The Rant Institute

"We must move aggressively and immediately," San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said at a news conference announcing the order in California for residents to shelter in place. "The time for half measures is over. History will not forgive us for waiting an hour more." It is too bad that we do not think this way about all of the problems the human race is currently facing, and has been facing for decades.

People who use labels to describe people are proud of the labels they give themselves. Ironically, the very same people who are proud of the labels they give themselves, do so because of the labels they give their Gods. But if an atheist engages in a sincere, lengthy, in-depth discussion concerning the nuances and intricacies of the believer's "infinite" and "eternal" God, the believer will often reject almost every label offered by the atheist to try and describe the "believer's" brand of God - a brand that every believer equally rejects is a "brand" at all.   But if that same atheist engages in that very same sincere, lengthy, in-depth discussion concerning those same attributes of "God," while pretending to be a "believer," the believer will often be willing to accept all of the labels the atheist will offer, by interpreting them in the most favorable way the believer can imagine.

If you have a conscience, religion can only be used to override it out of a misplaced devotion to defending the religion, by convincing the person they are serving a "higher power," and therefore "murder" is not "murder" but patriotism and the like. If you do not have a conscience, religion is just a means of clothing cruelty and judgementalism in the loft language of high ideals. Anyone who claims to be "good" for God, is admitting the are in fact horrible, and only pretending otherwise for fear of what people would say about them if they dared to behave the way they really wanted to.

All hero’s like William Wallace and Jesus Christ are hero’s because they represent a willingness to die rather than live by someone else’s rules. All religions promise their flock they will live forever if they live by their rules.

In today’s world, it is better to be known by all and know nothing than to know Everything in the whole world, and be known by no one.

Religion is a purely subjective experience which is worshiped as if it were the only purely objective fact of reality.

Psalm 18;29 says:   You, O LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light. With your help I can advance against a troop ; with my God I can scale a wall . As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him. Who is the "God" and the "Lord" who keeps the "lamp burning" for the author of this line, since it surely cannot be God himself, even though God is said to have inspired the author to write such lines? Who is the "God" who enables the author to "scale a wall"? Who is the "him" that the author of these lines is saying they can rely on like "a shield for all (to) take refuge in ..."?  Answer: truth.  But the believers idea of what they mean by "truth" is not simply evidence that directs us to test and question so we can reach some kind of verifiable conclusion, with the understanding that because "we can never kn...