The Rant Institute

 Jesus Christ did not suffer for either Judaism or Christianity. Nor did he suffer for his "faith" in any idea of God, or a brand of religion, but for "the sins of the world."  But what do we mean by "the sins of the world"?  For Christians, those "sins" are against their brand-version of the word "God." What offends their brand-version of God is failing to obey rules as defined by their brand-version of a religion called Christianity. Indeed, Jesus was put to death by the leaders and followers of his own religion for failing to conform to their ideas of what he should believe and how he should behave! So why would he come to establish a new religion that he wanted to empower to do the exact same thing, in his name, for the rest of time? The "sins of the world" that Jesus suffered and died for, as such, is all of the suffering that people inflict on each other in the name of their ideas and beliefs, from atheistic Communism to...

 I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use. - Galileo Galilei

 Christianity has two faces: Liberal and Conservative.  Whenever it seeks to use missionaries to plant its seeds into the cultural soil of "virgin" societies, Christianity preaches religious tolerance and claims to stand for peace. When the Anglican Church outlawed Catholicism in England, Catholicism preached religious tolerance. And when missionaries first went to Vietnam to bring the "civilization" of the West, they preached peace. After it has grown to be a tree of knowledge of good and evil that towers over the indigenous trees of knowledge in the cultural soil of the societies it implants itself into, it becomes intolerant and boastful, and begins claiming it is conquering the world for God by converting wayward sinners to the "right" brand of Christianity.  This is why the Anglican Church outlawed Catholicism in the first place, and persecuted Catholics who broke the law of the Anglican God.   It also has two faces of thinking: as the scientist and t...

In Mere Christianity , Christian myth-maker C.S. Lewis sought to reason his way to the existence of a God he desired, (his version only, however, not that of others) by offering his “Argument from Desire.” After his wife Helen passed away, however, Lewis felt as forsaken by God as Jesus on the cross, leading him to conclude that God was a “Cosmic Sadist,” an “Eternal Vet,” and a "Spiteful Imbecile." So, what changed? The answer to that question has to be unpacked in three parts. But first: why does it matter anyway? It matters because, as this argument illustrates only too well, the creative ways we can use our reasoning can lead us to very different answers to this argument. And, as Lewis’s change reflects, our emotions are often the catalyst for more creative ways of thinking. The question all of this raises is whether the answer we reach when considering this argument is one that makes us more dependent upon a brand of religion or ideology, which is like a bird becoming ...

 Faith is the act of believing in things either without evidence or, in some cases, despite the evidence.  Now, faith and stupidity are obviously not the same thing, but there can be some overlap.  And that's a major problem.  Between science and faith, stupidity is something the latter can use much more effectively. Indeed, for faith, stupidity can be the strongest asset, while for science, it is our greatest liability  Yet Christians want us to believe that, to save ourselves from the fires of hell, we must have "faith" that God wants us to depend on our greatest liability as our greatest asset.