Debating believers … oh so frustrating

Now this little post is to simply amuse you, and is not designed to actually inform, except to perhaps enable you to laugh and my foolish attempts to engage with an utterly irrational believer on a rational basis.

The context here is that I’ve been attempting to explain to him the historical facts regarding the four gospels and that the only actual claim that jesus = god emerges in the Gospel of John (written about 95 CE). I’ve also explained that the phrase “son-of-God” does not in any way imply that Jesus = God, but rather that it is a Jewish belief that an individual is simply claiming to have been adopted by God as a son (like King David was).

However, what truly astonished me is that the sticking point was his claim that Jesus was Worshiped, hence he was God.

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Why do atheists exist?

A question some often ask is “Why do rational sane people believe utterly irrational things?”. However, a far more interesting question to ask is to wonder why skeptics and non-believers exist. Think about it now, every culture we know has embraced some form of belief in the supernatural, so why do we have non-believers? There … Read more

Does Jesus make you fat?

If you believe the media, then apparently being a religious believer also makes you fat.

In the UK we have the Daily Mail claiming … (and they even have a picture offering you proof) …

U.S. researchers say Sunday worship can be just bad for your health as burgers and chips.

Experts at a Chicago university found those who worship regularly were 50 per cent more likely to be obese by middle age compared to non-religious people.

They are not quite sure why, though some say that because eating during church services has traditionally been allowed, worshippers were inclined to munch their way through the sermon.

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God and Disaster

A C Grayling has written a few thoughts that are well worth pondering over, here is an extract.

One thinks with sorrow of the hundreds of thousands whose lives have been horrendously lost or affected by the great Japanese earthquake and tsunami, which will put a black mark against this year 2011 in the annals, coming so soon after the earthquake that hit Christchurch in New Zealand. The events are almost certainly linked tectonically, reminding us of the vast forces of nature that are normal for the planet itself but inimical to human life, especially when lived dangerously close to the jigsaw cracks of the earth’s surface.

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Is freedom a religious or secular idea?

Paula Kirby has written a fabulous and thought provoking article in Today’s Washington Post. Paula, like myself, is a former Christian, so she can view this from all sides. Here is how it starts …

Is freedom a religious idea? As John McEnroe would have said, “You cannot be serious.”

If you value freedom, you should flee from religion as the antelope flees the lion. Religion is the very antithesis of freedom, insisting on our complete subjugation to the unachievable demands of an invisible but supremely powerful overlord. Think of Islam, whose very name means ‘submission’! Think of Christianity, which claims it is disobedience that brought original sin into the world, with all that entails in terms of suffering and injustice and even earthquakes and tsunamis. Imagine! To claim that human obedience is so imperative that the purposes of an omnipotent deity and the very fabric of the planet, if not the whole universe, depend upon it and can be catastrophically disrupted at the first whiff of rebellion – and then to claim that such a religion is the source of human freedom!

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