Christian customs are just as ridiculous. Eating pinches of bread and sipping wine or grape juice are supposed to give the Christian a taste of the flesh and blood of Christ — of course, the bread and wine must first be blessed by the priest or preacher, and by magic incantations and abracadabra, rig-a-ma-role and hocus-pocus transferred into the things it is claimed to be. It is thus impossible for the Christian church to get away from the cannibalistic theory of blood sacrifices. The whole of religion is based on morbidity. Anything promoting happiness is supposed to be wrong.

The Christian religion has attacked sex and sex desire as one of the greatest sins. Catholic priests are supposed to be celibates, and nuns and monks are required to take an oath that they will never have sexual satisfaction.
/

Many eminent authorities claim that no such person as Christ ever lived, any more than such gods as Mars, Isis, Woden, Siva, Zeus, Jupiter, Juno, Baal, and a host of other reputed gods ever lived. Their lives have all been based on myths. Why the Christian believes in one myth rather than another is hard to determine.

They say that there is practically no evidence, of the life, of such a person, in the writings of the at the time, contemporary historians as when he lived, not once.

A man who healed thousands by the touch of his hand, who died and was resurrected, would be so well known that his acts would be recorded at the time. Statues would have been raised to him, inscriptions carved, histories written, at the time. While the trivial events of those times were often recorded, nothing authentic has come to light of the life of Christ written at the time.

 No such records have been uncovered, contemporary with Christ, indicating his existence.


Even Christians doubt the stories of the gods of other religions and cults; and the latter doubt the stories of the Christians, with their tales of ghosts, angels, devils, Satan, cherubim, seraphim, and all the unseen evil and good spirits of the Bible.

/

The Columbia Encyclopedia notes that "when a man becomes conscious of a power above and beyond the human, and recognizes a dependence of himself upon that power, religion has become a factor in his being."

You cannot have god without religion, and religion without god. Those two are one. -You can't believe in god and Not be religious.- A is A. Let's make this very clear.


/

This is from a psycho-therapist PhD, I agree with it. Religious people are crazy.
http://www.geocities.com/bororissa/rel.html

Let us look at the main psychotherapeutic goals. On the basis of twenty years of clinical experien{blah blah—} I would say that the psychotherapist tries to help his patients to be minimally anxious and hostile; and to this end, he tries to help them to acquire the following kind of personality traits:

 Self-interest. The emotionally healthy individual should primarily be true to himself and not masochistically sacrifice himself for others.

 Self-direction. He should assume responsibility for his own life, be able independently to work out his own problems.

 Tolerance. He should fully give other human beings the right to be wrong; and while disliking or abhorring some of their behavior, still not blame them, as persons, for performing this dislikeable behavior. 

Scientific thinking. He should be objective, rational and scientific; and be able to apply the laws of logic and of scientific method not only to external people and events, but to himself and his interpersonal relationships. 

 Commitment. He should be vitally absorbed in something outside of himself, whether it be people, things, or ideas; and should preferably have at least one major creative interest, as well as some outstanding human involvement, which is highly important to him, and around which he structures a good part of his life.

Self-acceptance. He should normally be glad to be alive, and to like himself just because he is alive, because he exists, and because he (as a living being) invariably has some power to enjoy himself, to create happiness and joy. He should not equate his worth or value to himself on his extrinsic achievements, or on what others think of him, but on his personal existence; on his ability to think, feel, and act, and thereby to make some kind of an interesting, absorbed life for himself.

~

Now, does religion—by which again, I mean faith unfounded on fact, or dependence on some supernatural deity—help human beings to achieve these healthy traits and thereby to avoid becoming anxious, depressed, and hostile?

-The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t help at all; and in most respects it seriously sabotages mental health. For religion, first of all, is not self-interest; it is god-interest.

—The religious person must, by virtual definition, be so concerned with whether or not his hypothesized god loves him, and whether he is doing the right thing to continue to keep in this god’s good graces, that he must, at very best, put himself second and must sacrifice some of his most cherished interests to appease this god. If, moreover, he is a member of any organized religion, then he must choose his god’s precepts first, those of this church and it’s clergy second, and his own views and preferences third. 

NO VIEWS OF HIS OWN

In a sense, the religious person must have no real views of his own; and it is presumptuous of him, in fact, to have any. In regard to sex-love affairs, to marriage and family relations, to business, to politics, and to virtually everything else that is important in his life, he must try to discover what his god and his clergy would like him to do; and he must primarily do their bidding.

Masochistic self-sacrifice is an integral part of almost all organized religions: as shown, for example, in the various forms of ritualistic self-deprivation that Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, and other religionists must continually undergo if they are to keep in good with their assumed gods.

