The False Reality - Why Christianity Requires Ignorance
The False Reality - Why Christianity Requires Ignorance
The False Reality - Why Christianity Requires Ignorance
Ignorance
Ignorance really is bliss. Before I read the bible I only had a vague
notion of Christianity and God. After reading the bible, however, I was forced
to the conclusion that God is not real. I now understand why religion relies on
faith. Faith, by definition, requires ignorance. I came to realize that the
people who have the strongest faith are the ones who shield themselves
from any information that contradicts what they believe. They create their
own reality out of intentional ignorance and pass their opinions on to anyone
who will listen. This, in turn, influences the perceived reality of the more
trusting and suggestable individuals of our society; our children and I was no
exception.
False Reality
As a child my view of reality was influenced by my dads perception of
reality which was shaped primarily on his beliefs and opinions. He had the
typical Christian view that God created everything and that if you want to
live on in heaven after you die, you have to ask his son, Jesus, to save you.
Everything he knew about reality came from books written by an ancient
people. This was their view of reality which, by the way, didnt include any
concepts of space, planets or galaxies. They thought that the earth was the
only thing there was. They had no idea that the earth was a sphere orbiting
the sun. Even though this was an ancient view, my dad chose to adopt it
because it gave him all the answers he wanted. He made a conscious
decision that this reality was real and NOBODY was going tell him otherwise.
Fear of Death
I think the major reason for this was because my dad was afraid of
death. He wasnt just scared of his own death, he was scared for me and
especially for my brother. He didnt want us to die and he thought he found a
way to survive death. So, he took us to church. There we were introduced to
a reality that we werent allowed to question. While my brother fully
accepted this reality, I was skeptical. Because of my skepticism, I never got
the level of approval from my dad that my brother did. Anyway, the point is,
despite all of my dads efforts, my brother still died. He was killed in a hit and
run while riding his bicycle. It was a tragic event and I think my dads faith in
his chosen reality gave him a way to rationalize it. For my dad, knowing that
my brother shared his opinion and that he did everything he was supposed
to do to secure his spot in the afterlife made his death easier to handle. It
made him feel like his son was still ok. I can understand that, and I began to
wonder if there was any truth to what hed been saying. Was my brother still
alive somehow in some kind of afterlife? My dad already had his answer, he
was convinced that my brother had to be in heaven. Like a lot of people, my
dad found his answers from religion and the church assured him that as long
as you do what they say, you will live on in heaven after you die. This was
the reality he was born into, indoctrinated by his parents and the majority of
society.
Indoctrination
This indoctrination begins in the church. The church presents as fact
that God created everything in existence and that He is the authority on
what is right and wrong and that we know this through His own words as
they were recorded in the bible. They preach that you are born with a death
sentence because of the actions of your ancestors, Adam and Eve disobeying
God. They ate of the tree that He told them not to eat from. Because of their
disobedience, God could no longer allow them to have eternal life. In the
bible, disobedience is called sin and the penalty for sin is death. Since there
is no way for you to live a perfect sin free life you will die. You will die, not go
to hell. The concept of eternal torture in hell as opposed to just dying was
invented by the Church. The bible does not say you will either go to heaven
or hell, although most churches preach this. It says that everyone dies and
that God will resurrect everyone at a later date to be judged. Anyone who
asked to be saved will have eternal life in heaven while everyone else, along
with Satan and his angels, will be burned to death on earth while its being
destroyed. Because of the fact that no one can live a life free of sin, God
decided to come down to earth, become a man named Jesus, live a sin free
life himself, accept responsibility for all of mankinds sins, and fulfill the
death penalty by dying on the cross. Three days later He brought himself
back to life and promised to become part of you through something called
the Holy Spirit and accept responsibility for your individual sins so that you
may have eternal life. You will die but if you ask Jesus to save you then you
will be resurrected and you will get to go to heaven.
Avoiding Consequences
Think about that for a minute. Is this really moral? You deserve to die
even though there is nothing you can do to avoid sin? And it doesnt matter
whether you were a good person or a terrible person in life because as long
as you ask to be saved, you will be granted eternal life and you will get to
skip out on being burned to death. So I can commit whatever crime I want as
long as I remember to ask Jesus to save me before I die? How is that moral?
If you truly are breaking some divine laws and death is what you deserve
then the RIGHT thing for you to do would be to accept the consequences of
your actions (and apparently Adam and Eves). You should acknowledge that
what you did was wrong and ask for forgiveness but you should NOT have
the audacity to expect to be saved and even worse than that expect
someone else, namely Jesus, to pay for your, and Adam and Eves, sins!
