Creationist Propaganda Of The Worst Kind

Whilst collecting and sorting my mail from a basket that catches it at the main door at the bottom of the stairwell this morning I noticed a neighbour had mail from a christian creation church named 'Creation Ministries International'. It was bound in transparent cellophane and thus easy to see and read. I couldn't help but notice that it had a picture of Charles Darwin overlaid with a no entry sign.

The Article was written by a Gary Bates who heads it with 'Pressing on with questioning evolution'. Ok, so it's not really my mail to read, though as neighbours the first one to the mail tends to sort through it and leave peoples letters in respective piles. I quickly perused the article for a moment and the content was contradictory from the beginning. The author opens with 'Can we imagine living in a world devoid of christian influence (well I can actually), where compassion is regarded as a weakness and abortion is acceptable because babies aren't wanted or just the wrong sex?'

We then get some biased paraphrased world war two history lesson of sorts, Hitler's regime killing millions of Jews and around 70,000 handicapped German people. We get mentions of German people being duped by propaganda, eugenics programmes all culminating in the fact it was social Darwinism to blame. Near the foot of the page it states 'Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it'. I didn't read on, as I've stated though it was clear to view it wasn't my mail and what I was reading was only making me feel angry.

It's almost like creationists have created an alternate christian reality for themselves, a different world with their own take on history, so let's address a few facts mentioned in the article I briefly read.

Let's begin with the holocaust Gary mentions and I will refer him to letter wrote to the Pope Pius XII during the war by Ukrainian metropolitan Andrej Septyckyj referring to the German government as a regime of terror and corruption, more diabolical than that of the Bolsheviks. The Pope replied by quoting verses from Psalms and advising Septyckyj to 'bear adversity with serene patience.'

Wladislaw Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish government-in-exile, appealed to the Pope in January 1943 to publicly denounce Nazi violence. Bishop Preysing of Berlin did the same, at least twice. Pius XII refused.

And lastly when advised by his own clergy such as Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, who wrote to him and said, 'The massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms.' Pope Pius simply said there wasn't enough evidence to verify the rumours. Though to be fair there is examples the pope did covertly intervene on some occasions such as the deportations in Hungry though the vatican largely remained silent throughout the war to the atrocities when it could have raised its voice and made a difference.

Let's also mention his predecessor Pope Pius XI who said 'Mussolini is a wonderful man. Do you hear me? A wonderful man'. This was the same pope that blessed Italian bombers as they went to bomb Ethiopian villages in Mussolini's war of Imperial conquest.

I want to end this little segment on the holocaust and Gary's alleged Darwinian influenced eugenics programme by quoting Hitler himself;

'I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the almighty creator; by defending myself against the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord. I would like to thank providence and the almighty for choosing me of all people.'

Of course looking back in ancient history and events in the bible you soon find it in spades, Moses ordering his people to kill all of the Midians, in Numbers 1:7 in the bible it states;

'They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every man. 8 Among their victims were Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba—the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. 9 The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children and took all the Midianite herds, flocks and goods as plunder. 10 They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps.'

But it gets better, not content with the above, when women, children and other captives were taken along with the war booty Moses says in part 15 'Have you allowed all the women to live?' he asked them. 16 They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD's people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." Notice how they keep the dames for themselves?

There's many other such examples in the bible, god it seems doesn't really have a problem with ethnic cleansing at all, in fact he actively encourages it. So, Hitler from his above quote would seem to be acting on divine inspiration, of course we also know he did want a pure Aryan race but his theory and take on it wasn't about the many in Germany, it was about the whim of the few in power that facilitated it.

And before we move on let's not forget Noah's Ark and gods own mass genocide and ethnic cleansing of the world, it don't get any bigger or better than that!

If we look at the closing line I read and quoted above 'Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it' then we only have to look at later regimes in Cambodia and Serbia or the Kurds in Iraq to know that people who DID know history DID in fact repeat it. Mankind has always been a tribal creature and sadly through history has always fought amongst itself being the Red Indian tribes of American, to the Aztec tribes among countless others. Add religion into this mix and mans desire for control and power becomes heightened and atrocities become justified because they become a God's or Allah's will and command. Religion has been used to justify many wars and slaughter throughout history as we all know.

Let's move onto the disabled and abortion bit he mentions. Well with the above we can only conclude pregnant women of opposing tribes in biblical areas were killed but there's more specifics in the bible too. The Book of Leviticus, Chapter 21, says that if you are a disabled person you can’t be a priest or take communion; in the New Testament, it says renounce sin and you can ‘take up thy bed and walk' (Luke, Chapter 5); and disability is seen as a punishment from God, ‘be cured if you sin no more,’ in John, Chapter 9.

