The Rant Institute

As yourself a simple question: which belief makes a person more humble - the belief that we evolved from monkeys, and that we are therefore no more special or different from every other living thing on the planet, or the belief that we were made by God, and that the entire universe was created specifically with you in mind? Religious believers often insist that that only be believing that the most powerful God imaginable created the entire universe, can we be truly humble. Even though such a belief leads us to the conclusion that everything other living thing on the planet is ours to do with as we  please. This belief that we humans are somehow special, because God gave only our species a soul, lead one writer to explain it this way: To every other species on the planet, we are the Nazi's. And yet, somehow, our "benevolent" God, made it all for us anyway. Fuck the suffering of other animals - they're just animals after all. Sort of like how the Germans described t...

Only people who have the hubris to believe they are good enough to deserve the eternal paradise of heaven are evil enough to believe that all those who don't believe the same thing that they do deserve the eternal punishment of hell. Or more simply, only a person who thinks they deserve to live in paradise for eternity, are evil enough to believe that some people deserve to be punished for eternity.  And for almost no other reason than that they don't believe the same things, or they just happen to be different in their tastes and proclivities. Religion, in other words, sells its believers the very opposite of what it convinces them to believe. 

Here's how totally twisted we human monkeys have become.    We think we are so special, because we are so intelligent, that we can kill whatever we want. We even have Religion which "teaches" us to believe we are superior to everything in the universe. In fact, even the universe itself was made especially for us, by the most awesomely powerful being ever imaginable! And all, just for US! Because "He" loves us THAT much! But such a "belief" only ever gives us a truly false a sense of humility. Such a narrative provides those who believe in it the exact opposite of humility. In fact, such a story actually sounds exactly like the story of why the devil was thrown out of heaven in the first place, if you think about it, because he is alleged to have "wanted to be like God," and wanted his own servants and such. That is EXACTLY how religions, political structures, corporations, and even societies, have all arranged themselves - hierarchically....

Maybe the only thing infinite about religion is the number of lies it is willing to tell to enslave people with ever more lies. Take the lie of "moral perfection," for example. This lie convinces people that religion will help make them "moral" by curing them of the moral infection they are born with - original sin.  Th is f l aw of "original sin" leads us to think in terms of spiritual ine quality in the same way that a belief that some r aces of people are less evolved than others leads them to think in terms of racial inequality .  And the w hole quest for spiritual perfection or "spiritual purity," works the exact same w ay , and has the exact same effects on us all, as a "final solution" had in achiev ing racial perfection o r "purity . " One works to puri fy the soul of a "chosen people, while the other seeks to purify the bloodline . That's why some people see r acism as simply a secular rel...

Roughly 100 years ago, my great grand parents fled the Armenian genocide in Turkey, and made their way to America. Yesterday, my mother voted for a man who vows to send similar such refugees back to Syria, where ISIS and other genocidal extremists are doing their worst. "Isn't it ironic, don't ya think? A little too ironic. I really do think." Confronted with questions about how any "Christian" who proclaims to follow in the footsteps of Christ could support such a "man," the usual "Christian" reply is based on their "beliefs" about the dangers of losing their guns, the fear they have of homosexuals getting married, immigrants imposing Sharia Law, the poor developing a voting block strong enough to redistribute wealth, Black Lives Matter getting anyone to care about "black lives," abortion, or a number of other things. Never mind the fact that the number of abortions tends to go up during Republican presidencies, s...

Someone once asked "what kind of a God creates a world where all of the living creatures are forced to eat each other to survive?" This question forces a thinking person to wonder why such a "merciful" God would "intelligently design" such a house of horrors, if he really "loves us." Christians try to weave their way around the "problem of evil" argument by claiming that evil is simply a by product of free will (as if an infinitely benevolent God is therefore constrained by the limits of their own inability to imagine a world where free will exists but evil does not), but the problem of pain is a different question altogether. Even a mere human being can imagine a world in which all of the creatures are simply vegetarians instead of carnivores. Indeed, even the dinosaurs were said to be vegetarians, but for the T-Rex.     And if God could not figure out how to create a sustainable world where all of the creatures are vegetarians, the...

A "true believer" in God and Religion may be, by far, the most skeptical person on the planet. This may sound ironic, even paradoxical, but there is probably no one who is more skeptical of everything there is to be skeptical of, than a "true believer." Not all "believers" suffer from this near fatal sense of absolute skepticism, but the ones that do, will almost never "believe" anything other than the beliefs they have deeply, emotionally, and psychologically, come to depend on for their sense of purpose and identity. For these true believers, no mountain of scientific data could ever change their mind about climate issues, for example. No ocean of studies and research could ever sway their opinion about racism; no amount of murder, rape, and genocide could ever shake their faith in the righteousness of their chosen religion; and no universe full of torture, death, and evil, could ever diminish their absolute "belief" in the unequivo...

