The Rant Institute

Christianity teaches us to believe that our woefully flawed intelligence is still perfectly capable of understanding a perfect intelligence that is infinitely greater than our own. And the problem with atheists is that they have failed to understand that this is perfectly possible, and thus perfectly true, for no other reason than that Christians believe that it must be, as an act of faith. And the only reason Christians believe this is ultimately so they can avoid roasting alive in an eternal hell.  

Reality is made up purely of people’s perceptions of reality.

The only evidence for god is televangelists. And for atheists, that means Christians really do believe everything they see on tv.

The only way a person can know they are not completely dysfunctional is to believe they are not.

The story of Abraham is basically the story of the son of Sam.

Voting doesn’t change the agenda. It only changes who is running it. But it’s always the same agenda.

We are all the product of both our parents love and flaws,  but only some of us know how to use one to overcome the other, while most use it the other way around. The emotional intelligence practiced by the few, in other words, is hardly enough to overcome the fear and hatred masquerading as love practiced by the many.

In some ways, the only heaven or hell a parent enters after they die is the one within their own children. The only question, therefore, is which one of those places is dwells within you?

Religion is like Pokémon. You play this game with your friends that all see evidences that their “beliefs” are real just like you do, that no one else can see unless they have downloaded and installed the right biblical software app, like you have. And those who have downloaded that app, or belief system, “pray” for those people who can’t see those evidences, that they will one day believe they exist anyway, so they can play in the same reindeer game. That’s why science is always treated like Rudolph the red nose reindeer.

Through their beliefs in a God, Christians become surrogate fathers unto themselves,  dividing their mind into two personalities, one as the child they were that never got anything right, and the other as a father figure with a God complex. And as they strive to be the former, in the form of the perfectly obedient new testament God called Jesus, they treat all those who question them like the old testament God, Yahweh.

What amount of evidence would it take to convince an atheist that God exists? Here is the problem with that question. Remember that it is religion that teaches us to “believe” we are all born too broken to trust ourselves, which is why we must therefore trust only in God. But if this is true - and especially if it is simply and only “true” by “faith alone” - then how could so broken a person ever trust them self enough to believe in god, even if a universe of evidence was provided? After all, it is Christians who refuse to “believe” that every atom of our universe is proof that their singular version of “God” - the lottery winner of centuries of our own psychological evolution -  does not exist, even though Christians define their “faith in god” as “belief in something in the absence of evidence.”

Something really weird happens when you start seeing people as people, and not as the "idea" of people you simply have in your head. In fact, our society often works to makes us all see each other as anything but people. We are races, genders, Muslims and Christians, believers and infidels, and every other brand label we can think to assign. But we are not people... just simple, hopeful, people - who all want the very same things for their children; and who’s stories all end with the same four words - “and then we die.” One thing you notice, for example, is the profound similarities, and a common nature that is infinitely malleable enough to believe anything is "true." Another is how we only crave to be saved by the countless "truths" we are offered, to the point that we are willing to kill and die for them, because we are so profoundly broken. And because we are so profoundly broken, we cannot see how we each contribute to turning our Eden into ...

The idea that God will punish those who are not "saved" by accepting "Christ" means that God will throw into eternal hell even all those who had no idea they were ever doing or thinking anything that was "offending" such a "God" in the first place. Now that's what I call "divine mercy." And with such a God, why is there any need for a "Devil" character at all, since the latter can never come close to doing to us what the former is threatening to do to us? And in that sense, calling the devil "evil" for wanting to "lure us away" from such a God, like calling firemen "evil" for wanting to save us from a burning building.

there is a fading light in all of us that most of us cannot see from the fire of all we are and all we will ever be it is the truth about ourselves  that we refuse to see and the lies that seduce us everywhere, with all we hope to be it is the distance between life and love, from the sky to the sea and everything in the universe that exists between you and me there is a fading light in all of us that most of us cannot see from the fire of all we are and all we will ever be

It's funny how making a decision about something can make everything look so different.

Reason is to religion what sunlight is to a vampire. Because each set is the same as the other. 

To face the future you must turn your back on the past.

Doing things over and over again and expecting a different outcome is as much the definition of insanity as it is the practice of religion

  Fr.Lankeit is a Roman Catholic priest from Phoenix, Arizona, who recently gave a homily blaming homosexuality for the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. His homily, ironically enough, is the very means by wgich the abuse in the church has always been facilitated.  By shifting the blame from the mostly heterosexual clergy who are responsible for committing these crimes - clergy who prey mostly on boys not because they are themselves gay, but because boys have more shame about the abuse, and are thus more likely to remain silent about it - to simply blaming homosexuality itself, Fr. Lankeit only helps to create the very ‘culture of shame’ in which such sexual predators can and have always preyed upon children.  Lankeit’s condemnations, in other words, only help to produce a target rich environment of potential victims who will be (hopefully) too ashamed to publicly accuse their abusers. And by doing so, shame becomes the sheep skin beneath which predator priests c...

