Egyptian Church Burning: Why the Intolerance Meme Will Never Die

When will the violence between religions end? Will Christians, Muslims and Jews ever be able to get along and live in peace? They've been killing each other for thousands of years and it seems there's no end in sight.

This week we got to witness yet another example of this ageless fact when ultraconservative Salafi Muslims in Egypt decided to burn down a Christian church. Their logic? They claimed the Christians had kidnapped a Christian woman who had converted to Islam. Twelve people were killed in the conflict. These are the same guys who cut off a man's ear for allegedly befriending a prostitute (note that there was no trial ... they just decided he was guilty).

I'd like to think that this barbarism is just a relic. We all have hope that in the not-too-distant future the moderates will win the day, the extremists will be put in jail, and we'll all live as one big happy world where everyone can worship (or not) in peace and with respect for other faiths.

It's pure bullpucky. It will never happen.

The church burning in Egypt illustrates the fundamental problem: religions evolve as the

The Jews were Pagans?

I had a weird dream ... I was transported back 4,000 years and got to meet Abraham, the patriarch of all Judaism and Christianity! It was so exiting ... I was about to find out the truth about the Judeao-Christian patriarch and God himself!

But ... it wasn't quite what I expected ... did you know he and his wife Sarah were pagans? Polytheists? What a shock...

It started like this...

"You must have been overwhelmed in the glow of God's love and kindness!"

"Actually, he was pretty harsh." said Abraham, stroking his beard. "You know, you have to be pretty careful what you say when He is around. He's got quite a temper."

"A temper? But He is a forgiving, loving God!"

Abraham gave a chuckle. "Who told you that, son? You should see what He did to Sodom and Gomorrah! And that business telling me I had to sacrifice my son? And only stopping me at the last second? That wasn't much fun."

"No, well ... I suppose not. But he was just testing you! And you were loyal! I'm so in awe. But he is God Almighty, and

Alabama Christian Governor: Do Politicians Have a Right to be Prejudiced?

Do politicians have a right to hold beliefs that are offensive to modern society? Do they have a right to espouse those beliefs in public? Should they be held to a higher standard than the rest of us?

Robert J. Bentley, the newly-elected governor of Alabama, is "raising eyebrows" according to the LA Times.

"If you're a Christian and you're saved ... it makes you and me brother and sister. Now I will have to say that, if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister ..."

The governor made these remarks in church, not during his official duties as the state's governor. Does that make it OK?

I don't think so. Governor Bentley abused the power of his office, plain and simple. He used the State of Alabama to promote Christianity. It may not be illegal, but it certainly is unethical. The governor should be ashamed of himself.

Governor Bentley has a duty to represent all of the citizens of Alabama: people of all faiths and no faith, people of

Religious Fraud Scandal: $34 Billion Stolen, Only $31 Billion Spent on Global Missions

For once, I find myself rooting for the Christians, Jews and Muslims. They've got a real scandal on their hands and are actually taking a hard look at themselves.

The Christian Headlines Blog is courageously breaking the news that financial fraud is rampant in religious institutions worldwide. In 2011, more money will be stolen in the name of Jesus than will be spent on missions worldwide!

The January 2011 issue of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research reported that Christian religious leaders will commit an estimated $34 billion in financial fraud in 2011 while only $31 billion will be spent on global missions. Researchers from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity estimate that Christian religious leaders will commit $90 million in financial crimes daily and the fraud is growing at a rate of 5.97% each year. If the researchers are correct, religious financial fraud among Christians will almost double in 14 years to $60 billion annually by 2025.

... Barrett and Johnson in the reference book “World Christian Trends” reported, “Probably 80% of all cases are kept private or swept under the carpet, but each year a rash of megathefts (over $1 million each) is uncovered and publicized in the secular media.”

The Christian Headlines Blog is pulling the covers off this scandal with a series of insightful blogs that starts today.

When someone embezzles from a bank, it's no big deal. Willie Sutton, the depression-era bank robber, was asked why he kept robbing banks and famously replied, "Because that's where the money is." We expect thieves to be attracted to banks.

But thieves are attracted to money and don't much care where it is. Anywhere money flows

Atheists Have No Morals ... and the parrot is just resting

Debating morals with theists sometimes makes me feel feel like John Cleese and the Dead Parrot.

"It's dead, that's what's wrong with it."
"No, no, it's resting!"
"I know a dead parrot when I see one and I'm looking at one right now!"
"No, no, it's not dead, it's resting."

