My Dialogue With Shirley

The following is an exchange with an old friend in Texas of some 30 years ago. I have dedicated this entire blog session to her. Comment are welcome and encouraged.
Charlie


Shirley Sue wrote:

"Charlie, I hurt so much for you, and for myself, and you to, deny my daddy, my Father, who gave his only son to die such a horrible, painful, bloody death, for us. Charlie, we were born, with a sense of right and wrong. You were always the epidimy (sic) of a fine man to me. You were sensitive and caring. What has happened to you over the years? My daughters and I are praying for you because we love you and wish for you Eternal life and all the goodness that God has to offer at this time."

Shirley Sue also wrote:



"Please pray for my daughter Susan, as her flight left at 4pm on her mission to Nigeria to love and nurture the people there. She will be with the women and children and in the hospital with little children with aids. God has been using her for many years to care of little children from the Methodist Home. Charlie, why are you so bitter? What has happened to you since I knew you 30 years ago. I pray for you and wish you the best."



Dear Shirley

You asked, “What has happened to you over the years.”

What happened Shirley, was that I educated myself. I started reading voraciously even before I retired and have continued ever since. Here are a couple of things I learned.

Evolution is not a theory. It is a fact. Scientist now know we attained our present brain size of around 1500 cc, some 200,000 years ago; a mere eye blink compared to the age of the 4.6 billion year old earth. I learned that there was no Adam and Eve. Without Adam and Eve the whole sham of original sin is washed away like the sand it was built on.

You said, “He gave his only son to die such a horrible, painful, bloody death.”

Shirley, have you ever read the true account of the revolt by the slave Spartacus?

I thought not. Stay with me here.

You may have seen the Hollywood movie version, but that was all a bunch of bullshit. Since crucifixion seems to dominate the minds of Christians, I think you will find the account especially compelling. The revolt and eventual defeat of Spartacus and his slave army took place over 70 years before anyone had ever heard of Christ. During the final battle, the Romans finally killed about 12,000 of the slaves. They were the lucky ones. Six thousand of them were captured by the Roman army and crucified along the Appian Way; a Roman highway, parts of which are still there. It stretches142 miles from the outskirts of Rome, south, to the little town of Capua.

Let me put that in perspective.

Imagine getting in your car and driving from your home in Bridgeport, TX to Waco, which as it happens, is exactly the distance of the Roman road between Rome and Capua. If this was the road to Capua, you would see a slave hanging on a cross, or pole, or tree, every 123 feet. One corpse every 123 feet! By the time you got to Boyd you would already have seen over 700 rotting corpses.

So what’s my point you are asking.

The point is this. All those men wanted was their freedom. Nobody had promised them “everlasting life.” In fact, another 73 years would go by before an itinerant preacher showed up who died just like those 6000 pour souls died, while his minions managed to convince some very ignorant people that he popped out of a virgin. Everybody seems to have heard of Jesus and the two thieves. Almost nobody has heard of the 6000 slaves who died the same way with no promise of anything.

Have you ever thought of this? If your god really sacrificed Jesus for our sins, why didn’t he keep him in hell? Now that would be a sacrifice, wouldn’t it? If I truly believed I would spend eternity in some state of nirvana if all I had to do was be crucified, I would enthusiastically say, “send me in coach.” That wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice, compared to the eternal reward.

You wrote: “Charlie, we were born, with a sense of right and wrong.” Actually we were not. Babies have no sense of right and wrong. They have to be taught. Right and wrong is a meme taught to succeeding generations because homo sapiens (us) learned we could not survive long if we continually tried to screw our friends over. Surely you must realize that Moses (another fictional character) didn’t have to write rules down on stone tablets for people to know right from wrong. They already knew it long before that fictional account was made up.

And to underscore my point, let me remind you that if you were accidentally switched at birth and sent home with a Mormon mother, you would have grown up thinking Joseph Smith (the one with 33 wives) was a true prophet and really did write the Book of Mormon thanks to some special reading stones conveniently buried with the golden plates. If you were accidentally switched to a Muslim mother, you would have grown up thinking your real mother was going straight to hell. And if you were born to a Hindu mother you would be even more confused.

So ask yourself: Is the circumstance of your birth a good enough reason to believe what you believe?

The only reason religion survives is because it is built on a foundation of fear and ignorance. That is why religious leaders when confronted by people like me will say to their followers that Satan has taken me over. It is imperative that they keep their parishioners in fear and ignorance in order for their jobs to remain secure. If there is one thing I have learned it is this: You will never make a preacher understand something as long as his livelihood depends on him not understanding it.

“ What defenders of religion cannot say is that anyone has ever gone berserk, or that a society ever failed, because people became too reasonable, intellectually honest, or unwilling to be duped by the dogmatism of their neighbors. This skeptical attitude, born of equal parts care and curiosity, is all that “atheists” recommend—and it is typical of nearly every intellectual pursuit apart from theology. “Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under.” Sam Harris

You wrote: "Please pray for my daughter Susan, as her flight left at 4pm on her mission to Nigeria to love and nurture the people there.” Sorry Shirley. I sincerely hope Susan has a safe trip but I could pray till I’m blue in the face and it would not make a whits difference in whether she makes it safely. Prayer doesn’t work. It only makes the delusional praying person feel better. Christians cannot understand why it pisses me off for them to say they are praying for me. Its simple. Praying for me is about as useful as presenting me with a 2010 wall calendar and thinking you have actually done something for me. The fact that it “makes you feel good” just underscores the arrogance of believers.

