People often send me private e-mail, sometimes in support of the site, sometimes not, and this last was an interesting one. Unlike Ms. Navarro, this one didn’t annoy me quite as much. To that regard, the name has been changed to protect the ignorant, I mean innocent. Sorry. Legitimate mistake. Here is the letter in its entirety.
I was and am so sad reading your website. I know you said you are the happiest man in the world. That’s good but my mind ponders and races with questions for you. Like, where have you ever found a contradiction with Gods word? Where do you think we came from? Do you think your doubt surprises God, If you believed for one second) I mean there has always been crowds and crowds of people who did not believe. Look at history of doubt. It has been there since there since Genesis. What would it take for you to believe. IF a miracle happened what would it be to prove to you that God lives and that he is real and wants a relationship with you. What would it take? Kim.
Let’s walk through this point by point. Let’s take the first three sentences together. I was and am so sad reading your website. I know you said you are the happiest man in the world. That’s good but my mind ponders and races with questions for you. Far too often I deal with attitudes like this, an overly dramatic sense of grief for my lost soul and a hint of disbelief that I could actually be happy. I know most of them mean well, but I find this a bit irksome. Fundamentalist Christians are burdened with this idea that God has made us to be his personal slaves and that humanity can only be happy by accepting that yoke. In their eyes, all non-believers must be unhappy because who could possibly be content with their lot without shouting God’s praises every few minutes. Maybe those poor atheists don’t even know it. Maybe they have fooled themselves, but they are grieving internally at their lack of the Lord. Inside they writhe in agony, twist in misery, scream at the Chunks of God missing from their lives. Yeah…
Sigh. Sorry, but I do believe that I’ve gotta call bullshit on the whole frakking idea really. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I don’t honestly attribute all this to being an atheist, but it was that first step towards skepticism that was also the first step on a long road of introspection and self-improvement. There were many things about me in my youth I didn’t like and I’ve done my best to change them. Lest someone think that I being arrogant, let me state clearly that there are yet vast chasms to bridge, but I am trying. This attempted self-improvement has led me to be a better person and a happier one. Throwing out fearful superstition and the Great Pumpkin were just a couple of those things, though important ones. Now, I am aware that there is little evidence that someone in the depths of religion is truly less happy than those of us without, I don’t believe the company line. Although there are some who would revel in it, I do not believe a majority of humanity could ever be truly happy under any yolk of slavery, even one under their cross bearing Wizard of Oz. This belief is the natural outcome of realizing that there is always, always, always a man behind the curtain. I see no evidence what so ever of a God.
Next. Like, where have you ever found a contradiction with Gods word? Lady, had you but read a single post on this blog you’d have been exposed to contradiction. There are everywhere. There are numerous. They are legion! Just read the damn Bible with even one open eye. Even some filmed-over, cataract-laden pustule should be able to sense some contradiction within that big book. All you have to do is really want to look.
Where do you think we came from? Why is it that theists always insist that there has to be a comforting reason for existence, a compassionate creator, some purpose? I truly wonder why most of them believe, if not for the admittedly attractive idea of having a definite point to life. People don’t like to admit that they are in the grips of random chance, and they are truly afraid of such a radical idea. They’re terrified of those forces that they can’t handle and will grab ferociously onto any idea that gives them the merest illusion of control. Religion, like astrology, homeopathy and conspiracy theories, gives them that false sense of security, a great big portable security blanky that they can drag with them as they go through life. By shaking their prayer sticks or sacrificing their goats they feel they can control their destiny. By accepting slavery, they think that they become the masters of themselves. Again, bullshit. There is no evidence what-so-ever that anyone can control anything by worship or prayer of faith. And people, we make our own lives meaningful, not on any imagined cosmic scale, but on a truly personal one. Our lives matter because we make them matter. Period!
This next part is a bit of a mess. Do you think your doubt surprises God, If you believed for one second) I mean there has always been crowds and crowds of people who did not believe. Look at history of doubt. It has been there since there since Genesis. What exactly do you say to this? Well for one, I did believe for far more than one second, a fair chunk of my younger life, in fact. Alas, I know the typical Christian response here. That is if I don’t believe now, there is no way that I believed then. To them once you have truly seen the Lord you can never go back, once God has been in your heart he will never truly leave. Hard to argue the point as he doesn’t exist and can’t have truly been in my heart to begin with, so I’ll just give them that. But this part contains contradictions in logic. (shocking, I know!) Why would a God create a people capable of disbelief and then leave them alone for vast lengths of time seemingly unattended? He kind of reminds me of those dead beat dads who have children, leave them young, never send any child support, yet demand some kind of relationship as their due. You know those loving little… shitheads. but God’s not just asking for a relationship, he demands you accept him as your lord and master. He demands you become his slave. What would any sensible being say to this? ”Piss off, buttercup, and get the hell off my property!” That’s what! Be honest! You may use different words, but it’s more or less what you’re going to say.
