Hi everyone, This post is just copy from an email I sent my father about the
www.whywontgodhealamputees.com website. I must preface this by saying that I was raised in a strict mormon home. My dad followed the changing letter of the laws of the religion in an effort that we all might be in heaven together one day.
Now approaching 40, I have spent my entire life studying the Bible, the Book of Mormon and even left the church and ultimately started preaching some in a non-denominational church.
You must understand before reading below, my dad is a wonderful, very educated, intelligent and sarcastic man. I shared this website with him first as he made the most impact on my life regarding the adherence to religion. You will see with his effort to bring up the fact that I smoke like a chimney and drink literally less than 10 times a year and attempts at tying this in with a moral decline.
Hey Dad,
This is the most incredible break down of the bible that I have ever seen. Not a single person on this earth that has
the capacity to think logically can ignore the facts. I know that you are firm in your beliefs but I know that you will find
this information educational to say the least.
It will take some time to read, but I would love to get your opinions once you read it.
www.WhyWontGodHealAmputees.comHis Response:
And the GOAL IS? Atheism, no rules of life, freedom from conscience, or what? If you feel the compelling need to "convert, convince" those around you as is frequently the case with ANTI-converts, should you question why? If it brings you peace, freedom, joy, happiness etc, etc, the "product" will sell itself. No
recruitment will be required to justify your position. To tear down someone else's belief system while you are en route to self enlightenment but lack the temperance and wisdom that will come from reaching a conclusive result or end game, is cruel and self serving. Please, pursue your quest, reach what conclusions you want along the way. Know that we love you, but have NO desire to join in your current educational journey. Some thoughts for you to consider, Tobacco, what has it done for you, and for those around you?
Alcohol, what has it done for you,and those around you?
Your current religious or anti- religious pursuits, what effect on you, what value to Nick, Keith, Sabrina, Nina, and all your family including us?
You have always been an influential and compelling person. What will be your legacy? What will you stand for, or fall for? What will your life be for? To PROVE there is no God? To prove there IS ?, BUT, he/she is just you/me? And, to what end?
If, you could successfully get all of your family and perhaps dozens or hundreds or thousands to give up their faith, would that be good for you? And, then what?
And now my response to his questions, you will notice the sarcasm used as I was taught from the best, it's long so get a snack:
Holly Cow! Obviously you didn't read it, I have been on that book for days and am only at Chapter 16.
But I would like to take a stab at the questions presented me; I hope you will read it all!
The Goal for me is to share the truth with others. Religion has inspired more loss of life than any catastrophe of nature.(even more than tobacco and alcohol) Our adherence to it's fallacies are the single cause of separation of one from another.
My goals however are based on factual evidence and truths.
I don't claim that my journey of knowledge is over, nor may it ever be.
I do choose to share as I go, just as you do and have always done.
Example: You with beginning newly formed beliefs in a new religion chose to enforce these beliefs on others. Lets take just one for the example: Keep the Sabbath Holy. You chose to keep this commandment as taught you with no questions asked. As you know the 10 commandments are from the Old Testaments, which also state twice that if your son, daughter, wife or friend does not adhere to this, he must be killed. Yet thankfully because you were new in the Mormon church you chose not to kill us when we accidentally had some fun outdoors on a Sunday. Thereby breaking one of the rules of God. See Moses wrote the "kill your family" one also.
note: One of The Ten Commandments thankfully didn't include plagiarism as they would not have existed:
Dionysus (son of Zues) Received commandments on 2 stone tablets
Zoroaster (Persian Prophet) Received the Laws of God on stone tablets....and.....on top of a high mountain
Minos (King of Crete) Received commandments on 2 stone tablets and on a high mountain
No Rules of Life, Freedom from Consciousness??? Are you kidding me: So because of the Bible and Gods laws that we have cherry picked from, you think that this is why we have rules of Life, Moral values? Wonder why God didn't make the Bible 4000 years earlier for the millions that existed without these laws and values. It seems the animal kingdom follows rules of life and moral values. (moral covers more than sex alone) I wonder who told the animals. This is inherent in us, not because we have a bible that we have chosen a few scriptures as golden nuggets all the while refusing to except the majority of the text which would certainly condemn us to a life of Slavery, Polygamy, Death of all those non-believers and rule-breakers. ***from the New Testament Yes the New Testaments condone this!!! In fact: Christ says that none of the old laws of the prophets shall be broken until the day of his 2nd coming. And you would not believe the grotesque going ons included in its dark pages.
If you study the bible, and still believe that it is a work of God then you MUST create literally hundreds of rationalizations and excuses for the contradictory texts. I have written over 246 so far, I can send these to you if you like. This is not opinion, it is fact!!!
