Just as it has always been, when our memories
of the ancient world fade into twilight. A new era dawns
to fill the void.
An unfamiliar path with a pulse of its own. A tempo not dictated by the labor of men
but accelerated by the rhythm of machines.
Launching the world into an age of bold innovation.
From this cauldron of steel and sweat a vision of prosperity emerged.
Harnessing the untold power of the elements turning night into day.
Creating new designs  that brought the world stage to the masses
And providing an experience that many have never imagined
The advent of mechanized warfare brought devastation like none the world had ever seen.
Providing a window of opportunity for some to dictate conformity as regimes spread that ideologies with a heavy hand.
Inciting the world to the brink of war.
And yet some chose a different path and through their vision brought unique perspectives to the world.
A singular proponents of free thinking remained.
Striving for peace in their endeavors to unlock the secrets of the universe.
Some of which would fill our hearts with fear and regret
But as this progress
unfolds the finite nature of our world becomes clear
Our survival the survival of all the world's peoples
depends on our ability
Exist in peace but this piece is tenuous
Although mankind will always look onward yearning for more
searching for new boundaries
Only to break through them
With the understanding that this world is one in which we all share
Comes the responsibility knowing that the decisions you make today
Will have a lasting impact on the generations of tomorrow?
From humble beginnings the village became a nation an empire
As clashing ambition spurred the appetite of armies plow and sickle gave way to sword and shield
Consumed by war
Brought hope to son
But even then many were consumed by zealotry filling them with suspicion and fear
From this darkness a
glimmer of light emerged
immunes from ancient times long-forgotten
Inspired great minds and ushered in a rebirth of art and science
as our answered questions from the past found new illumination in a renewed thirst for knowledge
revelations from above provided insights below
Spurring new advances throughout the world
Bringing an end to one way of life
giving rise to another
Leading brave souls to reach for the ends of the world and beyond
Credo in Deum patrem
Omnipotent M factorial chilly air is obedient immune, but in this video
At immunodominant, I assume christum filium de winter at ex patre natum adai, omnia, Sakura
Dylan the villain
Mendeley del Valle, del Ferro
Getting the fat man post exertional party
where ho Mia facta sunt
We pretend misogynist appropriate most transcendent nation in the cheese
The Bible is littered with contradictions and the character of God is definitely one of an antagonist
There are people out there whose only purpose is to obscure the truth
They contest scientific facts and undermine the power of knowledge and reason that has built modern society
The natural world that surrounds us is truly magnificent
nature forged and evolved over the course of time
We can only stand in all such diversity and beauty
So instinctively it is perhaps only natural to believe that things didn't just happen
Many people believe that there is a deliberate intention behind all things
including the creation of our universe
Most of them try to assign a reason to things that may well have not all but this belief in the supernatural
Is the fundamental core of superstition and religion?
How do you get there or you believe
Jesus was asked the question. What do we do to work the works of God? What do we do to please go?
And his answer very simple
believe in
the one that he sent
All you have to do is believe in Jesus
That he's the one
He's the one sent by God to take care of all the sins of all the people in the world
That includes you
For thousands of years religions have ruled the earth creating personal national and
International conflicts as well as mind controlling the population to create political and ideological
divides in this documentary
I will show how religion hinders the moving cogs of scientific progress and uses its foggy and primitive
irrationality to endanger reason
I
Have two questions for you
Are you honestly seeking the truth and
Are you willing to change if the truth is contrary to what you believe?
What you are about to watch and hear is extremely important?
So please put down any distractions and pay close attention and prepared to have your faith challenged
For most of human history when we looked into the night sky, we just saw thousands of tiny pinpricks of light
What these lights were was anyone's guess and we did guess?
We used what powers of logic and deduction we possessed to try to understand. What was going on around us
But all too often we relied on Revelation where priests and prophets revealed to us the will of the gods, and we called it knowledge
the creation story in the book of Genesis says that God created the stars
Also, it says that he placed them in the firmament of the heaven
From the human perspective the universe wasn't very large at all
God created the earth and surrounded this crown jewel with wonders stuck fast in the sky and
That worldview suffice for primitive people who had no way to see beyond the mountains
There are apocryphal passages in the Bible that declared that in the end times
The stars will fall to earth from there supposedly fixed positions in the sky and that seemed reasonable at the time
It took nearly
1,600 years for us to know any different at the end of a thousand years of darkness using scientific measurements Tycho Brahe he in
1573
Discovered that stars were not fixed in the sky
They lacked the parallax necessary to be that close to earth
All of a sudden we had a glimpse of the true scale of the universe
But the earth was still the center of creation just as the Scriptures center until the founder of modern science looked through a telescope
one of the very first scientific instruments to extend our sense perception beyond its natural limitations
And saw the moons of Jupiter in their orbits that
Single observation was sufficient to prove that the earth was not the center of the universe
And even more shocking than that the earth was not the only planet
For now we knew that some of those pinpricks were worlds orbiting our star
And I'm not sure when it happened
but around this time humanity realized that we had found a way to overcome the limits of our senses and imaginations a
Way to understand the universe our world and ourselves
A way that Unchained us from superstition and myth and finally gave us the answers we were searching for and that way
That new idea we called science and this was the tool we had been missing the one without which our civilization could not be built
better tools meant better information and better information in turn meant better tools
Astrology gave way to astronomy and we saw the heavens for what they truly are
Appreciation to the gods gave way to medicine we discovered real cures and treatments
Alchemy gave way to chemistry
Electricity propelled us out of the darkness of our ignorance we discovered microbes looked into our own bodies split the atom
Harness the invisible power of the electromagnetic spectrum
Watched the birth and death of stars
Uncovered the secrets of the universe
Decoded the very fabric of life
even venture off our own
And though we had given countless millennia to sacrifice and obedience and bloodshed in their name the gods never revealed these things to us
Many now attempt to hijack science and attributed to their deity, but why did the deity wait?
Wine were these things not in the holy texts for a hundred thousand years Homo sapiens was born
Usually Nagas very often dying in the process or killing its mother in
But life expectancy for not much more than twenty twenty-five years
Dying property of the teeth after that very organized early nears the brain as they are
Or of hunger or of microorganisms that they didn't know existed cause the Christian
Heaven watches this with folded arms
And there are still those who try to tell us that science does not provide the answers and seek to drag us back
All the while benefiting from and using the tools of science to spread their message
But we have found the way forward and though sometimes the answers we find are frightening
It's too late we know from whence we came and we know the way ahead
That I wasn't going to go back into the cave and what are these people telling you you need my help
Cross my palm with silver. I'll tell you the future. I'll heal you. I'll do these various things for you
That's what they're telling us you're an inferior person
They're asking you to go back into the case that our ancestors had to have come from
But we've been to the moment the hell with the caves. We've been to the moon
There is an ancient myth that the gods forbade us from building a tower to heaven
We pushed aside the priests and built it and saw when they didn't want us to see
We saw that we had been lied to you all along
We saw something so powerful that it could sweep aside the ancient myths and superstitions
One glance at the universe as real years
The stars are not in the sky
They cannot fall to earth the true nature of revealed knowledge is myth from a time when man did not understand anything about the universe
It was science that brought us out of the darkness that showed us what we needed to know that opened our eyes to reality
That gave us everything the gods denied us
Whenever I shall give a lecture I show pictures for let's say for the Hubble Space Telescope a picture of a cluster of galaxies I
Mean the the poetry of it the poetry where we both talk about the poetry of science
But the inspiration you get from looking at a picture of a cluster of galaxies located 5 billion light-years away from us
Where every dot in that picture is a galaxy?
the light from those stars
Left those stars before our Sun and earth formed which means that now
Many of the stars in that picture don't exist anymore
and if there were civilizations around those stars each of those galaxies contains 100 billion stars any
Civilization that existed around those stars no longer may exist the it just opens your mind to wonder
And so I actually feel very strongly that while science per se may not provide the direct
consolation
It can and it should provide a spiritual not only wonder, but it should provide
Experience elation look when we we tell our kids?
Fairytales to console them we tell it to make their life fun. We talk about
Santa Claus Easter Bunny, but then we decide
that you know what it's better for them to know how the world really works and
It may be a little less consoling, but in fact knowing that they're in control of their lives
actually
is empowering and
many of us if you're a good parent you want to teach your kids how to become empowered and
Yet, so but we're legend and that
And in religion I often talk about the flock the children it effectively treats you like a child
it says it's better for you to believe a
fable
than reality
We have the privilege of being in this universe for a few decades
During that time it is an enormous privilege to be able to understand
Something about the universe in which we live why we're here
Why we were ever born where we come from and I think that is such a wonderful thing to be able to do
That I am hostile I can get angry about
competing accounts which seem to me to
Not encourage that kind of questioning, but instead to say this is how it is all written in the holy book
it was written 2,000 years ago and at the end of it I
Think that deprives people. I think that is such a
Bit literal event that the demeaning view of the of the universe and I think it's tragic the children are
brought up with that when they could be brought up in a more open-minded way so, that's
One reason for the anger the other reason it is that I do think that faith
Unsupported by evidence is a lethal weapon it doesn't have to be of course. It doesn't have to be but it can be
its a weapon because
Possibly unscrupulous people can get hold of often young men and use them as weapons use them as human bombs
The only reason they can be deployed as human bombs is that they have been brought up from childhood on Palmers to believe
Implicitly without question that whatever the particular religion is is the details don't don't matter
The point is that they do believe that it is the will of God that they should
detonate themselves and blow up a busload of people or blow up a
skyscraper in New York I
Don't think that any kind of
Reasoned argument would do that for people
And so I believe that religion religious faith is an enormous ly powerful
psychological weapon
It isn't always used for the powered of course, but the fact that it can means for the bad makes me
Want to cut it off of their roots and a very least to stop
The inculcation into children of the idea that there is something
virtuous in faith
I'm
Very concerned with the way children coming into the world
Innocently knowing nothing or taken over by the religion of whatever culture they happen to be born into doesn't happen to everybody
But it's very common, and so you see children being labeled
This is the Catholic child. This is a Protestant child I would much rather say this as a child
Perhaps you could say that as a child of Catholic parents, so this is a child Protestant parents
But to tie a label around a tiny child
this is a Catholic child when the child is clearly too young to know what it thinks about the
transubstantiation or ever it is that the differentiates Catholics from
Protestants
I was in the car and my daughter announced to me that God had made her and that God had in fact made all
Children and all people and she and you thought and I was so she you know she was so incredulous
Because she just thought this seems like really big news, and how you don't know it mommy
It's really beyond me so but it did it struck me
I mean I I was I was really caught off-guard by it well
So give me the example of the most basic question of your child says mommy
Does God exist and what is God or who is God the way that I go about it is to say?
That's a great question, and I'm glad you're thinking about it
That there are a lot of different ways that people describe God and and describe what God is and this is what some people
believe and this is what other people believe and this is and I I don't believe in God the
problem with a lot of parents is that they are
Trying to raise their kids in this era of transition or this era of of change
So let's come up with a way that we can talk to our kids about religion
that's completely honest that values critical thinking and
literacy and that kind of leaves the door for kids to really make up their own minds give me an example of a
Common dilemma that parents find when it comes to raising their children
We're visa via religion there are there are quite a few and I did a survey of a thousand
Non-religious parents to find out exactly that and the top reason cited was people
Weren't sure how to talk about religion without
indoctrinating their kids into what they
Believed themselves this word indoctrinating is an important one because it comes up to again here
What's the difference between indoctrinating and binding right right indoctrination?
I see is almost the antithesis of critical thinking of course
It's fine to guide your children, but I see indoctrination is sort of this middle ground
It's stronger than just merely guidance. I see indoctrination as
telling children that there's only one way to believe guiding your child to be a moral person an ethical person a
self-respecting person a
Critical thinker those are all really important things
Guiding them to believe in a certain way in a certain God, or a certain prophet. That is not so important
I really want to focus on what people do in life and not what they believe because if we can judge people on their actions
And not what we think the reasons behind their actions
Are it makes it makes for a more tolerant world and a better world
Why why are you talking in as a Christian? Why didn't you call it as a Muslim the Buddhist or Hindu?
Cuz my my parents raised me as a Christian so you didn't have a choice. Did you?
When did you lose to be a Christian? Oh? It's just a tradition your parents teach you
Whatever religion they do so if you learn over
Blan you'd be a Muslim yeah, you're barred born a Muslim, so it has nothing to do with truth in
It's just the way you were raised
See cuz I'm this show we actually care about whether or not things are true when I became an atheist what happened was I?
Gained more information, I became more knowledgeable about subjects and I decided to actually care whether or not my beliefs were true
You don't seem to care whether or not your beliefs are true. You just like them because you were born here
Well if I think it's good, I think you're gonna have more happiness in your life
if you have limits to tell you what you can do or
What I saw is that relevant to the truth of your religion. Yeah, I jump are not all true
I know I was talking to people on the on the chat here, and they said well. They're like read the Old Testament
There's all this genocide and stuff
And I was just saying we'll just you don't have to read the whole thing because you just read for example
What Jesus said okay?
