Tags
abscence of evidence for god's existence, Atheism, atheism identity, Atheism is NOT a religion it's important to remember that, biological arguments, Book Review, Challenging Faith, Christopher Hitchens, Episcopal Church, Essay, foundation of reality, Gal Gadot, god is not Great, Individual Will, Joshua Jammer Smith, letter, Mrs. Jean Watts, nature, Objections to Religious Faith, Personal Development, Philosophy, Reality, reason, reflection, religion, religious corruption, Skepticism, The Matrix, Wonder Woman
Dear B—–,
Let me begin by apologizing. Before you protest that I’m always apologizing you’re right but this one does need some explanation. You see over the last few months I wasn’t in a good place. In fact I was in a rotten one, a fucking rotten one. Graduating college wasn’t the entrance into some new golden world as I had thought or dreamt it would be because I discovered the institution I had attended and hoped to teach at wouldn’t hire 
me. That resulted in a long period of joblessness which, while it saw a blossoming of writing, didn’t see anything in the realm of actual employment. Add to that my wife was bouncing between jobs and encouraging me to consider teaching high school. Now I hated high school and I hated being a teenager so imagine B spending the rest of my life in such an environment. It didn’t get better after that despite the fact I was offered a teaching job at a local college. I was lobbying 
to teach there but as always no positions were available until one of the professors had a family emergency and needed someone to cover her classes till the end of the semester. I hopped into the gig thinking that I would be teaching college students, when in fact, I wounded up teaching college students who were really just high school students. The students didn’t want to be there and after just a few weeks I realized I didn’t want to be there either. I realized day by day that I was miserable. And then the depression kicked in. Finding yourself huddled up in a ball and crying in a shower twice a week for eight weeks is a hell of a thing B—–, but it gives you some perspective. It was near the end of the that semester that several of my friends, unbeknownst to me, had begun to lobby for me at the Tyler Public Library. One of my friends is a full time employee there, and two others are part time, and because people tend to see something in me that I don’t they continued to lobby for me while I day-by-day began to realize that I actually wanted to work there. I was ready to leave college behind and start a new path. And when a temp job opened up I knew, for my own health that I had to take the library job.
This is a long fucking opening B—–, I know that, but I just wanted to offer explanation as to why I haven’t been writing back, and also why I decided to begin this enterprise that I’m starting with this letter.
You see you’d be surprised how many atheists and agonistics work at the library. One of them is one of the friends I spoke of, and one night while we were closing we were 
discussing being atheists, the end of our faith, secular humanist mommy groups (that’s a thing, they exist) and of course Christopher Hitchens. We briefly discussed the book god is not Great, because both of us had read the book and credited it as the document which helped us realize we were atheists. I say realize because I distrust people who say they “became” atheists, it reeks of false conviction. But as I was heading up the stairs towards the employee exit, I thought about our talk and I thought about our letters. The first letter I ever sent you B—–, included a quote from god is not Great, and I recommended that you read the book.
What I’m offering now B—–, is the chance to read the book and talk about it chapter by chapter. This could take a year, it could take only a few months, but I like the idea and I want to give it a shot. So this first letter will address the first chapter of Hitchens’s book.
Although before we begin I have to tell you that your current girlfriend looks remarkably similar to Gal Gadot. The Halloween party picture you sent where you were both Wonder Woman was just eerily similar and on an entirely unrelated note I cannot wait for the new Wonder Woman movie. Wonder Woman, World War I, AND Gal Gadot. Jammer be happy.
Picking up god is not Great has been a fascinating reminder of how much I have actually grown in my personal belief B—–, or lack of belief if you want to be specific. I noticed myself reading the opening chapter and feeling somewhat stalled. I feel lousy admitting that, especially about Old Hitch, but I think, to his credit, it’s because I’ve read so much about atheism because of him and so his initial arguments seem, to quote Aerosmith, like the Same Old Song and Dance. 