Masochism, indeed, stems form an individuals’s deliberately inflicting pain on himself in order that he may guiltlessly permit himself to experience some kind of sexual or other pleasure; and the very essence of most organized religions is the performance of masochistic, guilt-soothing rituals, by which the religious individual gives himself permission to enjoy life.

Religiosity, to a large degree, essentially is masochism; and both are forms of mental sickness.

In regard to self-direction, it can easily be seen from what just been said that the religious person is by necessity dependant and other-directed rather that independent and self-directed. If he is true to his religious beliefs he must first bow down to his god; to the clergy who this god’s church; and third, to all the members of his religious sect, who are eagle-eyedly watching him to see whether he defects an iota from the conduct his god and his church define as proper.

If religion, therefore, is largely masochism, it is even more dependency. For a man to be a true believer and to be strong and independent is impossible; religion and self-sufficiency are contradictory terms.

Tolerance again, is a trait that the firm religionist cannot possibly possess. "I am the Lord thy God and thou shalt have no other gods before me", saith Jehovah. Which means in plain English, that whatever any given god and his clergy believe must be absolutely, positively true; and whatever any other person or group believes must be absolutely, positive false.

Democracy, permissiveness, and the acceptance of human fallibility are quite alien to the real religionist—since he can only believe that the creeds and commands of his particular deity should, ought, and must be obeyed, and that anyone who disobeys the is patently a knave.

Religion, with its definitional absolutes, can never rest with the concept of an individual’s wrong doing or making mistakes, but must inevitably all to this the notion of his sinning and of his deserving to be punished for his sins. For, if it is merely desirable for you to refrain from harming others or committing other misdeeds, as any non-religious code of ethics will inform you that it is, then if you make a mistake and do commit some misdeeds, you are merely a wrong-doer, or one who is doing an undesirable deed and who should try to correct himself and do less wrong in the future. But is it is god-given, absolute law that you shall not, must not do a wrong act, and actually do it, you are then a mean, miserable sinner, a worthless being, and must severely punish yourself (perhaps eternally, in hell) for being a wrongdoer, being a fallible human.

Religion, then, by setting up absolute, god-given standards, must make you self-deprecating and dehumanized when you err; and must lead you to despise and dehumanize others when they act badly. This kind of absolutistic, perfectionistic thinking is the prime creator of the two most corroding of human emotions: anxiety and hostility.

If one of the requisites for emotional health is acceptance of uncertainty, then religion is obviously the unhealthiest state imaginable:

Since its prime reason for being is to enable the religionist to believe a mystical certainty.

Just because life is so uncertain, and because millions of people think that they cannot take its vicissitudes, they invent absolutistic gods, and thereby pretend that there is some final, invariant answer to things. Patently, these people are fooling themselves—and instead of healthfully admitting that they do not need certainty, but can live comfortably in this often disorderly world, they stubbornly protect their neurotic beliefs by insisting that there must be the kind of certainty that they foolishly believe that they need.

This is like a child’s believing that he must have a kindly father in order to survive; and then, when his father is unkindly, or perhaps has died and is nonexistent, he dreams up a father (who may be a neighbor, a movie star, or a pure figment of his imagination) and he insists that this dream-father actually exists.

To believe in any of these religions, therefore, is to be unscientific at least to some extent; and it could be contended that the more religious one is, the less scientific one tends to be. Although a religious person need not be entirely unscientific (as, for that matter, a raving maniac need not be either), it is difficult to see how he could be perfectly scientific.

Not all forms of commitment, in other words, are equally healthy. The grand inquisitors of the medieval catholic church were utterly dedicated to their "holy" work, and Hitler and many of his associates were fanatically committed to their Nazi doctrines. But this hardly proves that they are emotionally human beings.

When religious individuals are happily committed to faith, they often tend to be fanatically and dogmatically committed in an obsessive-compulsive way that itself is hardly desirable. Religious commitment may well be better for a human being than no commitment to anything. But religion, to a large degree, is fanaticism—which, in turn, is an obsessive-compulsive, rigid form of holding to a viewpoint that invariably masks and provides a bulwark for the underlying insecurity of the obsessed individual.

In regard to risk-taking, it should be obvious that the religious person is highly determined not to be adventurous nor to take any of life’s normal risks. He strongly believes in unvalidatable assumptions precisely because he does not want to risk following his own preferences and aims, but wants the guarantee that some higher power will back him.