You know not everything Jesus said, it's true or good or smart or wise either
So why would you care at all what any of them have to say you're not concerned about truth?
you've aren't you just said you can pick and choose and
Toss aside the things you don't like so you're inventing your own version of Christianity
So why not just chuck it aside and go ahead and invent your own secular moral system that you
Don't keep talking about how we don't have limits
I have plenty of limits
And we live in a society that has plenty limits as Darrell's already pointed out most societies have limits
You keep going to this slippery slope thing of
Well if there is no you know Ten Commandments or Jesus or whatever then you've got no limits
You'll just run around raping and killing people well
That's already demonstrable false and there have been multiple studies that that actually
investigate the correlation between the religiosity of a society and its societal health
And there is always a strong negative correlation the more atheist a statistic
That's the society the better they score on
societal health factors from everything from teenage pregnancy rates to STDs to happiness to wealth to
murder murder a rape to
healthcare now
Go out and do some actual research that contradicts this and then you might have a case for your
Assertion that I think you'll live a better life if you know you won't there's no, there's no damage
There's no evidence to demonstrate this
This is wishful thinking just and not only have you gone and said well, I'll pick and choose what I want
You've done it in a way that where you're just trying to support your own wishful thinking
The absolute morality that a religious person might profess would include what stoning people for adultery
Death for apostasy
Punishment for breaking the Sabbath
these are all things which are
Religiously based absolute morality, I don't think I want an absolute morality. I think I want a morality that is thought out
reasoned argued discussed
Palmer say intelligent design if you actually look at the
Some morality x' that are accepted among modern people among 21st century people we don't believe in slavery anymore
We believe in equality of women
We believe in in being gentle. We believe in being kind to animals
These are all things which are entirely recent. They have very little basis in biblical or Quranic scripture
They are thought there are things that have developed over historical time through a consensus of reasoning
sober discussion
argument legal theory
Political and moral philosophy these do not come from religion to the extent that you can find the good bits in
Religious scriptures you have to cherry-pick
You search your way through the Bible or the Koran and you find the occasional verse that is an acceptable
Profession of morality who say look at that, that's religion and you leave out all the horrible bits, and you say oh
We don't believe that anymore. We've grown out of it. Well of course. We've grown out of it
we've grown out of it because of secular moral philosophy and
rational discussion
I'm
Struck by the fact that we spend so much time arguing with theists about where morals come from and how a life?
untethered from a God spells certain individual and corporate disaster
That we've completely missed the proverbial forest for the axiomatic trees
why debate the theoretical when the end of any philosophical claim is how well it has worked out in the real world as
of the last major Federal Bureau of Prisons studies
atheists and agnostics are almost absent from our prison population
The unaffiliated, and the non-religious simply engage in far fewer crimes
but if what theists say is true that a life without God leads to wickedness and depravity a theist should make up a
vastly disproportionate amount of the prison yard, but they do not
Those democratic countries with the lowest levels of religious faith and participation boast among the lowest violent crime rates in the world of
the top 50 safest cities in the world
Nearly all are in relatively non-religious countries once again. If what theists say is true
predominantly atheist states should be mired in anarchy and lawlessness
Instead the most secular nations in the world report the highest levels of happiness
their governments are also far less corrupt more prosperous and more
technologically advanced
However those countries with high levels of self-reported religious faith and participation are generally poorer more violent more
unaccepting of scientific facts and
incarcerate a far greater number of their population
Within the United States itself the states with the highest murder rates tend to be among the most religious
while the states with the lowest murder rates tend to be among the least religious
In fact rates of all violent crime tend to be higher in states that register higher than average religious belief in participation
The most religious states in America are also the poorest states and lead in high school dropout soon unwed pregnancies
Atheists and agnostics
According to numerous studies are less prone to racism more accepting of people different than themselves
far more empathetic more altruistic
enjoy significantly higher gender equality
Perform better in school a higher educated are better at critical thinking and more accepting of science
Are less likely to support government use of torture and have statistically lower divorce rates than do religious Americans
Perhaps it is time to shift the argument from the theoretical where the religious seemed to feel they always have the upper hand
To the street level where these theories are worked out each and every day
Perhaps we've been so busy arguing about whether or not the godless can be moral though
we've missed the fact that reality has already ruled on this decision finding the religious position illegitimate and
fallacious
The debate is over
It is manifestly self-evident that one does not need a God
to be good
What people get when they go to mass is a selective reading that doesn't mention murder rape
incest and so forth thus becoming an illusion a happy fairytale with talking snakes and
Unicorns they claim that God talks to them very much like the director was talking to Truman in The Truman Show
You can speak I can hear you
Who are you I am the creator of a television show that gives hope and joy and inspiration to millions
Is there any evidence for the voice of God of course not just like there are no talking snakes?
Or sparkly unicorns this idea that God somehow gave you the strength to do something is simply ludicrous
Religion the biggest fraud in human history not only takes away the ability to think rationally it also makes the believers too overconfident
When in reality they accept unsubstantiated things on faith if you have the urge to believe in anything then believe in yourself
It is your hard work talent dedication
And training that put you where you are today and not some magical force that adjusted your attributes like a video game would
It is quite possible that most civilizations even their potential others in outer space
At some time or another went through the idea of a divine creator
After all it is a very simple solution
albeit a very naive one
But once real science took over and ridiculed the science quotation marks in holy books then the former became obsolete
Not to mention that most holy books we know of rely on blind belief and faith
In other words a total suspension of critical thinking
The facts quotation marks and evidence quotation marks in the Bible for example really do require a real leap of faith indeed
Science is the only way we have of discovering things by first gathering existing evidence
Then analyzing it and finally if the experiment passes various tests it becomes a scientific theory
and if it fails it's either discarded or
re-evaluated
We don't need to have religious laws around like the Ten Commandments don't steal don't kill
Are you kidding? Everybody should know these things?
atheism among other things
Allows people to have the freedom of thought and be open to the influx of new information and evidence
that may challenge our current knowledge and
Religions are precisely not that
Why are you not a Christian because I see no evidence whatever or any of the Christian dogmas I
Examined all the stock arguments in favor of the existence of God and none of them seem to me to be logically really
Does it there's a practical reason for having a?
Religious belief for many people well it can't be a practical reason for believing what isn't true?
That's quite. At least I drew it out is impossible either thing is true, or it isn't if it is true
and if it isn't you shouldn't and
If you can't find out whether it's true or whether it isn't you should suspend judgment?
But you can't it seems to me the fundamental
Dishonesty and the fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity
To hold belief because you think it's useful, but not because you think it's true
Well, I was thinking of those people who find that
Some kind of religious code helps them to live their lives it gives them a very strict set of rules the rights and the wrongs
They would probably be able to find a rational morality
To take it live right if they drop this irrational
Traditional tubu morality that comes down from savage ages
But are we perhaps the ordinary person perhaps isn't strong enough to find this own
Personal ethic I have to have something imposed upon them from outside
Oh, I don't think that's true, but what did you post on yoohoo outside? You should know whatever doesn't count?
Well you were brought up of course is a Christian when did you first decide that you did not want to remain?
Believer in the Christina, I never decided that I didn't want to remain a believer
I decided between the ages of 15 and 18 I
spent
Almost all my spare time
Thinking about Christian dogmas and trying to find out whether there was any reason reason
And by the time I was 18 I discarded the last of them
Do you think that that gave you an extra strength in your life? I?
Don't know I should soon as it other extra strength nor an opposite
I mean I was just you engaged in the pursuit of knowledge
You see
One thing is I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing I think it's much more interesting
to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong I
Have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things
But not absolutely sure that anything and the many things
I don't know anything about such as we can whether it means anything to ask why we're here
But the question might mean I might think about me, but if I can't figure it out when I do it to something out
But I don't have to know an answer. I don't have I don't feel frightened by not knowing
By being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose
Which is the way it really is as far as I can tell awesome it doesn't fight
Do you at least acknowledge that all of the scientific evidence
Points to an earth that is vastly older than six to ten thousand years old
Yeah, I'm aware of that. Okay, so how do you recognize? There's no God? You're right? You're right. Did I say it?
Did I'm not saying that that first? There's no God what I'm saying is here's something
We've learned about the universe and it doesn't match with your literal view of the Bible now
There's a conflict there
and we need to resolve that and some people resolve it in favor of the Bible saying the Bible is absolutely right and
Ignore whatever actual evidence is presented there
I find that to be patently absurd because it turns Christianity into a self contradictory
Proposition which is and so by the way does the entire idea of a revelation in the New Testament?
because your visit your position to the extent that I understand it cuz I haven't got a kind of a straight answer yet is
One where there is a God who has an important message for mankind and somehow
He only reveals it to
Certain individuals who then write this down and thousands of years after this initial
revelation we have to rely on copies of copies of translations of copies by anonymous authors with no originals and the
a textual
Testimony to a miracle for example the loaves & Fishes, there's no amount of reports
anecdotal testimonial reports that could be sufficient to justify believing that this event actually happened as reportedly no amount and
anything that would qualify as a God would clearly understand this and
If it wanted to convey this information to people in a way that was believable would not be relying on
Text to do so and this for me is the nail in the coffin for
Christianity
The god that the God that Christians believe it is
Amazingly stupid if it wants to actually achieve its goal of
Spreading this information to humanity by relying on text by relying on languages that die off by relying on anecdotal testimony
that's not a pathway to truth and
Anything that would qualify for a God should know this which means either that God doesn't exist or it doesn't care enough about
Those people who understand the nature of evidence to actually present it now which of those possibilities. Do you think is accurate I?
Think you
He do need to believe it sure and but that why would you believe anything on faith faith isn't a pathway to truth?
Everybody every religion has some sort of faith people take things on you know if faith is your pathway you can't distinguish between
Christianity Hinduism, Judaism any of these others how is it that you use?
Reason as a path to truth in every endeavor of your life, and then when it comes to the ultimate truth the most important truth
You're saying that faith is required and how does that reflect on a God who supposedly exists and wants you to have this information?
What kind of God requires faith instead of evidence?
Well I think you probably have faith about a lot of things too like what I have I don't have reasonable expectations based on evidence
I have trust that has been earned. I will grant trust tentatively
I don't have faith faith is the excuse people give for believing something when they don't have evidence
I
Mean if you can come up with something that I believe that I don't have evidence for guess what I'll do I'll stop believing it
That's the nature of a rational mind
That is the that is the goal my only goal was to be the best Christian. I could be and
Represent this to people who didn't believe and what I found because I actually cared about whether or not my beliefs were true
Rather than whether they felt good was that my beliefs weren't justified
Try as I might and pray as hard as I could no answer comes
no evidence is forthcoming and
When I talk to people about this the only answer they ever offer is the one you did which is well
You've just got to have faith well. Sorry
I don't and not only do I'm not sorry that I don't I'm sorry for others that they think that that I should have
Because faith is not a virtue
Faith is gullibility
If it was true it would have to further implications
it would have to mean that the designer of this plan was unbelievably lazy and inept or
unbelievably callous and cruel and indifferent and capricious and
That is the case with every argument for design and every argument for revelation and intervention that has ever been made
Tenure on this planet, we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary
baggage
propensity for aggression ritual submission to leaders
hostility to outsiders
all of which puts our survival in some doubt
We've also acquired compassion for others love for our children and desire to learn from history and experience
And a great soaring passionate intelligence
The clear tools for our continued survival and prosper which aspects of our nature will prevail
Is uncertain?
particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth
But up there in the cosmos an inescapable
perspective awaits
National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space the fanatic ethnic or religious or national identifications
Are a little difficult to support when we see our planet as a fragile blue Crescent?
fading to become an inconspicuous
point of light against the best
citadel of the stars
I
Was not always an atheist I
Spent more than three decades as a devout and sincere believer in the Christian faith
I had always been supremely confident in my faith it had always felt impregnable airtight
I'd never even entertained the idea that it might not be true and anyone who challenged that assurance was either a deliberate or an inadvertent
mouthpiece of Satan
But the structural integrity of my faith was an illusion
Seemingly solid only because I had never challenged it never allowed myself to truly wrestle with doubt
Never asked of it the difficult questions it demanded once
I did my faith instantly became a far more porous thing riddled with countless gaping holes
Leaking its precious lifeblood into the philosophical ether
I suddenly began confronting one intractable hurdle after another the unqualified
Ridiculousness of scriptural inerrancy the malevolent and petty nature of my god the deplorable 'ti of a hell that punishes people
Eternally for a temporal crime and the clear mythology of a text. I'd always understood literally
My tipping point came when I realized that Genesis 1:1
Was erroneous as a product of a mostly terrific private school education I never had to worry about
Encountering anything that would challenge my hermetically sealed worldview a literal reading of the book of Genesis
including a six-day creation and a 6,000 year old earth
Constituted my understanding of cosmic and human origins the theory of evolution was a dreadful ploy spat up through the pit of hell
one with which the world scientists were incomplete
but when I investigated what scientists knew evolution rather than what my pastors and Sunday School teachers claimed it to be I
quickly realized I've not been taught the truth my concept of evolution was a ridiculous straw man an
unrecognizable and malnourished shadow of an elegant
graceful and sophisticated reality the biblical account of creation was quite simply impossible
It did not square with reality it flew in the face of
Everything humans had discovered if the origins of the world and human beings were wrong
what else was wrong the search that ensued over the next several years was exhaustive petrifying and
Illuminating it was the equivalent of pulling the strays string on a sweater and suddenly realizing that all you have left is a pile of
unspun fabric at your feet
Once Genesis felt the rest of the Bible fell with it
Once I accepted that the Bible's account of cosmic and human origins could not possibly be true
I began to realize that it was just the first in a long line of things about which the Bible was wrong
I quickly realized that this was more than just a season of doubt of questioning
This was more like being caught in the gravity of a far more massive object
I could struggle all I wanted purdue's no getting away from it
Jettisoning my religious worldview did not work itself out in clean lines and perfect right angles
It was long and frequently untidy while I didn't leave kicking and screaming. I didn't rush out either after all if I was wrong
We're a turtle
So I backed out slowly
purposefully for long time guilt and fear overpowered what I already recognize to be true, and then one day I
Realized I was living in terror of something in which I genuinely no longer believed
And the dread and guilt vanished in an instant and when I looked around I was suddenly on the outside of the bubble looking in
A perspective I could not have imagined
I would ever see in a vantage point that can only be understood by those who have made the journey
That I had existed inside that bubble for as long as I did and accepted without question
the dogmatic nourishment required defeated was suddenly incomprehensible I
Did not abandon my faith because I was hurt or angry at disillusioned
I did not abandon my faith because I wanted to rebel or live a life of sin or refuse God's Authority I left because there
Was simply no convincing evidence for my beliefs left because my faith insulted reason one too many times
I left because just because something gives you comfort and security
And claims to answer life's biggest questions does it mean it's right
I left because once I applied the same level of skepticism and rigidity to Christianity
But I always had to all other faiths get too withered away
I am NOT angry at the faith in which I was leaned and I do not blame my family
while I rubbed elbows with plenty of charlatans and carpetbaggers
I do not think I was deceived by the men with whom I personally shared my faith
and I was witness to countless acts of selfless love and
Genuine compassion the pastors under whom I sat remained some of the most extraordinary man
I have ever known
I
Was and continue to be surrounded like devout and ardent believers who genuinely want this world to be a better place
But the things they are required to believe in in response to that belief
practice
guaranteed that it is so often exactly the opposite as
A rational worldview dismantled my faith it replaced it with profound awe and wonder
Science killed my faith not science the perverse parody invented by some Christians of nefarious
Liberal secular agenda whose sole purpose is to turn people from God
but rather
science an
Objective methodological tool that uses reason and evidence to systematically study the world around us
And which is willing unlike faith to change direction with the accumulation of that evidence?
