Being persecuted for your beliefs doesn’t make you a martyr, nor does it prove you right. It does, however, prove you irritating.
Dying for religion doesn’t make it true. It only proves is your fanaticism was stronger than your love of life.
They tell us that the truth of religion is beyond worldly reason. Do you not admit then, that these truths are not made for reasonable beings? To pretend that reason can deceive us, is to say the truth can be false, that usefulness can be injurious. Is reason anything else but the knowledge of the useful and the true?
Besides, as we have but reason and our senses (such as they are) to lead us in this life, to claim that reason is an unsafe guide and that our senses are deceivers, is to tell us that our errors are necessary, that our ignorance is invincible, and without extreme injustice, God cannot punish us for having followed the only guides which he desired to give us—Jean Messlier, Testament
Then go on to pretend intelligence is a gift from god. The same god that is immaterial but created material. The same god that is immutable and alone, where his laws do not apply because he is apart of any society. The same god that lets his most irritating effective servants die without lifting a single finger to come to their aid.
“And that’s why it was such a brilliant idea from prophet Mohammad (and from the Bible) to explicitly describe the religion as the absolute last word from God that would never get any future amendments of any kind. It was the first to say it was the last, and and it worked pretty well by taking their immunity against listening to others and learning form them to a whole new level” Haritha
By abandoning your reason and senses, you can believe anything. Depending on where you were born, of course. 
My road less traveled.
TheCommonAtheist 
Dying for a belief is one thing . Being asked a question is quite another, yet many believers say that is also a form of persecution. When you question a believer and ask for evidence to back up their beliefs, oftentimes you’ll get the response of “The Bible speaks of people like you who have come to persecute me. Now I know I’m doing the right thing. I was told that I would suffer for my beliefs.” Asking for someone to defend their beliefs is not persecution, yet many claim that because others don’t believe like they do, they are being persecuted. That is what I find irritating. Believe what you want to but don’t play the victim card when people ask you to explain yourself.
Dying for a belief or being doubted and questioned about your belief doesn’t make it true. It just means that you believe in something and others do not.
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They do like to throw out the red card don’t they. And many, like colorstorm and IB, intensionally seek persecution to receive “stripes for Jesus” It is quite the mind bending whitewash they’ve got going (or are they joking) Wow man..wow
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It’s a smokescreen to hide behind. Nothing more. When you have nothing to offer in response to a question, either play the victim or go on the attack. Either way, you get to avoid answering the question while maintaining that you won the debate. They think we’re being fooled by it all.
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There is a physiological phenomenon too, that happens when you challenge a belief. Researchers have found during such events that norepinephrine is released in the brain stimulating a fight or flight. Basically you are challenging the validity of their hope that causes people to defend that hope with an argument. These people have paid dearly and worked hard to have hope, which is just a butthair to the left higher than a wish.
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Psychological phenomenon you say? As in, it’s all in their heads? 🙂
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There is some psychology involved too with the faith trap, but there is also physiology at work. Basically after submission and repetition the neurons become hardwired. You are now literally arguing with their physiology—The problem is now physical. Reason doesn’t work against a persons anatomy.
You remember the incessant hand-waving and ignoring contradictions? Muscle memory Ben.
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I do remember that I myself would defend indefensible positions without even knowing why. I know now that it was because I was trained to think that way and defend to the death the ideas I was believing on faith. There is a reason why churches encourage memorization of verses instead of more in-depth study. Remembering and regurgitating is easy. Thinking for yourself is a challenge.
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That’s why it’s important to teach em young before they know how to reason.
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Exactly
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Going on the attack when confronted with an uncomfortable question is a tactic that is probably as old as humanity. I ran into it all the time when I was with that skeptics group back in the early days of the internet. As soon as we’d cast doubt on someone’s claim that they really really really had a picture of a real ufo, the personal attacks and insults would start. The more viscous the attack, the more likely they were a fraud. It was amazing how nasty people could get when we’d point out that their photo of a “real” UFO was the hubcap from a 1954 Buick.
