Christianity

Why Believe in “God”?

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Does belief in any god bring anything to anyone? Certainly it brings a feeling of community, that you belong to something, but does it do anything else? That’s a question I had even as a Christian when I would attend church regularly, pray and read the bible the same. Even though I was very attended to my belief, today, years later, now an atheist, I can’t see why for so long I believed that anything I believed would affect my life. It may have; In fact, I actually think it did, at one point or another. But overall? No. Belief in any god doesn’t do anything for anyone other than the possibility that it makes them feel better about themselves. Not just their successes, but their failures as well.

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SCOTUS Rules Monument is Constitutional

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The US Supreme Court has ruled that the cross in Bladensburg, Maryland does not violate the Constitution.  This memorial to World War I fallen, has stood for 94 years and the court ruled that it was historical, and represented a memorial to the fallen of that conflict. When I wrote about this earlier this year, I was unsure how the court would rule, but if it ruled in the affirmative, the ruling would be narrow, a 5-4 vote on conservative and liberal justices lines. In fact, the ruling was 7-2 with only Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor in dissent.

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Is it Really Deconversion?

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I’ve never really cared for the word, deconversion. The actual meaning of the word, as a noun, is that it’s a return, from some religious belief to a previous belief or none at all.  For many, if not most atheists I know, they never had a chance to deconvert, because they never converted to their religious belief initially. Think about it. A child of parents from any religion automatically raise them to believe what those parents believe. Small children always, at least in my experience, want to please their parents, so it’s easy for them to take on those characteristics the parents indoctrinate them with, whether good or bad.

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Did Paul Preach the Jesus of the Gospels?

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The Apostle Paul is the most prolific writer in the Christian New Testament. He is credited with with thirteen of the twenty-seven books of the canon. Unfortunately, only 7 of those ( I Thessalonians, Galatians, I Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon,  II Corinthians,  Romans) are considered authentic, the remainder are now placed in the category of pseudepigrapha , epistles written in Pauls name, by others. All of the letters considered to be authentic, were written sometime between 50-57 C.E., the remainder in question as to the actually dates is not specifically known, but it’s thought for instance that II Thessalonians may have been penned as late as 115 CE.

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If You Can’t Prove It, It’s Not History

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I wrote recently about a very popular mini-series that’s being shown on The History Channel leading up to the Easter holiday: Jesus: His Life . I received a little blowback from some people even though overall I praised the show for it’s production value but stated that this should not be considered history. This is simply a retelling of a story, written by several anonymous authors, that weren’t witnesses to any of what they wrote about at the time. The main problem I had with the series, was that it was presented on a channel called History. There really isn’t any way that this could even remotely be called history, because there’s no historical basis for it at all.

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