You say that the beliefs or truths will become self evident to others, so why share? I guess because I was taught that way, see my dad encouraged all of his children to go on missions for a religion, knowing that there is no way an 18 year old could possibly have studied enough to carry on a knowledgeable conversation in attempts to convert. (key word: Convert) So you encouraged us to convert others from what? Obviously they had belief systems already. But you felt it necessary to lead your children to go and change these people. You did this all on the fact that you felt your gift of Mormonism was better than what those others had, even though there is not one single shred of evidence to its truth. So I too learned to tear down one's belief system. Heck, out of all the religions on this planet, the LDS church is second to none in proselyting. What is the use if as you say it should sell it's self?
Awesome statistic about religions affects on humanity: 2007 US Census 87% of Americans are Christians, However atheists make up less than 1/4th of 1% of prison population. While at the same time, Christians account for more than 70%. I know some aren't true Christians, but as a Christian Nation, we have rank with the worst of the worst, you see the muslim nations of our world, we are only second to them in crime. Yet at the same time, 3 Nations whom stats say their atheistic populations are greater than 80% have the lowest crime rates, lowest teen pregnancy, lowest abortion rates, lowest drug use....WORLDWIDE!!! (PER CAPITA) ***PEW Research (arguably the most unbiased research group in the world)
Their citizens are getting ethics, morals and principals from somewhere......hmmmm?
In regards to your questions on tobacco and alcohol and what its done for me and mine? All I can say is ?????? I had chicken last Thursday, so I am not sure how it relates to the subject of your text either. We both know I smoke and drink. These are health concerns and have zero to do with the subject at hand. I think I am very well versed on your feelings towards either of these so I surely don't get the correlation.
There is a drug used by 100's of thousands of africans in the sub-sahara. This drug is part of a necessary religious exercise. Just like sacrament. Let's say you become the proud foster parent of a 16 year old from one of these tribes. After he learns english and can communicate well you decide to teach him how bad this drug is for his body. Luckily, you have facts on your side, you would go to one of the writings and teachings of some atheist scientist and prove this to him if need be. You would attempt to convince him that to reach God, he does not need the drug and that the drug was a horrible substance to consume.
...i'm sure you get the point.
So to me, you are the one taking a harmful drug. A drug of deceit and lies. A drug so harmful that it calluses you to questioning, rational thinking and learning. The bible is full of the horrible atrocities, incest, adultery, murder, unicorns (4 times), slavery, abuses to the highest degree. Yet you rationalize the use of it. Had this been a book of any other name you would have burnt it and thrown it out of the house.
But it has so much good!?! Ok, but my dad always taught me that no matter how many good articles are in the Penthouse magazine, that it wasn't enough to read it nor have it in our home. Or maybe you remember the movie that I told you I watched with Margaret once, I told you how good it's message was and you asked about it's rating. I said R. You restated the previous. All the while you force fed us the gospel.
I can also share with you the Book Of Mormon's atrocities. Heck, I think you would just be convinced if you took the original BOM from 1830 and compared it to the one you read today. Even its authors then made some horrible errors that if it were never edited, I believe the church would have never made it. Or at the very least it's members would say, "you got some splain'n to do" Hey, the 1830's edition is still available.
Dad, I love you to the very core of me. I am proud you are my dad. I know that you are probably wondering then why do I feel I need to share this with you, well; You singlehandedly shaped the core beliefs of my past. Yes, someone else may have done some of the teaching, but it was at your command I be there. I am not a half-asser. If there was truth to salvation and truth to the blessings that Christ adamantly proclaimed 14 times. I wanted to know how to have them.
The Bible and it's books are provably false, I can prove that the many of the books are even plagiarized from previous mythological texts. We have 4 Gospels in the bible. Yet two of these 4 never make mention of the virgin birth. (The Catholics hung their hats on this text) Heck there are 3 stories in the New Testament about Christ's birth and where his Mom and Dad took him, only one of these mentions the fleeing to avoid the mass murder of all little boys by King Herod. In fact the other two stories say he went to an entirely different city where he was raised and led an exemplary life.
You might say, "well what does this have to do with my salvation", well if you allow the truth, the facts, you prove to yourself, that there is no savior, nor salvation. Dad, Christ says in Matthew during the sermon on the mount, "there is those among you who will be alive at my return". I am pretty sure there are zero 2000 year olds with us today.
You could say, what does there being no truth to Santa Clause have to do with me getting any presents on Christmas morning. Well a lot.
Greek mythology and actual original writings still carved into the walls of the pyramids describe the EXACT same story of Christ's, virgin birth, donkey ride, wise men, bright star, the whole works, this was about the prophet and God Archameus. Problem is it happened 2200 years before the Christ story.