It’s all intended, of course, to try to divert attention from the fact that they can’t answer the question, can’t explain why they believe what they believe. They immediately take up the flag of victimhood, claiming that they are being persecuted for their beliefs. The only thing that changes over the years is some of the terminology they use. Back in the day it was the communists who were conspiring against them, or the Illuminati or some nonsense like that. Today it’s the “deep state” or evil child murdering pedophile homosexual liberal socialists.
Sigh…
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Sigh indeed.
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The Bible says to “lean not on thine own understanding.” Interesting. I guess they knew even way back then that if people really, actually put some thought into it, they’d realize it was largely a load of horseshit.
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Largely? Oh my dear friend, you underestimate the piles, the mounds, the mountains!! It’s debauchery really. If you could finely tune an idea that plays so well on fear, doubt, and the foibles of human neurology and psychology, you could run the world.
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It’s true. I should watch my adverbs! I’ll exchange ‘largely’ for ‘basically!’ I’ve read the damned book completely twice and referred to it for years. In all that time, I had so many unanswered questions. The things I read just didn’t sit right with me. Though I, like Ben, would “defend indefensible positions without even knowing why.” It’s a delusion I’m happy to have awakened from.
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Tis a badge of social honor to pretend. The faith trap is an ingenious strategy to waste our years away, while those that purvey the putrefied slaw of belief never follow their own preaching. Exempt from their own laws for the “good” of the cause. Almost sounds like a political entity… hey!!
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The first priests must have been pilots in the cavalry. Now, hold on a second. See they would pile it here, pile it there, pile it everywhere. Horse manure that is.
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Exactly!!!! And they want you to “bully” them so they can play the martyr being “attacked”…. Uhhhh!!!
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Interesting. An irritating lot, those.
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If you look at the time frame and some of the great philosophers of the old world, they had a keen understanding of humanity. We have been manipulated to perfection, really. Every cognitive bias and foible has been played against our own physiology. If not to directly control us, to divide us into arguments over an imagination. It’s still working.
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It is just for me to do or die, without understanding or to wonder why.
Homosexuals, Atheists, Catholics, Jews, and Comminists have all been martyred for what they are. Others were radomly murdered in His name. And He fiddled as they burned. Good God!
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While they praise his wisdom.
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And, he always needs money.
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Keeping us divided is THE absolute key to it all. Also, if we go back 80 years or more, news took longer to get to us working class and poor folks. No TV, radio was available for many, but those tubes took a while to warm up. Out of Burlington, WI. where I came into this life, the telephone was a party line, so the first person who got a call of big news passed it ‘up the line’. Hey, folks expected that back then. Listening to phone calls that weren’t for you was frowned upon, but it was not so big a deal that you loaded your shotgun and went after said listener.
I still get a kick about this ‘meeting my maker’ crapola. Hey, I knew BOTH of them and lived in their homes for 19 years.
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Bet you don’t get a lot of Jehovah’s Witnesses up there?
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Yeah right. We have the big three newbies here in droves. Mormon, JW, SDA plus a healthy Mennonite population. The AOG tongue talkers are big here too. I’m surrounded with evangelicals and the works. I say I’m atheist and it gets very quiet. Foot shuffles, looking down. It’s not fair I suppose, that I can live without the rules they have encumbered themselves with. Foul!!!
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Jeepers. I think you should head back down to the jungle. At least they only have catolicos…
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And they just go to church. The women go inside and the men stand outside and bullshit. They believe it out of fear, but they are all horndogs with no conscience.
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I often wonder how much of it is driven by fear. Versus love for ones creator.
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Wonder no more! There is no love. It is all about reward. Same for everyone else. If the ideal of the Christian god we’re true, we would be incapable of loving him in any meaningful way. We can’t even imagine his ethereal greatness and mystery. And he is so high (on something) that he has no need, no rules for he is without society or equal. Spock might last 2 seconds but other than that, the fusion core god must be kept at a distance, for to know him is to see he is incapable of reason we can reason.
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One thing I always wanted to do when the door knockers were in town was to lay in wait for them and throw open the door as soon as they come up the steps with a big smile on my face and say something like “Have you heard the good news from our lord Satan?” Alas, never has the guts to do it.
