Recently in Religion Category

This was far too funny for me not to post.
It made me giggle like crazy when I found it at about 4am this morning. LoL

This list comes to us from I Am An Atheist, from their page entitled 'Atheist Rights and Responsibilities'.

1. Have no gods.
2. Don't worship stuff.
3. Be polite.
4. Take a day off once in a while.
5. Be nice to folks.
6. Don't kill people.
7. Don't cheat on your significant other.
8. Don't steal stuff.
9. Don't lie about stuff.
10. Don't be greedy.
    

That's a pretty damn good list, that's how I live my life, and I didn't even know about the list until today when I saw it up on Friendly Atheist.

They aren't commandments, they are our rights and responsibilities.
That's how we as atheists should live, how we should treat our fellow human beings, just live and treat others as you want to be treated.

I was reading updates on Twitter a bit ago, and came across a tweet from a Think Atheist member, Jin-Oh Choi, who posted a video on the site titled "Creationists threatens youth with eternal damnation". (links to the video on youtube)
This video was put out by a group called Revolution in Christ, and I went to their site to check them out.
They are a group who wants all churches to get back to the real biblical teachings, no more of this "come as you are, stay as you are, we love you just the way you are", and accepting of other lifestyles, and abortions, divorces etc.
They want the full on biblical experience to be taught and preached, which personally, I don't think will go over very well because whenever I've had a conversation with a self-professed Christian, they do not like the old testament, they think that it's when God was speaking in metaphors, that the new testament completely wipes out the old, and this group, Revolution in Christ, is all hell no folks, the bible is a book, 1 book, and the whole book is the unerring and completely infallible word of God, it's all his word, nothing in it wipes out anything else in it, God will punish you severely for not believing in him and sinning your asses off.
I looked around the site a bit and found a page called Munitions, where I found many links to all kinds of things like a 12 year old girl speaking out against abortion, and an article on megachurch pastor, Joel Osteen.

I see Joel Osteen on the tv every week, several times a week probably, as I'm surfing through the channels, and sometimes if there's nothing else on, I watch Joel preach to the thousands in attendance at his megachurch.
Personally, I don't like him, I think he's another fraud who likes raking in millions from innocent people who just want to believe so much in God and Jesus, and that when they die, all of their pain and suffering will be taken from them and they will live in the loving embrace of their savior for all eternity.
These people, in my opinion, are simply afraid of death, they cannot bear the idea that when they die, that's it, nothing.
And I also just don't trust Osteen.
He has super squinty eyes, he blinks like a gazillion times in 1 minute, and his smile is faker than the painted one on a Barbie doll.
I read something once somewhere, can't recall where or when now, that said something about small, beady-eyed people and those who blink a lot, like extreme blinking, and how 9 times out of 10, they are proven to be liars and more untrustworthy than other people.

Anyway, I was curious what this article had to say because the title of it is "Author sends out press release in defense of Osteen."
The article is basically 1 Christian, article author Ingrid, slamming another Christian author, Richard Young,  who came to the defense of another Christian's (Osteen) latest book.
The article writer, Ingrid, goes after the Christian author for defending Osteen, and then goes after Osteen.
Ingrid wants "Joel Osteen to repent of his false teaching and his man-centered gospel and stop misleading the millions of people who follow his ministry. He is a false teacher and the consequences are eternal."
 
What I found interesting in the article though, was the criticism of Osteen's use of scriptures in his latest book, and Ingrid feels that Osteen uses scriptures to make himself appear to be a follower of Christ, yet he's really not, and then Ingrid said this;
"He has people raise a Bible over their heads at the start of his messages to assure everyone that he believes the Word of God. Then he proceeds to completely contradict the very Word he claims to follow. We are here on this planet for God's glory, not our own. God does not want us on a journey of deeper "self-discovery" as Osteen claims in his new book. He wants us to go deeper and deeper into the knowledge of His Son, Jesus Christ. We are to decrease and Christ must increase in our lives."

The part I find really funny and have been thinking it myself for many years now is this, God does not want us on a journey of deeper "self-discovery",... and he wants us to go deeper and deeper into the knowledge of His Son, Jesus Christ. We are to decrease and Christ must increase in our lives."

I''ve been saying it for quite a few years, Christianity wants to keep you dumb.
The dumber you are, the easier it is to convince you that you're a sinner who must repent to a God that many men created about 6,000 years ago in a book. (It's also a whole lot easier to get you to part with your money)
There's a couple of great quotes from the late musician Frank Zappa, that I think fit perfectly with what Ingrid said about believers gaining more knowledge of Christ rather than of themselves or any other knowledge.
I'm going to quote a few of them here for you, they explain his thoughts on this subject the best, and I happen to agree with it completely.

The whole foundation of Christianity is based on the idea that intellectualism is the work of the Devil. Remember the apple on the tree? Okay, it was the Tree of Knowledge. "You eat this apple, you're going to be as smart as God. We can't have that."

