The Rant Institute

For the atheist, Christianity, like all religions, are man made belief systems where human beings make God in their own image. In short, religion is the story of how humanity lost the Garden of Eden when it fell in love with its own reflection in the heavens, like Narcissus. At a certain point in the movie, Silence, we see an allusion this idea. The bedraggled priest who is the main star of the film, looks into a pool of water and sees his own reflection. As he stares at it, it turns to the image of Christ, and than back to his own face. A Christian is likely to interpret this as if Christ comforting the priest by letting him know He (Christ) "goes before us always," and that the priests sufferings and hardships in Japan for Christ, are simply a reflection of Chris's sufferings for humanity.   For the atheist, however, the priest spying his own reflection in the water is reminiscent of the story of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection in a pond,...

Plenty of people believe that faith is not only the way to heaven, but the truest reason for why any of us even exists. We are here, as far as such "believers" are concerned, as simply a means by which God tests our faith, while teaching us all the lessons we need to know to get back to God, and heaven, forever after. That there are no lessons a mortal can learn that have any applicability or relevance to an immortal is completely ignored by the faithful, of course, but that is besides the point. The problem with faith, however, is that even thought it can give people meaning and help people see light in the darkest of situations, it also opens the door to every lie that has ever been told, let alone believed.  Accepting truth "on faith," in this respect, is the very means by which every lie ever uttered throughout human history has succeeded in controlling how people think and what they believe. And by doing so, opened the door to every false hope and fear,  as w...

There is no doubt that the majority of people who define themselves as "pro-life" believe that the unborn are "human beings" that are murdered by abortion. And the later in the pregnancy the abortion is performed, the more horrible the act of murder is committed. But what these "pro-lifers" don't realize is that their own actions are often the very thing that contributes the most to sometimes increasing the number of abortions performed per year, and even worse, specifically  increasing the number of late term abortions performed per year. To mention this fact to a "pro-lifer," however, is like trying to explain to members of Joel Olsteen's church that they are only worshiping money, or trying to explain the most ardent supporters of Donald Trump that they are only giving more power to the very New World Order they think they and Donald Trump oppose. It just doesn't make any sense to them. After all, everyone knows that people who...

I know Christians who claim that truth is as simple as the fact that 2+2=4. But in truth, it is Christians who are arguing that 2+2=5, and all because their Bible says so - and for no other reason. For Christians, the Bible is the literal word of God. This is something they admit they simply "choose to believe." They believe this, they say, because doing so is the only way that there can be any basis for any standard of morals whatsoever. In truth, however, believing in the Bible is exactly the opposite of establishing a basis for any morality whatsoever. Ya see, the entire  basis for Christianity and Christian morality is actually based on nothing but a "holy trinity" of assumptions. The first assumption in this trinity is that the Bible is the literal word of God. But there is no evidence or way to prove such a claim. Instead, such an idea is simply "believed" to be true, mostly because so many others have believed it to be true (many of whom have ...

The greatest sin religion has ever committed is deliberately, and knowingly, forcing people to accept that its sacred "beliefs" are necessarily "truth." And from this one simple but powerful lie, religion has committed all of its other sins, including torture, persecution, oppression, rape, and murder. Simply put, there is nothing wrong with someone choosing to "believe" that there is a "god," anymore than someone choosing to believe in an imaginary friend, or that your stuffed cat is real, or that the neighbors dog talks to you. But at the point that you feel you have any right whatsoever, to pretend that, because you simply "chose" to believe in this "god' of yours, that you therefore now have access to the mind of the most powerful being conceivable, and you not only KNOW what that mind wants absolutely, but are required to impose those wants on all others (and all to save your own soul!), then you have only proven you...

There are millions of Pro Life Christians who genuinely have their hearts in the right place. They really want to protect what they believe are "babies" from being "murdered," as they see it. Obviously, people debate this issue a great deal, but there is no doubt that the vast majority of the people who identify as "pro-life" really want to do the "right thing," and more importantly, they want to "protect life." That's why it's so ironic that they support a pro-Corporate party that only support pro-death polices. When their own children start dying a decade from now, because Trump shuttered the EPA and companies were allowed to do to all of the water in the US what has happened in Flint, Michigan, of course the "pro lifers" will blame Democrats, homosexuals, atheists, socialists, and all the usual suspects. Whenever things go wrong in the environment, for example, it's never because people voted for politi...

