The Christocentric Definiton of Atheism

I am sure that you have heard this before: atheists are only atheists because they don't like the Christian God (for whatever variety of reasons). Atheism to people with such a mindset is fervently opposed to Christianity alone, and is simply a refusal of their own doctrine. To such people, no other world views have any factor on the decision to become an atheist, no other gods are being "opposed" or "denied". It is only the god that they believe in that needs to be actively despised or rejected in order for one not to believe in it.

It is hilariously egotistic, thoroughly entrenched in the presuppositions of their own doctrine, and so blatant in its disregard of how they, by the implications of their assertion of atheism being hatred of a deity, must have an incredible amount of spite towards every other god that others hold as being true.

So, yes, atheists are only atheists because they despise Jesus and Yahweh. Serves you right for how much resentment you bear towards Allah, Vishnu, and the entire Greek pantheon.

Atheism: As conceived by those who believe that atheism is inconceivable.

This, my friends, is a flow chart showing how one becomes addicted to atheism!
And here I thought that my daily PCP binges and delicious baby corpse supply were enough to be addicted to. But, apparently, I am also addicted to not believing in god(s). It's like crack to me, I just can't enough of "no God". But, don't take my word for it! Let's go through the process, so that I could admit to all my fellow snorters of the cocaine of naturalism, and finally accept my grievous ailment.

Okay, first symptom is "sin". I have a strong desire to do something morally wrong, that nice, ethically infallible religion would expressly forbid me from doing. I know that I explicitly said to myself, when learning about Judaism, that I would never join them because I have strong desire to eat non-kosher foods. I explicitly forbade myself from becoming a Muslim because I am not the kind of guy who likes to fast, and I really don't that whole pray five times a day thing. I have a schedule to keep, dammit, and I need myself a deity that can understand that! And, after years of searching, I finally came upon Christianity, and saw that they didn't allow people to have sex before marriage! Well, since obviously no Christian could ever break that moral code and still consider themselves sincerely to be amongst the ranks of the saved, I decided to shun Christianity in order to live a carefree of debauched sex that no Christian has ever lived in the course of known history.

The second symptom would be redundant, but I need to see how badly I am afflicted. So, I ask myself, "am I angry with God"? Well, obviously. I am an atheist; the only way that I could fall into such a wretched state is if something catastrophic happened in my past to drive me away from the default assumption which every human being should have crammed into their head: that there is a God, and it is the one described in the Bible, with no possible deviations at all. So, logically, if something bad happened to me, then God is not just, and therefore there cannot possibly be any gods at all. At least that is what my pastor told me before I ran him down with my tractor.

Third symptom is follower syndrome. Yep. Got a boatload of that. There are atheists swarming all around in my neck of the woods, we have congregations where we meet and make sure that we have identical beliefs, and every single idea I have in my head is directly taken from a Richard Dawkins book. I only do what I am told, make arguments that have been made a thousands times before, and refuse to change my position. At complete odds with the religious in that regard.

And now, for the product of those three initial drives: discarding of God. I guess, as an atheist, I have done that. If I hadn't, well...I guess I need a better dictionary.

Oh, and now for the results! First, there is a sense of freedom, where the world becomes topsy-turvy, where sin becomes acceptable, virtue becomes meaningless, and you are exempt from any possible consequences for indulging in your desire to spend hours sodomizing cats. There just is no morality without Jesus looking over your shoulder.

And, our second result is narcissism, where we become our own god when there is none to worship. This sounds about right, as I have yet to meet an arrogant, narcissitic, or prideful religious person in my entire life. There is absolutely no way that you can use your faith to vicariously elevate yourself over others...at all.

This all leads to the inevitable loss of purpose inherent in refusing to accept the undeniable reality that we are all Jesus's divine Chia Pet. Without using excessive theology to explain why we humans obviously have a purpose in the grand scheme things (no matter how crappy that purpose truly is.), we are left without value, and left in a dark depression that forces us to accept the Truth that is Jesus Christ! (Please disregard the fact that a similar depression supposedly leads away from religion...)

And, failing to do this, you are banished to a temporary eternity of hedonism and arguments against religion, since Christianity is the only surefire cure for your physical urges and your desire to tear down establishments through ranting and polemic! Accept Jesus today, and you too can be free from the endless cycle that has been brought upon you by your strong urge to kill, your tragic memory of your little sister drowning at summer camp, and the vile temptations that are the writings of Richard Dawkins. Fight your terrible, unspeakable desires, put your obvious hatred of God for tragedies of yesteryear behind you, and stop worshipping those atheistic authors, and you too can trick yourself into believing that you have the answers, and yet feel as if that is not an inherently egotistic way of thinking. Reclaim your life's purpose today, and get a free T-shirt! *

(Note: You already own the T-shirt, and you will be instructed to give it to yourself upon winning the contest. If you do not own a T-shirt already, you will be instructed to buy one yourself and the expenses will be put toward the contest entry fee, which will be exactly equal to the price of the T-shirt. Offer not valid in Utah, Ohio, or Wyoming, for reasons known only to me and the women who have restraining orders against me in those states. We will not be held legally responsible if your T-shirt happens to suck.)