Allow me to summarize. God creates humanity then abandons them then when their descendants doubt his existence, tortures them for all eternity. Holy sheep shit, Batman! That guy’s a bastard! But that, in a nutshell, is the idea believed throughout Christianity. They would change the wording, but the sense of the argument is there. At the risk of being ironic, the “spirit” of the belief is there. Again, I must wonder how the human race ever made it this far. Oh, yes! Now I remember. Science!
What would it take for you to believe. IF a miracle happened what would it be to prove to you that God lives and that he is real and wants a relationship with you. What would it take? Let’s view these as two separate questions. How would God prove that not only is he real but that he wants to be my buddy? Well, first the old bastard could come down and introduce himself in person. ”Hi, it’s me God. Yeah sorry about all that hiding in the clouds shit, oh yeah and puberty. After the divorce your mom and I just didn’t get along and well… Sorry. But hey, believe in me now and submit to slavery and wormdom and I’ll take you off my torture for all eternity list. Deal?” Umm? Probably not.
But what would it take for me to believe? That is the crux of the entire matter. Well, my first instinct is to belt out “brain damage” or “head trauma” or accidentally driving a 16 penny nail through my skull with a powder actuated nail gun. (I’m not sure but I think you have to leave the nail in.) Although at this point in my life this is certainly true, it’s not descriptive enough. It’s a great sound bite, but it doesn’t get my point across as I’d like to. I think a better response would be to ask Kim herself a question. What would it take for her to fully believe and accept Islam as the one true religion and submit to Sharia Law? What would it take for her to join a Zen Buddhist monastery and live deep it the mountains of Tibet spinning prayer wheels? I counter with this Kim, what would it take for you to accept Zeus as the Father of Gods and worship him as he is due burning sacrifices and spilling libations to the Great Lord of the Sky. What would it take Kim?
Sometimes the best answer is another question. Think about it.
It’s a confusing question. Aliens are more likely than god, therefore who’s to say that even if God came down to earth as a 60 foot high man, shouting his wrath down at us and shooting thunderbolts, that’s it’s not just some aliens playing a trick on us…
I guess I have been thinking about the final question for many years. I would say that I would need to see all disease, hunger, cripples, war, and other evil stopped. I know that isn’t keeping with the christian god but any being as powerful as what we define a god to be could easily do this. I know many christians claim their god is all about love but that isn’t what I have gotten from the little I know of the bible. I think I would accept the christian god if he came forward and begged for forgiveness from all mankind. I would say that about the muslim god also but since they are the same one it should go without saying.
I have to agree with you that most fundies aren’t really happy. They may appear that way in public but to them it is more important to put a show on then to accept the truth.
Once again I feel I should thank you KK for helping me dig through questions I myself sometimes have in my faith. So…Thanks! I sm curious however on how you plan to approach the New Testament, granted that is some distance away. The reason I pose the question is the entire Bible is about Jesus, and you really haven’t discussed Him at all. I understand why obviously (since your going from start to finish) But even still Im curious on your thoughts and opinions! Thanks again and keep on writing!
I know your question was addressed to KK, FSM’s love be upon Him, but how is the entire Bible about Jesus? Not only does he not appear until the NT, but I think there’s several million Jews, who use over half the content of the same book, who might disagree with you profoundly.
LOL @ forgetting to tick the email button. I had to get an auto form-filler just to make me remember to enter my name when posting …
Daz I understand your logic here as Jesus’ doesn’t seem appear in the Old Testament. But a Messiah was prophesied very early on e.g. Genesis 3.15. and much of the OT points to Jesus. one example is Passover in Exodus, in the NT it equates to Jesus releasing people from sin. Or even the 10 Commandments, its entirely obvious no one has or ever will keep them all, but they are to show us precisely that. Compound that with Jesus’ actually keeping them and you at least see some connection. (There are tons of other prophecies concerning A messiah, just Google ‘messianic prophecy’ and you’ll see) The half a million Jews of which you speak would disagree thats it’s about Jesus, true. But they certainly would not disagree concerning a coming messiah. For modern Jews the issue is the same as it was in the NT. That Jesus claimed He was the son of God. Also I remember Vaguely KK saying in a past post, Jewish theology made no mention of these things or something about the Jews having no opinion or thoughts in this developed a theology. Which may be true to a certain extent but Christianity gives room for whats call ‘progressive revelation’ not entirely unlike our ever growing knowledge of the universe. Remember, at one point our planet was flat and everything revolved around the Earth.
