Tag Archive | religion

A “Come To Jesus” Moment

Mar28

That’s actually an amusing title because I’m going to discuss why I’m agnostic/atheist and the inherent problems I see in religion in general.

And I’m bringing this up because I see Jews getting upset that Israel (and by extension, Judaism) getting criticized because of the apartheid state that Israel runs coupled with the ongoing Palestinian genocide that Israel is perpetrating. And no, don’t argue with me whether it’s genocide or not. It fits the UN definition and multiple international human rights organizations have all labeled it genocide. So I’m not arguing about this and if you come here to argue about it, your comment will just get deleted. I’m not playing games with genocide defenders (because YOU, the genocide defenders, are why Trump is in the White House right now).

Anyway, let’s get back to religion. Over and over again throughout history, you find a recurring pattern – every religion that has a deity or deities, and where those deities separate human beings based on whether they worship said deity(ies) or not, you have a religion that ultimately others non-worshipers and then commits atrocities, and often genocides, in the name of said deity(ies). Full stop. Historically, this is an irrefutable fact.

You cannot get around this flaw. Religion is completely just opinion because faith is just opinion about whether something invisible is real or not. You cannot scientifically test it. You cannot see, hear, taste, smell, or feel it. It’s just opinion and, to make matters as much worse as possible, it’s an opinion that, in the historical record kills non-believers.

Every religion that others non-believers has committed atrocities! Every religion that others non-believers is, therefore, a prime enabler of genocidal behavior.

No, I don’t care that your religion is “nice”. Look at the numbers. When you consider the “kind” versions of Christianity versus the Catholics and evangelicals, the Catholics and evangelicals are about 95% of the total. Again, don’t try to argue here. Catholicism and evangelicalism have been prime movers and supporters of colonization, imperialism, and destruction of non-western cultures. History is utterly clear on that too.

So why do we even bother trying to focus on the 5% who are usually “nice” versus the 95% who are hateful, murderous, imperialistic assholes?

I mean, statistically, if I were an alien visiting earth and I looked at religion, I’d conclude it drives humans to act in utterly irrational and violent ways. Sure, there are a tiny few who are special because of their religion, but there are kind atheists and agnostics too, and they didn’t need “faith” to get that way. Meanwhile, religion continues to drive genocides, “culture wars” that actually kill people the so-called “religious” don’t like, and these religions also seek to impose their opinions (their faith) on everyone else whether you like it or not.

So I am left with this question of why do humans even consider bothering with religion? Are y’all that afraid of death that you’ll murder others to guarantee yourselves seats in some fictional afterlife that absolutely does not exist?

Religion, all religion that tries to separate people into believers and non-believers, is toxic as hell. It’s violent always and it always devolves into mass murder eventually. Every single time. That is an inescapable conclusion of history.

Further, as we see in western nation after western nation, religion demands special treatment and to be exempt from the rule of law of the secular state. Christianity does this. Islam does this. And so does Judaism. Hell, the conservative Jews in Israel are now openly calling for a “civil war” to stop the leftist Jews, to kill other Jews because they see those Jews as a threat to their continued genocide of Palestinians.

I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t believe in a deity. I’m not going to tell you to stop being a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. But I am going to ask you to honestly try to justify to yourself if the very few decent Christians/Muslims/Jews that you know are worth the cost to humanity of all of the violent and hateful Christians/Muslims/Jews that you see daily on our news channels.

Because if you are going to cling to an opinion (a belief, without any factual backing) that some people are “lesser” just because they don’t believe the way you do, then no matter what else you say, you are not a safe person. Because, in the end, the safety of anyone is conditional on your belief in your particular sky daddy (or daddies, or mommy, etc.) and that’s neither safety nor trustworthy.

You Did This

Feb4

This is to every single person who told me I was “hysterical” for predicting the rise of theocratic based fascism in the United States as long as 11 years ago (before Trump even announced his candidacy)

This is for every single person who told me “that can’t happen here”.

