The Rant Institute

 "Fundamentalist Christianity rests on circular reasoning and pat answers. The belief system is brilliantly constructed to provide its own support -- if you don't look too closely at the logic. It is a closed system , satisfied with its own internal evidence of truth . It is closed in that any information or argument from outside is rejected a priori because, as discussed above, it is a 'lie,' not of the 'truth.'" Marlene Winell, Leaving the Fold (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 1993), p. 83. How do you know your particular brand of "God" and religion are true, and infallibly so, and that any and all other brands of "God" and religion are false?  Simple: because you "believe" it to be so.  When others believe the exact same thing about YOUR brand of God and Religion that you do, they are right, but whenever anyone ever believes the same thing about a DIFFERENT brand of God and Religion, they are dead wrong.  For decades, I tri

To look outside yourself for validation is to compromise your integrity  Epictetus     Religion has a fatal flaw: it substitutes attachment for love. And by doing so, it rewires our perceptions of good and evil, transforming violence into a sacred act of pure love.   Real love is unconditional, and says “I want you to be whoever makes you happy,” but attachment is love’s near-enemy and sugar equivalent, and says “I want you to be whoever makes me happy.” The altruism of one allows our self-worth to rise in tandem with our freedom to be authentic; while the narcissism of the other leads us to measure our self-worth by the approval of others (who are often also narcissists). One invites us to find our true selves, and the other promises to “save” us from being rejected, but only if we “believe” in the “truth” brand of the tribe we wish to join. One fosters independence that allows for genuine connection with others and the self-confidence to develop healthy boundaries against those w

 Christians think that humans are more superior and special to God than any other species on the planet, possibly even more than any in the universe, but also think we are also the most disappointing, because we use our “free will” to challenge robotic ways of thinking offered by Christianity more than to obey and believe a religion operated by men who have never failed to demonstrate the infallibility of the claim that “power always corrupts, and both travel in tandem.” Indeed, we are so disappointing to God - in how often we exercise our ability to question more than we exercise our desire to simply “believe”  what we are told - that God could only forgive us for how He designed us by killing himself as one of  us, only he was as superior to us as a God, because he was, in fact, God, in the avatar of a human being That's like the ocean incarnating as a fish in order to sacrifice itself to itself for the sin of creating fish that can't fly like a bird. 

 If it is true in fact, then the Christian religion is an example of the art of deception. Allow me to explain. If Christianity is true, it is a religion in which God lures his sinful followers into worshiping him using the same kinds of deception the serpent used to lure Adam & Eve to sin against the God who created them, the serpent, and the garden into which he threw them and assured their paths would cross - a meeting which so irreparably cursed humanity forever for its gullibility that it could only be saved from being cast forever into a lack of fire by sacrificing Jesus on a cross. And behind this circular reasoning, animating it like an invisible hand, is divine deception. In the ancient days of the Old Testament, there were two kinds of sacrifices to the gods that required death: the sacrifice of animals (like an unblemished lamb) and the sacrifice of humans, preferably vestal virgins.  In the story of Jesus, the Jews had long celebrated animal sacrifice. In fact, they wer

 Only a narcissist can believe that they deserve an eternity of pleasure for being more right about their beliefs in their brand of God than everybody else, and also feel that the mere idea of ceasing to exist at death is like an eternal hell to their own ego. 

 Thought Dishonesty is the habit of training yourself to think your own beliefs are special, even infallible to some degree, and everyone else's are made up of different mistakes and or lies. This also means that a person must believe that their own perceptions are just as infallible as their beliefs, at least when it comes to perceiving anything that validates one's beliefs or invalidates everyone else's, and everyone else's are flawed.   If the Catholic sees the Virgin Mary or the sun dancing in the sky, they are infallible as much in their perception of it as they are infallible in their interpretation of what it must mean, even as they are equally convinced that whenever anyone else sees the exact same kind of miracles through the lens of their own brand of god and religion, they are flawed or deceived. This double standard, which either goes unnoticed or is easily justified by a divine standard, is thought dishonesty. Thought dishonesty is thus the ability to allow

 To be a Roman Catholic is to believe you are as infallible in your convictions about what is moral as you are committed to your belief that the Roman Catholic Church is "infallible" in any of its proclamations about faith and morals, and as inerrant as you (must) believe the Bible to be.   A Catholic must believe this, even though the Catholic Church has changed its position on everything from limbo for unbaptized infants to the morality of slavery, to suicide, and plenty of other "moral" claims about faith. To cling to such a "belief" is to believe your own views concerning any moral questions are as infallible as those espoused by the Church, for if the Church is infallible in its claims, and your claims are based on that Church then the Catholic feels their "beliefs" are equally infallible.   Doing this convinces the Catholic that they are only as special, and therefore only as worthy of being "saved" from eternal torment, as they a