The Rant Institute

here in the mirthless grim and dungeon dim where darkness hangs like rotting skin   from brooding demons sick with sin our soul is but a phantom limb and we the disembodied twin of the emptiness we dwell in that swallows everything within and makes a coffin of our skin filled with all that might have been now the dire moans of wind lament their bitter requiem as devils fanged come stealing in and in a froth my thoughts begin to tear my body limb from limb   ...here in the mirthless grim and dungeon dim.  

Corporations pour a ton of cancer causing chemicals into our food these days, from pesticides to preservatives, for the sole purpose of maximizing their profits at the expense of human health. This, along with the over saturation of society with everything from sugar to electromagnetic radiation,  and the ever mounting stress from ever growing dept needed just to barely survive today, only makes the ever worsening and increasingly precarious working environment that much harder to bare from day to day. It's no wonder more and more people are opting to kill themselves rather than get up and drag themselves to a job they hate more than the prospect of hell, just so they can continue to be nothing more than an economic battery in a system that has reduced everyone to a series of numbers on a screen like the Matrix. This system runs purely on death, by the way, from the Military Industrial Complex that robs the American taxpayer by seducing them with war and destructi...

Life can feel like a cross that only gets heavier with age, and all of us carry it to our grave like Christ on his way to Golgotha. Caught between an immovable past and an unstoppable future, each passing moment begins to feel more and more like we are being crucified by one on the other. Welcome to America, where my retirement plan is to have just enough money to afford a handgun or a length of rope. You'll hate your job, but at least you won't have any money for retirement or healthcare services. But you're "free," but you're not free to die, which is the only thing more and more people really want to do. Do a google search and you'll be surprised at the growing number of people who just wish they were dead. The Christians will all insist that it's because people don't go to church for their weekly brainwashing session that is designed to convince them that being a slave, to both God and their job, is what makes a person really happy. The...

Suicide and God are two sides of the same coin, if you think about it. While the former is a desire to stop existing altogether, the latter is based on a desire to exist forever and ever, Amen. While one may conclude that life is too meaningless or painful to go on, the other entreats us to believe there is a far greater meaning than we can even imagine. Both may be only "good or bad," as Hamlet put it, because our "thinking makes it so." And there's the rub, for both our thoughts that life is ultimately meaningless or that it has the greatest meaning of all, directly from God, are still only our thoughts, and nothing more. Such thoughts serve as bookends to a human mind possessed by the ever growing need to find meaning in a world that is only ever growing increasingly meaningless. Whether you are a nihilist that believes life is meaningless or a theist that thinks God gives life all the meaning in the universe, the fact that humans have the curious need t...

Centuries ago, when people with 'mental problems' were accused of being "witches" and burned at the stake for being different, the worst and by far the most prevalent "mental problem" in society at that time was one suffered by all those who labeled anyone who was "different" as a "witch." That kind of mental problem was not seen as a mental problem at all, of course, but as a necessary "belief" that every God-fearing person was expected to make in order for them to be moral.  Such a "belief" was so ubiquitous, in fact, that it never occurred to the vast majority who suffered from it that it was they -  since their own religion made it a moral, and sometimes even a legal, requirement to demonize anyone who disagreed with the majorities views about God, religion, or the hereafter - who were actually the one's suffering from the truly dangerous and often homicidal 'mental problem.' Despite the hubris that...

Conservatives love their guns because they hate their government. Nothing stands as a greater threat to liberty than the government, as far as they are concerned. That's why it's so ironic that they love God so much. Because God is far, far more tyrannical than any government has ever been. Think about it: if the Federal Government began requiring that people do even half of what they voluntarily chose to do for their "God" - like going to church at least once a week, shaping their sex life, policing their thoughts, threatening to burn them alive if they didn't grovel to it as "Our Father," etc etc - Conservative Christians would storm the White House faster than the Bundy Ranch standoff in 2014. In fact, the whole reason Conservatives Christians are so in love - and I mean "IN LOVE!" - with their guns, is because they HATE HATE HATE the idea that ANYONE would EVER tell them what to do, or think, or how to live, etc.  Now, if it's God...