Of all the men and woman and children whom saw Christ, no one wrote a shred of evidence of it, not the romans, not the greeks, not even the Jews. Paul the biggest author of our new testament, makes no mention of him. He preaches and teaches as if he had never heard of this Christ Jesus. WOW!
We have one guy, who wrote a gospel that coincides exactly in 16 of the 22 key points of all Greek Mythology on a God (the virgin birth, donkey etc). Then we have 3 other gospels copied from this one. Problem is two of these gospels, the authors, whomever they may be were poor translators of the Hebrew text. This is why they have no mention of a virgin birth. I would think this an important feature of Christ. In fact of all the miracles in the Gospels, only one is shared among all 4 gospels. And this one is butchered up. Yet we as Christians, mark it up to "whatever" and march on.
Bottom line, if you and I sat down. We took my notes and the Bible, we started going thru it all, in order to still believe it you would have to:
Say, "We will never understand the mysteries of God"
Say, "This has nothing to do with my salvation" or no can't say that: Because if we show all that is available to us, we will most definitely prove it is false so therefore so would be Christ and Salvation.
Say, "I don't care, I am in my happy place and that is where I will remain, AMEN."
Say, "This proves that man wrote the bible and therefore has some mistakes, but in essence you would be pretending to believe to be smarter than God and to know which ones are his truths and which ones are false.
Say, "Ok, but I still can take the good from it." Absolutely, this would be all I would suggest you take. Problem is by taking these tidbits of goodness from a book that is full of holes, delusions and horrible stuff you are condoning and subjecting yourself and others to trash.
It goes back to the Penthouse concept. I am sure that in their long history they have managed to impart some valuable moral information. Or at least confirmed some. Which the ones in the bible just do the same, confirm the truths that are inherent in us all.
So ultimately, my biggest problem now, is we as Christians, teach are children and our friends that:
The glory is in heaven
The reward is in heaven
That the wicked will be punished for us
That we will get to live with God....later
Problem: We accept the problems of today without much care because it is coming soon, our Savior and heaven. Thus creating a huge problem. According to PEW again, 56% of American Christians believe Christ will return in their lifetime. So we have almost half the country, not concerned enough with the problems with Government because Jesus is coming soon. Coincidentally, Paul screamed this sentiment of Christ's imminent return in over 10 books of our bible. 2100 years ago.
If God yelled down, "Hey, The end is not nigh, you have 764 more years left" I believe Christians and alike would begin to change much of the problems with our world. Instead, we sit back, for the most part and wait.
Take the Muslim's for example, here you have a Nation of People scattered on every continent, hailed as the fastest growing faith of today, reading the revelations of Muhammad, whom received them directly from God, after he was swept up on a magic horse and flown to heaven. Over 50 of these verses declare Jihad on our asses. We are the corrupt, spawns of satan. We are to be converted (there is that word again) or slain. It gets better, these people are 300 years behind us: Morally. They are like we were, reading our Bibles, 300 years ago brutally murdering millions of non-believers in the name of Christ. But somehow we evolved, yet it wasn't even with scripture, it was by ignoring some of the scripture. Holy S?%#!
Now they have access to weapons that were unheard of by us 300 years ago. They have the nearby potential to destroy the world. Just think during the crusades or even when the Christian Hitler was running amuck how much more cleansing we could have done to get rid of those horrid non-believers.
So we as Christians, just keep praying, Billboards on the interstate, "Heavenly Father, we all pray that you send your son to retrieve his chosen few, Amen", This billboard does exist, I saw it with my own eyes. TN, GA and SC.
Yet at the same time we maintain a smiley christian face and accept all those other religions, even muslims because, Jesus says to. Well, Bull s%&$! Call a spade a spade, they are not terrorists, they are faithful, koran pounding muslims, just as we were Bible Pounding Christians 300 years ago.
So now you know, we have increased morally over the years by removing biblical teachings from our life.
Religion is about money and control. That is it.
You are an atheist also: Do you believe in Zues, Cuperneous, Alah, Mohamed, Budha or the thousands of others? Of course not, so to them you are an atheist. shhhhhh....if you don't like direct conflict don't bring it up
We'll you remember this, I love you dad. I don't regret not one minute of my life with you. I know that I will never be the father you were and still are. I hold many of your qualities as a father, friend and husband as ones that I would like to achieve.
I must continue to try and convert others, family or otherwise as this will lead to a better life for us all.
I wonder who the first person was that stopped and said, hey, we can't kill our daughters if they are not virgins at the time of their marriages. But someone did, yet it was way after Christ came and went. That someone, decided, that at least that one biblical nugget had to go, even if God demanded it and commanded Moses to write it down. Or the person whom stopped the killings of Sabbath Holy day breakers, or the non-believers, that's new testament. Either way I am happy that someone did. Morally we have evolved without the Bible.
So that's the end of that, I will post his reply to this once I receive one.
