This was written in response to the charge on Reasonable Faith.org that in challenging Christian beliefs I am just trying to spoil their fun. I reply that this is a mistaken view of my motives and that I am driven by the dangers of organized religion. What follows is an adapted version of Post 23 on the linked thread.

General Knox, thank you for a very good post. You state your position clearly and answer a few other questions at the same time. I agree that spoiling the fun of others just because I don't agree with them is not a mature thing to do. I think people can do whatever they want to so long as they don't hurt themselves or others.

When it comes to organized religion, it is hard to say whether adults are hurting themselves. But when religion causes people to kill others it clearly hurts others. It also puts themselves directly into harm's way because the people they target are sure to attempt self-defense. Normally, this ends up being war.

I realize that some people disagree that 9/11 was caused by religion. The people who disagree that the terrorist attacks were caused by religion tend to be religious people. Nonreligious people tend to see it as a holy war. I was taking a course with an agnostic in sociology of religion when it happened. The first class was on Sept. 10, 2001.

The professor asked the class if we students thought holy wars still happened. We shrugged. We didn't know. It seemed unlikely. Not in the West. I figured we were far too intelligent and evolved socially. We just didn't do that kind of thing. I did not think we would even go to war if given the opportunity because that just isn't the way we do things these days.

The next day, Sept. 11, 2001, I was at home. We had no TV or radio. Around noon my sister called me from work and asked, "Have you heard what is happening in the States?" We are in Ontario, about an hour and a half from the international border. The question seemed very strange. I had not heard. She then started recounting about the various buildings into which jets had flown. Nobody really knew what had taken place or who was behind all of this. The closest thing I had ever heard like it was stories from WW2. I said, "This sounds almost like war."

The next day was the second class with the agnostic professor in sociology of religion. He reminded us that the first day he had asked whether we thought holy wars still happened. On Sept. 12 he asked, "What do you think now?" There was no question in his mind that religion was behind this. This was before it had been possible for much conversation to take place between scholars about the incident. I'm not sure if the airlines were operating yet when he said that. The Toronto airport had been shut down. No air traffic was seen in our area for a day or two.

There could have been communication via telephone or email, though not everybody had email yet back then, and anyway, there had not been time for much conversation to have taken place. He personally had spent the day worrying whether his wife would get home safely from Toronto, which is also about an hour and a half away by car.

My point is that 9/11 was tabbed as a holy war by agnostic sociology of religion right from the beginning. Religious people might not want to accept this but that does not change the facts. Books have been written on it. RELIGION KILLS.

Christianity kills in more subtle ways. It calls people to war. (I was simply wrong in my belief that Western countries would not go to war. I was also bitterly disappointed because Jesus said to turn the other cheek.) Religion stops scientists from progressing in areas of study that could heal terminal illness. It is true that everybody must die anyway but why must they die of terrible curable illness at a young age?

Conservative Christianity forbids certain kinds of birth control such as abortion. Forbidding abortion in certain situations can lead to the severe abuse of an unwanted child. Whether or not this leads to actual murder, it is extremely hurtful--not only for the present generation but for many subsequent generations because the person who was abused often passes on the tradition of abuse.

Here are some things Christians commonly do on Reasonable Faith.org that I find highly offensive:

1. They tell me what I believe without even asking; they think they know because I am an atheist but there is no such thing as an "atheistic world view," and definitely not the one Norm Geisler and Frank Turek describe in I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, which many Christians quote.
2. They don't believe me and other atheists when we explain that there is no such thing as an atheistic worldview.
3. They accuse us of not being moral but they produce no evidence for it. In this way, they deny us the opportunity to defend ourselves.
4. In those cases that we do defend ourselves they say we are not telling the truth. The "evidence" they provide for their side is beliefs from their religion that have nothing to do with the situation.
5. They say we are lying when we don't believe what they think we should believe.
6. They say I am rude, or call me names, or worse, when I am asking a sincere question.
7. They accuse me of things I have never said, thought, felt, or done when I want real answers to my questions, and cannot accept the pat answers they provide.
8. They accuse me of being worthy of damnation for not accepting their answers, yet their answers do not hang together in light of everything else that is known about life and the universe.
9. They put forward obvious lies about the universe, life in general, and humanity, in order to make their god and religion--and themselves--look good. The offenses committed around this would make another entire list.

Those are a few of the things Christians are constantly doing to me and other nonreligious people. There is hardly a post that passes [on Reasonable Faith.org Forums] in which no offense is committed. All I want is for Christians to face up to the lies they are propagating in the name of god. So far, they will attack me (I think they'd burn me at the stake if it were legal) before they will so much as even look at whatever topic I try to get them to discuss. Honest truth-seekers don't behave like this.

My personal position is that Christians do not deserve to be treated any better than they treat others. Out of self-respect, I think I do not treat them as badly as they treat atheists. In general, I don't think Christians receive anywhere near as much "shit" on these [Reasonable Faith.org] forums as atheists do from them. For more on this, see my Posts 47 and 49 on this thread.

Added for this forum. This might raise the question as to why I remain on those forums.

Answer: I feel a need to raise awareness of the lies these Christians are propagating in the name of holiness. As I see it, via these lies, powerful conservative Christians are a major social threat not only in North America but world wide. Muslims believe the same things regarding evolution as do these Christians. The combined populations of Muslims and Christians is half the human population on Planet Earth. See adherents.com.