Enormously fearing failure, and falsely defining his own worth as a person in terms of achievement, he sacrifices time, energy, and material goods and pleasures to the worship of the assumed god, so that he can at least be sure that this god loves and supports him. All religions worthy of the names are distinctly inhibiting—which means, in effect, that the religious person sells his soul, surrenders his own basic urges and pleasures, so that he may feel comfortable with the heavenly helper that he himself has invented. Religion, then is needless inhibition.

Finally, in regard to self-acceptance, it should again be clear that the religious devotee cannot possibly accept himself just because he is alive, because he exists and has, by mere virtue of his aliveness, some power to enjoy himself. Rather, he must make his self-acceptance utterly contingent on the acceptance of his definitional god, the church and clergy who also serve this god, and all other true believers in his religion.

If we want to look at the problems of human disturbance a little differently, we may ask ourselves, "What are the irrational ideas which people believe and through which they drive themselves into severe states of emotional sickness?"
 

Irrational idea No. 1 is the idea that it is a dire necessity for an adult to be loved or approved of by all the significant figures in his life. This idea is bolstered by the religious philosophy that if you cannot get certain people to love or approve of you, you can always fall back on god’s love. The thought, however, that it is quite possible for you to live comfortably in the world whether or not other people accept you is quite foreign to both emotionally disturbed people and religionists.

Irrational idea No.2 is the idea that you must be thoroughly competent, adequate, and achieving in all possible respects, otherwise you are worthless. The religionists say that no, you need not be competent and achieving, and in fact can be thoroughly inadequate—as long as god loves you and you are a member in good standing of the church. But this means, of course, that you must be a competent and achieving religionist—else you are no damned good.

Irrational idea No.3 is the notion that certain people are bad, wicked, and villainous and that they should be severely blamed and punished for their sins. This is the ethical basis, of course, of virtually all true religions. The concepts of quilt, blaming, and sin are, in fact, almost synonymous with that of revealed religion.

Irrational idea No. 4 is the belief that it is horrible, terrible, and catastrophic when things are not going the way you would like them to go. This idea, again, is the very core of religiousity, since the religious person invariably believes that just because he cannot stand being frustrated, and just because he must keep worrying about things turning out badly, he needs a supreme deity to supervise his thoughts and deeds and to protect him from anxiety and frustrations. ( I have seen this personally)

Irrational idea No. 5 is the idea that human unhap
piness is externally caused and that people have little or no ability to control their sorrows or rid themselves of their negative feelings. Once again, this notion is the essence of religion, since real religions invariably teach you that only by trusting in god and relying on praying to him will you be able to control your sorrows of counteract your negative emotions. ( also that god and religion is necessary because they teache what is wrong and right, I must concur, I can see myself, what is right and wrong for me, in my own actions! I am very able.)

If you think about the matter carefully, you will see this close connection between mental illness and religion is inevitable and invariant, since neurosis of psychosis is something of a high-class name for childishness or dependency; and religion, when correctly used, is little more that a synonym for dependency.

In the final analysis, then, religion is neurosis. This is why I remarked, at a symposium on sin and psychotherapy held by the American Psychological Association a few years ago, that from a mental health standpoint Voltaire’s famous dictum should be reversed: for if there were a god, it would be necessary to uninvent him.  ( lol ahahah would we really WANT one? lol that is too funny!!)

Dr Albert Ellis is a scholar who holds a Ph.D degree in psychotherapy. 
 
What a great report, I shortened it quite a bit. I need to send this to my mom, she is a therapist.

/





George Carlin : funny man

GEORGE CARLIN ON RELIGION

In the Bullshit Department, a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman.
'Cause I gotta tell you
 the truth, folks. When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you
 have to stand in awe
of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No
 contest. No contest.
Religion.

Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion
 has actually convinced
 people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything
you do, every minute of
every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not
want you to do. And if you
do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and
burning and torture and
anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and
scream and cry forever and
 ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always
needs money! He's all-powerful,
all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!
 Religion takes in billions
 of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now,
you talk about a good bullshit
story. Holy Shit!

But I want you to know something, this is sincere, I want you to know,
when it comes to believing in God,
 I really tried. I really, really tried. I tried to believe that there is a God,
who created each of us in His own
 image and likeness, loves us very much, and keeps a close eye on things.
 I really tried to believe that,
but I gotta tell you, the longer you live, the more you look around, the more
 you realize, something is
fucked up.

Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth,
 poverty, torture, crime, corruption,
and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good
work. If this is the best God can do,
 I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé
of a Supreme Being. This is the kind
of shit you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. And just between
 you and me, in any decently-
run universe, this guy would've been out on his all-powerful ass a long time
 ago. And by the way, I say
"this guy", because I firmly believe, looking at these results, that if there is a
God, it has to be a man.