... and so on, with the shopkeeper repeatedly saying something that everyone can see is plainly false. The parrot isn't alive, it's dead! Deceased!

It's like that when debating morals with a theist. They constantly harp back to their only argument, that without God there can be no morality. A case in point is Gary Hardaway's essay, CAN ATHEISTS BE GOOD CITIZENS? Hardaway starts with a few irrelevant quotes from the most religious of America's founding leaders such as James Madison in order to lend credibility to his case. But then he gets to the old dead-parrot argument:

The fatal, disqualifying flaw arises when the atheist encounters the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The atheist cannot agree with the Founders. In honesty he has to say, “Men do not have a Creator. Their unalienable rights do not come from a Creator. They come from another source.”

So far, so good: Hardaway is actually correct. Unalienable rights do not come from a creator! There is no God, just an idea of God that humans created. Human rights are unalienable because we have become a civilized species capable of rational thought. Using the same Rationalist reasoning that was created by the ancient Greeks and refined for two thousand years, we've figured out that human happiness and dignity are the foundation of all morals and ethics.

So we're good, right? Alas, no. Hardaway goes on:

What might this other source [of human rights] be? Government? But government can take away what it has bestowed. ... Atheists have an insoluble problem. If God doesn’t exist, human beings can have no special value.

Ah, there it is. The old dead-parrot claim. It's nothing more than "proof by repeated assertion." If you say something often and loudly, then it must be true!

Sorry, Mr. Hardaway. Atheists don't have an insoluble problem. God doesn't exist, and the universe doesn't give a damn about humans. If we manage to detonate all of our nuclear weapons and turn this planet into a sterile rock, that rock will keep orbiting the sun for another few billion years. The Earth won't care, the sun won't care, the universe won't care.

Human rights only matter to humans. Atheists and humanists know this. It makes human life even more precious. It's why atheist morality is fundamentally better than religious morality.

It is the theists, the Christians, Muslims and Jews who have the real problem.

Army tries to force Muslims, Jews and Atheists to attend Christian concert

How would you feel if you were a soldier training in Virginia, and your sergeant gave you this choice: attend a Muslim concert by a band known for its Islamic proselytizing, or be locked in to clean your barracks with no phone, internet or TV allowed until the concert was over?

That would never happen in the United States Army, right? I mean, we're a nation that represents freedom ... freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of religion. Our Army is there to defend these constitutional rights! Right?

Apparently not everyone in the Army sees it that way. Except it wasn't a Muslim concert, it was a Christian concert. And it wasn't the Christians who objected, it was the Muslims, Jews and atheists. It's just fun to flip the roles around so that even Christians can see how wrong this is.

Apparently this concert was part of the "Commanding General's Spiritual Fitness Concerts" series. A Captain (who probably wanted to earn points with the General) gave the order that men had to attend or be punished. Apparently following orders,

Pray for Me: April Fools Day is Pray for an Atheist Day!

Ok, all you Christians, it's time to pray for me!

April Fools Day 2010 is Pray for an Atheist day! (Here's their Facebook page!)

Do you believe God can do amazing things through prayer? We want you to select an atheist friend or relative and pray for them by name each day during the month of April, 2010 (and beyond!) It’s easy and could make an eternal difference for someone you love.

And I'm your man! A real Atheist, but also an honest one who would admit that he's wrong! But I'll warn you, I'm a pretty hard case.

In fact, why not make it a challenge? If all you Christians each pray for a different atheist, what's God going to do? He can't convert us all, that's too much work even for Him. So why don't you all get together and pick ONE atheist, and everybody pray for that person?

Boycott Mel Gibson

As if to top his own worst moment, Mel Gibson (or is that Gibbon? No, monkeys have more dignity...) is being a jerk again. It's time for everyone to boycott Mel Gibson, particularly his new film (The Edge of Darkness) coming out this week. It's time to send a message to the money people in Hollywood, to tell them that hate speech, hypocrisy and discrimination are bad business, that these actions have consequences, and that decent people of all religions or no religion won't tolerate Gibson's behavior.

He's been a jerk before, and now the trend continues. In a disgusting interview (here's the video), he won't even take responsibility for his own actions. As the reporter says, Gibson has never actually apologized in a meaningful way for his anti-Semitic remarks, and his weird religious views, combined with his hypocrisy, are offensive to just about everyone.