it's the opposite of religious systems of thought which are based on received wisdom and immediately calcified to fixed dogma the
Scientific method is self-correcting designed to ferret out human mistakes
unconscious biases and calculated deceits it takes into account our fallible our gullibility and our corruptible
Science is the impossibly dense core of curiosity while faith purports to have all the answers
Science thrives on the questions, no other human way of knowing works
this way the science that miniscule word saddled there's a burden of representing the entirety of the
Colossal human enterprise of decoding the cosmos is the most sweetly adventure we can know with it hairless apes build great cities
Do miraculous medicine see the unseeable stir the dust of other planets and peer back neither space and time?
Without evidence something is not a fact. It is merely an opinion
I now require evidence before accepting whether or not something is true. It doesn't guarantee
I will be right, but it does guarantee. I am significantly closer than without it
The religious believer begins with the assumption that their particular article of faith is true instead of reserving belief until the evidence
Meets that burden of proof. I am perfectly willing to change my mind, and if the evidence appears
I shall do so
Instantaneously could there still be a god of course
I would never claim to know there is no God to make such a statement
I would have to have looked under every rock in the universe
Such comment is as senseless and arrogant as the person who claims to know there is a God and that
This or that book is his plan for my life
But until evidence commensurate with the claim is provided for that or any God
Disbelief must be the default position
evidence makes belief
unnecessary one does not have to believe in what one has evidence for I now want to accept as many true things as possible and
Reject as many false things as possible
Does this mean I have to accept more mystery in my life indeed it does
But I'd rather acknowledge the world for how it really is than how I wish it to be
By and large humans main mystery we seek out comfort and crave knowing and religion gives us that
Anyone who tells me that they know where we go after we die
What God's plan is for my life for what the future holds is lying?
They are lying because I don't have those things and no mother human is in possession of special extrasensory powers that I do not have
Religion is dangerous precisely because it emboldened those who don't have all the answers to think that they do
Arrogant certitude is a hallmark of faith
I much prefer the humility of doubt
Especially given the fact that history is littered with people claiming to know stuff. They got dead
For millennia millions of Jews Muslims and Christians have been fighting to the death over a miniscule puffy and barren middle-eastern sanity
This Bronze Age tribalism from the barbaric infancy of our species is being dragged into the 21st century
Despite the fact that we know that plot is but one on a vast planet and that planet is but one in a vast
solar system of planets and that solar system of planets is but one in a vast galaxy of 100 billion solar systems and
That galaxy of a hundred billion solar systems is but one in a vast universe of hundreds of billion
galaxies and still they fight for worthless
Dusty real estate because someone wrote down thousands of years ago that their deed. He said it belonged exclusively
to them
Humanity's slavish adherence to religion keeps millions of people behaving like tantrum throwing toddlers
How conceited how narcissistic what outsized hubris it takes to claim your tribe has divine favor over all others?
Faith the very thing held up is the answer to all of our problems is the source of those problems
It's what drives Hezbollah to launch missiles into Israel. It's what inspires Israel to carpet-bomb Beirut
It's what inspires Christian militants to murder Muslims in the Central African Republic
It's what drove 19 men to fly fully loaded passenger jets into Manhattan skyscrapers
This is faith based behavior
If we as a species destroying ourselves
It won't be because anything written in one particular book of apocalyptic fairytales was correct
It will be because enough people believed in those fairytales to literally end themselves fighting over it
Religion forces us to see each other as tribes
rather than one great and beautiful human community
The irony of course is that because of religions influence in power to steer humans toward destructive forces we actually can bring
We might literally like every human off the face of history
Only life you're certain even exists in this boundless cosmos all because we held two ancient
Superstitions and myths so tightly that we were willing to literally destroy ourselves in their service
Everything humans have accomplished have loved produced and aspire to would end
Since our species was in its infancy it has looked to the skies and cowered in terror as comets passed overhead
Or the moon turned the color of blood
We interpreted the rumbling of the earth with a bluster of great storms as God's wrath we did this because we didn't know any better
unable to explain the world around us we made up our own answers, but those days of superstition should be behind us as
21st century people we have no excuse for still seeing angry gods and hurricanes or blood moons
raising faith above rationality
superstition above science belief above evidence is not something to be proud of
We are smarter than that and it's time we began acting like it
Christians when you read that the universe was created out of a giant golden egg as the Hindus believe you dismiss it out of hand
Clearly its foolishness
When you read that after death we all become God and rule over our own planet as the Mormons believe
You dismiss it out of hand clearly
It's foolishness when you read that Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse as the Muslims believe you dismiss it out of hand
Because clearly it's foolishness
But you don't blink when Elijah is caught up into heaven by a chariot of fire
Or a man lives for days inside of a large fish or two of every living creature crammed into a single boat
or the earth ceases rotating
It's time to stop believing in something that regularly breaks the laws of nature
It's time to stop believing in prehistoric gardens with magic fruit trees and talking snakes
It's time to stop believing in floating zoos a flood that covered the entire earth and people who live to be nearly 1,000 years old
It's time to stop believing in towers built to reach heaven it's time to stop believing in parting oceans talking donkeys
Controlling demons guardian angels evil curses signs and wonders. It's time to stop believing in the end times
traffics virgin births people who rise from the dead the Antichrist Lucifer wars that generate blood up to a horse's bridle and
locusts the size of cows
It's time to stop believing in an eternal paradise made just for those who believe like you and he'll of fire and brimstone
for those who don't
and yes
It's time to stop believing in God
It's time to start accepting reality to all that it is in all that's messy and glorious wonder
It's time to be overwhelmed by the size and age of the cosmos
It's time to be awed by the beauty of evolution as revealed by science
it's time to see the same sort of majesty in reality that you currently find in fantasy I
assure you a
Godless faithless life is not the cesspool of meaninglessness depravity and despair
You've been told it is since abandoning my faith
I am a far happier more contented and peaceful person
And I'm a far far less fearful person
I now consider moral issues not in black and white binaries, but I examine their many nuances
Taking into account. What science has revealed about the flourishing and well-being of both humans and animals
And no longer live my life thinking that this existence is merely a way station on the way to something better
but rather our singular chance to exist I
Count myself infinitely lucky that I get to experience this extraordinary
Planet and the cosmos in which it swims with a sundry smattering of beguiling human beings led in yellow black and white all
precious in my sight
The view of whom up here is absolutely
breathtaking there's nothing to be afraid of
You can pick almost anything in any holy book and then using reason and modern knowledge
See how it all is 'le falls apart like a castle of cards
When it comes to why people believe so strongly I think a lot of people forget how they were indoctrinated
Not everybody was indoctrinated the same way and not everybody's indoctrinated successfully
But I remember how I was indoctrinated
And it took me years of being out of it to finally sort of wrap my brain around oh
You know what now. I really remember what happened to me because I had a rosy colored view of it as a Christian
They would take me when I was little you know like before you like when you're a baby you're going to church
And you're in like little daycare at the church when you start to get a little bit older
They start putting you in Bible class and you have your teacher
That's there on Sundays and Wednesday nights, and then you have the preacher
That's up there in the pulpit like on you know Sunday mornings the Sunday nights
And then your parents are home teaching you this and so you have all this going on and all of these early before you even
Get into school
Like adults and the whole culture and your parents and all these people that you consider to be teachers and so smart and they're talking
To all these people surely they know things
So you're so impressed with that as a little child and of course when you get into school
It's kind of like what you were already introduced to at the church
And so you've got these teachers that you're supposed to listen to and learn from and they're just like the teachers at church that you
Listen to and you learn from so you've got this setup that it's just
totally reinforced and of course when you start to hit an age where
You start thinking about these things that you're being told and you start realizing hey
they want me to walk down the aisle and go and get baptized and now I have to really kind of think about this and
It's not just believe it anymore. I'm starting to get to be an adolescent
I'm starting to get to be a teen and I'm starting to consider these ideas in a less childlike way
But at that point you don't have any world experience. You don't have very much critical thinking going for you
you haven't certainly been raised to think critically and
You have this doctrine of hell that you've always heard
And there's all these horrible songs about what's gonna happen to you
If you don't believe in Jesus and you know all the good stuff is going to
And if you do and you're telling these children if you don't get baptized if you don't believe in Jesus you're going to
Never be with your parents again. You'll never see them again. They're gonna go to heaven you're gonna go to hell
It's a bad place, and you're gonna make God unhappy and Jesus died for you, and you're so ungrateful
And you're just you know sinful horrible thing
You don't know how to think or make decisions here and moral you can't trust yourself. Can't trust your own judgment
This is what you've been told everything their child should never be told you know children should be taught to learn
how to think and to progressively learn to trust themselves and to trust their judgment and when you're indoctrinated
you're just progressively torn down to never trust yourself and to think that you can't think and you can't question it and that you're just
Not smart enough and you're not even good enough, and so these children like me you end up
Just praying and praying desperately because you want so badly to be able to believe because not believing results in one of two things
Either you're gonna. End up in hell
Or you're gonna. Live your whole life afraid that you're gonna
End up in hell when you're a young person like this and you've been indoctrinated in this way
You don't understand that there is a way to not believe and not live in fear so you're thinking
my entire life will be horrible fear in doubt just like I'm experiencing right now if
I don't believe and so you're just on your knees every night. Just begging and begging for you know
Please God if you're there help me. You know show me something. Give me something to hang my hat on and
the cool thing about the prayer test is that there's no success metric right it's whatever you consider to be a
Successful outcome is the positive
Successful outcome of the prayer test so you get your little sign
That is whatever the hell is meaningful to you and your subjective head and there it is God God's showed you he's there and then
amazingly all that fear and all that crap just slides away because now you believe in Jesus you're gonna run and get baptized and
Isn't it great because now I don't have to be afraid anymore now
I don't have to be stressed anymore and now my life. Can be happy God's happy with me. I'm so happy
I know there's a God
And I'm so relieved like just the relief and and now I know how much God loves me
And he was there for me, and he helped me
Every single thing that happens, it's God
God did this for me God made sure to you know not let me get this because it wasn't right for me
And then I went got this other thing and it was so much better
And so your whole life is then filtered through this cosmology of God behind everything
And then you go through that for the remaining years
Unless somebody comes along and challenges it sufficiently and that's huge
I mean it's huge because what they're challenging is not just an entire universe that you see as God
But they're also
coming at you trying to take away your security blanket the thing that made you feel good and not be afraid anymore and
that to me is the thing it's
People call it like the fear of Hell
but I think it's more of a fear of going back to being uncertain and afraid and
When you haven't been in a place where you don't believe in you're not afraid. You don't even know that that place exists
You
Congratulations on your new building project your ministry is growing and you need to build
Exciting days for you and your ministry, I'm sure your future looks bright
Earlier this year my local newspaper ran a front-page story
Entitled faith in the future. It was an article discussing
How churches are aiming to attract and keep the younger generation?
The article showed how churches are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars building can phase multi media rooms even
Wi-Fi lounges for your mobile device of choice and yes
The Bible is supposed to be at the center of it all but the point of all these new
renovations is to get the youth and young adults in the doors and into the pews or
In this case the cushion seats next to the expresso bar
Christians are trying so hard to provide religious environments that feel safe and comfortable and inviting to visitors I
Know these churches mean well
But I think they're desperately trying to cover a massive wound with a bunch of shiny expensive band-aids
Problem is despite their best efforts the wound is still bleeding out at a record pace
Look Christians. I got a little secret for you
I can save you a lot of time and money by explaining why you're losing this fight
It's really simple and you won't have to waste your time and everyone else's money on expensive renovations pizza night
or lame jokes
Trust me you're gonna kick yourself for not thinking of this
Okay, got a pen and paper great here
It is the reason why Christianity is becoming irrelevant is because of this
Yeah, it's called the Bible and it tells the tale of a body of believers that doesn't look anything like today's church
Now I'm not talking near cultural differences. Those are to be expected what I'm saying
Is there is a fundamental disconnect between the church we read about in the New Testament and the one we see today and that?
