and her adventures in Atheism
history
The Original Godless Girl
Oct 23rd
The Godless Girl was a rebel, promoting science and secularism in her university. She passed out fliers proclaiming “Man made God!”, and lead a group called The Godless Society. School authorities attempted to stop the “blasphemous” behavior, and eventually this girl was sent to reform school. After a harrowing experience in solitary confinement, she eventually escaped. In a surprising twist, she converted, accepting Jesus as her savior.
Well, at least that’s the plot of the 1929 silent film The Godless Girl, directed by Cecil B. DeMille. When I was searching for a domain name to house my heathen bloggy bits, I stumbled on this movie. After reading the charged plot and, frankly, loving the alliteration of the name, I took the moniker for myself. The film illustrates plainly how atheists have been vilified in society. The introduction reads:
It is not generally known that there are Atheist Societies using the schools of the country as their battleground — attacking, through the Youth of the Nation, the beliefs that are sacred to most of the people. And no fanatics are so bitter as youthful fanatics.
Battleground! Attacking sacred beliefs! Fanatics! Gee, tell me how you really feel. Check out the first 5 minutes of The Godless Girl below:
No Other Gods but Yahweh?
Oct 8th
Photo © Mike Stenhouse
A member of a Christian forum asks:
I know several places in the bible it says have no other gods before YWH[sic], and that he’s the most powerful, but does it ever say he’s the only one?
What do you think about other gods?
I cannot help but offer my own thoughts:
In my understanding, all gods are created by the humans that want them to exist to explain what happens in the world. Gods are a part of our cultures, and they evolve as we do. Gods began as celestial bodies (sun worship) and gods who ruled different natural forces (gods of fertility, volcanoes, the sea). As we grew to know more about how the world worked, our gods grew to be more and more complex, more powerful, and more concerned with the ways of humans. Once we knew that the sun rose and set on its own, there was no need for a deity to carry it across the sky. Once we discovered our orbit and gravity, we could let go of the giant turtle that carried the flat earth on its back.
So yes, other gods did and do exist… but only in the mids of those who worship them. The ancient gods died along with the people who created them (like Ra and Apollo). Some gods linger on (Allah, Shiva) because they thrive in their home cultures.
Yahweh is one of the most advanced gods because he can be defined a bit more than the others and is more personal. We say he is outside of time because we know what time is and what restraints it puts on our universe. We say he speaks through books because we have written languages and the technology to pass it on. God is as advanced and as brilliant as we are, because our amazing minds imagined him and adore him.
This is just the way we are. I’m sure in the future our deities will grow and evolve to fit into the holes that science has not yet closed, into the mysteries that are still unsolved.
It’s kind of confusing, in a way… deities are getting bigger all the time as our minds and imaginations expand… but at the same time they shrink smaller and smaller as we give them less and less credit for the natural things of this universe.
We truly are amazing, thoughtful beings.
* * *
My thoughts are greatly inspired by the documentary Creator of God: A Brain Surgeon’s Story and the Q&A session our audience had with the creator Dr. Vivekanand Palavali at a local film festival. Although it has some weaknesses, I recommend seeing this film if you have the chance–especially if you have an agnostic or believing friend with you. It sparks some lively conversations!
Fundy Friday: Tower of Babel Edition
Oct 2nd
How could I forget to honor the fantastically fallacious Fundies? Check out these snippets from what I consider an award-winning representation of monumentally stupid anti-evolution hogwash.
If, as evolutionists claim, all of mankind evolved from the SAME primitive life-source, then how did we end up with 7,000 different languages? The Bible teaches that God created all the different languages at Babel… “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech … Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth” [see Genesis 11:1-9 [show] Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth." And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech." So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth. (ESV)
]. It is far more reasonable to accept the Biblical claim that God created all of mankind’s different languages; than it is to believe that some space-dust from a massive chaotic explosion somehow became life, and then took on intelligence, and then from the same evolutionary process ended up with 7,000 different languages. That makes no sense at all.
Oh stop it! You’re making my sides hurt! Please tell me again how reasonable it is that every human being on earth had a powwow in a valley somewhere, decided to build a really tall brick building so they could go up to heaven, be famous, and to stay neighbors.
Explain to me how sensible it is that a spirit-man in the sky literally visited to check on their work and got really pissed off that they showed some bricklaying skills. He then decided to keep them from being successful and unified, so he used telekinesis to lift them up, plop them down in other parts of the earth, and then magically changed their languages so they wouldn’t be able to understand one another (or themselves, I imagine). Talk about anti-progress, a bitchy boss, and a serious case of “go sit in the corner and be quiet”.
Oh yeah, that makes a whole lot more sense than gradual change over time.
Read more wtf-i-tude at jesus-is-savior.com.
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