@religion-is-a-mental-illness / religion-is-a-mental-illness.tumblr.com
"You can't trust an apocalyptic religion to find real world solutions. Their identity is based around the world ending."
Anyone espousing belief in a Rapture or a Judgment Day should be automatically disqualified from holding office. They're not working for us, they're rooting against us.
By: AAP
Published: May 19, 2011
WHEN Judgment Day comes - which some US Christian fundamentalists insist will happen on Saturday - have you thought about what you're going to do with the family dog and cat?
In 26 US states, you could have them rescued and adopted by enterprising atheists who have set up a business to care for the animal companions of any Christians who are selected to go to heaven when Jesus Christ comes back.
"You've committed your life to Jesus. You know you're saved. But when the Rapture comes, what's to become of your loving pets who are left behind?" Eternal Earth-Bound Pets says on its website, offering to "take that burden off your mind".
The post-Doomsday pet rescue service already has 259 clients, who have paid $135 for the first pet and $20 for each additional pet at the same address, to ensure the faithful animal companions are looked after and loved even when their Christian owners have gone to the other side.
All the rescuers are sworn atheists, which means they will definitely be left behind on Earth, ready to rescue pets after the Rapture, which one US Christian fundamentalist group has pencilled in for Saturday.
When Judgement Day happens, Eternal Earth-Bound Pets co-founder Bart Centre "will notify all of our rescuers to go into action and they will drive to the homes of anyone who's signed a contract with us, pick up their pets and take them home and adopt them as their own, keeping them happy and healthy for the rest of their lives.
"This will happen only if and when the Rapture happens. So we do not expect to have to do anything on Saturday," Mr Centre said.
Contracts are good for 10 years, just in case the Mayan calendar prophesy, which predicts the world will end in December next year, comes true.
[ Archive: https://archive.is/aI8Hx ]
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No more Xianity and we get their pets? Sign me up.
This is 12 years old, but still hilarious.
"Anyone who believes in a Sky Daddy, rapture, end time, the second coming, judgement day, heaven or hell should never be allowed to hold any position of power or authority."
"If anyone made me wait two thousand years and they still hadn't shown up, they'd be dead to me.
Adios amigo."
--
“Three gospels quote Jesus as saying that he’d be back in their lifetimes. That was over 2000 years ago. Christians are carrying around an expired bus pass, waiting for a bus that isn’t coming and doesn’t exist.” -- Docktor Jim
You can have "Jesus is real" or "Jesus is coming." You can't have both.
"Never trust a religion whose ultimate goal is the end of the world."
They'll do everything in their power to make it happen, celebrating the whole way. Religions are apocalypse cults.
Did Mohammed actually intend for his cult to outlive him by hundreds of years? If so, did he think he was putting a force of good in the world?
He thought the end of the world was coming.
The whole "final prophet" thing was not like "the final VHS recorder." Muhammad's claim was that he was the final prophet before Judgment Day, aka the Last Hour. Islamic mythology insists that only "Allah" knows when that will be, but like Jesus, Muhammad was completely certain that it would happen within the lifetimes of at least some of his followers. I previously made a post here about the end-times prophecies of Jesus (bible), Muhammad (hadith) and "Allah" (quran), but here's a few select quotes.
Closer and closer to mankind comes their Reckoning: yet they heed not and they turn away.
The Hour is at hand but People are heedless. This is a warning from Allah of the approach of the Hour, and that people are heedless of it, i.e., they are not working for it or preparing for it.
The Hour (of Judgment) is nigh, and the moon is cleft asunder.
The Hour draws near; the cleaving of the Moon Allah informs about the approach of the Last Hour and the imminent end and demise of the world,
Anas reported Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) as saying: I and the Last Hour have been sent like this and (he while doing it) joined the forefinger with the middle finger.
Anas reported that a person asked Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) as to when the Last Hour would come. He had in his presence a young boy of the Ansar who was called Muhammad. Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) said: If this young boy lives, he may not grow very old till (he would see) the Last Hour coming to you.
Muslims will always insist that "Allah" is eternal, timeless, etc, therefore time to him is different than time to us. Therefore, 1400 years could still be "soon." Except that a higher, eternal, timeless creature would experience every moment of time simultaneously. We perceive length, breadth and depth of everything around us simultaneously, but only one moment in time. So "Allah" should perceive time the same way we perceive everything between us and the horizon. So, this apologetic makes no sense.