We all make mistakes, but the true test of a moral person is admitting it, and trying to make it right. I'd actually have more respect for him if he just came out and said he hates Jews. By worming away from these accusations (but note the failure to deny them, which speaks louder than words...), Gibson not only looks guilty of anti-Semitism, but also looks like a weasely coward.

There are lots of other good movies. Go see Avatar again! But skip Gibson's new one.

Christians go Nuts: Bible Says God Did NOT Create Universe!

What happens when you insist that the Bible be taken literally ... and it turns out there is a big mistake in the translation? For example, what if the original doesn't say God created Heaven and Earth?

Oops.

It's a perfect example of what happens when you let irrational faith trump scholarship and rationality: every time a new fact comes along, your defense of your beliefs has to get even more contorted and far-fetched than before.

According to Professor Ellen van Wolde, the story of Genesis was mistranslated, and badly. God didn't create the universe, it was here already. He just sorted it all out and made sense of it. Sorting out the heavens and firmament, and the waters from the land, and so on, would be a mighty task, one worthy of any ordinary god. But it's a far cry from creating the universe itself ex nihlo.

If Professor van Wolde is right, it puts Yahweh in the same league as gods like Thor, Zeus and Baal: mighty gods, but of-this-universe rather than creator of the universe. Instead of being omniscient and omnipotent, Yahweh would just be more like an ultra-magical human. Quite a downfall.

While this academic debate over a single Hebrew word is interesting and amusing, it's the reaction of Christians and Jews that I find far more instructive, and sad. Professor Van Wolde's short thesis has spawned hundreds of replies on the newspaper's web site, and some of them fill pages with their arguments.

To a scholar, this sort of thing is fun and fascinating, and the debate is just part of an ongoing, somewhat esoteric, effort to expand knowledge. If this were any book other than the Bible, it would be left in the dry, dusty attics of just a few linguists and historians.

But because it affects one of the core beliefs of conservative Christians and Jews, it has to be refuted. Never mind that in a scholarly debate, everyone might eventually conclude that the professor is right (or not ... that's what scholarship is about). No matter what the facts are, these conservative Christians and Jews have to concoct dozens of reasons why the experts must be wrong.

The refutations fall into three main camps:

1. Professor van Wolde's translation is wrong (this from people who don't even speak Hebrew).
2. The word "separate" can be taken to mean "create."
3. The original Hebrew is irrelevant, because the Bible is God's inerrant word and the current translation is His divine will.

Yikes.

A few months ago, I wrote a blog that is relevant again:

There is no objective truth for religion, no foundation. When religious people argue, they're arguing about opinion, and they can argue forever. But when scientists argue, it's over facts, and sooner or later, the facts prevail. One theory will win out because it is true, and the others will be forgotten. And the scientists will then move on to the next question, to expand our knowledge even more.

That's the beauty of true scholarship, that ultimately, through hard work and clear thinking, and by ignoring our own wishes about what we'd like to be true, we find a core truth that everyone can verify for him/herself. And we move on to the next question.

Religion's reliance on faith, and belief in things that can't possibly be true, makes it impossible to move forward. People waste days, years, and even whole lifetimes, concocting silly explanations to justify two-thousand-year-old mythology, simply because some priests or rabbis declared it to be from Yahweh's own mouth. It's a terrible waste of human intelligence.

Christian Cross to Honor Jewish Soldiers? Scalia says yes!

I try to have respect for our Supreme Court justices even when I disagree with them, but Justice Scalia has once again shown a callous and contemptible insensitivity for religious minorities, and a shocking lack of understanding of the principles on which this country is founded.

Scalia can't see why the Christian cross, the very symbol of Jewish persecution down through the ages, might not be considered pleasing to Jews who died for their country:

"[The Christian cross] signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins," [attorney] Peter Eliasberg told the justices. ... Justice Antonin Scalia sharply disagreed. "It's erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all the war dead."

This is so idiotic it makes my head spin. How could anyone, especially a Supreme Court justice, think that a cross is anything but a Christian symbol, and worse, think that Jews would feel honored by this symbol that to them represents hatred and persecution?

This isn't the first time Scalia has shown his true colors as a Christian bigot. In an interview recently, he admitted openly that he doesn't believe atheists and humanists deserve the same protection as religious people, according to his twisted view of the United States Constitution.

Justice Scalia is missing that essential element that every judge should have: empathy, the ability to put yourself in the other guy's shoes. He is so immersed in Christianity he can't even recognize that the cross is a symbol of Christianity, not a generic god-symbol.

