by Scott Kaelen
The best Christians, the ones I respect and appreciate and am happy to debate with – and even, in some cases, be friends with – are each hiding behind the “nicest” words of Jesus and his disciples; they’re cherry-picking. That is, if they ever bother to read the Bible at all, which many do not.
There are verses of the holy books which the moderates will shun because they don’t fit into their world view. Such verses are like a drug for those at the farther ends of their disorder, the ones who grasp onto the most intolerant and violent parts of their religion and use them as a means to ramp up their own base depravity. These are the individuals who get noticed on public media, and many end up being acknowledged as public figures, spokespeople of their chosen faith. The worst of them preach and quote the vilest elements of their holy books, and warp the more innocuous verses to suit their intolerance and inherent malevolence. When someone is so severely lacking in mental stability and moral decency, it is worrying when they are given such a position of influence. To give someone too much leeway to spread inflammatory and intolerant proclamations is to invite global unrest. Many such figures will tend to portray themselves as caring and loving, but that care and love will only extend to those who share their beliefs.
Some theists aren’t lucky enough to have the freedom to cherry-pick and interpret to their heart’s content. In today’s climate this is more relevant with Islam, which is from where the majority of the world’s current turmoil stems. Muslim women today are as Medieval Christian women – thoroughly oppressed yet utterly indoctrinated into their faith. To me, it is absolutely tragic, and yet my humanist side remains at a deadlock with my logical side – the one that tells me that no one so indoctrinated into an oppressive faith system can or should have any amount of trust put in them. Muslim women can’t pick and choose what they want from the Quran. They must follow it strictly, or suffer the consequences. They don’t have the luxury of letting their psyches interpret the words of their holy book to their own liking. Their men do that for them.
DIGGING FOR CHRISTIAN GOLD
(DEBATING A THEIST)
You might ask yourself if it’s really worth engaging in debate with any theist at all, but it can be; some theists are actually quite intelligent, despite having the unfortunate affliction of having been indoctrinated into an organised faith system. In fact, debating a Christian is a great exercise in critical thinking, because it forces you to dig deep for your responses. Give it a go, but don’t expect to strike gold immediately; for every debate-worthy, intellectually stimulating theist out there, there are many more who are as valuable as fool’s gold.
Here are some things you might hear a Christian say to you (if you happen to be a non-Christian), and the sorts of responses I have often given to such utterances.
• “Doesn’t it ever strike you as odd that so many people are drawn to Christianity?”
It doesn’t strike me as odd at all, just a real shame. Religion has been around in one form or another for thousands of years. Along with other superstitious beliefs, the religions have spread until their influence on humanity is almost indelible. To believe that “someone” created you, created the Earth, and created everything beyond the Earth is something attributable to ancient times, not modern times. Believing such things is a practice that ought to have faded into history by now.
• “You will never live up to the standard of God.”
A standard created and imposed not by God, but by ancient man. A standard tweaked and picked at by every individual Christian the modern world over, to fit into a combination of their own personal standards, and what they think the Bible says about God’s standards.
• “Most people don’t understand that God already loves you.”
Your god only loves you in your head. There isn’t a scrap of evidence of a higher entity anywhere in the universe, and certainly no one should consider ancient scriptures as being the “word” of any such entity. The “love” you feel is purely neurological, and is merely a confused understanding of the nature surrounding you.
• “He just wants you to seek him out.”
No, no no! If you have read your Bible, then you should know the scriptures say God does not want you to seek him out. In fact, he orders quite the opposite in Deuteronomy 4:19.
“And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath imparted unto all nations under the whole heaven.”
The Living Bible paraphrases this in more modern times quite succinctly:
“And do not look up into the sky to worship the sun, moon, or stars. The Lord may permit other nations to get away with this, but not you. “
The order from God is for us to not search the stars. What he’s doing with this order is attempting to stunt scientific progress. If all good Christians throughout history had adhered to God’s alleged words in Deuteronomy 4:19, they would not have accepted or recognised any scientific discoveries concerning anything beyond the Earth. In other words, we would still be living in the Dark Ages.
• “When you find him, you will understand what everyone else understands.”
I assure you, there will never be a “when” for me. I have studied – albeit as an amateur – history, astronomy, geology, languages, geography, psychology, and more. And I have studied Christianity and other religions’ doctrines and philosophies. The only ideas within the Bible I agree with are the purely humanitarian areas. I do not and never will accept the concept of an entity which demands my worship. Moreover, if any such entity were to descend to the Earth from the stars, I would call it a charlatan – mighty, no doubt, but deserving of an entire species eternity of praise and devotion? Absolutely not.
What I do understand is that religious people need religion, they need to believe in a higher, unfathomable purpose above themselves, they need to believe they’re going somewhere after their bodies die. In the absence of one ‘divine’ plan, in the absence of a particular religion, most god-fearers would just choose another faith to kneel down to, another god to name as theirs. Now, tell me what everyone else understands?
• “Science has helped show that events in the Bible are possible.”
