there… in a hidden place.
I suspected Ken is possibly not a Christian and definitely not a regular church-goer. He said, “Wow, God has saved your life today. See? There is a God in heaven!” After we replaced the tyre, Ken said, “All done! I think I believe there is God in heaven. Thank you Father in heaven!”
All I can think of is a deeply sarcastic voice saying that shit.
I can do nothing but laugh at this sort of rubbish. Such delusion surely must hurt his brain.
- The Victorian Government was the first to make it law Wikipedia ↩
- Check out the history of the Jersey Barrier, a lot of thought went into that ↩
Related Posts
Aug
25
Austin Cline has posted on the frequent opinion that children need to be brought up with religion. His opinion is the same as mine and it should not surprise anyone who regularly reads this blog.
Aug
24
[SOURCE]
A rare earthquake hits the east coast of the USA and suddenly the second coming is on its way. Praise jesus!
I love reading the stuff on the Rapture Ready Bulletin Board always have something good to say
Have a look at the forum, but here are the good bits from various authors.
I know we Christians don’t need a sign but last night, for the first time, I prayed to the Lord to give those that are lost a sign that will turn them to His word. I can’t help but believe He answered my prayer!
So, you prayed to jesus and asked for a sign and next day there’s an earthquake. Wow. You should ask for world peace next!
Interesting observations:
We are almost exactly one lunar month away from the UN vote to divide Israel (9/20), a potential spiritual earthquake of Biblical proportions.
Almost exactly! You can’t get more exact than that.
I felt the earthquake this was my first time and I was scared. At first it was just a tremble then next things started to fall off the shelf. We made way for the stairs and got out of the building. I do think God is trying to get the world’s attention. I don’t think it was a coincidence that it just happen to hit where the president was once again vacationing.
So god doesn’t want the president to go on holiday? And if he really wants the world’s attention he might try something better than a bit of ground shaking.
My first thought; how appropriate.
Second thought, Thanks, Lord, I needed some encouragement.
I really don’t think we’ll be here for long now.
Wait…you need encouragement, and an earth… oh that’s just too hard.
When I heard it was felt in DC, first thing I thought of was how Obama keeps turning his back on Israel.
I always think this. As a matter of fact, I’ve been ‘waiting’ for the repercussions of Obama’s policy toward Israel for a while now.
The first I thought was, shit, was anyone hurt, it never occurred to me to link Obama, Israel and an earthquake. How silly am I?
My God, what have you done… His power and might and display of glory is AWESOME. Tremble in front of our God of power!
And if you do the dance in just the right way, you get rain.
Here, I was JUST thinking this morning, that Washington D.C. would have to get it, and was even pondering that New York would probably suffer as well for their actions…and I have just seen them both.
Oh yes, that showed them. The world has now changed because of the earthquake, your god made that really really clear.
God just fired a warning shot, and just outside DC, how obivous can it be. Mr Obama, heed the warning, you are travelling further down the path of destruction, you are nearing the point of no return. Repent.
Wouldn’t it be easier if god just gave him a call on his mobile, he must have the number. I would think that was even more obvious.
Related Posts
Aug
24
[SOURCE]
Marriage equality is all the rage in Australia at the present. As our parliament sits to hear the views of its constituency, plenty of christians are getting themselves all worked up demanding that a minority may not dictate the agenda. That is, the so-called militant homosexual lobby may not tell everyone else how to live. Again and again ignoring the reality. Nobody is telling anyone how to live. Nobody is asking you to get married to a person of the same-sex, nobody is telling you that you have to marry a person of the opposite sex. This is about equality. Why are you so scared of equality?
My old mate, Bill, he of the persecuted christian sect, is on his high horse rallying the troops, and I just can’t help my self. Here’s what he’s got to say.
Whenever a time of crisis erupts, more than ever, there is a pressing need for individuals to take a stand, and to do so courageously. And unless you are blind, deaf, and dumb, you would know that we are certainly living in a time of overwhelming crisis.
WTF? What crisis. What overwhelming crisis is this? The fight for freedom in repressive regimes? The fight for food in famine stricken Africa? The battle against global warming? The struggle for financial freedom for the poor? And within the first paragraph the tone is set, if you don’t agree that there’s a crisis then you are blind, deaf and dumb. You either agree with Bill or he thinks you are a complete fucking moron.
The whole Western world seems to be going up in flames – not just London. Each new day we find plenty of headlines illustrating how a moral, spiritual, cultural and ideological crisis is upon us. But the only question is, in the light of all this, what will good men and women do?