Scalia reminds me of that idiotic Kentucky lawmaker who argued that, "God is not religion. God is God!" It's laughable when a backwards hick says something like this, but what Scalia is saying is every bit as dumb.

How did this man get on the Supreme Court?

Anti-Atheist Bias at the Supreme Court

Could a US Supreme Court Justice actually believe that religious people have more rights than non-religious people? In an interview with Harmodia ("The Daily Newspaper of Torah Jewry"),
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia virtually confesses to bias against non-religious people.

Justice Scalia, who is sworn to uphold our Constitution, writes:

My court has a series of opinions that say that the Constitution requires neutrality on the part of the government, not just between denominations, not just between Protestants, Jews and Catholics, but neutrality between religion and non-religion. I do not believe that. That is not the American tradition.

Huh? Did I get that right? It seems like he's saying atheists and agnostics don't have the same rights as religious people. The Constitution "requires neutrality," but "I do not believe that." No matter how many times I read this quote, I can't find any other interpretation.

This is shameful. I can find no other words for it. At the start of the interview, Justice Scalia purports to be neutral, claiming that, "my religious views do not affect my opinions at all." But this falls flat once you read the rest of the interview.

The interview ends with these chilling words:

"G-d protects," [Charles de Gaulle] said, "little children, drunkards and the United States of America." I think it may be true. And the reason may be because we honor Him as a nation. We invoke Him in our country, our Presidents invoke Him, my court open its sessions with "G-d save the United States." Those things are not insignificant.

In other words a Supreme Court Justice of the United States actually believes that God personally intervenes, and monkeys with the laws of physics, in order to change the course of history itself, to favor the United States above all other nations on this Earth, because a few dozen men and women happen to invoke his name each day.

Of course, those millions of Muslims in the Middle East who invoke God's name much more fervently, five times per day, certainly don't deserve God's attention. They're not Christians like Justice Scalia, are they?

This is such egotistical arrogance it would be funny, if not for the fact that people like Justice Scalia run our country. This is the stuff that wars and genocide are made of. This is how, for example, the American People get infuriated when 3,000 citizens were murdered by terrorists on 9/11, but have no trouble with the fact that 150,000 Iraqi civilians were killed by American bombs.

It's sad that a man can hold such un-American, unconstitutional views, and still become a United States Supreme Court justice.

Does God have Genitalia?

I've always wondered: Does God have genitalia? Does He have a penis and scrotum and testicles? And if so, what the heck does He do with them?

I mean, if God has a penis, why?

Does He have a relationship with some goddess somewhere? Back in the good old days, like in Moses' time, the Jews were pagans (yes, they really did believe in many gods, in spite of what you were taught), and a lot of the Jews thought maybe God and Isis were hanging out together, and maybe even doing the dirty. But since the Abrahamic religions evolved the idea of monotheism, that means Isis and those other goddesses were just figments of everyone's imaginations, which sort of implies God really didn't have a girlfriend after all. And presumably, since God doesn't commit sins, and masturbation is a sin, that's out too. So a penis thing would be pretty useless.

And surely God doesn't need to take a leak, since He is God. I mean, he doesn't need to eat or drink, right? So there's nothing to pee either, so that doesn't explain why God has genitalia, if indeed He does. In fact, that kind of leads to more questions than answers, because if He doesn't eat, then why does He need a stomach, intestines, and all that other stuff inside?

But if God doesn't have a penis, scrotum, testicles and such, and maybe not even a stomach and intestines, then it's kind of odd to say we humans were made in His image, because we do have all that stuff in order to eat, drink and procreate. So maybe the Bible means "in his image" sort of like a snapshot or something, like, on the outside we'd say, "Hey, look, I look just like you, God!" but if a surgeon could get God on the operating table and take a look inside, he'd say, "Hey, this isn't right! This guy's got no stomach, or anything!"

I guess maybe that Genesis creation stuff is a myth or something. It sure can't be literally true, since you'd have to overlook an awful lot of crazy stuff to believe all of it.

Doctor George Tiller Murdered in God's Name

Well, it finally happened. Dr. George Tiller, a physician who provided legal abortion services, was murdered in the name of Jesus and God. He was shot while attending church services on Sunday morning. This tragedy is only mitigated the tiniest amount by the fact that all of the mainstream anti-abortion groups denounced the murder. This is just the final chapter in a long string of harassment, threats, vandalism and and even another shooting – in 1993, Dr. Tiller was shot in both arms. Dr. Tiller must have known that sooner or later the threats would turn to action, yet he carried on.

