I am often bemused by the response that woman who wear headscarves as a requirement of their religion give.

Their first response is as one would expect, defensive. I like wearing the Hijab or Burka or other veil. Like most people if you ask someone why they do what they do their first impulse is one of defense.

Oddly the Qur’an does not mention such headgear except in reference Muhammad’s wives being instructed to wear a veil in the presence of the many men that he entertained as a dignitary. The only reference in the Qur’an to woman’s clothing was for women to guard their private parts and throw a scarf over their bosoms in the presence of men*. It wasn’t until generations after that woman were made (yes made) to wear such head gear. Like most thing in religion it is about dominance. Though that is not what I want to say today.

Today I have a statement and one question I would like to propose to such woman.

I understand you would feel uncomfortable not wearing your Hijab. The continual wearing of a piece of clothing is habit forming and the removal would give the person a sense of unease. This is perfectly normal and to be expected in a society where such habits are common place.

What I ask is this. If you were to decide not to wear your Hijab at home or in public, how would others in your family and society view you?

*ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijab

I awoke this morning to the news that over 100 students were murdered in Peshawar. Shot in their classrooms by Taliban Militants.

A reprisal attack for a recent military offensive against the Taliban.

What evil twisted minds can justify an attack on innocent students sitting at their desks.

There is no justification. There are no words that can be uttered there are no mitigations there is no softening of thought towards these evil men.

If you harbour any thought of justification towards this evil. Then you are evil. There is no other way to think of it.

This is on arstechnica. Repeated here because I thought it was worth repeating.

“Source: The bible said the bible was right.”

Isn’t that known as a circular argument? The bible is right because the bible says its right!.

Actually I have read the bible from front to back. I see no where in the bible does it state it is correct or factual, nor even that its the word of god. That’s just what we are told.

So what you are believing in then is the word of man.

Original article:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/10/40000-year-old-indonesian-cave-art-may-be-humanitys-oldest/?comments=1&post=27750147

It was in response to this post

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/10/40000-year-old-indonesian-cave-art-may-be-humanitys-oldest/?comments=1&post=27746199

The major religions follow a similar line. Only the faithful shall enter the Kingdom of God. Whether it be Christianity, Judaism, Islam or many of the other major religions (excluding Buddhism and Hinduism).

But each religion makes exclusions. I mean I am faithful, I am faithful to my wife, I have faith that the sun shall rise tomorrow yada yada. yet I don’t qualify because I don’t follow their brand of faith. I must have faith in not just God but their brand of God!

They all claim to speak the mind of God, So they must be right.

So what’s the logical conclusion to this?

There is almost 7 Billion people in the world now, but they don’t all follow the same religious belief. The top ones can be broken down into a multitude of sometimes mutually exclusive sects.

Not everyone follows the same brand of religion, and according to the adherents only their own secular faith gets the right of entry into heaven. That means of the 7 billion or so people only very few actually have the right to go to heaven.

And that doesn’t include those who have already passed on.

What can this possibly mean?

Lets make some religious based assumptions.

1/ God is all knowing

Ok because of this God knew from the very beginning that he was creating people where the huge majority will end up in hell (at least Catholic Christians believe this).

2/ God is loving

What could the purpose of this be? Why would a supposedly loving God create man knowing at best most will be cast aside or at worst spend eternity in hell.

3/ God gave man free will

What does this even mean? How can you have free will when the outcome is already known?

Lets assume instead of there being one outcome there are innumerable outcomes all based on man exercising his free will.

If we assume there are as many different outcomes as there are people. So if we actually do the math on this a rough approximation is 7Billion factorial. wolphramalpha gives us

Ok given the subject is God we can assume this number is a mere trifling and God can see all of those possible outcomes. In actual fact the number of outcomes tends a lot closer to infinity the above enormous number only relates to each person exercising their will only once in their lifetime. Given that each person exercises their will countless times in a day you can see how this number becomes even daunting for a god.

What have we learnt so far?

