Ah, Sunday. More
Americans will demonstrate that they suffer from delusional thinking today than
any other day of the week. More Americans
will demonstrate their hypocrisy today than any other day of the week. More Americans will practice the brainwashing of
their children today than any other day of the week. Churchgoers abound and the mythology continues.
I am pretty much unaware of what happens during ceremonies at Mosques and Temples and Synagogues. But I do know Christianity.
Some folks will go to a church that proclaims the Bible is a
holy book, virtually dictated by God and that the words therein must be taken
literally. They are, of course, lying to
themselves and others. The Bible is full
of flaws of historical and scientific nature. Nope, the earth is not flat. Nope, the sun does not orbit the earth. Nope, not a good idea to stone adulterers to
death. Nope, the planet is not 10,000
years old, and on and on. Worse, there
is evidence of other great lies: the Jews
were never slaves in Egypt; Herod died 6 years before Jesus was born, the
Romans did not conduct a census anytime around the supposed birth of Jesus,
etc. But, these same believers will say
that abortion and homosexuality are bad because they interpret some scriptures
to say so. The hypocrisy of these folks
is overwhelming to me. It seems to me if
they claim a literal interpretation of a flawless Bible they should not cherry-pick
the verses they like and ignore others.
Sadly, there was no flood and no ark. There was no parting of the Red Sea. There was no city where the inhabitants were
turned to salt. No one was ever swallowed
by a whale and lived to tell the tale.
It is as though these believers go to church and turn off their brains
so that they can believe the impossible.
One wonders why the Bible never mentions the pyramids as they were built
before the Old Testament was written.
One wonders why if the Bible is God’s word he did not preserve the
original scriptures and only left his followers with copies of copies of the
text, each iteration different from the one before. Shepherds do not tend sheep in December. And no star can hover over a specific city.
Some folks will go to a church that supports celibacy in the clergy, does not approve of married clergy or homosexual clergy and yet those same
churches have huge issues with clergy acting as sexual predators. Some folks will go to a church that worships
rich clergy who claim God wants everyone to be rich despite the clear
injunctions against wealth in the Bible.
Some folks will go to church where infants are sprinkled and others will
go to a church where young adults and older get dunked in the hot tub in the
sanctuary. Some folks will go to church
where they are told how to think politically and the message is always “be
conservative”, despite the fact that the message of the New Testament is about
as liberal as one can get. Some folks
will go to a church where a bell is rung and crackers turn into human flesh and
wine turns into blood and people eat and drink it anyway. So bizarre.
Cannibalism is against the law but no one ever gets arrested.
And some folks will go to church where people believe they
are vested with the presence of a spirit and they begin to talk in gibberish
and dance and roll on the floor. Some
folks will go to church where they believe vaccinations are evil and
harmful. Some folks will go to church
where handling rattlesnakes is a test of trust in the mythical being. Some folks will go to church and believe that
clergy can heal them from all sorts of ailments, but they never see those same
clergy in a hospital.
And every single
one of them will go to a church supposedly established by their omnipotent and
all-powerful god and their god needs money.
More money. Really? Why doesn’t God just whisper insider trading
secrets to the clergy?
So I think all those people putting on their Sunday best and
heading out the door, checkbooks in hand, are delusional. They cannot prove the existence of a god, of
a heaven or a hell, of some sort of secret god plan for everyone, the ability
of some being to personally hear the requests of 7 billion people, or of a resurrected
human being. How can they possibly
believe all that?
But they do. Worse,
they teach their kids to think in every domain but the religious domain. In that domain the kids are simply taught to
believe hogwash and poppycock.
Even worse for me are the people who claim to believe but in
no way act as though they have any understanding of what such a belief would
mean. They play golf every Sunday and do
not even go to church. If one is going
to be a delusional, hypocritical believer in the supernatural then one should
at least act in ways that demonstrate such a belief.
And no, I will be sitting at home today reading about the
latest evidence that we are killing our planet and are likely to become
extinct. Wonder how the believers will
justify such a plan by their god?
