Will the Real Jesus Please Rise? [4 Podcasts]

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40 Examples of Christian Privilege

40 Examples of Christian Privilege | Godless Girl



01
It is likely that state and federal holidays coincide with my religious practices, thereby having little to no impact on my job and/or education.
02
I can talk openly about my religious practices without concern for how it will be received by others.
03
I can be sure to hear music on the radio and watch specials on television that celebrate the holidays of my religion.
04
When told about the history of civilization, I am can be sure that I am shown people of my religion made it what it is.
05
I can worry about religious privilege without being perceived as “self-interested” or “selfseeking.”
06
I can have a “Jesus is Lord” bumper sticker or Icthus (Christian Fish) on my car and not worry about someone vandalizing my car because of it.
07
I can share my holiday greetings without being fully conscious of how it may impact those who do not celebrate the same holidays. Also, I can be sure that people are knowledgeable about the holidays of my religion and will greet me with the appropriate holiday greeting (e.g., Merry Christmas, Happy Easter, etc.).
08
I can probably assume that there is a universality of religious experience.
09
I can deny Christian Privilege by asserting that all religions are essentially the same.
10
I probably do not need to learn the religious or spiritual customs of others, and I am likely not penalized for not knowing them.
11
I am probably unencumbered by having to explain why I am or am not doing things related to my religious norms on a daily basis.
12
I am likely not judged by the improper actions of others in my religious group.
13
If I wish, I can usually or exclusively be among those from my religious group most of the time (in work, school, or at home).
14
I can assume that my safety, or the safety of my family, will not be put in jeopardy by disclosing my religion to others at work or at school.
15
It is likely that mass media represents my religion widely AND positively.
16
It is likely that I can find items to buy that represent my religious norms and holidays with relative ease (e.g., food, decorations, greeting cards, etc.).
17
I can speak or write about my religion, and even critique other religions, and have these perspectives listened to and published with relative ease and without much fear of reprisal.
18
I could write an article on Christian Privilege without putting my own religion on trial.
19
I can travel without others assuming that I put them at risk because of my religion; nor will my religion put me at risk from others when I travel.
20
I can be financially successful without the assumption from others that this success is connected to my religion.
21
I can protect myself (and my children) from people who may not like me (or them) based on my religion.
22
Law enforcement officials will likely assume I am a non-threatening person if my religion is disclosed to them. In fact, disclosure may actually help law enforcement officials perceive me as being “in the right” or “unbiased.”
23
I can safely assume that any authority figure will generally be someone of my religion.
24
I can talk about my religion, even proselytize, and be characterized as “sharing the word,” instead of imposing my ideas on others.
25
I can be gentle and affirming to people without being characterized as an exception to my religion.
26
I am never asked to speak on behalf of all Christians.
27
My citizenship and immigration status will likely not be questioned, and my background will likely not be investigated, because of my religion.
28
My place of worship is probably not targeted for violence because of sentiment against my religion.
29
I can be sure that my religion will not work against me when seeking medical or legal help.
30
My religion will not cause teachers to pigeonhole me into certain professions based of the assumed “prowess” of my religious group.
31
I will not have my children taken from me from governmental authorities who are aware of my religious affiliation.
32
Disclosure of my religion to an adoption agency will likely not prevent me from being able to adopt children.
33
If I wish to give my children a parochial religious education, I probably have a variety of options nearby.
34
I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence and importance of my religion.
35
I can be sure that when someone in the media is referring to God, they are referring to my (Christian) God.
36
I can easily find academic courses and institutions that give attention only to people of my religion.
37
My religious holidays are so completely “normal” that, in many ways, they may appear to no longer have any religious significance at all.
38
The elected and unelected officials of my government probably are members of my religious group.
39
When swearing an oath, I am probably making this oath by placing my hand on the scripture of my religion.
40
I can openly display my religious symbol(s) on my person or property without fear of disapproval, violence, and/or vandalism.

Schlosser, L. Z. (2003). Christian privilege: Breaking a sacred taboo. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 31(1), 44-51

You can download a PDF of this list here.

The Theology of Armageddon | Common Dreams

The Theology of Armageddon | Common Dreams

[REPRINT]

by Robert C. Koehler

The woo-woo nuttiness of it all defies the imagination, beginning with the idea of a course in “Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare” at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Nuclear ethics?

Does that mean no nuclear weapons should ever be used to promote sexual harassment?

Well actually, turns out the point of the mandatory course recently canceled by the Air Force after officers of numerous faiths complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation about it and TruthOut published an exposé in July — was to give officers in the first week of missile-launch training a Bible-verse-studded indoctrination in faux-Just War Theory, cynically known in the ranks as the “Jesus Loves Nukes” training.

“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.”

This verse, Revelation 19:11, has nothing to do with Just War Theory, Christian or otherwise. It sounds more like the theology of Armageddon, or the ethics of end times — scary enough on the social fringe but, my God, here was the U.S. Air Force, guardian of the country’s nuclear arsenal, pushing it as a basic part of missile-launch training.

There were plenty of other religiously pushy declarations in this mandatory course, such as these words from Wernher von Braun, the Nazi rocket scientist who teamed up with the U.S. military after the war to develop its space and missile programs, regarding his surrender to the Americans in 1945:

“We knew that we had created a new means of warfare and the question as to what nation . . .we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else,” von Braun is quoted as saying. “We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.”

This is too strange to be irony. The Nazi rocket wizard sought moral reassurance in Christian exceptionalism, and his words then became part of America’s official ethics of nuclear war: We’re with Jesus on that white horse, and if/when we launch Armageddon, we’re only doing the work of the Lord. To my mind, there are few people on the planet scarier than self-proclaimed “Christian soldiers,” at least those who feed from the evangelical trough and belong to the U.S. military, because their agenda transcends rationality. In righteousness they judge and make war.

But my sense of shock and awe over this nuclear ethics course isn’t simply about evangelicals in the military and their zeal to proselytize. It’s about the official sanctioning of a nuclear morality that allows their use: that transforms America and its military machine into an instrument of the will of God.

The canceled course was called Christian Just War Theory. Even leaving aside the “Christian” part, this theory — or rather the public-relations perversion thereof (Just Window Dressing) — is at the center of the smug delusions of armed righteousness in this country and beyond. Some form of it is used to justify every modern war when, in point of fact, an honest reading of just war theory makes modern war impossible.

“Civilians are never permissible targets of war . . .”

What part of this do we not understand? Even Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, has acknowledged the moral quicksand of modern war, commenting in 2003 that “we must begin asking ourselves whether as things stand, with new weapons that cause destruction that goes well beyond the groups involved in the fight, it is still licit to allow that a ‘just war’ might exist.”