Or we could move onto Leviticus 21:17-23 which states 'Whosoever ... hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or anything superfluous, a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, Or crookbacked, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken; No man that hath a blemish of the seed'.... it goes on some more but I'll spare you.

As with the other stuff there's more examples I could quote, religious apologists I'm sure could add their own 'nicer' biblical quotes to the debate but this only serves to demonstrate how the bible is a contradictory fractured affair, rewrote and badly edited over the ages.

As for abortion, well it's not nice but sometimes necessary in the world of today, if I was told an unborn child a partner was expecting was deaf, blind and dumb then what would be the point of them being in a world they couldn't interact with, see or hear? Taking the religious drivel above into account there'd be no point them being here anyway because if there was a heaven they'd not be welcome.

I really don't know why it comes to Darwin or natural selection what creationists are afraid of, or why they seek to disprove it or eliminate it from enquiring rational minds? There's more resounding evidence and proof for it than there ever has been for creationism. Francis Collins, the American physicist/geneticist who was the leader of the human genome project and is also a christian puts the mankind's age at around 100,000 years old, other scientists differ on it being older or younger but many say older. That said, when we look at the creationist side of things happening about 6 or 7 thousand years ago we could say over a timeline and on what Collin's says that mankind was here for 99% of the time regardless. During that duration he had to forge his way in the world enduring war, famine, resettlement and natural disasters. It's only in the last percent of Collin's time frame that god actually gets interested in mankind and sets up shop in a hot arid backwater of the world and his created crew get busy doing his work (Adam and Eve rubbish to one side here). We all know though through archaeology and recorded history that civilizations had risen and fallen, people such as Alexander the great had crossed most of the known world and the ancient Greeks had been talking some degree of sense about democracy and philosophy. Gods of course had been created in abundance before the alleged main dude entered the fray to explain of course what mankind couldn't explain back then.

I find it sad to see that organisations such as the Creation Ministries International would post such blinkered one sided rubbish to people. To refer to your own article Gary, you and the organisation you are in are duping people with propaganda of worst kind.

Déjà Vu

It's been a quiet month blog wise, I know you all want more but I've been in video game heaven and doing other stuff, and there's no point in blogging unless I have something worth saying really. So get a cup of tea, settle down and get ready for a humanistic rant. I'm actually in the process of setting up another blog based on my atheist/humanistic ideals but haven't got around to the finer details yet, so until then I have to use my trusty old hobbit blog to get things of my chest and rant with my usual vitriol against all things organised religion orientated.

It almost seemed like a Déjà vu instance as I perused my local paper the Newark Advertiser today. As usual I read the 'Credo' column to see what my religious local friends are up to and who should be featured but the person from my last rant, none other than Lesley Marshall from the church of promise (see the earlier 'You're In Control' blog).

So what proverbial and intellectual gems does Lesley have to offer this time around? Well she's been to the cinema to see Tin Tin and she mentions the senses being bombarded by technology on a daily basis, and at this point I am indeed nodding and concurring. Then we move on to meaningful silence and having studied psychotherapy in the past I am aware how much meaningful silence can be important in some circumstances and situations be it counselling or within a relationship.

Then like the last entry Lesley made we move swiftly into God territory with wildly delusional claims of 'God is the Lord of eternity. He is the creator of time. His timing is perfect and he is never late or rushed.' I lean into my cup of coffee and breathe in, the pungent aroma filling my nostrils and I ponder 'Will Lesley wake up and smell the coffee one day?'

These certainly are fantastical claims Lesley makes and I muse if the so called god of eternity is so pre-occupied with time as to look earthwards and see women being gang raped in the Congo, people being slain by a dictator in Syria or children foraging for scraps of food in the ghetto's of Buenos Aires?

Lesley then goes on to ironically mention how much attention god makes to the smallest details by saying 'It's not just the big crises that god wants to be involved in, but he is concerned with all the small details too.' Well evidently not Lesley because just take a casual look at the news on a daily basis, it's not good is it?

She goes on to add 'Already I can hear some of you hyperventilating in thinking how far behind you'd get in your day if you just sat down in silence and did nothing but chat with god.'

Well firstly I'd tell god what an awful mess things are down here and to come and live as a mortal for a day, feel pain and suffering, feel sadness and despair and get a dose of reality. Unfortunately I can't do this because the phone is swinging aimlessly off the hook because god isn't there, he doesn't exist.