C.S. Lewis wrote a book called "The Great Divorce," where he basically argued that people who do not subscribe to the fictions of his Christian religion are somehow incapable of accepting reality.  Lewis might as well have been arguing that anyone who cannot see that he is Jesus Christ, and Napoleon Bonaparte, and Little Red Riding Hood, all rolled into one, is equally incapable of accepting reality - his reality, to be specific.  And both are equally divorced from anything that resembles reality, except perhaps in a lunatic asylum.

Christianity and Islam are theistic religions, and they have surely done their share of blood spilling for their Gods, even as their adherents distance themselves from such horrors by insisting that their religions are strictly benevolent. But whether you insist that your religion is whole separate from all of the horrors that have been carried out in its name, or whether you are an atheist who thinks religions are the most evil monster humanity ever created for itself, the worst religion by far, is economics. Bertrand Russell argued the the bloodshed of the 20th century would never have been possible if not for religion predisposing human beings to accept absurdities on faith, without the need to question the myriad assumptions that such absurdities have always been built upon. And by accepting that such absurdities necessarily constituted "the truth," even when they were so obviously just "beliefs" that people wanted (indeed, many dreadfully needed) to be true...

Many hardcore alt-right Catholics see Pope Francis as a communist and a Marxist. And if they had the choice, they would do to him exactly what the Sanhedrin had done to Christ himself. No wonder Martin Luther accused the Catholic Church of being "the whore of Babylon." Mind you, this is one of the first popes to actually try and walk in the footsteps of Christ by taking up the cause for the poor in earnest. That so many Catholics have been seduced by the serpent of their utopian capitalism that is now coiling around the whole world, and all because they have been indoctrinated by their capitalist caretakers to see any gov't attempt to help the poor as something only Satan himself would do, only proves that any institution can be used to brainwash even the most well meaning of people. True, governments are almost the worst things humanity has ever created for itself, necessary evils that they are. But when such fear and hatred is used to justify opposing ANY gov't ...

Today, Donald Trump signed the Global Gag Rule, which denies aid to any country that provides abortion services. In doing so, Drumpf ensures a dramatic increase in the number of unborn children that will be murdered through abortion, while also increasing the number of women who are harmed from such services. And he will do all of this under the ruse of morality, much to the fan fare of his sheepish Christian supporters, to enrich the money lenders in their temples, and the private healthcare providers. If you identify yourself as "pro-life," there is a good chance that that is the only issue you use to determine how you vote. Hence, you probably vote Republican.  But even though this is the ONLY issue upon which many Conservative Christians vote, they have no idea that their attempts to stop abortions are actually only increasing the number of abortions. To use a line from The Usual Suspects, one of the biggest tricks the Republican party ever pulled was convincing well ...

 The movie " Silence" is a historical fiction about two Christian priests, Fr. Rodriguez and Fr. Garrpe, who travel to Japan to find a fellow priest, Fr. Ferreira in 1631.  Under extreme torture by the Inquisition in Japan, Fr. Ferreira renounced his faith in Christianity. The movie raises many questions about faith, of course, but those questions can only be answered from two very different perspectives. The first perspective is one of the Christian believer, while the second is of the atheist. In short, the movie is about how obstinate stubbornness is always a virtue when practice by "us" for our beliefs, and always a vice when practiced by "them" for their beliefs. For the Christian, Silence is a simple movie about how obstinate stubbornness is a virtue, because it is the ultimate test of faith in the face of extreme persecution. For the Christian, this movie is the Christian equivalent of the World War II movie " Unbroken ," about Lou...

Here is an obscure movie reference that I am sure no one else remembers. If you watch the clip from The Exorcist where Regan and her mom are in the basement playing with the Ouija board, you'll notice the ceramic bird sitting on the washing machine. That bird is used more than once in the movie, but in a very subtle way, to denote how Regan sees Captain Howdy. Captain Howdy is the name Regan gives to the demon she is communicating with via the Ouija board, that eventually possess her. The demon's real name, we learn from the beginning of the film, is Pazuzu.   I refer to Trump as "Trumpazuzu," because the bird in that scene is orange with a yellow tuft of hair, and because the most argent believers in Trump are practically possessed by the idea that he is their free market messiah, even though he has appointed all of the same Goldman Sachs people that he condemned Hilary for even associating with.

