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Who Cares What Jesus Would Do?

Theocracy? No Thanks

Atheism and Marriage

Petition to the gods

Christianity and the Death of Civilization

Does God Bless America?

Kill the Puppy Dogs

Debate Unlimited is Bigger Than Jesus

Blinding Faith

The Future Does Not Suck

The Devil Hypothesis

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Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

I will recognize a prediction made in advance which comes true within a reasonable time-frame. Last week I asked for a prediction of a smiting, within three days there was an impressively destructive "Act of God". If you had given me the name of that city when I asked you to I would have been convinced. It's that simple.

That is all you would need to do. But you can't do that because the voice in your head that you call God is your voice and knows only what you know and never tells you anything you didn't already think was true. And deep down you know that is true.

If you want to understand evolution go and read some books written by people who believe it, not books written by religious fundamentalists who have to show it is wrong.

Monkeys are more evolved than people, not less, but significantly less evolved than bacteria. Go and find out why. I am not your teacher. Only a clueless jerk could think that asking why there are still monkeys around is either sensible or clever, it shows you have no idea how evolution works at all, probably because an understanding of and for evolution would endanger your treasured beliefs. Evolution has no goal, direction or purpose. That which can survive does survive. That which changes to survive survives and changes. Some monkeys became larger and heavier, others continued being successful as monkeys. Asking why there are still monkeys around is a sensible as asking why there are still pick-up trucks around now we've got SUVs, and why there still desktop PCs when we have PDA functions built into phones. Why would a monkey want to stop being a monkey when he's wonderfully well adapted for the life of a monkey? New niches become available in nature just as they do in the market for goods and services. Animals which have been struggling to compete in a niche with limited space move into new niches. Why are there still Irishmen in Ireland? Why haven't they all gone to Australia and America? It's the same argument. Population pressures force some out, thereby easing the pressures on those left behind as well as allowing those who move to change and adapt to a new environment. The result is new communities of Irish-descended people in Australia and America as well as a continuing population of Irishmen in Ireland. That is why there are still apes, monkeys, insectivorous mammals, amphibians, air-breathing fish, fish and worms as well as hunter gatherers, peasant farmers, Southern Baptists and civilized people.

I will not state again that I do not accept the Bible as an authority on anything and I am not impressed with its alleged fulfilled prophesies. You've lost on that line, give it up. I also do not see how the prophesies of the end times fit today any better than they fit any other time of imminent end of the world.

Failed: “...there shall be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

One failed prophesy is enough.

There it is.

Goodbye Christianity.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrl2.htm

Forty-Four End-of-the-World Prophecies——That Failed

“Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end. Bribery and corruption are common.” a translation of a quote predicting the end of the world in 2800 BCE

“There is no doubt that the Antichrist has already been born. Firmly established already in his early years, he will, after reaching maturity, achieve supreme power.” St. Martin of Tours, late fourth century

A Brief History of the Apocalypse

April 29th, 2007 was the date Pat Robertson predicted the world would end, back in 1990. Did he shut up?

Yes your end times shit is the kind of stuff that is always happening. The end of the world is always nigh. I remember seeing loonies marching up and down with placards announcing this when I was a boy. The world is still here and it will take more than the wishful thinking of simple-minded faith-heads to convince me otherwise. I need evidence, real tangible evidence.

I also asked you for evidence for your claim to have been an atheist, the silence is deafening. You used to be an atheist? You can't have been a very good one, can you?

I raised the stakes.

You've folded.
--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

22 July 2007 (08:09)

How can anybody tell who is a false teacher of the Bible when no teacher will demonstrate that their connection to God actually works?

That is a simple question.

You, by implication, by the fact that you keep churning the lessons out, are suggesting that you know and understand “the true way” to read the Bible. But there are many other ways.

Nobody can read the Bible and see a list of who is fit to teach it. Indeed the Bible itself does not endorse itself, Genesis does not say John and Samuel are cool but Enos, Helaman and Ether are all bullshit. How could it? They'd have to have been prophets! How can anybody prove that Scripture is significant when all they do is cross-reference Scripture, which is after all just stuff that is written down? Fundamentalist right wingers are often very sceptical of Wikipedia because it is written by many different people who are not experts but they simply accept that whoever felt inspired to write stuff for the Bible that didn't get thrown out by those people who felt inspired to edit the Bible was fit to do so. It's a rag bag book that has not been edited coherently for centuries and when it was edited that was done by men, not God, men who largely remained anonymous because they knew they could not demonstrate their "authority" to undertake the task just as you cannot demonstrate your authority to interpret it, or more accurately select between pre-existing rival interpretations. Or more accurately still plump for one stream of interpretation before you have done much more than skim through investigating it.

You have not demonstrated to me that you have a sound understanding of the Bible or of God. You have merely made out that the Bible is completely true if you read it the way you do. I am not buying that. I have looked at it myself and found it full of injustice, ignorance, inanity, insanity, inconsistency, inhumanity and incoherence.

Your claim to have studied evolution is pathetic, if you did study it you can't have been a good student as you demonstrate the same yee-haw yahoo level ignorance of the fundamental principles and mechanisms that are shown by people who can't even spell it.

Your call to open my mind to Creation is in reality a demand to do the exact opposite, to close my mind to any possibilities you do not endorse and to accept a brain-dead literalist interpretation lifted from notes and glosses of the Bible endorsed by your approved duckspeakers.

Read my lips: I don't accept the Bible as the inspired word of God because I don't believe in any gods.

In order for me to take the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Moron or any other works seriously I would first have to believe that there could be such a thing as the directly inspired word of a god. Just as when looking at the signatures and watermarks on a nine dollar bill I would first of all have to take seriously the idea that there could be such a thing as a genuine nine dollar bill. I don't care how pretty it looks and how intricate the printing is I don't believe any of it.