Still if you’re reading this book for the first time, these ideas and declarations are bold and unsparing. The first chapter, if you’ve read it already, starts off with a declaration of his beliefs that he titles “Putting it Mildly.” What I love, from the start, is how Hitch recognizes that he’s going to be attacked the moment he hits the ground running. If you don’t believe me watch how he starts the book:
If the intended reader of this book should want to go beyond disagreement with its author and try to identify the sins and deformities that animated him to write it (and I have certainly noticed that those who publicly affirm charity and compassion and forgiveness are often inclined to take this course), then he or she will not just be quarreling with the unknowable and ineffable creator 
who—presumably—opted to make me this way. They will be defiling the memory of a good, sincere, simple woman, of stable and decent faith, named Mrs. Jean Watts. (1)
There’s a lot to get into in this first chapter B—–, and I can’t possibly cover all of it, but I wanted to start off with this quote because it provides insight to the reality facing out and about public atheists. I’ve been fortunate in my life that I’ve avoided such treatment by supposed “believers” but that’s usually because I only inform people about my lack of faith to people I know and trust. If a random Christian asks me about my faith I’ll usually just say something like “I was raised in the Episcopal church.” I’ve found though sometimes that when I out myself as an atheist those people who are bothered by it will usually just ignore me and quietly pray for my soul. But just because I’ve had it easy doesn’t mean that other people have. Atheists are some of the most distrusted people on this planet, and I suspect the only reason I don’t have people writing me angry letters telling me to suck dicks in hell is because I’m just some shit-for-shit nobody with a shit-for-shit blog.
How many shits was that by the way, I lost count. Must have been thinking about Gal Gadot again. There’s this one picture of her wearing glasses and this nice hat…
Focus man!
What I like about this opening however is that, while it does acknowledge the tendency of many people of faith to demonize atheists it also reinforces an observation I’ve had, which is that real atheists tend to be those who’ve experienced real religious instruction. Hitchens describes his early teacher Mrs. Jean Watts, as a sweet and kind woman who taught the children about nature and spirituality. Hitchens was raised in this 
environment and one moment was eventually attributed to his early skepticism:
However, there came a day when poor, dear Mrs. Watts overreached herself. Seeking ambitiously to fuse her two roles as nature instructor and Bible teacher, she said, “So you see, children, how powerful and generous God is. He has made all the trees and grass to be green, which is exactly the color that is most restful to our eyes. Imagine if instead, the vegetation was all purple, or orange, how awful that would be.” (2)
I suspect B—-, that every atheist has a moment like this. I sometimes refer to it as the “aha” moment, but really it’s probably more accurate to call it the “really, oh for fuck’s sake” moment, because honestly that what you feel when it happens. Or at least that’s what I felt when I experienced mine. Unlike some atheists that will profess having some kind of dramatic realization, real mature atheism occurs, much like religious instruction. It takes time, real study, introspection, and finally just one moment of initial skepticism. I’ll never forget mine.
A preacher from the local Baptist church in town came by to deliver the sermon, and given the fact that I attended an “Episcopal” school I failed to really observe the fascinating dynamic of a Protestant sermonizing at a Catholic-Light institution. He was a charming character and boomed rather than softly spoke, and the lingering sensation of him is the fact that I was wrapped up in his story. It was the Loaves and Fishes tale retold from the position of a boy who happened to be at the scene retelling the event to his mother. I was about twelve years old at the time, but I was transfixed by this man and his ability. I wondered where the story would go, or how it would end, and even after I realized this was the loaves and fishes story I’ll never forget the moment when the man raised a finger in the air and spoke:
“And do you know who that man was Momma? That man’s name? It was Jesus Mama. Jesus Christ.”
Something dropped into my stomach and I suspect it was the angels because that’s what it felt like. It felt like I had finally woken up and seen Christianity for what it was, or at least what it had always been: a cheap sell using a piss-poor story.
Faith and belief was shown for what it was B—-, a club ticket rather than a spiritual tool. It didn’t stop right there, and in fact it wouldn’t truly diminish until I read Hitchens’s god is not Great a year after graduating high school, but that moment of initial skepticism I believe is crucial and one of the reasons Hitchens makes it the start of his book.