Where the second set of footprints really went...

The devil may be the one admitting it, but you know that Jesus must have gone piggyback and pushed cocaine on us during at least one occasion. It would be negligent of him to not do so...

The Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot Gambit

Okay, I have been seeing a lot of this come up lately, and it grows increasingly annoying because it obvious that it is a hell of a lot easier to ask, remember, and regurgitate across the intertubes than it is to come up with a clear and concise response to why it is more than a little off kilter. The basic idea is this: atheism is no better/worse than Christianity because the worst crimes and atrocities committed by Christians have only death tolls in the thousands, but the atheists Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot all killed a number of people in the millions.

Let me just point out the problems, step by step. The first little complaint is that "atheism" cannot be equated to Christianity as an ideology, in that atheism is simply the lack of belief in god(s) and has no other common doctrine or conclusions attached to the title. As such, there is very little uniting atheists together, and very little that defines them as being similar, and, as such, any given atheist has less in common with another atheist than a Christian would have in common with a Christian (even despite the heavily sectarian nature of the religion), due to the large amount of doctrine that they both are exposed to, are influenced by, and tacitly accept. Atheists have no such comparable exposure or adherence to common ideas, and, as such, atheism in of itself cannot be as connected to the activities of any given atheist as it could be for any given Christian. I know this sounds unfair, and undemocratic of me, but I think it stands to reason that people who all believe in the existence of God, the veracity of the Bible, the divinity of Jesus, the necessity of his moral law (whatever those morals may be...), and who regularly interact with those who share those beliefs in settings focused explicitly on them have slighty more ideological connections to one another than the rare, insular people whose only common belief is that they have no belief in the religions that surround them.

The second problem is related to the first: that, even though these three dictators were all atheists, what defined their actions and mindsets more than simple non-belief in gods alone were the ideologies of communism to which they subscribed (and abused in order to attain oppressive totalitarian regimes). There was far more similarities in regards to their political ideologies than anything to could be said about atheism alone.

The third issue is both of a general defense of any set of ideas, beliefs, or actions that are challenged due to an alleged connection to a set of horrifying events. Though it is tempting to leap to judgment when a (presumably) clear correlation between some kind of ideology's prominence in a society or many societies and horrible events occuring in those locations, it is pertinent to try to reserve judgment unless you have seen that the ideology can and has influenced such behavior in several different socio-political climates, varied in time and location. The more it seems to occur across different times and regions, the more confidently we can blame the ideology itself, rather than underlying problems in the population, societal structure, economy, etc., which is presumably unrelated to the ideas criticized. And, unfortunately, the atrocities of communist regimes are relatively confined to a few struggling nations within the early to mid 20th century. Whether these nations alone reflect upon an inherent evil in communism or atheism, one could hardly say with honesty.

The fourth issue is whether the massive death toll somehow makes Christianity's own death toll from the witch trials, Crusades, Inquistion, etc. less significant. There are few problems with this. The first is that the three atheistic regimes did not engage in formal warfare, which is what constitutes an "atrocity", apparently, whereas this was the primary fashion in which Christianity went about killing a majority of the lives that could be tallied up against it. The problem is that we somehow dismiss the warfare as justifiable and beyond reproach (in fairness, I do not mean to suggest that Christianity in of itself was behind every war of Christian nations, but I simply mean to express that one need not spill the blood of many dissidents when you are sending off your own to kill and die for the sake of glory, satisfying the desire for violence and power in a more "acceptable" fashion). The second is that Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot had a much larger population to work with and, as such, it is a little underhanded to suggest that the failure of Christians to kill millions within the confines of a decade in the Middle Ages, as these three have done in the 1900's, somehow reflects upon some form of restraint. The third is related to the second: Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot not only had a larger crop of potential victims than Christianity had in its more impressionable years, but they also had much more efficient modes of execution. Even if the population had been identical to today back during the Inquisition, the Inquisition would still fail to have a significant death toll comparable to the atrocities of the three communist regimes without the Industrial era tools, transportation, and weaponry to do it (to say nothing of the fact that the Inquisition would need to focus more on execution and less on torture to compete).

So, to put it concisely, atheism is not detailed, consistent, or universal enough in its implications to be blamed for the actions of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot; what is more more relevant to the Big Three's behavior is communist ideology itself (which, even there, they deviate); one should not dismiss any set of ideas or beliefs as the direct cause of certain events without seeing that there is not something else at work (the fact that most successful and peaceful European countries of our day and age are atheistic helps to show that the assumption that atheism itself leads to these atrocities is flawed); and Christianity's atrocities are not entirely mitigated by the fact that they have lower total deaths attributed to them, given the fact that those atrocities may have been much larger in scope if given the population size and technology of the nations that they are being compared to.

All in all, this little argument, though deceptively convincing, is blatantly unfair and is a glorified illustration of jumping to the conclusion of correlation implying causation. As such, this argument is suitable as a rebuttal to a similarly unfair jump in logic of trying to cast doubt upon the entire precipice of Christianity by touting about a few acts of violence of centuries past. When it comes down to it, and you get beyond the false appeal of an argument from consequences, none of the tenets of Christianity, nor the arguments of atheism, are swayed in the slightest. They merely sit, ignored, as we entertain ourselves with horrific distractions.