• God created man knowing most will die wasting their life or will be punished just for being God’s creation.
• Gods love doesn’t encompass those he considers unworthy. Plenty examples in the bible of God destroying those he dislikes.
• God is truly great with numbers

If we can be so bold as to consider what God’s plans are and I don’t see an issue with this as if you ever ask a Christian or Muslim or whatever about God they are more than willing to tell you what they think gods plans are. So why should we be barred from considering the same question?

So assuming we wont be burned at the stake for doing what religious folk do every day we will attempt to consider what all of the proceeding means?

With so many possible outcomes what can be the ultimate goal?
With so many discarded lives what can be the ultimate goal?

To be honest I can only come up with one plausible answer. We are Gods experiment, God is trying to build the perfect human and each failed life is just one more experimental miss, discarded as the worthless life it was.

Eventually God will find that perfect being.

What then. Will God continue looking for another perfect being or will he be satisfied and turn off all of creation?

Where do YOU fit, Are you that perfect being?

Another supposed proof of gods existence is morality. The claim is somehow that without God there would be no morality.

How Fucking insulting. I mean Really Fuck you, you cunts. Since when has religion meant morality.

Murder, Rape, Genocide done in the name of God, and that’s just in the last few years. Look back into history and tell me morality proves the existence of God. There has been more carnage, violence and lies in the name of God than for any other reason.

Hypocrisy now that may have been created by God, perhaps it is proof of Gods existence. Most practitioners of religion practice hypocrisy all the time. Take for example the false morality of Violence and Sex.  Violence is OK, just look at the western world video culture for proof of that. Its OK for a TV show to depict the gruesome mutilation of a human body, as long as no breast or genitalia is shown. The God fearing majority in America don’t seem to get it (other countries to a lesser extent).

Why is that? Its because the purveyors of religion use Violence and Sex to manipulate and control. If someone doesn’t do as you wish its OK to be violent. its acceptable. If you want to make up a reason to punish someone with violence, you use sex as the crime. Therefore Sex is bad and Violence is good. How fucking sick and twisted and hypocritical is that?

Do you believe forcing your beliefs on another human being is moral? I think it is the most immoral thing of all. Yet most religions consider it their duty to force their version of the truth onto others. Entire countries have been invaded to ‘save’ them. Even if it meant killing them in the process. Today’s terrorism is nothing more than the crusades of old.

Morality and Immorality are part of our nature. Evolution is more a driver of morality (as it is for love) than any external creator. To survive as a species we must develop morality otherwise we would tear each other to pieces. undermine others and therefore they would undermine us. Immorality must be set aside for a society to grow.

One only needs to look at godless faiths to see the folly in the claim that Morality Proves Gods Existence. Many of you might not know that Buddhism explicitly denies the existence of a creator. Surely then that godless lot counting in their hundreds of millions must be the most immoral society on earth (forgetting for a moment, countless creatures ignorant of Gods non existence).

In fact I would say Buddhist are the most moral of all ‘Religions’.

In a world where religion rules and genetics don’t apply. You must ask the question…

Why do your children look like you? where do the traits they display in their looks and their actions come from?

When you talk to someone of a christian religious persuasion and ask them. How do they know god exists? their argument follows a fairly predictable path.

This image outlines how the logic works.

Proof of God

This is known as a circular argument and only proves that the reasoner is delusional.

The cornerstone of all Christian belief is the bible.

Their claim is that the bible was written by God and is the sole source of truth. I am not going to dispute that today. its not my purpose.

No, the purpose of this little post is to question their interpretation of the bible. Being just mere men or woman how do they know that they have interpreted the meaning of the bible correctly.

Of course they have an answer for that. Their answer is always. ‘God told me”. In other words they are saying God spoke to them personally and told them how to interpret the passage they just read out of his book.

I am fine with that … until … They get it wrong!

Getting it wrong

As a topical example lets look at Californian preacher Harold Camping. He was the preacher who recently rose to prominence with his claim that the Rapture was to occur on May 21 2011. He is now advocating Oct 21 2011 as the correct date.

He came to the earlier claim based on his study of the Bible. Now assuming he is like every other christian I have ever met and I have met a lot. Then he believes he was right because God spoke to him or guided him in his study.

So and you can see where I am going with this, Why was he wrong?