A number of Conservatives I know have been bragging about how they belong to the Republican part, the part of Lincoln that opposed slavery, while "Liberals" are all "Democrats" (often referred to as Demo-rats) who supported slavery. But this is a bold faced lie. First, this claim confuses the difference between a political party name, like Democrat, Republican or Whig, with a political ideology, which is often characterized as "Liberal" or "Progressive" and "Conservative." But what must be understood is that a political party name is obviously in no way pegged to a particular political ideology; especially since the political landscape is forever changing. And these days, that landscape is only changing faster and faster.  So it is comical to hear Conservatives today boast of belong to the party of Lincoln, since the Republicans who opposed slavery in those days were not "Conservatives" who voted for Abraham Lincoln becaus...

When the high ranking Nazi and German officials (many of whom were Christian - Germany was 99% Christian at the time) met in Wannsee to discuss the murder of millions of Jews in 1941, they planned to do it by effectively 'euthanizing' with poison gas.  While this seemed more humane to those who were not convinced that genocide was the best answer to the Jewish question, the Zyklon B poison gas that was eventually used was simply a more efficient way of carrying it out. Repealing Obamacare (an admittedly horrible healthcare coverage plan in it's own right, but for millions of people, it's better than nothing) achieves the same effect as the Wannsee conference, but dispenses with all pretense of being humane about it. While one treated people like a dog that needed to be put down, the other treats the uninsured like Terri Schiavo, and while the former was the result of racism the latter is the result of greed. Yet both were performed for "moral reasons," by Ch...

Conservatives who make the bogus empty claims that "republicans would not be out there protesting and declining to go to the inauguration if Hilary won," have no evidence to support such a claim. But there's plenty of evidence that suggests that they would be protesting, and many of them with their guns in hands! Indeed, Republicans were certainly out protesting in droves, after all, after the passage of the ACA, with many a republicans (including Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck) claiming they would "leave the country if the ACA passed." Yet none of them did. And today, it's really amazing to hear Republican saying "We should all be together now that the election is over," after so many of them so vocally expressed their commitment to doing the exact opposite of that after the ACA was passed.   In fact, all Republicans did for the most part was not only try to bankrupt the country by refusing to fund the US government, but they also s...

I am an atheist who believes in God. And everyone who claims to believe in God is actually an atheist. You're probably saying right now, "what the...?" Ya see, I believe that "God" is an idea, a delusional one but an idea nonetheless, that people around the world "believe" they share with others, but they really don't; and they sort of do. But people don't actually believe in "God," they only believe in their beliefs about God. People's "beliefs" about God, in other words, ARE their "God." And people's "beliefs" about God are only ever extensions of themselves. That's why people who tend to believe in God always cock sure they are right, and why such a belief so often makes "believers" more arrogant about "being right" about everything they believe. And that's because they insist that their own beliefs come from the supreme God who created all beliefs. Indeed, ev...

If you watched the Frontline two part special on the Obama presidency, you may have noticed the parallels between what is being done in America by Republicans and what happened in Rwanda prior to the genocide in 1994. That parallel is right wing propaganda being used to sow the seeds of fear and rage based purely on lies. Leading up to the genocide in 1994, in both churches and on radios in Rwanda,  a massive propaganda war was being waged as misinformation was used to intentionally sow the seeds of fear and rage in the Hutu majority. Like America today, that fear and rage came from a concerted effort, by both Christian churches and talk show radio hosts, to convince the Hutus that the Tutsis where about to take power in Rwanda, and enact policies that would result in the oppression and even murder of Hutus. That fear spread like a virus across the minds of the Hutu majority in the da...

Conservatives are being deliberately whipped into a frothy hatred for anything that looks, thinks, or smells different from them. But what's really impressive is how. Despite the fact that the alt-right crowd and the KKK both got their man Drumpf into office, that doesn't mean they don't have plenty to be angry about. Indeed, Hitler winning power in Germany certainly did nothing to defuse the anti-Semitism that was growing at the time. Instead, it only concentrated it. When people get angry, they tend to get angrier before they ever calm down. Just look at the Civil War, for example. So how are Conservatives whipping up and propagandizing their loyal Right Wingers? People like Mark Levin, who proudly boast about their "patriotism" (Isn't pride supposedly a sin? Was Jesus "proud" of being Jewish?), claim they are defending their country while they are making a lot of money spreading nothing but lies. Lies, lies, and more lies. That's how capit...