Disconnect is driving the nail into Christianity's coffin
See in the New Testament we read amazing stories of the church that healed the sick and performed miracles
They functioned as a closed community, and met the needs of the collective
Apostles and prophets guided them if there was a question an answer was provided. If there was a need it was met
signs and wonders followed those who believed
truly amazing stuff
Today however well church is nothing more than a weekly activity where people go to sing a few songs
Listen to a half-hour speech and fellowship with friends. It's part Toastmasters part
Consort social club, and that would be fine under normal circumstances
But the church was meant to fulfill a much higher calling
The modern church seeks to fill pews instead of emptying hospitals it excels at fundraising
But not raising the dead
If the modern church were doing the works found in the book of Acts or epistles you could hold services in an old broken-down
Factory with no heat no air-conditioning and that building would be filled to max capacity every
Sunday with every age group and demographic imaginable if members of the church could heal terminal diseases
Instantly through God's power or restore sight to the blind if they could utter prophecies that saved lives
from future disasters if the collection plates were passed in order to help poor members pay their mortgages if
Pastors taught the scriptures with apostolic Authority there would be no need for internet cafes or other crutches
people would be lining up on Sundays by the
Thousands, but that's not what's happening
As a result the church must rely on home makeovers in order to stay relevant
Church, it's time to face the harsh truth
The younger generation is tired of the clowns who represent you the monsters you
protect and the oppression you champion
They're tired of the unanswered prayers the countless divisions the hypocrisy
and all the things that bagel sandwiches and flat screens can't compensate for and
so after many fruitless revival meetings
Maybe one day some of you will finally realize what many of us already have and that is
You cannot revive? What was never real in the first place?
faith in the future well if all the church has to offer our band aids your faith may not have one I
Was raised in a very Catholic family both sides my family very religious
I
Would witness and you know as you use the the
Christian terminology witnessed in school my dad drove the school bus my mom taught Sunday School
Required practice on Wednesday night
So we had church on Sundays we had youth group we were there every day during the week for school
And then we were there during the weekend for church
It's difficult being raised from a child
Because you're brainwashed. I mean it's it's a brainwashing
Why would they lie however the adult lied to the child there? There's trust there?
So asking questions like why are we doing this?
What is this all about the only reason that they do believe in what they do believe in is?
It's just by chance by where they were born they were born in a religious family. You're told from your birth
That there is this mystical person in the clouds
Who is going to make sure that you're okay? When you die and you're taking care of?
Everything I've ever learned about marketing. I learned in church
as if it
It is the only
It's the only thing
evangelical
Religions wanting to bring youth in
Before they start getting exposed to other ideas in the world they now have the concerts
pizza parties they have slumber parties
All kinds of activities they want everybody in the entire world to believe what?
They do when there's there's so much knowledge out there that we have today that
It tells us otherwise
Ask questions. You know I think that that's where we're really lacking is. We just take things in. I just recently had a
Argument, and one of my brothers. He's just so into believing in Jesus. He said he was gonna try to save me
There's no saving something that's not wrong it's like fixing something that isn't broken
I'm a skeptic. I'm a free thinker. I'm an atheist
I
Think you know the big question is why do you believe certain things?
You know why do you believe in?
Allah versus Jesus or why do you believe in alternative medicine versus conventional medicine?
And a lot of it has to do with what you're exposed to as well as the number of
Biases that we as humans have that sort of colors the information we receive from the world
A large portion of its geography right so if you're born in Oklahoma, you're much more likely to become a Christian
then you are a Hindu simply because everyone else around you as a Christian but
in terms of the specifics of our beliefs
They're very very highly driven by you know what we're imprinted with early
So you know those people that are around us as well as the fact that we naturally as humans seem to have these
Pieces built into our brain that want us to believe things that are not necessarily backed up by the evidence
There's been some very very interesting research over about the last 15 years or so that has cleverly shown that children
I'm talking here under two years old seem to be naturally wired to believe in things that are not necessarily actually there
And that certainly helps contribute to our belief in supernatural things later in life
I'm a huge fan of the scientific method. I think one of the
Best things that our culture has produced over the last 400 years
Is a scientific method and the reason is because what the scientific method does is?
It takes all these biases all these heuristics that we're naturally prone to
And it helps to eliminate them it helps to control
For all the things that we as humans naturally do so that we don't fool ourselves
And that's the key to any sort of real understanding things is not just oh well. Here's my evidence for it. It's well
Here's my unbiased evidence for it for me personally
It's about seeing the world as it is not as I want it to be and I think
The world would be a much better place if all of us were trained in how to think critically in how to think rationally
And how to logically examine questions and not just find what I want to believe which is what we do naturally
But find what actually is what so to do so in an unbiased way
I
Used to believe in angels I
Honestly believe that they comforted me when I was in need and they watched over me when I was in times of peril
And that they whispered to me day and night
And that they were whispering that God loves me and that he was protecting me from harm. I
Walked through each and every day with grass stains on my knees bruises on my elbows
Band-aids on my hands and those angel's wings kept me safe from the real harm
They blow that calm gentle breeze that grew into a hurricane
To beset me on all sides with a sort of safety bumper
Now don't get me wrong though. There were plenty of times. I pushed my luck and my imaginary Guardians
Well, I pushed them to the limit. I mean how was I still here after nearly 35 years?
if not by the grace of a God and the protection of his agents I
Mean why am I here now?
Why am I here now while there are coffins that are being lowered into the cold winter ground in Connecticut?
What if I done with my life that gives me the right to be here
While a child that may have done so much more
Lies in a closed casket as her father finds the special presence she asked for for Christmas
hidden away in the trunk of his car
What have I done with my life that gives me the right to complain about?
Hardship and adversity while a wife walks into an empty house once full of hopes and dreams and plans and now
Now it just breathes every memory into her as she walks through the quiet halls
What have I done to deserve to be here
What lottery did I win and why did the Angels that watched over me so well for so long when I didn't even care
And why did they watch over me when I had all but turned away from their maker
I guess maybe it's because the cloud of heaven was never anything more than a shield against the reality of this world
And once your head is out of the clouds you tend to see things more clearly
but the reality is the bad things will happen all the time and
that reality is that we will always be shocked and terrified by the news of one another one of our species is done and
That the reality is that a god if one even exists has been completely stripped of their power
No rule that man has ever made would have been able to limit an ellipse and God and yet no God intervened
No God ever intervenes
When I was in my private Christian high school they were heavy on the belief that everything that happened was according to God's will
When one of my classmates died on the operating table?
It was because God needed a piano player and when the girl that I was dating committed suicide
It was because God needed the brightest smile the earth had ever seen
To shine for his pleasure and for his selfish pleasure alone
And when the bomb went off in Oklahoma City?
Taking the lives of a hundred and sixty eight people including 19 children under the age of six
well
They didn't have a good reason for why God would want that one to happen?
But it was obvious that they believed that he did have a plan
because if not
It never would have happened
So last friday and christian classrooms all over america indeed all over the world. I'm sure
another generation of children were told
That either God had a plan and that the deaths of twenty more children was all a part of his grand scheme
Or they were being told that they were the lucky ones to be in a school that allows God in their doors
they're the chosen ones the children of God the blessed the strangers in a strange world and
the protected
My only hope is that this coming generation which is?
Already becoming one of the least religious generations in the United States will see the lies for what they are
That they'll realize that any God that could create a universe
Wouldn't need senseless violence to accomplish his plans
That they'll open their eyes from their teacher. Led prayers and see how empty and impotent and small the God that they worship really is
And that they'll finally start asking those questions that lead to truth and freedom from the chains of a belief
That reduces them to pawns and a cannon fodder the believers like to tell us that it's harmful
But if it weren't for us damned atheist their imaginary friend would have miraculously stopped the bullets from ripping into the bodies of those children
We've been accused of stripping their God of his power on one side, and then the believers chastised their own for not being vigilant
We've been accused of turning our country away from the saving grace of a God and yet we see that if that God actually exists
It cares nothing for our existence. It cares nothing for our happiness, and it cares nothing for our lives
It's proven that time and time again
It cares nothing for the lives of the innocent either and the lives of the children
those children that think only of today and only of this moment and only of the joy and the love they can give and
Thriving on the love that they receive and yet we know
We know that even if a God exists well
We're still on our own here
Our lives are only made tolerable in the ravaged world we have around us because we rely on each other
Because we know that hands clasped and prayer do nothing when compared to hands reached out to health
Humankind is a strange species
We need tragedy sometimes to remind us value we all have and how valuable we are to each other
But it's not healthy and we need to move away from all of the hate and the strife and the finger-pointing
We no longer need to be divided by creeds written down hundreds or thousands of years ago
And we can no longer afford to be that species anymore because those divisions and those dogmas
Are destroying what we can become?
believing in a God harms everyone because that God either becomes the reason and the excuse for our actions or
That God fails to live up to the promises
We are all told have been made, and I don't blame any gods for the tragedies
We put ourselves through and I don't hate any gods for not interfering and saving the innocent lives
And it's not only because I don't believe any gods exist
It's because I know what pain is and I know that there are others that hurt
And I know what that can drive a person to do
We are the masters of our own destiny and we are the makers of our own fate
There are no gods and Kings only humankind
I'm here now because a God wanted me to be here not because of God protected me
I'm here to experience the gift of life and the joys and sorrows that go along with living I
Have to make my life worth something
I have to work at making an impact on the lives of those around me and around them and around them
I'm one of the lucky ones, and I can't forget that or there's no reason and there is no hope for me
1993 photographer Kevin Carter went to use Sudan
to photographically document the suffering and starvation of the Sudanese people a
suffering brought on by political Anarchy and
backwards religious thoughts of ideological supremacy and intolerance
Not only to those who believed in a different version of the God and power, but also
To those who believed and worshipped a different God altogether
Carter snapped this photo of this starving child this little girl
Who was trying to crawl to a un aid Food Centre I?
read how he was told not to touch her not to help hurt her, but instead she just
Walk away from her
That is when I started to ponder that
Is when I started to question God's plan?
If you're going through a bad chapter in your life today
Well, I have good news for you God has a plan for you today, and it's a good plan
It's a plan to prosper you and not to harm you
I don't care what the circumstance is you may say you don't understand how bad my situation you know friend
I don't have to
What I have to know is what the Word of God says and the Word of God tells me that he has a plan for
You that he does
As I stared at this photo at first I wondered how Carter the photographer
Must have felt as he walked away from his child loses
Future lay not in front of her, but literally stalked her from behind
how he must have felt knowingly that this child would soon helplessly feel the sharp talons in
shredding the beak of her future of
gods a plan for her tearing into her flesh as she cried out their final moments I
Then wondered if the car Gege tried to rationalize as best he could what he had just seen
The image of which now not only lives in the eye of his mind and in the depths of his emotions
But also on a roll of tightly-wound film in a camera dangling from his neck
I wondered if he prayed to God for comfort and understanding I
Wonder did God gave him this verse to help ease his sense of guilt and English
Or if God gave him this message to help him understand God's higher purpose in ways
My thoughts then turn to this starving child this little girl
Who did nothing more than be?
created by her Heavenly Father for
his purpose for
His divine plan I
wondered if God comforted her with the same verse I
Wondered if God
consoled her with
this message
Has a purpose for your life - this is a very clear link I know the plans that I have for you
to give you a whole
and a
I wondered how this child full of pain full of hunger full of fear, Erin full of lost hope
Felt upon receiving these words from her creator as she tried to crawl away from them his plan from her
Purpose as she's bloodied her palms and knees in futility trying to escape every peck at her flesh
Every part of God's loving planning for her life
My thoughts then shifted from the child to God himself
How did God feel as he knelt down on whispered this?
into that child's ear
How did God feel as he watched this trial fulfill her purpose her partner in his unquestionable plan?
Then I wondered
How did God feel?
Looking not only into the eyes of this little girl, but also into the eyes of the millions of children
He has given such a hope and a future - throughout history
As part of his divine planning as part of his purpose for their lives
This is the United States Pledge of Allegiance
as it was in 1953
It included the sentiments of all peaceful productive and contributing Americans and excluded no one
This is the reverse side of the United States dollar bill as it was in 1953
It also did not overtly exclude the beliefs of any peaceful productive and contributing members of American society
This is the motto of the United States as it was in 1953
It promoted the unity of all Americans in reaching the common goals of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness
From 1954 to
1957 during a time when America felt threatened by the Soviet Union a nation with state and forced
Atheism we changed our pledge our money and our national motto
our fear of being culturally
Overtaken by the Soviet Union was so strong that we were willing to incorporate explicit references to believe in God into our federal government
as part of our national identity
Despite the fact that many hardworking and sometimes deeply influential Americans were atheists
Our national symbols now explicitly excluded one group of Americans for the sake of promoting the identities of another
Some have argued that since atheists are a minority in America
Incorporating references to God and our government is acceptable because it still represents the identities of the majority of Americans
But imagine if instead of saying under God our Pledge said one straight nation which would exclude
homosexuals instead of atheists
This pledge also represents the identity of the majority of Americans, but would this be acceptable
The fact that has been so difficult for us to see this disparity
Shows that the echoes of polarization that resulted from the Cold War still live on in the public consciousness
But they don't have to there are so many values that we all agree on whether we're atheists
Christians Muslims Buddhists
homosexuals or any other type of American
To Y than any one of us is more patriotic than the others is an insult to all of us
The government that we all create together should promote the values that we all stand for
Thomas Jefferson viewed by many as the beacon of freedom said I have recently been examining all the known
superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular superstition
Christianity one redeeming feature
They are all alike founded on fables and mythology
Jefferson also famously cut out all the myths and fables out of the Bible with a razor thus creating the Jefferson Bible
Benjamin Franklin said
Lighthouses are more helpful than churches as well as the way to sea by faith is to shut the eye of reason
Thomas Paine by the way wrote an article proposing the emancipation of slaves in
1775 he said what is it the Bible teaches us?
raping cruelty and murder
what is it the New Testament teaches us to believe that the almighty committed the battery with a woman engaged to be married and
The belief of this debauchery is called faith
James Madison said religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and then fits it for every noble enterprise
every expanded prospect
Religion is a mental slavery and to say that the only creeps into life would be a major understatement
Scientific advances, which should by now be conventional wisdom are challenged by fiction and myths
The process of non-thinking called faith
I'm a scientist, and I believe there is a profound
contradiction between science and religious belief
There is no well demonstrated reason to believe in God
And I think the idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe
The 21st century should be an age of reason
Yet irrational militant faith is back on the March
Every person needs at the center some sense of meaning about existence it is life and death to us
It makes us who we are
Yet most of us as we grow up and become responsible adults
accept that life is complex that we live in a world of subtle shades not sharp black and white I
Worry that these born-agains are being persuaded to return to Childish certainties
The only truth they need is God God as interpreted for them by their pastor
You don't already
Everybody knows that we believe the Bible is the Word of God and today, I talked about love
Your neighbor as yourself
Now I didn't have to produce evidence
Sociological evidence or psychological evidence the book is how can you say that ask to think for themselves?