Christianity is an institution, one that is wrapped up in almost every level of our culture. I won’t compare the skeptics and atheists and agnostics to Neo in The Matrix because that seems too dramatic a metaphor, but the first moment sometimes does resemble that scene when he wakes up in the gel and looks around the world. You begin to see how the power structure is embedded at every level. It’s important B—-, to have a social network so that one doesn’t feel alone in the world, and while there is Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Blogs, T.V. shows, and the internet in general, books can go a long way in helping someone reassess their beliefs or even just feel validated.
Reading this first chapter again I always remember that preacher and so there is an identification. Christopher Hitchens and I went through the same experience and that makes me recognize that my skepticism isn’t something unnatural, it’s common. That banalization is important for arguments I’ll try to get into later.
But this opening chapter is the first in what can really and should be called a kind of Manifesto. The readers who pick up god is not Great are reading the work of a new generation of atheists who feel free enough to openly declare their sentiments, opinions, and belief without (much) fear of the societal rebuttal. And Hitch, being the man that he was, decides to not spare anything and simply declare his sentiments to his reader:
There still remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of 
solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking. (4).
These four points perfectly sum up my own position for why I believe religion is a dangerous institution. You’ll note B—-, that I said religion and not god. I’ve told you before B—– that the reason I don’t believe in god is not because of religion but from my own observations of reality. Because there is no empirical evidence for the existence of a divine being I cannot in good conscience profess belief or even pretend to believe in one. Likewise talking about the possibilities of such a being, or philosophy about that being’s intentions, from my perspective, is absurd.
It doesn’t matter the extent of god’s power because until there’s evidence for god’s existence there’s no point asking such questions. To put it another way, it’s useless arguing how many angle could fit on the head of a pin, or what is the molecular make-up of a unicorn’s horn. Neither have any solid proof of their existence so there’s no point having the conversation.
I take that back. Unicorns exist. They’re called Rhinos and they’re awesome.
This quote is vital however because it lays the foundation for everything that’s going to follow in Hitchens’s book. He lays out his ideas in the form of a thesis and statement of belief so that the reader can determine what is his ultimate position. Religion, and by extension god, are pollutants because they distract human beings from reality. They make man the focal point, the prime locus of the entirety of creation, and that allows human beings the opportunity to perform vile actions because they are the chosen creation. And, of course, this spawns dickish behavior ranging from murder, torture, rape, pedophilia, genocide, and wearing sandals with socks. (#Never Forget #Never Forgive).
I know the objection B—–, and I’m getting rather tired of it to be honest, but I’ll indulge it in the spirit of fairness. The charge, by the casual believer, is that atheism is a religion too. That atheists turn their godlessness into a kind of faith and that this in turn makes them just as much of self-centered assholes as religious people.
And you know, my problem B—–, is that most public atheists don’t really help me much here. Bill Maher regularly turns his atheism into a merit badge, Richard Dawkins actually has little merit badge pins that are large red “A’s,” and David Silverman has tried to establish an atheist television channel, and Sam Harris is the textbook definition of a giant douche-bag. The real problem is that most of the men I’ve just cited aren’t in fact atheists, but really more of anti-theists. And even Old-Hitch himself fell into this category.
If I can save the man though, at least a little in your eyes, let me offer the second most important quote from this chapter:
And here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically: the disagreement between Professor Steen Jay Gould and Professor Richard Dawkins, concerning “punctuated evolution” and the unfilled 
gaps in the post-Darwinian theory, is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shall resolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual excommunication. (5).
In short B—– it goes back to a point I’ve made before in these letters. Atheism, by it’s very definition, cannot be a religion. It can most certainly be called an “ism,” and therefore should be looked on with skepticism. But anyone who would argue that a lifestyle and philosophy can emerge from this position is fooling themselves. Atheism is simply, or at least the way I’ve executed it in my lifetime, an absence of belief and faith in god. That’s it.
I place whatever “faith” I have in this life, not with a god, but with facts, knowledge, data, and information. I trust these because they are not determinant purely upon faith, but by real material reality. A fact is determined by the collection of humanity observing the same phenomena and recording it, doubting it, testing it, and finally resolving it into reality. That’s the way knowledge is produced, coallated, and recorded for posterity.
