Dear kid: you almost didnt have a dad.
today a lady put a gun to my head… she also fired three shots at me…
it sucked.
but the most amazing thing about this whole ordeal is:
i never once asked God for help… it didnt even cross my mind.
i dont know if there are atheists in foxholes…
but i can tell you there are atheists in crosshairs.
throughout your life i want you to remember this one thing…
there is no god.
try not to worry. enjoy your life.
Read Morechristians are stupid #1: miracles
ok lets assume that Jesus was a man… born of a woman, that makes him a human being. it makes him a physical thing… a part of this world.
since he is a physical human being he is subject to the same laws of physics and nature, that all humans are subject to.
meaning he felt pain… heat… he could not fly, or see in the dark, he could not defy gravity…
miracles defy all laws of physics.
only something outside of the laws of physics can defy the laws of physics… meaning jesus had to exist outside of the laws of physics…
but he was human…
so he couldn’t exist outside of the laws of physics…
therefore….
Jesus was not real.
or
Jesus did not perform miracles…
so which one is it… is jesus fake… or is he a liar?
pick one.
Christians used to say that god defied the laws of physics… since god created the earth he created the laws of physics…once it is pointed out the jesus (being human) could not defy the laws of physics, there is usually some circular argument that god can do whatever he wants… whether it makes sense or not.
due to recent advancement in the study of the theory of quantum physics christians are finding whole new ways of explaining how jesus could preform miracles.
take this quote for instance
“According to quantum mechanical theory, walking on water is entirely possible although very highly unlikely. This is because sub-atomic events are probable not certain. What physics calls random chance, we call God.”
or layguys “God exists in 11 dimensions”
you see… science is not all knowing… there are gaps in our understanding of certain things… like quantum mechanics, christians like to use god to explain the gaps in our scientific understanding… its called ‘the God of the Gaps‘ thankfully as we have began to more fully understand the nature of our universe… those gaps are getting smaller…
soon there will be no place left for your god to hide.
Read MoreDear Kid: you now look like a manatee
Dear Kid:
your mother and i recently celebrated our one year anniversary.
it doesn’t feel like we have been together for a year… everything is going so smoothly that time just seems to fly by.
we have had no real arguments… hell we hardly disagree… she is an amazing woman…
you know… at this point you don’t really know much about us… you don’t know much about anything. all you really know is that your mothers uterus is rather dark.
sooooo….
let me tell you abit about us.
I am your father!:
Hello my name is George Ward… and contrary to popular belief… i am not Batman. im a 28 year old no-one who does nothing… except for the things your mother tells me to do.
i work for the power company yet i am seriously considering going back to school to become a high school science teacher… and as far as i know… you are my only kid (you may have had some brothers or sisters once… but the mother of those kids was sorta whorish… and we weren’t sure who the father was… also she was sorta heartless… because she killed them) so its just me and you. anyway kid, im gonna go ahead and admit this now… you scare the shit out of me… i don’t feel that i am ready to be a father… at this point i think that i am more childish than you are. i have severe A.D.D. … let me give you an example… while i am writing this i am constantly checking my facebook… browsing deviantart… and updating twitter (none of which will be around when you read this)… and actually writing different sections of this letter. the ending is finished, now i just have to fill in the middle.
also… im too lazy to edit.
i love my car more than i love my friends.
my car is a 97 eclipse.
which will be an antique by the time you read this… yet with all of the modifications that i have made it will be worthless… but still fun as shit to drive (if we still have gasoline that is). who am i kidding i will have blown the engine by then.
i play video games… im currently still playing skate2… i would move past that, but your sister insists that i play it often… she likes it when the skater falls down.
im lazy… i would try to explain how lazy i am… but im too lazy
so yeah… im scared.
im not sure what im going to do with you.
but…
i have a plan.
i would like to raise you the same way i was raised… with love and compassion… with freedom but restrictions… the only thing i want to change is this: i do not want to expose you to any sort of religion until you are old enough to understand them for what they are … and what they aren’t. that seems to be the only thing your mother disagrees with me on… well that and she doesn’t want you to watch horror movies… she doesn’t think that AC/DC should be played in the nusery… even if it is the rockabye baby version… and she doesn’t think tshirt hell baby shirts are funny.