And they told everything in this book is true
There is ample evidence for example that the earth is billions of years old. There is no evidence
however for the existence of god or gods
Yet, there are people out there who challenge science by waving the Bible about
Creationism is just one of the many modern
Aberrations aims are we writing history self and where else better to start than with children at schools
Do you believe in evolution
What do you believe I?
Created that world which will do that
It's the biggest question of the poll
Where did we come from
How do we rise above our humble beginnings
How did it remote of the primates go from swinging from trees to walking on the moon?
We now have a chance to be your back and see for ourselves
To see how our ancestors rapid untamed horses age to shape our own destiny
We are the designers
We invented the tools and the tools then invented us
And fire man and medicine man and transport
innovations that changed the world and changed Humana
This is the greatest adventure story ever told it's bigger than science. It's greater than history
Imagine what it was like for those who came before us at the dawn of humankind
When the earth was flat
On the moon and Sun were our mother and father
And when the stars were just pin holes in the curtain of the sky
When we drew our history with primitive pictures
When we fashioned our shelters inside the cold rock of the landscape
When a long life was 30 years
When everything we saw was a sign a
flash from the sky
Meant God was angry
When the earth shook the spirits were displeased
The floodwaters came and we begged for forgiveness
The volcano erupted and we appeased it with sacrifices
We suffered sickness and disease and we called it a curse
When loved ones perished and we called it judgment
Everything was beyond our understanding
Mysterious strange
wondrous
terrifying
Unknown it. Somehow we believed that we were the center of all things
And then we began to see our world
with new eyes
The moon was a place we would one day visit and leave our footprints in the dust
The Sun was a brilliant cascade of helium hydrogen a
star a
single solitary star
among billions of other stars
Inside a single galaxy
Alongside hundreds of billions of other galaxies in a universe born billions of years before us
The Tempest above us
the fire beneath us
They became explainable
measurable often foreseeable
Our crude illustrations gave way to rich expressions of picture and verse that ignited the imagination
We build our shelters from wood mortar glass and steel
We discovered living worlds beyond the naked eye
And we inhabited that world to understand and begin to conquer sickness and disease
We began to unlock the code of our very being and discover the bond we share with all living things
We celebrated long lives of over a hundred years
Our age is a new age of enlightenment at this very moment
Humankind is beginning to grow beyond the childish fears of its infancy to refuse to be satisfied with unanswered
questions to acknowledge a universe much grander and more wonderful than the
superstitions of our ancestors would ever allow and to
Understand that even though we occupy a tiny planet inside a vast universe
We are still part of it. We are growing we
are learning
We are achieving
We are evolving to
Finally understand that we are not the center of all things
There are many questions about the history of the earth
What major events might have occurred to shape it?
Was there a global flood a big bang?
How did the earth become filled with so many amazing and diverse creatures?
Tosses the fate of the present want to understand why the why the world is to die you've got to understand
What happened in the past?
to this day
There is no greater method to remind us of the mundane trivialities
Of everyday life than glancing up at the ghosts of many millions of ancient stars
dangling in front of the black veil of the great cosmic dark
But for me. It's not just the immensity of space that gives me my dose of insignificance
but time
Deep time
Naturally we tend to ponder 10 lengths that are proportional to what we observe in our own experience
days
Weeks and years so the concept of deep time
winding back through many millions and billions of years is far beyond the comprehension of you or I
We humans evolved to survive in the open savannas of East Africa
to fashion stone tools and follow the hurts for survival all while developing the brainpower to out-compete and
Outsmart the great predators, which shared our environment not contemplate the success of eons that have passed before us
Our ability to ponder our place in time is but a harmless byproduct of our ancestral survival instincts
No, no mad or wanderer of ages past could have possibly known of the forgotten worlds of planet Earth lost not in
space but in time
So here's a simple question when was the first person born around what time in history did the very first?
recognizably modern Homo sapiens walk the earth
Fifty thousand years ago 100 thousand years ago 1 million
Well truly there is no real answer
Because there was never a first person
In order to understand the history of life from an evolutionary perspective
It's important to realize that terms like species are often relative and ever-changing
Because nature doesn't have to serve our intuitions
Evolution is a slow process
We're in times of environmental change every generation is slightly different from the last
Transitions between species aren't nearly so sudden
It's not unlike the so called fall of the Roman Empire
In this case too
we tend to think of transitions from one historical period of time to another as a sudden collapse an
Event of some kind where in one day the Classical Age was humming along as usual
and then suddenly the barbarian hordes attack the walls fall the emperor is deposed and the people are killed and
Slaved and scattered along with their civilization lost forever to the dust of time
But in reality if you or I were to live at the same time of this so-called fall
We would hardly notice much of a change over the span of our lifetime
Just a subtle policy shift here
And there a slight change in cultural emphasis arises some new gods pop up while certain old ones slip further away into obscurity
while essential portions of infrastructure are no longer properly repaired and maintained until
Eventually over the span of decades and centuries things slowly evolve into something totally different
From classical antiquity to the world of medieval Europe from a time of symmetry unity and order
Literacy and light to a time of superstition division and darkness such is the passage of time?
whether on the microcosmic scale of the passing of human
civilizations were on the larger deeper scale of the transition from one species to the next
Just imagine we animals plants fellow humans entire ecosystems alike are all
perpetually living together in the flowing stream of evolution
We are all collectively floating downstream together in a mash of a currents tides and whirlpools all
affected and being affected together by the same selective variables in our collective environment
just as the common Romans living at the time of their own civilizations fall could not have noticed the changes swirling all around them and
Just as historians are loath to pick a singular date or time to pinpoint exactly the moment of monumental change to the world
Evolution is a slow process so slow and gradual even when it is punctuated by dramatic change that it is never noticeable or
significant in any way at one point
It is only through the application of deep time of looking over vast periods of cause effect and change
That anything significant pops up or jumps out at us
based off of the fossil evidence we can tentatively pin the origin of anatomically modern humans in Africa to between 1 and
200,000 years ago
The world we currently find ourselves in with all of its wonderful and vibrant life forms all playing their own role in a vast global
Ecosystem is but a snapshot in time a single frame in the great film of life. Where all that is inevitable is change
natural pressures from competition for the basic necessities for life
Forced populations to either adapt to new environmental changes will be forever lost in extinction
in its
multi-billion year long history life on Earth has seen countless environmental changes many harmless some catastrophic
Where species have either vanished were developed new adaptations to cope the?
further back we wind through geologic time the more alien life becomes as
recently as
10,000 years ago
Lions were stocking herds of giant wild camels on the plains of North America alongside of woolly mammoths and nomads
The streams were filled with saber-toothed salmon measuring
2.7. Meters and just a few thousand years before a sheet of ice a mile thick covered the continent
10 million years ago animals show much fewer resemblances to their modern-day counterparts
While there are whales beavers bears and cats there are equally as many unfamiliar creatures
There were great predators such as the Intel and the Nimba rids preying upon three-toed horses and giant sloths
Life
150 million years ago paints a very different picture
This world when ruled by Giants is set in the middle of the age of dinosaurs
Here we find a menagerie of great reptilian beasts like the colossal sauropods and the spectacular Stegosaurus
dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops lived at the very end of the age of dinosaurs
Some 66 million years ago 85 million years after the last Stegosaurus vanished from the earth
more time separates Stegosaurus from tyrannosaurus than tyrannosaurus and us
500 million years ago the land is barren
desolate
void of life
But in the seas however lies an alien world
The competition for survival had begun long ago, and the competitive pressures have already produced life. Forms. Just as beautiful as they are bizarre
Many of these creatures we will never know existed their soft bodies too fragile
their existence too obscure for their remains to last through the ages
All while life has been competing in the endless war of nature the continents have been rearranging themselves even more slowly than evolution
Collisions and tears have reshaped the Earth's surface countless times
given millions and even billions of years
Nothing is static
change happens oceans rise and fall mountains form and degrade
Species evolve and die off all in all in deep time all that is certain is change
Eventually even we humans will become extinct and be forgotten forever
when
Nobody can say how no one is sure
But what we do while we are here is up to us
Along
Despite all the moral nonsense and ethical evil coming out of Western religions
We should by no means discard the other overgrown elephant in room
Islam
Islam is a monotheistic religion that originated in the Middle East in the seventh century AD
Islam in a religious context means voluntary submission to God
It was founded on the teachings
Of the Prophet Muhammad as an expression of surrender to the will of Allah the creator and sustainer of the world
The Quran the sacred text of Islam contains the teachings of the Prophet that were revealed to him by Allah
Essential to Islam is the belief that Allah is the one and true God with no partner or equal?
Today it boasts more than one and a half billion followers around the world
You know No
In the West we sometimes ignore religion
But the Muslim world takes its holy book to the letter and anyone who dares to oppose the Prophet who must be exterminated
in 2004 Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh released a short film called submission in the movie a
Muslim woman talks about being abused and beaten by her husband as well as getting raped by her uncle
Giving a voice to a woman and criticizing the rules of Islamic marriage got van Gogh murdered in the same year
In the Netherlands a radical Muslim acted on his beliefs
Stunning his country by killing one of its most famous men
Amsterdam November 2004
Scene of a grisly and shocking murder the victim the great-grandnephew of artist Vincent van Gogh
the killer
Muhammadu Buhari a homegrown radical Muslim
Who yeri gunned down tail van Gogh as he rode his bicycle, and then he cut his throat
Nearly decapitating him do you fear for your life? I?
fear from those individuals
Who feel that they will go to heaven by killing me I fear for my life
Ayaan, Hirsi Ali has reason to fear a former member of the Dutch parliament her name was on a death threat
stabbed to Teo van Gogh's chest
Her crime
She had collaborated with van Gogh to make this provocative film called submission
It is an indictment of the way some Muslims mistreat women
Islam is my spiritual journey
And it is part of that journey that has brought me here to
Share with my sisters because I feel like all of you that the struggle for women is
our struggle
Saudi women aren't allowed to drive themselves to work or even to the doctor's office the
Atrocities and the disadvantages perpetrated on women in the name of Islam are real and their manifold
serious sexual harassment and attacks on women in Egypt grouping stripping and rapes have become
increasingly frequent and mutilation of the body acid violence
There has been a wave of killings specifically targeting girls who study Oh women who work?
There's a terrible fear of the educated empowered woman. I have the right of education. I have the right to play
I have the right to sing I have the right to talk. I have the right to go to market
I have the right to speak up with all upon targeted
Fifteen-year-old Malala yousufzai and her friends he asked for Malone by name, and then he shot her
This is one of the most alarming human rights issues in the world
This is being done in the name of some
ideology
The causes of prices have everything to do with the part of tradition and religion
Which are clearly about the oppression of women is this the honest?
Concept of honor it is very difficult to explain it to Western
Societies a lot of it has to do with how women behave and the sexuality of women honor
Is something that is carried and contained in women and is there to be guarded by men?
Why is it that everybody is afraid to say?
that
Muslim women are deprived of their humanity
Because people are you know slapped with these labels of being an Islamophobe and people don't want to speak out
Across Europe Islam is the fastest growing religion the number of Muslims tripling in the last thirty years?
This increased Muslim presence and violence like the van Gogh murder play into the hands of right-wing
Politicians like hurt builders a member of the Dutch parliament yes here
We have nine seats who fears the Dutch are losing their country to an alien culture
The party he's founded has staked its political future in large part on an anti Islam platform
Why have you chosen?
Islam as your battleground so to speak
Islam is I believe
one of the most major threats
to the West
And also to Western Europe and to the Netherlands
Today and more especially in the radical Islam is a major threat to our society
Those are people that hate everything and that we stand for and are proud to use every means possible
and to kill us
It is to be expected from a society that uses the Koran as a main educational
Textbook and where most of the city's harboring radical Islamists least are in ruins
Those are places with no hope for prosperity no entertainment no high education and where people struggle to survive
No wonder then that their only escape from those desperate conditions is jihad a twisted
Holy war in which radical Islamists, not only kill so-called infidels people of other faiths, but also many other Muslims
Who often find themselves caught in the crossfire?