I pity people like Lesley, in their comfy little alternate reality bubble, their twee little world of godly goodness, their world of 'it's gods will' when you point out the calamities of today.

She goes on to suggest that we should try and talk to god and see a quality of life beyond our wildest imagination. Grand and deluded claims indeed, you only have to read the bible to see what a celestial dictator/gangster character god really was. I have to hand it to Lesley she is the queen of wild boasts and extremely knowledgeable when it comes to making sweeping assumptions.

There's a great little book called 'Being Good' by Simon Blackburn which is basically about ethics and in it he quotes;

'All in all, then, the bible can be read as giving us carte blanche for harsh attitudes to children, the mentally handicapped, animals, the environment, the divorced, unbelievers, people with various sexual habits and elderly women. It encourages harsh attitudes to ourselves as fallen creatures endlessly polluted by sin, and hatred of ourselves inevitably brings hatred of others.'

That kind of puts it better than I could really and sums things up perfectly, I could add to the statement with passages from the bible but why bore you with that rubbish. As the philosopher Nietzsche puts it;

'Christianity is the hatred of the intellect, of pride, of courage and intellectual libertinage'

These are tough times the world is in, we need level heads and pragmatism to see us through, not some flights of celestial fantasy from such as Lesley Marshall and other christians. The reality is we have to sort our own problems out using common sense and often personal courage and determination. Mankind needs to put faith in itself and not sit around pathetically thinking some higher conscience is running it all. We're the real architects of this planet, we built everything from bridges to hospitals of our own volition and because of our own needs and ultimately we are the architects of our own destiny be it good or bad. If we sat around praying for new hospitals or bridges would they appear?

Religion in my view is very much like a cigarette, if you've never had one then you don't need it. Should you try one and get past the uncertain coughing stage you become addicted, you come to rely on it at all costs and when problems surface you reach for the packet in order to cope just like christians reach for a god as their coping mechanism. Christianity to some is just like a drug, the opium of the masses as Marx once said, thankfully more people these days aren't as reliant on religion.

Personally if religion didn't exist or wasn't created and human kind had no knowledge of it then the world wouldn't need it. Just like if tobacco hadn't been found we wouldn't be smoking. I don't have religion but then I don't need it because I still have the capacity to love my fellow human beings, to smile, to extend my arms and hug someone and to marvel at how beautiful the world can be. I don't need the invisible and pointless crutches that is religion.

Hopefully in the upcoming weeks I'll be launching my humanist blog and hopefully I can use it as a common sense platform and maybe even start up a local humanist discussion group. I'll keep you posted. Thanks for reading.

You're In Control

Most Fridays I pop into my local and grab a coffee, it's cheap, decent coffee and I either chat to another customer (most of us know each other) or read the local paper. My local paper the Newark Advertiser has more than its fair share of articles about faith, along the lines of 'new vicar installed at church' etc. Every week it has a regular small column called 'Credo' in which a local narrow minded vicar or pastor does their bit to promote the alleged big guy upstairs. The articles range different subjects, some are light on the religion aspect of things whilst others are plain stupid, the latest Credo being no exception. This weeks literary gem is called 'Let God be in control', yep it's scary just from the headline. The article writer this week, a very deluded Lesley Marshall opens with the subject of school holidays and wholesome family stuff, all good so far until we delve several paragraphs in and she hits us with the god smackdown. She writes (I assume the writer is female);

'We need to be ready for gods touch, wherever we are and whatever we are doing. God wants us to have good quality holiday times.' Hhhmm didn't god just want us to have the sabbath off and how does she specifically know the above fact, has he told her this?

She goes on to say 'He loves us to have relaxation and be unburdened. But he especially loves us to be in a relationship and communication with him everyday so that he can guide us and help us in our busy stressful lifestyles.' Now the article is leaning into an Orwellian slant, you can relax my loyal subjects but don't forget, I'm watching and judging and need constant worship and contact.

The article gets unnerving still, totally moving from the school holidays and family bit to saying 'What's the catch, you may be asking? You need to commit your life to god, talking to him in prayer and listening for his answers, reading his word, the bible, and accepting that god is in control and not you.' I beg to differ, last time I looked I wasn't attached to strings.