The whole western world… all of it, Australia, Canada, Europe, America, the whole lot going up in flames, wow. Good men will try and fix it by understanding the issues and not trying to enforce their own beliefs on the issues.
How will we respond? Will we simply cover our eyes and pretend all this is not happening? Will we hope someone else makes a stand on our behalf? Will we deceive ourselves into buying the PC line that just getting along and not rocking the boat is the best option.
You should try getting along with others, you may enjoy it. There are people out there who need compassion and understanding. Bill makes it clear that unless you accept his view of the world you are guilty of bringing the end of the world. He makes it clear that you may not turn a blind eye or stand back and do nothing.
Or will we stand and fight? In my eyes the last option is our only option.
Fight? Who will you fight? Why is this the only option? You’ve created a fictitious battle that is an overwhelming crisis, and now you want to fight. So now that he’s made you feel bad because the world is ending and you’re not doing enough, he calls you to arms. He attempts to incite in you a violent response.
The next question is, do we have the courage to stand up and be counted? Now is the day we desperately need men and women of courage – those who will not wilt under pressure or give up out of fear.
The only fear you have is that you may not be in control. You create the crisis and then want people to have courage to fight your imaginary battle. The wilting ones are the ones who accept your self-perpetuating crisis as truth. Bill is now attempting to manipulate you by calling you a coward, a coward if you don’t have the courage to stand up and be counted. Just to make sure you get the point, he tells us that the need is desperate.
Of interest is the list offered in the book of Revelation telling us who will not inherit Christ and his Kingdom. Leading the list are the fearful, or the cowardly (Rev 21:8). Those lacking in courage will in effect deny their Lord in the time of battle.
Of course, that reference to Revelations also gives us the news that the unbelieving, the abominable, the murderers, the whoremongers,the sorcerers, idolaters and liars will end up in lake of brimstone and fire. Hell, I guess. It’s nice to know that the gays are probably included in either the whoremongers or the abominable. This is the same book that gives us the delightful image of a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns upon it’s head. Yeah, that’s the sort of book I want to believe in. Bill uses this quote to point out to the believers, that if you don’t participate in this fight, you’re going to hell. He’s making it clear that you won’t inherit the kingdom of god, that is, heaven.
Jesus made it clear how such people are to be viewed: “I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the angels of God” (Luke 12:8-9).
So, take a bit of Revelations and a bit out of Luke and use it to say that if you don’t do what Bill says then you are disowning christ and will end up in the lake of fire and brimstone. Nice one Bill, how to win friends and influence people. You need to make sure you’re good with the lord so you can be acknowledged before the angels of god. Is that like having 72 virgins?
‘But,’ some will protest, ‘I have never denied Christ’. Please think again. When the very gospel is under threat yet we stand idly by and do nothing, have we not denied our Lord?
How is the gospel under threat? Christianity thrives with its churches and massive finances, it’s not under threat. I haven’t heard any politician call for the gospel to be banned, or for your organised religions to be dismantled. There’s no threat. This is all part of the same mind game to make you feel guilt for not agreeing with him.
When God’s institutions of marriage and family are under direct assault, and we sit by and do nothing, have we not denied our Lord?
Direct assault? Please, there is no direct assault. Nobody is denying your right to have the family you want. You however are directly assaulting the rights of others to enjoy their life in their way.
When people are heading to a lost eternity yet we remain silent, have we not denied our Lord?
You’ll notice the fear again here, he’s fearful of a lost eternity, not just for others, but mostly for himself, he actually thinks that he may end up in hell if he doesn’t try and save the rest of us. To get you onside, he tries a guilt trip. He attempts to make it your fault that others will burn in hell. I can smell the burning incense of arrogance.
When people are bound in destructive and terminal lifestyles, yet we do nothing to let them know they can be set free in Christ, have we not denied our Lord?
Who are you to tell others what a destructive and terminal lifestyle is? Who are you to attempt to make others feel guilty because they don’t call the ‘homosexual lifestyle’ destructive and terminal. There’s that smell again.
The tragic truth is, there is a cosmic battle going on right now, and lives are being lost, families are being destroyed, nations are crumbling, and hope is being taken away.