In the Middle East Islam is our identity is our political life is our social life. It's our life
As a child I attended their Gaza elementary schools and
We were taught that jihad is a religious. Holy war
for the sake of Allah
That's what it is to conquer the word for Allah
That is jihad
These are actual scenes broadcast on Arab television
Be mindful sana and
DVI soldiers were nine lives of Hanan wa taala now with the more appear
Abner and a terribie at an ala
Affiliated he severely
outfit Alex Avila
But it was not always like that
Baghdad for example used to be the hub of world science people with various beliefs from all over the globe would go there to study
and work together they advance the frontiers of science by developing algebra and
identified most of the stars in space
But religious fanaticism was allowed to creep in and eventually take over
Islam became the law of the land and Baghdad's demise was at hand it was not just baghdad however the domino effect
Affected the entire Middle East plunging it back into the bloodthirsty and pitch-black obscurity of the Dark Ages
There was once an empire
it arose from the eastern deserts during the seventh century and swept through the lands all the way from the edge of India in the
East to Spain in the West
the Empire included 30% world's population and
consisted of a large variety of ethnic groups with various religions and languages
Even though the people were divided by great distance and cultural differences
They bonded to each other through an official language
60 million people that lived within the Empire's borders could exchange words and ideas by a common language
It was Arabic
This unrestrained exchange of communication between cultures sparked into an intellectual beacon in 10th century
It became known as the translation movement, and it was the most ambitious gathering of knowledge the world had ever seen
Thousands and thousands of books which due to her
Philosophical ideas and scientific
discoveries were preserved by translating works from Greek Persian and Indian into Arabic
the teachings of Aristotle and Plato were translated and
Contemplated by the intellectuals and even some of the feared lives were depended
Knowledge became the most precious commodity in the Empire and the intellectuals paid almost
Anything to get hold of a book that could expand their wisdom
The translation movement gave the Arabic
Scientists access to all of the world's previous research and scientific discoveries
They started to invest in scientific progress, and they encouraged philosophical inquiry
all scientific progress was consequently collected in the Arabic world and
Baghdad was the center of the intellectual world
Scholars from all over the world gathered in Baghdad all scientists were welcomed to contribute regardless of faith
Muslims Jews Christians and non-believers exchanged ideas
Debated freely and worked together without being restrained by their religious convictions
The Arabic scientists were encouraged by their faith to seek knowledge and therefore. They saw no contradiction in inquiring the world
They were eager to understand how the universe worked and they realized that the only way to obtain
Truth about the natural world was through observation
documentation and testing hypothesis thus the scientific method was born
This new way of contemplating the world excelled into unprecedented scientific endeavor
Groundbreaking discoveries were made and the foundations of contemporary scientific fields were created
The advancements that were made in medicine in anatomy took the Europeans several centuries to improve and the unprecedented
Achievements in mathematics shaped the world we live in today
Arabica mathematicians adopted the numeric system from India and by combining it with Greek geometry
They created the modern mathematical model
They developed algebra in the fall to still use today and algorithms essential for our modern computers
While Greece regarded with Mattox as a mere theoretical instrument based on a perfect unrealistic world the Arabic
Mathematicians adopted it as a practical tool. That could be applied on the real world
They realized that they could decode the universe with mathematical principles
Even I light them use geometry to explain how light works in his book of optics
He explained in great detail that light travels in straight lines and that it bends in different medium
He provided scientific evidence for his theories that could be tested and verified by others
This unprecedented approach made him the world's first real scientist
Ahmad al biruni used trigonometry and algebra to measure the size of mountains
Equipped only with medieval tools and the naked eye. He calculated the size of the earth accurate to
99%
Elba Thani
Contemplated the movement of the Sun the Solstice. He was able to calculate the length of a year to an accuracy of two minutes
His studies of the celestial bodies inspired the European scientists of the Enlightenment several hundred years later
Nasir al-din pussy directed the construction of the largest observatory at the time
through his observations
He concluded that the ancient Greek astronomer Ptolemy was geocentric model. It was deeply flawed
He frantically worked on new models to explain the movement of the celestial bodies
By proving that the scientific method was a powerful and reliable tool to decode the universe the Arabic
scientists gained authority and influence in the society
Their inquiry enriched the Arabic world with discoveries that took precedence over old knowledge
And it hoisted a sail to the ocean of truth
That would let humankind embrace science and reason hundreds of years later
But this new rational and scientific approach to contemplate the world was not in everyone's favor a
Conflict arose between the intellectuals that embrace the scientific method and the religious scholars
one of the main characters in this conflict was a theologian
Jurist philosopher and a mystic his name was Ali gasps
Al-ghazali x' mindset was in stark contrast to the intellectuals that used mathematics to explain the world
He believed that maam ethics was the language of the devil and that it would lead people away from the real truth
al-ghazali
Propagated that the purpose of society was to apply Sharia and the goal of man was to achieve happiness close to God
His sole agenda was simply to revive Islam
True knowledge in al-ghazali's view was the knowledge of God
He preached that this was religious science the only true science
Disciplines relating to this world such as medicine and arithmetic
Were merely techniques
According to Al gazali knowledge was to help man achieved plenitude and getting close to God
Improving life in this world or obtaining knowledge about it was not in his interest
He also believed that ideas from other societies were useless
And therefore he rejected the Socratic way of reasoning and all the scientific and philosophical work. That was not made by a Muslim
The works of argus ally led to the implementation of taqlid which means to follow someone
He proclaimed that the people shouldn't think critically towards established facts or old knowledge
but that they should follow a religious expert Omaha, Jing based on his interpretation of the Koran and
Since the Koran was the infallible Word of God the people had to follow it without questioning or reasoning in the matter
And
while the teachings of al-ghazali spread through the Arabic Empire
his notion of Islam started to replace the critical thought and the scientific progress and
Thus the last song set of golden days soon fell upon the Arabic world
The success of al-ghazali
Reanimated the importance of Islam and it changed the path of the Arabic world
The empire that once served as the intellectual beacon human
Civilization is now only a vague memory of its great past
The Arabic countries are today one of the most religious regions in the world where
94% of the population will confess that religion is important in their
But their party came at a great cost
The Arabic world that one sprouted itself for being the most innovative people in the world
Has now fallen behind the rest of the world
One of the key factors behind the Arabic golden age was the great translation movement that elevated the Arabic culture
But the isolation towards other influences embarked by al-ghazali in the 13th century still remains today
And since al-ghazali's teachings were established in the Arabic world
Fewer books have been translated to Arabic than is being translated to Spanish every scene
Between 1980 and 2000 the Arabic countries in the Middle East registered
357 patents
over the same time South Korea alone registered sixteen thousand three hundred and twenty eight patents
Since the Nobel price first was awarded in 1901 to
intellectuals who contributed to mankind through scientific or cultural achievements
561 prizes have been awarded to 847 individuals only ten of them were Muslims
The American walks every day normal going to work
Is walking down town in Manhattan and all of a sudden
Two planes hit the Twin Towers, and they have no clue why would somebody do such a thing
Well I saw the second airplane hit I
Knew
Jihad has come to America
Heart lies at the Quran and the Quran is a book that thoughts for hatred
That goes for violence that goes for murder
That goes for war that cause for submission and the Quran asks and orders
Muslims to kill
non-muslims the Quran describes Jews as monkeys and pigs
The Quran is alas
Personal words which leaves no room at all for interpretation
Therefore ladies and gentlemen there is no such thing as a moderate Islam sure there are
Moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam
You
What happened in Bali and in Istanbul now in Madrid
Are close to home for all of us London's worst attacks since the Second World War?
the series of blasts rocked the capital during the busy morning Russia a
Shocking toll of dead and injured dozens are described as in a critical condition bears lanschool number one is a scene of carnage tonight
Hundreds of children are feared dead
Masha's pushed us eh good
We have to stop pretending that Islam is a religion
Islam is not a religion Islam is a totalitarian
Ideology Islam wants to rule every aspect of society and every part of any
person's life therefore Islam should not be compared with other religions like Christianity or Judaism or
Buddhism, but Islam should be compared with other
Totalitarian ideologies like communism or fashion every single country in the world is dealing with this on one level or another
you see that the Thais are dealing with it you see that the
Filipinos are dealing with the
Europeans arguing with in Madrid the Russians are dealing with it in Chechnya and the British dealing with it in London and in
Manchester
and and of course you see in the Middle East whether it's in Iraq in Iran in Syria in
Lebanon in Egypt and of course in Israel at Saudi Arabia
And you go to Africa and you see that jihad is our operating everywhere from Djibouti to South Africa
They are not trying to be part of the American Way of life
They are not trying to be part of our culture. They are here with an agenda to make
Islam the law of the land just to show where our loyalty belongs soon
You see this flag here. It's gonna go on the floor
And to us our loyalty does not belong to this flag Allah to bless the loss of one o Allah
Of course not all Muslims are like that, but we've been infiltrated with this kind of agenda and
America has to wake up because we are strangling ourselves with our political correctness
Let us also be tough on those people who do not want to integrate for people who are already in our
societies and are from Muslim and Islamic
background
Let me tell you to them that if they adhere to our values to our
Constitutions that they are welcome to stay there equal as anybody else since we have no hate to any person
Whatsoever but as soon as they have an idea that?
They think about Sharia
That they think about jihad that they commit criminal acts we tell them we expel them
We tell them there is the door you have to leave our society
There is tremendous deception in terms of saying one thing publicly another thing privately Jasha arafat
Obviously was the master of the this dual agenda in terms of openly
supporting pluralism or non-violence or condemning terrorism
I condemn completely sisters activities, and then secretly or behind closed doors supporting it
Sometimes you would find a Muslim who appears to be moderate
We were the first as you may remember poster time of the 11th
We said that the actions of flying planes full of innocent civilians into buildings is not legitimate, but in his deeds
He's not as moderate as
He is we are here to talk about the Magnificent 19
Those who two years ago today split the world
Into two camps into the camp of Islam and the camp of non Islam or cover
Those who revived the obligation of jihad worldwide the Magnificent 19
They were praising their hijackers
celebrating the attacks on, New York
In Paradise right now it looks all too impossible
Christiane's you frequently accused me of picking on your religion and ignoring the transgressions of others
While this myopic focus is largely
Understandable both because it is the faith in which I was raised and the overwhelmingly predominant one in our own culture
I've decided to heed your criticism and focus on another faith for a change
Islam
Islam I hope all a theists and Christians can agree is the most vile religion on the face of the planet today
We live in a time when the horrors of religious fanaticism are all around us
We have seen what Sharia law looks like when it is transformed into political law. This is Islamic theocracy
The repugnant barbarism inspired and even endorsed by the Quran is nothing short of evil
Even a cursory reading of the Quran reveals a text steeped in violence
misogyny sexual perversion slavery rape and torture
Muslims use their holy book to justify all kinds of heinous barbarity
Isis's members accompany their barbarity with cries of Allah Akbar god is great
their actions are endorsed
Encouraged and quite often outright commanded by Allah through the Quran and other Islamic. Holy books
consider these examples in
chapter 35 verses 7 through 9 Allah portends mass-murder
I will fill your mountains with the dead your Hills your valleys and your streams
Will be filled with people slaughtered by the sword
I will make you desolate forever your cities will never be rebuilt then you will know that I and God
Elsewhere in chapter 15 verses 2 through 3 Allah commands go now
Attack the infidel kill men and women children and infants and boxing's and sheep camels and asses in
Chapter 9 verses 5 to 7 Allah leaves no doubt of his genocide all appetites kill everyone
Show no mercy have no pity kill them all old and young girls and women and little children
Defile their temple Phil its courtyards with the bodies of those who kill in chapter 14 verse 21
Allah says to slaughter sons for the guilt of their fathers
The Quran goes so far as to say how blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones the rock
All's sediments are again echoed in chapter 13 verses 15 through 18
Anyone who is captured will be run through with the sword
Their little children will be dashed to death right before their eyes
Their homes will be sacked and their wives raped by the attacking hordes
They will have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no compassion for the children
Now in fairness Allah doesn't always insist his followers butcher all their enemies sometimes. He allows them to keep them alive as
sex slaves
In chapter 21 verses 10 through 24 Allah commands his people to kill every man woman and child
Except the virgin girls he orders the men to carry them off as sexual trophies in
Chapter 31 verses 7 to 8 Allah orders them to kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man
Only the young girls who are virgins may live and you may keep those for yourselves
In chapter 21 verses 10 through 14
Allah says that when they go out to war if they see a beautiful woman among the captives and become so enamored of her that
You wish to take her as your wife you may take her home to your house you may have relations with them
What kind of God sees women as spoils of?
like cattle and other material plunder
Clearly not a God whose values women
But then the Quran has never been kind to women
In chapter 21 verse 9 the Quran says and the daughter of any Imam if she profanes herself by whoring
Profanes her father, and she shall be burned to death in
chapter 22 verses 28 through
29 the Quran instructs that if a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman
He must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father
And then he must marry the young woman because he violated her and he will never be allowed to divorce her
Yes, you heard that right Allah requires that rape victims have to marry their rapists that is unless no
One can hear them screaming
Just a few chapters before in chapter 22 verses 23 through 24
Allah's people are commanded to stone to death both the rapist and his victim
He because he violated the property of another man, and she because she didn't cry out loud enough to be heard
All's concern is not with the rape victim, but rather the violation of another man's property
Speaking of property all a wholeheartedly endorses slavery in
chapter 25 verses 44 through 46
Paulo says you may purchase male or female slaves from the foreigners who live amongst you
You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners including those who have been born in your land
You may treat them as your property
Passing them on to your children as permanent inheritance
In fact the Quran goes into great detail explaining, not just where to find slaves
But how they can be beaten and when they can be raped it even gives instructions for how fathers can sell their own daughters
into slavery
Allah demands that anyone who does not worship Him is doomed to die
Telling his followers in quran chapter 13 verses 7 through 12
If your own brother or your son or daughter or your beloved wife or your intimate friend?
