The Rant Institute

 "All the reasons we've considered thus far for the existence of God clearly do not establish that God exists. It is surprising, then, and somewhat disturbing, that these reasons are so often presented as if they were good reasons... The reasons we've considered begin by confronting the mystery in front of our noses--the mystery of the existence and order of the universe around us--and then quickly move in a direction that take us away both from our experience and the mystery itself... The hypotheses we've considered about God do not solve the puzzles but complicate them."  Daniel Kolak and Raymond Martin, Wisdom Without Answers , (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1998), p. 41

  "By examining our lives, we may be able to wrest ourselves from inherited answers and hand-me-down values long enough to make contact--not with pipe dreams or idealizations--but with what is true and authentic about ourselves and the world. While we may not, ultimately, save ourselves, we can stand up to the disintegrating universe, our destroyer, and in the midst of our annihilation take stock of what is really going on before the world hurtles us and then itself into oblivion."  Daniel Kolak and Raymond Martin,  Wisdom Without Answers , (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1998), p. 98 Those who hope for eternal life after this one show an incredible amount of ingratitude for the life they have. The degree to which they expect eternal reward for the life they are living is equal to how much they feel they deserve for having been made to carry the cross of life itself as they have, straitjacketed by dogmas out of hope for eternal freedom beyond the grave. And the surest proof they hav

“The essence of trauma is disconnection from ourselves. Trauma is the very separation from the body and emotions. I t is that scarring that makes you less flexible, more rigid, less feeling and more defended.” Gabor Mate Choose relationships with people who do not punish you for being yourself.   Scott Kiloby   Creating souls stained with sin in order to require those souls to depend on spiritual sacraments that act like medicine for the soul - medicine that requires a miracle to turn wine into divine blood and bread into divine flesh, but stops short of fully curing an innocent child of the sin-stained soul they are born afflicted with - is the spiritual equivalent of mnchausen by proxy. Worse, it puts those in charge of administering the cure for such spiritual sickness an incredible amount of power, especially over the children who are taught to believe in both their own spiritual deformities and therefore their need for a life long dependence upon the priesthood that administers

Unless by pain and suffering thou art taught, Thou canst not guide thyself aright in aught. St. Augustine   In part II, we looked at how love has a near enemy that, while it looks a lot like love, is in fact its opposite masquerading as the real thing. One leads to the development of an emotionally healthy person, while the other creates emotional deformities that foster spiritual dependence. One creates healthy boundaries while the other creates porous boundaries. And as one nurtures our inner swan, the other fosters a belief we are ugly ducklings.Ugly ducklings, in turn, learn how to get approval by being and doing whatever they need to to be accepted. And the addiction to approval they develop can lead to two results. One is an extreme altruism, and the other is a narcissism. And Christianity allows for the former to be used as a Trojan horse for the latter.  In this installment, we will discuss two key parts to understanding how religious trauma affects us and sets us on a spirit

  Preface    “Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature.” St. Augustine    The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind. Friedrich Nietzsche   Understanding why people hold such radically different perspectives about miracles is much easier than explaining what those differences are and why people hold them as tightly as they do. But we will try to do so in what follows.  To begin with, these two views are not mere categories but exist at opposite ends of a spectrum of perspective. At one end of the spectrum are those who simply "believe" a miracle comes from a supernatural agent, called either God or the devil, and mostly because doing so evokes an emotional response that is undeniably real for them. At the other end of that spectrum is a way of looking at the world that is willing

“Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel.”       Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov       "In the beginning" were the questions we asked concerning this conflict between what one believes and what one comes to understand, or between the findings of careful scientific investigation and the proclamations of religions that give us comfort in an uncertain world,  questions that needed to be kept in mind during this brief survey of why and how people see miracles from such radically different perspectives. The questions the reader needed to keep in mind, and to ask themself, before any attempt to understand these different perspectives concerning miracles, or anything else for that matter, is what was more important to them as both an individual and as a member of a species:

"The more enlightened element of all denominations now admits that science has in numerous instances unquestionably demonstrated that religious teachings have at times been wrong as to matters of fact."   "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell."  St. Augustine   Bayesian Inference   Everything discussed so far about how people look at miracles from very different perspectives, like looking at a horse from opposites ends, brings us to the idea of how Bayesian reasoning is as necessary for understanding miracles as Kepler's ideas were to understanding that planets move in ellipses rather than circles. Based on the ideas of Presbyterian Reverend Thomas Bayes (1701-1761), it is also  called Bayesian inference or probabilistic reasoning . In simple terms,  in order to in

 "If there is a God, atheism must strike Him as less of an insult than religion." [Edmond and Jules de Goncourt]

  “Most of our tensions and frustrations stem from compulsive needs to act the to act the role of someone we are not.  János (Hans) Selye, M.D., The Stress of Life”     Trauma is when (our authentic selves) are not seen and known. Bessel van der Kolk         In part one, we looked at how religious trauma, thanks to being taught to believe they are born with the stain of original sin on their souls,  causes a child to see themselves as the spiritual equivalent of an ugly duckling. As a result of this belief, a child born with as much of a need for unconditional love as mother’s milk is given only conditional love instead. While these two versions of “love” can look as similar as our right hand looks to our left hand, one is natural and the other is as manufactured as Yoo-Hoo chocolate dink. The latter is made up mostly of High Fructose Corn Syrup! Mother's milk is like liquid love for a new born child, while Yoo-Hoo is liquid-love's "near enemy."  And as

 Christianity - in a world where the most brilliant minds have collectively accepted that we know very little about how anything operates, from physics to consciousness and everything in between, Christianity is a religion in which many of the least educated people on the planet claim to understand with near perfect clarity an infinite intelligence that exists wholly outside of the material reality we know almost nothing about, and think that anyone who doubts their claims to know the desires of such an intelligence deserve nothing less than eternal torments for daring to doubt, not so much that intelligence, but any mere humans claim to understand it far better than they know themselves.

  "The Christian religion cannot be believed without a miracle by any reasonable person." J.L. Mackie,   The Miracle of Theism   (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 12. Miracles are used by Christians as evidence for a "belief" that they hold in "faith."  Faith is believing in something in the absence of evidence.  So the miracle of the Christian is how they use miracles as evidence for a faith that they pride themselves in holding in the absence of evidence.   

 "It is impossible to devise a scientific experiment to describe the creation process, or even to ascertain whether such a process can take place. The Creator does not create at the whim of a scientist." Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism , (General edition, second edition, El Cajon, CA: Master, 1985), p. 5. The idea of "scientific creationism" is a contradiction in terms, because science is limited to studying what can be measured in some way, shape, or form. But as the statement above illustrates, there is no way to apply the scientific method to something that cannot be measured or even verified in anyway.  The real question is not whether science can measure anything that may indicate creationism is valid, but why a God who is dying for us to know Him would choose to endow us with the ability to know certain "truths" about the nature of the material reality we inhabit, and even some of the immaterial nature of our own mind, but not with the abil

Thomas Jefferson observed that  "Reason and free inquiry are the only effective agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error and error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free inquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free inquiry been indulged at the era of the Reformation, the corruption of Christianity could not have been purged away."  Now compare this to the reign of Julian the Apostate, and how Christians formentted violence because they were unable to defend their beliefs in the court of public opinion, as Jefferson said was necessary for unmasking falsehood. After the death of Constantine the Great, a holy trinity comprised of three wise men rose to take control of the Roman Empire. That trinity was comprised of his three surviving sons: Constantine II, Co