Don’t you know? The devil is the master of writing on papyrus. Dumbasses.

That filthy liberal rag, the NYTimes, published an article about a scrap of papyrus from 300 BC AD, before several of the New Testament books were written, that has words in order like, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife…” among other sacrilegious nonsense.

I mean, don’t they know that everyone was named Jesus back then, and it could be referring to anyone?

And anyone’s wife.

The devil is a crafty beaver, don’t you think?

He’s constantly trying to confuse us with contradictory ideas.

Josephus only wrote about Jesus Christ, who was an unmarried, miserable God wretch.

Or something.

Besides, if Jesus were sexually active or married it would destroy almost 2000 years of The Catholic tradition of celibacy and frequent sex with children.

Gosh guys, if one doctrine is full of crap, what does that mean for the other doctrines we love to throw in others faces?

Let’s bind together to reject this flimsy piece of devil papyrus!

Read more here.

Adam Gopnik says the book of Revelations has all the makings of a Hollywood movie, only 85% of the population thinks it’s a docu-drama

The New Yorker — that liberal rag — published a review from Adam Gopnik of Elaine Pagels’ book, “Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation.“

He says it has all the makings of a Hollywood movie. The only problem is that there are too many people that think it’s a prequel documentary about the end times, while the rest of us know it was just some big, hallucinogenic metaphor for the madness that was happening back then.

Well, Pagels says it wasn’t hallucinogenic. But whatever. How can’t it be?

Anyway, the best part of the article is the art coupled with it.

This is a “love” story

Believers claim boldfaced that the New Testament is a story of love, forgiveness, and representative of an awesome, merciful, all-loving god.

Keep that in mind when you read this story from Acts 5: 1-10:

¹ Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. ² With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.

³ Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? ⁴ Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”

⁵ When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. ⁶ Then some young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.

⁷ About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. ⁸ Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?”

“Yes,” she said, “that is the price.”

⁹ Peter said to her, “How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord? Listen! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”

¹⁰ At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband.

Moral of the story, god will kill you if you fuck with lie about his money. This is a biblical tale, not a myth. It’s something that could happen to you … but, it NEVER does.

Via The Holy Bible.

From the comments

Luis V. delivered my favorite response yesterday to the post about The Ten Commandments. 

He wrote:

It’s amazing for example, how something like the narratives of the birth of Christ are TOTALLY different in all 4 gospels, same with the death and resurrection narratives. Yet my school was all too happy to do what most Xtianity does, combine all 4 gospels into one super narrative, tell you it’s all in the Bible and not tell you jack about the fact that none of the gospels agree on the details. Combine that with laziness on my part for not really digging and analyzing the texts and voila, instant believer!

Thanks, Luis!

Zoinks, it’s an Easter Quiz! How would you score?

You probably worn out from celebrating Easter yesterday, but how much did you learn about the day you were celebrating.

SkepticMoney‘s Phil Ferguson posted a ten-question Easter Quiz recently. I think you should take it. Here’s a link.

For example, here’s question one with the answer in red.

1. When did Jesus get crucified?

a. At the 3rd Hour (9am), on Friday, the morning of Passover.
b. Shortly after the 6th Hour (noon), on Friday, the day before Passover.
c. He didn’t really get crucified, his identical twin Thomas Didymus did.
d. He didn’t really get crucified, he only appeared to be crucified.
e. We don’t know for sure, since the gospels disagree irreconcilably.

Note: According to the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), Jesus was crucified at 9am on Passover; John insists it was in the afternoon the day before Passover. To make matters even worse, they all say this was on a Friday. Later Christian sects argued he was never crucified at all; it was just a spiritual ruse.

How do we know that this is the answer?

One answer: read the bible. It’s plain as day. Another way, read a copy of the synoptic gospels.

In college, the required reading for my Bible 102 course on the New Testament was a Synoptic Gospels text. It places the overlapping stories of the gospels side by side. And it shows the discrepancies by showing what isn’t written in one book but is in another.

Once you see side by side that the accounts of Jesus are dramatically and irreconcilably different, it’s very difficult to make a case that the gospel writers knew what the hell they were writing about.

The bible works hard to defeat itself. Hell, go check out some of these masterfully written bible quotes that have been put on billboards recently.

Here are a couple (below) that I couldn’t reconcile as a Christian. Someone please explain how we’re supposed to believe the bible is the written word of a perfect deity?

