Religious riders

Most people with an interest in politics are familiar with the idea of legislative riders, but for those that aren't, they are unrelated laws thrown into a bill. It's a tactic to have an item passed by oversight, or because there is pressure to pass a bill at the time.

I have seen comment, posts and blogs from believers and non-believers alike asking, what's the harm in faith?

I have seen first hand how faith can lead people to kill others. I don't even have to specify the examples I'm thinking of because they are so numerous that anyone reading this can easily think of their own. Even so, it is still a minority of believers who hold views to such an extreme.

In fact you only have to look most likely to your nearest hospital to see the positive impact of believers. I spent most of my highschool spring breaks building homes for the poor in Mexico. I would say these are positive impacts motivated by religious views.

I don't know if those who are religious are more likely to give to the poor, but i know for certain it is commanded in Christianity.

Some will argue that everyone can give regardless of faith, but negating there is at least some connection is foolish. Maybe an individual would give either way, but there is an obvious vehicle and positive impacts are made.

Now, before i go on, i want to mention that the actions of those who are religious speak nothing about their religion, unless it's tied directly to it. If a Christian doesn't know how to do math, it doesnt mean Christianity is false, and if the Bible had a verse saying Christians would know math as a sign of salvation, it would only call into question the individual's belief. But what about commandments of a faith which are not quite so innocuous or charitable in nature?

Numbers 15:32-36 clearly tells the tale of a man who broke the sabbath and was stoned to death for it. Imagine if believers took this to heart as a precedent. They do not though. In fact they overlook most of the Old Testament laws, probably without ever condidering Matt 5: 18.

I have already written about others and i personally think the Bible would be a much more "holy" book without Numbers, Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Some of the "riders" come from these books. I'm not familiar enough with the Quran to identify the riders there, but look at any woman who has to keep her face covered and you can see they're there.

Not every believer accepts all these riders, but most have at least one or two.

A great example of a religious rider is the pervasive negative view of any type of relationship outside of the monogomous heterosexual. The bible explicitly condemns most (except polygamy which as far as i know, most christians are also against.) Or creationism. Racism. Sexism. Death for apostasy. Bigotry.

This is where it gets ugly. This is where religion goes rogue from loving people unconditionally, or peace, to trying to keep them in a specific role ordained by God.

From an inside perspective of belief, if God prohibits or condones something, a believer should judge, shame and enforce his standard despite the damage it would cause someone, because the greater concern is the aguish it causes God. In fact, shunning someone from a family gathering, for example, for being gay is considered an act of tough love with the aim of breaking them down for reconciliation out of concern for their eternal well being.

From an outside perspective, these all boil down to the worst biases we have in society. And to top it off, they think this is love because it is directly linked to a specific book they believe.

From the outside, these biases, these religious riders, look like hate and discrimination, condoned and commanded by religious texts. I gave only a few examples of "riders" here and primarily from Christianity. Without delving immensely deep, i wonder if it's even possible to remove them all.

This is what makes religion evil and poisonous. Regardless of the good it does, there will always be room for greater evil. These riders sneak in under the guise of faith and "love."

The past actually proves repeatedly that unless we, as a society, make laws to prevent the religious from enacting the more gruesome portions of the Bible, we would still have slavery, witch burnings, segregation... I hear a lot of Christians in the U.S. cite God's law is higher than man's, but it sure doesnt seem that way since the only controversial views held onto are those which don't violate man's law.

I should take a moment here to specify i don't think religion should be outlawed, nor do i think we should start prosecuting for thought crimes. I do think we should continue to progress morally as a society through careful reflection.

The belief in a deity makes no moral act more moral, but in the mind of a believer, it can make the most heinous into a moral imperative.