For a long time, science and religion have been frenemies: they hate each other, they love each other, they love to hate each other. It's like the Hatfield's and the McCoy's practically. To some atheists, religion might be the most evil thing in the world, responsible for genocide, war, torture and a whole lot of other horrors. To some theists, on the other hand, atheism and science are responsible for far , far more evil. But the truth is that this conflict between science and religion, while real in may ways, is not as legitimate as it seems. You see, the problem with both science and religion, is that they are often used together. Even the Nazi Holocaust could never have been accomplished without a heavy reliance on the use of religion to convince the 99% Christian population of Germany at the time, that discriminating against the Jews was a Christian thing to do. But for all of the barbs that have been traded back and forth between science and religion, abou...

If you are afraid that Liberals are out to take your guns and destroy all notions of masculinity because some extremist group on the political Left has said that that is their goal, you may be as extreme as they are. How so? You see, all extremism has a polarizing effect. Anyone who holds any position, can always find someone who holds an "extreme" position that opposes them. But should we always base our decisions only on such extremes? Must we become extreme in response to extremism? And if so, are we not become the very thing we are agaisnt?  If people base their ideas about homosexuals in general, for example, on a small minority of homosexuals who may claim they want to make everyone in the world homosexual, is that not the same thing as all homosexuals in general basing their ideas about Christianity on the anti-homosexual hate of the Westboro Baptists, who openly believe that homosexual should be put to death? To argue that one group must be considered a legitima...

I am fascinated by what people chose to believe or not believe. personally, I don't see how anything good can come from "believing" that people are basically born sinners, that homosexuals are sexually maladjusted, or that being "skeptical" of such beliefs makes you a morally bad person. But there are plenty of people who think it is better to start with these assumed "beliefs" than not to. Of course, there is absolutely no evidence to support such "beliefs." Well, there is the "bible," of course. But the bible only counts as "evidence" to support the validity of such "beliefs" if we are willing to assume in the validity of the "bible" itself. In other words, the only way you can support your "beliefs" about sinners, homo's and skeptics with the bible, is if you "believe" the bible in the first place. But that's just circular reasoning. This is like choosing to "be...

There is a reality that certain people will never understand. Our minds do not process nor understand information in the same ways. Some operate in a more binary mode, while others in a more multinary way. Some think more in digital, others in analogue, and while some need to know what rules they can trust, the other knows there are no rules. And never the twain shall meet. In a binary world of black and white, of right and wrong, and of good and bad, there is a static security that some think must be followed, lest humanity devolve into barbarism and chaos.  It does not occur to such people that it may be the rules themselves, along with an irrational need to defend them to the death, that may actually be contributing to the very barbarism and chaos such defenders are trying to defend agaisnt, even if they must be willing to engage in barbarism and chaos to do so. And this is the problem with religion and the Christ. The problem with the bible is not the bible itself, in other...

Studies have shown that levels of religious beliefs tend to correlate with levels of racism. Some even argue that this is a causal relationship. And given that particular brands of religion tend to flourish along geographical lines, along with the fact that racism itself is a kind of 'religion of race' that leads a person to view their own race in a more favorable light than other races, discriminating against people for one often includes a good deal of discriminating against them for the other. What is interesting about the relationship between religion and racism, however, is how these two ideas work like "belief" buckets tied at either end of the same social rope in a common well. Basically, American Christians who believe that God exists are often less likely to believe that racism exists in American in general (after all, we have a "black president), and vice versa. And as the one goes up, the other goes down. Hence, those who "believe" in the...

I overheard a truly disturbing conversation with my ultra right wing "Catholic" Christian brother and my mother this evening, about racism and baby killers, in the presence of his kids. Both of them - my brother and my mother - are die hard, (pretty much "zealots" really) for their Catholic church and their corporate-servicing Republican party. This means the mere mention of the word "Democrat" (or "demo rat" as they like to call them) evokes instant nausea, anger, hatred, and disgust. (Pavlov and B.F. Skinner would be proud.) Such a conditioned blanket stereotyping and response is pretty common where I come from, which is exactly what America's political propaganda machine is designed to produce. And although I know there are plenty of Democrats in America who have equally been conditioned like Pavlov's dog to have the same kind of reaction to the word "Republican," I just happen to be surrounded by the former and not the lat...

Religious believers put their supreme trust, not in their Bible or their God, but in their gut. If they feel that a particular sexual propensity is disgusting, for example, than that proves to them that God wants them to be disgusted at the thought of it (why they are even having such "impure thoughts" in the first place, is itself disconcerting), so that they may have a divine knowledge of what God  himself is disgusted by as well. If any of these "believers" happen to be equally disgusted by the thought of their own parents or siblings having sex, however, that "disgust" does not prompt them to conclude that God must be trying to tell them that sex between parents and siblings should therefore be considered a "sin." They would point out, obviously, that the Bible does not expressing prohibit sex between parents and siblings, however - duh! That we are left to wonder how people were to discern between which gut levels of "disgust" ...