you see… im a very odd guy… i have a strange sense of humor.
i like blood guts and gore… but only in fictitious form… im a very caring individual… i feel that every person in the world should be treated with love and respect, until they prove that they do not deserve your love and respect… then you should treat them as if they do not exist.
your mother is my polar opposite.
your mother is kind… loving… generous.
your mother is faithful… thoughtful… and graceful.
if there was a god… i would thank him daily.
but since there isn’t, all i can do is remind myself daily that i am the luckiest man alive.
your mother is an accounts manager with…
well…
lets just say she works for a rental company.
she deals with some of the biggest assholes i could ever imagine on a daily basis… and yet she still finds enough warmth in her heart to come home and take care of your sister and I.
you are lucky to have her in your life.
speaking of your sister:
her name is bailey… and she is a beautiful, sweet, smart little girl.
normally she is very easy to deal with… but lately she has sorta been a pain. not so much for me… mainly for her mother.
for instance:
this past saturday we took her out… we started by having lunch at olive garden… where she pigged out on the breadsticks and some of your mothers pizza. she got some spaghetti but she was too full to eat it. (im actually eating it right now… its pretty good… id give you some… but i dont think you have a working mouth yet.) then we went to the greenville zoo… we got to see some lions, giraffes, elephants, chimpanzees, all sorts of animals… and she seed to like that.
it was after the zoo that things started getting bad.
we went to whole foods to pick up some tomato chips and cherries… then to burlington so that your mom could buy some maternity clothes… and bailey became the most unruly child imaginable.. screaming and running off… melissa got upset, she said “i cant believe im the woman that has THAT child” meaning the child who screams and whose parents cant make it stop.
i seem to have a magical effect on bailey… if i get closer than ten feet… she shuts up. i guess its because i am the one that hands out the punishments… im the one that yells when yelling needs to be done.
and i like it that way…
i have heard kids say that they hate their parents… when all their parents are doing is trying to get them to behave.
if bailey ever says she hates someone… i would rather it be me.
i would rather be the bad guy so that melissa never hears those words come out of baileys mouth.
we tried to take her to frankies fun park… to hang out with uncle David, uncle Joe, and aunt Rebecca… but bailey was far too uncontrollable… so we stayed long enough for mellissa to get enough tickets playing skee ball to get you the strange stuffed bee that im sure you threw into the trash many many years before you read this.
one positive thing did happen as a result of us having to leave…i got to see a pretty awesome skyline AND i almost got hit by a car.
the end.
Read MoreGod delusions cloud a world of wonders
MOST weeks I read The Sunday Age’s Faith column, out of professional duty. Most weeks I am left perplexed, unable to reconcile what I am reading with anything I see around me.
What I see is a world slowly tearing itself apart for the sake of one faith or another. A world where an extreme faction of Islam wishes to put me and mine to the sword for my unbelief, and to shackle half the world for the crime of being born female. A world where an extreme faction of Christianity wants to throw away science for the sake of millenniums-old superstitions, and is prepared to kill in the name of life. A world where an extreme faction of Hinduism wishes to religiously purify India. A world where people are unashamedly trying to fulfil the biblical conditions for Armageddon.
Moderates say that these factions are perversions of faith, but that too jars with what I know of the past: that it took until the 20th century for humans to devise a secular philosophy, in the form of communism, to rival faith’s destructive power. From the Egyptians enslaving the Israelites to Nero lighting the streets with burning Christians, from the slaughter of the Crusades to the bloodbath of India’s Partition, violence and religion have always gone hand in hand. And the record of societies governed by religious law, from the Aztecs to the Taliban, tells us that theocracy is a synonym for barbarity.