Of course, the theory is always presented with wiggle room, making it, you know, fair for the war makers, too: “The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatant,” Vincent Ferraro explains in his discussion of the principles of the theory, as referenced atjustwartheory.com. “Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.”

Aha, loophole! While the actual point of the theory is to acknowledge — to bless — a people’s need to fight back in self-defense against an aggressor, or to protect the innocent, its language is so hopelessly wishy-washy that its blessing is there for the taking for any armed cynic who wants moral cover. A warring nation has unlimited permission to kill indiscriminately as long as it “makes every effort” to avoid killing civilians.

Thus Harry Truman announced, on Aug. 9, 1945: “The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.”

There is no moral honesty in a discussion of war for the simple reason that there can’t be. War is its own end, the perversion of every just cause. As soon as we begin worshipping it, we can tolerate moral authority only as a cover for our crimes. Before you know it, Jesus loves nukes.

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.

Explaining The Resurrection

Explaining The Resurrection

By Libby Anne of Love, Joy, Feminism ~
[REPRINT]

Another blogger that I have been corresponding with asked me the other day how I, as an atheist, account for the resurrection. When I was a fundamentalist, I was told that the resurrection was incontrovertible proof of the truth of Christianity, the kind of proof that cannot be ignored even by an atheist. This argument made so much sense to me at the time that I couldn't understand how an atheist could possibly explain it away. Those of you who are also from fundamentalist backgrounds may have been taught the same. So my goal here is not to upset anyone or start any debates, but simply to explain why atheists do not actually see the resurrection as proof of Christianity.

I will start with my friend's question, and then offer my (somewhat lengthy) response:

How do you, personally, account for the story of Christ's resurrection? It is fairly well documented. Do you think it was a hoax, a collective hallucination, or what? How do you account for the fact that so many of the apostles were willing to die horrible deaths for the sake of a belief in something that never happened? I'm sure you have an answer of some sort, I'm just curious as to what it is. :)

How do you account for Joseph Smith’s discovery of the golden plates? It’s quite well documented. Do you think it was a hoax, a hallucination, or what? How do you account for the fact that Joseph Smith was willing to face persecution and ultimately death for his belief in the gospel he read in the golden plates he found, and that his followers like him faced persecution and even death for the sake of a belief in something that never happened?

How do you account for David Koresh’s belief that he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ? It’s quite well documented. Do you think it was a hoax, a hallucination, or what? How do you account for the fact that David Koresh was willing to face persecution and a horrible death for the sake of a belief in something that was not true, and that his followers were willing to join him in both and died a fiery death for the sake of a belief in something that was not true?

How do you account for Mohammed’s visions of the angel Gabriel? It’s quite well documented. Do you think it was a hoax, a hallucination, or what? How do you account for the fact that Mohammad was willing to face persecution, and even be driven from his home, for the sake of a belief in something that never happened, and that his followers were willing to join him in persecution and even risk their lives for their belief in something that never happened?

Dying for a lie?

You see, it’s not just Christianity. Every religion claims its beginning in a miraculous occurrence or revelation, and in each case the religious leader and his followers are willing to face persecution or even death rather than deny their newly held religious beliefs. Joseph Smith and his followers were chased across the country, and he himself was eventually murdered, as were David Koresh and his followers. Mohammad and his followers were run out of town because of their new beliefs. Jim Jones and nine hundred of his followers committed suicide by drinking poisoned punch. Thirty-nine members of the Heaven’s Gate group committed suicide in anticipation of the arrival of UFOs to take them to a celestial kingdom. And in all of these cases, it wasn’t just the followers who were willing to face persecution or death; it was the founders as well. So the fact that the disciples were willing to face death for their belief in the resurrection actually says nothing about whether or not their belief was true, that is, unless you are willing to assume that all the beliefs listed above were also true.

In fact, we don’t know for sure that the disciples actually did face the horrible deaths tradition says they did, because the only evidence of it is just that - tradition. There is no actual historical evidence for the disciples’ demises, just stories passed down through the years from Christian to Christian. In addition, early Christians were not actually persecuted to the extent that I was led to believe growing up. Rather than continuously having to hide or risk being thrown to the lions, as I had somehow thought, early persecution of the Christians was extremely local, and generally related either to people being upset about their relatives joining a strange new religion they viewed as an illegitimate cult or to the need to find a scapegoat for a local disaster. Other times Christians faced mob violence from other religious groups upset about losing members.

The first official persecution of Christians came in 64 AD, thirty years or so after Jesus' death, when the Christians in Rome were used as a scapegoat for a great fire that engulfed much of the city, but this sort of official persecution was both local and temporary. For the first two hundred years of Christian history, this was how Christian persecution took place - it was local and it flared up at specific moments rather than being continuous. Then, during the third century, over two hundred years after Jesus' death, official empire wide persecutions of Christians took place. The Roman Empire faced grave threats from barbarians on its borders, and the Roman leaders attributed their weakness to the fact that Christians, by now a growing percentage of the population, were refusing to honor the old Roman gods. They therefore enforced worship of the Roman gods, and those who refused to participate were killed. Official persecution of the Christians ended in 312 A.D. when Constantine called for religious freedom for the Christians in an effort to unify the empire. Then, in 395 A.D., Christianity was made the official religion of the empire, and persecution was turned on the pagans and Jews.

Documentation of the resurrection

Now, you say that the resurrection of Jesus is well documented. Actually, it is not. The only - I repeat, only - documentation of the resurrection comes from the New Testament. I think anyone can agree that a document written by the early followers of a religion is likely to be biased. Taking what the New Testament says about the resurrection at face value would be like taking the writings of Joseph Smith’s closest followers at face value, or taking the writings of David Koresh’s followers at face value, or the writings of Mohammed’s followers (the Koran) at face value. This is why I say that Joseph Smith’s discovery of the golden plates and David Koresh’s role as the reincarnated Jesus and Mohammed’s visions of the angel Gabriel are all well documented - because they are, by their followers.

Furthermore, the gospels were not written down until after 70 A.D., and not by eye witnesses. The stories recorded in the gospels had traveled as oral traditions for four decades and more, with ample time for shaping and reshaping. We really have no idea what actually happened to Jesus and his followers in Palestine in 30 A.D. All we have is oral traditions that were eventually written down forty years and more after the fact. In other words, we don’t know that there were Roman guards at the tomb, or that there was a huge stone that was rolled away, or that the authorities were concerned that the disciples might steal his body, or that one of Jesus followers encountered him outside the tomb, or that two of his followers encountered him on the road to Emmeus, or that he appeared to the eleven disciples or five hundred others. Any of that could easily have grown up over the years, as stories became embellished as stories do. We really can’t know for sure what happened.

Why did no one contradict the resurrection?

