Understanding Religion's Relationship To Human Social Systems

  Responding to a comment under the above-linked video. The comment was: "Frank Turek complains a lot about paying people to give their opinion for someone who makes a living giving people his opinions." --- My reply to that comment is:  Great point. Although, ... Frank is trying to market his opinions as "facts" given to him by the Creator Of The Universe. In part, it's meant to appeal to black and white thinkers and anxious people who seek the comforts of "certainty" and "clarity" provided by simple absolutes; backed by the "perfect" and "unquestionable" authority of: the only "Being" who can really "know" anything. Effectively, that also makes it wrong to question Frank. Because when we hear him speak, we are hearing "God" speak. Although, Frank didn't invent that game. He got it from other Christian pastors, priests, and apologists. Going back even further, they got it from the ra...

 I like starting from Randal's releases, because he's one of the closest-to-reasonable and closest-to-decent apologists out there. Here is a short list of things Randal cannot un-fact with apologetic SPIN.  The ONLY way to clear "God" of SOME responsibility for the Bible's evil bullshit, is to denounce the Bible as: not from God and not accurately even ABOUT God. There's no other way. Although, if you want to clear him of ALL responsibility for the evils promoted in Bibles, you'd need to say he's: * too WEAK to prevent people saying and doing bad things, AND * too inept to make a better universe. Alternatively, you could just say he doesn't exist as a real person. That would certainly be the cleanest and most effective defense available. -- -- To make sure we're on the same page about this, first, ... "The Bible", in this context, is: A formalized collection of religious texts, divided into 66 parts that people...

Nothing in any part of the Hebrew Bible is about Jesus. Isaiah 9:6, for example, is either about king David or a male descendant of his physical lineage. History presents an  incomplete picture of what's being written about.  In fact, this is always the case with both Hebrew and Christian religious texts. However, the academic consensus about the entire book of Isaiah is that:  It was written during or soon-after when David was king.  Chapter 9 verse 6 is either about David or one of his male heirs.  It would be like me, today, writing about Michael Jackson; as someone will be called the king of pop. Or writing about how Trump will be called divine by his cult.     It's not a prophecy. NOR is about anyone showing up someday to clear humanity's sin-debts.  In fact, per the Hebrew religion,  humanity did not HAVE a sin-debt.   The Hebrews sometimes sinned (made their gods mad).  Whenever that happened, they gained a sin-debt (a...

[First Draft. And also probably the last draft.  I don't really care about the typos.  Chances are, nobody's gonna read this anyway. It's just a 'thing' I felt like writing today. ]  Dear Randal, ... [My inner dialogue: "Dear"? Really? Isn't that a bit overly personal, and bordering on intimate?" "Is this where I should say #NoHomo?" "Lol, nah. But it is kinda cringe." "Kinda. But "Attention" sounded like I'm setting the stage for condescension. Whereas, "hey" sounds like I just saw a friend in a parking lot and I'm wanting to catch up." "Ok. But you could just skip that part entirely." "True. But I want the reader to understand from the start that the narrative perspective I'm writing from is "to" someone.", and I wanted to start off as non-threatening as possible". "Fair point. But you could set the stage for that, here, by ju...

[First draft]    Someone going by the name " Drip Lord Mezaya "  wrote:  Religion is not Good for mankind. It creates division rather than love and unity. I hate it In reply, someone named Jayarathne Abeydeera posted this comment: In the Bible, Jesus says, "Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other!" in Luke 12:51-53. Jesus also says, "I have come to 'set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law'" in Matthew 10:34. Jesus' statement may seem shocking because it contradicts other promises that he would bring peace.   However , Jesus is challenging his listeners to repent and convert by denouncing injustice and wrongdoing." Later, in that same post/comment,  Jayarathne adds:  " In choosing to see life differently—to embrace our true Oneness with God instead of accepting old beliefs of separation, guilt,(and) ...