Post religious stress disorder

Have you ever heard of anyone trying to disprove the Lord of the Rings? Or Game of Thrones? Aesop's Fables?
I have continued to study the Bible and examine it very carefully, but I have started to ask myself why. I have found numerous contradictions and falsehoods, the worst of which is Matthew 11:25. (Jesus literally thanks God for hiding his message.) So why do I continue down this futile path of studying what I know to be inherently false?
The truth is, I see a lot of others who have transitioned beyond religion that do the same thing.
It has been very difficult to move beyond the religion that I accepted as fact for so long. I'm not even sure I could have comprehended what it's like to not think I have someone in on my every thought. I still see things in an in-between state. I still see both sides of the Christian/non-Christian coin. I can have a conversation with a theist and see how they view things. Maybe it's overactive empathy, but I'm more inclined to think it's the years of thinking that way hanging around in my mind like Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused.
This may be the reason why I have continued to study.
I still need to assure myself of what I know. That the religion I once accepted is false.
Transitioning beyond religion is not just a flip of a switch. It's not an on/off situation, it's a quantum state of being both or neither at the same time. I also think it's something most people will not understand.
In general, I think people prefer to have a stance on one side or another and have trouble being anywhere in the middle because it means they don't fit with either side.
That's where a problem lies for me. In my normal everyday life I don't have to justify where I stand on beliefs, but with my family it won't be that way. In fact, I don't really believe any amount of study on my part will change how they will receive this news. I honestly worry that when I tell them, the news will be met with disappointment. Is it strange that as an adult I still fear disappointing my family?
I think a large part of my studies and even in writing this is exploring my position so when this conversation happens I know where I stand.
I'm losing the drive provided by all this post religious stress disorder though. It gives me hope though, that I won't grow into an old man reading the Odyssey, trying to figure out why I ever really believed it in the first place.

Marry your rapist

Deuteronomy 22

28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

I have seen this verse many times in arguments against the Bible. As can be imagine there are quite a few articles around the interwebz which aspire to defend this virtuous piece of writing.
The two top results justify this edict as punishment for the rapist.
Seriously.
There are many cultural differences of the time which are crucial to note in regards to this commandment. Girls were regarded very much as property, as they are still in some middle east countries, and as such, if a man wanted to marry her, he had to pay her father. A girl whose virginity was not intact was not worth much because men wanted virgins and it might be that she would spend her life alone and have no man to support her, leading to a very difficult life.
This is where the possible benefit of this passage comes in. The rapist would be forced to care for her since he defiled her. It also helps the father because no matter what happens (even if he does not give the rapist his daughter) he gets his price for his daughter.
There's another matter which is also important to realize and that is the age of brides in that culture. 12 years and 1 day is old enough to marry with your parents permission and 21 was old enough to marry without. A lot of marriages were arranged in biblical times. So an "unbetrothed virgin" is in many cases a fairly young girl.
Perhaps my aversion to pedophile rapists is just a cultural difference, but i cannot honestly think of any culture where this is the optimal solution.
What is really scary to me about this, is that faith overcomes any rational obstacle to this passage being wrong!
I cannot imagine the hell many girls were forced into because of this passage, being subjected to their rapist throughout the rest of their life. As far as it being a punishment for the rapist, unlike one of the articles which jokes she might not be the right girl for him (seriously? Rape jokes?), i have a feeling the rapist being of questionable morality at the time of the incident, might use the opportunity for ongoing sexual gratification at the girls expense. And he, not being a philanthropist exactly, might not be so careful with her physical or mental well being either.
It's a rapist, not a purse thief! It's a complete violation of human dignity, not a prank.
I'm by no means an ISIS sympathizer, but those men believe they are doing what is righteous. How they can commit such heinous crimes is because faith allows them to overcome the obstacles of reason and morality, just like the two articles i referenced earlier. This is why so many in the atheist and agnostic community regard religion as dangerous, because it can lead good men to do terrible things and still feel like they're in the right.
Why couldn't the commandment say she had to sacrifice a sheep and should be considered a virgin from that point?
I understand that there is no perfect solution to rape, but I can't believe that this is the best an omniscient god could come up with which is why I cannot accept that this scripture is from any deity.
It could be that God's ways are well beyond mine and that the real issue is me, but I still don't think this lines up even biblically and it might be scarier if it does. Read Deuteronomy 28 for the prize and price, biblically speaking, of this passage.