I live my life now in the absence of god and there’s a lovely freedom to it that I’ll explore in later letters. I just wanted to start here B—– with an understanding of what Hitchens believes atheism is and how he’ll go about arguing it, and whether or not I agree with his points. I agree that Hitch can be abrasive, and there are certain elements of the text that I disagree with, but the quotes I’ve provided here are used because they seem to perfectly reflect my position. They did when I was a nineteen year old kid who had known nothing but the church, and spent most of his time reading with a heavy lump in his chest and crying while turning the pages. It felt like I had finally found the voice I had been waiting for. The person who had made the exact arguments I had been making in my head for years.
Which leads me to the final argument in this letter. There’s a temptation to make the lack of belief and faith into some kind of dramatic affair. It shouldn’t be. And that’s the point. Belief in the foundation of reality is difficult B—–, obviously, and unfortunately the arguments surrounding it have become wrapped up in emotion, politics, and power structures, so much so that, when a man decides to write a book criticizing religion he has to start the book by predicting a pushback. I don’t ever want our letters to be as such, because I know you are a believer. And so let’s hope in this correspondence for further dialogue rather than mutual excommunication.
Besides, even if we disagree about god we can both agree Gal Gadot’s going to be the best part of the new Wonder Woman and Justice League movie. As if there was any doubt of that.
It may be a while till my next letter, but keep writing, I enjoy your responses.
Sincerely, yours in the best of confidence and support,
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
P.S.
A while ago Cracked.com got into a bit of trouble because they posted an article about the way atheists communicate in public and why their methods were flawed. This, to no one’s real surprise, created a bit of a tizzy by atheists themselves who proceeded to shit all over Cracked. I haven’t gotten a chance to read it myself, but whenever people are offended or bothered by a piece of writing I immediately pick it up and read it because people always get upset for the wrong reasons. Plus, discourse is important. Enjoy:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-atheist-community-hurting-itself/
P.P.S.
I’ve also attached a link to a newspaper article from my alma matter UT Tyler. A friend of mine was writing a piece about religion and college students and he wanted to get some of my insight about being an atheist. It is, as far as I know, the only time my name has appeared in newsprint. The article ends on a positive note about faith, which is rather annoying, but it’s still a well written article. If you’re at all interested B—–, simply follow the link below.
P.P.P.S.
I don’t really have anything to add here B—–, I just wanted to gush about the fact that Gal Gadot is playing Wonder Woman again. I’m not obsessed, I promise, there’s just something….something….
Well shit I can’t remember. What ridiculous fool I am. At least I’m cute.
you might be able to do a fascinating remix of the entire collected works, with bits of Thoreau’s writings and letters dispersed throughout the songs, but after looking back over my proposition I think I’ll just have to stick with noting the man’s influence on Transcendentalism and Dr. Martin Luther King.
I read Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience in High School, forgetting it and Thoreau almost immediately holding only his tenuous bond to Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks, and Nelson Mandela. The idea of peaceful protest was an idea, not a fascinating philosophy by a strange man I would eventually come to respect as a writer and thinker.
state a slave-state. This would have massive implications concerning government because already the United States Congress was becoming a battle ground, in one case quite literally, between pro-slavery and abolition senators and representatives. The state of Kansas alone became a clusterfuck between pro-slavery and abolitionist people scrambling to acquire more power in the new territory, and Thoreau, like a fair amount during his time period, saw the war as nothing more than an attempt to create another slave territory for Texas which was a new acquisition to the union only three years earlier.
and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meaness to the world; or, if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. (88).
spent one night in jail because his aunt supposedly bailed his ass out of jail. After hearing this I briefly imagine Thoreau shouting “thug life” before his aunt pops him upside the head, but this fact is an important point that, while it somewhat lessens the man’s political integrity, does not necessarily destroy his philosophical point.
