Read Your Bible Kids

Religion is a powerful force... for anything you want. Give me any bible verse to support a claim and I will give you 2 bible verses that support the opposite claim.

Faith in Man

What evidence is there for the divinity of any holy book or the truth of any religion? Let us remember that our faith is always in man first before it can be in the object of his stories. So if you say, "I have faith in Jesus," you must first say, "I have faith in the stories of man," because that is how we learn of Jesus. Any and all stories of a spiritual world comes from man. Every religion was started by man. Plenty of great men in history were claimed to be fathered by gods. Prophets are men. Holy books are written and edited by man. If you have no faith in the unsubstantiated stories of man, then suddenly there is no religion.

Why Would Man Lie About Religion?

It is possible man never lied, but truly believes all the things he says. I know I did when I was blindly religious. But how/why did it begin? Consider primitive man looking in awe at the billions of stars in the night sky, rejoicing in the warmth of the sun as it magically rises yet again, and cowering from the trauma of storms, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. How does primitive man explain all this before science has learned the truth? Gods. And from there it grew.

More Bible Study!

I encourage you to continue studying this imperfect bible and you will soon find all its many contradictions, its mythological things like talking snakes, talking donkeys, unicorns, satyrs (men with goat legs), dragons (dinosaurs?), 7 headed dragons, 7 headed leopards, leviathans (dinosaurs?), giants (angel/human hybrids), animals covered with eyes, behemoths (with a 'tail like a cedar', dinosaurs?), cockatrices (serpent/cock hybrids, dinosaurs?), sorcerers, witches, fortune tellers, mediums, and magicians all with real power (not like the fake ones we have today), an impossible global flood, unfulfilled prophecies, unfulfilled/broken promises by God, a schizophrenic insane jealous humble hateful loving god, and testable new testament claims (ie. ask Jesus for anything and you get it, and drinking poison wont harm believers). I recommend http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/by_name.html and http://thebricktestament.com (the largest illustrated bible in the world).

"Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course, but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is therefore at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie." - Thomas Paine

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Christianity: The Evidence people give For and Against it.

The table is below.

Please leave a comment to let me know if I’ve left something out.

Keep seeking the truth.

Evidence FOR Christianity	Evidence AGAINST Christianity
it feels real	every other religion also feels real. books, movies, and dreams also feel real. your mind makes it real, but that doesn’t make it objective reality.
if feels good	it does feel good, and it makes you feel special, but so does every other religion. feeling good doesn’t make it real. we all want to feel like we are infinitely important and infinitely loved.
There really was a charismatic guy named Jesus	there is no evidence Jesus was anything more than a man who was killed for Jewish heresy.
smart people believe it	smart people reject it
lots of people believe it	lots of people reject it
it promotes charity/love/good/tolerance	it promotes killing/hate/evil/intolerance
the bible is perfect	the bible is not perfect and has many internal contradictions. it also contains absurd mythological fairytale like things
answered prayers	god only "answers" prayers that already have a statistical chance of happening.  answered prayers can easily be explained away as coincidence.
miracles (incorruptible saints, stigmata, speaking in tongues, healing by laying on hands, drinking poison without harm, driving out demons)	impossible things remain impossible. the laws of nature and the physical universe do not change. they do not make exceptions. claimed miracles have not been given the scientific scrutiny they need to be understood.
	God breaks his promises/lies to his people in the the old testament
	Jesus makes clear claims in the new testament that are testable and false.
	looks like every other religion including mythological ones (ie. no proof, requires faith)
	* EVOLUTION * - human male nipples, tailbone, goosebumps, wisdom teeth, appendix. - Wings on flightless birds - hind leg bones in whales - the Astyanax Mexicanus fish live in total darkness in caves and are born blind. the same species is also found near the surface where there is light and they are born with fully functioning eyes. - Dandelions have sex organs (stamen, pistil) but dont use them to reproduce. instead it clones itself. - Whiptail Lizards are all female and grow clones from their eggs, but sometimes a lizard will act like a male and try to mate with another female.

Beliefs

"You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should be malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant." - Dogma (1999)

What are your religious beliefs? Do you believe some people are born gay? Do you believe conspiracy theories? 9/11? Did we land on the moon? When does life begin? Is there life after death? Is there a personal God who answers prayers? Does everything happen for a reason? Do you believe in childish things? Santa Clause, the easter bunny, unicorns, fairy tales?

