Ask Yourself Some Questions ….

I

Is it love to tell people that an all-good God exists?  No because it is to say that people should not be valued above all but he should for he is all-good and better than us. That is putting belief before people.  If it is okay to do that then how could hurting people in the name of God be wrong?  Jesus went as far as to say that this God must be loved with all the heart (emotions) and our entire being.  Thus we must value people only for his sake and not for their own.  Lovers say they love one another with all their hearts.  They do not.  As long as you feel love for a parent or child or pet or whatever you are depriving the beloved.  You are keeping feelings for somebody other than the beloved.  Jesus said the commandment was the greatest meaning that whoever has feelings for themselves or others is the vilest thing this side of Hell.

II

Is it love to be ordered or asked to believe that it is God's concern what you do?  Let us examine this.  Is evil wrong because God says so or is it wrong whether there is a God or not?  If it is wrong because God says so then God can order us to abuse children.  Obeying would be right and good.  If even God cannot make right wrong or good evil then we can be good without God.  Good would be independent of God.  It would be his job to discover what is good but he cannot make anything good just by commanding it.  The Christian reply that good is God's nature so that what he commands is good does not solve the problem.  The reply is only a trick to make it appear they have an answer.  Both the view that God makes things good by commanding them and the view that good is independent of God are fatal to the notion that we need to believe in a God who commands good in order to have a moral code.  The Christian answer is just a rewording and amalgamation of the two views disguised as a third view.  So its worse than either of them.

The proper view is that we don't need to believe in God to believe in helping people with joy and compassion.  In fact, even if there is a God, we should be doing good for it is good and not to please him.  Its none of his business.  Good is more important than God or prayer.  Jesus said that we must love God with all our powers and this is the greatest commandment and the next greatest is to love one's neighbour - thus it is less important to help a leper than to love God.  He plainly declared that God and Christian doctrine comes before anything else.  We reject such attitudes as the seeds of violence and religious war. 

Is it love to be asked to keep laws that hurt just because God supposedly made them?  Religion claims that God knows what is best and can command what seems to be morally abhorrent from our perspective.  For example, he harshly commands that people who divorce and remarry must suffer Hell forever. Religion says, "Doctors and politicians make decisions which seem cruel but which are necessary evils so why can't God do it?  So we must obey God."   Is the doctrine of divine authority not the reason why we see religious inspired violence and peoples’ lives wrecked by listening to God’s ministers?  Oh what power it gives them!   Is it any wonder we read in the Old Testament that God wanted homosexuals caught in the act not just put to death but tortured to death?  Religion has sinister implications – therefore it is dangerous and no child should be exposed to its seductions.  Society needs to start frowning on the baptism of children and stop any form of religious education of children that can be termed abuse.  Eg telling a child not to think or that fornicators will suffer in Hell forever if they do not repent.

Rules should be kept to a bare minimum for breaking them makes it harder for the breaker to love herself so that she can help herself and others better and produces more fear – fear is the reason we do wrong.  Is it love to be asked to keep laws that don’t hurt just because God supposedly made them? No for then you are keeping the laws not because they are harmless but because God made them which means you would observe them even if they were harmful.  See what is good and do it.  You don’t need a God to be your king.

III

Is it love to tell people that there is a supernatural purpose for evil meaning much suffering should happen? If we really care about people we will not believe that and we will not let people suffer nor believe that they should. Even if you deny that people should suffer, once you believe in God you cannot be as sure of that so it undermines you and insults them. Dentists have to hurt people to help them but we should not believe that the rotting teeth in the first place have a good purpose that only God knows and has planned. The people you see must come before the God you cannot see.  The truly good person does not try to find ways to condone what appears reprehensible.  The believer is no better than the do-gooder who tries to find excuses for a child torturer's grave depravity.