This is truth? You think there is a cosmic battle going on. The cosmos doesn’t provide a battlefield for you to play your pathetic little games on, it has no way to care about you, it just does what a cosmos does, it spins. The grand claim that families are being destroyed and that nations are crumbling is the biggest pile of pooh I’ve heard for ages. The notion here is that the calls for gay marriage are destroying families. Let’s ignore the fact that the men and women in married relationships are often looking to get out of them, let’s ignore that our society continues to grow and prosper, despite the greed of the rich, despite the divorce rate. Let’s ignore that most young people continue to grow up, get jobs and contribute to society, despite having come from divorced families, poor backgrounds. These some children, now adults continue to find partners, have families and the cycle continues. It’s not crumbling. The only hope being removed is that of die-hard christians, that they will continue to have a major influence on society.
Yet we sit by and do nothing and say nothing. But even the smallest things that we can do might be of help, yet we seem too fearful or incapacitated to do even these things.
On a cosmic level? You don’t even rate. Are you still trying to make people feel guilty?
What about taking 1.3 seconds of your time to press the ‘like’ button on Facebook when someone has posted a biblical quote or a helpful Christian word? It can be that easy and simple, and it may encourage another brother to keep on in the battle.
Oh yeah, that’ll change the cosmic battle going on. Bring it on baby. Sounds like nobody likes Bill’s posts on Facebook. Must be very disappointing. So ego deflating.
I often get people telling me they are discouraged and tired of all these struggles. They want to give up. They are discouraged. They think we are not getting anywhere.
You need to listen to them. There’s a reason why you’re not getting anywhere.
My usual reply to them is something like this: “If we ever find that Jesus has given up, has quit the race, has become too discouraged to continue, then we can do the same. But I don’t see this anywhere in Scripture.”
I’m yet to see any evidence that this jesus bloke is still about. I reckon if he is this almighty god thing, he appears to have given up. Bill wants to make sure you understand how unworthy you are of christ because you want to give up, when you should follow the example of his loin-clothed god.
The truth is, Jesus drank the cup to the bitter end. He kept going all the way to the cruel cross – for me and for you. He loved us too much to want to drop out or to just live a quiet and peaceful life. He did not insist on his own rights, but gave them all up, so that we might live.
Oh what bullshit. This is such a fantasy story, not based in reality at all. If this jesus thing, you claim was god, loved us so much he would say so without the crazy antics of pretending to die as a sacrifice only to magically come back to life, thereby not sacrificing anything.
I sometimes get people writing to me, asking if I can remove their comments from my site which they posted in the past. Some have discovered that they are now public property – being monitored and checked up on in cyberspace. I reply by saying that unless there is a very good reason for this, I am not too keen. Why are they asking me to do this? Is it just fear, or not wanting to make enemies, cause trouble, rock the boat, etc?
Some say they have privacy concerns, etc. But I am not impressed with those reasons either. Sorry, but when we come to Christ, we lose our right to privacy. We also lose our right to a life of ease, comfort, luxury and security. In fact, we lose all our rights. We are no longer our own – we are bought with a price.
What an arrogant cunt you are. You’re as bad as Facebook keeping everything for ever. People are entitled to change their minds and people are entitled to a life of ease, comfort and luxury, with security thrown in. I suspect however, Bill, that you like to keep a dossier on everyone, so you can quote them back to themselves when they finally see what a fuckwit you really are. It’s all about power Bill. You love having the power to decide what’s good for other people.
When we become a disciple of Christ, we give up all claims to living a selfish, comfortable and easy life. Quite the opposite. As Bonhoeffer rightly said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Dead people have no rights – it is that simple.
Your christ is a prick. You are very selfish.
Of course no one prefers living a life of ostracism, scorn and rejection. But that is what Jesus did, and he told us that the servant is not above the master. To follow Christ means we also will be rejected, ridiculed, hated and persecuted. And that is certainly not fun.
Yet, you treat people with scorn and rejection. It’s funny how you reject, ridicule, hate and persecute gay people and then attempt to claim these very same things for yourself. You then see it as not being fun, with that in mind, most normal people would have some empathy.
Does anyone really think I like all the flack, opposition, abuse, and persecution I get on a regular basis? Do I really thrive on all the hate mail and death threats? It would of course be so very easy to avoid all of this. I could simply stop what I am doing and say nothing: a guarantee to a quiet and peaceful life.
Well yes, I think you do thrive on those things. How else can you keep up such an outwardly hateful exterior.
In fact, I can do what some “Christians” are now doing, and call God a liar. I can argue that what God calls a sin is not in fact a sin. I can say instead that something like homosexuality is God’s gift to mankind, and that to be compassionate and loving, I should instead promote and advocate for this lifestyle. I can even argue that Jesus would favour same-sex marriage.