No woman could or would ever fuck things up like this. So, if there is a God,
I think most reasonable
 people might agree that he's at least incompetent, and maybe, just maybe,
doesn't give a shit. Doesn't
 give a shit, which I admire in a person, and which would explain a lot of
these bad results.

So rather than be just another mindless religious robot, mindlessly and
aimlessly and blindly believing that
 all of this is in the hands of some spooky incompetent father figure who
doesn't give a shit, I decided to

 look around for something else to worship. Something I could really count on.

And immediately, I thought of the sun. Happened like that. Overnight I became
a sun-worshipper. Well,
not overnight, you can't see the sun at night. But first thing the next morning,
I became a sun-worshipper.
 Several reasons. First of all, I can see the sun, okay? Unlike some other gods
 I could mention, I can actually
see the sun. I'm big on that. If I can see something, I don't know, it kind of helps the credibility along, you know?
 So everyday I can see the sun, as it gives me everything I need; heat, light, food,
 flowers in the park, reflections
 on the lake, an occasional skin cancer, but hey. At least there are no crucifixions,
and we're not setting people
on fire simply because they don't agree with us.

Sun worship is fairly simple. There's no mystery, no miracles, no pageantry, no
one asks for money, there are no
 songs to learn, and we don't have a special building where we all gather once
 a week to compare clothing.
And the best thing about the sun, it never tells me I'm unworthy. Doesn't tell me
I'm a bad person who needs
to be saved. Hasn't said an unkind word. Treats me fine. So, I worship the sun.
But, I don't pray to the sun.
 Know why? I wouldn't presume on our friendship. It's not polite.

I've often thought people treat God rather rudely, don't you? Asking trillions and
 trillions of prayers every day.
 Asking and pleading and begging for favors. Do this, gimme that, I need a
new car, I want a better job. And
 most of this praying takes place on Sunday His day off. It's not nice. And
 it's no way to treat a friend. But
people do pray,
and they pray for a lot of different things, you know, your sister needs an
operation on her crotch, your brother
was arrested for defecating in a mall. But most of all, you'd really like to
fuck that hot little redhead down at the
convenience store. You know, the one with the eyepatch and the clubfoot?
Can you pray for that? I think you'd
 have to. And I say, fine. Pray for anything you want. Pray for anything, but
 what about the Divine Plan?

Remember that? The Divine Plan. Long time ago, God made a Divine Plan.
Gave it a lot of thought, decided
 it was a good plan, put it into practice. And for billions and billions of years,
the Divine Plan has been doing
 just fine. Now, you come along, and pray for something. Well suppose the
thing you want isn't in God's Divine
Plan? What do you want Him to do? Change His plan? Just for you? Doesn't
it seem a little arrogant? It's a
 Divine Plan. What's the use of being God if every run-down shmuck with a
 two-dollar prayerbook can come
along and fuck up Your Plan?

And here's something else, another problem you might have: Suppose your
prayers aren't answered.
 What do you say? "Well, it's God's will." "Thy Will Be Done." Fine, but if it's
God's will, and He's going
 to do what He wants to anyway, why the fuck bother praying in the first place?
 Seems like a big waste
 of time to me! Couldn't you just skip the praying part and go right to His Will?
 It's all very confusing.

So to get around a lot of this, I decided to worship the sun. But, as I said, I
don't pray to the sun. You
know who I pray to? Joe Pesci. Two reasons: First of all, I think he's a good
actor, okay? To me, that
counts. Second, he looks like a guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci
 doesn't fuck around. In fact,
Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things that God was having trouble with.

For years I asked God to do something about my noisy neighbor with the
barking dog, Joe Pesci
straightened that cocksucker out with one visit. It's amazing what you can
accomplish with a simple baseball bat.

So I've been praying to Joe for about a year now. And I noticed something.
I noticed that all the prayers
I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being
 answered at about the same
50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't. Same as God,
 50-50. Same as the four-leaf
clover and the horseshoe, the wishing well and the rabbit's foot, same as the
Mojo Man, same as the
Voodoo Lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles,
it's all the same: 50-50.
So just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself.

And for those of you who look to The Bible for moral lessons and literary
 qualities, I might suggest
a couple of other stories for you. You might want to look at the Three Little
Pigs, that's a good one.
Has a nice happy ending, I'm sure you'll like that. Then there's Little Red
Riding Hood, although it does
 have that X-rated part where the Big Bad Wolf actually eats the grandmother.
Which I didn't care for,
 by the way.