One argument I have heard for the resurrection is that these stories spread while people were still alive to contradict them. Well yes. They did. But I would make four points:

1. The ancient world didn’t have twitter or facebook or the blogosphere. They didn’t even have newspapers. It took months for news to travel, and indeed, months for people themselves to travel. If Paul was preaching the resurrection in Greece and Asia Minor, say, who was there to contradict him? His converts couldn’t google what he was telling them to see if it checked out.

2. Christianity started small, and without fanfare. It was people hiding out in basements and back alleys, not people converting all of Jerusalem overnight. What need was there to contradict that? People were worried about living, not about stopping some crazy belief their neighbor’s slave happened to hold. Plus, given the variety of crazy religious beliefs at the time, what are the odds that they would really even care?

3. Furthermore, how do we know that people didn’t contradict the stories about Jesus’ resurrection? All we have is Jesus’ followers’ side of the story, or rather, their story as shaped by four decades and more of oral tradition. We have no source of information outside of that written down by early Christians. I think it likely that early Christianity did have some nay-sayers. But guess what? Those nay-sayers have never stopped any religion. Joseph Smith had plenty of people calling him a hoax, but it didn’t stop people from following him. It was the same with Mohammed and David Koresh and essentially every other religion throughout history.

4. In addition, after Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D., the Jews were scattered across the Roman Empire. The places Jesus spent his life were destroyed or changed forever, and any possibility of Jewish witnesses countering Christian claims was silenced. This was convenient, for it was not until after this point that Christianity really began to grow by leaps and bounds.

And indeed, as Christianity became more popular, voices of opposition did arise. Many of the early Christian writings we have today outside of the New Testament are those of Christian apologists seeking to counter the arguments of prominent pagan critics. These pagans did argue against the resurrection, and against basically every point of Christian doctrine. When the emperor Constantine adopted Christianity, these voices were silenced. Regardless, you have to remember that Christianity did not become popular enough to warrant any sort of major opposition until the middle of the second century, over a hundred years after Jesus’ death. By this time, however, any witnesses who might have contradicted it were long gone, and Palestine as Jesus knew it had been destroyed. It was too late to go fact checking there - the evidence was gone.

Argument from ignorance

In essence, the argument that the resurrection is the only way to explain the origins of Christianity is an argument from ignorance. It essentially says “we don’t know how early Christianity could have developed without the resurrection, therefore God.” This is the same argument that is used any time we as humans encounter something we can’t explain. Our ancestors wondered what lightening was, and concluded that it must be God. And then we figured out what it actually is. Our ancestors wondered where the seasons came from, and concluded that it must be God. And then we figured out why we actually have seasons.

Just because I don’t know every detail of how Christianity, or any other religion, was founded and gained adherents does not mean that I should conclude “therefore, God.” It just means I don’t know. The fact that we don’t know exactly how Christianity started doesn’t bother me. Similarly, the fact that we don’t know how belief in the Greek and Roman Gods started doesn’t bother me, nor does the fact that we don’t know exactly how Hinduism started, or that we don’t know how exactly Mohammad came up with his new teachings, and on and on.

Possible Explanations

Now while it does not bother me that I don’t know exactly how the story of the resurrection originated, I can at the same time think of plenty of possibilities for how it could have happened. One possibility is that after Jesus was buried the Romans dug up his body and destroyed it hoping to keep his grave from becoming a tomb, and then the disciples found an empty tomb and concluded that he must have risen from the dead. The Romans might have tried to counter it at that point, but the disciples could have accused them of lying, especially if they had already disposed of the body. Another possibility is that there was a mixup about where Jesus was to be buried and the disciples went to the wrong place, and found an empty tomb. Or perhaps the Romans decided at the last minute to dispose of the body themselves. It's quite possible that the Romans didn't think anything of the issue once Jesus, whom they had likely feared was contributing to unrest or plotting subversion, was dead, and therefore didn't feel the need to counter rumors that he had risen from the dead, or maybe they didn’t hear of the rumors until much later. It's possible that the Romans' custom was to dispose of the bodies of the crucified themselves, and that the disciples, or perhaps even just one of them, hallucinated a vision of Jesus, and concluded that he had raised from the dead, and that the empty tomb story itself simply grew up later. There is an endless list of possibilities.

And really, new religious movements are not that hard to start. While in college, I actually became involved in a group that was on its way to becoming a cult. We had a leader, we had visions and revelations from God, we even saw demons and worked to cast them out. We believed that we were about to bring about a Christian awakening that would spread first to our college campus and then to the rest of the nation. But it wasn’t real. In the end, it turned out that our leader had mental problems and had to be medicated. Caught up in religious fervor, we imagined the whole thing, and were positive that what was happening was real. But it wasn’t. This sort of thing has happened again and again and again throughout history. Joseph Smith, Jim Jones, Heaven’s Gate, David Koresh, Mohammed, and, yes, I would argue, even early Christianity.

Conclusion

I find it interesting that so many Christians seem to think that the resurrection is some sort of infallible proof of the truth of Christianity. To atheists, the entire idea that the resurrection might be an argument for the existence of God seems strange. I think the difference centers on the fact that the Christian believes that the New Testament is infallible and inerrant while the atheist does not. You can’t prove the truth of your religion using only documents written by followers of your religion. It doesn’t work that way. It’s circular. The Bible is inspired because Christianity is true, Christianity is true because the Bible says so. No. You have to prove it using something outside of the Bible. And when it comes to the resurrection, there simply is no documentation outside of the New Testament. Furthermore, in making this argument the Christian also forgets that every religion starts with some sort of revelation or miraculous happening, and that members of essentially every new religious movement across time have faced persecution and even death for their beliefs. If I must accept that Christianity is true because the disciples would not have died for a lie, then I must accept that every religion is true. And I don’t think it works that way.

Karl Rove: It’s ‘Offensive’ To Say We Are A Christian Nation | ThinkProgress

Karl Rove: It’s ‘Offensive’ To Say We Are A Christian Nation | ThinkProgress

Social conservatives often insist the U.S. was founded to be a “Christian nation,” and they accuse progressives and President Obama of undermining these supposedly core values. But leading conservative strategist Karl Rove called the notion that the U.S. is Christian “offensive” on Fox News last night. “We are based on the Judeo-Christian ethic, we derive a lot from it, but if you say we’re a Christian nation, what about the Jews, what about the Muslims, what about the non-believers?” Rove said the president, in one of his books, inaccurately quoted Rove as calling the U.S a “Christian nation,” a misquote he was clearly offended by. Watch it:



By Alex Seitz-Wald on Aug 17, 2011 at 3:25 pm
[REPRINT]