The more liberal of both religions may not accept the conservative beliefs but, when conservative religionists are getting science degrees in order to fight evolution theory as they are doing today, the power of fundamentalist religion becomes a monolith to be reckoned with.

General Knox also raises issues about liking/not liking the teachings and works of Jesus, and whether or not he is the "son of God" as Christianity teaches. I am not sure why he puts "son of God" inside quotes but I follow suit since I am responding to his question. Though the original was all in one post, I will post my responses to these issues separately in this post. He also touches on the Old Testament and God as portrayed in it.

I think it is important to post these responses because religionists are often of the mistaken impression that atheists hate God and Jesus and everything related to religion. This is not the core theme of the post, but rather bits and pieces. Thus, I will patch my responses together in what is hopefully an intelligible post.

I love the stories and teachings of Jesus. Whether he was a real person or just a great mythical hero, I love him. I also think God is a human term to embody that which is understood by humans as most noble. Thus, when I see Christians living in such a way as to bring dishonour and shame to the name of God or Jesus, I feel a very strong revulsion. I am not a Christian because, so far, I have been unable to find answers to key questions about how the Plan of Salvation works, nor could I find any evidence whatsoever for God's existence. But I cannot tolerate people doing evil in the name of the most noble and greatest heroes known to humanity. Possibly, in addition to noble concepts, "God" can also be seen as one of the West's "heroes" because he is part of our cultural mythology even if we are not religious.

From a mythological perspective I can see how he would be the "son of God." I think that if God is who and what religion tells us then there should be answers for these questions. After all, God is supposed to be omniscient, which means he knows everything.

For me, "knowing everything" means he knows all logic and all facts and he also knows how to communicate this so that educated intellectuals in the 21st century find that Christian theology makes sense and hangs together, and fits in with the rest of what is known about the universe and life in general. A God who knows everything would have caused his Word (Bible, Qu'ran, etc.) to be written in such a way that the same applied to it.

I don't find Jesus' teachings that hard to follow. He had no conscience against calling liars and hypocrites on their deviant behaviour. The regular rules for life he talks about such as keeping the Ten Commandments (outside of believing in God) are natural human traits that I find quite easy to follow. I don't necessarily keep the Sabbath holy but I take time off for relaxation.

If God and Jesus were proven to be true, that would be great. Then I could fit in with the rest of society once more. I could go to church and participate in the beautiful songs and music with a clear conscience. I could also participate in Christian festivities with a clear conscience and my family would let me eat with them again for religious meals such as family funerals and weddings. As it is, they won't for religious reasons. And I would have to violate my conscience to reconvert.

I'm curious about the 20% of Jesus' doings that you disagree with. At the moment, I can't think of anything he did or said that I really disagree with, but my memory is not perfect.

Old Testament

General Knox says he believes "there is some sort of "God" or "Higher Intelligence" or possibly aliens, though he isn't sure. I respond:

I don't know a thing about aliens and am not interested in learning, I guess. I have not yet seen any evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence but I think each of us has to come to his/her own conclusions and personal convictions on things like this. It seems to be organized religion that hurts people because it is only through organizations that human institutions can accomplish much on the mass social level. I have not yet heard of any deists who hurt society. In fact, deists like Jefferson and the American founding fathers are often quoted as great benefactors of humanity. I realize that in saying this I open a can of worms because Christians want to claim these heroes for their own. Unfortunately, they have little basis for doing so. Hitler, on the other hand, was protected and prayed for by the Vatican till his death, and never renounced his belief in God. He was a Christian though neither Christian nor atheist wants him today.

A few characters, place names, and events recorded in the OT are also recorded elsewhere so they are probably true. However, "big names" like Abraham, Moses, and Kings David and Solomon probably never existed. My OT teacher, a devout Christian, believed that everything before Abraham was myth. She also pointed out that the prophecies in Isaiah on which the Virgin Birth of Christ are based are in fact mistranslations made by the Jewish scholars who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. This is known today as the Septuagint. The Septuagint is the "Scriptures" of the NT. It is what Jesus and the apostles used if they existed. Whatever the case regarding the existence of Jesus and the apostles, the first Christians used the Septuagint as their Scriptures.



I had mixed feeling on this while I was a Christian and can't comment. Well, I wonder sometimes whether some people might take it out of context a bit overmuch. I don't know. I consider it irrelevant.

I'm trying to find the references I found earlier this year on the Pope that sided with Hitler. I am having some trouble finding exactly what I had read. I thought it was in wikipedia but there seems to be nothing in wikipedia on the Vatican and Hitler. I found some other links that I will post.

• Book review on Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany
• Hitler Dupes the Vatican, article on Internet Infidels
• Today in History, provides the date on which the following event took place:

It was on July 20, 1933.

Nothing more is recorded for this entry in Today in History.

The articles in wikipedia on Pius XII and on the Reichskonkordat are what I read earlier this year, and on which I base the statement in my post above.

• Pope Pius XII, wikipedia article, includes story of his controversial relationship with Hitler regarding World War II and the Holocaust.
• Reichskonkordat describes the agreement with Hitler signed by Pope Pius while he was still Cardinal.