This one is brilliant, is it not? Here’s a list of miracles allegedly performed by Jesus – without science, which science has not proved possible, along with where they can be found in the Bible:
1 Turning water into wine.
2. Faith healing (including regeneration of severed appendage – Luke 22)
3. Exorcism (Matthew 12, 17; Mark 1,9; Luke 4,9,11)
4. Bringing the dead back to life (Lazarus) (Luke 4,8; John 11)
5. Controlling the weather (Matthew 8; Mark 4; Luke 8)
6. Summoning demons (Matthew 8, Mark 5, Luke 8)
7. Mass instant food replication (5 loaves + 2 fish to fill 5000+ stomachs)
8. Walking on water (Matthew 14; Mark 6; John 6)
9. Power of atrophy over nature (Withering the fig tree) (Matthew 21; Mark 11)
And those are just Jesus’s alleged escapades without adding the extremely dubious account of his resurrection in Matthew 28 into the bargain. (To list all else, especially from the Old Testament, would take much longer, but feel free to ream them off to any Jew or Christian as you see fit.)
• “How do you know what happened in the past unless you were there?”
We know thanks to fossil records, carbon dating, geological findings, physics, human history, statistical probabilities, limits of human abilities… In short, we know because we seek, find, study, learn, accept, and employ. That is the nature of science and the gathering of wisdom.
• “To be a true follower in science you have to be open to all possibilities, even spiritual ones.”
I actually like this point, because it’s partially true. Science takes a theory, a myth, a belief or something presumed to be true, and it explores it. It digs deepe
r. It takes time in doing so, but every scientific fact came about as a direct or indirect result of a theory, myth, legend, presumption, et cetera.
Science has disproved many myths and legends, as well as cryptids such as the Loch Ness monster, kraken, yeti, mermaids, and Bigfoot. Many other obscure creatures in ancient lore remain unconfirmed and will likely always be so (although this is not to say that extreme mutations don’t exist; they do.)
Science has proven that the stars are not angels, but rather balls of intensely hot gasses. Science may not have seen it, but it knows that in the centre of the Earth is, not Hell or Satan, but a solid ball of nickel-iron alloy the same temperature as the surface of the Sun. Ah, the Sun! An object of spirituality in bygone years, today a yellow dwarf star consisting mainly of helium and hydrogen.
So you see, ‘followers of science’ are certainly not opposed to exploring all avenues of possibility. That includes researching and investigating supernatural claims and debunking urban legends taken as true by the easily led. It also includes proving other strange phenomena to be true, but to this day not one spiritiual tale or mystical figure has ever been proven to be extrinsic to nature and the laws of physics.
• “There are things in the world our minds don’t yet understand.”
There are things in the world certain people’s minds can’t understand. There are also certain things in the world not yet able to be fully explained by scientific methodology. I assure you, that will change, but it will be science that gives the answers, not religion.
WHEN TOLERANCE IS AS BAD AS INTOLERANCE
I know some Christians who don’t follow any of the immoral doctrines and tenets from the Bible. Unfortunately, many Christian moderates or apologists don’t realise the irony that their extremely selective cherry-picking technically puts them closer to deism than to theism; in other words, people who refuse to acknowledge the vast majority of their so-called ‘chosen’ religion’s holy teachings are only a few small steps away from not belonging to an organised religion at all.
Organized religion, regardless of how well-intentioned, will always lead to immoral, inhumane acts being done by humans to humans in the name of the Abrahamic deity, regardless of its guise. Witness the world today; it is no better than the world of 2000 or even 4000 years ago in terms of intolerance and brutality for the sake of religion.
It isn’t necessarily Christians that I dislike, but rather Christianity. However, if I had lived between 500–1000 years ago, I don’t doubt I would have disliked the vast majority of Christians, for multifarious reasons. My loathing of Islam will not allow me to trust a single Muslim, regardless of how peaceable they believe themselves to be. Christianity is diluted nowadays, but the same can not be said for its younger offshoot, Islam.
These are my views, and I’m proud to share them rather than hide behind a curtain of apathetic pretence, even if doing so may damage any future success I have as a writer, or worse – lead to me having a fatwa placed on my head. Let’s face it, they target anyone nowadays, not just bestseller authors like Salman Rushdie. They’ll take whatever they can get.
And so I prove myself to be human. Not only theists are capable of intolerance, but also atheists. My defence is that it’s a chicken and egg problem, but for me to point at the big boy and say, “He started it!” would be quite laughable at this stage. Yes, I’m prejudiced. Sue me.
Like any person whose moral compass is wavering towards north, my tendency is to despise bigots, misogynists, rapists, thugs and religious radicals. The unfortunate truth is that these are the ones who shout the loudest and are heard across the world. It’s often atheists – unbiased towards any of the faith systems – who have to stand up to these people. I wish, just once in a while, that the extremists’ fellow “moderate” believers would rise up and flush the zealots out of their flock. Sure, Christians are currently taking action against Muslims, but where do you see Christians standing against fellow Christians? Or moderate Muslims against extremist Muslims? Well, some of them are doing so, but sadly the moderates don’t stand a chance against their extremist and terrorist brethren. Aside from the few who do dare to speak up against the radicals, the remainder merely cower in submission. Some of those wind up dead, ironically murdered by the hand of another who believes in the same god. Meanwhile the atheists shake their heads and sigh at the absurdity of it all.