It’s a puzzling thing about religion that its words, which generally urge us to bolster our better natures and remedy our faults, so rarely match its actions. It seems to me that while an individual’s faith can be a profound personal journey that might even make them a better person, a society’s faith is akin to mass psychosis. History suggests that the killers were always the truest believers, and that notions of tolerance, peace and enlightenment come from those who question the orthodoxy.
I also see a world where human beings have unlocked many, although by no means all, the secrets of reality. Secrets that allow the meanest of Westerners to enjoy a lifestyle beyond the imaginings of kings, that cure diseases that were once routinely fatal, that let us cross vast distances in comfort and safety.
That’s the world that has produced the computer and the skyscraper, along with Michelangelo’s David, the plays of Shakespeare, the first three Star Wars movies and the Rolling Stones. None of these things was made or discovered by a man on his knees gazing at the stars, but by men and women standing at a workbench looking down at the world. Many were undoubtedly men and women of faith, but it didn’t cloud their essential genius, the ability to engage with what is. The great discoveries were not made by those agog at the wonders of the divine, but by those intrigued by the wonders of the mundane.
Because make no mistake, we live in a world of wonders. The sound of a wave breaking on a beach, the green of a forest, that we can see and hear and appreciate these things … these are all true marvels, and no less so for the fact we can now understand how it happens. As someone wise once said, the garden is quite good enough without having to invent fairies at the bottom of it.
The question I can’t escape is why so many people clearly prefer the realm of faith, the realm of the Inquisition and of violent jihad, to the realm of thought. What does faith provide them with that reality does not? If it is the comfort of a benevolent power guiding and protecting them, how do they square that with the horror and squalor that still infest the world? Or if it’s a desire for mystery, isn’t the contemplation of the natural forces that conspired to put us here enough?
More and more, I suspect that I will never have a proper answer to these questions. If all that we now know and all the demonstrable benefits of secular thought are not enough to dissuade the faithful, then it’s hard to see what shattering revelation or cogent argument ever will. Perhaps it’s simply that the human brain is hardwired for belief, a theory bolstered by the number of people who spurn the churches only to take up one of faith’s less organised offspring (see wicca, tarot, positive thinking, etc). It is a disturbing prospect.
And then, too, I wonder if I’m any better. It’s become quite clear that I’m as guilty as anyone of clinging to an irrational belief in the face of all available evidence. It’s just that my faith is that people will one day see the light, and realise it comes from earth, not from heaven.
Read MorePart of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty
heather told me today that I should let out my anger
I should vent my frustrations
so I’m going to
and its going to piss allot of you off
George Bernard Shaw once said: No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means
and nothing could be more true
this past week I have been quoted one verse from the bible
one verse that explains away all peaceful teachings in the bible, all messages of love, hope, forgiveness, and humility.
Matthew 10:34
“Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword!”
taking this verse at face value brings an image of god to mind
a wrathful god raining fire upon those who oppose him
destroying his enemies
reading it in context (with a little cross referencing) makes it clear that it is anything but a description of how Jesus is coming into this world or what mentality towards people he wishes to impose on his followers
you cant see this scripture and think of it literally
its not like Jesus is walking into a cookout saying “hey I come not bringing beer but chicken!!!”
- the sword is symbolic of the division of the people as a result of hismission
the parallel verse is found in Luke 12:53
“Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.”
go… get your bible and read both passagesthey are the samepeople take their bibles and their religion to seriously
every Christian wants every non Christian, to become Christian… then jointheir church… and pay tithe
the top 10 religions of the world are - Christianity: 2.1 billion
- Islam:1.3 billion
- Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
- Hinduism: 900 million
- Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
- Buddhism: 376 million
- primal-indigenous: 300 million
- African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
- Sikhism: 23 million
- Juche: 19 million
*it should be noted that Christianity contains all religions believing in Jesus, in one way or another
however oddly enough only Christians actively recruit members
you will never here a Buddhist yell “BE ONE WITH THE TAO OR BURN FOREVER YOU FUCKING FAG!!!”
attention class! raise your hand if you can tell me the one thing that keeps most people from becoming a Christian.
yes Tommy?