Morality
If I were to kill someone I would fully expect to go to prison and
possibly get the death penalty. I may regret what I did and be sorry for it but
I would have no right to ask to be saved from prison and ask that same
person to take the blame! But this seems to be perfectly acceptable to
Christians, they call it Grace. They would say that I was merely under the
influence of Satan and that if I would have just been, instead, influenced by
Jesus then I wouldnt have committed the crime. They believe that people
naturally behave immorally. They believe that without fear of divine
consequences there is nothing to stop people from doing all kinds of awful
things. As if religion has to teach people right from wrong and that without
God people are incapable of making moral judgements. They believe that
things are wrong because God says theyre wrong, because, according to the
bible, morality is dependent on obedience to God. Thats ridiculous. The truth
is, people are capable of making their own moral decisions. There has never
been a murder where the murderer was completely surprised that he was
being arrested. He may not care about what he did, but he knows it was
wrong. (Im of course talking about individuals whose brains are functioning
properly) There doesnt have to be a rule stating thou shalt not kill. You
already know its wrong. Its not rocket science. If your actions or words are
going to negatively affect someone else then its wrong. You know this
already because you have empathy for others, unless of course, youre a
psychopath. The problem arises when you choose to ignore the morality you
are born with, your conscious, and do things that you know are wrong.
Accountability
Whether people decide to do the right thing or the wrong thing, the
accountability is on them not Satan or God. Unfortunately, religion removes
this accountability from the individual. People stop thinking for themselves,
believing they are merely a "vessel" for God to use. "God is using me to carry
out his will". This is considered noble, relinquishing all control over to God.
This how the church conditions you to think, Dont attempt to understand
why God wants you to do things, just do it. This is simply wrong, you should
always think before you act. You are in control of your own actions! You are
capable of making your own decisions! Your life is a result of your decisions
and actions, and society as a whole is a result of everyones decisions and
actions, not part of some predetermined plan! The only reason that we as a
society need law is because some people choose to ignore their conscious
and do things that they know are wrong.
Opinions
But I guess thats just my opinion. Just like you, Im entitled to my own
opinions. Theres nothing wrong with opinions as long as you recognize that
they are opinions and you dont present them as facts. You can either have
faith that your opinion is correct or you can accept that your opinion may be
wrong. Yes, opinions can be wrong. For example, you may have the opinion
that sugar makes kids hyper (I use this example because you probably think
this is true) but your opinion would be wrong. If you hold this opinion then
your initial reaction to this statement might be No, thats not true! I know
sugar makes kids hyper because Ive seen it! But youre wrong. The only
way to determine whether an opinion is right or wrong is to use logical
reasoning. We have a word for this, Science. When science is applied to the
question of whether or not sugar causes hyperactivity in children, the answer
turns out to be no. The results were published in the November 22, 1995 issue of
the Journal of the American Medical Association. It doesnt matter whether you agree
with this answer or not, thats what it is. It doesnt matter how strongly you
feel that youre right, YOU ARE WRONG! Do not have the attitude of Well, I
know its true, I dont care what anyone says. Thats willful ignorance and
that makes you an idiot. If you feel like your opinion is correct then do the
work, yes I said work, necessary to find out for yourself. Or at least find
someone who has done the work. If youre right then youll have the
evidence, but if youre wrong then accept it and move on.
Science
It has always been the goal of science to find out how the world
actually is rather than how we imagine it is. But for some reason people
either arent properly educated in science or they just dont care about it at
all. So, instead of learning about the way the world actually is, which is what
science is all about, many people rely on their own opinions or worse, the
views of ancient cultures through religion. If you know nothing or very little
about science then your view of reality is FALSE! Sure, some of your opinions
may be correct but you have no way of knowing which opinions are right and
which ones are wrong. Without science we have no way of knowing whats
real and what isnt. Science is about finding the CORRECT answers to our
questions. Its not just another thing to believe in, its a method for finding
out whether your belief, meaning your opinion, is true.
Faith
To find out whether the belief in the Christian God was true, I had to
study the only information available that describes him; the bible. It was hard
for me right from the beginning because the creation story in Genesis didn't
match the scientific facts at all. But, I thought, maybe I didn't understand the
science or ancient Hebrew language well enough. So I expanded my
scientific knowledge as well as my knowledge of the biblical language itself.
This is the opposite of what most religious people do. Whenever science
contradicts a religious text then they say "...the bible is the Word of God and
is infallible......if the scientific facts don't match up then the science is
obviously wrong...of course God's not wrong..." They refuse to think logically
because they don't want their belief to be false. This is called faith, believing
something is true without any evidence to support it. Faith is not a good
thing. It requires you to ignore facts that contradict what you believe.
Fact Checking
I thought that if I could definitively root the biblical facts to actual
known facts then I could be sure that what I was reading was actually true. I
had to do this because if the creation story is false then that discredits the
rest of the bible. There are no contradictions in the truth. The Hebrew
language does allow room for different interpretations because each word
can have different meanings depending on how its used or even how its
written. Because of this leeway, I was able to loosely relate each day of
creation with the scientific facts. But the scripture still had to be interpreted
a certain way for it to make sense and I started veering from known scientific
facts to what was merely scientifically possible. I had to make a lot of
assumptions, a major one being that the 6 days of creation was
mathematically equivalent to 13.7 billion years. Another one being that the
first day of creation began with the beginning of the universe even though
the bible is clearly describing the beginning of earth with everything in the
sky added later. What I came up with was, at the very least, a scientifically
plausible Genesis creation story. If you are curious, you can read my
scientific creation story, which is based on pure speculation, here.
