Sunday Sermon: An Atheist in the Courtroom

I've been encountering the same logically flawed objection to atheism a lot lately, and I feel the need to at least attempt to put this objection to bed. The objection usually runs as follows:

"How can you be sure that there is no god? Do you have any proof that there is no god?"

This is an attempt at reversing the long-time atheist argument that "claims require supporting evidence", by saying that an atheists denial of the existence of deities is a also claim that must be supported by evidence. While this may initially seem like a decent argument, it's logic is actually terribly flawed.

Sunday Sermon: The Invention of the Gods

For just a little while today, let's go on a trip. Close your eyes… actually on second thought, ignore that, You're reading a blog post. It won't work if you close your eyes. Regardless, imagine for a moment that you are alone, walking through the savannah. It is a beautiful spring day in the middle of Africa. The year is 150,000 BCE.

Schrödinger's Freedom of Speech

There is a fairly well-known thought experiment known as Schrödinger's Cat. The basic idea of the thought experiment is that, if one were to accept a certain interpretation of quantum mechanics, it would follow that a cat placed into a box, would at some point be simultaneously alive and dead. I'm not a physicist (although I try to stay somewhat informed as a layperson), so if you want to know more about Schrödinger's and his cat, pray to Google, for she is a wise and benevolent deity.

Anyways, I didn't start this post to talk about physicists and their hypothetical cats, but to talk about freedom of speech. It occurred to me last night during a conversation with a friend, that I simultaneously do, and do not, agree with the concept of free speech (hence the title of this post). Allow me to explain.

The Bible: Just the Good Stuff Translation

It is not at all uncommon for Christians to have to "cherry pick" their Bibles in order to avoid the horrendous immorality, logical inconsistency or impossibility, historical inaccuracy, and/or outright contradictions that makes up so much of the book. On a few occasions, I've even said "If you will go into your own Bible, take a permanent marker, black out that verse, and tell me that that verse is false and not the word of Yhwh, I will no longer hold that verse against you in debate." To date, I've found not one Christian who was so sure of what Yhwh meant, that they were willing to black out a verse to improve their Bible.

So, in the spirit of fair play, I've decided to redact the Bible in advance. In my new translation, I've removed every immoral teaching, implausibility, falsehood, etc, and kept only the good stuff. By using my new translation of the Bible, no Christian will ever again have to be embarrassed by the content of the Bible, undertake embarrassing mental gymnastics to explain how it "isn't really that bad", or have to explain how they're a Christian who "doesn't really believe in that verse".

Let's call this new translation:
"The Bible: Just the Good Stuff Translation (JGST)"

Sunday Sermon: "In Money We Trust" or "Peter, The First TV Evangelist"

I recently found a new candidate for "Most petty reason why someone gets killed in the Bible". My favorite part about this new passage - as opposed to my previous "most petty reason" in Numbers 15:32-36 - is that my this passage is from the New Testament, after "gentle Jesus, meek and mild" comes along. The passage I'm referring to is Acts 5:1-11.

In this passage a man named Ananias has sold a piece of his land, and with his wife's approval, kept some of the money for himself and brought the rest to the apostles. A select few translations claim that Ananias told the apostles that he had brought the full amount that he had gotten from the land, though most translations make no mention of this (presumably because Yhwh forgot where he left the "power of tongues" and hash't been able to figure out how to produce a faithful translation into English without it). Regardless, I think the story makes more sense with that claim included.