The Bible is a great many things but given space and that some quite possibly wanting to punch me in the throat, its suffice to say it is God’s self-disclosure of Him redeeming humanity, Jesus is that redemption. My point here is not to be right or to ‘show Atheist’s a thing or two…rawr’ it’s simply to lend a little insight into Christianity. So we may better understand each other. Sorry for my rant, I just finished my coffee amd I think I’ve just twitched my leg out of joint…
Also, I think I forgot to click the box again because I didn’t get the reply lol. Fail.
forgot to check get emailed : P
I really feel sorry for Kim. She could be (and probably is) a very nice, sweet person, who honestly doesn’t understand how atheists don’t believe in anything.
However, she could be just as nice and sweet and caring… and rational, with just a little thought. It’s as though she can’t be a good person without god. I wonder if she thinks that if she rejects god, then she’ll instantly become a drunk slut? I got news for you girl, plenty of drunk sluts that I know are Christians (on Sunday morning at least).
Anyway, these are good questions, and I hope Kim comes back and actually thinks about them for more than a few seconds.
Thanks for your work on this site.
I’ve stated on one of your posts before KK that the people that should be reading the posts on this site wouldn’t come near it with a bargepole.. Guess this one shows that some must at least glance at them. It’s just unfortunate that Kim is seeing the writing, but not understanding the words.
It is scary just how ingrained peoples beliefs can be..
Then again, life must be easy when the answer to pretty much every question is.. ‘God did it’.
Unfortunately in taking that easy road, they are missing out on all the wonders of actual provable, and repeatable science.
If you do come back on here Kim, thanks for your concern. Though I think you must realise that there are more of us concerned about you and other children round the world being brainwashed into believing in fairies than the other way round.
Starting a new post as the reply column in Tim’s is getting a tad narrow.
I can’t remember the details and I’m too tired to look this up lol, but I seem to remember that many Bible-scholars regard those prophesies as not referring to Jesus at all. In fact the Jews, whose prophesies they were, after all, never acknowledged him as the prophesied Messiah.
As to the many other ‘prophecies’ in the book, they have all been applied retroactively. Now if you can tell me something specific that will happen next year and back it up with an unambiguous Bible quote, I might think again …
You might want to be careful of sounding like this, though …
Wish I knew why it does that. All I did was paste the URL from the address bar.
Good call on the new thread! It was getting a little cramped lol. Referring to the Bible Scholars, i’m really curious, if you could find the link whenever convenient for you and email it to me that would be awesome, i’d love to check it out. But unfortunately for most groups the loudest tend to be the minority (one good example are the Islamic terrorists) but that still doesn’t make sense to me, the Christian faith is based off of Jesus, without Him it doesn’t exist, so if they claim those things, then chances are they probably aren’t Christians and are more likely generic scholars who probably know a great deal of biblical literature, culture, etc. But again I’d rather see the sources before I make such conclusions.
Remember also that Jesus, His 12 disciples, and nearly all of His other followers until the formation of the Church, would have been Jews, so the prophecies were just as much theirs as the rest of Judaism.
As for the other prophecies being applied retroactively, I suppose your right, but we are talking about past events, and I don’t think we can look at them any differently(I feel bad for the guy in the video, he seems quite….lost. But i’m speaking directly about Jesus, I don’t think he has a clue what he’s talking about lol) Also i’m sure you know that the Bible wasn’t written by one person or even all at once. So one of the quickest examples I can give you is the Book of Isaiah which scholars agree (generally due to testable, visitable, or discovered persons or places that existed around the time period)was written around 700 b.c.e this passage Isaiah 50:6 says:
I offered my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
from mocking and spitting.
fulfilled in Matthew 26:67 and 27:26-31, and the book of Matthew has been dated to around 70-100 c.e. Now I know realistically this prophecy alone could merely be coincidence, but compound it with the others and it can give you a better understanding of what Christians teach about Jesus, or what Jews think about the Messiah (whether you agree its Jesus or not)
http://www.clarifyingchristianity.com/m_prophecies.shtml
Thats a website,a hideous looking one, but it does give all of the Prophecies and their counterparts. Also you could read secular Historians such as Josephus or Tacitus and see Jesus met the prophetic requirements.(Josephus was Jewish and Tacitus was a Roman senator/historian) Statistically speaking though, its highly improbable that he meet just a few of these. And when it’s written about over hundreds of years by many authors its at least something to think about. I hope that helps shed some insight. If it doesn’t I apologize for yet another rant. And I suppose the only prophecy you could get next would be the second coming. Which isn’t given a timetable. But nonetheless happy studies!
