Call for Thought and Discussion ...
(Top Posts - Distance From Belief
in christianity - 032901)

... at your next Sunday School meeting or Catechism
or whatever you call your assembly disposed to reli-
gious indoctrination via that one-way street to religious
faith ...

... in the best interests of Freedom, Liberty, Verity,
and the future of humankind ...

... consider this "Call for Thought and Discussion" as
a means of merit to either validate or reconsider your
devotion to religious faith ...

... boldly go where few church members have gone
before and, setting aside the traditional conformity in
which parishioners are dictated to as if they're sponges
whose primary purpose in being at church is to soak
up the "brainwashing potion of religious faith", seek
to challenge your church leaders and yourself by critic-
ally addressing topics with an open mind, free from the
"religious faith / god no matter what" perspective pro-
moted by most church doctrine and leaders.

"Top 10 Discussion Topics" for open minded consid-
eration of the flaws inherent in religious presumptions,
faith, and blindly following / submitting to ancient
dogma ...

1) Discuss the origins of religion (their human origins
and the evidence which points to myth and supersti-
tion): http://prohuman.net/history

2) Discuss the abuse by / of religions (their use as
a fomenter of hate and violence; their use as a tool
for political power).

3) Discuss the origins of Christianity (the book burn-
ings, the conspiracy between a single Christian sect,
one of many, and the Roman emperor, close to 300
years after the supposed presence of Jesus on the
planet).

4) Discuss how non-European-impacted cultures
had their own religious hang-ups, deity systems,
and morality totally without the bible stuff and relate
how arguments for a bible as a requirement for mor-
ality are absurd based on history, logic, and reason.
Relate how some of the worst and most immoral
crimes in history were based on the hatred encour-
aged by the bible.

5) Discuss what the writers of the bible knew and did
not know when they wrote their pieces of the bible.

Things the writers of the bible did not know (but should
have known if you buy into the deity talking to 40 or so
men theory): galaxies, stars=suns, super novas, atoms,
molecules, cells, bacteria, dinosaurs, plate tectonics,
comets, asteroids, age of the universe, size of the uni-
verse, evolution of humankind, massive life extinction
events, vast distance of the stars and galaxies from
earth, equality of all humanity, equality of males and
females, immorality of harming children, immorality of
genocide, immorality of casting humans into a lake of
fire, immorality of cancer and disease, the complex
and symbiotic nature of all life on earth, the immorality
and danger of harming the planet, the despicable and
reprehensible damage which can be caused by humans
misusing and abusing religions, etc.

6) Speaking of that last concept, discuss the bible verse
which states "Thou shall not use the bible as a basis for
murdering and harming people". Sorry, there is no such
verse. Oh, there's the commandment not to kill juxta-
posed against all the edicts to kill, like "thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live" because the deity says so. Pitiful.

7) Discuss how a mixture of genocide, murder, women-
hating, lies, children-hating, burning in a lake of fire, and
love makes for an insane basis on which to live out your
life.

8) Discuss the willingness of science to doubt itself
and open itself up to examination and constant change
whereas religions are closed boxes of aged myths.
Relate the merits of search for truth as opposed to the
flaws of accepting an ancient amalgamation of 40 or so
writers of myth, anti-humanism, and love.

9) Discuss the irresponsibility inherent in accepting an
ancient and ignorant view of life is "the truth" just be-
cause some seduce you to (via the good parts of it,
that is) or just because an authority figure says you
must believe it to have eternal life (no proof or evi-
dence required).

Relate how any "belief in silent deity" system suffers
from this fatal flaw - "myths / religious faith / close-minded
acceptance of same" required for eternal life (no proof
or evidence required or, for the "religious faith as justi-
fication for myth" folks, desired).

10) Discuss how the core of almost every religion relies
on conformity to ancient close-minded doctrine in order
to perpetuate itself.

Relate how the primary concepts that keep religions going
are

o brainwashing (of children),

o fear (of death),

o basic human instinct (to conform to the wishes of the
tribe in order to perpetuate the tribe),

o obliviousness to the human origins of religions,

o the total absence of deity-evidence in the evolution of
humankind, life, the earth, the solar system, the Milky Way
galaxy, the countless stars / planets / galaxies in our par-
ticular universe, pulsars, quasars, super nova explosions,
gamma ray bursts, black holes,

and (for a clincher as evidence of a naturalistic deity-free
world)

o massive global life-killing extinction events occurring re-
peatedly over the hundreds of millions of years since life
exploded on our planet (thanks to super volcano eruptions,
devastating asteroid / comet impacts, global climate catas-
trophes, and other naturalistic medium which continually
threaten the survival of the entire human race).

*BONUS* Discuss the dearth of evidence for any man
referred to as Jesus (by the gospels) ever existing and the
bounty of evidence that the gospel stories were based on
a wealth of pre-existing religions and myths combined with
the secular supernaturalistic views prevalent amongst cross-
fertilized cultures of that day and age:

The Jesus Doubt File (022801)
http://prohuman.net/disbelief/jesus_doubt_file.htm
"For consideration of the likelihood that Jesus
was a mythical creation -or- an overly ambitious
series of creative extrapolations pertaining to
a human who, if he even existed, had neither
divine nor extraordinary attributes anywhere
near those credited to him in the gospels,
review the following ... "

* BONUS 2 * Discuss what might have been in the
following document ...

"We know of a history of a three-volume history of
the world, now lost, by a Babylonian priest named
Berossus. The first volume dealt with the interval
from the Creation to the Flood, a period he took
to be 432,000 years or about a hundred times longer
than the Old Testament chronology. I wonder what
was in it." -Carl Sagan (Cosmos)

* BONUS 3 * Discuss the relevance of the bible or
any holy document when compared to the evidence
science / naturalism has turned up for a naturalistic
world of vast time / space / naturalistic events, of
which humankind is but an infinitesimally tiny part ...

Origins
http://prohuman.net/origins.htm

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