Besides, Muhammad wasn't eternal or timeless, and he did plenty of describing of how soon it would happen. And why would "Allah" give warnings based on his own perception of time, not human perception? If "soon" to "Allah" is anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 billion years, what's the point basing a prophecy, a warning for humans, on Allah-time?
I don't know that he thought he was putting a force of "good" out into the world. Rather, he thought he was preparing the world for the end, by any means necessary. This is evident by the inordinate number of ayahs warning people about pagans, Xians, non-believers, everyone who isn't a Muslim, and particularly Jews. They're the worst people, so don't have anything to do with them, because Allah won't like it. At bottom, "bEcOz jUdGmEnT dAy" is pretty much the justification for everything in Islam.
Like Xians, Muslims are looking forward to the end of the world, when the Dajjal (false prophet, i.e. Antichrist) comes, and Isa (Jesus) returns to destroy all religion except for Islam, and condemn the non-Muslims. Almost as much as they're looking forward to the Caliphate rising, when they'll murder all their non-Muslim neighbors and band together to fight everyone to secure Islamic supremacy.
Islam's primitiveness, barbarism and complete incompatibility with modern sensibilities demonstrates to that "any day" now expectation. Islam was never supposed to last this long.
So, he was sort of spreading "good" in the same way that Islam spreads "peace" and the Borg spread "perfection" - through absolute subjugation. Which is, after all, the definition of Islam: submission.
Totally normal.
There are Xians who will look at this and regard them as nuts. The problem is that there is no difference between what they believe and what this person believes. It’s just awkward having it written down for everyone to see.
"With a necessary part of its collective mind, religion looks forward to the destruction of the world. By this I do not mean it "looks forward" in the purely eschatological sense of anticipating the end. I mean, rather, that it openly or covertly wishes that end to occur. Perhaps half aware that its unsupported arguments are not entirely persuasive, and perhaps uneasy about its own greedy accumulation of temporal power and wealth, religion has never ceased to proclaim the Apocalypse and the day of judgment."
-- Christopher Hitchens, “God is Not Great”
I was recently reminded of a line from God's Not Dead 2: "Atheism doesn't take away the pain, it just takes away the hope." What would you say if you were told this?
I agree, in a way.
The problem is that the "hope" theism gives you is a false hope, akin to the old trope of your sick dog being sent to live on a farm upstate. It's a lie that functions as a placebo.
So, I'd frame it as "atheism doesn't take away the pain, it takes away the false hope and gives you the reality and truth."
"Hope" for absurd and ridiculous magic helps nobody.
I can have hope that humanity will continue on its trajectory of improving life, reducing poverty, etc, as well as other problems that we've only just discovered or don't even know about yet. Particularly as religion falls away. By every measure, we're better off now than we were 500, 100 or even 50 years ago. We did that, not some imaginary space elf.
But considering that this trajectory has been underway since well before I or anyone I know was born, it's narcissistic to think that I am necessary for it to continue.
Let's not forget either that the "hope" a Xian or Muslim has is for the destruction of the world, the obliteration of all life, and the eternal torture and suffering of everyone they don't like, the heathens/kuffar, while living infinitely as worship-slaves to their heavenly slave-master in celestial North Korea. Believers often accuse non-believers of nihilism, and yet are the ones who insist that they're "nothing without god,” that they are "in the world but not of the world" (i.e. they don’t belong here), and that life in this realm has no meaning except as fodder for their monster-god's ego.
The "hope" they have is for themselves, not for the world, or for our or any other species. They hope for death, they hope for an apocalypse, they hope for the annihilation of everything tangible and real, and to be whisked away from this dirty little life to an imaginary world in the clouds full of people who are as astonishingly awful as they are.
The hope I have is modest. It's grounded in reality, and recognizes that there is hard work and difficult decisions involved. Hopefully, where nobody gets set on fire.
“Life” is a synonym of “change.” Believers want to think that there will come a point where they’re whisked away to some eternal perfection, devoid of change. This is anti-life. They don’t want to live forever, they want to exist forever.
My hope is uncertain. It's for the imperfection of humanity, but it could go either way. There’s no magic wand, no trite easy answers, not even a stopping point. We are never done improving, discovering, learning.
If a believer ever says this to you, ask them to be specific about what it is they "hope" for. When they give you platitudes, probe for the details. They'll soon show you who they really are.