My worldview is fundamentally at odds with yours. I don't believe in prophesy. I don't believe in any gods. I don't believe faith is a virtue. I don't believe religion is a good thing. I don't believe in life after death or a soul. I believe there are rational explanations for the existence of religions which are nothing to do with any of the religious beliefs having any truth value.

Unless you can demonstrate that God exists I have no reason to try to make myself believe that brain-straining nonsense I freed myself from over thirty two years ago.

I don't care what the Bible says, stop giving me chapter and verse and instead give me proof of the existence of a supernatural god in my life or stop wasting my time.

If mankind could free itself from this burden of belief and an obsession with myth and magic we may be able to free up enough time to solve the real problems of the life we have and not spend so much time preparing for an existence that isn't going to be.

By the way, which denomination do you belong to and which one did Jesus belong to?

Another question for God, prove he's Jewish. Ask him what the thing about foreskins was about and why he changed his mind about that when Paul found gentiles didn't fancy the idea. I want God's answer in God's words to you, not a reference to some pastor's comments. God's answer, verified by the name of the next city he is going to smite out of his infinite love for us all.

--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

22 July 2007 (17:33)

Why should I take my proof from a dusty old book that has been read smooth by fingers and moving lips willing meaning into it?

Thomas wasn't fobbed off with "You've just got to have faith, just ask Jesus into your life and read the Bible." He got to touch the wounds of the Risen Lord. Allegedly. Why do I deserve less? Why should I have to make do with screwing up my eyes until I manage to hear the voices in my head speaking predictable platitudes in a different timbre? Anybody could hear the voice of of God if that is how you do it, you listen until you convince yourself that your words come from him. That is something I will not do because I know what such voices say: they say what the listener wants to hear. Men hear the voice of God telling them to hate homosexuals, or Jebusites, or the uncircumcised, or the kafirs or the Jews or whores. Never do such voices ever say something totally unexpected, never do the voices impart new information.

No scientific discoveries have been made by divine revelation. Why not? Why couldn't God grant a vision of the dark side of the Moon to Leonardo da Vinci? Why didn't God ever tell an astronomer where to point his telescope? Why didn't God grant visions of spermatozoa to any great artists?

Why didn't God grant the gift of tongues to people who wanted to spread his gospel? To me the answer is obvious, God is a figment of the imagination and man cannot imagine very well. Dante's inferno and the Revelation of St John the Barking Mad show the limit of human imagination of the divine, and it's rather pathetic.

God could clearly give man knowledge that is as of now beyond him but he would soon be able to see. To do so would reveal that God was real and faith was unnecessary. Faith is after all simply a trick to make people believe the incredible without question. Faith is merely the flipside of gullibility like childish is the flipside of childlike, licentiousness is the flipside of liberty and cynically world-weary is the flipside of experienced. Faith is believing without a sound reason to believe. Your faith is always seen as good faith, as is the faith of anybody who shares the same belief while faith in Allah, Hitler or the Communist party is to you bad faith. To me faith is not a virtue, it is a weapon. I cannot say faith is a good thing any more than I can say fire is a good thing. Whether it is good depends upon the circumstances.

Faith allows anybody to identify a voice inside their head with the ultimate power in the universe. Of course most people let that voice speak pretty much the same things as their superego would normally speak: be good, make friends, attack foes, defend allies, don't do things that will make the people you want to impress hate you. But some people are screwed up and to them the voice of God, as genuine as all the other voices of God, tells them to do unspeakably hideous things such as sacrifice their son on a mountain top or try to rid Leeds or Ipswich of prostitutes one by one. Believing in God's voice is empowering your imagination, removing all the brakes on your behaviour as God's Will supersedes all human laws and opinions, or so the defence counsel claim. Doing God's will means doing what you choose to believe is God's will, and if you read the Bible you will find you're right. Every time. No matter what your God-voice says.

You choose to interpret Jesus' prediction of the disciple's generation seeing the Kingdom of God in that way because it is quite simply the only way you can interpret it without making the Bible seem to be contradictory. As you have decided it is not and cannot be contradictory the correct interpretation has to be one which allows the contradiction to vanish, no matter how involved and logic-stretching that interpretation is. The disciples themselves clearly interpreted the words very differently. They expected that the end of the world would happen in their lifetime that's why large families and cathedral building didn't come in until much later. If they had good reason to believe that the world would end between 2007 and 2012 they would have behaved very differently, wouldn't they? But that is not the way the first generation of Christians interpreted the words, they took them at face value: faces among the crowd of people watching Jesus that day would not die but would go straight to heaven without passing Go or having a soil-snooze. That is the way the words were intended, that is the way the words were interpreted: that is what the words meant. The first gospels appear just in time, just as people are begining to flag and fade from the idea of a brief rant and rave and then straight off to meet Sweet Jesus, just after the Temple has been destroyed and the world didn't end. It was worth writing the stories down but it wasn't worth building anything or having children.

The early Christians believe what you believe, for the same reason: they believed that they were living in the end times and would be raptured, and they believed that on the basis of reading the same words you have been reading. That is absurd. Just take a few paces back, take a deep breath and think about that. They heard the words in the original language, in the context of living in the same country and society, from preachers who were as close to the source as anybody is ever going to get and they interpreted them differently to the way you do. The reason you interpret them differently is obvious: you want the words not to be a failed prophesy. The reason they interpreted them the way they did, the way they were intended, is that they wanted them to be a true prophesy.

I know your methods Holmes, once you have excluded the the unpalatable whatever remains, however crazy, must be the truth. It is totally unacceptable to you for Jesus to have been caught making a prediction that did not come true so a different interpretation is required, and invented. Those who need the Bible to be true believe whatever it takes just as they believe the absurdities of Noah's flood and the insane six day timetable for creation. On the other hand they find it really easy to cast doubt upon the careful conclusions of historically based science with the ignorant lout's casual taunt from the back of the classroom “how do you know sir, were you there?”