We either allow ourselves to be crucified for our passions or we crucify ourselves with our fears

Human nature is such that we can be led to believe anything is “true.” And if enough people believe something is “true” it becomes our “common sense,” even through the entirity of that collective common sense is underwritten by a lie. And the best lies are always the ones that are sufficiently complicated enough as to not be understandable by mere humans, but simple enough that even a child can see how plainly true it must be.

Judging others is caused by an inability to love oneself.

Christians think their cross is to make their desire to Christianize the world everyone else’s cross to carry; for Jesus will only be happy after we have all crucified ourselves for his sake.

Only ugly people think people are ugly.

Those who cannot follow the truth follow their beliefs instead.

The story of the garden of Eden is to remind us how even our greatest heaven can become our worst hell, and often by our own hand. Now, that story casts the pursuit of knowledge as a "sin." And that explains why ignorance is worshiped as a virtue.   And also why the pursuit of knowledge (i.e. the search for actual truth) that could lead us to "become like God," which is described in the Bible as the original act of "human evil," and the mother of all sins every after, was replaced by religion with the pursuit of simply one's "sacred beliefs," especially in the face of "infallible" scientific claims to the contrary.  

We are only as good as our own worst demons, because we are our own worst demons. 

Our inability to love ourselves for who we are instead of who we think we should be, along with our habit of so often defining as imperfections the very things about ourselves that makes each of us so unique, is not only what prevents us from being able to love others, but what prevents us from feeling the love that others have for us as well.

Christians and Muslims think they know enough about God to praise and worship him, and even to kill and die for him, but not enough to question him.

Every day is another opportunity for you to ruin the rest of your life.

i know not by what grand design you came nor whither thou may go when into the welcome arms of both that friend and foe you shuffle loose the surly chains of this distracted globe and rising like the morning sun to melt this august snow we perchance shall meet again beyond the pall of all we know

Life is an awareness of the things you are made of, and subsequently decompose back into, when you are dead. Heaven is the hope that that awareness will only get better and never die. And hell is the threat of eternal torments for those who failed to focus that awareness on a fear (which Christians refer to as “love”) of a God, who is said to be the greatest awareness of all.

A person is only as free to love god under an ever present threat of hell as a person is free to have sex under an ever present threat of death.

The scariest thing in the world is to speak the truth, especially to those who prefer their sacred "beliefs." But it is also the most fulfilling, the most liberating, and the only chance that humanity has to progress, or even survive. But to defend our sacred "beliefs," which range in everything from gender to gods to governments and more, humanity becomes both Abraham and Isaac, God and Jesus, and willingly sacrifices itself to itself on the altar of its own ideals.   

Many Christians like to "believe" that suffering for their faith means trying to convince people they are right to believe in something that is the very opposite of what all of the evidence in the universe so clearly proves. And that evidence clearly proves that Christians are only worshiping their own ideas as their God.  

A grand jury report released yesterday showed that "internal documents from six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania showed that more than 300 "predator priests" have been credibly accused of sexual abusing ore than 1000 child victims." Devout Catholics who wish to defend their faith and their Church, have argued that the percentage of such priests within the Catholic Church is the same as the percentage of such people in society in general.  But there are a number of problems with such a defense that such Catholics seem to overlook. First of all, "society in general" does not claim to be God's moral authority on Earth. Indeed, the most Conservative of Catholics often complain about how the increasing acceptance of homosexuality and same sex marriage - something those Catholics often think of as "immoral" -  is due to the spread of secular humanism and atheism. Second, the fact that there are just as many child predators outside of the Chu...

The most indecent thing a Christian has ever encountered is the naked truth.

In the sense that Christianity claims to be a religion of peace and poverty while acting like the god of war and avarice, I’m trying to explain Christianity to atheists just as much as I’m trying to explain atheism to Christians.

I can only imagine the horror and disappointment felt by Jesus from walking into a Catholic Church and seeing a crucifix hanging over an altar. Only the Christian is convinced that there is nothing macabre about such a picture. And that’s what gives everyone else cause to worry. It is also the Christian who thinks the only reason they, and everyone else for that matter, are not running around raping and murdering people, is because they believe in a “god,” which they have proven for the last two thousand years they are perfectly willing to kill and die for. And perhaps worst of all, most seem to be trying to force Jesus to return as he promised by praying for Armageddon,

Christianity is the story of how god became a man to tell man to worship a god, a god who became a man to set the example for what it meant to be a man.

Love and war are actually the same thing, for the latter can not exist without the former.

We become monsters to avoid being seen as cowards.

A belief in God is often just the result of a lack of imagination.

Our love of war is equal to our love of religion, because for us, there is truly no greater pleasure than suffering for a righteous cause. 

To live in fear of hell is to chose to live in hell, and religion convinces us that doing so is the greatest virtue of all, because it is the only way we can show God how much we really love him . Yet Christians get offended when I compare their God to the serial killer Jigsaw in the horror movie Saw . 

