The Rant Institute

The God of the Old Testament, who directed his "chosen people" to commit numerous acts of genocide to settle his own insecurities, is the very same God that Christopher Columbus brought to the Native American "Indians" in 1492. That God was the very same God that Christian Crusaders brought to Jerusalem in 1099, murdering every Muslim man, woman, and child, and all for the glory of gold and in defense of an institutionalized Christian religion. It is that same God, which rose up like a serpent with the rise of King David, that murdered Christ, for daring to suggest that people ought to work together for their mutual benefit, rather than follow like sheep, the proclamations of  either the Sanhedrin or Popes, false prophets adorned with power and wealth, who all claim to be as "infallible" in their decrees as the emperors of Rome. Those who now declare they know "the will of God," are by far the falsest prophets who have ever dared to crawl the...

If you think about the difference between a lie and a "belief," you discover that they are often basically the very same thing. In fact, at the center of the word "belief," we find the word 'lie." And while the Christian will everywhere boast of the power of their "beliefs," they never notice that they are, at the very same time, boasting about the power of their lies.  From slavery to geocentrism, from pogroms to genocide, from martyrs to world wars, every horror perpetrated through history has been over one lie or another. The Christian admits this every time they accuse atheism of being far more responsible for bloodshed throughout history than theism.  And yet, despite Christians claiming that far, far more people have been killed for what the Christian "knows" to be a lie (i.e. atheism), the Christian nevertheless claims that their "beliefs" are far, far stronger than any lie.  Let us fist accept that the Christia...

The "forbidden fruit" eaten by Adam & Eve from the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" is unmistakably religion. Religion is the lie, after all, that we have "souls," which convinces people not only that they are special among all of creation, giving humanity a very real "god-complex," but also convincing humans of their need to be wholly dependent upon a special class of shamans who proclaim to know "right and wrong" as if they were "like God, knowing right from wrong" - which is exactly what the serpent promised. From this lie, every other lie humanity has come up with descends. Nationalism, hatred, hope for salvation and fear of those "evil" people (like atheists) who devilishly threaten to drag souls to hell (another religious fabrication that humans simply accept as "true" without a shred of evidence to support it), all come from the "tree of lies" that religion planted on Golgatha, an...

Bishop  Robert Barron  recently reviewed the movie,  The Case for Christ, which is almost as much pure emotional propaganda as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and the1935 German propaganda film Triumph of the Will . The movie is based on the supposedly "true" story of Lee Strobel, a journalist who set out to save his marriage by debunking Christianity, only to succumb to a serpentine story of salvation and redemption that Christianity "intelligently designed" to seduce human mind , with the promise that it would live for all eternity as a perfect ideal.  Christians never suspect that Strobel simply wrote a book that he no doubt knew Christians would be both eager to "believe" and only too willing to buy, of course, selling enough copies to score even a movie deal in the process. No, Christians never doubt that someone who is making money off of their willingness to "believe" anything that supports their brand of God and relig...

Christians generally love the idea of heaven and hell. In fact, most relish in the belief that their "faith" is a winning lottery ticket to live forever in the Chocolate factory of the one, almost as much as they enjoy the thought that their enemies (i.e. atheists and anyone who ever 'bullied' them by doubting the veracity of their "beliefs") will burn for all eternity in an Auschwitz pizza oven of the other.  Ignoring that their "beliefs" in such places are supported with even less evidence than most of their other claims, such Christians feel that simply believing in the existence of these two final destinations are necessary for keeping people "moral" in this life, by the promise or threat of final and eternal justice in the next.  Naturally, most people  never envision that their own children, or their own parents, ever end up in the oven, even if those parents or children were serial killers or school shooters. For such a th...

