The Blog for WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com

Preachers, faith healers, and other conmen: The story of ‘Marjoe’

Marjoe (named after Mary and Joseph) was born in 1944 to Pentecostal preacher parents. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were also evangelists and his parents noticed early in his life that he had a precocious self-confidence and good mimicry skills. They had the idea of making him a child preacher, publicizing a story of him at the age of three being visited by the Holy Ghost and speaking in tongues while having a bath.

This is the full-length Academy Award-winning 1972 documentary about Marjoe:

It turns out the whole thing was a giant con, like all religion. If you are religious and you wish to understand how badly you are being conned by your religion, here is your chance to understand.

Look at these two articles:

Florida will block tax credits for entertainment industry if movie or tv show has gay characters

Florida lawmakers are considering a “family friendly” bill that would deny tax credits to films and television shows with gay characters in favour of those promoting traditional values…

The little-known provision was slipped into a 75-million-dollar incentive package that Republican leaders who hold the majority in the state House of Representatives hope will bring more entertainment industry jobs to Florida.

School prom off after lesbian’s date request

The prom’s off at a northern Mississippi school after a lesbian student demanded she be allowed to bring her girlfriend.

The American Civil Liberties Union had demanded that the Itawamba County school district allow 18-year-old Constance McMillen to attend with her date.

A school board statement Wednesday announced the district wouldn’t host the April 2 prom at Itawamba County Agricultural High School.

Why to Christians hate people of the homosexual persuasion? Why would Christians hate anyone?

The goal:

If you want to help make it known that the world is full of people who are ‘good without God’ and who don’t need religion to influence their lives, then on Mon, 29 Mar ‘10 join in and set the letter ‘A’ graphic to be your Facebook profile photo. As the ‘A’ appears all across the site let’s see how much interest we can generate during the week - have fun!

‘A’ Week on Facebook - 29 Mar 10 to 6 Apr 10

If you have ever wondered what members of the Jewish faith believe and why, here is a summary:

Judaism and Jewish Apologetics

This quote summarizes how both Jews and Christians can happily quote from a book that is obviously repulsive to any normal, non-deluded person:

In view of the fact that in most of history the Jewish people and Jews have been severely persecuted and harassed, first and foremost by Christians and persons raised as Christians – who often justified their actions with the same Bible revered by their victims –, it is almost surprising how much Jewish apologetics resemble those promoted by Christian theologians.

What is presented to the reader as the essential message of Jewish morality is largely a projection of modern, humane and humanistic values on the Scriptural texts, which are quoted very selectively. Like any human product the Sacred Scriptures – as a reflection of the thoughts and environment of their authors – contain both agreeable as well as problematic teachings and morals. Modern theologians consider largely only those verses which do not seem offensive in the light of today’s ethics and value systems, which mainly derive from the era of enlightenment, occasionally even from ancient pagan sources, or are simply values which can be shown to be the basis of many, in other respects vastly different cultures. These selected verses then are claimed to be the essential message of the Sacred text and the religion based upon it, although in many cases the very next verse directly contradicts this picture.

Obviously Jewish theologians can rely on the fact that few lay readers ever bother to look up the original context of the passages they happily quote in support of their claims.

The article contains gems like this:

Sometimes one has to read a passage twice to believe what has been written in the Sacred Books of Judaism: what has been decreed the way to a holy life by the “sages of blessed memory… whose words are the natural sounds of Judaism” [131]:

Said Rabbi Joseph, “Come and take note: A girl three years and one day old is betrothed by intercourse. And if a Levir has had intercourse with her, he has acquired her.”

Delightful.

For more information on the repulsive Bible watch this video:

If you are a Christian, please take a look at this photo:

A free thinker is satan’s slave!

According to your religion, if you think for yourself, you are evil incarnate.

Why would you want to be a part of this?

Read this article and you will understand that God is imaginary. Because if God were real, if religions were true and if heaven and hell were actual rewards and punishments, then things like this would NEVER happen:

Nigeria religious clash ‘kills 500′ near Jos

They said three mainly Christian villages near Jos were attacked from nearby hills by people with machetes.

There is a long history of local tension between Muslims and Christians.

The attacks are said to have been in revenge for the killing of several hundred people around Jos in January.

Nothing more is needed to prove that God is imaginary.

No comment is really necessary - simply scan the articles:

1) CBS affiliate CBS13 reports that Roy Ashburn, a married, Republican state senator from Southern California WITH A HISTORY OF OPPOSING GAY RIGHTS was arrested for allegedly driving drunk after leaving a gay bar with another man in the car.

2) Vatican hit by gay sex scandal

Meanwhile, here is the kind of crap that the religious broadcast to deny basic civil rights to human beings of the homosexual persuasion:

Gay Marriage Tied To Beastiality, Incest, Pedophilia In Conservative Media

This article shows yet another way that religion causes war and destruction. Religion does this by turning something completely natural into something evil:

Sex Against War - We’d all be safer if guys like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab got laid occasionally

Any criminologist will confirm that the great bulk of crime in America is committed by unmarried young men. The best way to turn a criminal away from crime is for him to get hitched to a woman and become a father (though there’s surely a strong cause/effect conflation in that one).

The underwear bomber appears to have been just another lonely, horny, frustrated young man feeling bitter and disconnected — the perfect victim for an ideology that promises to make him a hero with all the admiring female attention he could want. If young men are designed by evolution to be obsessed with sex, like dogs in heat, you’ve got to wonder what kinds of destructive energies are created and compounded by ideologies telling them these feelings are shameful — feelings common to both Islamic and Christian fundamentalism.