Or you could just come to the realisation that there is no god, and drop the appalling reasons for your ongoing persecution of those who aren’t like you.
That would be the easy path. Indeed, that would make me the flavour of the month. I would become terribly popular, and even the MSM would give me lots of praise and approval. Yet as Alan Sears has just written, “It doesn’t take courage to ride the wave of support for same-sex ‘marriage.’ It takes courage to stand against the surging tide.”
You’ll never be popular, no matter what you do. The easy path is to maintain your pathetic pretense of speaking for a non-existent god. If you are serious about caring for other people, you’d spend more time asking why, instead of accepting the reason as being ‘coz god said so’.
Quite so. To stand up for God’s standards of holiness and righteousness in the public arena on any topic is to take a courageous stance. If you want to be at rest and have everyone applaud you, then simply go with the flow, and stand up for abortion rights, pornography rights, homosexual rights, and other trendy secular left causes.
So, you’re against letting people just get on with their lives. In your smelly arrogance you think that you have the right to inflict others with your stand on abortion, (of which jesus makes no mention) on pornography (of which jesus makes no mention) and on homosexual rights (of which jesus makes no mention). You claim the moral high ground on your interpretation of ancient text that had no way of knowing what life would be like 2,000 years later.
Anyone can do that. Indeed, any dead fish can simply float downstream. But it takes a living fish to swim upstream, against the current. The call to Christian discipleship is a call to swim against the world’s currents. The world will always be opposed to the things of God, so to stand for Christ will always be to stand against the world.
Oh for fuck sake, the prevailing attitudes in Australia is that of the christian world. Most of the population isn’t doing any swimming, they are going with the flow. The real challenge is to have the christians understand their place of privilege in our world and acknowledge that there are other ways. Stop floating Bill, have some courage to allow people to be who they are. You are full of such arrogance to suggest that if your followers don’t swim the way you do, then they are dead. Rude.
Such a stance requires courage. But the good news is, it is not a question of us mustering up some courage on our own. God provides it. He enables and empowers us. We cannot do it ourselves. I am probably full of fear most of the time. But as George S. Patton has reminded us, “Courage is fear holding on a minute longer”.
You’re not courageous. You’re a coward and an arrogant one at that. You have created a belief system that pulls useful phrases out of ridiculous texts to support your bigotry and you pretend that this is the only way for the world to be. You allow your beliefs to enable you to think you have some sort of authority and power. You’re not full of fear, you’re full of horseshit, and you try to goad people into the fight by telling them that unless they think like you, act like you. they’re bound for hell.
A.A. Hodge once put it this way: “It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.” But men of courage will inspire others. As Billy Graham said, “Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.”
The truth stares at you. Look up into the night sky, the cosmos is there, uncaring, getting on with it’s spinning. It doesn’t care, it can’t care. Your religion is there for you to comfort yourself against the reality of the universe. You, I and everyone else on the face of this earth are insignificant to the cosmos. The universe will not end based on your ramblings and predictions.
Remember what Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 1:7: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” And if that is not enough (although it should be), let me finish with some words of fiction which I often turn back to. They come from the film version of The Lord of the Rings. Aragorn is mustering the troops to stand against an army of orcs much greater and more numerous that they, and he encourages the troops with these words:
“I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me! A day may come, when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of Fellowship, but it is not this day! An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you, stand, men of the West!”
And like the Lord of the Rings, the bible is a made up story, full of impossible things. Nobody in their right mind thinks that the Lord of the Rings is real, we understand it’s fiction.
In these days of unprecedented evil, Christ is looking for men and women of courage. Will you be one of them?
Christ is looking? Perhaps he should create a facebook event and invite everyone. There is real evil in this world. The real evil of starving people, the real evil of dictatorships, the real evil of corporate greed, the real evil of the churches of the world having the ability to prevent both hunger and greed and not doing so. Instead of taking on the real issues, the really important things, the likes of Bill Muehlenberg attempt to make minor issues like equality in marriage the big battlefield, ignoring the very real life situations in our small part of the cosmos.
Here’s some advice Bill. Shut the fuck up. Pull your head out of your arse, and do something useful like help the starving by ensuring that the money and food gets to them, by ensuring that dictators are driven from office, and by ensuring that corporations don’t attempt to make massive profits out of food required to feed the hungry.
I suspect you’ll just pray.
