The Rant Institute

 One can be no more separated from a god that is the very substance of the universe than they can be separated from time and space, or an atom can separate itself from the universe on the whole. 

The miracle of Christianity is very simply demonstrated by the power it has to make a negative into a positive.  A person who claims to be a Christian often does so with pride. In fact, for many, being a Christian is the greatest thing about them, without which they feel they are nothing at all.  But to be a Christian, you must accept that there is something fundamentally and irreparably wrong with you that God could fix, but chooses instead to only treat, in order to keep you dependent upon a Church run by people who likewise are irreparably flawed, while convincing you that doing so is something you should not only be proud of, but should seek to convert others to doing.  This is like being proud of being a drug addict and wanting everyone else to claim to be a drug addict as well. Only the drug addiction can never be fixed, it can only be replaced with a purer drug - God! Welcome to my family. 

 “Faith” of the religious variety is like both the wizard of Oz and a curtain, behind which are three words that for some people are by far the scariest words ever spoken, and especially to have to admit and accept.  For others who have faced their fears of those words, naked and unafraid, and accepted unflinchingly whatever cost such words require as merely the price of all true liberation, they are the only path to true wisdom, awe, love, truth, and gratitude just to be alive. What are those three words?  “I don’t know.” 

Teaching children to believe they are born with the stain of original sin on their souls is a way of teaching a child  they are only worthy of being "saved" from the fire of hell through their willingness to confine their infinite curiosity and creativity within the dogmas offered by their brand of religion.  This is like telling a child to believe that the sin of having two legs can only be forgiven by walking in a straight line, and only in the direction their religion requires, for doing anything else with your own two feet is an offense to a God who doesn't have legs because he's completely immaterial. 

  Last time we looked at how filicide can be interpreted as both good and evil, just by changing the names from Jack and Danny Torrance to Abraham and Isaac. In contrast to religion, science sees Jack and Abraham to be as insane as David Berkowitz, the serial killer dubbed the Son of Sam after claiming his killing spree was in obedience to commands from his neighbor’s dog, Sam. And to transform Berkowitz from Jack into Abraham like water into wine, all we need is the right story, a will to "believe, "and another 4000 years. Thanks to a man with memory problems, we now know how turning a serial killing psychopath into a religious saint reflects the dualistic nature of memory. Since memorizing scriptures is one way to prove oneself worthy of salvation, religion would have colored that man more as a witch or pawn of the devil.  Yet, by enlightening us about how memory really works, he shed some light on how great sins can become holy sacraments of obedience with enough time.

 Christians and atheists have very different ideas of what it means to have, and more importantly to exercise, one's "free will" with regards to what and how a person is allowed by "God" to think.  The easiest way to understand this difference is to think about the nature of how freely a person can use their imagination and creativity as being the mental equivalent to how freely a person can use their own body. An atheist sees their mind as something with which they can dance, run, skip, walk, swim, jump, or anything else. In the same way they can use their body however they wish, so they can use their mind the same way.  The Christian sees their mind as being "intelligently designed" to do all those things, of course, but also believe that, to show the "creator" of such a mind and body they deserve to be saved from eternal tortures, they are required to "believe" in a particular version of their Christian religion, and if they don&