Entices you to secretly serve other gods
Do not yield to him or listen to him nor look with pity upon him or spare him or shield him, but kill him
Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him the rest of the people shall join in with you
In fact the quran demands the death penalty for cursing
parents for not being a virgin on your wedding night or for having sex outside of marriage
For not obeying imams for committing adultery for blaspheming allah and of course for being gay
Again, I think both Christians and atheists can agree the Quran and the so-called God who inspired it are. Nothing short of
monstrous
So by now my ruse is almost certainly up at no time have I read from the Quran
every verse I cited or quoted here came straight from the Holy Bible the
Commands to kill everything that breathed to punish women for being raped to enslave others all came not from the mouth of Allah
but from Jehovah
It was Yahweh who murdered every living creature across the entire face of the planet
And it is a tone I who brags about the fact that he will do it again
It is al Shaddai who?
Because he so loved the world will cast every man woman and child who does not return that love into hell
Where there will be tortured for all eternity?
Elohim
Asserted by Christians as being of pure
Unconditional love is the very dictionary antithesis of that claim
Worship me or I will torture
You forever is a monstrous commandment, but this is the divine mandate on which the entirety of Christianity turns
No doubt many of you will tell me that I am taking these verses out of context
But I have to ask you in what possible?
Context are they defensible in what context is a purely holy?
perfectly moral all loving God make such pronouncements
And you cannot tell me that these verses come from the Old Testament and have been invalidated by the new
Your God is the same yesterday today and forever?
Even if the Old Testament was superseded by the new you are still left with a God who at one point in human history
Thought it perfectly moral to order such cataclysmic horrors
Is it any wonder then that Richard Dawkins said the God of the Old Testament is?
Arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction
Jealous and proud of it a petty unjust unforgiving control-freak a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser a misogynistic homophobic
racist infanticidal genocidal
Phyllis idle pestilential megalomaniacal sadomasochistic
Capriciously malevolent bully
You would think that an omniscient God knows the difference between truly malevolent characters and innocent bystanders
you would think that an omniscient God knows the difference between a human being and
Property you would think that an omniscient God knows the difference between a temporal crime and an eternal punishment
And you would think that if an omniscient God wanted to obliterate slavery he'd have commanded it
After all he issues thou shalt commands for everything from dietary restrictions to crop rotations
How much more important is abolishing the ownership of another human being?
This is evil right who in their right mind could follow a religion that preaches this sort of bloodthirstiness and savagery
Well the answer is you can't Christians you already are
If I fooled you at any point in this ruse
If at any time you found yourself angered by what you heard you must ask yourself
Where is that anger now?
Christians this is your holy text
This is not the degenerate wicked make-believe scripture of some other false religion. This is your own Bible yours
Why then do you use this book as your basis for morality?
Why do you see the person who inspired and wrote it as a guide for any part of your life?
If God were to command in the Bible that killing the defenseless children of your enemy is morally justifiable
Would you consider toddler murder to be moral? Would you do it?
Can you conceive of a single situation in which smashing the brains of infants against the rocks would make someone blessed?
Those who do follow such rules are not radicals. They are following their holy texts to the letter the
Question is why aren't you?
the answer is
Secular culture has emasculated God's commands you no longer behaved
This way because you recognize it is morally reprehensible to do so
If you won't do these things even when commanded to
Is it possible you are more moral than your God?
Christians you are quick to note the immorality and others. Holy books. Are you brave enough to examine the immorality in your own?
Dear believer
Have you ever stopped to consider? Why you believe what you believe?
Have you ever thought about why you chose the religion you chose?
Why do you believe in Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal salvation and not in karma or reincarnation?
Why do you believe that Allah is the one true God and Muhammad is His Prophet
And not in the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha
Why do you hold to the Torah as the only revealed Word of God and not?
the bhagavad-gita
Dear believer
Do you ever wonder?
Why your heaven resembles a utopian earth and is composed of the same base elements found right here on this planet?
Do you ever wonder why your didi governs within a power structure that resembles that of the specific time and place in which?
Your holy text was written
Do you ever wonder why your God looks just like you or the animals with whom you share the planet
dear believer is
The faith you practice the dominant one within your culture
Do you not find it at least a little suspicious that the overwhelming majority of all religious believers
Adopt the religion of the society into which they were born
Yet remain convinced. They've lucked out or been divinely admitted into the one true faith
Does it not make you at least somewhat apprehensive that almost every person of faith chooses belief not because of its virtues
supporting evidence
Moral codes or expression of worship, but rather because it was what they were born into
Why out of the abundance of faith choices available?
Does almost every believer on the planet choose the faith? That's within arm's reach?
Are you a Christian because you were born in America or Europe a Muslim because you were born in Saudi, Arabia or Indonesia a
Buddhist because you are born in Japan or China a Hindu because you were born in India
Can it be that faith is in almost every case just an accident of geography?
Do you sincerely believe that had you been born in another country? You'd undoubtedly still be practicing the same faith you now embrace
Dear believer is the faith you practice that of your parents and their parents before them
Is it the first to which you were exposed?
Did you know that nearly all religious devotees end up believing what they were taught to believe by their parents
Why is it that we scoff at the idea of labeling a young person a Republican child or a Marxists child or a Keynesian child?
Understanding he or she lacks the intellectual discrimination life experience and wisdom to make such a complicated and nuanced decision
But we do not raise so much as an eyebrow when a youngster is referred to as a Christian child
Surely a choice. No less complex
Could it be that. There's no such thing as a Muslim child just a child of Muslim parents
Dear believer you are supremely confident in your faith
You know it is the right one and all others are wrong
you are literally willing to bet your eternal soul on that very fact and
Yet
have you ever stopped to consider that there are two dozen major religions and
literally thousands of different faiths practiced on this planet
Did you know that within Christianity alone? There are more than?
45,000 different denominations each claiming to understand ultimate truth better than all the others
Do you realize that each member of every faith practiced is just as devout
Just as sincere and their conviction every bit as sure as yours
Did you know they to read infallible holy texts have airtight apologetics have experienced miracles
feel God's presence
Sense his still small voice
obediently follow his perfect will for their lives
Love him indescribable and can defend their belief with the same fervency as you do yours
And yet since every religion is mutually exclusive and contradicts the others in matters both large and small
They cannot all be right
right
you know you just know your faith is the exception and yet if
Every member of every faith feels just as you do
What are the odds you're right?
You
I'm told you've met a trusting Christ pavement on the cross of Calvary to tip you to him now the moment you do this
God will give you eternal life just say Lord Jesus I
repent of my sins
Come into my heart
Wash me clean
I make you my Lord and Savior friend if you prayed that simple prayer we believe you got to live again
God says I will save you if you confess with your laughing, I think
everyone who repents of sin and trust in cross
Half jesus's righteousness credited to their account
Sirs what must I do to be saved
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved in that house
The Church of Rome is the capital of the universal Church the Church of Rome is the very cradle of holy church
See she is the mother church in all other churches are but daughters to her
The Catholic Church is the one and only church founded by our dear Lord Jesus Christ in the year 33 AD
upon the rock of Peter a mystical body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are
identical
one and the same thing and
If this is true, which it is and all Protestant groups all Orthodox
Groups are not part of the true church and Christ
This is the only one who spoke about his own church
And we believe that we stick to orthodoxy because it is his own church today the four
Patriarchate's remain intact in full communion
maintaining the original
Apostolic Faith of the new testament record the Orthodox Church will continue in that challenge until his return
That challenge is to spread the good news about the historic church the one that Christ himself established
Being sure it is identical to the Church of the Apostles
You see we have a life-and-death
Message to present to the world
Seventh-day Adventists have been raised up like Noah to prepare the world for its final hours
We've been raised up like John the Baptist to prepare the world for the coming of our Lord
There is no other religious movement in the world which fits this pattern
I appeal to you to embrace the prophetic calling that Jesus has given
To this church his remnant Church the seventh-day Adventist Church
There is no other organization on earth providing spiritual food like the one that we belong to
the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints is
The only true and living church upon the face of this earth
The fullness of the gospel has been restored
The power and authority to act for him is present with us
The power and the authority of the priesthood
Rests upon this church the Lord spoke to those through whom he restored the church in the latter days
He said of them that they might have power
to lay the foundation of this church and to bring it forth out of obscurity and out of darkness the only true and
living church upon the face of the whole earth
with which I
the LORD am well pleased
the restored Church of God explains the truths of the Bible with clarity and
stands apart from the thousands of disagreeing sects and denominations
of traditional Christianity as the restored Church of God's membership continues to grow and
Expanding full-time ministry serves congregations in Pastor, it's around the world through the work of the restored Church of God
Millions around the globe hear the good news of the coming kingdom of God
Find answers to life's greatest questions and learn never before understood routes that produce real
lasting happiness
The Reverend moon calls his family the true family the perfect family
Moon is perfect human being is the only perfect human being from the earth?
And he can choose his wife and his wife
Becomes perfect as well and so his children become perfect because they are from this perfect man and perfect one
And so when moon marries more than a thousand couples at once as he did in New York last June
He exhausts them to live the high moral life that he supposedly exemplifies claims to be the one true church
Iglesia de Cristo was established in
1914 it is an extremely well-organized set with followers of more than 2.4 million
Scattered all over the world. It draws its powers from its ability to generate enormous revenues
It's reported more than 10% of its people's income goes to feeding the church's coffers
it is also a closed society whose influence expand beyond its membership a
solid voting bloc during elections hear politicians
compete for the attention of its members
One problem is that we have many holy books authored by the creator of the universe and they're in conflict. You know they're not it
The New Testament makes it perfectly clear that Jesus is the Son of God?
Really the Son of God, and you have to believe this
Otherwise you're gonna spend eternity in hell
The Quran says twice that Jesus was not the Son of God and anyone who believes he's the Son of God will spend eternity
Hell, I mean this is this offers as much room for compromise as a coin toss
So so let's say, let's say we just knew that one of those claims were what's right
You know we have a unit now. It's we flee we've eliminated all the other possibilities
We're living in this challenging universe what God has given us a highly imperfect book and asked us to grapple with it
but now we have the biblical claim the New Testament claim to the divinity of Jesus and the necessity of believing in it and
The qur'anic claim that belief in jesus's divinity leads to damnation
Which is more likely that one of those is right
and the other is wrong or that we have these competing tribes who were
toiling in the context of just abysmal ignorance about the world and
They you know the birth of the cosmos and the and the destiny of any individual soul after death
you know I would put my lot in with a wider view of the circumstance, but even if we
Granted your premise that no no there's a good reason to believe that one of these books is perfect
We're still with a a coin toss situation. We don't know whether to be a Christian or a Muslim
and
We're noticing that people are choosing
Basically on the basis of accidents of birth. I mean you just accidentally born in Afghanistan, and then you choose to be a Muslim and
likewise with Christianity elsewhere
It is a
It's a very strange sort of loving God who would have created this circumstance that web Eimear accident of birth
You are raised to believe
That a certain book was was and let's say rightly raised to believe that this book was you know the perfect book
But if you happen to be born in China. You know you go for centuries without hearing about
this it's it's a stray a
Four I think obvious reasons a totally provincial and and implausible scenario, and yet, it's the scenario that most people believe
I'm curious. How many of you consider yourselves to be devout Muslims?
See a show of hands don't mean to single anyone out, but not many
Now you're all aware of course that the Quran exists and claims to be the perfect word of the create of the universe
You're aware that once having heard this
Possibility and rejecting it
You're all going to hell for
eternity
I
Mean needles to say dr. Craig and I are both going to hell if this vision of life is true
The problem is that everything dr. Craig has said tonight
with a few modifications
Could be said in defense of Islam in fact has been said in defense of Islam
If the logic is exactly the same we have a book that
Claims to be the Word of the creator of the universe it tells us
About the nature of moral reality and how to live within it
Well what if what if Muslims are right and what if Islam is true okay, how should we view God in moral terms
How would we view God in world terms or I should say Allah?
We have been born in the wrong place to the wrong parents given the wrong culture given the wrong theology
Okay
Needless to say dr. Craig is doomed. He's been thoroughly confused by Christianity. Let me just appreciate what a bad position. He's now in
To appreciate the true Word of God I've been thoroughly misled by science
Where is Allah's compassion?
And yet in a tree
He's on it. He's omnipotent. He could change this
in an instant he could give us a sign that would convince everyone in this room and yet he's not going to do it and
hell awaits and
Hell awaits our children because we can't help but mislead our children
Okay, now just hold this vision
In mind and at first appreciate how little sleep you have lost over this possibility
Okay, just feel in yourself at this moment how carefree you are and
Will continue to be in the face of this possibility. What are the chances that we're all going to go to hell for eternity?
Because we haven't recognized the Quran to be the perfect word of the creator of the universe
Please know that this is exactly how Christianity appears to someone who's not been indoctrinated by it
Our scriptures were written by people
who by
by virtue of their placement in history have less access to
scientific information and facts and basic common sense than any person in this room
Okay in fact there's not a person in this room. Who's ever met a person?
whose worldview was as narrow as the worldview of Abraham or Moses or Jesus or Mohammed and
most of these people with a few exceptions
Had had a moral worldview. That was more or less indistinguishable from that of an Afghan warlord today
Okay and yet dr
Craig insists that the authors of the Bible knew everything they had to know about
The nature of the cosmos and about how to live within it to guide us at this moment
Okay, I want to suggest to you that this vision of life can't possibly be true
Okay, but just as there's no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra there can be no such thing as Christian or Muslim
Morality whatever is true
about our
circumstance in moral terms and in spiritual terms is
discoverable now and can be talked about in in language that it is not an outright affront to
Everything that we've learned in the last 2,000 years
Okay, what remains for us to discover are the facts in every domain of knowledge?
