The Painful Job Of Thinking

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

~Galbraith 

Quote Of The Day

I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it. ~Edith Sitwell

Quote Of The Day

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. ~ Aristotle

The Wit And Wisdom Of Mark Twain

"Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him! "

~ Mark Twain

Quotes Of The Day

"The rational mind does not choose the unlikely conclusion when a much more likely one is available."--Dave Matson, Three Explanations for Prophecy Fulfillment

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."--Thomas Jefferson, 1823

Thinking For Yourself

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne
"...I had allowed other people to tell me what to believe."--unknown.

"I was raised a Christian but I'm now in my senior year at Princeton and am currently going through the phase where I have to stop believing things because I grew up believing them and start believing them for my own reasons."
--from a book reviewer on Amazon.com.

Fundamentalist Christians say that people must make up their own minds about Jesus Christ and the salvation he allegedly offers, but during this process they don't mean look at all the facts. What they mean is look at all the facts presented in the Bible (and when they say that, they really mean "all" the facts that they want presented and in the way they want presented and don't ask any hard questions--and if you do that you will see that Christianity is the true religion and that their version is it).

When I was growing up and even most of my adult life, I often thought how lucky I was that I was born into a family that believed in the one, true religion. I can't help but wonder how many other Billys and Marys, Abdullahs and Aras grew up thinking the same thing--about other religions. Religious indoctrination and a virtual absence of critical thought are common in almost all religious cultures.

Some of the best teaching that parents can pass on to their children, when the children get to a mature enough age, is to think critically and think for themselves; not push them, even if it's only a nudge, in the direction of what the parents believe; even if the parents believe that it is very important that their children believe what they believe. When parents do not do this and only allow their children to get one side of the story, whatever "faith" the children wind up with is really the parents' faith and not the child's faith. The child has put their faith in their parents (and sometimes some other authority figure(s) the parents approve of) and not in any alleged God that might be taught about in the Bible.

Sadly, many people never get to the Princeton student's phase in the quote above of believing things about Christianity and religion for their own critically-thought-out reasons.

"If You Knew..."

The following is part of an interesting exchange between Zach Dills and a Christian in the comments section of  a post by John W. Loftus entitled, "A Christian Mother: ' May You Rot In Hell' ", dated September 30, 2011, from debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com:

Zach Dills:

If you knew beyond a shadow of doubt that before you conceived your son that he would most certainly go to hell and burn for all of eternity would you still have decided to have him? That's the question because that is what the christian god did. He was willing to sacrifice the majority of humanity to eternal torment so that he could have a few people who would worship him for all time. Does that sound like what a loving parent should do? I would say no.

I have no doubt you are busy but the question that you have been asked multiple times that I am still waiting to hear you answer is: if you knew for certain before your son was born that he would end up in hell to suffer for all eternity would you still decide to have him? Yes or no? That is all I want to know. 

Christian:

"If I knew without a doubt that my son would reject Christ and go to Hell, of course I never would have sought his conception."

Zach Dills:

Thank you for your answer. It was good to hear that and I think it proves that you are more moral than the god you worship. It shows you ultimately put your son's needs before your own. Whereas the opposite seems true of your god. The god you worship knows before he "creates" us where we will go (where he will send us) and that does not stop him from making those of us he plans on sending to hell because at the end of the day that god made humans to worship and glorify him. Ultimately creation was always about him. Unlike you and most human parents he is a parent who places his own desires ahead of his "children's". You quote Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.” Now if this [were] true then the fact that so many people are apparently going to hell seems to show that your god does not take his own parenthood very seriously again focusing on himself more than us. The point is I think most people would give the answer you did and I think that is the right answer and that is an answer that shows how ridiculous the idea is of an all loving god creating and sustaining an eternal place of torment for those who do not have the right beliefs about him.

And, finally, a reply from a commenter, "qit" quoting Dills:
"I find it morally reprehensible that you could willingly conceive a
child knowing that he could suffer forever and believing that this was a
loving action upon the part of a loving god."

For me, pulling this exact card out was what finally brought the whole house down many years ago. 

Zach Dills reply to "qit":
Agreed. That was a big issue leading to my exit of the Christian faith as well. 


And for me as also, this issue was what put Christianity in a coffin, slammed the top down on the coffin and drove most of the nails into it--it made the existence of the omni-Christian God impossible.

Kenneth Hawthorne

An Answer To A Friend

The following is a letter Thomas Paine sent to a friend in response to a letter his friend had sent to him concerning Paine's book The Age of Reason. From, The Online Library of Liberty:

AN ANSWER TO A FRIEND.

Paris,

May 12, 1797.

In your letter of the 20th of March, you give me several quotations from the Bible, which you call the word of God, to shew me that my opinions on religion are wrong, and I could give you as many, from the same book to shew that yours are not right; consequently, then, the Bible decides nothing, because it decides any way, and every way, one chooses to make it.