Bit busy right now, sorry. I think you’ll find that Josephus was writing in the late first century. Hardly a first-hand account. There’s also some doubt, I think, as to the actual authorship of some of the things attributed to him. Tacitus was writing even later, in the early 2nd century AD, and makes one short passing reference to Christ.
Do you have a link from a scholarly, rather than an overtly christian source? (There’s a reason we’re known as sceptics… [I'm old-fashioned, I stick to my native British spelling])
Sorry, got no links of my own to hand, most of my knowledge comes, rather quaintly, from books borrowed from my local library.
For a prophecy to be testable, it should be unambiguous, ie, “There will be a messiah one day” would be considered a bit vague to say the least. It’s the sort of morale-boosting thing that’s been believed by many oppressed peoples, and any later leader or wannabe-leader can point back to it and say “Look at that! They meant ME.” In fact if the culture concerned is truly oppressed, it’s almost a self fulfilling prophecy.
I’m not sure how the verse you offer from Isiah can be considered prophecy at all. It appears to be talking about fortitude in the face of attackers. A commendable virtue, but hardly prophecy just because someone years later showed the same fortitude.
Your main claim though, is that KK should be discussing Jesus several while talking about events that ‘happened’ centuries before his putative birth. We’re not even out of Exodus yet (pun unintended). Give him chance!
And I’m gonna be late if I carry on typing …
For “…discussing Jesus several while talking about events that ‘happened’ centuries…,” please read:
“…discussing Jesus while talking about events that ‘happened’ several centuries…”
This is what happens when we self-edit in a hurry lol. Must dash!
Sorry If I made you late! I suppose I could have been more brief. : (. I always get confused with century style dates, 70 c.e. -ish would still fall under that right? Because the Book I have dates him around that time frame. if so a mere 40 or so years removed should not be that hard to believe (As Jesus died around 33 ish c.e.), 40 years ago today was only the 1970′s I’m only 24 and I still listen to Music from 70′s and I remember with fondness Sesame Street!, something as important as What Christ claimed surely could not have been misconstrued so badly, especially with people still alive to contest it (seeing as Christianity was condemned in that period and Christians were even murdered why would people NOT point out a simple lie? As for not completely Christian sources, I have non to speak of at the moment, so were in the same boat, But my curiosity presses me!
Also since regarding Josephus’ authorship, as I understand it, Its not the entirety of his text’s that have been under consideration, but individual passages, like where he calls Jesus The Christ, as Josephus was still a jew that would be a little stretched, but there are other areas not really debated. like the follw up passage where he names James as Jesus brother.
As for vague prophecies I am unaware of any in any religion or otherwise that aren’t. That makes sense from a skeptics perspective though, and as such I respect that. But I suppose our definition of prophecy is completely different, again something else I’ll have to look into! As for talking about Jesus and KK, I apologize for getting….immensely ahead of where he is. I suppose I’m a little too fervent in that. Either way Thank you for taking the time to discuss with me, it’s been a pleasure!
This is to Tim. You are making a mistake with your view of how 40 years aren’t that many years. Really think about how many copies of the music you listen to from the 70′s there is and then think about a population where most likely less then 5% of the population could read or write. You can probably find books printed 40 years ago that will conflict with books written today about events from that time frame. How many stories did you hear as a kid that now when you hear them they have changed since they were never written down but passed by word of mouth? It could just as easily be said that what your christ said wasn’t what the writers wanted to hear but close, so they changed it. Look how republicans change the meaning of words so they can make false claims. People lie when it is to their advantage and I very much doubt it was any different when the mentioned books were written.
I also noticed you are fast to jump on the false christian claim when your beliefs are called into question. Like Daz I can’t say the source but have seen and heard that many theologists do not see the prophesies as you do. You can probably find what they are saying by using Google search.
This link is from a Jewish website and explains why they believe Jesus was a false prophet. http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/jewsandjesus/
Going back to first-hand accounts, the remarkable one, or lack of one, is the fact (seeing as we’re talking about Exodus) that there’s no known Egyptian records of what would apparently been the biggest non-volcanic ecological disaster(s) human eyes have ever seen, even though there are Egyptian records known from that period and earlier (and they’re literally ‘set in stone’). Likewise no Egyptian records of a massive slave-revolt followed by the massacre of most of their army in the Red Sea. And even if that was seen as trivial (which I doubt), the death of the Pharaoh’s first-born and successor most certainly wouldn’t have been.
Just thought I’d mention it…
Can anyone tell me why my spellchecker allows “Pharaoh”, but not “Pharaoh’s”? Most odd.
people are stupid
Well, some are, David Michel, I’m convinced of that.