Schizophrenia has been defined as "a chronic mental illness often passed down through a genetic chemical imbalance. The disease controls the thoughts and actions of the person it afflicts. Those with schizophrenia often hear voices that tell them what to do, which may lead to unfortunate consequences such as violence and cerebral entropy if left untreated. Symptoms of the disorder include losing touch with reality, hysteria, visual hallucinations, paranoid delusions, trouble focusing, memory loss, and decreased sensations of pleasure." So what's the relationship between this kind of mental illness and serial killers, witches, and messengers from God? How the person interprets the voices in their head on the one hand, and how we interpret those who have these experiences on the other. If Joseph Smith claims that God spoke to him and establishes the Mormon Church, or Mohammad imagines that God is communicating his will to him and establishes Islam, most Cathol...

The problem with arguments for God and man made religion is not that there is NO reasoning that people can come up with that suggest God could potentially exist, but that there is no reasoning that a person can come up with that is not based on so many ambiguous assumptions of reasoning on the one hand, and relies so obviously on its use of double standards on the other, that it is just as easy - and often far easier - to see how such reasoning can always be used to arrive at any infinite number of other conclusions as well; including conclusions that are often the very opposite of what "believers" think such arguments 'conclusively' demonstrate. That the limits of their own reasoning prevents so many of them from seeing how this is possible, is not proof that their arguments for God's existence are therefore beyond logical challenge, but only speaks to the subjective limitations and fallibility that their own religion...

When I asked my ultra Conservative friends and family if Trump had been accused of rape a couple of months ago, their response was an emotional volcano of righteous indignations that vomited forth in a lava of hatred for Hilary and the media. Granted, this response is not without warrant, but such an emotional addiction to Trump's blatant demagoguery has left people on all sides of the political spectrum concerned, and quite frankly, speechless. While such Conservatives vehemently denied that Trump could ever have been guilty of such an act (although there is no real evidence that could show him to be a "moral man" in the first place), recent court documents tell a pretty harrowing story of how Trump engaged in the brutal rape of a 13 year old girl. And apparently, she was not the first or the last. I have no idea if these allegations are true, nor have I done any great deal of investigation into who the accuser is or anything else. But one thing is perfectly cle...

When Barack Obama was running for POTUS, the ultra Conservatives in my own family frequently pointed out that those who supported Obama were basically automatons, who were essentially hypnotized by the very idea that Obama represented "change."  In all fairness, there are always plenty of automatons during an election year, on both side of American's growing political divide. But what is ironic about the current POTUS race between Hillary "America's greatest con-man is a woman" Clinton and Donald the "Drumpf" Trumpet-my-own-horn like the " 7 trumpets of the apocalypse" Trump, is that those same ultra Conservatives have now become the very automatons for Trump as those they hated and condemned who supported Obama. Even worse, they live in complete denial about their blind devotion to such an obvious demagogue as Trump. Yet any suggestion that they may be more emotionally addicted to the 'idea' of Trump as an agent for "cha...

When Martin Luther broke away from the Catholic Church in the 16th Century, he based his criticisms of the Church and his new found beliefs on the concept of "sola scriptura," which is the belief that we should base our relationship and understanding of God on "the Bible alone." Those Catholics who stood faithful to their Catholic Church, like Erasmus, rejected this idea of "the Bible alone," and instead based their faith on the belief that a proper relationship and understanding of God and his divine will could only come from both the Bible AND tradition. But talk to a Catholic about their view of the Constitution, and they will often sound more like Martin Luther than Erasmus, especially about contemporary politically hot topics like same sex marriage or their right to "live by the sword," or, that is, their gun. The "tradition" of Supreme Court decisions that are as necessary, and in a sense as "sac...

What would it take for a Muslim to renounce Islam as a fraud, or a Catholic to renounce the Catholic Church as a bunch of snake-oil salesmen and nothing more? If you engage in a debate with believers about their dire need to believe in the existence of a God, that is one thing. But if you engage in a debate with that same believer about their dire need to believe in their particular ("one true") religion, in order that they may believe in the particular version of God it offers, that is another thing entirely. While the former is something one could never disprove the existence of (since it is simply an infinite abstraction that can always morph its way around any criticism), the latter is something that is as man made as a temple filled with money lenders. What is fascinating about the believer's devotion to all of humanity's different man-made religions is their absolute conviction that THEIR religion comes directly, unvarnished and unsullied, fro...