Bits of Bull, Bureacracy & Blasphemy

Today’s post is a trio of items that caught my attention today.

BULL
I’ll begin with an amusing bit of bull from Liberty Council, an affiliate of Liberty University. This little bit of lunacy is a program entitled, Adopt A Liberal. Now that the allegedly godless, or, at the very least, misguided, liberals have control of the American government, the need for intercessory prayer for our leaders is deemed to be urgent.

Adopt A Liberal has responded to this need by providing, on its home page a list of prominent American political leaders, accompanied by photos of the guilty parties, for whom godly conservatives are urged to pray. The council promises to add more liberals to the list every week. As I scanned the selections compiled thus far, all I can say is that liberalism – like beauty – is in the eye of the beholder.

BUREAUCRACY
The next bit I’ll share is an incident that demonstrates the beauty of bureaucracy. Fall is the time of year when employees in my company have opportunities to enroll in the company’s benefit plans for the following year. Since benefits enrollment is a task on which the payroll clerk and I work together closely, I knew she’d be morbidly interested in a discovery I made today. The following dialog took place in her office:

Chaplain: Do you remember that I told you the company decided to combine the forms for Plan A and Plan A Plus One onto one form this year? It sounded like a good idea, right?
Clerk: (looks at me with a deer-in-the-headlights expression)…Yeah…
Chaplain: The new form is a goddamn six pages long.
Clerk: You’re kidding!
Chaplain: Here, take a look. The old forms were one page apiece.
Clerk: (looking at form and frowning) Oh, shit!
Chaplain: I think I could live without this company’s idea of simplification.

BLASPHEMY
Most of you probably know by now that today is Blasphemy Day. Notwithstanding its provocative name, the purpose of Blasphemy Day is one I endorse wholeheartedly (emphases added):

Blasphemy Day takes place September 30th to commemorate the publishing of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons. The purpose of Blasphemy Day is not to promote hate or violence; it is to support free speech, support the right to criticize and satirize religion, and to oppose any resolutions or laws, binding or otherwise, that discourage or inhibit free speech of any kind. While many perceive blasphemy as insulting and offensive, this event is not about getting enjoyment out of ridiculing and insulting others; rather, it was created as a reaction against those who would seek to take away the right to satirize and criticize a particular set of beliefs given a privileged status over other beliefs. Criticism and dissent towards opposing views is the only way in which any nation with any modicum of freedom can exist. Without this essential liberty, those in power are those best able to manipulate others will suppress and silence dissent by labeling it “defamation” or “blasphemy” or whatever other bogey words they can use to stifle opposition by turning popular sentiment against it. Please, do not let them do this.

While some religious believers may object to Blasphemy Day, I want to note that, in addition to supporting my right to criticize religious beliefs, Blasphemy Day supports religious believers’ rights to religious freedom and expression. After all, one person’s religion is another one’s blasphemy.

And on that note, I wish all of you a joyful and prosperous Blasphemy Day.

– the chaplain

 

Humanist Symposium 43 Is Up

If you’re interested in reading some humanist blog posts, head over to Frank DN’s blog and catch the latest issue of the Humanist Symposium. One of my posts, Yale University Press Caves In, is included in this week’s offerings.

– the chaplain

 

Saturday Smile

Inspired by Teleprompter:

– the chaplain

 

Salvation: Simply a State of Mind

Some of you may recall that a Christian fellow named Robert Deidrick visited the chapel a few weeks ago. In addition to leaving several comments on a post entitled, Bullshit About Death and Heaven, Robert struck up a conversation with me on my About Me page. The following excerpt is from one of his comments:

Do you think that you may have never been a believer in Christ and were just deceived? Some would say that you never had a true faith anyway. Or you may have and you backslid.

My response to Robert was the typical former believer’s response, “yes, I believed just as devoutly as you and other Christians believe….” Looking back now, I think my answer, while not wrong, was incomplete. In addition to being incomplete, it attacked the question from the wrong angle. I want to address both of those weaknesses in this post.

First, I will reiterate that I once was a true believer in the Christian God. That is no longer the case. I no longer believe in Bible-God, and I no longer believe that Jesus, if he existed, was a deity, or the son of a deity. I think the Jesus-legend was based on someone real, but many of the attributes and feats ascribed to him are legendary rather than factual. Moreover, I don’t believe that any of the other deities that humans have described – Allah, Krishna, Mithra, Horus, Thor, etc. – exist or ever have existed. While I can’t rule out the possibility that some entity that people would consider godlike exists, but is currently unknown to us, or possibly unknowable by us, I don’t believe there actually is such a being.

Next, I want to address the issue of deception. When Christians ask people like me if we were deceived, what they often mean is, “Were you deceived by Satan?” In the interests of thoroughness and clarity, I’ll state that I do not believe in Satan. Why would I? The Satan-myth is part of the Christian God-myth package. If I reject the God component, it follows that I also would reject the Satan component. So, the answer to Bob’s question is, no, I was not deceived by Satan. Nevertheless, I certainly was deceived.

I was deceived by believers.

The people who taught me to believe in God, Jesus, Satan, the Bible, etc., are the ones who deceived me. They didn’t do it out of malice. Their intentions were pure – they thought they were doing me a favor by teaching me that the myths in which they believed were real. Nevertheless, they were wrong and I was deceived.

And now, I come to the main point of this post. Christians who say that I never was saved are right – I never was saved. But, they’re right for the wrong reason. They think I never was saved because Satan deceived me, or because God didn’t elect me, or because I didn’t believe the right stuff, or because I didn’t believe in the right way, or because I backslid into a life of degenerate sinfulness and sloth. All of those suppositions are wrong. What Christians don’t realize is this: I never was saved because the state of salvation doesn’t exist; it’s nothing more than a figment of believers’ imaginations. Since Bible-God doesn’t exist, and since Jesus’ death on the cross (assuming that part of the myth is factual) did not reconcile humankind with a non-existent deity, there is no such thing as salvation through atonement. Therefore, Christians are not saved from sin either. They believe they are, but they’re not. Their state of salvation is no more real than mine was – all of it is in their heads.

The good news is that Christians are no more sinful than I am, either. They haven’t offended Bible-God, they don’t deserve eternal punishment and they don’t need to be saved from the consequences of their so-called sins against a non-existent deity. The only sins that people commit are the wrongs we do to each other and other living beings. Those sins often require recompense or retribution, but they never require eternal damnation and torment. Salvation and sin (with regard to deities) are two sides of a coin. If one is false, so is the other. Humankind is neither inherently sinful nor in need of salvation from sin; both conditions – sinfulness and salvation – are fictitious rather than real states of being.

Given all of the above, I’ve decided that when Christians question whether I was ever saved, I won’t answer by saying, “I was just as saved as you are.” It’s a true answer, but they won’t grok why it’s true. Instead, I will offer a more forthright answer; I’ll say, “No, I never was saved. And, neither are you.”

– the chaplain

 

Renovations

I want to update you on some recent additions to the chapel.

1. I’ve added a Reading Room page. You can get there by clicking on the Reading Room tab just beneath my banner. This is a partial list of books I’ve read in the past couple of years that may be of interest to you. If you have recommendations, add them in the comments section of that page. The page will be updated frequently.

2. I’ve added a Quote to Note in my sidebar. The featured quote will change once a week.

3. I’ve added a WordPress Smiley link in the sidebar. If you click on the graphic, you’ll get to a WordPress page that provides html coding for common emoticons. This is a handy tool for comment writers. (H/T to Mark at Proud Atheists for alerting me to this feature.)

– the chaplain