Atheist Experience

Christianity: It’s Just About Being Nice to People?

Atheism & Religion

by heicart

Someone wrote to us from a “non-English speaking country,” to say that his friend asked him why he, as an atheist, objects to Christianity—since it’s only teaching people to be good to one another? The writer said he wasn’t very familiar with Christianity and asked me why it should be such a big problem for people to teach their children to be kind? What did I think about that? Here is what I replied:

 

Thank you for writing.

I encourage you to do a Google search for “Why do we need salvation?”

What Christianity teaches is not just to be a good person.

It teaches that all people are wicked. Many of the churches teach that even children are born wicked. Because of this, people need to be “saved.” If you ask “saved from what?” you will hear about some sort of punishment or torment, usually. Some sort of hell, or some sort of eternal separation from god—that is darkness and despair. According to Christians, this is what all humans deserve—sometimes even children deserve hell for being born sinful. Churches believe that human beings all deserve to die—not just that we will die, but we deserve to die. And some churches think every human deserves to be tortured for eternity—just because we are human, and that is how horrible every human being is.

I think that is a horrible lesson for children. I think people are good. Sometimes we can do bad things. But we are basically good people—most of us. We do not deserve to die. We do not deserve to be tortured or tormented forever. That is awful.

So, to show his “love,” god decided that he would send part of himself to Earth to become a human being. He was born, grew up, and preached to people for a few years. Sometimes he said nice things—like treat people nicely. And sometimes he was pretty bad—chasing people with whips and comparing one woman to a dog, because she was a different ethnicity. Sometimes he taught good things—like help people in need. And sometimes he taught irresponsible things—like do not prepare for your future, because god will take care of everything for you.

Then, after a few years, it was time to “save” everyone. And here was god’s plan: Since Jesus had not done anything bad, he was considered to be clean. In the Old Testament, the sacrificed animals had to be pure and not sick or lame. They were sacrificed to god as payment for all the wrong-doings the person had done. But god was tired of all these animals, and so he thought a really good sacrifice would be to have a perfect human being slaughtered for him. So he wanted a human sacrifice this time—not just more animals. And so he had Jesus beaten and tortured and crucified to death as a human sacrifice. Jesus had not done anything wrong—but other people had. And so god thought it was a good application of justice to kill an innocent person to pay for other people’s crimes.

So, Jesus was sacrificed to god, and god was happy with that.

Then after three days, Jesus came back from the dead to show everyone that he was more powerful than death. And when people saw it—they were happy because they believed him when he told them that they could be more powerful than death, too. All they had to do was devote their lives to Jesus and follow his rules and believe he would bring them back to life after they died. They had to follow him and be grateful that he was a human sacrifice. And they had to also admit they were worthless, evil creatures that needed to be washed cleaned in the execution blood of Jesus.

Every weekend after that, they all would meet together and drink wine and eat bread—that represented the blood and flesh of Jesus. And they would have a symbolic cannibalism snack to remind them about the bloody human sacrifice.

And this is the core teaching of Christianity.

 

The letter writer responded to say, “Thank you for taking your time and answered my question, it was pretty funny how you put it, about what Christianity is based on, hahahaha it made me laugh, and again, thank you and keep up with the show  ”

Tags: salvation

 

Aside

Young Atheism

Good Morrow Atheists and other readers!

Yes, I still struggle to get my message out there because this is my first blog ever! I have to strategically embed it into all of the leisure/social electronic networking that I do to spread the GOOD news! But I digress…

My daughter had her best friend over this weekend and she happened to leave one of her college papers here on accident and I just picked it up. The subject is religion and how people are still following it even though it is obviously filled with crooks in almost ALL of the leadership positions. She goes on to mention such mind-criminals as Joel ‘The Hole’ Osteen and various other modern day snake oil salesmen who are not at all masking their Tony Robbins style of mind control. Not that this is necessary seeing that 80 or greater percent of humanity are a bunch of vapid, media-digesting lemmings, but just so you know where this is going, get my drift? This is not new or news in that we already know that those of us who buck this archaic system of spiritual slavery are going to be reviled for our forward-thinking, our vision into a world absent of the yoke of religious oppression.