A Christian can no more understand what Christianity actually is then a snowflake can understand Mount Everest; or even how so many snowflakes in countless blizzards over millions of years, have slowly helped to shape and polish that mountain. And a human being would have no  better understanding of the Biblical God than an atom would have in understanding everything in the universe, or any other, or even none at all.  

We live in the classroom of the human mind. And while we have advanced in every subject in school, from science to technology to politics and everything else, as far as religion is concerned, we are still stuck in the first grade. And anyone who has ever dared to show us the way to make it to second grade - like that fellow Jesus who is said to have helped humanity to see the wisdom of the second grade offered by the "new testament" - has always been crucified by the most fanatical first graders of all, for the heresy of pretending to know more about "god" than they do. Hence, for the last two thousand years, the most fanatical children in a first grade religion class, are the one's Christians have "faith" should be trusted to run the school, and even the whole world.   Yeah, that makes sense.

Blind obedience to almost any form of power, and by "blind" I mean a willingness not to question such power, and especially to the "power" of God, is always and only ever an act of submission to a fear of that power. The "believer" will tell you that their "faith" is not simply an act of submission to fear, however, but an act of hope. But if you ask them what it is they are necessarily 'hoping' for, you will discover that they are only ever hoping to escape their greatest fears. Religions dupe us into "believing" that obedience to the will of a "god" is an act of love, in other words, to hide from us the fact that it is only an expression of fear, that we have become not only enamored with, but depend upon to justify the most immoral of means imaginable as necessary for defending against our worst fears.   

Religion teaches people to be addicted to the delusion that they know far more about an "all knowing" God than they really do, and to believe the suffering they receive from people who simply dare to point out that this is simply a delusion, as being proof they are suffering like Christ because they know as much about morality as God - which is why so many of them tend to think their "beliefs" are infallible.

To chase your fears is to follow your dreams. And to run from them is to follow your nightmares.

Christians crucify Christ every time they defend their Christianity. Or to put it another way, to worship Christianity is to crucify Christ. And that’s because all you have to do to convince Christians you must be a demon that needs to be destroyed, is simply disagree with them, especially about their “sacred beliefs” and their “divine authority” to impose them upon the whole world. Christianity, in short, is to preach like Jesus while crucifying Christ.

The internet is simply an experiment in psychological warfare designed by the military. And this is made doubly true be the fact that business is war. (I would say it was also a form of mind control, but that’s what religions and other forms of power were created for. The internet is simply to monitor and modify the results.)

Heaven is never feeling the need to judge anyone for anything, and hell is to be judged by others all the time.

How odd it is for anyone to ever strive to be the person they always were, rather than something completely different. And that is almost as odd as a person thinking they haven't got the right to be whoever they want to be.

Let anything rule your life enough and it will ruin it. Moderation applies to everything, and especially "beliefs." What arrogance we show by assuming our own societies are so much more advanced in science, politics, technology and understanding, than ancient civilizations, while at the same time being convinced that the ones that were brutal enough to slaughter all of the others, knew more about God and morality than we do. Of course, if any of those ancient civilizations had had the nuclear technologies we have, none of us would even be here today, because they would have quite literally decided to end their arguments about god by deciding the whole world deserves to meet its maker. And following in the footsteps of their Old Testament God, they would’ve sacrificed their sons like Isaac and Jesus, by blowing the entire world to kingdom come. But today, people with those same "beliefs" are being voted into office again. Considering the fact that Christianit...

The difference between Santa Claus and our parents is the same difference between God and our parents, for it is our parents who actually give us gifts, including the gift of life, but we are supposed to “believe” they are merely facilitators of such transactions. I can think of no greater way of dishonoring one’s parents, and thus breaking the 5th “commandment,” then in giving the respect and appreciation they deserve to either an imaginary glutinous hermit who plays with toys all year long, or a deity who strokes his own ego by “commanding” that he be thanked for what others do.

We can be either our own best friend or our own worst enemy. But too often we confuse the one for the other.

Love is always the best reason for getting us to do the things we hate.

The most evil ends are achieved only thru the most virtuous means.

In an information age, maybe our naked thoughts are the only art left in a world full of artifices. And rather than seeing thoughts as seditious, they should be thought of purely as art. For surely there is nothing sexier than a naked thought.

What looks like heaven often feels like hell. And vice versa.

You have to "believe" you are good, when you know you are not.

There is as much difference between exercising a faith in reason and practicing a faith in religion as there is between using a computer and trusting a hallucination.

I am always impressed by how Christians think their “creator” gave them a divine and infallible sense  of right and wrong, and how they proudly do everything wrong to prove to everyone just how humble they are, for believing they are always right. And in this way, the Christian always acts like the devil, especially when they are burning atheists for acting like Christ.

In a society that worships lies, the search for truth is a form of bondage. 

The government governs the people not nearly as well as the rich govern the government.

Some people try to change the world with their jokes, or with their reason or their art or their religion or their science, or even by just being a good Samaritan and thinking of others. But some only want to change the world with their bombs and their bullets. If the world were High School, this would be like electing Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris to be Class Presidents.