Christians are big on telling people they will pray for them. In fact, many atheists are often left to wonder how to respond to such a claim. Since to the atheist, praying may be simply a form of mediation (even though the person may believe they are conversing with another "being" that they can persuade to help in some way, which is like writing your senator, congressman, or president), saying "I'll pray for you" is like saying "I'll meditate on that for you." Umm... thanks? The whole problem with the idea of "prayer," however, is that it assumes God set up this "system" we are a part of, to run our own willingness to devote the finite amount of time and energy we have in this life, to nagging Him for the things he already knows we need in the first place. This is like a parent who decides they want to teach their child something (although I'm not sure what) by forcing that child to "pray" (i.e. ask, beg, plea...

The other day, I was discussing with a friend the proper angle one should hold their elbow to ensure a bullet would travel through both hemispheres of their brain with the most promise. It wasn't that either of us were interested in shooting ourselves in the head. He had simply worked in an ER for more than a decade, and had seen over that duration the many countless failed attempts of those who, concluding that life was but a hellish realm that might be exited through a doorway called "death," had crashed into that threshold with all of the grace of a bird flying into plate glass window by dropping their elbow upon squeezing the trigger.  According to the World Health Organization, global suicide rates have increased by 60% over the last 45 years.  And using a gun is the number one means by which people (especially men) chose to shuffle loose this mortal coil. (The National Rifle Association should be ecstatic!) Suicidal ideation is when we find ourselves thinking ...

Is life ultimately meaningless?  For anyone who bothered to read the 1905 page suicide note by Mitchell Heisman, a nihilist who spent 5 years writing the note before dressing all in white and shooting himself in the head with a 38 while standing on the steps of a Memorial Church in Harvard Yard, one may actually think so. But his sister Laurel didn't think so.  After his death, said said she wishes she could have "made him see more of the beauty of life, and how we create our own value and give our own meaning to life." Religion tries to anchor that meaning outside of ourselves. It gives those who feel hopeless some hope that there is a larger story that they are a part of, and that no matter how bad things get, Heaven awaits all those who patiently suffer all of "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" that life can hurl at them. In truth, the ultimate answer to the meaning of life that religion offers never lives up to its billing. Like a food that...

While Christians continually deny that Hitler was a "Christian,"  despite his many claims that he was, what is both interesting and ironic is how Christianity helped to fuel his own ideas of Darwinism. Hence, Hitler was a Christian, but he was also a Darwinist. In short, Hitler was a Darwinian Christian. While Christians, like all religious believers, possess the belief that their own special brand of "beliefs" is the winning lottery ticket of "divine truth" among all of the religions that have existed throughout history, those beliefs are never immune from fusing with other beliefs and ideas in which they interact. This is part of the reason why you see a continual splintering of Christianity, for example, with over 40,000 different sects of Christianity in America alone. Hitler simply fused his ideas of spiritual righteousness with biological evolution. For him, the latter became the ark by which the former could be perfected, which is why he sought ...

Jesus is said to be the Lamb of Peace, but he is also said to have said, "I come not to bring peace, but the sword." Yet despite "bringing the sword," he is also said to have also warned that "he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword." So which the hell is it, Jesus, ferchirstsake! That Jesus was said to have gone peacefully unto his own execution without lifting a finger to help himself, Christians today think that the 2nd Amendment Right to "bare arms" must of come down with Moses from Mount Sinai as the 11th commandment. For Christians who love the idea of killing anything and anyone who disagrees with their own personal brand of infallible righteousness that comes with their "beliefs," Jesus is only ever merciful and "peace" mongering when it comes to themselves; He'll swing an axe in an unholy rage like Conan the Barbarian, however, agaisnt anyone who dares to suggest that the Bible proves only that God is m...

  According to Christians, especially the alt-Right Christians, all of the worlds problems having nothing to do with economic exploitation of the environment or debt enslavement of employees into soul amputating careers that are designed to create an addiction to products that all promise to fill the void they only contribute to creating. No, for Christians, all of the problems in the world are the result of atheists, socialists, and "fags."  And it's as simple as that. For them, these three "godless" groups have been engaged in a war agaisnt God since Satan decided he wanted to rule rather than serve, because 'they have all been duped by Lucifer and his evil minions into being as selfish as a devoted disciple of Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand. And as these agents of evil infiltrate American culture more and more, so the alt-Right crowd claims, they subvert Christianity and prompt God to withdraw the protective grace He has traditionally used to shield the w...