“Hocus-pocus phantasm”

Next November, Thomas Jefferson‘s 86-page bible will go on display at The Smithsonian. Jefferson is a hotly debated “founding father” because of this shortened bible. In letters, he claimed he was a Christian, but his slice and dice of the holy book garnered him name callings as awesome as “howling atheist” and “a confirmed infidel” known for “vilifying the divine word, and preaching insurrection against God.”

From an article in WSJ:

To readers familiar with the New Testament, this Jefferson Bible, as it is popularly called, begins and ends abruptly. Rather than opening, as does the Gospel of John, in the beginning with the Word, Jefferson raises his curtain on a political and economic drama: Caesar’s decree that all the world should be taxed. His story concludes with this hybrid verse: “There laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed.” Between these points, there are no angels, no wise men, and not a hint of the resurrection.

After completing this second micro-testament, Jefferson claimed in a letter to a friend that it demonstrated his bona fides as a Christian. “It is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.”

That, of course, has been hotly debated from the election of 1800 to today, and Jefferson has been called an infidel, a Deist and more. What is most clear is that he was not a traditional Christian. He unequivocally rejected the Nicene Creed, which has defined orthodoxy for most Christians since 381. And he was contemptuous of the doctrine of the Trinity, calling it “mere Abracadabra” and “hocus-pocus phantasm.”

 

Justin Wilson: The New Tithe

I know I post a lot of videos, but this one is a must watch. It’s called, “The New Tithe.” It’s an excellent video detailing the business of churches and how the rest of us should go about spending our money for more worthwhile causes.

Please, take a few minutes and watch this. The link will take you away from Le Café. Come on back and let me know what you think.

West Chicago deacon gets 6 years for embezzlement

This morning, I read this story about a Chicago deacon who got 6 years in prison for embezzlement from his church. He stole over $300,000 and used the money to pay off credit card bills, pay for his insurance premiums and buy Bulls and Bears tickets.

From the article:

George Valdez, 58, of the 800 block of Gates Street, West Chicago, admitted in a plea agreement to writing unauthorized checks to himself and transferring money from the St. Mary’s Parish bank account into his own. He also used a parish credit card for personal expenses and failed to pay for a family insurance policy.

Assistant State’s Attorney Helen Kapas-Erdman said Valdez used the ill-gotten funds to pay for White Sox and Bears tickets, expensive dinners, hotel stays and his daughter’s wedding. The thefts, dating back to 2006, were uncovered during a financial audit in 2009.

“For more than three years, Mr. Valdez stole from those who had placed their trust and confidence in him,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said. “He betrayed that trust by lining his own pockets with funds donated to the parish.”

Read more:

At the end of the Sun-Times article (which I couldn’t find), the quote from his lawyer was, “Valdez was trying to help his family.”

I’m sure the jury was all sympathetic to that once they heard the amount he spent on sports tickets. What an idiot.

When you grow up in a religious family, the common response to something like this is: “Don’t judge the people in the Christian church; they are fallible.” Lately we’ve been talking about how careless and the un-appetizing ways god is portrayed in the bible. God’s word isn’t infallible. He’s not inerrant. The word of god isn’t inerrant. If he intended you to throw non-believers into the water weighed down by rocks, he shouldn’t have written that stuff (Mark 9:42).

The bible is full of mistakes and blemishes. In some ways, the New Testament is just as violent as the Old.

So what are we to make of all this?

The leaders of the Christian church have shown time and again their fallibility. The god we’re taught is infallible appears fallible time and again. What is supposed to impress people about god that I’m missing?

Am I supposed to be impressed by the universe? Am I supposed to be impressed by earthly creation? It’s impressive, but if it implies a deity, that deity has a lot of explanation to do.

I’m pleased as a peach to live a life absent of a deity. It makes the universe real and exciting. I don’t have to convince myself that god stopped working in biblical proportions over time. Yet I can see that scientific advancements blow biblical miracles out of the water time and again. Biblical miracle isn’t going to bring people I love back from the dead. But according to science, we can live longer with the ones we love. That’s much more appealing than chopping off my hand if it causes me to sin or some fool idea like that.

I can recognize that I’m lucky because I live in a great scientific age, and I can be jealous that science is going to make the future even better.

Contrary to some belief, I want to have this conversation with believers, but I don’t know that believers want to have this conversation. I mean, look at the whole Noah’s Ark thing. It’s like a story from a movie. If I came to you and said, “You have to believe me. There’s a guy named Luke Skywalker. And his dad is Darth Vader. Luke Skywalker uses the power of the force to defeat evil … “

You’d say, “That’s impossible.”

