I Choose Life

This is a copy of the testimony I posted over at Atheist Central under the "What's the Big Deal" Thread. It came out more profound even than I was expecting.



I'm feeling a bit philosophical at the moment, so I'd like to make points against a few of your beliefs and where they lead, Mr Comfort. Please note: the following is way out of line for me. I usually limit my comments to scientific claims, because I really don't have an objection to modern Christianity. But occasionally, I decide to tell it like I see it.

I don't actually want to spark any deconversions here, though it may seem that way, but I do want to make it clear why I don't consider Christianity any better than any other religion.

This comment is directed at anyone who shares Ray's beliefs.

You believe that all humankind is tainted by sin, and that the only way to remove that sin (and gain eternal peace) is by accepting your Lord into our hearts. We are miserable, pathetic, sinful wretches, living out a meaningless temporary existence on a tainted world before passing into eternal punishment. Only His mercy and sacrifice can spare us this fate, and bring us to eternal peace in heaven.

What hope is there for the future then? None on this planet, certainly. Indeed, your bible portrays an endless spiral into sin, until finally God steps in on Judgement day and destroys it. Our descendants cannot hope for a better life than ours: they will be born into a progressively more and more sinful world, until the final generation is burned off of the earth in God's final act.

So all of your hope is regulated to the afterlife: where God will purge you of your sins and keep you in eternal peace. This existence, means nothing compared to that, right? You have sold the only life you will ever have to slavery to religion, to an invisible Lord, in return for the promise of eternal life. But you have no way to ensure that promise is kept: you have no way to ensure that promise was even made in the first place. Even worse, as part of this slavery, your Lord demands that you do not question the promise, condemning any doubts rather than allaying them.

You claim we are all miserable sinners: worthy only of hatred from God, and eternal punishment. How then can you love another human? Rather than seeing them as beautiful, you see them as hateful sinners, evil by nature. God can forgive us only with eternal mercy: do you claim to have the same level of mercy for your loved ones? Do you compare yourself to Him?

Love is a shared respect for the other individual, an acceptance of everything that they are, including their 'sins'. To steal a quote from the 2004 Hellboy movie: "we like people for their qualities but we love them for their defects." How can you accept another’s sin, when even God's infinite mercy can only go so far as to forgive it, and even then only if we accept Him first? I hate to ask this, but are you even capable of love?

What about logic, and reason? The only feature that sets us human apart from the animal kingdom is our brain, and your Lord expressly forbids using it. Look at Adam and Eve's tale: they ate from the tree of knowledge, and they and their descendants were cursed for all eternity with the very thing your God so despises: sin. If this isn't a metaphor for the promotion of blind obedience to authority, nothing is.

In comparison, those philosophies based on atheism generally promote the use of logic, reason and curiosity. The modern scientific endeavour descended from those philosophies. Us atheists see hope in progress, in the ability to make life better for those who come after us, or at least not make it worse.

We don't see life as wretched, the twisted result of perfection lost: instead we see it as beautiful, something complex that has come out of the relatively simple laws of nature to make the universe its own.

Our life is the only one we have: it is something that cannot be replaced. In that we find value: how can we justify taking something impossible to replace? Where you see something temporary and meaningless compared to eternity, we see something that, despite it's brevity and seeming insignificance, has more meaning than anything else in the entire universe.

You have sold your only life, your hope for the future of this world, your logic and reason and your ability to love another to the dictates of a 2000 year old book, in exchange for an empty promise from someone you can not meet in this world that He will spare you from punishment after death. You hang every speck of your hope, not on the beauty and nobility that is life, but on death, and the afterlife beyond it.

It is your choice to continue to worship death. I choose life.

Rant-agon

Disclaimer: This is a personal-ish rant. It has nothing to do with Christianity, atheism or Ray Comfort. Feel free to skip this post if you like.


