The Rant Institute

What if the very "knowledge" that the serpent promised Adam & Eve they would receive by eating the forbidden fruit from the "tree of knowledge," was the Bible itself? After all, the serpent told them that, by eating that fruit, "they would become like God, knowing right from wrong." And isn't that exactly what the Bible purports to do?  If you think about it, the claim that the Bible is "infallibly" inspired by God, a "truth" that even the "gates of Hell shall not prevail agaisnt," then why has the Church worked so hard to prevent anyone from challenging what it says? Like the famous scene in A Few Good Men, where Tom Cruise asks Jack Nickolson's character, "If you gave an order that Private Santiago wasn't to be touched, and soldiers always follow your orders, then why was there any need to transfer Santiago off the base? Why the two orders?" why would God declare that "the gates of hell wou...

In the Bible, God decided that the people he had created, addled with the stain of "original sin" that He chose to allow them all to be born with, were just too "evil" to be allowed to live. So he decided to kill them all. Christians want people not to think too much about this, of course, because even though God must have fully known he would eventually murder all of the people he had created with a great flood, God's "righteousness" is always far greater than any system of "universal natural law" that He offends in exercising it. Praise Jesus! What God does by killing all of the sinful bastards he had created with a flood, is set an example that he clearly demands his subsequent "children" must follow. After all, Jesus even tells us that, to avoid the fires of hell, we must strive to always "be like God." That the serpent in the Garden of Eden tempted Adam & Eve to engage in the "original sin" using the...

 IN response to the question, "Why set Adam and Eve up to fail?," a Christian replied: Skeptics often complain that God set Adam and Eve up to fail. However, God had to give Adam and Eve a choice. Without free will to choose, Adam and Eve would have been mere puppets. True love always requires choice. God wanted Adam and Eve to choose to love and trust Him. The only way to give this choice would have been to command something that was not allowed.Since God had planted in the garden all the different trees from which we now get fruit, 1 the test was not too difficult. Adam and Eve had plenty to eat and a large variety of fruits from which to choose, and could have chosen to believe God. They were only commanded not to eat from one tree out of the many. RESPONSE: What must be noticed about this answer is how truly insane you have to be to believe it. What this answers boils down to, in short, is that God - the most perfect, loving, caring father ever!...

It is not the "lie" of Christianity that bothers me. It is the insult to one's intelligence, and the attempt to "gas light" someone into believing they are suffering from some mental defect, if they are unwilling to accept that their invisible soul is marred by an invisible cancer, that can only be healed by an invisible God,  who they are partially responsibly for murdering, who the local witch-doctor/priest can communicate with as if through an invisible walkie-talkie, so that they won't end up roasting like a pig at God's everlasting pig roast in the sky.  And if you are unable to make sense of this story, that is so obviously "true" that the only people who would even ever THINK to question it are those who MUST be in league with Lucifer,  it is because, as the bible says so plainly, God has decided NOT to give you "the gift of faith." In other words, if you can't "believe" the Bible story is true, that your eterna...

Religions all claim that their "beliefs" are "the truth," and the people who "believe" these claims never once care to consider how often a "belief" is so often different from, and even the opposite of, the meaning of the word "truth." But despite the fact that "truth" and "beliefs" are so often direct opposites, this does not give a single person who knows there is a difference a moments pause in their willingness to conflate one for the other. Ironically, they are the FIRST to scream and shout at the top of their lungs, if ever they suspect anyone else is daring to do the same thing, mind you; but that never seems to bother them. If the Christian gets up and says their "beliefs" about sex, sexuality, gender, marriage, Jesus, original sin, heaven & hell, God, the Bible, the Devil, and so on, are all "the truth," they take offense to anyone who is awake enough to point out that "belie...

If you have ever looked at a crucifix without the lens of your own confirmation bias, the only thing you see is a torture device depicting the brutal murder of a man. People pile into churches around the world and stare at this ghoulish piece of art, convinced that it is a celebration of their salvation. And in this way, it is the most obvious example of just how truly powerful a person's confirmation bias really is, and how that bias can be used to make people see whatever it is you want them to see. There is no doubt that anyone who was NOT a christian already, who was presented with any image of a person being savagely murdered using any number of horrific murder devices - like a machine gun, an electric chair, an iron maiden, the rack, a pack of lions, or a crucifix - would naturally and automatically be horrified at the thought that any of these such devices were hung on the wall of someone who knew a loved one who had been put to death by any of them. This would be even o...

I am in the process of metamorphosis, but in the opposite direction of Kafka or Buffalo Bill.  In this process, it is interesting to notice the irony of how much of a comfort zone is made up of caring about what other people think. Yet the professional, and all those encumbered by the pursuit of their career, are often forced to cultivate the latter so that they may "rest in peace" in the former.  And all those who fail to do the same, no matter how much of a coffin it proves to be to the flourishing of their own soul, are seen as heretics by "Christians" and political conservatives who everywhere proclaim, without a hint of irony, that the liberty of the individual is paramount. Remarkable! Such a thought is hardly worth the effort to write it down, especially so far beyond the meridian of midnight, but I have often found myself set upon by a thought that will not let me rest until I have pried its gnawing teeth from my mind and set them to...