Christians have been predicting the iminent end of the world for nearly two thousand years now and they never tire of it. Seventy generations of Christians have died unraptured and still you go on waiting just a few more short months, or weeks. Hang on. It's coming. Really, it's coming. Listen ... has it started?

Here's a question for you, what would you have been saying forty years ago? Israel has just been attacked! I guess you'd have been one of those scary blokes I saw wearing sandwich boards marching up and down saying the End of The World is Nigh! Repent! You can see them every day if you know where to go. Mad staring eyes, a smell of damp and neglect and always a table to themselves at the Wimpy bar.

Just a matter of curiosity, do you have a pension scheme?

You think I'm mocking you? No shit. If you don't want people mocking your sincerely held beliefs don't hold such hilarious beliefs.

I have one other question, suppose God did reveal himself to me and told me to write a new book for the Bible, where do I send it to get it published and what facilities exist to update those Bibles already in circulation? I am serious. What is the procedure for adding new books into the Bible and where in the Bible is this codified?

--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

23 July 2007 (20:44)

Everybody who is interested in what the Bible says interprets the Bible the way they want to interpret it. There is no definitive translation because what the author intended is not same as what the editor intended which is not the same as that which the translator wanted to interpret. People who find the Bible doesn't say what they would like it to say don't bother reading it.

Your claim that the Bible has been "declared" from beginning to end is meaningless, the Bible cannot verify itself and Jesus did not verify any Gospels or Epistles, neither did he give a definitive list of which laws he had repealed. Nobody wrote a frontispiece to the Bible with the names of all the valid books in it from the start and nobody wrote a definitive contents or index page when the final book was included. There could never have been a definitive Biblical reference for the authority of those who wrote and compiled the Bible. You are very clear about the possibility of people believing they have heard the voice of God but in error and yet you seem to have difficulties with the full implications of this. Nobody had any Biblical authority for the written material they wrote which was later included in the Bible. Remember the nine dollar bill? The Bible cannot authenticate itself any more than a dollar bill can, any more than you can prove you are who you claim you are just by pointing at yourself in the mirror and shouting "That's the chap!". It has to be accepted on faith as being correct and valid but we have little or no evidence for who wrote most passages in the Bible and what their status was and whether they took their instructions from shadowy High Priests, kings, cliques, Satan, their own fevered imagination (you have read Revelations I take it?) or directly from God.

If a televangelist can hear the wrong voice of God, can hear his own voice and wrongly interpret it as coming from God, then surely so can anybody. The Bible is not a magic self-correcting book. If you cross out a few nots in it (like the version which was published with the commandment thou shalt commit adultery) the pages do not burst into flame. You have seen Bibles published yourself which no doubt you think are poor translations, if people like them they sell. Surely this is the ultimate reality of the Bible: it's just a book! It was written by men, edited by men, often changing the original wording to give a different interpretation. The canon of the Bible was drawn up by a bunch of Bishops of the Church of Rome shortly after the Roman Empire took up Christianity and nobody has added to it since, except of course they have but it has always been too politically difficult to get Christians to agree. The definitive canon is just the lowest common denominator, the path of least resistance and fewest collateral matyrdoms: it's a political compromise, a theological stand-off, a fudge.

The (to many) definitive version of the Bible was drawn up by a committee under the king of Scotland and England as supreme head of the Church of England. Are you a member of either the Church of Rome or the Church of England? It seems to me that whatever denomination you do belong to it is one you are ashamed of admitting.

Do you think that God regularly works through committees of the British crown or the Bishop of Rome?

When did God stop speaking clearly to Catholics?

When did God stop speaking clearly to committees of the British Crown?

When did God stop speaking clearly to Jews?

When did God stop speaking clearly to Kent Hovind?

When did God stop speaking clearly to Mesopotamians prepared to kill to obey the voices in their heads? I assume you think most murderous Iraqis today don't have the celestial hotline to heaven they sincerely believe they do have.

You believe some voices in some heads come from God, and yet any that don't say things you agree with are not of holy origin despite subjectively feeling identical to those who profess them. Isn't this incredibly convenient for your case? Voices in the head count as evidence for your case but never against it. In a similar way the deaths of people you wish to identify yourself with count as holy martyrdoms and evidence of man's faith, the Tightness of their beliefs and God's grace while the deaths of people you wish to disassociate yourself from (Wako, the hounding to death by a Christian mob of unrepentant self-aggrandizing religious hoaxer Joseph Smith, suicide attacks by Muslims, kamikaze pilots, the self-immolation of protesting Buddhist monks and the suicide bombs of the Tamil Tigers) count as proof of the stupidity and wickedness of man and possibly the deceitfulness of Satan.

You discuss the creation of the Biblical canon as if it was spontaneous coming together of all Christians resulting in a happy and unanimous decision. It wasn't. It was a dirty stitch-up by the powers that be which was enforced by mass murder and persecution. There is a special type of religious persecution that apparently counts as righteous because all the heretics die, like the Jebusites and all the rest the Jews claimed to have wiped out. The butchery in the early days of the Christian church was as nasty as anything that goes on the Middle East today, both sides fighting in the name of the ultimate truth of the same perfect only god.

How can you in all conscience worship a god who commissions genocide? What use is a land of your own if somebody else is living there and doesn't know your god is the only real one and he wants to give the land they call home to you? I can imagine my daughter's face if I said I was promising her a car, all she had to do was go out and murder the bloke who has got it now and steal the car then she could enjoy my wonderful gift, and it's all fine, trust me I love her and will see to it that she gets tortured for ever if she even thinks about leaving me. That isn't the behaviour of a sane and loving father, it is the behaviour you would expect of a psychopathic monster. The psychopathic monster who haunts your dreams like Freddy Krueger.