Have you ever noticed how much God is just like Adolf Hitler, or how much the followers of Christ are just like the followers of Charles Manson? The only difference, really, is that the former are responsible for far more bloodshed and suffering than the latter, and all for the purpose of creating the perfect human being. Charles Darwin was apparently the model upon which Hitler wanted to "perfect" the human race, by forcing humans to biologically become more evolved, and thus more pure. Religion likewise tries to create "perfect" souls, by getting humans to become more spiritually evolved. And while Hitler was willing to burn those he deemed to be biologically inferior in the ovens of Auschwitz, so God is willing to burn those He deems to be spiritually inferior in the fires of hell in the afterlife. Make no mistake: despite the best attempts by Christians to do everything in their power to convince people that Hitler was NOT a Christian, he clearly and undenia...

Christians love to offer any number of arguments about why they are so sure their God exists. All of these arguments rest on a host of assumptions that the Christian is either completely unaware of, or simply chooses to ignore (so much for really "believing" that our "reason" was given to us from "God" so we could find "truth.") Some of those arguments simply try to prove, through logic alone, that God must exist. Those arguments include the "argument from design," the "argument from cause and effect," as well as from existence, from motion, from perfection, from desire, and so on. Rather than calling these "arguments," however, they should all actually be called "assumptions." The observant reader will notice that all of these arguments are essentially the same argument with slight modifications, and that each relies on the same double standard of reasoning as all of the others. All of these arguments ...

Christians are found of telling atheists that they cannot prove that God does not exist. Of course, the Christian cannot prove they are not simply suffering from a psychological disorder that they simply "imagine" is a separate identity that they have concocted for them self , and now refer to by the name of "God." That throngs of people willingly engage in this self-delusion, not only because of the social benefits that come from participating in such celebrated delusions but also because it feeds that all too human need to feel superior to others, only encourages the practice of falling in love with one's own reflection on a divine scale. There is no way for the Christian to deny this is what they are doing, which is why their only recourse is to insist that anyone who points out their delusion is clearly delusional, or worse, in league with their other imaginary friends they call "demons." In this way, the Christian can populate an entire "...

Theists love to claim that "atheists hate God," when in fact this is untrue, and they know it. Atheists do not hate something they do not even "believe" exists,  anymore than the Christian or the Muslim 'hates" the flying spaghetti monster or Santa clause. No, the atheist does not hate "God," but they do hate all those who think that, just because they "believe" in God, they have a special license to act as if they were appointed by that "God" to act like they ARE God, in everything they say, declare, think, judge, and seek to impose on others. That Christians think their "belief" in God means they have a right, and indeed an obligation, to determine what is "moral" for everyone, everywhere, always and forever, only demonstrates a hubris that would make even Satan himself blush like a shrinking violent. And that is precisely the only reason why an atheist would hope there is a god, so that he can tre...

There is a famous conversation between Socrates and a fellow philosopher (i forget who) about whether "man is the measure of all things." When Socrates is asked this question, he replies, "if man is the measure of all things, why are those people over there listening to what Pythagoras has to say, and paying good money for the experience?" The point Socrates was trying to make was that, if man is the measure of all things, then why do people seek to understand things or even life itself by listening to other men? If human beings are the measure of everything, in other words, shouldn't all human beings therefore just seek the meaning of everything for themselves? Theologians seized upon this idea to argue that human curiosity indicates that man is not, in fact, the measure of all things, but that God is. The miracle of this reasoning, however, is that the God the Christian theologian relies on is one that became man, and not a baboon or even a bacteria. And...