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You make my nipples hard! Ok, my nipple. I lost one slamming the door too quickly. But imagine inviting them in with loosely clad girls dancing around the fire? We’d have some converts!
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When my wife and I first got married we lived in a small city called Stevens Point and every summer we’d go through three waves of “missionaries”. The Assembly of God, Latter Day Saints, and Seventh Day Adventists would all hit town. It was annoying, sort of like mosquitoes.
But I must admit I had a soft spot for the SDA. I knew a lot of them back then because my wife and I both worked for an SDA owned and operated nursing home in Point, and from what I saw, they were one of the very few Christian splinter groups that actually practiced what they preached. At least at that facility. It was a 300 bed nursing home facility, and we took in the worst of the worst, the people that had no where else to go or who had mental problems so serious no other institution would take them in. We had a locked ward where we had severely mentally ill, people who’d suffered from botched lobotomies, the severely mentally retarded, we also had the extremely frail elderly in extreme poverty. You can’t imagine the work, skill, resources and medical staff you need to care for a population like that unless you’ve experienced it yourself.
Not all of the SDA facilities shared that philosophy, as we found out when we transferred to a different one a couple of years later. And eventually the bean counters found out how much money the Point facility was bleeding and it ended up being sold a few years later. I have no idea what happened to the third floor residents, which was the locked ward.
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Some of them may still even be alive Farmer. I used to transfer many of these “kids” from YVS and Rainier to the hospital. Some of them had been there 50 years or more. When I was a young boy I went with my mother to Rainier School while she did service work. I was there 40 years later as a medic and many of them had grown up, living their entire lives at the kindness of some amazing people. Inspiring, yet heartbreaking at the same moment.
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The religious know no shame. Out of one of their heads that say their god is ineffable, that no one can know the mind of god, his purpose for you, why he and Satan got their jollies fucking over Job, etc. The other head will then tell you in great detail what god wants, that god is beyond space and time (How do you know? Were you there?), that god has a plan for you (Can I just see the damned thing? I might like it.) Etc. They claim anything that we perceive as good comes from their god and all of the bad comes from devils and demons.
The philosopher Alvin Plantinga had the audacity to suggest that “natural evils” are caused by Satan and demons. Apparently philosophers are allowed to call upon supernatural beings as long as someone else thought them up. Plantinga doesn’t explain why his god created Satan and demons in the first place (no one can know the mind of god) nor does he explain why they are allowed to continue to exist (god works in mysterious ways). I call bullshit! I call Brandolini’s law!
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Well these “martyrs” are one thing – mostly dupes, right? But what do we do with all those who aren’t believers but pretend to be in order to manipulate the public…for votes or whatever?
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It’s funny how they suddenly congregate around election. Trump is less a Christian than I am. They’ve all practiced being gullible so long they don’t know how to stop.
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Yep, that reminds me of a few fanatical apologists we’ve encountered Jim, like ColorfulSprinkles or Pastor Mel and several others. The same logic and intuitive passion applies equally to Big Foot enthusiasts. Sasquatch’s evident POPULARITY makes it just as real as Moses, Christ or Mohammed! It’s all the same.
The Abrahamic god is never wrong, always right, no matter what time-period humanity tries to nail down anything consistent or inconsistent because He is everything always, and not everything always, at any given time past, present, or future, and no one knows what His future ultimate plans/providence will be because He is always right… for His own pleasure whether we like it or not, OR whether it is good for humanity or not, at any given time!!! But the ONLY people who can properly interpret all of this divine engagement and revelation… are those who proclaim (truthful or not) exclusive membership into His esoteric ways and language — Scriptural corroboration or not! 😉 😛
The only way an intelligent human being can justify that level of absurd reasoning is empirical denial and intellectual suicide… also known in the mental-illness and psychiatric field as Hyper-religiosity related to Bipolar Disorder.
And yet, it all persists in society because too many are too afraid to be different, independent, and non-confrontational.
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Somehow we need to work together to and focus the rebuke. We’ve had enough and societal ignorance needs to go the way of all the other gods.