The great irony of Christianity is how often Christians have acted like Satan in pursuit of their desire to make everyone like Christ. And this irony is only surpassed by how often atheists are truer to the example and the teachings of Christ than Christians, since it is the former who are often imprisoned like Christ for advocating peace in times of war, while the latter is only too willing to jump into the nearest foxhole for God and glory, with all the conviction of the German foot soldier in WW II that "God is with us." This is hardly surprising, since if anything Christianity has to say is true, especially if Satan and God are really at each others throats, than there is no doubt that the easiest way for Satan to win the Battle of the Flags game between "Chaos & Order," like a Get Smart episode, is to wear the arm bands of the other side, like the criminals did in The Dirty Dozen.  To put it more simply, when the Book of Revelation talks about Sata...

Ask a Christian where the universe came from, or what causes "miracles," and they will assure you the answer is God. And with such an answer, religion proves that its greatest miracle comes from convincing Christians that their ignorance of something must be proof of their knowledge of God.  According to this logic, the reason we do not have all the answers to everything, is because our ignorance is intended by God to lead us to God. Brilliant! Put another way, religion worships ignorance as the greatest evidence of God's existence. Hence, if we have no idea of where the universe came from, religion assures us that such a lack of knowledge of how or where, or even why or when the universe came to be, only proves it must have all come from God, and for whatever reason God wants, regardless of all the senseless suffering such a universe may contain. In fact, if we have no idea why the universe contains such suffering, it is only as arrogant of us to presume it ...

There are basically two kinds of prayer, one of which is active and the other of which is passive. We could further categorize and sub categorize ideas of prayer, but for simplicity sake, understanding the difference between these two kinds of prayer is necessary for understanding whether prayer has a real world effect, or whether it is mostly just a lot of hot air.  The first kind of prayer is prayer that is offered as a substitution for having to do anything. This kind of prayer happens when people get together to "pray" for the president, or to change abortion laws, or for world peace.  Such prayers allow those who are offering them to buy into the illusion that, from the comfort of sitting around their own living rooms, they can actually help to alleviate the troubles in the world, by helping to empower and all powerful God, to do something about all those troubles. This is essentially how prayer becomes a way of purchasing world peace the same way someone might ...

In this video on  Stephen Hawking and Atheism by Bishop Barron:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-yx5WN4efo Barron argues that "Science pontificates about matters properly philosophical or religious." And with this claim, Barron asserts his authority to be qualified to "pontificate" about matters scientific, even though he is not a scientist, while then condemning scientists for "pontificating" about matters concerning religion, without first being a priest. That Barron is so comfortable practicing as a priest the very thing he condemns in the scientist, should raise a red flag for his audience.  Barron continues, " "There is a qualitative difference between science and philosophy."  - Actually, this is not entirely true. Science and philosophy were always parts of the same discipline, even before the great Greek philosophers like Socrates and Plato, and especially Aristotle. In fact, it is incredibly ironic that Barron should a...

There are any number of reasons why people will tell you they "believe" in their gods or their religions. But perhaps the most interesting of those reasons, which is seldom admitted by "believers," is simply the fact that their "beliefs" cannot be falsified. Karl Popper pointed out that, for a theory to be scientifically and thus logically valid, it must be testable, and thus falsifiable. But from flat earth believers to Christians, such "beliefs" can neither be tested nor falsified. And when we look at the recent phenomenon of people "converting" to "flat earth" beliefs, we see that the strongest evidence they have for their conversion comes from their inability to falsify the claims of flat earthers. And in the same way a person cannot falsify God or virtually any of the claims made by religion - such as the existence of a soul, "original sin," heaven & hell, and so much more - so a person who cannot falsif...

In the following video: Bishop Barron on Violence in the Bible  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A65Wfr2is0 Bishop Barron offers a way for Christians to grapple with the problem of violence in their Bible, where God repeatedly directs his "chosen people" to engage in genocide after genocide, as if "morality" and "genocide" are not always mutually exclusive ideas, much in the same way that St. Augustine advocated the use of torture and persecution as the preferred method for forcing wayward sinners to accept his own brand of God and religion. In doing so, we see how a religious "bias" can ultimately help us rationalize anything we want it to, including torture, murder, war, and basically any grand scale act of evil we wish to revel in for the sake of our sacred gods. Barron, for example, is perfectly willing to rationalize the violence in the Bible in ways that allow the Bible to conform to his own sense of morality, but seems to ignore ...