Please, always be aware when fiction is fiction and never try to use fiction to prove something real. Your cruise boat example is fiction and therefore cannot prove anything to anybody except the point the author intended. But in that example many men believed they heard the voice of God and of course none of them could use Scripture to prove which was right. Neither could anybody use Scripture to prove that one or all of them must have been in error. God promises gifts to people quite regularly, and usually that person hasn't done anything special up to that point. The promise is not at all out of character for God, who is pretty schizophrenic and quixotic. Scripture does not and cannot prove those apparent divine revelations wrong. Neither can Scripture prove whether God was on the side of King Philip or Queen Elizabeth. People can and do make claims that God is on their side, has promised them a prize or says they alone are on the true path. Scripture, stuff written down with all that mumbo-jumbo "it is written" woo-woo track going on over it cannot prove anything about who is really divinely inspired. A charlatan can live on the reputation for being in touch with God indefinitely as long as he doesn't claim to do anything which contradicts Scripture. This is a parasite's charter and priests, pastors, preachers, mullahs and rabbis have been using this ruse to make a living for centuries. Proclaim the Scriptures and let the voice of God speak through you whatever the paying punters expect to hear. But there is always the temptation to go one better, to adapt the message a tad and so reap the higher rewards of running your own cult or splinter church.

Nobody has a truth detecting organ inside them. It does not exist. If you get a voice from God which is not a voice from God but a voice from your imagination there is no way you could possibly tell it was fake unless it contradicted your belief in Scripture. Now why on Earth would you speak to yourself in the voice of God telling yourself something you didn't want to believe? You'd have to be insane.

Let me take you through that again slowly so you can appreciate the full implications:

1 ] sincere people can be sincerely misguided

2 ] not every "message from God" actually comes from God

3 ] you can only prove a message is not from God (according to your beliefs) if it contradicts the Bible

therefore you can live your entire life having sincere experiences of listening for the voice of God and hearing your own interpretation of Scripture coming back at you.

Or, in other words, if some sincere people can be wrong about God there is no reason for all of them not to be sincerely misguided about God as long as their imaginary summonings-up of God conform to their own expectations of how God should behave.

If you are living in a Muslim land you hear the voice of vengeful Allah. If you live in a mansion in New England you hear the voice of gentle Jesus meek and mild, who encouraged people to give to the poor while he was begging but somehow you don't hear him asking you to give up all your possessions, just to make a public and tax-efficient gesture expressing your sincere and fashionable altruism. If you live in the backwoods of West Virginia you hear a liberal-hating racist homophobe. If you are living in Portugal you hear the voice of Santa Maria. If you live out on Vancouver Island and spend all day reading the Bible Jesus and God talk to you in just the same voices you have been led to expect and they say just the things you have been taught to think.

You believe in a Scriptural God, a literalist Scriptural God of the Protestant tradition. How can anybody be surprised if that is the voice you hear? If you go to a hypnotist to recover lost memories of sexual abuse would you expect to discover that you were anally probed by aliens in your previous life as Mary Queen of Scots or were suffering from demonic possession? The voice of God in your head is the voice you expect and the voice you want. Just like the randy lad on the cruise boat. It is your emotions which generate that voice. You want to believe in God, the traditional conservative god of Protestantism and you want to experience him and hear his voice telling you that you will be saved and he's got a bit of a job for you to do. And lo and behold you do! "Scripture" says that God will not be tested (despite evidence that he did indulge in such things when he was in his youth) and surprise surprise he tells you that he won't be tested! Amazing! What more proof do you need? You obviously don't need any more. As for me I haven't seen a single shred of proof.

There is absolutely no logical reason to expect people to be incapable of imagining the voice of God telling them a scripturally plausible message. If you can imagine the voice of God telling you to murder prostitutes surely you can imagine the voice of God telling you to do what your preacher tells you to do. People who are inclined to believe the soul survival thing want to know they will be safe after the terrors of the great certainty. They want to be saved, they have picked a church and a preacher and a message (or more often had it chosen for them by their parents, who also didn't really choose) it would be bizarre for these people to imagine the voice of God telling them something entirely different. People hear the voice of the God they want to hear, which is the voice they expect to hear.

When God speaks does he sound Jewish to you? I'll bet he doesn't sound gay or have a squeaky voice like David Beckham. How surprising that the voice of God doesn't say anything unexpected and doesn't sound different from, well, the way you would imagine him. The way you have been imagining him, with a capital letter for Him and all.

He tells you what you want him to tell you, he does what you expect him to do. He doesn't tell you anything you don't already know. And none of that is fishy. Of course not, no religion is going to survive for so long without developing defence mechanisms. All religions have ways of pooh-poohing doubts and brushing off challenges, except those religions which have had a local monopoly. Do some research into the history of religion and you will see how people can keep their false religions going for centuries. Sometimes religions do get wiped out, but many times they merely come to a working agreement with the new imposed religion. West African Christianity is full of nonsense about witchcraft and possession of children, Mexican Catholicism has adopted large parts of the pre-Columbian religions, Irish Catholicism is steeped with Irish goddess worship dressed up in the garb of the blessed virgin and in Japan Shintoism and Buddhism have formed a strange alliance. Your own brand of worshipping the sacred written word has developed its own ways to defend itself against attack, techniques which allow it to stay strong in its heartland but make it a laughing stock elsewhere.

Accurate preservation of multiple copies of a single text across time is not in the least bit difficult to explain. It is the basis of sex as a genetic error correction mechanism. If there was ever only one copy in existence and it was copied and then the old version destroyed at once this would be a recipe for increasing errors (accidental or deliberate). But Jews to this day don't write the o in the middle of the word god in case "the name of God" gets defiled in some way, they are hardly likely to go around destroying copies of the sacred word. Copies are made from copies but the copies are compared and the text is so well known that accidental or deliberate errors would be spotted, especially if they altered the way the text was used. If your text is wearing away you go and borrow a good clear text, copy that and then bring your new copy to read aloud alongside the old copy. The Koran has also been passed down the years in the same way, any text which is regarded as important, and you can't get any more important than sacred, is likely to be treated in a similar way. Tell your son your family tree and get him to tell it to his grandfather, that way you minimize the chances of errors. Compare the latest copy against the oldest version you can find, even if that wasn't the copy you have just copied. There is no mystery in this.