I’m sure you are aware that Susan is going to a country that is half Muslim. Here is what the Koran has to say about infidels.

"The only true faith in God's sight is Islam. . . . He that denies God's revelations should know that swift is God's reckoning" (3:19).


"Let the believers not make friends with infidels in preference to the faithful—he that does this has nothing to hope for from God—except in self-defense" (3:28).


Believers, do not seek the friendship of the infidels and those who were given the Book before you, who have made of your religion a jest and a pastime" (5:57).

I have a question for you Shirley. Why do you condone your daughter going to a country where half the people there see her as an infidel and would delight in doing her harm?

One of my friends here is an expert in the Hausa language, spoken in Nigeria. Because he speaks the Hausa language fluently, he was called as an expert witness when the Nigerian terrorist tried to blow up the Delta flight landing in Detroit. Nigerian Muslims despise Christians and especially American Christians. Susan has no business going there.

When I lived in Texas there were plenty of sinners just down the road there in Weatherford. I don’t understand why Susan and her group don’t just drive 35 miles to Weatherford. No doubt they have already cleaned up Bridgeport, but Weatherford is still a target rich environment when it comes to sin. They could use all that money they save on travel expenses and build one of the sinners a house. I might even chip in a few bucks myself.

You asked, “Charlie, why are you so bitter?”

You misinterpret the signal you are picking up. I am not bitter, just a bit annoyed and irritated. Here is why. If I were to catch a priest or preacher in the act of sexually molesting a child, the first thing I would do is look around to find something with which to beat the crap out of him. But what if someone is abusing a child’s mind by filling their head with untruths? Do you think Islam is true and that Muslims should teach their children that Jesus was only a prophet, but other than that, there is nothing particularly special about him? Do you Shirley? Would that be o.k. for your grandchildren to be taught there was nothing special about Jesus? Would you be annoyed?

What about Mormonism? What if you found out that someone was telling your grandchildren that the two bit con man, Joseph Smith, was a prophet and they should convert to Mormonism because of what is in the book of Mormon? Wouldn’t you say their innocent little minds, which had not yet developed enough to reason, were being polluted? Would that not annoy you?

How about Hinduism? Hindus have more gods than you can shake a stick at. And 850 million Hindus believe in them all. What if someone came along and told your grandchildren that Christianity was a crock and they should really start worshipping gods like Krishna, Vishnu, Shiva or Rama? Wouldn’t that really piss you off?

But why Shirley? Why do you not lie awake at night worrying about whether you should worship all those gods instead of your own? I’ll save you some effort here because thinking is really hard. The reason you don’t lie awake at night worrying about whether you should convert to Islam, Mormonism or Hinduism is BECAUSE THERE IS ZERO EVIDENCE that any of these gods and prophets are real.

And that is exactly the reason I don’t lie awake at night worrying about whether to become a Christian. Because there is zero evidence! I am sick and tired of the circular reasoning that adults use on little children and some of the more ignorant grown ups. How do we know the bible is true? Why, because it says right there in the bible its true; that's why!!

The reason my blog is titled “An honest search for truth” is because the truth is important to me. And when I see people like yourself and your preachers filling the minds of young people with rubbish, it makes me a little testy.

Let me summarize for you.

The only thing that separates us from the so called “lower” animals is the fact that we have evolved with huge brains compared to body size, have mastered language and we have opposing thumbs and forefingers. Other than that we are a pretty sorry lot. If most of us were dropped buck naked onto almost any place on earth and left to fend for ourselves we could not survive. Scientist through much hard work and research have determined that we reached our present brain size, i.e. became fully human, some 200,000 years ago. This means your all powerful, omniscient god, sat around for about 198,000 years twiddling his thumbs while his crowning glory, his ultimate creation; us, suffered from cold, starvation, disease and wild animal predation. Then about 2000 years ago he plopped a savior out of a virgin, among some of the most ignorant people on the face of the earth, brushed his hands and said, There by God!! That oughta do it.

And it still took over 300 years for the secret to leak out!! When Constantine finally convened the people who came up with your so called “holy bible”, they VOTED on it. They VOTED on it!!

Finally, Shirley, have you ever heard of the National Academy of Sciences? Its an organization whose members are made up of the crème de la crème of the scientific world. We cannot underestimate the tremendous contributions they have made to civilization through discoveries in medicine, math, physics and other fields. Now comes the part that will no doubt cause you to drop to your knees in prayer. A huge majority, nearly 97%, do not believe in a personal god. When you begin to pray for them will you ask god why it is that he passed out most of the brains to those who don’t even believe he exists? And when god gives you the answer, be sure and let me know because you may just have solved one of the greatest mysteries of all time.

Now, having said all that I’m fully aware none of it will have the least effect on you. Because adults lied to you before your were able to think critically, your brain is already infected and there is no cure for delusion. Medication is available for psychotics but sadly, no drug has been discovered as yet to cure delusion.

If a cure is found you can bet the answer won’t come from the bible. It will most likely come from the hard working members of the National Academy of Sciences; those 2100 folks who don’t believe in a god, but who have learned to use the wonderful gift that separates them from the lower animals, their brains.