Nothing makes us feel more superior in every way - especially morally superior - quite like our own intelligence.  The free loving bohemian thinks them self more enlightened than the Buddhist, and the Catholic Priest no doubts finds his Christ to be a more intelligent fellow to hitch their heavenly hopes too than that desert rustic named Mohamed. And everywhere humanity is seduced by the apple of it's knowledge, and throws away the whole world by crucifying all those he perceives to be less intelligent than himself - especially with regard to matters beyond this world.   This superiority of intelligence not only underwrites all racial and religious claims superiority, from the Aryan race to the "one true faith," it is also why humanity feels quite comfortable with killing everything else on the planet, and then hanging their heads on the walls of our "den." How enlightened. That we possess a complete inability to actually measure the "intelligence...

The only thing we fear is not fear itself, despite FDR's claim, but our own ignorance. That's why we constantly come up with stuff that convinces us we are brilliant about things we really know very little about, from science to religion to politics and economics and food and medicine, etc etc.  You name it, and we probably don't know nearly as much about it as we like to think we do. If you ever saw Mel Gibson's Apocoplypto, you know how, out of complete ignorance of nature and the solar system, people turn to priests of God or Gods to solve environmental problems like drought and social unrest (as a result of no water). Welcome to America and Christianity today. Hence, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Like that movie, rather than try to understand what environmental things may actually be causing the drought that seems to have befallen the Mayans, they take to human sacrifice. Christians do the same thing today, of course, only the...

A recent study showed how a belief in God, far from making us more compassionate and accepting of others, actually turns children into bullies. A belief in the ultimate moral yardstick of human behavior does not foster a sense of empathy for others, although Christians and Muslims alike will argue tooth and nail that it does. Instead, it only actually creates an impossible example that those who feel they must "save" everyone else - by coercing or cajoling them into accepting Jesus Christ as their "personal lord and savoir" (whether they want to be saved or not!) - must get everyone else to accept and follow. Never mind that the example can never be lived up to. Never mind that God gets everyone in the Final Judgement (God's own version of the "Final Solution" of the 'people question').   And never mind that Christians, by wanting everyone to accept these unfounded, prejudicial, and altogether closed minded  precepts, are actually engaged i...

People who justify the existence of hell argue that our sin and unwillingness to repent is what earns us a spot in hell. More to the point, they argue that God does not send people to hell, so much as people chose to go to hell. But what kind of a lunatic would willingly chose to throw themselves into a lake of fire, where they will burn alive forever and ever? In truth, hell is simply proof that the Christian God does not exist. As Christians so often say, there is no offense that God cannot forgive, except apparently the sin of failing to ask to be forgiven for committing a "sin" that a person may not have even known they were committing, agaisnt a "being" that that same person may not have known even existed. What the hell is that all about? But to say that people earn hell by being unrepentant says much more about God than it does about sinners. Think about it: if we hold a grudge and refuse or are unable to forgive someone, simply because they refuse to a...

The temptations of Christ by the devil illustrate exactly the kind of corruption that power can produce, and why the 10 Northern Tribes were so uncomfortable with the idea of kingship in general, and the building of the temple in particular. This is clearly demonstrated when Solomon builds the temple and uses it as the catalyst for Israel's rise to the height of world power. At first glance, "believers" always interpret this expansion as confirming that their God is the right God to endear themselves to (even though the archeological record shows that the Hebrews were more polytheistic than monotheists). But if we consider Solomon's accomplishment outside of the guiding light of our own confirmation biases, and in the light of the temptations of Christ instead, it becomes clear that what Solomon was doing was the opposite of what Christ was teaching. And this is the paradox of power, that any attempt to obtain it - whether for God or for gold or for personal g...

In many ways, the Hebrew Bible is simply a sustained polemic agaisnt the religion of Canaan, and for the very same reasons that Jesus opposed the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And that's because the Pharisees and the Sadducees, much like the false prophets of the "prosperity Gospel" and the Religious Right today, had twisted the religion and the God of Israel into one that vested them with the power to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. And in so doing, they traded their souls and the lives of millions, for their desire to rule over the whole world. We see how this manipulation of power began in Psalm, 68:4, for example, where Yahweh is given a title that is also the most frequently used epithet for the Canaanite deity, Ba'al, "the cloud rider." The danger of thus confusing Yahweh and Ba'al only grows with the adoption of the Canaanite mode of social and political organization,  which revolves around establishing a permanent king....