There is always another way of explaining anything than a supernatural explanation, and even if we lack a convincing explanation the pre-existing supernatural explanation favoured by the religion of your forefathers does not win by default.

What does transcendent truth transcend apart from logic, reason and reality? And what makes you think transcending is some kind of a good thing?

If a sign is good enough for that Gideon dude why not me? I deserve an answer to that one.

A believer can see whatever he wants to see, especially if he really really want it. Proof to a believer is absurd, as absurd as a thing I saw at work the other day: a sprinkler over the urinals. If you have faith you have no need of proof and yet it seems the most proof turns up in the lives of the faithful. It's almost as if God was some kind of a retard, or didn't exist. It is the intelligent sceptic that has the most need and use for proof. You don't need the voice of God in your head in order to believe. Isn't it absurd that those who could most use the voice of God: atheists, criminals, major league sinners, harlots, fornicators, blasphemers and sodomites don't get to hear the voice while he's jabbering away all the time to grey-haired spinsters whose biggest temptation is not to sort the recycled green glass separate from the clear.

Why isn't God talking to Osama bin Laden, Hugh Hefner and Richard Dawkins? Billy Graham doesn't need a voice in his head, he knows what the Bible says.

Apologetical evidence is a very sorry excuse for evidence. It exists because it has to, the failed prophesies cannot have been prophesies because they failed, they had to have been misinterpreted. The alternative explanation, that it looks like a failed prophesy because it was intended to be a prophesy but failed is unthinkable.

The prophesies fulfilled by the life of Jesus are not at all convincing for the same reason there is no need to think up a supernatural explanation for why a movie follows the same plot as a book of the same name. The people who wrote the Gospels knew what the plot should have been and they followed it. Amazing!

You claim that because I do not believe the Bible I will not believe a sign. What nonsense! I can see why you stopped being an agnostic, you're shite at making logical deductions. I do not believe the Bible because I do not believe in the existence of any gods because I have no evidence that any gods exist. So why would that make me unable to recognize convincing proof for the existence of a god or two? To believe in the Bible you first have to believe that there is at least one god, it really does not make any sense otherwise. The Bible is clearly not written for atheists and it barely seems to acknowledge the possibility of atheists existing, it certainly does not do any convincing as far as I can see. The Bible treats doubt in God as a sin which cannot be forgiven and a position which the authors of the Bible couldn't get their heads around. If there wasn't a god how could you explain all this stars and dirt and bugs stuff? Ahh! Got you there, of course there is a god so get worshipping him now. The Bible was far more concerned with people worshipping the wrong gods than they were with atheists whose philosophy didn't make any sense to them, there was no alternative explanation for the existence of life the universe and everything than magic. The only choice was what kind of magic: how many gods, how many arms and what shape heads they had.

Now we have a lot more evidence about how the world really is and it does not resemble the firmament separating the waters above from the waters below and all that embarrassing detail you try to skirt over.

You don't have any explanation for why God chose the Jews, you also don't have any explanation for why he now doesn't communicate with them. Of course God cannot be the God of the Jews and the Jews not know that Jesus was his son. It doesn't make any sense. But the Jews don't seem to be aware that the God voices they hear in their heads are now the voices of their own imagination or of Satan. They still think the God voices in their heads are as real as the God voice in your head. That would be preposterous, wouldn't it? And against what it clearly says in the New Testament. One would almost think the Jews were deliberately ignoring the will of God. And yet they don't think they are. For them it is business as usual. Their relationship with God is exactly the same as when God was communicating with them just as he now communicates only with his new elect.

You have not begun to explain why God needs placating by any form of sacrifices. Isn't God meant to be merciful? Why didn't God simply forgive Adam and Eve the way he forgives serial killer scumbags who turn to Christ in prison? Forgiving is obviously a big part of his nature and Jesus tells us to forgive, so why would God need Jesus the prophet of love and forgiveness to be killed in order to stop his own wrath?

Nobody outside the authors of the Bible have ever spotted a correlation between the plight of the Israelites and how much they obey their god. The Israelites have never been top nation, the so-called exile in Babylon only affected a few in the ruling class, there is no evidence that the Hebrews were ever captive in Egypt and indeed the histories of mankind do not show a single example of an entire nation being enslaved and very few examples of a whole nation being uprooted. The history contained in the Bible clearly shows that you can be a total shit to everybody, have lots of wives and concubines, sell your wife to a foreign king as if she was your sister (twice), annihilate your neighbours, get yourself comprehensively beaten by neighbours with better technology and nothing really matters except sacrificing and burning animals in the name of the right sky god. There is no lesson to be drawn from watching what happens to Israel. In the nineteenth century Jews were very pious, and they started to return to Palestine, and then came the holocaust. Israel filled up with secular and atheistic Jews practicing communist ideas and then they win the six day war. They pick a trans­sexual to represent them at the Eurovision Song Contest and they win for the first and only time. The moral of this story? Shit happens. Only a faith-head would see the story of the Jews as some sort of tale of why to pray well and stick to pointless unexplained laws to please the bogeyman in the sky.

Why would God need Jews to chop off their babies' foreskin, abominate shellfish and refrain from seething a kid in its mother's milk? Explain it to me. Why was God so anal? Whose rules was he following and why? Why does getting himself killed ease his angst on these matters? He sounds like one of those nutters who gets relief from the voices in his head when he cuts his wrists.

I am not prepared to believe in the absurd psychopath of a god you describe unless there is some convincing evidence that gods exist, he exists and he's the least crazy god out there.