So yes, it's probably accurate, in a simplistic way that requires disregarding the detail and the consequences, and therefore completely on-brand for the childish shallowness of theistic belief.
As usual, we just disagree on whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. Me, I think living in a fog of delusional magical thinking, denial of reality and abject disregard for all existence is a bad thing. I'm a weirdo, though.
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life." -- George Bernard Shaw
Jesus and Muhammad were each completely certain that the end of the world was coming within the lifetime of the audience they preached to directly.
Since this never happened, both are necessarily false prophets.
According to a recent Gallup poll, only 12 percent of Americans believe that life on earth has evolved through a natural process, without the interference of a deity. Thirty one percent believe that evolution has been "guided by God." If our worldview were put to a vote, notions of "intelligent design" would defeat the science of biology by nearly three to one. This is troubling, as nature offers no compelling evidence for an intelligent designer and countless examples of unintelligent design. But the current controversy over "intelligent design" should not blind us to the true scope of our religious bewilderment at the dawn of the twenty first century. The same Gallup poll revealed that 53 percent of Americans are actually creationists.
This means that despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of life and the greater antiquity of the earth, more than half of our neighbors believe that the entire cosmos was created six thousand years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue. Those with the power to elect our presidents and congressmen - and many who themselves get elected—believe that dinosaurs lived two by two upon Noah's ark, that light from distant galaxies was created en route to the earth, and that the first members of our species were fashioned out of dirt and divine breath, in a garden with a talking snake, by the hand of an invisible God.
Among developed nations, America stands alone in these convictions. Our country now appears, as at no other time in her history, like a lumbering, bellicose, dimwitted giant. Anyone who cares about the fate of civilization would do well to recognize that the combination of great power and great stupidity is simply terrifying, even to one's friends. The truth, however, is that many of us may not care about the fate of civilization. Forty four percent of the American population is convinced that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next fifty years. According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry here on earth. It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves—socially, economically, environmentally, or geopolitically. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.
-- Sam Harris, “Letter to a Christian Nation” (2006)
I’d never heard of this before, but it makes sense and doesn’t surprise me.
Did anyone else suffer from Rapture Anxiety?
Q: If there is no God, why do you spend your whole life trying to convince people that there isn't? Why don't you just stay home?
HITCHENS: Well it’s not my—it isn’t my whole career, for one thing. It’s become a major preoccupation of my life though in the last eight or nine years, especially since September 11, 2001 to try and help generate an opposition to theocracy and its depredations.
That is now probably my main political preoccupation, to help people in Afghanistan, in Somalia, in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Israel resist those who sincerely want to encompass the destruction of civilization and sincerely believe they have God on their side in wanting to do so.
A thing—maybe I will take a few minutes just to say something that I find repulsive about, especially monotheistic, Messianic religion.
With a large part of itself, it quite clearly wants us all to die.
It wants this world to come to an end.
You can tell the yearning for things to be over. Whenever you read any of its real texts or listen to any of its real, authentic spokemen, not the sort of pathetic apologists who sometimes masquerade for it, those who talk—there was a famous spokesmen for this in Virginia until recently, about the rapture say that those of us who have chosen rightly will be gathered to the arms of Jesus, leaving all of the rest of you behind.
If we’re in a car, it’s your lookout, that car won’t have a driver anymore. If you’re a pilot, that’s your lookout, that plane will crash. We will be with Jesus and the rest of you can go straight to hell.
The eschatological element that is inseparable from Christianity—if you don’t believe that there is to be an apocalypse, there is going to be an end, a separation of the sheep and the goats, a condemnation, a final one, then you’re not really a believer, and their contempt for things of this world shows through all of them. It’s well put in an old rhyme from an English Exclusive Brethren sect. It says that, “We are the pure and chosen few and all the rest are damned. There’s room enough in hell for you, we don’t want heaven crammed.”
You can tell it when you see the extreme Muslims talk. They cannot wait, they cannot wait for death and destruction to overtake and overwhelm the world. They can’t wait for, what I would call without ambiguity, a final solution.
When you look at the Israeli settlers, paid for often by American tax dollars, deciding that if they can steal enough land from other people and get all the Jews into the promised land and all the non-Jews out of it then finally the Jewish people will be worthy of the return of the Messiah
And there are Christians in this country who consider it their job to help this happen so that Armageddon can occur so that the painful business of living as humans and studying civilization and trying to acquire learning and knowledge and health and medicine and to push back—can all be scrapped and the cult of death can take over.