This is religion at its worst.

• The murderer is completely intolerant of other viewpoints than his own.
• It represents an absolute certainty about morals, so much certainty that the murderer believed execution was warranted.
• Religion allowed the murderer to believe he is above the law, and can decide which laws to follow and which to ignore.
• It shows that these religious fanatics believe that, no matter what crimes they commit here on Earth, they'll be forgiven and actually rewarded in the afterlife.

In other words, this murderer doesn't believe in the rule of law. He believes that any one of us can murder another, just based on our own personal beliefs.

It is nothing more than anarchy in God's name. If we follow this to the logical conclusion, then each of us is free to do whatever we like, so long as our personal religion, whatever god or gods we worship, tell us it's OK.

Well, this assassin is wrong. There is no salvation in his afterlife. Nobody is going to forgive him. He won't live happily ever after. Nobody will be singing his praises. He is not a hero. He is nothing more than a cold-blooded murder, anarchist, and self-important fool.

Instead, the State has already captured the man, and he'll be found guilty of first-degree premeditated murder. He'll spend the rest of his life in prison, and may even be executed by the State.

Which is as it should be. Nobody is above the law.

Christians, Jews, Muslims, and surely others, will decry this murder, saying that God does not approve or condone such behavior in His name. But they're wrong – just look in the first few books of the Bible and you'll find many, many instances of people, families, cities and even whole lands, murdered on a whim or for trivial offenses, or for the misdeeds of just a few, or even just because God wanted them out of the way. These horrifying tales of murder and genocide are taught to children and adults alike as moral lessons.

When a murder takes place in God's name, like the murder of Dr. Tiller, all the Christians and Jews can do is find yet another quote from their Bible, "'Vengeance is mine, I will repay,' sayeth the Lord." (Romans 12:19). But that's a pure cover-up. The Bible is such a pile of conflicting morals and baffling lessons, anybody can claim just about anything they like, and find a passage of the Bible that backs them up. Apparently this murderer didn't get to Romans, he read Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus and learned his lessons about murder and genocide there.

Those of you who think that this murder doesn't represent your religion, think again. This is exactly why the Bible is a terrible source of morality.

F18 crash reveals that God's hand is ... not there

Yesterday I made my lunch and sat down to enjoy the noon news. But when I flipped on the TV, I was greeted by the tragic videos of smoke billowing from a neighborhood just a few miles from me, where an USMC F-18 fighter jet had crashed just two minutes earlier. Sadly, four people were killed: A mother, two very young children, and their grandmother. Four wonderful lives, snuffed out in an instant, by utterly random chance.

Years ago, I remember reading about a couple on a canoe trip in Canada for their honeymoon. A beaver just happened to be gnawing a tree as they paddled by; the tree fell and killed the woman. Utterly and completely random.

I did a lot of camping at Yosemite National Park when my kids were young. One year, we heard that a monstrous branch from an ancient sequoia tree broke off and fell on the open upper deck of a tourist bus, killing a number people. When those people woke up that morning, would any of them have guessed they wouldn't live to see the end of the day?

If you believe, as millions do, that God is omnipotent and omniscient, then God knew these people were going to die, and in fact these deaths were somehow part of His plan. For some reason yesterday, God decided to kill a baby, a toddler, their mother, and their grandmother. God decided to leave behind a widowed grandfather, and a father who not only lost his wife, but also his two tiny children.

And you have to believe that, for some inscrutable reason, God had that beaver cut the tree down right when the happy couple were paddling by, leaving her husband a young widower. The same goes for all those people on the bus in Yosemite – God decided to kill them, too.

There are many far greater tragedies unfolding across the world every day, but these simple, small tragedies hit me much harder. Maybe it's because a million starving people are too much to grasp, but a dead family in my own neighborhood is something my brain can understand.

Jews, Christians and Muslims who believe that God is really in charge, and deliberately causes all of these random, horrible deaths, have resorted to some of the most inscrutable and indefensible logic in the history of humanity. The pinnacle of this "logic," the phrase that I find deeply offensive, is: "God works in mysterious ways." In other words, none of this makes any sense, but God is smarter than us, and uses a superior logic that is far beyond human comprehension. God has a plan, and God is good, so killing some babies, their mother, and their grandmother, must be a good thing. But we poor humans are too dumb to grasp the logic that helps God realize why this random killing was for the best.