IV

Is it love to be asked to follow scriptures, prophets and priests as the mouthpieces of God whose revelations we have a duty to accept for we have no right to contradict God? In practice there is no difference between a person who may really speak for God and one who is just lying to get an undue influence over your life.  Maybe the prophet is genuine but you don't know that!  Those who are lied to are convinced the imposter is not a fake.  Even experts in theology or philosophy are often taken in or pretend to be. To promote faith in God when this faith is not faith in God at all but faith in men and in their alleged authority from God to speak for him is wrong. It is really promoting their interpretation, and their perception which is wrong and bigoted. They make decisions that are supposed to be God’s but there is no practical difference between obeying men who really are from God and men who are not but say they are. Most people are not skilled enough to see through the deception and it is evil to ask them to obey popes and prophets. To follow prophets is to follow men not God even if they claim to speak for God.  There are countless versions of the faith even within each religion.  There are countless religions and possible scenarios for inventing a new religion.  Most people, even experts, must be making mistakes.  To follow any religion is really to follow men.  End of story.

V

Is it love to promote religion which tells the lie that we can sacrifice? We can’t sacrifice for we do what we want to do depending on the circumstances.  If you don’t want to be rich and ignore this desire to take the wealth nobody sees that as a sacrifice! If that isn’t then nothing is.  Thus we must be suspicious of saints and altruists!  Religion teaches that love is sacrifice and denies that loving others through yourself, ie loving yourself automatically makes you nicer to other people for you are happy to share yourself with them which is egoism is love. Religion is really just getting in the way of goodness.  Religion lies in wait to deceive.

VI

Is it love to promote religion which tells the lie that to say Adam did wrong freely (wasn’t programmed by nature) is to suggest that Adam is at least partly evil and therefore partly hateful? You can’t love the sinner if you hate the sin or see it as evil any more than you can say you trust the sinner but not his sins with a straight face!  To condemn Adam’s sin as evil is as good as saying Adam is evil.  To say you make a distinction between blame and responsibility is to add to the hypocrisy.  To say somebody is responsible for evil is to blame them - declare them deserving of punishment and condemnation - at least implicitly.  It is never the evil action that is the problem but the evil in the person that is shown by the action.  It is that that really hurts and awakens our desire for retribution.

Religion stop your lies.  You do not love the sinner and hate the sin.  You say do do.  If you hate the sin, you must hate the sinner for the sin only reveals the sinner and says what kind of person he is.  It cannot be separated from the sinner.  To say John’s homework is bad is to say John is bad - at least up to a point.   You may love your evil father but when you think of him as evil or sinful you hate him then.  In fact, the true opposite of love is not hate but indifference for you can't really hate a person unless you value or love them in some way.  So to call on people to love sinners and hate sins is incitement to hatred.  You can't really hate a brick for falling on you.  You do feel a personal hatred whenever people hurt you because it is not the deed they have done you hate but them.  You can't hate a thing such as a deed but only the doer of the deed!  How can religion say it loves when it lies about those who admit that nobody can love sin and hate sinners?  Religion even smears them as dishonest people!  Religion, your hatred is so sneaky and hypocritical and you have slandered, tortured and killed people through your lies.

Let us work against bad deeds but not hate them.  We don't need to hate.  Be an atheist and joyful in your atheism. 

VII

Is it love to ask or encourage people to join and commit to faith organisations or religions that can be done without and which are too amenable to abuse? If you want faith work out your own needs and invent your own faith to satisfy them and keep it private. Religion gives people an extra and needless excuse to fight and kill and so it is bad.

VIII

Is it love to promote something that tells you that you have to believe x, y and z? Who cares if people don’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God – what matters is how they treat themselves and if they bring joy to others. Humanism only advises people to believe whatever puts people first and only asks them to be very careful and not to be afraid to change their minds. If religion is acceptable, then why not help people to find the beliefs that work for them and improve their lives? Religion seeks to get people to believe the same things as it believes, not caring if it is best for them or not.