Nope! God cannot have you anywhere near as smart as he is, because then you'd know he was pulling your leg on a whole lot of stuff! LoL

The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden story. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.

Bwahahahahahahaha!

And; So, when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, if you go for all these fairy tales, that "evil" woman convinced the man to eat the apple, but the apple came from the Tree of Knowledge. And the punishment that was then handed down, the woman gets to bleed and the guy's got to go to work, is the result of a man desiring, because his woman suggested that it would be a good idea, that he get all the knowledge that was supposedly the property and domain of God. So, that right away sets up Christianity as an anti-intellectual religion. You never want to be that smart. If you're a woman, it's going to be running down your leg, and if you're a guy, you're going to be in the salt mines for the rest of your life. So, just be a dumb fuck and you'll all go to heaven. That's the subtext of Christianity.


But it's true, (the story) look it up in the bible, it was the 1 thing in the entire garden that he forbade them to touch, forbade them to eat the fruit from it, and he stuck it smack dab in the middle!
It was the biggest of all of the trees, it's apples were huge, red, and shiny, practically beckoning them to come eat them.
And he told Adam what it was, and then he lied to him.
Genesis Chapter 2: 16 And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat: 17 But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.
He told Adam that the tree of knowledge contained all of the good and all of the evil and all of his knowledge, and if he ate even 1 bite, on the very day and moment he took that bite, he would surely die.
They both took bites and did not die, and they did gain all of the knowledge, they knew both good and evil.
And when they took that bite and gained the knowledge, they knew he had lied to them, they became fully aware and intelligent, the 1 thing he didn't want of his creations.
He wanted them to remain blissfully stupid for all of eternity.
And then later on as his son Jesus (God impregnated a virgin with himself so that he could live as a man, die, and then become God again and have a ghost of himself) is dying on the cross, Jesus tells everybody that he's dying to save us from our sins, that he's taking the punishment for all of us because the first 2 people God created disobeyed and sinned, and now we're all sinners for all eternity unless we believe Jesus, repent, and beg for his forgiveness.
Not once in all of that, does God take any of the blame on himself, he's a liar, he lied to them.
He had Adam and Eve living in fear of that tree, that if they took a single bite, they'd die a most painful and wretched death, and it was all a lie, but nope, no siree bob, he allows his own son, his reincarnated self, to die to save us all from our sins, but he's the real and ultimate sinner here.
Heck, 1 of his own 10 commandments, is thou shalt not lie.
#8 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, which simply means, you shall not lie, when in fact, it's God who lied in hopes of keeping us stupid for all eternity.

Now we have a new group of Christians, Revolution in Christ, who wants all churches and all Christians, to get back to the bible, the real bible, what it really says, not all of this comfy and cute we love all of you exactly the way you are so that we can fill up the pews every Sunday and take some more of your money, so that we can decrease ourselves and increase our knowledge of Christ.
They want Christians to become dumber, stop gaining general knowledge, stop improving themselves so that they can serve God better.
He is not happy with his creations, we are sinning every day of our lives, we are getting more and more intelligent every single day, but that's not what the bible tells us, that's not what God wants.
God wants you to be dumb.
He created us, created paradise, planted a huge tree full of his knowledge smack in the middle of it all, told us what it was, lied to us, and then punished us when we learned the truth.
That IS the subtext of Christianity, and every time some group makes a new video trying to convince us that evolution is a lie, that it's evil, it is their way of trying to make us more stupid, to make us stop searching for the answers, to stop digging up fossils, to just stop all of our pursuits for knowledge and information, so that we can stay dumb and be idiotic servants that he can control easily.

Click for biggie

I was reading along on Twitter tonight, saw I had a new follower, so I went and checked them out and immediately started laughing.
Endofworshipping had posted this:
Creationist: Bananas have the perfect shape for the human hands and mouth. Me: So do penises.

I laughed out loud really hard, probably shouldn't have given the hour of night, er, morning that it is, but it just made me giggle, much like the inspiration for what they said.
Where did they get the idea to say something like that?
From my favorite creationist of course! (no really, he is my fave)
Ray Comfort!
I've posted this video before on MSML when I used to post my weekly Sunday Sermons, (atheist quotes or other religious themed posts) but it's always worth re-posting just for the absolute laughs I get from watching it again and again.
Be-hold!
The atheist's nightmare! (said with a nasally New Zealand twang)




Oh man, you gotta love Ray, even if only because he makes you laugh, he really truly believes what he's telling you in that video (and always), but had he done his research, (which he never, ever does) he would have learned that the banana he holds in his hand is only like that because man (the people of Papua New Guinea) cultivated and farmed it for a long time (5,000-8,000 years ago) for the banana to become what it is today, a soft, peel-able, easy to eat fruit.
The original banana was a small, hard fruit with seeds in it, and man, not a god, cultivated it and made it the fruit it is today.
 