Creating religion

"If I wrote a book and ran around and called it the truth, I'm sure I could get a few followers. Especially if I had a sword."
This is something a Christian told me in a conversation about religions. In my mind I thought "Exactly."
There are a lot of religions in this world and I'm sure there will be many more to come.
One reason I bring this up is because it was a little confusing to me how Christianity was started in the first place. Why would so many people follow it if it wasn't true to start with?
If the disciples weren't certain of Jesus' resurrection why would they continue to preach it until death?
If I had literally seen the events purported in the Easter story, I would have done the same thing, but there are some clues that the disciples might not have ever seen such events.
Mark, which is widely held to be the gospel written first, contains something in the Easter story which is curious to me. The women left the tomb and "told no one" of the empty tomb.
This phrase seems out of place to me. Why would they be afraid at the most triumphant moment of the man they had been following for so long?
I have a hunch this phrase is here for another reason: to explain why no one heard about this event at least until Pentecost.
Even if I'm wrong, it still doesn't address the differences in the Easter stories between gospels or why the tomb wasn't preserved by early Christians. Why tell people that Jesus has been raised when you could just show them an empty tomb? It wouldn't prove the resurrection, but it sures seems suspect that it wasn't preserved.
Could the story be a later fabrication to continue in a radicals teachings? Would the disciples continue to preach the gospel until death if it was false? The short answer is YES!
Enter Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon church.
Joseph Smith met with an angel, got some new texts written on golden plates which were omitted from the Bible by generations past. He gave a lot of details about these plates and wasn't the only one who claimed to have seen them. His mom even vouched for him and there's no way I could get my mom to do that for me if she knew I was lying!
Joseph Smith is said to be a martyr be his church and despite having a mob which would have seemingly delighted in his recanting of his faith, that is not the story which has been passed down to us, especially through the Mormon church.
Does that mean the faith Mormon church is also "true?"
We have the same evidences as the disciples, only much more recent. We have a few people who claimed to witness something miraculous and even died continuing to preach it.
I, as a christian, would have rejected it immediately because it isn't the truth that Jesus taught, or archaeologically verifiable.
That isn't even the only modern sect which has similar claims. The motivation to present these lies as truth must be admittedly elsewhere then. I cant claim to know what it was for the apostles, but there may be a very heinous answer to that in Acts 5:1-11.
In this story a husband and wife sell land they owned and brought money to the apostles, but kept "some", no amount or percentage is specified, for themselves. The both fall dead for "lying to God." It says that the rest of the church was afraid when they heard what happened.
The context of this story is about the early church sharing everything so no one was in need. Interpretations here vary quite a bit as to what actually occurred, but I think that it's glaringly obvious that the goal was that believers should give their all to the church without holding back even "some."
It's a motivation well mirrored in the creation of the modern religion of Scientology.
L. Ron Hubbard has been quoted by several people as saying religion is where the real money is. Unfortunately we don't have a recording of his actual words and accounts as to the actual phrase vary so maybe he didn't say it at all, but the religion he started seems to fully support this mind set.
Everything costs money to be a higher "level." There are a lot of things in Christian churches that costs money, but at least the forgiveness of sins is free and what does cost money is optional (other than the tithe which I would argue those of faith give freely rather being required to pay.)
There are many devout Scientologist even though the religion's founder was a science fiction writer prior to his founding of Scientology.
Shedding the shackles of faith has not been easy for me. Even though I can prove portions of the Bible false, still many questions have lingered at the back of my mind that must be answered carefully in order to be sure of the truth. I have to be sure that I have not been mislead in some way by ignoring an imperfect story that truly is from God. Having modern instances of the creation of religion and how quickly they can grow with only a few devout believers definitely helps to provide some possibilities as well as discounting the evidence which once seemed so sure.
The Biblical continues to fall apart piece by piece under scrutiny. It fits the entire biblical story better for each portion to be legend sprinkled with some truth, than the most crucial story being the ultimate truth.

Could another religion be true?