My 5 Dilemmas of Christian Religious Beliefs

My Five Dilemmas of Christian Religious Beliefs

by Godwin Johnson

I discovered this forum (ex-christian.net) a while ago and have enjoyed reading the many stories shared on this site. I have a not so different story. I was an Evangelical-Pentecostal Christian for 25 years or so. My inexorable move towards unbelief was about a decade or so in the making. It all began with a serious determination to study and better understand this faith I had dedicated myself to and was spending an inordinate amount of time and emotional, psychological and financial resources to. While I am still working on a much longer story to share, I want to summarize what it basically came down to for me; the situation is captured in what I call the FIVE PROBLEMS:

1. The Problem with the Bible

Increasingly, it is hard for me to believe that the Bible in its entirety is the inspired Word of God. It takes extremely contorted arguments to try and reconcile the dozens, even hundreds of contradictions. Many of the statements are not only historically false, but ethically abhorrent. That the Bible is not meant to be fully understood by the mind but believed by the heart is a cop out for a book that purportedly comes from a perfect God. It is far more likely it is the work of man. No one who has studied the origin, development and translation of the Bible could possibly deny it is the work of man. Saying God was working through human agency is too convenient and did not result in a perfect book from a perfect God.

2. The Problem with Science

More and more, science and religion (Christianity) do not agree on the fundamentals. For many things, both cannot simply be true. It takes extremely contorted arguments to try and reconcile them. Anyone who thinks or believes otherwise neither knows the Bible nor science well enough, or perhaps simply disingenuous in their approach to both.

3. The Problem with Religious Plurality and Eternal Damnation in Hell

Over 70% of the world's population right now are not Christians and are unlikely to ever be. It is hard to believe that all these billions will go straight to hell when it is really not their fault that they never heard the Gospel. And which Gospel is another issue. There is little agreement in Christendom on some of the fundamentals. The entire premise of missions is that those who have not heard are doomed to eternal damnation. It never occurs to anyone that millions lived before and after Jesus Christ who never heard the Gospel. There are dozens of convoluted arguments about how God in his omniscience and omnipotence will resolve this dilemma, but the inescapable consequence of not hearing the Gospel is fully described in the New Testament and gives the impetus to reach the unreached before they perish. Christian missionary work has gone on for millennia and most of the world is not convinced. True Evangelicals as you know do not consider over 80% of Christians as real believers and believe only those who are "born again" will go to Heaven. Even heaven is a concept lacking in the Old Testament scriptures and a unique invention of the New Testament. That humans will suffer untold torment for eternity (forever and ever and ever… is not only absurd, but sick and twisted). It seems all religion including Christianity not only are man-made, but man-propagated and helps together by natural human forces in human societies with no real supernatural influences. In fact I believe natural explanations for everything in life is all there is.

4. The Problem with Evil and Suffering

I know of all or most of the classical Christian and religious arguments to justify the presence of both moral and physical evil in the World. Honesty requires me to admit that these arguments do not cut it well at all. God if he exists cannot be omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipresent in all of these. Indeed there are theologians who believe the same thing. That evil is the result of human free will is only a small part of the problem, and that it works out a larger purpose in the will of God is another cop out. It seems these explanations are designed to protect God’s reputation, and is followed with explanation that all evil will be conquered someday as comfort to humans. Believers who do not understand this dilemma have never grappled with this problem or do not understand it.

5. The Problem with Prayer

This is the most personal of the problems because prayer does not work as religionists of all persuasions proclaim. After being a born again Evangelical Christian for 26 years until my lapse into agnostic-atheism, I know that most "answers" to prayers are wishful thinking or at best coincidences. All answered prayers are plausible, and there is no evidence of answer to prayer for a truly “impossible” problem such as amputees re-growing limbs, destroyed optic nerves restored, cancer cured, hysterectomized women giving births, or paraplegic and quadriplegics walking again. I have thought through this very carefully over a very long time and found that not a single "answer" to prayer I know lacked a natural explanation. And when a truly supernatural move was required to made a difference, it was nowhere to be found and all the blame as always came back to humans who were either too ignorant, too proud, too sinful to get the prayer answered, did not pray the right way or just too blind to see that God answered it in another way. It seems in 100% of the cases with unanswered prayer, the problem was man and not God. In reality there is no such thing as answered prayer by a benevolent deity.

Religion no doubt plays an important role in the lives of humans and is not going anywhere. That one religion is superior to another is just plain nonsense. Every religion thinks it is superior to another, although a few do not proselytize and have a live and let live mentality. The most proselytizing religions of Christianity and Islam which believes in converting others have also precipitated the most atrocious acts in human history. If you do not believe it, go to Wikipedia and do a tour of histories of Christianity and Islam. Proponents and supporters say those acts do not truly reflect the teachings of these religions, which is of course nonsense. The vast majority of believers in these religions do not really know what their religions teach, and simply hold to them by cultural affinity or family upbringing.

It seems I have become a skeptic and perhaps now doomed to eternal damnation. The problem with that is we have no proof whatsoever that there is such a thing as surviving this earth when we die. Life it seems makes far more sense when we believe the reality of human experience rather than the wishful thinking of what religion expects it or assumes it to be. For various reasons I cannot go into, I am going to stealthily keep my new views and lack of belief from most of my friends and associates, especially from close family who knew me as a very strong Christian for decades. It will be equivalent of an emotional and incredulous earthquake for many who know me if they find out that I have become a skeptic. There will come a time to come out clean, but not at this time.

Do People Follow the Ten Commandments? Behavior and Beliefs Often Don't Match

Do People Follow the Ten Commandments?
Behavior and Beliefs Often Don't Match

By Austin Cline, About.com Guide
[REPRINT]

There are lots of debates over the cultural and political status of the Ten Commandments, but in all of those debates there is a common assumption that devout religious people are already following them and everyone else should start. Is it true, however, that religious people currently follow the Ten Commandments with any degree of consistency?

Jews presumably do a fair job at trying to follow their Decalogue, but it’s Christians — and conservative evangelicals in particular — who do the most to promote these laws in civil society, so perhaps we should focus on them. When we do, we find something interesting: not only do they not consistently follow the commandments, but in fact a couple are broken so regularly and casually that it doesn’t even appear as though anyone really tries.

The second commandment, at least according to Protestants, is a prohibition against “any graven image, or any likeness of any thing.“ The more literally one reads this, the more that would have to be forbidden: crosses, crucifixes, statues of Jesus, status of saints, icons of any sort, even photographs and realistic paintings. Muslims adhere to such a rule strictly, and as a consequence, artistic decoration consists of abstract design rather than the human figures that one typically sees in many churches.

Most Christians today, if they accept this commandment at all (it’s not included on Catholic lists), don’t interpret it literally. At most they read it to mean that one shouldn’t make any idols designed to represent God (although statues of Jesus, who is also God, are somehow exempt from even this most mildest of readings). Once we allow this commandment to be interpreted mildly or metaphorically, however, what’s to stop us from doing the same with the others? Should the commands not to kill or steal be read metaphorically?