That will allow the greatest number of us to live
lives truly worth living in this world how is it that we can build a global civilization a viable global civilization of
now
destined to be 9 billion people
With a maximum number of people truly
Flourish that is the challenge we face
sectarian
moral denominations
Okay a world shattered balkanized by competing claims about an invisible God is
Not the way to do it
apart from the fact that
There's no evidence in the first place. That should be compelling to us to adopt that view
The only tool we need is
honest inquiry
And I would suggest to you that if faith is ever right about anything in this domain it's right by accident
You will not get to know it was by trying to prove it
archaeologically or by DNA or by anything else in my judgment just pick it up and
read it and pray about it and
You will come to know religious truth is always confirmed by what you feel
The Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth if we will
Study pray and listen to God's voice
This will help us strongly establish our seventh-day adventists
Identity folks the Holy Ghost has been telling me to lay hold of that truth
And every time that I walk the street and the enemy comes in with a lie
Every time he comes in with a temptation every time he comes with discouragement fear shame whatever it may
Be there has to be something in your heart
And you asked the Holy Spirit stop if you have to and say make the proclamation to me again, Holy Spirit
And you would hear the proclamation of the Holy Spirit because he abides in you as the spirit of the son
So this spirit this Holy Ghost. It is the Holy Ghost every Church in the denomination claims it
Everybody seems to be in touch not at your beck and call you press the button and is there
You ask the Jehovah's Witnesses say yes, we have it as the Roman Catholics. They caught it
Uh-huh the Jimmy Swaggart you see his product everybody has it and they are all going in different directions
So one spirit taking you all into opposite directions from God
When he the spirit of truth is come he will guide you both, I said that spirit of truth this Muhammad
Muhammad is the Prophet?
We say, Asahikawa. Do I mean the Prophet was faithful truthful?
prophet
Sudoku word Allah mean the truthful the faithful. He is the prophet of truth
Spirit of truth is the prophet of truth Muhammad and he guided mankind into all truth all your problems
I've often been told that my unbelief is a guarantee of missing out on heaven and
Ending up in hell
but whose heaven
Whose Hell?
I've often been told that I should
Just to be safe
except God
After all what have I got to lose
But who's God?
Given so many options
Aren't I more likely to choose incorrectly might not I be better off wagering on no God rather than on the wrong God
You put it to me. What if you're wrong
But what if you are wrong?
What if rather than Jehovah Allah is the one true God or Shiva or Wooten?
Or some God on the other side of the planet you've never even heard of yet
The truth is you already know what it's like to be an atheist in regards to every other faith, but your own
It's clear to you that adherence to other faiths are mistaken deluded or deceived
But they think the same of you
the way you view them is
Exactly the way they view you
Every devout Hindu has embraced his faith for the exact same reasons you have embraced yours
Yet you do
Not find his reasons compelling nor do you lose sleep at night fearing that if you die you'll wake up in his hell
Given this is it so hard to see why some of us just take our atheism one God further
Dear believer I
Wonder if religions aren't just ancient constructs
In which early humans attempted to both explain and control the chaotic world around them
though irrational and content their emergence certainly isn't
We do not blame our ancestors for inventing religion
There is no shame whatsoever in stumbling when you are blind or failing to properly construct a puzzle in the dark
But we no longer live in the dark
Science is ablaze in our world and illuminates our way
Dissipating shadows and exposing even the deepest of crevices we no longer live in the cave
We have crossed the valley scaled the mountains and have begun to make out the Magnificent Vista on the other side
We no longer require comforting stories to make us feel safe or valued is
It not time that our beliefs match our discoveries
Is it not time that our ideas?
reflect our new perspective
There is equal. If not greater off in reality than there is in fantasy
Perhaps it is time to stop telling ourselves that we are the reason the universe was made
That our culture is somehow better than other cultures that our tribe was chosen over all other tribes
it
Is time to learn how the universe really is?
Even if that deflates our conceits wounds our pride
Humbles our point of view and forces us to admit that we do not have all the answers
Believer
If you honestly value the truth above all things as you claim as I truly know you do
You must confront these fundamental questions
The world's religions conceived of god or gods in so many
Contradictory ways that they cannot all be true in
particular the concept of God in Islam and Christianity is
So different in crucial respects that both religions cannot be right for example
Christians believe that God is try personal that the second person of the Trinity took to himself a human nature
That Jesus of Nazareth was there for both man and God that in his human nature
He died to pay the death penalty of sin that you and I deserved, but that God raised him from the dead
Thereby showing his sacrificial death to be effective
Muslims deny all these things we cannot both be right we could both be wrong
Maybe it's the Buddhists. Who are right, but we can't both be correct
Thus every one of us whether Christian Muslim Buddhist Hindu?
atheist agnostic or what-have-you
Needs to ask himself what reasons we have for thinking our persuasion to be true
Otherwise we run the risk of being self deluded can't all religions be true or can't all
Religions at least have some of the truth, and none have all the truth, and this is quite often
Illustrated by the six blind men and the elephant you ever heard this parable
This is what professors often use to try and convince students that
You know religions don't really have the truth
They're kind of share the truth
But they're not really one is not really more true than the other they think they have the truth
But they really don't and it's illustrated this way
there are six blind men and
One feels the ear of the elephant and thinks it's a fan and other fields the side of the elephant and thinks it's a wall
Another grabs the tail and says you know. No. This is a rope another one grabs the leg and says now
This is a tree another grabs the Tusk and says this is a spear and another of course grabs the trunk and says now
We've got great snake here now these six blind men are all supposed to represent
The major world religions they think they have the truth, but they don't really have the truth
They may have a piece of the truth, but they don't really have it
Now
How do you?
Basically refute the conclusion that no religion is the truth here's the question to ask?
What is the perspective of the parable teller?
The parable teller can see everything he can see the whole picture
The parable teller has an objective vantage point so once you have an objective
Position you can really see the truth
so what's the moral of the story the moral of the story is once I was blind, but now I see and
We can do the same thing when it comes to religion if we take off our blindfolds we can discover the truth
And that's what we try and do we try and discover the truth, which is giving evidence for what you believe
How did you come to that conclusion?
How did you come to that conclusion have you studied world religions for yourself?
What are most people gonna say at that point
Probably no they're not gonna. They're probably not gonna have studied that right you will find that most people in our culture today
Have a worldview built on slogans
Maybe not most but a good number of people and they put all of these
Slogans together, and they go this is my worldview never realizing any of the evidence behind any of those slogans
any of the real particulars behind any of those slogans and they go skipping through life thinking I
Really know what's going on as soon as you question them on it, though
They run short of intellectual justification in about three seconds you say how did you come to that conclusion?
Have you studied the manuscript evidence for yourself
I'm not yeah, you're not being mean here
You're just trying to find out where people are coming from never once a while
You might find somebody who thinks they've studied it and has the truth
You don't have the obligation to refute what somebody else says
They have the burden of proof to support what they've just said
You're on earth I
Created all the gods yes, but I myself am NOT a God I
am
Humanity and I created you because there were times when I felt scared and alone
There were times when I grieved
There were times when I felt aw and wonder
Yet, didn't have the answers. I so desperately wanted
but most of all
There were times
When I wanted to control other
People and in all these things the creation of the gods was most useful
You may have been a necessary evil, but Humanity is growing up and the time has come
to put away childish things
It's all ridiculous, it's not that you know being a Muslim isn't ridiculous, but being a Jew is
Everything's ridiculous being a Catholics ridiculous being a protestants ridiculous being a Baptist or being a Buddhist is ridiculous
Being in anything is ridiculous
You attach yourself your mind to any ideology you're gonna be on a road and that
Road may or may not leave you in a good direction
But you're gonna stay on that road if you're attached to an ideology
And it could be a terrible road problem is no one knows
You cannot know you can have your own beautiful personal experiences
You could have been the person that was actually touched by God
And it's not that you know yoga is the answer or mushrooms or the answer? There's there's just questions?
The human race is stuck in a giant quagmire when it comes to our behavior and our thinking about our, baby and
Until were honest about that. We're never going to evolve
For a lot of people man
religion can give you some inspiration
But there comes a certain point in time when you have to pop the training wheels off and you have to recognize that all this
Morality that you've developed is good because it's good to treat other people good
It's good to treat other people the way you would like to be treated yourself as I've been golden rule and there's a reason for
and that reason is that we're connected in some strange way that we don't totally understand and
Unless you are good to other people around you unless you are kind and friendly
And warm and loving you're not going to enjoy this life
You're just not you're gonna be
Problems everywhere you go you're gonna have problems everywhere you go you got to figure out a way to enjoy life
It's not because of Jesus. It's not because of
Moses it's not because of anybody that may or may not have ever existed
It's because that's how you fit in better in the world. That's how you stay positive
Most people would say that life is hard
Tough decisions always seem to take forever the legislative process is beyond slow and regularly corrupt
International diplomacy is often deadlocked trade deals are often infested with greed
All of these things are true in our current environment, but it is not beyond us to change things for the better in reality
positive change does not require countless hours of debating it requires common-sense firm action and
mathematics I
Have a vision it may appear as a utopian dream to many, but it is actually quite achievable
However, there is not enough time to explain all the mechanisms all I can do right now is just give a few pointers
Consider my words carefully though never doubt your ability to have an impact you
Can make the world better
We can make the world better if we all stand together
People should be humble
Rather than arrogantly pretend to know all the answers they take from a book written by ma'am my vision for a better world
Would be one without countries. No borders. Where everybody works together as one for a better future
My world would also be educated on scientific facts and not religious superstition
If you're just joining us this morning
Electric surprise
rescue crews
making their way to the scene in all of us unfolding and one of the busiest places in the world recent events such as
9/11 would never have happened if mankind
Abandoned religions long ago the bloody history of religious conflicts is too long and must end
My time friends to a few rinses non-existent
I resisted the faith-based claims can't go the distance the reasons are gonna stand up for reality or surrender to the fantasy
But either way don't care people mad at me my criticism so much bigger than religion miss Ibaka fact that they're lacking in total
Skepticism these days it kind of seems like being skeptic is a negative so my position is to face a type of mental
Sedative the type of things I rap about I'm really not cerebral
There's just an overabundance of really stupid people who get offended when I challenge all that sacred shit first and complaining
But then abstain from debate in it. They won't be suppressed
I'll be trying to say that I'm obsessed that need your reaction whenever they hear my views expressed
Same uncle buns they ain't but I said on the sidelines too scared to offend
But then defender who's done lies you really think you still see you in a different light because you're the type this pass of your
Favorite boy. It's not this site
You really think they think that you and I are not alike it that they don't imagine you burning hot in the afterlife
To dump you just a sacrilegious blasphemy I tried to be a heathen who doesn't respect this. Holy majesty my contention
You are respected on condition that you never contradict them will speak against their convictions
So this way
I'm making my stand and now regardless with like you know how they get mad spider must the doc fix a lady over to plan
You gonna swaddle until I'm freaking my hand
So listen while state official policy no matter how threatened with hell didn't ever silence me
I know that you don't see this as imperative
but you used to lose and let the stupid friends an error there sceptic me so much more than being an atheist and
Until you accept that you won't relate to this that cognitive dissonance that you
Experiences when there's things you claim to believe in but ain't living it
most of you say you are attached to crush everything until I hit a
Conspiracy theories that you hit the ring and when I lose an eye for things you try to say your lives
Expose your sources and suspect. I see your logic dies some still believe in pseudoscience engage your special
Reasoning
Arrested Simo for us to tell me exactly just what the difference is I skip without the ability to analyze just
Cuz will probably accept a lot
Just as long as the verifies all the spiders since the poor and the to is knowledge fool
And then he's diving in so I'm not saying something spirit is not exist
I'm just saying that a lot of dump on some bullshit swarm
I call a spade a spade no matter who assertion nobody's perfect and just my life that it's all perverted free knife and curtain so
That's a display the only ways the question itself and all the things you say start the day
We can rise above engage samples for others to emulate that's the way we win this battle
So this way
I'm making my stand and now for Karla something like you know how they get mad
Slaughter us the young picture laid and go with the plan. I'll be beating on this wall until I'm forgive my hand
Listen while state official policy no matter how threatened with hell. They'll never silence me
I know that you don't see this as imperative, but I refuse to lose and let the stupid frame that narrative
Raise consciousness to the fact that to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration and a brave and splendid one
You can be an atheist to his happy balanced moral and intellectually fulfilled
That is the first of my consciousness-raising messages
In January
2006 I presented a two-part television
documentary and British television channel 4 called root of all evil
From the start I didn't like the title
Religion is not the root of all evil for no one thing is in this of all anything
But I was delighted with the advertisement channel for put in the national newspapers
It was a picture of the Manhattan skyline with the caption. We imagine a world without religion
What was the connection?
the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were conspicuously present
Imagine with John Lennon a world with no religion
Imagine lo suicide bombers no 911 no
770 no Crusades no witch-hunts hey Gunpowder Plot no Indian partition no
israeli-palestinian Wars no sir co-op Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as Christ killers
No, Northern Ireland problems. No honor killings. No shiney suited blue forehead
Televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money God wants you to give till it hurts
Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues
No public the headings of blasphemers no flogging of female skin of a crime of showing an inch of it
Incidentally my colleague Desmond Morris informs me that John Lennon's magnificent song is sometimes performed in America with the phrase
and no religion to
expurgated one version even has the effrontery to change it to and one religion to
We are staggeringly lucky to find ourselves in the small large amount
however brief our time in the Sun if we waste a second of it or complain that it is Dow or barren or
uncharged
Boring wouldn't this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never even be offered life in the first person
Because many atheists have said better than me the knowledge that we have only one life should make it all the more precious
The Atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life enhancing
On at the same time never being tainted with self delusion
Wishful thinking or the whinging the self pity for those who feel that life owes them something
Emily Dickinson said that it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet?