One question my wife asked me was if I thought I would find a new religion.
I think I can categorically answer that with a no. Although I'm not familiar with every religion, I can say I'm no longer comfortable with the premise of it.
Throughout the Bible there are many miraculous signs which would easily point to some other worldly power being in play. One of my favorites as a kid was when Elijah faced off against the prophets of Baal and called down fire from heaven. Such signs and miracles happen repeatedly throughout the Bible, God seemed to be especially eager in the old testament to prove he was above all other gods, but I have yet to see anything close during my lifetime.
Jesus performed quite a few miracles in front of the disciples that would make me never doubt, such as calming the storm. That's no cheap parlor trick. How on earth could the disciples ever doubt Jesus had supernatural backing after that?
The fact that the Bible says they ever doubted again indicates to me this is just a story. A man whom they saw heal the sick, feed the multitude with a few fish, and made a tree wither for not bearing fruit would be pretty convincing even in today's world of extreme magicians, but calming a storm that's something beyond anyone's capability.
I have to say, that it would be quite convincing to see someone calm a storm. I would be astonished beyond reason.
Once I realized that the Bible was not absolute truth, my eyes were opened to quite a few things I didn't realize before. As a Christian I looked at other religions as spiritual warfare with God's kingdom. Angels and demons all over the place influencing us for each side.
Religions are the concoctions of mankind originating from myths and fables. I've been fooled once and I don't intend to be again.
The thought has crossed my mind that maybe there is a spiritual realm and it is just beyond our abilities to observe it. Maybe its something akin to intuition where we know it exists but cant quite put our finger on it. It's kind of like dark matter in that respect, except with dark matter we have evidence it exists, even though we cant directly observe it.
I believed spiritual influence should fit perfectly into this category. Even if we couldn't observe God directly, it would be nice to at least see his unexplainable influence, it would even lead scientific minded down a road of evidence to God.
This is exactly what I expected to find when my transition started. I expected to find God's unexplainable influence everywhere.
I had been told it was here and assumed it was true, but it didn't take too long to unravel everything I knew considering how long I had spent weaving my own story of the universe along with just the right (mis)information.
The God of the Bible went to great lengths to show he was God, if that story was more than words on a paper, we should see it's continuation today. Even if only by a select few with a mustard seed's worth of faith.
Maybe most religions are making an attempt at describing this intangible but real thing, like the Greeks trying to explain natural occurrences by assigning them gods. But I have a feeling a larger majority are created by people with much less benign intentions. I would suspect most come as a result of men who seek profit and power, and are perpetuated by those who truly believe.
So forgive me if I don't run out to pick up a new holy book.
Not one of them can provide any evidence which would speak to a creator which intervenes in miraculous ways on a consistent basis. Not one.
Some would be quick to say that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, and I would agree. Perhaps there is a supreme being that started it all, but unless he puts credible evidence into existence, I'll simply consider it a distant possibility.

Evolution's Achilles Heels Pt. 1

I haven't been engaging others for too long in regards evolution vs. creationism. Mainly because for most of my life, I was on the creationism side turning a blind eye to anything which did not confirm my belief and twisting what was impossible to ignore. It helped that there are just enough scientists out there to support the idea to keep the young earth creationism theories.
Recently a new book and movie came out called Evolution's Achilles Heels. To be fair, I didn't watch the whole thing. I watched to extremely abridged versions, also known as "previews" in commoner terms.
I'm going to take the snippets they showed for free to make a few observations and my first observation is: If these guys have the scientific knowledge to prove evolution is false and the Bible is true, they might have to be some of the most immoral people of all time to charge people money for the information when souls are at stake. Maybe their bank account is more important than the billions of souls which could be saved. Seems legit.
On to the preview.

 

"Natural selection can't actually generate anything new. It can only operate on what is existing."