The article goes on:

“deprivation of body pleasure throughout life—but particularly during the formative periods of infancy, childhood, and adolescence—is very closely related to the amount of warfare and interpersonal violence.” Cultures that don’t interfere in the physical bonding between mother and child or prohibit the expression of adolescent sexuality show far lower levels of violence—both between individuals and between societies.

Why does religion feel the need to demonize sex?

AC Grayling - Religion in its ‘death throes’:

This thread from the forum is also relevant:

Catholics come home. A sign of desperation?

I saw a slick, polished commercial on TV yesterday, essentially calling for all Catholics who have left the church to come back and re-discover their “home”.

This video shows a priest talking about Hell, and rejecting it:

Of course he can reject it - it’s a made up place.

What is funny is the fact that he understands that Hell is make believe, but doesn’t take it the obvious step further. If he did, he would understand that all of religion is make believe. God is imaginary.

Christians, like any group of people, spread out across a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum there are Fundamentalist Christians and Evangelical Christians. In the middle there are Devout Christians and Practicing Christians. At the other end there are Christmas Christians and Casual Christians.

The problem is that the Fundamentalist Christians and Evangelical Christians truly are insane. There is no doubt about this - their delusion is insanity, and the insanity manifests itself in myriad ways, as we will see in a moment.

The further problem is that the Christmas Christians and Casual Christians give Christianity an overwhelming mass in our society, and therefore provide harborage for the insanity.

The insanity is vividly illustrated in this article:

Fundies and child abuse

From that article, here is a quote by James Dobson, a prominent Evangelical leader:

The spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely. After the emotional ventilation, the child will often want to crumple to the breast of his parent, and he should be welcomed with open, warm, loving arms.

Beating a person - any person - is torture. It is wrong. Beating a defenseless child is insanity. In most sane places, body blows like this would be seen and charged as assault. But Fundamentalist Christians and Evangelical Christians are insane, and they see beating their children as something good that is commanded by their imaginary God. And unfortunately, Christians are a majority in America so their insane child abuse goes unchallenged.

Are you a casual Christian? Those of us who are sane and rational beg you - abandon the insanity. The people who follow this imaginary God are insane, and in many cases they are violent and repulsive, as demonstrated above. Please take the time to read things like Whywontgodhealamputees.com and come to your senses. Give up this childish delusion and become a rational, thinking adult. Run away from the insanity so that these people lose the safe harbor you give them.

After dealing with wingnut Christian Republicans all the time, Obama will be relieved to talk with rational people today:

Obama to Meet with Atheist Groups on Friday

Representatives of several leading Atheist, Freethought, and Humanist organizations will gather in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, at 11:00 AM ET, for the briefing.

Dr. Ed Buckner, President of American Atheists, said “We are delighted that we will get the chance to speak to and to hear from the Obama administration at the briefing with the Secular Coalition for America tomorrow. We will not be seeking support for Atheism from the federal administration, because we know they must be neutral and because we are confident that our conclusions can compete and win in the marketplace of ideas, unaided by government. We seek an end to special rights for religious ideas and beliefs–in all regulations, laws, procedures, and pronouncements. The privileging of religiosity violates the First Amendment and good sense.”

A great point:

Time to strip tax exempt status from all churches

As the nation, states, and communities struggle during trying economic times, revoking the tax-exempt status for religious organizations must be considered and is long overdue. This is especially true when groups like Mormons, Catholics, and evangelical Christians contribute to political campaigns that promote their hateful religious agendas, or worse yet, when they preach political issues from the pulpit.

Note that the NFL also has tax exempt status. The NFL! Strip that too:

Critics question league’s tax-exempt activities

As the following article demonstrates, there are delusional people who believe the earth is flat:

The Earth is flat? What planet is he on?

And the amazing thing is that they sound EXACTLY like those delusional people who follow religion. Where have you heard this logic before:

“I haven’t taken this position just to be difficult. To look around, the world does appear to be flat, so I think it is ­incumbent on others to prove ­decisively that it isn’t. And I don’t think that burden of proof has been met yet.”

If we substitute two words, we have religious babble:

“I haven’t taken this position just to be difficult. To look around, the world life does appear to be flat designed, so I think it is ­incumbent on others to prove ­decisively that it isn’t. And I don’t think that burden of proof has been met yet.”

The problem is that, in the same way there is a gigantic, insurmountable amount of evidence showing that the planet is a sphere, there is a gigantic, insurmountable amount of evidence showing that life has evolved. The only way to believe in intelligent design, or a flat earth, is to ignore and deny all of the evidence.

Understand the delusion:

A recent study lays out the evidence for a link between Christianity and racism:

Study: Religion Linked to Racism

Further, Wood said, the more devout the religionist, the more extreme the racism.

The opposite is also true; Wood and her co-authors found that the less religious the person, the less racial prejudice is manifested.

One possible surprise? We are all familiar with the stereotype of the fundamentalist Christian ranting against all sorts of people, and assume that she is more likely to harbor racist attitudes than the friendly, rational-seeming Episcopalian next door. Not so.

While fundamentalists were more outspoken with their bigotries, Wood, et al found that mainstream Christians held the same prejudices, while paying lip service to racial tolerance.