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I’m starting to understand why Hitchens was getting so perturbed. It’s so fucking obvious that a child can do it.
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Completely agree! 🙂
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Hey! Check your email!
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I love Messlier’s work
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It arrived in the mail! That book is cover to cover genius! I have only browsed it for the moment. It is interesting how he came up with so much truth and reason on his own observations—defying the “experts” and their faux wisdom of god. That book may be the Fort Knox of quotable quotes. Thanks for the tip, mi amigo.
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It’s one of those books I can reread over and over. It is good and imagine he wrote that in 1750s!
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It really is amazing. The chapters are short and every one carries a blatant observation that believers ignore. You really can do this without the help of an expert.
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You know. One only needs to sit down with the book and common sense on the other side and you are home and dry
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Part of the problem is we read the Bible with the supposition that it’s real and we find the bits and pieces were looming for. Oh, and hey, thanks for the referral. It came on Thursday and I just kept reading. Hard to put down. Should be on every bookshelf in every home.
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It is hard to put down. I don’t know if I can interest in some other classical work too; Letters to Eugenia by d’Holdbach
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I’ll check it out. Between letters from earth and testament, now I guess I’ll have to… haha.
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This is good to know. You will be the better for it lol :).
When I started reading letters from the earth, I felt it was too slow and set it aside. Then later when I settled to reading it, man, I couldn’t put it down.
Letters to Eugenia are letters to a friend and addresses itself to religious questions
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$86 for this book? At least that’s what it is at Amazon. Did you find it elsewhere for less? No matter how “great” it is, not sure I want to plunk down that much cash.
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Here’s a link. $15 Testament: A Priest’s Dying Confession (The Godless Heritage Series) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1482394081/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_pxO.Cb2RRZMY5
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Ahhhh… much better. I’ll look into ordering it later this month as we’re leaving this weekend for a few days at the coast. Weather is warming up here! Thanks for the link!
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It’ll be fire season here in a week! It’s been a cool and rainy one til now. Better late than never 😳
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I really dread hearing those words … Fire Season. From your descriptions and pictures, it seems you’re right in the middle of things. I do NOT envy you at this time of year. Stay safe.
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It’s a crap shoot. We’re working on some defensible space, but until you’ve seen how hot those fuckers burn, you can’t imagine the intensity.
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What breaks my heart is thinking about the moment we stand before God and become acutely aware of how infinitesimal all this is. How painfully obvious it will become that we were always meant to be reconciled to God and it being too late.
I’m a Christian and I have friends who are atheists. We coexist amicably and I love them dearly. Yet my heart breaks for there reliance on self.
Honestly, whether my being willing to die for my belief only creates an illusion of religious truth or someone else dies involuntarily is neither here nor there. The point is, none of us can stay here forever and when we die, your truth nor my truth will matter, only THE truth will be of any value. In that moment individual opinions and truths will not be able to save us. We will no longer be in our own hands. We will have no control.
It just saddens me to think of the moment some of us realize how wrong we had it all along…
I pray always for God to soften hearts to truth, despite our persistent stubbornness. Not just atheists or nonbelievers, I pray this prayer relentlessly toward my own foolish heart.
God bless 🙂
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The world is full of people who believe over their own abilities and compassions. Obviously I disagree with you. We have a problem when we doubt—that we believe we need external help to solve the worlds problems and end up waiting. How many more thousands of years can we use belief as an excuse to wait? The biggest regret humanity will face when they realize there are no gods? That we’ve trashed the place and our fellow man over thought convictions of an imagination. Your prayers are being answered. People are finding the truth—in atheism.
I appreciate your compassionate heart, but we got this. God is absent no matter if he were real or not. It’s up to us.
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🙂
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I enjoyed the piece, but you are preaching to the choir. 🙂
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I have a very good core group. I do think they have an aversion to choir music though. Hehe. This blog is my own conclusions without the opinions of expert atheist. It has been as pure of an escape from faith as I could envision. I was swayed by indoctrination so long it had to be my own observations. Happy you stopped by and that’s for the follow. I have a very smart group here that outshine me all day long—you’ll fit right in.
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