As for me, I prefer a much more sensible explanation: Random stuff happens, and sometimes you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Tags: F18 crash christian jew muslim death atheist atheism religion

An Atheist in the Land of Mormons, part 3: Becoming God

Did you know that Mormons believe – this is no joke – that if you're married in the Temple, you follow certain laws, YOU BECOME A GOD when you die. Not just an angel or a magician, a real god, with your OWN PLANET. You get to create all the creatures and people, plants, rocks, mountains, whatever you like. And when all is said and done, your creation, your people, will worship you, just like good Mormons worship Yahweh from this planet.

As we finish our stories of Utah and the Red Rock Film Festival, some of my readers might be very surprised to learn that my wife, who is Jewish, was a Mormon for several years. Of all the things I learned about her when we were dating, this probably surprised me the most. She even attended Brigham Young University for a semester.

The way she joined the church is pretty ordinary: a fiance' who converted her to Mormonism (much to her parents' dismay, I'm sure).

The Mormon missionaries have a very carefully crafted bag of tricks they use to attract and keep new converts, stories that are selected with two criteria: First, the introductory preaching resonates with "mainstream" Christianity and Judaism. The initial messages make Mormonism sound very pleasant and ordinary, much like just another branch of the mainstream religions, one with a special place for family and community.

Second, potential converts are told of the promise of the Mormon heaven, where peace, love, forgiveness, and happiness, reign, a paradise even more appealing than the typical Christain heaven.

But certain parts of Mormonism are carefully concealed from potential converts. They sound so outrageous to Christians, Jews, and Muslims that most people would reject them immediately. They're only revealed in bits and pieces, slowly so as not to scare the convert away, and only when the convert has become committed and integrated into the Mormon community and way of life.

(Check out The Mormon Curtain if you want to learn more about Mormon excesses, absurdities and abuses.)

Unfortunately for the Mormons, and fortunately for my wife, their indoctrination didn't succeed. Brigham Young University requires all students to take one religion class every semester, and for her introduction, my wife selected "Mormonism and Modern Science," which is essentially Creationism, somewhat repackaged. She now says, "I didn't know enough about science at that time to be alarmed by what they were teaching. But when they got to the part about polytheism – that when a good person dies, he becomes a god and gets his own planet &ndash my limited Jewish upbringing set off an alarm. Jews believe there is just one God. This was very important Jews, and Rabbit Ott, who was a powerful speaker and very well known [with the Sephardic Temple in Los Angeles], would read from the Torah, 'I am your God, the one God, and there are no other gods before me.'"

The idea that every good Mormon would become a god is polytheism, plain and simple. It is probably the single most important difference between Mormonism and the other three Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam), and most people raised in an Abrahamic religion would never convert to Mormonism if they knew the truth about the Mormon's polytheism beforehand.

My wife goes on to say that when the class got to the part about becoming a god when you die, she was astounded, not by this teaching, but by her fellow classmates. Looking around the room, she realized not a single other person objected. They were all fully indoctrinated.

She completed the semester, but never returned to BYU. Although she'd become skeptical about Mormonism, she continued to attend the LDS Church for a few years, but finally a friend gave her a copy of "The Godmakers" by David Hunt and Ed Becker. The book totally broke the spell, and she never went back to the LDS church again.

But she has some good stories to tell!

Tags: utah mormon lds atheist atheism god christian jew religion

Rape victim, age 13, stoned to death for having sex

I could not have picked a more horrifying, tragic example to prove the point of my last three blogs (part 1, part 2, conclusion). WARNING: The details that follow are very disturbing.

Aisha, a 13 year old girl in Somalia, reported being raped to the Shabab Milita (sometimes called the "Somali Taliban") who control her town. Instead of receiving their sympathy and support, the girl was convicted of having sex outside of marriage, and sentenced to death by stoning.

Thousands of people crowded into the local stadium to witness the execution. A hole was dug in the ground, and the girl was buried up to her neck. Then about fifty men started stoning her, throwing rocks at her head, to kill her. After a while, she was dug up, and nurses were called in to verify that she was dead. When they discovered that she was not, the girl was buried again, and the stoning continued.

At some point, it was too much for the crowd, and they stormed down from the stadium bleachers to try to stop the horrifying execution. The military opened fire on the mob, and a young boy was killed by their gunfire. The 50 men finally completed their task; the young girl was dead.

As for the three rapists, they have nothing to fear. No arrests have been made, and apparently there is no expectation that they ever will be brought to justice.