The paper goes on to point out various things that should be obvious to the average person, that the religion is not on the level and should be ACTUALLY regarded as a financial institution fully vested in the task of earning money for it’s leaders. The opulence in which these assholes exist and to which they elevate the church should at once be the cue, but serves to actually BUILD the flock of the blind! Check out the many Osteen books and seminars, the suits he wears, the money he makes and see if it can be equated with the simple robes and sandals supposedly worn by Jesus! Lemmings eat this shit UP! Some would say that this represents the Great Whore of the ‘End Times.” I say give me her number, I could use a good whore about now! HA! Just kidding! Seriously, the Great whore seems to come into the living room and to the mega-churches everyday and hoodoo EDUCATED people into believing this fairy-tale bullshit!

Just today I was into my Yahoo page and one of the stories was about Jillian Michaels and her new adoption as well as coinciding birth, from her partner, of their new baby. Now I clicked in because I thought I might get to see her in some of her incredibly sexy workout clothes but it was not to be. The article said that she was told early on that she could not have children. Ms. Michaels says that GAWD had other plans for her! This is where it gets to the point that I say that humanity is too stupid to carry on! In Vietnam many of the people are Christians as well as Korea. In Mexico almost all of the population is Catholic. In Ireland you have the Catholics and the Protestants. In the good ol’ USA you have a mix of all AND you have gays and lesbians that go to church, WHY!! All of the above groups that I have just named were FORCED to capitulate or they were killed! Why are these idiots still embracing the religion of their oppressors? Yes, I understand the sociology, but that means that we are truly base life forms who are to pass into history just like the Dodo!

These are frustrating times for those of us who embrace science and reason over cockamamie fairy bullshit. These churches are an unchecked infection that is ravaging mankind and the most prominent symptom is BLINDNESS! Todays huckster sells you on how ‘hip’ it is to believe in fairy tales, that GAWD doesn’t MIND if you have wealth because the ‘faithful’ deserve it for being so kind and upstanding! Church is now run on business models that are right out in the open now! They don’t have to hide it because the business man astually LIKES that his church is the most successful. Sound like the Mormons? They have been following the business model for years earning them the animosity of the other faiths, but now that it’s the ‘in’ thing, it’s popular now for all churches to be a business. This and they dangle the fact that other church members will only patronize YOUR business because you are one of them.

Beware, is all that I can say. Beware of these motivational spiritual self-help books based in religion that will encourage you to believe that you can’t improve yourself without faith. When I envision ‘The Great Whore’, besides thinking of yo’ mama(just kidding, I am a guy you know), I see these Creflo Dollar/Joel Osteen/Benny Hinn fucking illusionists preying on the weak-minded, the troubled and the psychologically injured souls who are searching for meaning and falling for the Tony Robbins-like pump-up to make them feel whole again. Atheists tend to have these traumatized souls as well, but traumatized from religion. We also have the fiercely independent people who think appropriately that religion is just another crutch, a plug in the the leaky wall, a band-aid and not a viable solution to problems that need a PERMANENT solution.

On that note, I will say FUCK FUCKETY FUCK FUCK FUCK!! Strange ending? Sorry. I had a houseguest over the weekend who calls EVERYONE on ‘Language’. This isn’t because of religion, but the adherance to certain rules closely resembles that crap! With such prose as the above, I am finding that one does NOT necessarily use cursing because their vocabulary is lacking, please see above rant as an example. I have NEVER been accused of the lack of vocabulary, indeed I have been vociferously accused of using my ‘Harvard Mouth’ to baffle and gain the upper hand in a debate! Team America-FUCK YEAH! I will now sign off and attend to the business of fighting religion by other means. Please, if you are a believer, leave a response. I have not been, in one of my thousands of debates with believers, been swayed or even close to beaten when debunking religion. I have science and reason and NOTHING trumps THAT!  Peace out!