Now that's pretty deluded if you ask me, and grossly stupid, I myself am in control of my daily life, not any god, I make the decisions, I have my own moral code and ethics, I influence the days events by my actions and it is also influenced by those around me, god doesn't have a look in. I don't have to tell a god how good he is and I don't have to cower in praise and wish for a life after this in what would be if it existed a kind of celestial North Korea. Yep, to quote Christopher Hitchens here, imagine that every day of your life from the first day you were born until the day you die is scrutinised and judged by some omnipotent being above. Then when you die and if you've passed all the stupid tests he's set (forget being a fallible human!) and ascend to heaven you actually pass into a celestial dictatorship where the big brother scrutiny continues - would you really want that? I imagine if heaven existed it suspect it would be some kind of dour holiday camp with rows of identical wooden huts where you have to live with family, some of which you never liked in the first place for eternity and then daily like a sycophant turn up to a church to tell god how amazing he is, erm... no thanks.

It's really simple folks, you can be a perfectly decent human being without religion, being intelligent creatures we all know between right and wrong and yes we all make mistakes, it's called being human. Catholics of course use confession as a get out of hell free card but seemingly with the amount of child abuse constantly being revealed about the catholic church confession isn't really working very well from either side of the wooden partition.

So back to the 'let god be in control' bit, lets take Lesley's words as the possible truth for a second and ponder the fact that god is in actual total control? All I can say is if that is the case then what an awful mess he is making of it all. Starvation, disasters, cruelty, fear and a list of endless bad stuff, oh yes, as a religious person would respond 'it's gods will'. They'll always play that card over a rational sensible explanation as its a christian universal side step without thinking too much.

It's people like Lesley that actually make the world a blinkered place, the classic christian approach in which they believe praying is the be all and end all about everything, it's a laissez-faire look at life, in the fact I'm a christian, I pray therefore I don't have to worry, and if I slip up I just have to say sorry to some invisible deity and its all good again. All I have to do is subscribe to the bible, a book written and constantly edited by ignorant old men long ago that contains very little historical fact. A book written by individuals that sought control and thought the earth was in fact flat as they lived within their small sphere of influence on the earth.

If I told you that your partner was having an affair or that green paint made you invisible readers, then you'd want proof wouldn't you? Yet christians take the bible as proof without any tangible evidence because its far more easier to be ignorant, christian ignorance after all - is bliss.

Christianity today is a folly on a massive scale where people cling to relics and fables of the past and use it to control and deceive the weak minded or vulnerable, it's a comfort cushion in which we delude ourselves some heavenly big brother or uncle is looking out for us when in fact we are alone in a universe that doesn't give a damn what we do, it's not worried about us so why should we worry about it? As for death, well its simple in my mind, I can't change the fact I'm going to die, I have no control over it so why should I again worry about it? I imagine death to be like a hospital anaesthetic, a void, a blackness where you feel nothing and think nothing but are in no discomfort either. When I had my hip replacement and woke to reality and pain I wished I was back there to avoid the agony I was in so in that respect I didn't find it scary at all. When you talk to most old people these days many seem to crave that eternal not knowing and pain free bliss, they feel they've lived their life best they can and now its time for an eternal slumber of sorts. Yep it may be disconcerting to you reading this, that I think that's what happens but having the option of that or debasing myself in front of a god whose alleged book is filled with cruelty, war and hatred everyday then I know which option I'd prefer. (Yep the bad bits of the bible, of which there are countless many get excluded by christians, we just get the so called nice stuff)

So to close, you're in control of your own life and destiny, things may happen beyond your control to change that but the universe has been nothing if random throughout known time. So forget all the christian control stuff, be true to yourself and others, live life as you see fit, be good to one another and realise you don't need the fetters of religion to live a good, moral and decent life - you, not a god (or any of the over 10,000 listed gods) are in control so enjoy life !

'Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.' Anon.

Following On

Following on from my recent 'Atheist Junction' blog and the feedback I got from it I've had a think and decided on which direction I want to go. People messaged me on Facebook, email or spoke to me on the phone and the resounding feeling is they think I should carry on with the blog as it is. I don't think people mind blogs on my feelings regarding religious issues but felt I was doing exactly the same as my pro-religious counterparts in putting my opinions forth.

There's no doubt I totally see this angle and I personally felt my staunch viewpoints were taking over a bit and detracting a little to what my blog is generally all about. On a frank note though, my opinions and views are something I feel passionate about, most people have a cause out there they feel strongly about from poverty to politics or even just supporting their local hospital or chosen research group - the list is endless.

I think the best route for me to go down is to do another blog, maybe on a different website with a new format, after all there's so many websites out there these days designed for blogging so it'll be good to try a new one. There's still going to be blogs on here about my thoughts on Atheism, Humanist stuff and religion but they'll be markedly less.

Thanks to everyone that took time to give me some feedback be it on Facebook, email, the phone or in person.