Exodus 31:14 - Desecrate the Sabbath, die!

In Christianity, New Testament, all variants of such religion claim to worship an infinitely merciful and just God. Except on one day of the week:

Exodus 31:14

"Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you.

Anyone who desecrates it must be put to death;

whoever does any work on that day must be cut off from his people."

In other words, do anything unholy on the sabbath and you must be put to death. That is how far God's kindness and tolerance goes in this day of the week. And in case your decide to work, that will cut you off from your people. Very fair, considering that all obstacles of Nature towards Mankind also happen during the Sabbath.

In my humble opinion, I believe the Bible needs to reassess the meaning on the word "infinitely". Because if for some reason another God shows up that is kind and tolerant every day of the week, such new God would be even kinder and more tolerant than the Christian God.

The newer God would then be kinder than the already infinitely kind one we "have" today. Can you really surpass infinity? According to Christianity, yes. They allow infinity to have exceptions.

Jumping Breaks / "Read more" links

It took me a while to notice Blogger had implemented a new feature called "jump break".

That allows me to split the posts in two parts I sometimes feel appropriate: the main part, and some details.

When that happens, you will see a "Read more" (or some similar one like, "Click for the rest", "Get the whole scoop"... I haven't decided yet.) link at the bottom of the posts.

Clicking that link will expand the post to its full content.

I hope this makes the reading experience better.

More about this here.

Faith and Doubt events - Part III

The 1st day at the Faith and Doubt event.

After the surprising effect of that first quote, mentioned in our last post, the real interesting part of the speech began. One could almost say it matched the very definition posts about atheism that this blog contains, specifically, the ones that are labeled under definitions, and that covered, theism, atheism, agnosticism, and so on...

It was with satisfaction and some excitement that I witnessed a totally accurate description of that all these terms mean.

Unfortunately, it all changed when the the quotes of atheists were brought into the spotlight.

As the speaker would bring each carefully chosen quote of the most popular atheists, the highlight was on the words that would describe Christianity in the worst possible way. All the reasoning leading up to such adjectives and claims were totally left aside.
Was that inevitable or intentional? Perhaps. After all, showing some good reasons in support of religion's failures would probably defeat the whole purpose of preaching for it in the first place.

Still, the chosen quotes did stir a negative sentiment towards atheists, and specifically, the militant ones.

At this point, I expected nothing else other that seeing all militant atheists being painted as a real threat to religion. Some of them are such. Some aren't. And that is exactly what it should have been said.

Atheism is an individual achievement.

Even though Faith can be too, Religion can't.

A Religion and its followers are bound by a set of beliefs, therefore we can expect accuracy in describing some behaviors and/or beliefs when grouping people by faith.

Atheism does not have a belief set, nor a set of reasons that all atheists share (or are supposed to share) to support their disbelief.

Therefore, one cannot expect a good enough precision in grouping atheists as one can expect when grouping religious people.

In this event, portraying all atheists fairly was not only very hard with the amount of time available, but it was impossible. I was in a church after all.

Too bad Peter never asked his followers to also ask Atheists about the reasons for their lack of faith. :)

He just asked Christians to be kind and respectful to those who inquire about the reasons for faith.

I took that quote seriously, and I did point out a few things to the speaker afterwards.

Let's just say that the next post will show how hard and complicated things can really get.

Faith and Doubt events - Part II

How was my first trip to the event about faith and doubt?
I was caught by surprise from the start. In my experiences with religious people and the fiery debates that come from the usual conflict between religion and atheism, I am used to resistance, and in some unfortunate cases, disrespect and aggressive stances towards atheists.
This time it was going to be different. It started with a quote from the Bible:

"…Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts,
always be prepared to give an answer
to everyone who asks you to give the reason
for the hope that you have.
But do this with gentleness and respect."
1 Peter 3:15

Be gentle and respectful when anyone questions your faith. Seriously? I was impressed. I immediately got those images in my head of the most extreme of Christians. Those who preach by yelling, those who preach with a closed fist and loud voices, and would call me Satan, or devil, just by asking the wrong question. This didn't happen here. But it was right after listening to Peter's quote that I glanced at the concentrated look of my friends and decided: "I am going to see this through".

Faith and Doubt events - Part I

A couple of weeks ago, religious friends of mine asked me to go to some event that their church organized.
The reason for the invitation is pretty obvious:
I am an Atheist, and the event was about faith and doubt.

We went, we listened, and we came home to talk about it.
Unfortunately, Atheists were not very well portrayed, and I left under the impression that every religious person in that room now likes atheists a bit less after having heard what we did.

Let us just say that the explanations about what we represent were accurate, the quotes of popular atheists were too, but the conclusions were pretty offset by the emotions of faith.

As such, and after stating my opinions to my friends, I was invited back due to the event being a 4 week presentation on Faith and Doubt, to see it all through, and now the presenter knows they had and will have an Atheist in their midst. I told him on their website.

More details soon, here, on the Religious Faith Challenger.