Violence is part of our genetic makeup, our animal heritage, but as my three-part blog series tries to show, we have the ability to be ethically advanced. As rational, thinking beings, we can recognize the good parts of our instincts, such as love, marriage, children, and family. We can also recognize that some instincts, such as violence, murder and war, are no longer useful nor moral, and we can leave these things behind us in history.

But as long as outdated and immoral religious laws are followed and revered, young girls like the poor, dead Somoli, just barely a teenager, will face the horrors of rape, only to be murdered when they seek help.

Those of you, Christians, Jews, or Muslims, who think you are exempt, and try to say, "That's not MY religion," need to go back and reread your holy books. It IS your religion. YOU are the problem, because YOU don't see that your holy writings are nothing more than outdated stories, that should have been left behind long ago.

Tags: atheism atheist christian jew muslim religion somalia stoned Aisha Ibrahim Kuhulow

Most Atheists are RIGHT: Religion really does cause violence

Having spent two blogs (part 1, part 2) explaining why religion doesn't cause violence, it's time to refute that statement.

More exactly, I'm going to refine it: Religion isn't at the root of violence (evolution is), but religion greatly amplifies violence.

A huge portion of the "laws" laid down in the Bible are, by today's standards, barbaric and primitive. If a priest's daughter becomes a prostitute, the Bible says she should be burned at the stake (Leviticus 21:9). The penalty for blasphemy is death (Leviticus 23:10-24). Adultery, incest, and homosexuality, any of these and more call for the death penalty, often by stoning.

Even people who claim to follow the Bible's laws, and believe the Bible's inerrancy, can't stomach these laws today. We've evolved, we now know better, but the Bible is frozen in time.

Should we accept these millenia-old rules as our laws, just because two thousand years ago, a group of Jewish scholars declared that these were God's own words?

My primary thesis is not wrong, quite the contrary: Violence is part of our genetic makeup (our instincts), and religious memes that support violence are just an example of memetic evolution at work, shaping the religious memeplex to fit well into its environment (our brains).

But we're supposed to be civilized. We're supposed to move beyond our primitive animal instincts that make us fight and kill one another. We've evolved brains that are powerful enough to understand good and evil. We've evolved culture, and empathy, and the concepts of right and wrong. We understand that sometimes the individual has to subjugate his/her own raw desires for the good of the family, the village, or the world.

Unfortunately, some religions are holding us back from these achievements.

Somewhere along the way, a bunch of parables, historical "tall tales," and good advice, got converted into the inerrant Word of God, purportedly correct in every respect and for all time. The Inerrancy Meme, one of the evolved tricks that religion uses to defend itself from criticism, arose in the Jewish culture a few hundred years before the time of Christ. Since then, it's become a huge barrier to progress in human ethics: If we left it to religions that follow the Inerrance Meme, human ethical advancement would be frozen in time forever.

Religion is not the root of violence and war; that distinction goes to evolution, keeping us in keen competition with one another for survival of the fittest. But religion is holding us back, exacerbating and amplifying the worst parts of our animal nature, and preventing us from evolving to the next level of ethical achievement.

Tags: atheism atheist religion morals ethics evolution memes virus christian jew memes memeplex dawkin harris hitchens

Most Atheists are Wrong: Religion doesn't cause all violence (conclusion)

This continues yesterday's blog, in which I explained how a memetic viewpoint clarifies that most morals originate with our instincts, rather than from religious inspiration or philosophical enquiry.

A constant state of tribal fighting, murders, skirmishes, and outright warfare is pretty much the natural state of human beings (where "natural" means what was common over the last few hundred thousand years as humans evolved to our modern form). Jared Diamond, in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Guns, Germs and Steel, describes his experience a typical such tribe, the Fayu of New Guinea, who were in a constant "kaleidoscopically changing pattern of war and shifting alliances with all neighboring hamlets..." While in New Guinea, he witnessed an anthropologist interview women about their husbands:

Woman after woman, when asked to name her husband, named several sequential husbands who had died violent deaths. A typical answer went like this: "My first husband was killed by Elopi raiders. My second husband was killed by a man who wanted me, and who became my third husband. That husband was killed by the brother of my second husband..." Such biographies prove common for so-called gentle tribespeople...

Guns, Germs, and Steel, p 277, copyright © Jared Diamond, 1999

When we discover a behavioral pattern that spans the globe, it's a good bet that our instincts are running the show. Adding to the weight of this theory, anthropologists also find similar behavior in the other great apes that form bands. Although this is not a scientific proof by any stretch of the imagination, I think most anthropologists and behavioral scientists would agree that this pattern of tribal war and murder reflects our instincts.