If God were a man then he would clearly need to be placed in a secure home for the criminally insane. He has delusions of grandeur and obsessive-compulsive disorder, he has a prurient and unhealthy obsession with nudity and sex, especially sodomy and he is well known to have three personalities. He has been witnessed committing genocide (the flood) war crimes (use of biological weapons targeted on civilians) and inciting genocide (Joshua and co.), inciting rape as a war crime and committing rape on a young girl. He has been reported as inciting murder and condoning incest. If he was my father I would leave home in the middle of the night and go somewhere he could never find me. Is that what people mean by the phrase the fear of God?

God's only defence against these charges is the ultimate alibi: he wasn't and isn't there.

--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

24 July 2007 (20:55)

Non-specific Christian, or embarrassed by the loopy name of the church you attend? Come on, tell me, do you go to a church on a Sunday, if so what does the sign call that church?

Did Hitler and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union receive their power to govern from God? It seems as though somebody who believes as you do would have to try to avoid admitting that they did. That is a terrible burden you have to bear, the legacy of the story of Jesus being told trying to avoid Jesus being seen as a failed political rebel. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. What about rendering unto Hitler? It seems to make perfect sense: the Divine Right of Kings, the powers that be are in power because of the ultimate power that is was and will be. The divine right of kings is a notion the civilized world gave up several centuries ago. It is a very fatalist notion which stifles change, revolution and all endeavours towards progress. But who needs political change when the end of the world always comes before you retire?

Isn't your attitude to the Bible itself a form of idolatry far more pernicious than wearing a crucifix or praying to the mother of Jesus?

Of course God didn't reject Jews or Catholics, he's a forgiving dude (but full of wrath) I get that. The issue is that Jews and Catholics are still holding the seashell of prayer to their ear and hearing the voice of God coming through as loud, clear and consistent as ever. It hasn't occurred to them that the Protestant splitters took the right roads and now God doesn't want to be on speaking terms with the misguided, they are convinced they are on the right track and they are still as well tuned-in to the voice of God as they ever had been. Of course my explanation is that whenever anybody hears the voice of any god in their head they are mistaken but you are trying to have it both ways: Jews and Catholics used to be tuned in to the voice of God and now they are making up the replies themselves in their own imaginations and thinking that is still the voice of God, which it cannot be because he's giving you conflicting messages. This is a very big issue you really have to address. Jews and Catholics have heard the voice of God speak to them and answer their prayers and they still do have that experience. It does not make sense that they could have been right before but now they are imagining the voices or listening to Satan instead. Of course you will say they are not the same people, but the people alive at the times of the great schisms were the same people. I can't buy the idea that Jews or Catholics were all well tuned in to the Godly channel in one generation and then they went through a generation or two who were not tuned in but didn't know it and then the schism came and ever since they have been talking to their own imagination. That is too convenient for your dogma to be credible, not that you ever would decide that is ever a good reason to be sceptical of any idea.

Have you ever read the Koran or the Book of Mormon with an open mind? By that I mean the kind of open mind you want me to read your Bible with - a mind willing and aching to believe what you read, a mind willing and wanting to believe the authors were divinely inspired. I suggest you haven't, and that you would find it impossible to do so, you could only read such books looking for evidence that they were wrong, misguided, faked or Satanic. If you want to get me to read the Bible with an open mind first cast out the beam in thine own eye.

Why do you think belief is a dirty word to me? Why is it unreasonable for "an evolutionist" to hold provisional beliefs that bridge gaps in knowledge that science is actively seeking to fill in? Why do we have to wait until we know everything before we make some guesses about how things probably are?

You are completely wrong to suggest that there is such a thing as a religion of evolution. Nobody apart from fundamentalist believers in the Abrahamic religions have any problems with a belief in an old Earth and macro-evolution. The ease with which you believe absurdities such as resurrection, walking on water, flooding the world, creation in six days and the rest with no evidence whatsoever except a book written by dead foreign religious maniacs whose sanity, charisma, piety and integrity you have no way of assessing at this distance in space, time, culture and language gives you no room to criticize anything on the grounds of either credibility or credulousness. [deep breath]

I think your notion of sin entering the world is bizarre in the extreme. How could there be a world with no potential for sin? It would be like trying to imagine a world in which there was no potential for beige or tepid. Sin is an adjective, looking on it as a noun is silly. If people (social intelligent beings of whatever "kind") live together and have free wilt (or are complicated enough in their make-up that they model it as well as a lottery machine models randomness) then there has to be a potential for unfair treatment at the very least, sins such as jealousy, covetousness, disrespect and impoliteness. A world without sin is not a real world at all, it is a fairyland of the imagination.

You could just about imagine five minutes of such an idyll before you would have to have Darth Vader come in and destroy the place before all the onlookers choked on their own vomit.

144,000 Jewish Witnesses, 12,000 from each of the tribes of Israel? Just as when Michael Jackson dangled that child over the balcony any attempt at satire is entirely superfluous, all we can do is stare open-mouthed at the colossal idiocy - you couldn't make it up. This shit is meant to be more believable than evolution from a common ancestor? On which planet?

You say nobody hears the voice of God unless they humble themselves but that is nonsense. People regularly hear the voice of God without humbling themselves (did Saul humble himself and beg for Jesus to talk to him?) and people humble themselves to different gods and different interpretations of the only god and get fully convincing replies back, and are prepared to die for those voices their imagination creates. You cannot take a look at any Muslim, Catholic, Hindu or Protestant and say which is really filled with the spirit of the real god, which one really does hear the voice of god. Believers are keen, filled with enthusiasm, immune to fear and pain to the point of willingly being "martyrs" and they believe in mutually inconsistent creeds. How can you explain that?

Nothing that believers do suggests that they are right in their beliefs, merely that they believe strongly. Catholics scourge themselves, Hindus pierce their flesh with hooks, Muslims slash themselves with swords, Protestants handle serpents. Jews don't eat lobsters or bats. All this proves nothing except the power of human bloody-mindedness.

