Synthetic Naturalism

Stupidity that I’ve seen lately.

Art Jones, Illinois Republican Congressional Candidate, Says Holocaust Never Happened

So does that mean that the 7 to 11 million Jews killed in the Holocaust have really been on vacation for this whole time? That must be it. Never mind that we have the testimonies of many, many Jewish survivors and the evidence to support it. Must all be a lie, right? For some reason, creationists denying the mountains of evidence (including dinosaur bones) to evolution comes to mind. 

Also, I have a gay friend on another site who put up a status in which he was perplexed at the fact that he met a girl so smart that it actually aroused him. Some asshole commented with:

are you sure it was a woman? “Show me the receipts.” -Whitney Houston

And he replied with:

I’m sure it was a woman, because she was intelligent.

Win. Anyways, some guy also put up:

You should feel like maybe you’re not going to hell man. Congrats.

I can’t wait to troll on this idiot. So let me get this straight:

There’s a perfect, all good, perfectly loving guy up there.

He loves you.

He really loves you.

He protects you.

However, if you don’t love Him, love the wrong interpretation of Him, and such, He’s going to send you to a place to be tortured forever.  

You were a good Jew? Eternal torture just like the ones who have cause a lot of pain and suffering in the world. It has to happen because you had the right guy, you just missed an important update. 

You were a peaceful Buddhist who never raped, never stole, tried to always be honest, and so on? You’re going to be “butt-fucked by the devil” (a saying introduced to me by my girlfriend one night as we were amazed at similar stupid ideas). I hope you like your fingernails being torn out. Again. And again. And again. Forever. 

Makes total sense. Peaceful religion, my ass.

That’s why I could only accept the Mormons if I were ever to accept an Abrahamic religion. The worst you can get is more like exile, and only those who have seen the whole truth yet still reject it are sent there. (The ones who are beyond help) That reminds me, I’m a good skeptic and I want to read the “against” arguments as well as the “for” arguments for that religion. Can anyone tell me about questionable verses in the Book of Mormon?

Yes, I know some of the leaders have shady pasts and to me it makes total sense that if there is a God, he would have started at our level and worked his way up, we can have eternal marriages and families, and so on. I want stuff straight from the source material itself. I just can’t explain how a farm boy with the equivalent of a 7th grade education at most could have written such a complex document. 

This is (part of the reason) why I’m left-wing.

Rick Santorum recently said that rape victims who become pregnant should “accept what God has given to you” and “We have horrible things happen. I can’t think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.” 

What. The. Fuck.

He’s basically saying: Yes, you being assaulted and have the creep force himself on you in ways which go beyond violation of personal space is horrible, but you should accept God’s gift anyways and have to live with 8 months-18 years of a reminder of your rape. It’s “a gift in a very broken way” 

That last part actually is one of his quotes. If it’s part of the Plan for you to be violated like that and to have to live with it for a long time after, then what happened to that part about God being omni-benevolent? 

Very unchristian of you, Santorum. Good job.

And just so I’m not too one-sided, here’s the full quote:

“Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn’t have this baby, if she kills her child, that that, too, could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice. I understand that. As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn’t, it will always be her child. And she will always know that. And so to embrace her and to love her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time, I’ve always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can’t think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.”

If Hell is eternal, why isn’t Christ’s suffering on the cross?

In mainstream Christian doctrine, there’s an eternal hell. Eternal suffering for forgetting to confess a tiny sin, for choosing the wrong version of god, and so on. It makes Hitler look like an amateur with his concentration camps. 

I just had a thought. 

If mainstream Christianity believes that Hell is eternal, then what was Jesus’s “Infinite atonement” for? You’re putting limitation on your own deity, people. Unless you admit that his suffering on the cross is eternal (and thus still going on), that is. 

Or was it only for the good Christians? Well that makes god/Jesus look a bit petty, doesn’t it?

The Mormons, on the other hand, don’t have a hell. The worst they have is more like exile (Outer Darkness), so they don’t fall into this contradiction. Also, you can convert in the afterlife. They admit that there are millions of people who have never had the chance to accept Jesus, so why should they be eternally damned? After all, before Jesus the only religion which was supposed to have god’s seal of approval was Judaism and it was restricted only to Jews. They were not allowed to proselytize. How does that work out? 

Hell.

I cannot understand, for the life of me, how a sizable portion of the people on the planet can support such an idea. It completely contradicts their view of what God is.

Here’s basically how they see it, from my understanding:

Ok, so there’s an all-powerful, all-loving, all-good being out there and he loves you very much! He loves you with everything He is, which is pretty much everything there even is! He loves you so much, that if you don’t love Him, or love the wrong version of Him, He’s going to send you a place to be tortured for eternity! He loves you so much, He made ways to avoid being tortured for ever and ever! 

It makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

No? I didn’t think so. 

How can so many in the world blindly accept this? It makes your “perfect, all-good, all-loving” being look like Hitler, but infinitely worse. Think about it. Most religions believe in a place that’s like a concentration camp, but one that never ends. 

I have heard reports of children in religious families who have practically been scarred by how much they fear or feared this place. No child deserves that. Look at this website, and that is what most people believe is truth.

I’m less familiar with other religions and Hell, as I live stateside, but the majority of Christians do. Some believe in a reformed version of the doctrine, believing either that they simply remain dead until the resurrection or that they are exiled to a place of eternal darkness and misery. Eternal death is one thing, that’s acceptable, but eternal suffering of any kind? That’s a bit harder to back up. It’d be better to just destroy those souls. 

However, the majority of Americans believe in the classical version of hell: fire, pain, demons, torture, suffering, and so on for eternity. This is not a claim that can be supported. It makes the god of a religion that believes in this seem like a complete monster, but then makes him worse. How can anyone support this?

If you believe that Hell is a real place, you must then accept that Lucifer was in the right when he lead his rebellion against god if you’re a moral person at all. It makes Satan seem more like a liberator than the father of evil. Under that doctrine, you have to wonder if the devil is really that terrible, or if god simply has a lot of bad press and propaganda about him. 

Once again: if you’re a mainstream Christian, you believe in a place of eternal torture for everything from not voting for the right guy, to mass murder. You believe that a truly, undoubtedly evil man like Hitler is suffering there for basically being unoriginal. 

Hitler was a horrible man. How can you worship a being who does the same thing, but far, far worse? 

Evolution is “just a theory”?

Alright, but so is gravity.