That, to me, is a hideous thing in eschatological terms and end time terms on its own, hateful idea, hateful practice and a hateful theory but very much to be opposed in our daily lives where there are people who sincerely mean it, who want to ruin the good relations that could exist between different peoples, nations, races, countries, tribes, ethnicities, who say—who openly say they love death more than we love life and who are betting that with God on their side, they’re right about that.
So when I say, as the subtitle of my book, that I think religion poisons everything, I’m not just doing what publishers like and coming up with a provocative subtitle, I mean to say it infects us in our most basic integrity.
It says we can’t be moral without Big Brother, without a totalitarian permission. It means we can’t be good to one another, it means we can't think without this. We must be afraid, we must also be forced to love someone who we fear, the essence of sadomasochism and the essence of abjection, the essence of the master-slave relationship and that knows that death is coming and can’t wait to bring it on.
I say this is evil.
And though I do, some nights, stay at home, I enjoy more the nights when I go out and fight against this ultimate wickedness and ultimate stupidity.
Hi! I love your content and I wanted to ask something, so xtians are all about second coming of Christ right? Isn't his ressurection was second coming, like his first was of course his birth and second his ressurection? Anyway I hope you have great day/night :)
Interesting question.
Upon his death, he hadn't really left yet, though. He flew up to heaven the same day, eight days or forty days after his resurrection, depending on who you ask; Mark and Luke say the same day. John says eight days, Acts says forty days, Matthew says nothing at all and just sort of stops.
The entire resurrection myth is, of course, a forgery added to Mark much later that was then propagated to the other gospels and stories. Read Matthew 28, Mark 16 and Luke 24 horizontally (side by side, rather than one after the other), and this is clear.
Mark originally just stops at 16:8, and everything from 16:9 onwards is a known forgery invented by someone else even later. The entire notion of Jesus resurrecting didn't even exist until the second century. Apparently they wrote down that he called a Canaanite woman a "dog" but they didn't think it important to write down that he's magical, came back from the dead and flew up into the sky?
The point of the Second Coming is that he will bring an army of angels and the power of the kingdom of god with him.
For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.
Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.
And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.
Basically, the "Second Coming" is when he raids his dad's gun rack and comes back to high-school-revenge-shooting everyone who wasn't his friend.
The resurrection is like when a character in a sitcom storms out in a big showy perormance, then after a beat, barges back in to collect something, then storms out again.
Of course, it and Xianity are false. Even if we didn't know how the bible was created, and that none of the New Testament authors were there, even if we believed that the bible character of Jesus existed in the real world - and we have no reason whatsoever to think so - it's unavoidable that the-one-true-god-made-flesh lied or was wrong.
Xianity's like a franchise that got canceled on a cliffhanger, but its fans insist that the next instalment will be released "any day now."
While Islam is the reboot series nobody asked for.
I just read an article about some guy claiming the biblical apocalypse is coming, because signs from the bible are the same as from recent events, and I'm sitting here right now thinking "why?" I mean, why Christians always says "End is near" I never saw other religions doing it, furthermore it looks like Christianity is doomsday cult, what are your thoughts about it?
“When I saw you stop the world from, you know, ending, I just assumed that was a big week for you. It turns out I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural of apocalypse.” - Riley Finn, "A New Man" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
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Like any prophecy, one can creatively match up current events with the supposed signs to formulate an apocalypse prediction.
And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
All these are the beginning of sorrows.
Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.
And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.
And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
The above is all super-easy to corroborate at any point in time. But particularly when you hate whole groups of people - the "libe", the gays, etc - and have a persecution complex about the "War on Xianity." Call everything you don’t like “iniquity,” decry the politicians you don’t like, the religious leaders from other faiths, and even people from pop-culture - from the Beatles to the Kardashians - as “false prophets,” and pretend that there is not almost always some war being fought somewhere.
The matching “signs” are always super-vague and flexible ones. But those that refute it are often specific, and yet are always ignored.
And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
To believe any of this is in any way true is to not understand the world.. Since the bible and its god and messiah clearly don't.
In order to make any of this fit, one needs to squint and make it metaphor.
And thus, a metaphorical apocalypse?
Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.
Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.
And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.
Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.