There is no point in discussing evolution with a man who insists the world is demonstrably only 6,000 years old and science thinks evolution is discredited. It is futile. You dismiss as impossible or irrelevant any evidence which contradicts your religious views. How am I meant to demonstrate evolution if you deny the possibility of the time for it to happen in? 6,000 years is enough time to turn wolves into terriers and hounds but it isn't enough time to turn cats into lions. But 200,000 years is plenty to allow the evolution of several different species from a common ancestor.

If the universe really is created by a god who cares about what we do why does he hide away in such a way as people can easily believe he doesn't exist? It is bizarre and perverse. So is the idea of him getting really angry about what we do but only punishing us for it after we are dead and have no chance to benefit from the correction. The simplest explanation is that he doesn't, the universe is not created by a perverse and paranoid maniac who cares deeply whether we masturbate or like the look of the new BMW we can't afford but hides away so people can't be sure he's real but may show up sometime and do something really violent. I don't see any good reason to believe in a Boo Radley kind of god.

If you want me to start to investigate the Bible you need to point me at evidence that there is a god. I gave you the simple method by which you could do that, by revealing a new prophesy that comes true within days. Coincidentally an earthquake did follow within days of that challenge, but you did not predict where it would happen, if you had done so that would have been compelling evidence. The Gospels describing events which show some similarity to passages in the Old Testament is not proof of fulfilled prophesy because the Gospels are not validated by independent evidence and even a child could see the conflict of interest involved in reporting uncorroborated events which appear to show agreement with supposed prophesies that many people of the time would have recognized. I say supposed prophesies because many of the "fulfilled prophesies of the Messiah" refer to parts of the old testament that have nothing to do with a messiah. Also the Jewish end times Messiah (every anointed Jewish king was a messiah, including Marcus Julius Agrippa, King of the Jews) was meant to be a king, a man, not the son of God and he was meant to come once, not twice. Jesus did not fulfil the main things the Messiah had to do: be the anointed king of the Jews of the legitimate line from David and Solomon, build a new temple and rule the whole world in peace, gather together all the tribes of Israel back into the Holy Land in his mortal lifetime while the whole world worshipped the Jewish God. The Jewish Messiah is a flesh and blood Jewish king not a godman, son of God or demigod. The only second coming bit refers to Elijah. Jesus was not Elijah and neither was John the Baptist.

The Holy Land at that time was full of dozens of literate people interesting in recording histories and current events who could have noticed the most amazing events in history but didn't. No non-Christians wrote anything about Jesus until several decades later when his cult was firmly established.

Another little question: what language did Jesus choose to use to speak to Pilate?

--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

Ah, so the whole church is made up of people too embarrassed to list the full story of their multiple splits from the main church into ever smaller but "purer" factions.

You really don't get off so lightly with the idea of God not creating sin. Do you believe in that nonsense about all animals being vegetarian until man sinned? If so when did this change occur? Was it with the first bite of the forbidden fruit or did it wait until after Noah's ark came to rest, and if it did, why start when most of the sin was washed away? How long did animals with digestive systems and teeth clearly adapted to life as carnivores live as vegetarians? If that isn't the way things were why do some Christians say that? How easy is it to carry on hearing the voice of God and yet spout bullshit?

Why would a perfect all-knowing wise god try to drown all the sin in the world he created and then fail? It doesn't work. The flood story does not work. A perfect god could wash away the sins of the world to save it but then it would be saved and it clearly isn't. Therefore it follows that in the flood God killed millions of people, shortened mankind's lifespan down from hundreds of years (possibly made animals eat each other) and failed to eradicate sin. In what way is that possibly acceptable behaviour from a perfect god? It is mass murder, genocide, including drowning bunny rabbits, puppies, babies and pregnant women and in the end nothing was achieved. The world is still full of sin, iniquity and paganism. Your god fucked up on a colossal world wide scale and this is a tale you tell to children before they can read. I can see why you do, if you left teaching about it until their minds were a little more developed they would be able to see that the story is preposterous and it shows God to be a psychopath, a mass murderer and the biggest fuck-up in the history of the universe. Forget the pop-up book of the ark, you should be whispering this shite to the bellies of your pregnant women, only by teaching it to the most credulous possible audience do you stand a chance of it being accepted as reasonable behaviour on behalf of a loving parent.

Jesus was a false prophet in just the same way as Joseph Smith. His prophesy of the temple being destroyed was put in the Gospels after the temple was destroyed and his prophesy of the end of the world within the lifetime of the generation that heard the message was obviously designed to imply that the end of the world would follow in a few short years of the gospels appearing. All the end times stuff comes from Matthew's gospel (which of course was not written by Matthew) and the timing of its writing fits this time scale perfectly. It appears within ten years of the destruction of the temple but while there were still many people of that generation alive.

In Luke's Gospel the end times are to be preceded by Christian Persecution to the Jewish Authorities:

12But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name's sake.

13And it shall turn to you for a testimony.

14Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer:

15For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.

16And ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks, and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death.

17And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake.

18But there shall not an hair of your head perish.

19In your patience possess ye your souls.

Luke's gospel appears when, oh yeah, there is widespread persecution of Christians to the Jewish authorities. It is telling them to keep calm and keep being martyred in the correct way. But of course there is a minor wee contradictionette in the claim that some of you will die and but not a hair on your head shall perish, unless he's suggesting you go to meet your maker with a wrecked body but perfect hair, Tammy Faye style perhaps.

The end times discussed by Luke in chapter 21 are in direct contradiction of the prophesies of the Jewish end time prophesies in Micah, which clearly involve not wars and earthquakes and persecutions of Christians but the building of the a new temple in the mountains, world peace and universal acknowledgement of the God of Israel. Could there be global war and global peace at the same time heralding the same end of the world?