Either…

1. God made a mistake.
2. God was not involved at all.
3. God deliberately mislead.

God doesn’t make mistakes

Now of course God cannot make mistakes so we will discount the first possibility, A misleading God? no, which only leaves the second.

Christians are Genuine

If God was not involved did Mr Camping deliberately lie? or did he believe God was guiding him?

Again I draw on my experience of my time with Christians. That is that they are genuine. They genuinely believe in what they say and what is told to them by other members of the church and their elders.

Because they genuinely believe in what they say and what they interpret from the bible, and they genuinely believe that God speaks to them. Then I believe that both Mr Camping believed God guided him and Mr Camping was wrong, God in fact was not involved at all.

If such a devout christian as Mr Camping can be so wrong and still believe God guides his action. Then I must say he is delusional. Can their be any other conclusion?

So where does this leave Christianity as a whole? This is the point of my precis. They too believe God is guiding them, but as I have carefully explained above they can be wrong. Which sort of overwhelmingly points to them all being delusional. Don’t you think?

And the Bible?

So now I am going to break my my own little promise above. Ask any christian HOW they knows the bible is correct, and not just a collection of stories put together over time.

They will answer you. “Because God told them so”. But as I have already pointed out they are delusional. Then where does the bible stand as the basis of all truth?

I’ll let you the dear reader consider that question.

I had an interesting conversation with my sister today.

As some background my family are all very religious (various flavours of Christianity) but I am not.

Anyway we were speaking of our father who has some lets say unusual beliefs, he had told us about these ‘omens’ things that had happened during his life which leads him to believe his latest fantasy. He wants to go to Israel to visit the ‘motherland’ before he dies. That would be cool except he is not a Jew.  he is desperately searching our family tree to find something that says we have a Jewish lineage, we don’t.

Any way that’s an aside my sister said that she was concerned about dad and his belief in the mystical. He definitely doesn’t believe in speaking to the dead (except in prayers) or reading palms or crystals or anything like that. it was just the ‘omens’ that seemed to trigger that comment.

My reply was, yes its a shame the whole family is subject to that. She seemed taken aback and said, Who? I replied we all are, some more than others. to which she replied you can count me out of that, to which I replied “No! I can’t”.

I don’t think she was impressed.

So when is mystical not mystical?

• It’s when you prayer to an unseen unknown figure (presumably in the sky) who supposedly made everything.
• It’s when you believe in the “power of prayer” to cure incurable diseases.
• yada yada yada I am sure you get the idea…

So religious people aren’t mystical? Sorry! Nope you are right there with ‘other’ faith healers, shamans, diviners and palm readers.

I never thought my first religious post would about proving Gods existence. Rather I thought it would be about the opposite.

I had the strangest thought this morning while pondering genetics and evolution. Evolution trials various genetic mutations at random, those that improve the mating opportunities result in the strengthening of the genetic mutation, on the other hand those that make the organism an easier predatory target reduces the population with that gene, thus reducing mating opportunities resulting in a weaker gene.

This is an overly simplified example. For a simple introduction check out this site. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIBMechanismsofchange.shtml

So what was this insight?

I believe many gays are born that way, they are genetically predisposed to being gay. Some make it a life choice, but you must already be inclined that way before you can make it a life choice, so genetics play a role in those decisions too.

If homosexuality is the result of genetic mutation. rather than purely environmental reasons. in other words being born gay…

Then the logical conclusion of that is that Homosexuals prove the existence of God.

Gays do not and cannot mate and produce gay offspring. Therefore what strengthens the gay attributes? Surely mating would result in the weakening of the genes involved and therefore homosexuality would be a ‘failed’ genetic variation.

Therefore this aspect of of humanity cannot be caused by evolution and must be the result of “intelligent design” i.e. God created homosexuals.

I am am sorry to all those Christians and other religions that believe homosexuality is against gods law. How can it be if God made them that way?

Of course the flip side is that God had nothing to do with anything and that the “Gay” Gene is so predominant because its easy for the mutation that suppresses a man’s manliness to occur rather than die out.

In case you are curious…
http://www.livescience.com/health/060224_gay_genes.html