Even more significant is the breaking of the Sabbath. The Ten Commandments require that people work for six days and then rest on the seventh, which is Saturday. This is what Jews and some small Christian groups do. Almost all contemporary Christian denominations have placed their sabbath on a Sunday, however, which is the first day of the week.

This might not seem like such a huge issue — after all, Christians are still working six days and resting one, which is one of the points of this commandment. Another point of the commandment, however, is to commemorate God who worked six days and rested on the seventh; Christians who don’t rest on the final day of the week are quite simply getting things backwards. God certainly didn’t start off the grand task of creating the universe by taking a coffee break.

Furthermore, Christians today don’t adhere to the prohibition on working as strictly as orthodox Jews. Christian may go to church services and they may not go to the office, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t work. On the contrary, most do quite a bit of work on their sabbath: yard work, house work, school work, etc. Very few Christians actually refrain from any work whatsoever, and I doubt that you will find many who go to the same lengths as orthodox Jews who refuse to drive, turn on lights, light stoves, etc.

Suggested Reading

* Ten Commandments: Introduction
* Ten Commandments: Analysis
* Ten Commandments: Different Versions

Does god Really Heal?

Unreasonable Faith


[REPRINT]

By vorjack on July 25, 2011 in Christianity, Medicine.

The following post was submitted by Jeremy Wells, AKA the Not So Friendly Atheist, who blogs about the logical flaws in religious arguments.

Does god really heal? This is a simple question that I put to the test when I was a Christian- the results convinced me to abandon religion. One of god’s promises is that he will heal all believers that pray for it. This is one of the foundational beliefs in religious doctrine. Certainly god should honor his word in this area, but does he?

Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.
If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. (James 5:14-16)

Scientologists, Catholics and More Money Than God

The Church of Scientology building in Los Angeles.

By GARRY WILLS | Published: July 21, 2011
[REPRINT]

We do not need these books to tell us that money and religion make for a poisonous combination. But it is of some interest to see that ancient truth confirmed in both a church as relatively new as Scientology and one as ancient as Roman Catholicism. Even religious leaders develop a certain swagger when they know they are backed by bundles of cash. When a French court fined Scientology nearly a million dollars, one of its officials shrugged that off as “chump change.” And when the Vatican ran a deficit of nearly 2.4 million euros in 2007, an Italian journalist familiar with the church’s finances dismissed the debt as “chopped liver.” Chump change or chopped liver, both churches have bigger sums they can get to and use, and few outsiders are given a look at how they do it. These two books trace the cash source of theological confidence.

As Janet Reitman describes in “Inside Scientology,” Scientology did not begin as a religion, which its founder, L. Ron Hubbard came to consider his initial mistake. In 1950 Hubbard published his book “Dianetics,” which proposed a variant on the “mind cures” that have littered the American landscape through most of its history. He offered his followers a process of “auditing” that combined Freudian sessions with elements of his former career as a writer of science fiction. People being audited could relive their births, or test their future hopes on the E-meter, a kind of super lie detector that revealed “the anatomy of the human mind.” Mental health authorities, Reitman notes, were quick to condemn Hubbard’s claims as fraudulent. He did not, at this point, have the money to fight against such attacks, a situation he would spend the rest of his career correcting.

Hubbard’s failure to secure a strong financial base exposed him to a takeover of his concepts and properties. Barely two years after founding the movement, he lost Dianetics to a wealthy supporter named Don Purcell, who simply bought him out. To restart his project, he needed protection for it. He found that protection in religion. After all, one cannot buy out a religion. This “religion angle,” he wrote in 1953, is “a matter of practical business.” Being a church, Reitman writes, gave Scientology tax exemption, clerical status for his “ministers” (who wore Roman collars) and clerical exemption from the draft for these ministers. It also allowed him to rally even non-Scientologists to his defense against increasingly hostile government agencies, presenting any of his troubles as a persecution of religion, violating the separation of church and state.

There was another advantage to becoming a religion. In the 1960s, especially in Los Angeles, where Hubbard’s early success came to him, there was a spiritual hunger among young people that took them to religious figures like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (the Beatles’ guide) and the Hare Krishnas. Some of those who came into Scientology as ’60s “kids” stayed on to hold responsible positions under Hubbard.

Hubbard’s experience with Dianetics, Reitman writes, taught him to keep all parts of Scientology under his personal control, to keep his governance secret, and to have a cash supply to deal with enemies, real and imagined. It takes money, after all, to sue the Internal Revenue Service 200 times after it revoked the church’s tax exemption. The early criticisms Hubbard received from psychiatrists made him an unremitting foe to all mental health activities but his own. The general public became aware of this when the Scientologist Tom Cruise attacked psychiatry on the “Today” show. But for years Scientology had been trying, with lawsuits, propaganda and harassment, to bring down the mental health establishment. psychiatrists maim and kill, read a sign carried by Scientologists outside a London mental health center.

Hubbard’s feuds were deadly. Of a person suspected of stealing his secrets he wrote his followers: “The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway . . . will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. . . . If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.” Those who opposed Scientology in any way were called “suppressive persons,” of whom Hubbard wrote: “A truly suppressive person or group has no rights of any kind, and actions taken against them are not punishable.” They “may be tricked, sued, or lied to or destroyed.” Thus, when Hubbard became convinced that government agencies were collecting negative information about Scientology, Reitman writes, a secret agency of the church (Branch One) planted operatives inside the I.R.S., the F.B.I., the Justice Department and that old enemy, the American Medical Association. According to Reitman, they stole tens of thousands of documents to use for their own smear campaigns. The church gave them awards for this service.

Hubbard was particularly fierce against defecting members, especially if they put online the higher levels of enlightenment that were supposed to be revealed only to loyal trainees. Hubbard feared ridicule, Reitman argues, since the upper levels of disciples learned that a Galactic Confederation had destroyed earth millions of years ago (using hydrogen bombs) and planted captive souls in volcanoes. Even some of the most conditioned and docile disciples, including Tom Cruise, balked at this secret knowledge when first exposed to it.

When Hubbard died in 1986, his leadership role was taken over by a less flamboyant figure, David Miscavige, who had been a Scientologist since the age of 8. He followed the founder’s plans, especially his “celebrity strategy,” conceived in 1955. Hubbard’s initial hopes were to lure admired people like Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and Edward R. Murrow into his church. But this ambition shrank, by Miscavige’s time, to recruiting show business personalities. The big catches here were John Travolta and Cruise, on whom Miscavige danced continual attendance, in a tactic the church called “admiration bombing.” A glitzy Celebrity Centre was built for any new catches, and less-known figures proved useful. Nancy Cartright, the voice of Bart Simpson, gave the church $10 million in just one of her years of devout service.