What this world needs is a peaceful unity, but such will never be realised while there are so many religious and non-religious factions in existence. Humanity has always thrived on conflict within itself, regardless of how many of us would like to turn blind eyes to the sickening truth. Religion is not good. Believe, by all means, but, please, for the love of your god, do so quietly without forcing or even coercing your beliefs on others.
If your fellow Christian is spouting hate against atheists or homosexuals, speak against him. If your fellow Muslim is shouting for the heads of heathen children to be placed on spikes, shout your disgust! Silent acceptance is for weak-willed people who are content to let the madness of monsters thrive upon this crowded Earth. This is when tolerance is as bad as intolerance. Are you satisfied to pretend ignorance and blindness? If so, you might as well kill yourself now, because your god is as likely to accept you into the afterlife for being a coward as he is for taking your own life.
THE LONG-LOST SECRETS OF CREATION
(A SATIRE)
There are three long-lost secrets of Creation according to the Ancient Hebrew Bible. Facts which didn’t quite make it to the final draft of the first published edition. I have become privy to these forgotten truths, and I would like to share them with you here.
The Genesis Secret: The first book of the Old Testament was a cause for heated debate between Moses and his neighbouring pagans. Moses wanted to call it Biogenesis, but the pagans insisted that would be too close to plagiarising their Abiogenesis. A deal was finally struck that Moses would drop the prefix completely and simply call the book Genesis.
The Creation Secret: Some 3.7 billion years ago, a collective entity of cosmic microbes created life in its image, and called it Mat. The microbial Mat split, becoming two new lifeforms – Bacteria and Archaea, or Terry and Archie as they preferred to be called.
The Eden Secret: The long-searched-for site of the Garden of Eden has been revealed as the Strelley Pool Formation in Western Australia, where the fossilised remains of Terry and Archie were discovered. The jury’s still out on what part Biogenic Graphite – or Gene, as the little rascal referred to itself – could possibly have played, since two hundred million years and half a world separated Gene from Terry and Archie.
In a way, it’s the greatest love story never told.
GODS OF EXTINCTION
From the poetry volume DeadVerse
by Scott Kaelen
A hundred thousand years ago,
gigantopithecus died out,
but if they’d hung around they’d know
there’s nothing here to shout about.
Extincted species have no redemption,
being naught but fossils of curious appeal.
Biased faith systems cry their exemption,
since the big guys’ bones lie beneath our heels.
Are secrets buried deep in our past,
crushed into the Paleolithic mire?
Were the gigants slaughtered to the last,
with mankind’s newly-discovered fire?
Or did the ape-men start a religion,
praying to a god who didn’t care,
who let them slip into extinction,
for the simple fact he wasn’t there?
NOT JUST A PRETTY BAUBLE
(BIRTH, EFFECT & FATE OF THE MOON)
Earth’s speed of rotation was once much faster than it is today. Years and days were considerably different than what humanity has ever been accustomed to. In our planet’s infancy, when the Earth was still a hot and steaming mess, an entire day lasted only 6 hours, and a year consisted of more than 1000 day
s.
About 70 million years after the Earth formed, the most likely theory is that it collided with a Mars-sized planet, the result of which was the formation of the Moon – an event that would alter the entire future of life on Earth.
For the first billion years of our planet’s existence, its decreasing rotation was barely noticeable, but then – some 3.5 billion years ago – the first liquid water formed and the speed decreased more rapidly, until…
Just 400 million years ago, one year lasted 410 days, and a day only 21 hours. By contrast, that’s 45 days longer than our current 365, but 3 hours a day shorter. Therefore, 400 million years ago the length of a year was 150 hours less than the length of a year today. The Archaean year, with its 6-hour days, had a ballpark figure of around 6000 hours, more than 2500 hours less than a modern year of 8760 hours.
That’s tidal acceleration for you.
It beggars wonder to imagine how life on Earth might have turned out without that fortuitous encounter as our planet was smashed into by a careless rogue world. Back then, when the Earth was scarcely more than a squishy, liquid inferno, there were no casualties from the collision. But what if the incident had never happened? Without the gravitational effect of the Moon on Earth, might the first microbial life on our planet never have taken hold? Perhaps it would have, or perhaps not. Either way, it’s worth tipping a hat to our satellite in recognition of services provided. After all, the Moon is not just a ball of rock hanging uselessly up in the sky.
In the far future, the Earth’s rotation will have decreased to almost nothing, causing it to tidally lock with the Moon. Both a day and a month will be equal, consisting of around 1128 hours. But that won’t happen, because approximately 7 billion years from now the Sun will go nova and consume most of its inner planets, disintegrating the Moon, scattering its remnant parts in a ring of debris around the Earth’s equator, and finally the Moon will fall back down to Earth after its 12 billion year vacation. The Earth it returns to will be much the same as the Earth it left – a smouldering, lifeless husk, with humanity nowhere to be seen.