But the video and the idiot in it are the inspiration for the above funny about penises, or is the plural for penises penii?
I'm pretty sure it's penii if it's more than 1 penis. (do correct me if I'm wrong)
Plural penis.
Heh.
There's that fun game where you take a movie, book, and song titles, and you change the last word of the title to penis or penii if it's plural, funny, hahaha.
Penis.
The Fellowship of the Ring Penis
The Green Mile Penis
Sixteen Candles Penii
How about some of the billboard top 10?
Lady Gaga- Poker Face Penis
The All American Rejects-Gives You Hell Penis
Miley Cyrus-The Climb Penis
Lady Gaga- Just Dance Penis
Kelly Clarkson- My Life Would Suck Without You Penis
Jamie Foxx- Blame It Penis

You get the idea...LoL

Now for the people like me part of this post.
I've added and been added to the atheists blogroll run by Mojoey.
I have this blogroll on MSML , but I wanted to add this blog, and Joe was kind enough to go ahead and add this blog to the roll too.
Since being added to it and adding the roll's code to my blog, I've found so many amazing blogs to read, other people like me, more atheists.
I live in the bible belt and for a long time, I felt really alone, even on the internet for a few years, I didn't find many other free-thinking humanists, but we are starting to come out, speak out, and it's a really cool feeling to know that there are a lot more people who think and believe like me, (no belief in any god or gods) out there.
There's a lot of us, and many more are starting to speak up too.
NBC Nightly News did a poll a few weeks back, more people now say that they have no belief in any god or gods, have no association with any religious group or church, and consider themselves to be atheist. (16.1% of Americans are not affiliated to any faith, that is approximately 48 million people)
That's way cool if you ask me, which you didn't, but I felt like sharing anyway.

Maybe I'll start my Sunday Sermons back up, do them on this blog, stick to parenting, the teens, school, home/family type stuff on MSML, and start doing my Sunday posts again.
I really enjoyed doing those.
Yeah, I did, I will.
Consider this my first Sunday Sermon on KatScan.

Click for supersize.

The last 15 hours have been rather stressful for me, drama, drama, drama.
Here I am trying to get my life in order, get organized, and I've got the stress coming out my ears.
I need a serious vacation.
I swear, one of these years I'm just gonna pack up my stuff, just my stuff, and I'm going to take off for a week, some isolated place all by myself.
Go rent myself a cabin in someplace nice like maybe one of those Outer Banks rentals that people are always talking about.
I'd wanna go in like the mid-fall though, when most of the tourists have gone home yet the weather is still a bit warm.
That way I could take long walks on the beach by myself with no shoes, dip my feet in the water, do some sight-seeing by myself, eat, sleep, be completely alone for just one whole week someplace beautiful.

I have so much faith in people, faith in them to do the right thing, to tell the truth, and it upsets me so much when they don't.
I know, I'm holding people up to standards they can't possibly live by, everybody is always looking out for themselves, trying to be bigger, trying to be in the center of it all, and so they do things, they say things, that are not truthful and hurt other people.

I am part of it, I'm not going to lie about that, I've become a trusted person who gets spoken to about a lot of things, so that puts me in the middle of it all.
And I don't mind it, not at all, I try to be helpful and listen, and come up with ideas, and help implement others, so this makes me privy to information that other people don't know.
And because of that, I'm a trusted person, it's not my place to share anything that is said to me with anyone else, but when I'm left with no choice because of other people's lies, what am I supposed to do about that?
I'm left with no choice but to say what was shared in confidence with other people to try and clear up the mess and drama that someone else started, and frankly, that's not fair.
But what was said really hurt someone, and I can't just stand by and allow a friend to be hurt when I know the truth.
I know how difficult it was, I know that other ideas were bounced around for several days before doing the only possible option, but still, it wasn't my place to say any of it but I had to.
Oh and the lies that just kept coming, and I ask myself why people lie, and I keep coming back to wanting to be the center of it all and self esteem issues, and so I looked it up, and so yeah, that link is pretty interesting, you should read it.
 
"We're trying not so much to impress other people but to maintain a view of ourselves that is consistent with the way they would like us to be," Feldman said. We want to be agreeable, to make the social situation smoother or easier, and to avoid insulting others through disagreement or discord."

I think some people do lie to create disagreement and discord though, to hurt others, to start some drama, and that is what happened that caused me so much stress and left me having to try and explain.
I am greatly upset that lies were told that hurt someone that I consider a friend, and it's causing me a great deal of stress.
 
Here it is almost morning again, and I have yet to even try to sleep, all I can do is think about how badly a friend is hurting, that it should have never happened, and that no matter what I say, it won't be believed because there is a a he said/she said thing happening and a lot of hurt feelings.
But I know the truth, and the truth is that it was a lie said and it hurt someone.

I am so so tired, but I can't sleep because of all of this, it's not right.