Micah 4

But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it.

And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it.

For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever.

The Gospel's end times were clearly imminent not some long distant event many generations in the future. That is how they were interpreted at the time. The early Christians did not build cathedrals, take out pension schemes or start large families: they expected to be called up to heaven at any time. The end of the world was imminent, they could see the signs.

Does any of Isaiah makes sense to you? It reads to me like it was written by a computer program designed to spew forth random shite that the credulous could see as a prophesy.

For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him: I hid me, and was wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart.

They hatch cockatrice' eggs, and weave the spider's web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.

Is that Isaiah or Lewis Carrol?

The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall shew forth the praises of the LORD.

Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast of kings: and thou shalt know that I the LORD am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob.

I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.

Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory: where is thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies toward me? are they restrained?

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD.

They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the LORD.

Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor innocents: I have not found it by secret search, but upon all these.

And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks.

Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings.

Well? Are the soundings of your bowels restrained? Do thou suck the breast of kings? Have you been covered up by dromedaries? Have you eaten of the cockatrice' egg, easy over or sunny side up? Did you stain your raiment? Have you circumcised your heart? Has your nation committed adultery with stones and stocks? How do you do that and can you give me the URL? Is there the blood of souls in your skirts?

Oh, right Jeremiah mixed up with Isaiah, no wonder it doesn't make any more or less sense.

Isaiah 53 is interpreted by Christians as a prophesy of "the" messiah, but nowhere around that passage is that interpretation made clear. Isaiah 52:13 is not surely referring to the Son of God but a servant, I think the Bible usually makes it clear that sons are not servants and vice versa.

What the hell am I doing wasting my time with this stuff for? I am not a Jew. There are no gods. Millions of people sincerely believe they know the true and only god and they disagree on almost everything. That is what needs explaining and that is the issue you keep ducking.

300 fulfilled prophesies all collapse as one because they are all built upon the baseless assumption that the Gospels are true histories incapable of error or artifice. Nobody can deny the following points:

1 ] The Scriptures were widely known by the early Christians both Pauline and Nazarene.

2 ] The Gospels were written after the Scriptures.

3 ] No non-Christian sources confirm the vast majority of the details contained in the Gospels.

The simplest and most obvious way in which the similarity of stories in the Gospels can be explained is so obvious that any child should be able to spot it: the Gospels were written to show fulfilment of passages in Scripture which the authors thought could be seen as prophesies. The Gospels are at the very least semi-fictional and could conceivably be entirely fictional.

No contemporary sources support any details of the Jesus story: http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/sources.html beyond the fact that there were Christians around in the middle of the first century.

Many the teachings attributed to and about Jesus were not inconsistent with the philosophy of Philo of Alexandria, indeed many Christians have quoted his works because they are so similar to Christian thinking (for the same reason Mao's thinking is so similar to Lenin's, the Tu-144 was similar to Concorde and the final attack run on the Death Star in Star Wars looks like The Dambusters). And yet Philo lived at the time of Jesus and survived him for more than fifteen years and did not write a single word about Jesus. That is bizarre, if you have to believe in Jesus as a historical figure. It presents no difficulties of explanation whatsoever if you maintain that the Jesus story was made up largely or wholly by Jews who wanted to see a religion which combined Judaism with Greek thinking about the Word and the Son of God.

Aramaic was not "The common language of international discourse", not since the time of Alexander the Great five centuries earlier.

A Galilean carpenter would have spoken Galilean Aramaic, a distinctive dialect noticeably different from the Old Judean dialect which would have been used in Jerusalem. Jesus would not have spoken Greek or Latin but Pilate would. It seems rather silly for God to go down to Earth to spread a message to the whole world as a provincial illiterate monoglot, don't you think? Oh, sorry, obviously you rarely ever do.

If Jesus was sent to Earth to save all humanity why did he never leave the area in which his native dialect would have been understood? As God incarnate he could have used any language and preached to anybody.

I'm getting a clearer impression of who Jesus was now. He was one of many religious Jews who became a focus of anti-Roman political sentiments, a Nazarene, a member of the Nazarene sect not a man from Nazareth as there was no such place back then. A Jewish zealot. Religion is always getting mixed up with politics, as we can see in the modern world as nationalist causes are inflamed by religious fervour. It was Paul who made him the Logos, the Son of God, filling him up with the Hellenized philosophy of Philo of Alexandria and granting him a god-man death, conquest of the Underworld and rebirth so common among mystery religions of that time. The Gospels were written to square the circle between the Jesus of Paul the Epileptic, who did no miracles and preached hardly anything with the memory of Jesus the second rate trouble-maker whose activities didn't warrant a mention in any Roman history of Judea. It was the Gospel writers who made the synthesis, weaving a full narrative around the bare bones of the dead zealot bumming around Galilee and going to Jerusalem, adding in his reports of his teachings and adding more to them and attributing miracles to him that had previously been attributed to god-men and Greek miracle-working travelling mathematicians (really, they had interesting career options in those days). The gospels also see to it that his life fulfils prophesies including inventing Nazareth as a place for him to live rather than him being a Nazarite, one separated from corrupted forms of Judaism so "fulfilling" the prophesy that he shall be called a Nazarene, a prophesy that I am not alone in not actually finding in any of "The Prophets".

Why can't your god teach you Aramaic? Can your god actually do anything without a person doing it for him? That is behaviour of a god that I have no trouble explaining while you wriggle, whine and plead. Gods can't do miracles on demand for the same reason that mermaids can't.

Prophesies in old books be buggered: show your god here and now or scuttle off and bother me no more.

--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

I have no interest at all in being saved by grace or works or the Easter Bunny because I have no belief in existing after death or separate from my body. I don't believe there is anything to be saved from. Any messages mentioning such a futile argument will be deleted unread.

Rapture is a very poor pension plan for a young man.
--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

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