The biblical apocalypse has already been falsified anyway. These online prophets never adequately address - or in many cases even acknowledge - that the End of Days prophecies were supposed to occur within the lifetime of Jesus' followers.
Never mind the fact that many of the prophecies he supposedly fulfils, he either doesn't, or don't exist anyway.
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This doomsday cult mentality isn't unique to Xianity though.
Fight against those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth [i.e., Islām] from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah1 willingly while they are humbled.
And when the son of Mary was presented as an example, immediately your people laughed aloud.
He [i.e., Jesus] was not but a servant upon whom We bestowed favor, and We made him an example for the Children of Israel.
And if We willed, We could have made [instead] of you angels succeeding [one another]1 on the earth.
And indeed, he [i.e., Jesus] will be [a sign for] knowledge of the Hour, so be not in doubt of it, and follow Me.1 This is a straight path.
And never let Satan avert you. Indeed, he is to you a clear enemy.
And when Jesus brought clear proofs, he said, "I have come to you with wisdom [i.e., prophethood] and to make clear to you some of that over which you differ, so fear Allah and obey me.
Narrated Abu Huraira:
Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "By Him in Whose Hands my soul is, surely (Jesus,) the son of Mary will soon descend amongst you and will judge mankind justly (as a Just Ruler); he will break the Cross and kill the pigs and there will be no Jizya (i.e. taxation taken from non Muslims). Money will be in abundance so that nobody will accept it, and a single prostration to Allah (in prayer) will be better than the whole world and whatever is in it." Abu Huraira added "If you wish, you can recite (this verse of the Holy Book): -- 'And there is none Of the people of the Scriptures (Jews and Christians) But must believe in him (i.e Jesus as an Apostle of Allah and a human being) Before his death. And on the Day of Judgment He will be a witness Against them." (4.159) (See Fath-ul-Bari, Page 302 Vol 7)
And there is none from the People of the Scripture but that he will surely believe in him [i.e., Jesus] before his death. And on the Day of Resurrection he will be against them a witness.
Narrated Abu Huraira:
Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said "How will you be when the son of Mary (i.e. Jesus) descends amongst you and your imam is among you."
Hudhaifa b. Usaid al-Ghifari reported:
Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) came to us all of a sudden as we were (busy in a discussion). He said: What do you discuss about? They (the Companions) said. We are discussing about the Last Hour. Thereupon he said: It will not come until you see ten signs before and (in this connection) he made a mention of the smoke, Dajjal, the beast, the rising of the sun from the west, the descent of Jesus son of Mary (Allah be pleased with him), the Gog and Magog, and land-slides in three places, one in the east, one in the west and one in Arabia at the end of which fire would burn forth from the Yemen, and would drive people to the place of their assembly.
Isa (i.e. Jesus) is just a prophet, who will return a Muslim to destroy Judaism, Xianity, fight and destroy Dajjal (a false prophet), and usher in the will of Allah during the Day of Judgment. Unashamedly co-opting Xian prophecy into Islamic.
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The upshot is that the Abrahamic religions are essentially apocalypse cults. It doesn't just look like; they are, and they celebrate it, and are proud of it.
This is not unique to Abrahamism, but it does show up frequently on the List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events.
It's one of the most extreme aspects of religious in-group/out-group mentality. It's not enough for everyone who isn't in the in-group to live their lives in their own way, it's not enough for them to individually be judged and tortured for denying the "truth" of some god, but there needs to be a "reckoning" where the believers get to watch all the non-believers pay for not believing.
Vicarious revenge for being outside of their group and not submitting to its will and demands. But it's not them getting their revenge, it's their god. They're just looking forward to it.
It's truly sociopathic. And it's fed by the certainty of their Chosen-ness, that they, uniquely, deserve to escape death and live an eternity of reward.
"Be in the world, not of the world."
They don't belong here, this isn't their world. They are of the Kingdom of God/Allah/[insert god]. They belong there and deserve to be there.
Which means they're not invested in this life or this world, except to the extent of ensuring they retain their VIP pass to the after-party. This world is beneath them, they're just visiting.
It's bad enough that believers throw away their one and only life in pursuit of a non-existent unlimited bonus round. Because getting to exist at all is not enough for them, because everything that does, will or can exist, in this or any realm, needs to have them in it, in some form.
But, honestly, this is why believers should never be in charge of public policy. When eternity and the Kingdom of Heaven awaits them, what care need they hold for the mere transit lounge of Earth?