IX

Religion is divisive and causes suspicion and trouble and war. Those who say there is one true religion must admit that religion is dangerous for they will see other religions as false and in opposition to the truth. Suicide bombers kill for religion because they think they will awaken in paradise. They are the people who sign the affidavit that religious belief causes death and destruction and even peaceable forms of it are dangerous in their own blood. Once you choose faith over reason and human welfare, no matter how decent you are, you are advocating what could snowball into an openly destructive form of faith. All suicide bombers started off believing that God came first not people (a belief advocated by the evil Jesus when he said that the greatest command is the love of God and the second greatest and therefore less important one was love of neighbour – so people are to be valued for God and not for themselves, it is really only religion that ultimately matters). Their belief that religion mattered not people was the seed that grew into the tree that led them to bring on their horrific deaths. They were murderers in their attitudes long before they murdered. Whoever devalues people is a killer in his heart and desires no matter how much charm he pours out on them.  Human beings are shockingly irrational.  Be aware of this.  Religion then comes along promising a pie in the sky and invisible blessings and fantasy friends.  It is a dangerous poison when it offers itself to beings as irrational and often stupid as us.  We are bad enough without it.

X

It is your desires that are important to you - not the thing desired.  For example, the wife who adores her necklace in reality adores how it makes her feel.  Maybe there are good memories associated with it!  In other words, what is important is not what you think you want but you wanting it for it would mean nothing without the wanting. To get something you desire fulfils your feelings. It is this fulfillment you want not the thing itself. (It is not money that matters to the avaricious it is how money makes them feel.) Denying this is the lie on which all religion depends and we all know it’s a lie. For example, religion says stuff like that we want God or want Jesus and want to pray. Therefore religion has no right to cause the divisions and suspicion and guilt and fear that results from its teachings. Religion is bad and the good it does cannot justify it for it exists only because people lie to themselves and each other. So would it be wrong to think that “Good” like that serves only to enslave and exploit for the men of God are not interested in God at all?

If your answer is no to many of these questions then please consider joining a humanist organization or at least cut all ties with religion and do not support the clergy in any way for ultimately they are to blame for all the evils carried out by religion.

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Atheism is Honesty

Fact – You like even the most unpleasant tasks in the sense that you feel you have to do them for it is only right so you like them to some extent and this liking causes you to do them.

Fact- You can only focus on one thing at a time. Therefore the desire you have this moment causes you to do what you do in this moment. Examine yourself.

Fact – Liking means finding pleasure in something. When you say you choose what you mean is you do what you like or desire to do under the circumstances. To do it is to fulfill yourself to some degree – its to satisfy your desire. Desire is behind everything you do for without desire you wouldn’t have what you call choice and you wouldn’t be able to act without desire. This is not an assumption, all admit and know that when we do something it is always in response to some desire. Desire means being after some kind of fulfillment.

Therefore – everything I do no matter how altruistic it looks is done for self-indulgence. When I help another person and suffer for them without any gain for myself, and not even to feel good after, I am doing it solely because my desire to help them is being fulfilled. I am helping them to fulfill myself NOT to help them. Altruism is a lie. The alternative, the view that we are self-centered and can’t be other than that, is true.

We are not suggesting that everybody does what they do because they want something like praise or money or to feel good about themselves. We are suggesting that doing a good act is its own reward. The reward is in relieving the desire by doing it. We do all we do for relief of a desire and not necessarily for anything else. To deny this is to deny that desire has anything to do with wanting something which makes no sense.

I am only after my own pleasure so I am my own God and should live as if there were no God. God even if he exists cannot blame us for that because he made us like that. Be secular, be happy for that is the only way you will be able to help yourself and others. Because I treat myself as if I am my God, whether I admit it or not, for me to bend the knee to any God outside me is hypocrisy and deceit.

This truth is often disguised today as the advice, “You can’t love [be good to others] unless you love yourself.” So all goodness starts with self-love and putting yourself first so that in helping others you are pleasing yourself. If you are not happy in yourself and with yourself you cannot help make other people happy. Religion is totally unnecessary and a neurosis. Prayer and sacraments have never dispensed with the need for psychologists, psychiatrists and self-development.

CONCLUSION:

We call on reasonable people to depart from the Church and have their names taken off its membership rolls.  Give it no money.  We are all atheists in the deepest recesses of our hearts so let us pretend no longer.  Who really believes any of the religious doctrines we have refuted above?  Do you not feel that you have known all this stuff all along?  Do not inflict religious delusion on yourself.

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