 

They start off with a true statement, but the implication is a lie. Natural selection is a part of the evolutionary process which slims the choices down. Genetic mutation is the part of the process which makes the variants to be selected. I'm really not sure if the person saying this phrase simply doesn't understand the terminology, or if he's being intellectually dishonest. At best there must be a portion which denies genetic mutation all together, which is false, but maybe he's just refuting natural selection in addition to mutation, in which case he might be severely uninformed. Or maybe he's just saying natural selection does remove mutations which have to exist before their removal in the most deceptive way possible.

 

"14 Ph.D. Scientists"

 

14?! Somebody call the New York Times and let them know that there's a whole 14 Ph.D. scientists in this movie! I'm honestly not sure if this number is meant to impress the viewer or not. There could be 1,000 or a group of flamingos in lab coats holding up cue cards. It's not the minds presenting the information that I care about, it's the information itself.

 

"Many evolutionists claim that the origin of life is not part of evolution, but come on, they believe that all living things came from a single cell, which in turn came from a primordial soup."

 

"But notably absent from any rock anywhere is any trace of a primordial soup."

 

I want so badly to hop all over the term "evolutionists" here like a jackelope on the hot sands of West Texas, but I'll save it for later since there is so much wrong with this.
Technically these guys believe in abiogenesis if they think the creation account is true. Evolution and abiogenesis are two separate issues. A god could have created life a billion years ago and evolution would still be true. Evolution has happened and is happening now. Abiogenesis does not have to be proven to support it.
I would like to what someone's belief has to do with the case against evolution. What does the lack of evidence for something someone hypothesized happened have to do with evolution? Just in case they wanted some filler, they should have mentioned the sun is not a chariot ridden by Helios and Superman's fortress of solitude isn't real either. There are a million possibilities besides primordial soup so I don't think anyone should be surprised when they don't find it.

 

"Existence of a fossil by itself is actually proof that something happened very, very fast. We also know therefore that the rocks the fossils are formed in must have formed quickly as well."

 

Fossils are great examples of a specimen getting buried quickly. There are multiple things fossils can be buried in as well such as sedimentary rock or volcanic ash. There are different types of fossils though and not all can be explained as happening rapidly. A short timeline is years though and it only goes up from there when it comes to sedimentary rock.
They follow the statement with something about Noah's flood but they don't give evidence so I won't get into the weeds on that one because it is a pretty clear move from a case against evolution to religious propaganda.

 

"If the whole earth was pure carbon-14, it could only last about a billion years before it's all gone and we couldn't detect it. And yet, we repeatedly find carbon-14 in objects which are claimed to be millions, and even billions, of years old including diamonds."

 

Carbon dating is kind of complicated, but I'll try to explain this simply. Carbon-14 is radioactive and becomes nitrogen-14 with a half-life of 5,700 years or so and is generally not used to date anything over 20,000 years. By the way this phrase is said, we shouldn't find carbon-14 in anything at all if the earth is billions of years old, but they don't say that. The reason why they don't is because carbon-14 is produced on earth in different ways so many things become contaminated with it. After a certain point when objects have too little, or no carbon-14, but undergo the test for carbon dating, background radiation will seem as if it is the smallest margin of error for the test. This is how you get carbon-14 where there might actually be none and why something formed a billion years ago would test for younger. Of course the technician running the test might question your motives for the test in the first place if you knew the object was likely older than the test was accurate for. I would probably classify that with falsifying evidence.

 

"If the creator made us, then he owns us and has a right to make the rules for us. But if things made themselves, then there's no right or wrong. We're just really bags of rearranged pond scum. So what is murder? It's just one bag of chemicals impacting another bag of chemicals."

 

I won't argue the first part of this because I don't know what evidence he may have to support his claim of a creator. Things making themselves is as wrong as using a pickle spear to stir your hot chocolate. Something cannot make anything until it exists, especially not itself. I know causality is an important part of logic for humans, but isn't this a bit far fetched?
Right and wrong are concepts well beyond the scope of such a short post, but I would say if there were no humans around to ask what is right or wrong, would the concept exist at all? We see lots of "moral" behavior in mammals. Ours has become so complex it's confusing, but on the individual level, we decide what we think is best for us and our group. I honestly prefer meat machine to bag of chemicals, but I don't have a Ph.D. to back up such technical terms. I like to think my life has more intrinsic value to myself than other animals because I have the ability to comprehend it more than they. In that same thinking, I have respect for the lives of others because they too are valuable to themselves, to their family, and to their friends. I have a respect for the human condition which conflicts with biblical morality in that I believe people have value beyond their belief in God or Jesus.