I ask these questions not to offend you, but to get you to think about all your beliefs... now lets attack religion:

"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God." -Thomas Edison

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectively on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." - Albert Einstein

"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it." - Benjamin Franklin

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythologies." - Thomas Jefferson

A person's belief is what's real to them. If we believe what isn't true, then we have deceived ourselves. And this deception feels real because we believe it. Its circular. This is how religion works. Why believe anything we cannot prove? Instead, have an idea. You can change an idea.

Sex, Friendship, Love, Like, and Lust Demystified

Today a friend of mine asked my views on relationships. Without thinking, I regurgitated an old response I'd been using for years, "Men and women can never be 'just friends'."  Then with a quick glance at my life we found that I currently have several female friends!  I am my own proof that men and women CAN be friends.  So it's time to reorganize my thoughts...

Side Note:
While struggling to accurately write the info below, I realized that the English language is limiting me.  Proper words just don't exist for some things.  It is also confusing.  The word "boyfriend" or "girlfriend" suggests that all other friends are not of that gender.  "This is my girlfriend," sounds like, "I have only guy friends, except for this one girl friend."  And "girlfriend" and "girl friend" mean different things.  It's too confusing.  Stupid language needs better words.

First, Lets Define Some Terms

• Like - a feeling of enjoyment, approval, admiration, or esteem
• Lust - a feeling of sexual attraction (ie. wanting sex)
• Friend - a person you like, and who also likes you
• Lustbuddy - a person you lust, and who also lusts you (ie. boyfriend/girlfriend)
• Flirt - playful sexually suggestive dialog

Observations

1. people like some people
2. people lust some people
3. like and lust are not like light switches (on/off). they are scales. like is balanced with dislike, and lust with disgust or repulsion. they each vary in intensity.
4. people flirt with some people
5. flirting increases lust or like
6. touching also increases lust or like

The Like/Lust Chart

If person A	and person B	then
likes	likes	Friends
likes	-	-
lusts	lusts	Lustbuddies
lusts	-	-
likes	lusts	Much frustration? Probably unhealthy.
likes and lusts	-	-
likes and lusts	likes	Friends (unless affected by lust). Probably unhealthy/unstable.
likes and lusts	lusts	Lustbuddies (unless affected by like). Probably unhealthy/unstable.
likes and lusts	likes and lusts	Friends and Lustbuddies

Love

What's love? Where does love come into all of this? I didn't define it it my list of terms because love is complicated enough to deserve its own section and again I am limited by the lack of proper English words.

• Love - is charity. it is giving and good, selfless and unrequited.

Love can be broken down into 2 components (emotional and physical):

• Emotional Love - a feeling of wanting to Love. (ie. "I want to feed those poor starving African children" or "She is so beautiful and amazing, I want to give her the world"). There is also a component of brain/body chemistry here that makes us feel good when we love and when we are loved. It can take our breath away, quicken our pulse, make us happy, and make us cry.  But emotions are temporary.  They always are.  They fade. 
  
  A 2nd definition of Emotional Love - intense like. This emotion is balanced by hate, or intense dislike. I don't like this usage of the word love because it muddies it's other definition. Basically, when you share proper giving love with someone, you are going to like them more intensely and that's why love is often used to describe intense like.
  
  So the phrase "I love you" can mean either "I intensely like you" or "I want to selflessly give to you". Likewise, when you are "in love" you are either "in intense like" or "in a state of selfless giving".
  
• Physical Love (Love as an action) - this is how we express love, through acts of charity/giving. This is always a choice whether you feel the emotional love or not.  Expressing love to family and friends is the same. Expressing love to a lover is also the same except that it has an additional sexual component. Sexual love is the giving (and not necessarily receiving) of sexual pleasure.

Observation #7. Love exists separate from like and lust. Each has their own scale.

Conclusion

What have we learned? Men and women can be friends. More than that, any person can have any degree of love, like, and lust for another person.  Relationships are formed when we find another person who's love/like/lust for us matches or partially matches our love/like/lust for them.  We then make decisions on how we want the relationship to proceed based on logic, emotions, social norms, alcohol, etc.  Maybe it's a lust filled one night stand, or a like filled friendship.  Maybe we limit ourselves to 1 active lustbuddy at a time, and demand everyone else be 'just friends'.  Whatever our reasons for defining our relationships, we still tend to surround ourselves with people we like.

Observation #8. Love is a gift. It cannot be earned.
Observation #9. Like and lust can be earned.

Surround yourself with people you like, flirt often, and love and lust will work themselves out.