Reitman, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone who spent five years trying to pierce the walls Scientologists put up against outsiders, gives us the most complete picture of Scientology so far. She seems, now, uncertain of its future. But its continued existence, given its weird aspects, is its main claim to religion’s power. It is something of a miracle.

The Catholic Church offers a very different picture, but one where money is even more important. Jason Berry, the reporter who broke several of the priest abuse scandals of recent times, finds the same pattern of deception, denial and subterfuge in the church’s handling of money as in its treatment of pedophiles. The Vatican comes to its high-handed way with money in an understandable fashion. In the Middle Ages, all authority was male and monarchical, so the pope became a king. His multiple realms had all the appurtenances of a medieval monarch — armies, prisons, spies, torturers, legal courts in papal service. The money flowed in from many sources — as conquest, as tribute from subordinate princes (secular and religious) or from the crops on farm lands held by the pope, who was not accountable to anyone for use of these funds. When normal sources did not satisfy papal ambition, clerical underlings invented new kinds of revenue — like the granting of time off in Purgatory for cash contributions during life (“indul­gences” for sale).

All that seemed to be ending in 1860 when Italy at last united its secular government and began taking away the pope’s realms. Pope Pius IX rejected the Italian government’s efforts at partial restitution, calling the secular regime illegitimate. He made himself a “prisoner of the Vatican,” never venturing out into Rome, or even addressing it from his balcony. Catholics in sympathy to Pio Nono’s “martyrdom” by the modern state increased their popular donations to the Vatican called Peter’s Pence. This donation arose in the seventh or eighth century, when the pope was still a monarch. It was set aside from the monies exacted from various parts of the papal empire, as something coming voluntarily from the people in the pews. The announced purpose was for the pope to have extra money for the charities he supported.

But after 1860 a surge of sympathy made Catholics every­where, but especially in America, pour large sums into the Vatican, originally conceived as giving the pope military assistance, but then turned over to him for any use. No longer were papal charities the rationale. In fact, the lay cardinal who was Pius’s secretary of state, Giacomo Antonelli, took all available Vatican sums for ambitious new financing schemes. Already in 1857 he had used Peter’s Pence funds as collateral for a new loan from the Rothschild banking firm. Antonelli made one of his brothers the head of the Pontifical Bank. Another Antonelli brother secured a monopoly on Rome’s grain imports (a key to power in Rome since classical times). Antonelli soon had papal investments in countries all over Europe. The pope’s distress was made the excuse for a new financial empire, with no accountability for the funds used.

That non-accountability continues. The Vatican issues statements of its assets — in 2007 the amount was 1.4 billion euros —but the Vatican Bank is off the books, as is a metric ton of gold, and other things not reported. On a list of papal assets, St. Peter’s Basilica and other historic sites are listed as worth one euro each. No wonder, as Berry says, “the Holy See’s true net worth is invisible.”

Having set this historical background, Berry begins his true project — the use of funds in the American church during its modern time of troubles. He grants there are excuses for the financial maneuvering of the Catholic bishops. “The Roman Catholic Church in America is undergoing the most massive downsizing in its history,” he writes. “Since 1995 the bishops have closed 1,373 churches — more than one parish per week for 15 years.” There are many reasons for this wrenching development — lower church attendance, which means fewer donations from the pews; the movement of parishioners from inner cities to the suburbs, stranding old ethnic structures; the loss of free labor in Catholic schools by the declining number of nuns. We can add to this the payment of damages to the victims of priest pedophiles — though many bishops claim they haven’t closed churches because of the sex scandals.

Berry says it is hard to verify this claim because the ordinary bishop is as loath to reveal his transactions as the pope is. A lay group begun in Boston, the Voice of the Faithful, asked that the financial arrangements of the diocese be exposed, and it was fiercely resisted by bishop after bishop. Church authorities in some cities banned the V.O.T.F. from meeting in any parish. The same bishops had earlier opposed revealing what sums were paid to victims of sexual abuse. Settlements forbade the victims from revealing this. Even when settlements were reported, other hidden costs were kept secret — for instance, how much had gone to expensive rehabilitation centers through which the pedophiles were endlessly and uselessly recycled, and to legal costs while the bishops were denying accusations.

Lay people were also kept out of the decision on which churches to close. Good faith attempts by lay people to cooperate in evaluating this procedure were rebuffed. While Cardinal Sean O’Malley was trying to remedy the harm done the Boston diocese by Cardinal Bernard Law’s recycling of pedophiles, his auxiliary bishop Richard Lennon was managing a professedly separate operation to close churches — he would finally shut down 62 in the Boston area. The opponents to Lennon’s plan alleged that he was selecting properties most likely to bring the highest price for resale, not taking into account community support, unconsidered resources or the possibility of merged work with nearby parishes. At eight condemned parishes, people devoted to their churches kept round-the-clock vigils, refusing to give them up. Appeals were taken to Rome, but the man responsible for parishes, Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, refused them a hearing. Berry finds the Boston pattern repeated in other dioceses, like those of Cleveland and Los Angeles.

Then, returning to Rome, Berry shows the power of money to squelch evidence that the founder of the ultra-conservative Legionaries of Christ, Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, was a serial child molester and had illegitimate children in Mexico. I met Berry in 2002 at the bishops’ Dallas meeting on the sex scandals. He was just beginning his exposé on Maciel, and I followed his work after that, since he was up against vituperation from the Legionaries, criticism from people like William Bennett, and a cold shoulder in Rome, where he went with Maciel’s victims to plead their cause. Unfortunately, Maciel was a great favorite with Pope John Paul II and his secretary of state, Angelo Sodano. It helped that Maciel showered Rome’s cardinals with expensive gifts. Every Christmas Legionary brothers fanned out across Rome to deliver lavish Christmas baskets to the hierarchy, with fine wines, liqueurs and rare Spanish hams worth up to $1,000. He sent a million dollars in support of the pope’s visit to Poland. He gave large cash gifts to Sodano. He ordered a Mercedes-Benz for Cardinal Pio Laghi, though Laghi turned it down. Sodano and others were entertained in style at the Legionary headquarters.

Cardinal Ratzinger, who had taken charge of all sex claims reaching Rome, sat on the charges against Maciel, at the urging of Cardinal Sodano, who reminded him that Maciel was well liked by Pope John Paul. Ratzinger held off until John Paul was clearly dying; then he hurried to remove this incubus from the church. In December 2004 Ratzinger’s office ordered Maciel to step down, pending an investigation. Even then the Vatican Press Office, under pressure from Sodano, denied that there was any “canonical process” against Maciel. But once Ratzinger was Pope Benedict XVI, he consigned Maciel to a period of prayer and penitence and began a thorough re-evaluation of his order.