Acceptance

In mortal frame, passions withdrawn, I stand
Ever silent, cold and weeping
As man of mud and dust, black soul, dark land
Claim inner flame, mind still sleeping

Triumphant over human flesh, exalted
I sit dreaming, preaching, shouting
Of life beyond where sense is halted
Knowing, seeing, face death without routing.

Yet think of what it means to be
Men composed of flesh, bone and blood merely
Whose thoughts still ring, whose eyes still see
Who can dream, and feel, and think despite me.

Transcendant, foolish, too eager to fade away
I lie, wishing for a life that I once could not stay.

Ten Things We Have In Common

Ten things that believers and unbelievers have in common:

1. We are both human. Sometimes a little too human.
2. We both have feelings (and they can be hurt...I think...)
3. We both enjoy our occasional picture cube program, intertube surfage, or soundbox listening.
4. We can both agree that this guy is insane.
5. We are both imperfect (whether or not we can seriously admit it).
6. We both love love and beauty.
7. We both hate hate and injustice.
8. We both have lives and parts of ourselves that are not solely dictated by religious belief (or lack thereof).
9. ....
10. Profit!

Isn't this special.

This nice little Christofascist has decided to take it upon himself to speak for his God and point out who is going to hell (surprisingly, including entire websites on his list...can blogs burn for eternity?).

Honorable mentions:
"P.Z Myers : P.Z. Myers is not only a Atheist of the worst sort, he is a scientist who promotes the lies of man kind evolving from primate love. NSFA."

"Barack Obama Hussein Bin Laden: Muslim, Pro-Homosexual, Pro-Abortion, America hater. Carries the curse of Ham." (He damns Hillary too, but it is less hilariously wrong/racist).

"The Evil Atheist Conspiracy: Satan worship in 6 languages complete the mark of the beast. Their motto, “We’re after your children and pets.” NSFC"

"Landover Baptist: THE MINSITRY ISN’T HELLBOUND BUT THE FORUMS ARE!
WARNING: A real church web site but it is under constant attack by Liberals and Atheists making the forums there full of UN-Patriotic propganda. It is frequented by Liberal con artists and who spread lies and abominations. The Front page are articles are safe but the Forums are NSFW, NSFC, NSFA, NSFH."

"4Chan: Evil and Liberalism abound like the Black Plague. “4chan is a simple sinful image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images.” This vile site offers more pornography and free thinking than Playboy magazine. NSFW, NFFW, NSFC<21"

Well...I've got to agree with him on the last one...but his obliviousness in regards to Landover Baptist and Evil Atheist Conspiracy is just priceless!

Edit: Wow...guess this explains why he took Landover Baptist seriously! Place is a Poe site, just like Landover! Guess I'm a bit late to the game on this one....

Releasing the Demonic Liberal Within Me: Guns on Campus

So...you guys hear about that shooting that happened last year? Yeah...it was a pretty low profile event, something about some crazy Vietnamese kid, and some college down in Virginia. I don't remember the exact details, since it was barely covered by the news, like, at all. [/sarcasm]

Well, apparently in the wake of the Virginia Tech Massacre, every campus in America has students looking around with shifty, fearful eyes, wondering if they will be next. It is a wonderful paranoia that flies in the face of reason, and is inspired directly from remembering a single tragic event that is etched in one's memory rather than realizing that such horrific and memorable shootings happen incredibly rarely, and claims relatively few lives compared to almost any other conceivable way of dying. School shootings have resulted in a total of 323 deaths over the course of 40 years, which, in light of the fact that the city of Detroit alone had 418 murder cases in 2006, one should seriously be paranoid of being killed wherever you go if you seriously fear being killed in a schools shooting. It reminds of me when kids in middle school (and some teachers) were seriously concerned with the possibility of a terrorist attack in the wake of 9/11. never realizing for a moment that we were a school of 400 students in the middle of nowhere that was of little concern to anyone.

The basic point is that you can't let a few extreme cases of a psychopath going wild define your perception of reality. Because, if you do, then suddenly there are mafia hitmen, serial killers, and Illuminati members around every corner (or at least, that is what you insist to be the case). But, what are campuses across America trying to do in order to address these fears of a possible school shooting devastating their own university? They're entertaining the idea of letting the students overcome these fears by allowing them carry concealed weapons on campus! Now, I don't know about you, but personally I am far more comfortable with the idea of some random student getting pissed off, going berserk, and killing a few people (because it is incredibly unlikely to happen on any given campus), than letting every other person on campus pack heat as a precaution against such a rare, improbable occurence. The problems of trying to fight paranoia by making students believe that they have to be armed in order to be safe is counter-intuitive to an extent that makes me wonder about how logical it is for grown adults to buy into the same concept.

But, that's just my two cents. Also: take away second ammendment rights! Anarchy! Watch it all burn, burn like a thousand gasoline-fueled forest fires! Yes! Yes!