God is Immoral
I was ok with scientifically plausible because I was treating the bible
as a historical, error free document. But as I continued to read the bible it
quickly became clear to me that the bible is not the moral guide book that
Christians claim it to be and I realized that I was stretching the truth to
support my assumptions. By far, the biggest assumption I had was that God
is an all knowing morally perfect being incapable of evil. But the God the
bible describes is much different and seems to be more human than divine.
He sets a terrible example for people to follow. God, for some reason, hates
handicapped people (Leviticus 21:17-24) and is many times jealous and
vindictive, allowing slavery (Leviticus 25:44-46, Exodus 21:2-6, Exodus 21:20-
21, Ephesians 6:5 , 1 Timothy 6:1-2, Luke 12:47-48) (including sex slaves)
(Exodus 21:7-11), rape (Judges 21:10-24, Numbers 31:7-18, Deuteronomy 20:10-14,
Deuteronomy 22:28-29, Deuteronomy 22:23-24, 2 Samuel 12:11-14, Deuteronomy
21:10-14, Judges 5:30), child abuse (Judges 11:29-40, Isaiah 13:16), and a
lot of murder. God not only allows it, and clearly approves of it, but he
specifically orders it many times. God, himself, killed hundreds of thousands
of people. I cannot believe just how many instances of murder there are in
the bible. There are even specific rules for who you are supposed to kill. Kill
unbelievers (2 Chronicles 15:12-15), kill followers of other religions
(Deuteronomy 17: 2-7, Deuteronomy 13:6-12, Numbers 25:1-9), kill witches
(as if they were real!) (Exodus 22:18), kill fortune tellers (Leviticus 20:27), kill
people who ignore priests (Deuteronomy 17:12), kill children for cursing their
parents (Leviticus 20:9), kill adulterers (Leviticus 20:10), kill the child who
hits his parents (Exodus 21:15), kill gay people (Leviticus 20:13, Romans
1:26-32), kill entire towns if one person worships another god (Deuteronomy
13:12-19), kill women who are not virgins on their wedding night
(Deuteronomy 22:16-21), kill anyone who blasphemes (Leviticus 24:10-16),
kill anyone who works on the Sabbath (Exodus 31:12-15). God kills too. God
killed 42 children for making fun of a prophet's bald head by sending 2 bears
to tear them to pieces (2 Kings 2:23-24), he sent a lion to kill a man because
he didnt strike the prophet with his weapon when the prophet told him to (1
Kings 20:35-36), he killed people for looking at the ark of the covenant, a box
containing the 10 commandments (1Samuel 6:19-20), he killed all of the
firstborn of Egypt just to prove He was real (Exodus 11:4-8), and of course he
killed everyone on earth except for Noah and his family. God killed and
ordered many more killings throughout the bible. I'll let you read the rest
yourself. The Christian justification to these crimes is always "they deserve to
die because of their immorality". Nobody deserves to die. But thats the
theme of the bible, some people deserve to live and some deserve to die.
Jesus is Moral
It's pretty clear that the bible is merely a reflection of the culture of the
time. A record of a violent culture and a violent God. This God is obviously
fictional, but I do believe that the Jewish people did have real spiritual
experiences where they truly believed they were seeing God and
communicating with him. Like my dad and my brother, they truly felt that
what they believed was real. Jesus was no different, and unlike God, he
actually set a good example for people to follow. Like Moses, Jesus believed
he was in direct communication with God and most historians now believe
that he actually existed. He was a Galilean Jewish teacher who was born
between 7 and 2 BC, a time when the Jewish people of Israel were anxiously
awaiting a savior that would free them from Roman rule. Jesus understood
himself to be this long awaited savior that Moses wrote about (Deuteronomy
18:15, Deuteronomy 32:43, Hebrews 8:4-5). Even though Jesus was familiar
with and even agreed with the teachings of Moses his own teachings were
usually morally sound. Jesus taught that we should show love for one another
(Matthew 19:18-19, Mark 12:31, John 13:34, John 15: 12-17), love our
enemies (Luke 6:34-36, Matthew 5:43-47, Luke 10:29-37), forgive (Matthew
18:21-22, Luke 17:3-4), serve others (Luke 6:29-30), lead by example
(Matthew 5:14-16), listen to our conscious which he called the Holy Spirit
(John 14:25-27) that the kingdom of God is not a physical place, its within
you (Luke 17:20-21), that we should not worry (Matthew 6:25-27) , and that
you should not judge people (Matthew 7:1-3, Luke 6:37, John 8:3-11).