 

"There's another reason why an evolutionist would hold onto their belief system even when all the fatal flaws are revealed and that is because if evolution isn't true, it strongly points them in a different direction."

 

I wonder if the saying this realizes the pope is an evolutionist and that is not his belief system? Evolutionists are just those who accept the evidence of evolution, no belief required. And besides all that, why would I care if the evidence lead in a different direction? I'm absolutely fine with being wrong. I guess they saved all the "fatal flaws" for the actual movie though. As a more appropriate rebuttal to this statement:
The reason why a creationist would hold to their belief system even when all the fatal flaws are revealed is because if evolution is true, it strongly points them in a different direction.

Where is the hope?

I think that probably one big question I will hear is where is the hope in not believing the Bible and the salvation through Jesus.
I honestly did take a lot of comfort in the idea of eternal life before my transition beyond Christianity. Forever is quite a long time and I truly think I would enjoy living that long.
I would be able to compose all the music I could literally ever imagine. I could paint murals which stretched for miles. (As someone who enjoys writing, i wonder if you could write stories with antagonists in heaven?) I could get a really great tan basking in the glorious starlight of newly formed stars at the pillars of creation.
Unfortunately just because it is a wonderful idea does not make it true. I can imagine a world where there's no gravity and clouds are made of cotton candy so nutritious it's all anyone ever needed to eat and no one ever has to work, ever. There aren't any ancient texts claiming that will happen but it's no more probable it will come to pass than an afterlife.
There's not much hope for anything beyond this life for me. I am quite a lucky product of a long line of miraculous events, but so is everyone who has ever lived.
I am no more special than the next person except for to myself and my family. Another statement which is generally true for all humans.
I am a consciousness higher than any other animal, able to ponder the cosmos.
So I have a lot to look forward to in this life.
Watching my children grow, seeing the rise of a digital world where everyone can own or explore anything, buying my dream car, spending countless evenings with my wife.... the list goes on and on.
There's a lot of hope for things to come while I live.
I cannot trust in the idea that I will have eternity, so I will have to try my best to have a good time while maintaining my responsibilities.
Honestly though, the idea that we are simply a meat robots doomed to base desires has crossed my mind more than once. Usually followed by the question of do I really control myself?
The very fact I'm pondering that question means I must to some degree. At the very least, I'm analyzing past events which would affect reactions in the future.
In some instances I am kind of in control. I get hungry and I have to eat. I have gone more than a day without food when it was readily available, but eventually, I will eat in order to survive. I get thirsty, I have to breath, there's a lot of needs I must meet in order to continue to exist as a conscious being. I can choose to abstain from anyone for short periods of time though.
I think the craziest part in all this though is imagining what it will be like after I die.
I spent a lot of my life preparing spiritually for eternity. Most people also plan for the eventuality of their death through wills, life insurance, savings and I'm sure a lot of other things as well. But will it matter?
I'm sure when I die it will matter to those I leave behind, but me, I'll be gone. My consciousness will have "left the building" so to speak. I truly cant imagine death though.
My blackest black and quietest quiet conjured up in my imagination just don't cut it. I'm still perceiving the real world around me. It will just be over, like an unending dreamless sleep.
I think I will mostly be sad it is the end before it comes, but I will think about the good things in my life like the way my daughter's cheeks fill up like tiny balloons when she smiles, the way my son laughs deviously when we play, or the day I got married.
But then, when all is said and done. I will be gone, no longer troubled with anything here, but also unable to experience the good. 
In the mean time, I'll have to do my best to make the most good experiences for myself and others that I can and that is where the hope lies. That I still have time to enjoy this life a little more.