If you've ever seen the old Christmas classic, 'It's a Wonderful Life," with Jimmy Stewart, you'll remember that Stewart played the part of George Bailey, a tired guy who ran a crummy little "Building & Loan" in a place called Bedford Falls. There was a greedy old misanthrope who lived in that town as well, named Mr. Potter. Mr. Potter was virtually identical to Mr. Scrooge from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. George Bailey, on the other hand, was like Bob Chitchit, only for George, the whole town of Bedford Falls was Tiny Tim. In the presidential election of 2016, America rejected George Bailey (in the guise of Bernie Sanders) and elected Mr. Potter instead (in the grim visage of Donald Drumpf), and, with the attempts by Republicans to abolish Obamacare, basically said "Fuck Tiny Tim!"  As anyone who remembers the movie knows, George is given the chance to see how life would've turned out without him. His older brother would...

Conservatives are convinced that "the communists are coming, the communists are coming!" From Andrew Brietbart and the alt right crowd, to gun lovers and bible thumping Christians in American's heartland, fear is used to prod true believers to support the very "new world order" they fear the most. Basically, it works like this. Communism and socialism are seen by Conservative Christians as instruments of the devil, responsible for the murder of roughly 100 million people in the 20th century alone. As such, anything that in anyway sounds or smells like "socialism" is to be feared as much as Satan himself. Basically, all you have to do is simply SAY something is "socialism," and Conservative Christians immediately start thinking that govt will soon by sending us to concentration camps and pushing people into ovens. This irrational fear, coupled with the insanity to believe that "the profit motive" of "capitalism" is ...

My brother once found a young boy who had hung himself in the basement of a neighbors house. For him, the experience was incredibly traumatic, as anyone can imagine it would be. The boy was around 10 or 12 years old, and his parents had recently undergone a very ugly divorce. As a result, the doctors had put him on drugs for depression which ultimately contributed to his death, in my opinion. But my brother is a Catholic, which means the entire experience was interpreted within a Catholic paradigm of beliefs. Hence the boy had killed himself, not because of the drugs he'd been prescribed or the divorce of his parents, but because evil demonic forces had clearly been at work to lure the boy to his own demise. Of course, had an atheist or a Shinto or a Buddhist found the boy, their own interpretation of the event,  however traumatized they might have been by the experience, would have been interpreted within a very different paradigm from the one my Catholic brother used. And it ...

In January of 1942, sixteen distinguished doctors and lawyers – most of whom were Christians - met for an elegant lunch in the German countryside to resolve what they called “the Jewish question.” As these men smoked cigars and drank French wine, they discussed the important role Germany was to play for humanity, professed their devotion to German culture and its high ideals, and plotted to kill a hundred million people. To defend the purity of their enlightened system of beliefs, in other words, they planned to tear humanity limb from limb.    That lakeside luncheon was known as the Wannsee   Conference , and it was the place where the fate of some eleven million people was sealed, including six million Jews. The conference had the singular purpose of coordinating the various government agencies needed for The Final Solution. It was here, for the first time, that most of the men at that table were presented with the plan to turn the age old religious practice of ge...

The trouble with marriage is that we often come to think of it like a prison sentence from which there is no escape. Thanks to Catholics, marriage is basically like the 2nd circle of hell, where Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta are punished together in hell for their adultery, for eternity.  Naturally, the two can't stand each other. If you were stuck to someone for the rest of your life, could you? And that's the problem. Ya see, we can only truly love that which can be lost. We cannot love someone who we are bound to for forever, from whom we can never escape, no matter how much we wish we could; no matter how painful it may feel to be around them. That is not love. But that is exactly what some people think marriage requires. No wonder so many people prefer not to get married these days.  Being bound to someone for you're entire life (one wonder's what this means for this couple in an eternal afterlife - are this still "married" even after ...

I am an atheist, so I do not believe in the Christian conception of the "anti-Christ" as being Damien Thorne, the actual son of Satan, anymore than I believe that the Jesus figure was real, or the son of "the one true God." I do, however, believe that Christ is an archetypal figure who embodies the rebellious nature we saw in Moses, Lucifer, Martin Luther, Adam and Eve, James Dean, John Lennon, and countless others who have challenged the rules and norms of their given day, especially when those rules and norms result in so much suffering of the many to the great financial benefit of the few.  Christ, in other words, is a person who dares to defy the powerful, and point out that the emperor has no clothes.  The anti-Christ, in contrast, is simply anyone who thus chooses to support the ethos of the day that benefits the rich minority at the expense of the poor majority. In the days of Christ, Judas and the Sanhedrin more generally, were "anti" Christ;...