This is for every single person who said our institutions would save us.

The entire time, conservatives have said in advance, publicly, precisely how they would undermine everything, destroy every safeguard, seize control of every institution.

Even if a given court rules Trump in contempt of violating a court order, who’s going to arrest him now? Who’s going to enforce anything?

And now we have the first concentration camp since WWII. We have citizens being threatened with deportation. Kids being denied medical care. An entire group of human beings being actively erased from existence and history (that’s called “genocide” for you who are too f*cking stupid to get it).

Some of you are just NOW finally asking how do we mobilize against this to “save” our country? You should have mobilized a decade ago. In waiting til now to realize this, you’ve already lost. The United States of America is already dead. And you can’t face that, can you? You killed it by your inaction, your refusal to listen to what they openly said.

For those that can get out, do it as soon as you can. For those that can’t, your lives and the lives of your descendants for generations will become a living hell.

You were warned and ignored every warning. You deserve what’s coming. Those of us who told you don’t deserve this but we’re the direct targets. Our blood will be on your hands too. Trump didn’t do this alone. You let him.

Carry that guilt to your grave. And to every spineless Democrat in Congress seeking “common ground” with these fascists? May you burn in hell.

Why Do We Need A Church Anyway?

Nov1

That thing that we all call the “church” was doomed from its inception. Frail, flawed human beings are going to fail, including in their conception and execution of the church. They are going to place themselves first, their wants, their needs, their narrow interpretations of a boundless deity who created a universe so vast we can barely comprehend the size, let alone all that is within it.

And you know, now that I think about it, Jesus didn’t preach creating churches, planting church seeds, none of that. He didn’t demand confessions or tithes or looking down one’s nose at those less “Christian” than he was.

Instead, he taught his disciples to simply spread the good news. And he said where two or more are gathered in my name was sufficient. It didn’t need a building, an organization, a tax break, an organ, a choir, hymnals… none of that. No megachurch, no TV stations, no fake games by the power mad.

And speaking of those power hungry, where I see those things, I see too often people, very often usually men, who seek nothing but power and dominance over others, as well as fame and fortune. Creflo Dollar, anyone? Pat Robertson? Jim Baker? How many people must these con men fleece before your heart awakens to the truth.

What truth? Jesus never needed those men. Neither do you.

Christianity, as religion, is as much a sham as the Old Testament rules were – rules that God gave Israel not because he wanted to but to show Israel that rules alone are never enough.

Maybe Jesus gave us the church to teach us the same thing – that we need to grow up, look past rules, look past the church, and learn to just love. Maybe it’s time to be the adults that Christ and so many other religious leaders have told us to be, to be kind to one another, to cherish one another, to lift up one another.

Because in far too short a time, we will all return to the stardust from which we came. And all that will be left are memories. If you live a life of rigidity, coldness, cruelty, all in the name of some hellfire breathing thunder god from Mt. Ararat, just what sort of memory will you leave? Not one that people will hold to, or cherish, I can guarantee you that.

A Response to the Lies of “A Sacred Androgen”

May8

Recently, the Antioch Review has published an article full of hateful lies, stereotypes, and absolutely incorrect medical information about transgender people titled “The Sacred Androgen” (link marked as “nofollow” so as not to boost the page’s rank).

In response to this, Brynn Tannehill wrote a scathing condemnation of the article and The Antioch Review itself, titled “Antioch Demonstrates Why Mid-West Kills Queers from the Inside Out“.

And in addition to Brynn’s article, I sent the following email to Christina Check who is listed as the contact for The Antioch Review. I encourage all of you to do likewise. The more they hear from us, the more they may realize they have done something ugly and horribly wrong, and perhaps retract and apologize for that piece of garbage they published.

My letter to the editor lies below this line

 

Really?

If you had published such a pile of garbage laden pile of tripe about black people, your offices might have been buried under angry responses from across the nation already.