Thus, we find two key points about religion and morality:

• Most of our morals are really memes that express, in language, knowledge that is hard-wired into our brains, put there by evolution to help us survive.
• Humans are naturally warlike and murderous, again, because it is behavior that helps us survive and procreate.

Yesterday we used the examples of infidelity and child abuse to illustrate how memes that match our instincts are far more likely to survive than memes that are contrary to our instincts. Now we can see that religious memes that encourage warlike behavior are simply reflections of our human instincts. It is our instincts that have caused us to shape religions that advocate warlike behavior.

The logical conclusion from all this is that religion is the "victim" of our instincts. Humans are just doing what we've always done: wage war and murder each other. Modern evolution has equipped us with language, and the "ideosphere" (the meme ecosphere) has evolved memes that support this aggresive behavior.

Tomorrow: Why this is all wrong – religion really does cause harm.

Tags: religion war morals evil atheist atheism christian christianity jew judaism islam muslim philosophy dawkins harris hitchens

Most Atheists are Wrong: Religion doesn't cause all violence (part 1)

I strongly disagree with one of the most widely-held beliefs of the Atheist community: That religion is at the root of so many of the world's problems. In my opinion, this is a specious argument, a bad case of reversing cause and effect.

When I started historical research for my book, The Religion Virus, I was a "standard Atheist" in this regard: It was plain to me that religion is the root of much of the violence and hatred in the world. I read Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris, and was properly outraged at the terrible things done in the name of religion.

But, as my studies took me deeper and deeper into the world's history, I began to doubt this "stock" answer. The more I learned, the more I realized I was wrong. I began to question my assumptions about religion's negative role in society: Was religion really the cause? Or was it just a reflection of deeper forces? If we could take away religion, would people really start behaving better? Or would they just keep doing the same things, using a new excuse?

Memes can only survive when they fit the "ecosystem" in which they live – if a meme contradicts a basic human instinct, it becomes extinct, wiped out of human culture. By contrast, if a meme matches human instinct, it's easy for it to "reproduce" and increase it's population, because we humans are pre-programmed to believe the meme.

(You can Learn more about the fascinating concept of memes, if you're a newcomer to this idea.)

Religions are just a large set of intertwined memes – a memeplex – and thus it is no surprise that most of the morals claimed by religion are really nothing more than memes that survive because they mesh with our instincts. When religions claim to be the origin of morality, they simply have it backwards: Their morals are the ones best adapted to the "ecosystem" of our brains, nothing more.

To illustrate, let's look at sex, infidelity, and child abuse. Humans are sexually dimorphic – on average, men are considerably taller, stronger, and heavier than women. In almost all mammals, this is a hallmark of a harem species, where males mate with many females. And what do we see around the world? Almost all societies have a marriage institution, yet almost all societies "wink" at male infidelity – although it's frowned upon, and grounds for divorce, it's not a criminal activity unless you're the President and you lie about it to Congress. Most societies consider male infidelity to be a matter between husband and wife, not the state's business.

Now consider female infidelity. In most societies, it is not tolerated. Even in our "modern" society, female virginity is still somewhat valued, whereas male virginity is something of a stigma. Female infidelity in many societies is a very serious crime and can even result in death, whereas male infidelity is almost never a crime. These memes again reflect the underlying biological facts: If a male cheats on his mate, it doesn't really hurt the couple much, the male is still able to care for his family. By contrast, if a female cheats on her mate, she may become pregnant; her mate could end up raising another man's child instead of his own.

And finally, consider that child abusers, and especially child sexual predators, are reviled worldwide, and laws around the world reflect this. A man who has an affair suffers his wife's wrath; a man who abuses a child goes to prison.

These three examples illustrate a basic principle of meme theory: Ideas that mesh with our animal instincts find themselves in a "friendly ecosystem," and memes that clash with our instincts die out. A meme that says, "We should criminalize male infidelity" will find itself in a hostile ecosystem, because male infidelity is part of our genetic makeup, whereas a meme that advocates punishing and incarcerating child abusers matches our deepest instincts, and will become part of our culture.

Religion claims to be the origin of all morality, but it is not. Morality originates in our genetic makeup: Our instincts have evolved over hundreds of millions of years, and are at the foundation of all human behavior.

To be continued in part 2 ...

Tags: religion war morals evil atheist atheism christian christianity jew judaism islam muslim philosophy dawkins harris hitchens