Whether Berry is considering sex scandals or money scandals, or the refusal of the hierarchy to be open with its own believers on many fronts, the thing that sours all relations is secrecy — as we can see from the conduct of our own government. Secrecy eats at the soul. Some are surprised that religion is so corruptible. They should not be. When secrecy is used to protect a higher order of knowledge, it can make the keepers of the secrets think of themselves as a higher order of humans. Corruptio optimi pessima, goes the old saying. Blight at the top is the deepest blight. It is the sin of taking God’s name in vain.

The Rapture - Christians Are Gone!?

May 21st - Judgment Day?

There is much talk about the End of the World being on May 21st, 2011. Harold Camping, of Family Radio, is an absolute nut. Even mainstream Christians say that the hour of Jesus' return isn't known, but only to God the Father. However, this alone is crazy, because if the Father and Jesus are one, then Jesus should know also, but this is side-tracking.

Camping's ramblings are not new. The Seventh Day Adventists predicted the end of the world a few times, most famously once in the book, Evidences from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ about the Year 1843. This date came and went. And there has been other predictions and speculations that are humorously in error. It'd be more funny, if it weren't for the gullible and vulnerable giving their life savings away to fund the knowledge of impending doom. There will be many suicides on the 22nd, thanks to Mr. Camping's ridiculous (and mathematically flawed!) claims. May he be charged with Aggravated Manslaughter when this happens. I am not a Christian, but heed my prophecy!

This is not the first time Camping had predicted the end of the world either. He's even makes a claim to know the year the earth was 'created,' and when the global flood occurred. Now, this weird nutcase predicts the return of the Son of God, the being that has no plausible existence outside of the Bible, if Jesus even existed at all.

I cannot wait until this man's claims are behind us, and the man is dead (he's in his late 80's). However, it's unfortunate that as time continues and people keep believing in myths, legends, fabrications and superstition, there will always be predictions of the End Times. And there will always be weirdos that buy into it, give away all they have (not to the poor, but to the Church), and die confused and embarrassed.

A Holey Fairy Tale

~ ExChristian.Net

By atheistnurse ~

Once upon a time there was nothing. But in that nothing was an omnipotent god. This god wasn’t made by anything - he was just always there -- hanging out in nothingness for eternity (Don’t spend a lot of time wondering how this could be, just believe it). You might think he was bored, lazy, or unimaginative because he didn’t do anything, but he was thinking of what he was going to do. It just took him a really long time to come up with a good plan. He thought of talking snakes, talking donkeys, superhuman men who lost their power when their hair was cut, killing people for picking up sticks on his day, making a lot of stupid rules that would be really hard to follow so he could punish them for not following them, wiping out whole communities of men, women, and children, and –oooh!! the best part!! – he would make an evil, powerful angel who would tempt people and cause people to turn away from god so he could put those people in a place of torment for all eternity.

After god decided on a plan of action he got right to work. He made the earth and planets and stars. He added plants and animals and made a man out of dirt. Then he made the man fall asleep and he made a woman out of the man’s rib. They lived happily in a garden where everything was perfect. But one day a talking snake tricked the woman into eating fruit off of a magic tree that god had told them not to eat. This made god mad even though he knew ahead of time they would do that. That was the whole point of god making the magic tree and the talking snake. Duh! So he kicked them out of the garden and labeled every descendant of theirs a big piece of worthless shit, which god called “sinners.” But god was nice enough to let them live for hundreds of years and have tons and tons of worthless shit babies. God knew they were all going to be worthless and he had already preplanned a giant flood to drown them all, except for one family. He had to save one family to start all over again, even though he knew they were going to have tons of worthless shit babies, too.

God had an ingenious plan to help all the worthless shit people in the world and make them think he was really a nice, loving god. He was going to make a virgin 12-year-old girl pregnant with himself!! Deep down god really liked to kill and torment people. He told them how he was a loving god and they had to follow hundreds of stupid rules he made up or he would be well within his power as god to kill them. He made up rules about what they could eat, how to cut their penises, how to wear their sideburns, killing their kids if they talked back, having feasts, washing, working, having sex, and lots, lots more. He knew they couldn’t remember all the rules, much less follow them, so he would have lots of opportunities to kill and torment. Fun!!

Along the way he had a little fun with some of the worthless people. He messed with their minds by allowing the evil angel to kill all the kids of one guy who followed god’s rules really good , he told an old man to kill his son and burn him, told another guy to lay on his side for months and make a fire using human shit, and he told another guy to marry a prostitute even though he had told people before that was a bad thing.

God had an ingenious plan to help all the worthless shit people in the world and make them think he was really a nice, loving god. He was going to make a virgin 12-year-old girl pregnant with himself!! Then god would split into two different entities and be a man and a god. He would go around praying to himself, and tell people how worthless they were and they could either worship him or be eternally tormented. Then he would let himself be tortured and nailed to a cross and his body would die (but he wouldn’t really die because he is god) and then he would come back to the worthless people in two days (though it is supposed to be three days by his prophets, but never mind the technicalities), and tell more people how worthless they were. He would tell them that he was going to split into yet another form (a magic ghost!!) and if they actually believed this bull shit and telepathically communicated with him all the time, they could spend eternity worshipping at his feet. What could be more fun?? Well, the alternative was eternal torment in a fiery hell, so worship it is! Finally he would rise up and disappear never to be seen or heard from again.

And everyone who believes this will live happily ever after.

Christmas' Pagan Origins

Few people realize that the origins of a form of Christmas was pagan and celebrated in Europe long before anyone there had heard of Jesus Christ.

[Reprinted]

No one knows what day Jesus Christ was born on. From the biblical description, most historians believe that his birth probably occurred in September, approximately six months after Passover. One thing they agree on is that it is very unlikely that Jesus was born in December, since the bible records shepherds tending their sheep in the fields on that night. This is quite unlikely to have happened during a cold Judean winter. So why do we celebrate Christ’s birthday as Christmas, on December the 25th?

The answer lies in the pagan origins of Christmas. In ancient Babylon, the feast of the Son of Isis (Goddess of Nature) was celebrated on December 25. Raucous partying, gluttonous eating and drinking, and gift-giving were traditions of this feast.

In Rome, the Winter Solstice was celebrated many years before the birth of Christ. The Romans called their winter holiday Saturnalia, honoring Saturn, the God of Agriculture. In January, they observed the Kalends of January, which represented the triumph of life over death. This whole season was called Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The festival season was marked by much merrymaking. It is in ancient Rome that the tradition of the Mummers was born. The Mummers were groups of costumed singers and dancers who traveled from house to house entertaining their neighbors. From this, the Christmas tradition of caroling was born.