If you had published such a garbage laden pile of tripe about gays, you would have been dragged through the major press and rightfully pilloried publicly destroying your reputation.

Yet you think you can get away with it against transgender people?

Your author uses every bad stereotype, ignores all the current medical evidence including neurobiological evidence that has led the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, the American Association of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association all to conclude that:

1. Being transgender is not a mental illness (and it’s no longer listed as one in the DSM)
2. Being transgender is a neurobiological medical condition caused by in utero hormonal ratio variations during early pregnancy.

Your article goes on and paints trans women as sex obsessed fetishists which couldn’t be further from the truth and which theory has been totally destroyed. Bailey’s work on “autogynephelia” has been refuted because what he thought was solely trans obsession turns out to be common natal female behavior as well.

Your author asserts that transgender people are mentally ill while mental health professionals say that being transgender is not a mental illness. Your author then goes on to support reparative therapy which has been proven to increase suicidality, and never ever “cures” anything.

Your author cites the 41% suicide attempt rate as proof of mental illness and ignores that mental health professionals cite that as proof of the deep systemic hatred and oppression our culture has displayed towards transgender people. Mental health professionals say YOU need to change your attitudes towards trans people, and not that trans people need to change.

Your author launches into rape culture objectification of women and then tries to use that as a reason to see trans women with disgust.

Your author tries to assert that trans women are just gay men but ignores actual biological evidence that trans women are as different from gay men, in the brain, as they can possibly be.

The above microscope slides are just one of many studies demonstrating that trans women have brain structures very similar to cisgender women and nothing at all like gay men.
In short, your article, “The Sacred Androgen”, is hate speech targeted at a minority group that is being actively attacked and oppressed today in popular media and by right wing politicians and churches for being different. Yet the medical community, across the board, supports trans people and who they say they are. There are only a few old fossils, like Paul McHugh, Bailey, and others who get regularly trotted out by the right wing to support these hateful views.

With the publication of “The Sacred Androgen”, The Antioch Review demonstrates that it is not a rational nor respectful publication and that anything it publishes should be ignored, discarded, and that the Review itself should be driven into the ground as a purveyor of hate speech.

You should be ashamed of yourselves but bigots never are. Just like racists have been hiding in the closet for the last 40 years until Trump came along, bigots never give up their ugly ways and we now know that The Antioch Review is a publication of bigots and bigotry.

Cara Ramsey

Deliberate Mistranslations – The Bible Used as a Weapon

Jul13

ChristA recent article that I read pointed out that the word used to describe the Roman centurions companion was “pais”. Modern bible scholars translate this word as “servant”, jumping through all manner of hoops to reach that conclusion. Why? Because among the Roman legions, which prohibited heterosexual marriage while serving Rome, same sex relationships were extremely common and the word pais was almost always referring to a Roman centurion’s shield bearer who was also almost always his same sex lover.

So we have yet another verse, deliberately mistranslated, in which Christ himself encounters a same sex couple, heals one of them, and praises the faith of the elder of the two.

Modern Christian scholars deliberately ignore the cultural context of Roman soldiers. Aside from being banned from heterosexual marriages, bisexuality was the norm in ancient Mediterranean cultures. Greece, Assyria, Babylon, and even in Rome there was a longstanding tendency towards bisexual behavior. Wealthy men often had wives as well as male lovers. It was routine for victorious armies to subjugate and rape the males of the losing army (when not outright executed) and then take them as slaves.

It was extremely common for Roman soldiers, especially centurions to have same sex lovers because of those prohibitions on heterosexual marriage while serving as a soldier of Rome. And in all other known historical cases of ancient Greek about Roman soldiers, pais is used to designate same sex lover of such soldiers.

So this case is actually very strong in this situation that this is about a same sex lover for the centurion, which means the translation presented by modern biblical scholars amounts to a lie deliberately trying to obscure that truth. What better way to corrupt the church than to turn it into an organization of hatred, bigotry, discrimination, and torment? Who is the church really serving with its hateful, divisive, bigoted campaign against LGBT people while quietly ignoring adultery, divorce, and dozens of other sins?