And finally, I've always drawn a great deal of moral comfort from Humpty
Dumpty. The part I like the best?
 "All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty
back together again." That's
because there is no Humpty Dumpty, and there is no God. None, not one,
 no God, never was.
 In fact, I'm gonna put it this way. If there is a God, may he strike this
audience dead! See? Nothing
happened. Nothing happened? Everybody's okay? All right, tell you what,
 I'll raise the stakes a little bit.
 If there is a God, may he strike me dead. See? Nothing happened, oh,
wait, I've got a little cramp in my leg.
And my balls hurt. Plus, I'm blind. I'm blind, oh, now I'm okay again,
must have been Joe Pesci, huh?
 God Bless Joe Pesci. Thank you all very much. Joe Bless You!

CHILD Abuse
 From
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/johnson0.htm

We are told that there is a God with supreme power over everything. He cannot be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. We are supposed to take the Sunday school teachers' word for it.

We are told that the Son of God was born of a woman who had never had sexual intercourse with a man. Children only vaguely understand this.

We are taught that when we die our soul survives. There is no proof. We are expected to accept the statement without proof. Each man who tells us of the survival of the soul in Heaven has a different conception. We do not know where Heaven is. We do not know what a soul is. We may be told of Hell, but it cannot be shown to us.

The things we are told about religion are mythical, impossible of proof, and we are expected to believe them because our parents or the priests or preachers tell us they are true.

As children we have no way of investigating the facts and arriving at the truth. We dare not show doubts, dare not ask for proof, and usually accept what we are told without questioning it. Our parents have accepted what they were told by their parents, and the priests and preachers got their first information from their parents, and later from books written by priests and preachers who got their information from other priests or preachers.

As children we are not taught all sides of all religious questions. In fact, every effort is made by most religions to prevent children from getting any favorable information about any religion other than that of their parents, or of the priest or preacher who has charge of filling their minds with the things he wants them to believe.

Having developed no reasoning faculty we accept the statements made to us. We can do nothing else. The early training becomes a habit. A special portion of the brain is apparently developed and the early impressions of religion are deeply recorded in that part, just as the erroneous belief in Santa Claus is impressed on young minds devoid of the ability to discern the falsity of the fable.

If each child were allowed to wait until of mature age before investigating religions and was then required to study all religions and all opposition to religions, few persons would be believers.

The world is religious because children are given only one side of a many-sided question.

There are thousands of religious beliefs, the leaders of each claiming theirs to be the only true one. The children of each of the followers of these religions are taught that theirs is the only true religion. If you are a Catholic, were you told, "The Methodists have the only true religion?" No, you were taught that there was only one true religion, only one true church, and that was the Catholic Church. So it has been with each child in each religion.



CHILD ABUSE IN THE FORM OF Religious GENITAL MUTILATION
Genital mutilation is unacceptable under any circumstances. To do it to children incapable of understanding but capable of suffering is barbarous and evil. (If everybody else stoned their kids, would your parents have done that to you? Probably.)


Unwarranted religious mutilatation and caused many men and women to be disfigured. This is hush hush and disgusting. One of the commonly cited reasons is religion. Some followers of the three major traditions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - believe that circumcision is a necessary part of their relationship with God.An infant hasn't developed the ability to form its own opinions on religion and its own health. Therefore, it can't offer its consent for this harmful and unnecessary procedure. If the parents truly believe that circumcision is an essential part of the child's spiritual life, then they can teach the child to make that decision for himself once he is old enough to do so. In the meantime, any attempts to circumcise an underage child should be viewed as a form of child abuse and dealt with accordingly.Mutilation is defined as being “Disfigurement or injury by removal or destruction of any conspicuous or essential part of the body” (Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, 26th Edition, 1995)

Mere assertion that ritual circumcision is seen as a religious duty is equally valueless in discharging the burden of proof: it may provide a reason but it does not provide a justification, or in other words it may explain but does not excuse. Price, 1996, page 4



http://mycaseagainstgod.blogspot.com/

1. Please present extraordinary evidence in
 support of Jesus’ bodily resurrection.

2. Please present extraordinary evidence
that, after wandering about for awhile,
Jesus rose bodily into the cosmos.

3. Please present extraordinary evidence
 that Jesus was born via mammalian parthenogenesis. It should be noted that parthenogenesis is not possible in the human species, which makes evidential demands even more pressing>>.

4. Please present extraordinary evidence
that the following biblical characters
attained the following ages:

(4a) Adam, 930 years.
(4b) Noah, 950 years.
(4c) Abraham, 175 years.
(4d) Sarah, 127 years.

5. Please present extraordinary evidence that immaterial, immortal �