Then how is it possible that I’m supposed to be believe the movie-calibre plots found in the bible? They’re just stories, aren’t they?

I’m deflated about this today. I feel like the field can’t be even when people are damned sure the impossible happened at one time and was recorded accurately in an old book.

Am I really the asshole for not taking you for your word when you’re damned sure there was a global flood and all the animals and humans alive today originated from those who survived that event? That means every animal is an in-breed of its own species. And when modern science says and SHOWS that it’s not possible, I believe fact over hearsay.

But I’m the asshole.

Making friends with believers

Julie Ferwerda

The other day, I mocked poked fun at a woman named Julie Ferwerda for writing a web editorial about dating Jesus. You can see the original post here.

Ferwerda’s editorial was an easy target, and I shallowly attempted to make a joke of it. Ferwerda caught wind of my post and has responded to it, which impressed me in a weird way.

This past weekend, I went to the gym. I got an email notification in my earphones while I was on the second mile of a 5K treadmill run. I switched over to my email to see this:

Julie Ferwerda | Hey Jeremy | January 16, 2011

In other words, it was a direct email from Julie Ferwerda. Her message was “Hey Jeremy” and the date is pretty self explanatory. This wasn’t on the blog. This was personal. My knee-jerk reaction: Ferwerda means business.

My heart sank. I panicked a little. I refused to click on it right away. I felt like it was going to be angry, and I didn’t want to be flung off the treadmill in the event it shocked me. So I kept running.

“Shit,” I thought. “I’ve managed to piss off this random woman and she’s now emailing me personally to take down my asshole post.” My mind was racing with all kinds of possibilities of how she was going to rip me a new asshole. Plus I thought she was Asian, because the picture at the top of her editorial was of an Asian woman looking downward. Apparently she’s not Asian.

Or maybe she was going to be nice about everything, and say, “Pretty please with sugar on top, take down your post.”

And I would say, “Screw that. I’m leaving it up. You put yourself out there. You get criticized. Own up, bitch.”

You know. It’s the Internet. You can call a woman a bitch while hiding behind the safety of your computer screen. It’s easy. Try it sometime. It’s invigorating!

I finished my workout, went down to the locker room, avoided eye contact with all the dudes walking around, showered, dressed and went out to the lobby. I sat down on a cushy leather couch and opened the email.

And what to my wondering eyes did appear? There was a kind-hearted email from a genuinely curious and interested person. Ferwerda complemented me explaining that we might have come from similar positions but landed on two different platforms. She is still a believer and I’m not.

So we’ve exchanged a couple, “hey how’s it going” emails.

Unlike most believers I know, Ferwerda has read and researched Christianity and religion. She’s read Ehrman and others. She’s a well-rounded believer. I respect that. A lot.

Of course a “real” Christian would criticize her. She doesn’t believe in hell. She doesn’t call herself a Christian, which is a sticky point for me, but whatever. She does follow Jesus and she believes she’ll be in heaven someday.

You can go read her blog. It’s damn interesting. Ferwerda is a dedicated mother and wife. She’s involved in all kinds of things I respect (e.g. humanitarian causes, dispelling biblical misconceptions, etc.). I have a feeling that several of my lurking readers who are looking for a way to express their doubts about Christianity but not ready to take the atheist plunge would LOVE Ferwerda’s blog.

Even more awesome, Ferwerda wants to send me a copy of her forthcoming book that I can read and discuss here. I’m giddy with excitement.

The way I see Ferwerda is she’s a gateway drug to this side of a coin. She’s a stepping stone toward non-belief, or at least a more realistic view of the world through an educated view of bible.

Sure, sure, I could criticize Ferwerda on a few things. And I’m sure you could, too. But you have to respect someone like her. I mean, she’s got a sense of humor. And a sense of humor goes a long way.

 

Crazyass religious group in Raleigh calls shutgun, wants to drive, too

Headline: End of Days in May? Christian group spreads word

RALEIGH, N.C. — If there had been time, Marie Exley would have liked to start a family. Instead, the 32-year-old Army veteran has less than six months left, which she’ll spend spreading a stark warning: Judgment Day is almost here.

Exley is part of a movement of Christians loosely organized by radio broadcasts and websites, independent of churches and convinced by their reading of the Bible that the end of the world will begin May 21, 2011.

Read on