Words like “zakhar” in Leviticus (zakhar is not ish and ish is ancient Aramaic generic “man”) mean that 18:22 and 20:13 do not say “a man shall not lie with a man in the bed of a woman”. What they say is a man (ish) shall not lie with zakhar in the bed of a woman. And zakhar is not ish. What is zakhar? Perhaps you should find out, but it is most definitely not ish.

Paul’s admonition in the new testament so translated so often as “homosexuals” is a Greek word that appears to have been coined by Paul himself to make a very precise description, not a generic one. What was Paul condemning? Upon analysis of context and the word that Paul created it appears that he was condemning pedophilia with underage male sex slaves and indeed just a few verses later, Paul condemns the slavers who create this condition for these young males.

Every single verse assumed to be translated as expressing against same sex relationships suffers from similar translation difficulties. Every single one. Then, in addition, modern translators ignore the relationship between David and Jonathan, which properly translated suggested that David loved Jonathan “as a man loves a woman”.

Modern scholars deliberately try to gloss over the relationship of Naomi and Ruth. Every indication was that Ruth and Naomi were lovers, and God approved.

When you begin digging, you discover this ugly deliberate campaign by the church to translate in the manner most allowing outright lies as a means of assaulting LGBT people throughout the second millennium of the church, yet we now know LGBT people are born as they are due to biological forces outside their control. That campaign of bigotry appears to have really taken off with archbishop Nicmar of Reims in the 8th century AD.

There is even archaeological evidence that the first and second century churches conducted same sex weddings.

Modern biblical scholars have set aside scholarly attention to detail in favor of centuries old deliberate manipulations and lies that were created for the sole purpose of persecuting LGBT people. Their assumption and that of so many other Christians is that these centuries old lies are the truth, so their first inclination is to defend that lie and they refuse to consider the alternative when the alternative runs counter to the propaganda with which they have been indoctrinated.

There are even openly anti-gay scholars who, in examining the passage about the centurion admit that the most likely meaning in this situation, given the nature and restrictions of Roman legions and cultural context, is that pais is the centurion’s same sex lover.

When I watch the mental gymnastics that Christians go through to butcher the ancient Greek and ancient Aramaic in order to maintain their hatred and ugly treatment of LGBT people, it is nothing short of astounding. And don’t give me the “hate the sin, love the sinner” nonsense – the treatment of the church of LGBT people is unique. Divorcees are not treated that way. Adulterers are not treated that way. Rapists are not treated that way. Pedophiles (like Josh Duggar) are not treated that way. Thieves, even murderers are not treated this way. Don’t try to cover hateful bigotry by trying to call it love. Because if that is what the church calls love, I do not want to see what they call hate.

Face it, the only reason so many Christians focus so much on LGBT people is this is the one thing they cannot see themselves committing so that excuses their full wrath, anger, and bigotry against LGBT people, while quietly accepting divorce, adultery, pedophilia, and so many other sins.

But the modern fundamentalist church is losing this discussion. Their viewpoint about LGBT people will soon pass into history as absurd as the church’s insistence that left handedness was a sign of demonic possession or that the “curse of Ham” was a valid biblical basis for racism (yes, the church argued that for centuries). Indeed, the 8+ year running trend of the Southern Baptist Convention of losing members, even while the US population is growing, means that organizations like this are being seen as more and more isolated, more and more irrelevant, and more and more in denial of modern medicine and science.

I have a saying I’ve used frequently before and it applies here – faith that denies science and reality is fantasy, and dangerous fantasy at that. Large segments of the modern church (not all but many) are largely engaged in one of the most hateful, cruel, and dangerous fantasies in history in its unjustified persecution of LGBT people. Within 50 years, our children’s children will look back and ask how anyone could have held and reconciled such beliefs. How will they remember you?