In northern Europe, many other traditions that we now consider part of Christian worship were begun long before the participants had ever heard of Christ. The pagans of northern Europe celebrated the their own winter solstice, known as Yule. Yule was symbolic of the pagan Sun God, Mithras, being born, and was observed on the shortest day of the year. As the Sun God grew and matured, the days became longer and warmer. It was customary to light a candle to encourage Mithras, and the sun, to reappear next year.

Huge Yule logs were burned in honor of the sun. The word Yule itself means “wheel,” the wheel being a pagan symbol for the sun. Mistletoe was considered a sacred plant, and the custom of kissing under the mistletoe began as a fertility ritual. Hollyberries were thought to be a food of the gods.

The tree is the one symbol that unites almost all the northern European winter solstices. Live evergreen trees were often brought into homes during the harsh winters as a reminder to inhabitants that soon their crops would grow again. Evergreen boughs were sometimes carried as totems of good luck and were often present at weddings, representing fertility. The Druids used the tree as a religious symbol, holding their sacred ceremonies while surrounding and worshipping huge trees.

In 350, Pope Julius I declared that Christ’s birth would be celebrated on December 25. There is little doubt that he was trying to make it as painless as possible for pagan Romans (who remained a majority at that time) to convert to Christianity. The new religion went down a bit easier, knowing that their feasts would not be taken away from them.

Christmas (Christ-Mass) as we know it today, most historians agree, began in Germany, though Catholics and Lutherans still disagree about which church celebrated it first. The earliest record of an evergreen being decorated in a Christian celebration was in 1521 in the Alsace region of Germany. A prominent Lutheran minister of the day cried blasphemy: “Better that they should look to the true tree of life, Christ.”

The controversy continues even today in some fundamentalist sects.

--------------------------------------

Here are a few other great links:

http://atheism.about.com/library/weekly/aa101800a.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5T5ibb2E9I&feature=player_embedded
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/atheist-group-says-christmas-isn-t-a-religious-holiday

666 = The Number of the Beast? #wtf

There is much that Christians, and other religious nuts, have to say about the Number of the Beast, thus 666. Curiously, the "Holy Bible" reads "6 and 6 and 6" which is humorously 18. Multiplied, 6x6x6 is 216. Of course, this is just humor, because the original Greek in that silly gnostic book of "Revelation" is actually 666.

SF has an interesting thread on the Roman Numerals of 666:

666 - The sum of six of the seven numerals is D+C+L+X+V+I=666. The letter M is missing. This is a nice playing with numbers and results from the pairs (1,5), (10,50) und (100,500).
It is more interesting that 666 is the largest triangular number of equal numerals. There is 666=1+2+3+...+35+36=36*37/2.
One Comment from this thread: 666 is actually DCLXVI in roman numerals, and that D,C,L,X,V and I, in turn, are the first six symbols in the roman numerical system in reverse order (i.e. I, V, X, L, C and D backwards). It's like us writing 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,0, and then someone coming along to add them all up to get 45!

What follows is some findings when "666 roman" is Googled:

In Mathematics

Six hundred [and] sixty six is the sum of the first 36 natural numbers (i.e. 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 34 + 35 + 36 = 666), and thus a triangular number.

Since 36 is both square and triangular, 666 is the sixth number of the form n2(n2 + 1) / 2 (sequence A037270 in OEIS) and the eighth number of the form n(n + 1)(n2 + n + 2) / 8 (doubly triangular numbers).A002817

It is an abundant number.

The number of prime numbers up to 666 is 121, the square of the number of prime numbers up to 36.

666 is the 60th 12-factored number; 60 is the first 12-factored number.

The harmonic mean of the decimal digits of 666 is (trivially—all repdigit natural numbers have this property) an integer: 3/(1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6) = 6, making 666 the 54th number with this property.

In base 10, 666 is a repdigit (and therefore a palindromic number) and a Smith number. A prime reciprocal magic square based on 1/149 in base 10 has a magic total of 666.

The Roman numeral for 666, DCLXVI, has exactly one occurrence of all symbols whose value is less than 1000 (D=500, C=100, L=50, X=10, V=5, I=1).

666 is a member of the Indices of prime Padovan sequence, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 14, 19, 30, 37, 84, 128, 469, 666, 1262, 1573, 2003, 2210, ... (sequence A112882 in OEIS).

In other fields

* 666 is the magic sum, or sum of the magic constants of a six by six magic square, any row or column of which adds up to 111.
* The sum of all the numbers on a roulette wheel is 666.[2]
* 666 was a winning lottery number in the 1980 Pennsylvania Lottery scandal, in which equipment was tampered to favor a 4 or 6 as each of the three individual random digits.[3]
* 666 was the original name of the Macintosh SevenDust computer virus that was discovered in 1998.
* In the Bible, 666 is the number of Adonikam's descendants who return to Jerusalem and Judah from the Babylonian exile (see Ezra 2:13).
* The number 666 is a frequent visual element of Aryan Brotherhood tattoos.
* In Kabbalistic Judaism the number 666 represents the creation and perfection of the world. The world was created in 6 days, and there are 6 cardinal directions (North, South, East, West, Up, Down). 6 is also the numerical value of one of the letters of God's name.[4]

616

In May 2005, it was reported that scholars at Oxford University using advanced imaging techniques[9] had been able to read previously illegible portions of the earliest known record of the Book of Revelation (a 1,700 year old papyrus), from the Oxyrhynchus site, Papyrus 115 or P115, dating one century after Irenaeus. But the existance of manuscripts attesting to 616 has been known long before this finding, the other early witness Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C) has it written in full: ἑξακόσιοι δέκα ἕξ, hexakosiai deka hex (lit. "six hundred sixteen").[10]

Significantly, P115 aligns with Codex Alexandrinus (A) and Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C)[citation needed]. Thus, it is argued that P115 has superior testimony to that of P47 (Papyrus 47) which aligns with Codex Sinaiticus and together form the second-best witness to the Book of Revelation[citation needed]. This has led some scholars to conclude that 616 is the original number of the beast.[11]

The NRSV translation for Rev 13:18 includes this translation note: "Other ancient authorities read six hundred and sixteen".

Mark of Commerce

Those who hold to Futurist Christian eschatology believe that the rise of a supranational currency could be a hallmark of the End Times.[43]

Religious difficulties with a supranational currency currently exist (see World currency – Political difficulties). According to the Futurist view, to overcome the extant difficulties the Antichrist will use forced religious syncretism[44] (i.e. in the name of counterterrorism and world economic stability) to enable the creation of the supranational currency. Some interpret the mark as a requirement for all commerce to mean that the mark might actually be an object with the function of a credit card (e.g. implanted RFID tags).

Afraid of the 666 number? That mental illness is called Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia.


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