To start. I'm a bit of a health nut. Or I am now anyway. I've lost 30+ pounds in the last 6 months, and I did so by combining a sensible diet with 5-7 days a week of intensive cardio and strength training. I am by no means 'stick thin' nor will I ever be - one thing alot of people need to realize is that genetics play almost as big of a role in your body type and your fitness as your lifestyle choices do, but that's a different rant entirely. However, I was never obese in the sense that most people use the word. Over-weight certainly, but not to the point where I think I stood out for it. I was simply too partial to chocolate and would avoid exercise like the plague.
I'm giving this background so people don't take my following diatribe to be an insensitivity towards over-weight people. I know what it's like to be over-weight and I don't consider myself a 'better person' because I've lost the weight.

The second thing to bear in mind while reading this - yes, I am aware that SOME people have medical conditions that cause them to gain or have an incredibly hard time losing weight. Statistically, these people are NOT even CLOSE to being the majority of chronicly obese people in North America. For ever 1 person that is chronicly obese partly because they have a thyroid condition, like 50 others are chronicly obese because they eat way too fucking much and spend hours sedentary. So while I don't hate people who are chronicly obese, I understand that this condition is largely self-imposed and that is the second largest preventable cause of death in the USA today.

Without further ado(about nothing): <------that's an English Major joke.

Hambeasts drive me crazy. You know, like people that are so fat that they roll around on fucking scooters because walking is too much trouble?

I left the gym today and I had to pick up some cat litter in the Superstore(gym shares the same building). Now I'm aware that I'm a bit sweaty and probably don't smell fantastic, but I generally aim to just grab what I need, stay out of people's way and get out of the store as soon as possible. So, I grab the cat litter, and I'm standing in the self-checkout line when this rolling hambeast whaps me in the back of the legs with her fucking scooter. Well, I fucking bite my tongue but I shoot her a dirty look. She scowls at me while we wait in line, me with my cat litter, her with her ham-basket full of twix, bacon and mayo and one of those pre-cooked chickens. So, I'm checking out and she moves to the self-serve checkout next to mine and as I'm walking past her on my way out she pokes me in the fucking shoulder. So I turn around, and she shakes her fucking jowls at me and informs me that I should "be ashamed of myself." And when I ask her why I should feel this way, she informs me that walking around in the Superstore "all sweaty from the gym" is disgusting, rude and makes her nauseous. So, I smile at her, and I inform her that SHE makes ME sick. Because she's severly obese and doing nothing whatsoever about it. Because she can't even WALK through the Superstore and yet she's buying the fattiest food she can find. Because at least MY sweat is from exercising while her's is from the strain of being 300 pounds too many. Why should I feel shamed for exercising by some woman who probably can't even wipe her own ass? And I walk away while she's shouting for a manager to eject me from the store "for being rude to her."



So, I hope you guys don't hate me now, but I seriously wanted to get that off of my chest.

On a Personal Note

Hey, Cronies.......
My job has got me knuckled down, as they say, and I needed a break from this battle, but, I have a new blog that you can find on my profile, called, The Bushy Tree.

Back in 1987 I was the number 119 person to sign on to a local ISP which now handles almost a quarter million, yeah small but the magnitude is astonishing still, to me. I got to thinking about that because I am seeing my focus and my intersts changing over time, as they should, and how many of these really cool groups of people I have communicated with to see them little by little, go away. and of course that's not a bad thing.

I'm getting tons of hits at the new blog so, especially Weemaryanne, at least drop by and leave a, hopefully, civil comment (Doggeral accepted without condition.) I want to bring in some other of my ol' cronies into this discussion, and perhaps this could be a meeting place, as it were.

Thanks for your indulgence on this matter and, Don't Let The Bastards Wear You Down!

Where is Everybody?

Since it seems that I am the only one not out partying and "indulging in the lusts of the flesh as if it were your birthright," as the fundies would say, you all have unwittingly left me an opening to bore you with a personal account.

I drove up to my hometown today to attend a social function, with my Mom as one of the hosts. The hosts were a group of folks that are all over seventy eight years old. The theme was a Hawaiian Luau. It was held in a beautiful outdoor setting.

Number one daughter and number one grandson pulled up and I walked over to greet them, Lisa hands me an index card, and written on it is this:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.
---Blake

I knew exactly what this meant just seeing it, not even having to re-read it for the ten thousandth time, and I looked at her, she's smiling and says, "I think you got it right, Dad."

And I stood there, in the sun, regaled in my festive shirt, with tears streaming down my face. /d