“other Christians”?
wow Tommy you are absolutely correct
other Christians hate anger and intolerance is listed as a major atheist publications top reasons people do not become Christian
but this post was supposed to be about me….
so what pisses me off about most Christians?
their inability to figure out which batch of text is literal and with is figurative
if you believe the bible is real because of faith… then nothing I say will make any difference to you
because you are a person who takes pride in believing in things that are hard to believe in
but if you need something more you have to cross reference the bible with the events that actually happened in biblical times
you cant rely on the bible
because, to quote penn and teller
“the bible contains an equal amount of fact, history, and pizza.”
like
genesis 6 11-13
Noah’s ark
there is no possible way that Noah could have put all 10 billion species of animals on a boat and distributed them appropriately, where the marsupials are all in Australia and so forth…. its just fucking retarded
its not a literal story, its a story about redemption and forgiveness. starting over. to try and read it literally is to miss the point of the story.
the Noah story is more than likely a metaphorical story based on an actual (albeit smaller) event
a flood on the Euphrates river around 2900 bc. one of the kings of the land named Ziusudra who took a commercial barge… loaded it with shit and road down to the Persian gulf
exodus 14: 22-31
Moses and the red sea
thousands of Jews are enslaved by an Egyptian pharaoh, oddly enough there is no evidence of that
so Moses (whom we also have no evidence of) comes to the pharaoh and says “let my people go”
pharaoh says no
why wouldn’t god appear to the pharaoh and say it himself? because go works in mysterious inefficient and painstakingly cruel ways.
once free Moses leads his people to the red sea and parts the water like pages in a book
these people supposedly wandered around in the desert for 40 years. there is absolutely no archeological evidence that this ever happened.
you would think if thousands of people lived in the desert for 40 years they would leave behind some trash, dead bodies… something…. these people must have either been
1 neat freaks
2 gay men
3 metaphorical
there is no evidence that a man named Moses ever even existed
the gospels
there’s this guy
says he is the son of god, that he will change the world and can heal the sick, raise the dead, make the blind see. his followers claim that he has performed all of these miracles
he was persecuted by the roman government for his beliefs, was crucified, and then raised from the dead and appeared to his followers
his name?
Apollonius of Tyana
I should say that very very few historians doubt the fact that Jesus existed
hell I don’t doubt it one bit
here is my argument
the bible, in and of itself cannot be a basis for belief…. because it is inaccurate on so many levels
hell we cant even agree on who wrote it just that it was “inspired by god”
but what about the other gospels that we are now finding that aren’t in the bible?
the core of the cannon came from the usage in biblical church.
not from relevance
not from accuracy
it came from people asking “what is your favorite story?”
many of the gospels we are finding now contradict, explain away, and elaborate many of the stories we are used to hearing today.
you can think whatever you want about what I have said
frankly I don’t care
my beliefs are not weak enough that your opinions can change them
but don’t try to take one thing literally without taking it all literally
and when taking it all literally be sure to keep these verses in mind
exodus 35:2 35:2 Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, asabbath ofrest to the LORD: whosoever doethwork therein shall be put to death.
Romans 1:29-32
29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
31 Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
1 Corinthians 14:34
“Women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says.”
Mark 9:43
“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched.”
Deuteronomy 23:2
“One of illegitimate birth shall not enter the congregation of the Lord.”
if you believe that the bible was truly inspired by god, and god is infallible
then you cant throw out some of the rules, just because you don’t like them
it isn’t our job to judge people
it isn’t really our job to judge the bible
the bible is a book
its a series of pages strung together and bound
your belief structure is in your heart
your god tells you what is right and what is wrong
if we could get passed what we “think” is right
and listen to our gods. maybe we could finally understand this
Matthew 22:37-40
“Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
Gandhi said “God has no religion”
just a little something for you to think about
Read MoreAbout Me
Having grown up in the sweltering Florida heat, George enjoys staying indoors, and air conditioning. A Level 7 Elvish Photoshop Mage with +10 Dropshadow Power, George specializes in visual design & interaction design — two fancy terms he uses to make himself sound important and to explain that he cares about both how things look and how things work.