I’ve observed that I do not possess the rhetorical ability in conversation to explain my individual position on certain issues.
have faced, and while he addresses that concern he notes that there is a larger more nuanced issue and that is concerning political apathy:
get around to actually reading many of the comments or essays people post, likewise I support at least two local LGBTQ Facebook groups, and while there are often invitations to parties, meetings, or events, I’ve gone to only one pride parade in the last year.
the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternistcally feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advised the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” (286)
told blacks to simply “wait” until the system was better for them may not seem as bad as the big bad police force in Birmingham, but that call to wait was just as pernicious. In effect telling someone to “wait” is telling them to negate their Action from Principle, which is, ultimately, what makes them an individual and by extension a human being in the first place.
political structure, the man is in fact demonstrating that political activism can serve as a kind of philosophy of the self. As an individual I have to believe in my world, myself, and my integrity before I can ever perform any kind of action, and so by participating in Civil Disobedience I am not just trying to get a law passed, I am in effect transcending my individual being to engage and face the large forces of government and society that are attempting to corrupt that self.
memory since we were in a group and most of the other people in attendance got a little chuckle at my expense, but the visual metaphor I think retains its poignancy as I decided I would write to you about the graphic novel Preacher by Garth Ennis.
while Alice Cooper is a cartoon character, the reason why Black Sabbath now has fans that span at least three generations is that people eventually stop being shocked. I would argue though that the difference between Marilyn Mansion, Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, and Garth Ennis is that the previous three actually make art that’s worth your time.
My life has become painfully shorter for the benefit of an afterlife is gone, but this only places me in a position in which I have to “cut the shit” and really recognize my problems because there isn’t someone looking out for me. What I do with my time isn’t just a sentence, it’s a real reality. Living without god, or faith in god, is stepping out of narcissism because it reduces the ego. Once mankind steps away from god they step out of the center of all creation, and while life in this new space isn’t always pleasant, as Preacher clearly demonstrates, it does make you see the world in a new way.
movement along with familiarizing myself with the writers who contributed the most to it. Like you, and I’m going off of your letter here, I was mostly taught that Existentialism was about meaninglessness of existence and how life was hollow and pointless and we were all going to die and there was no afterlife and so existence was pointless, the end.
the heavens with a clenched fist, the philosophy I’ve been studying is actually positive and life affirming. The reason I’ve warmed up to Existentialism is because I finally understand what the Philosophy is about and I find a lot of the ideas since with my worldview already.
Sartre went back on the bookshelf. It wasn’t until a few weeks back when my friend Christie mentioned that she and her girlfriend were moving and needed to get rid of some books…and honestly I can’t remember what happened next because I heard the word books and I began to growl and beat my chest making a “hungry” gesture. In the pile was a Modern Library copy titled Basic Writings of Existentialism, and opening the book I spotted the name Sartre again and turned to a passage simply titled Existentialism.
and so contemplation really isn’t a concrete reality. The people who have “time” tend to be rich people and so communists, who tend to despise rich people, would look upon a philosophy that seems to be nothing but air-headed contemplation with contempt.
not about Metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that concerns itself with the nature of reality. Existentialism relies on the fact that there is a reality and that human beings occupy space within it. From there the life of man is about choices, but a second philosophic concern needs to be addressed.
is essential that certain values be taken seriously and that they be considered as having a priori existence.
existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to. He can’t start making excuses for himself. (349).
but a purely benevolent creature that is static and does work well with moral grey area. As such whenever Christians hear phrases like “God is Dead,” or “You Don’t need god to be moral,” there is usually a violent reaction. I can attest to this for when I still had my faith I clung to the idea that it because of god that humans, and by extension myself, had to be moral or else all chaos would ensue. The conflict with this is that it is bullshit and reveals painful weakness.
Sartre’s essay is largely a defense, but it’s also a reminder that free will, or more importantly what we do with free will, is what makes our species unique. By adopting philosophies like Marxism or Christianity, both institutions that tend to usurp individual will, humans are rejecting the most important facet of their reality.
theologians and priests are not only half-assed in their methodology, they’re also bad readers. Nietzsche doesn’t end the sentence on “dead,” he says “God is dead, and Man has killed him” and this has implications for the reader because it questions what many people, at least people in the United States, are raised to believe. When Nietzsche wrote this line more contemporary scientific methods and innovations were coming into being, and the notion of Modernity was becoming something relevant and important. In this atmosphere the Abrahamic god was becoming an anachronism to Nietzsche, yet still Christianity was adapting to it, or really fighting through it, and in this struggle the man found something to detest.
wrote in recent essay I eventually discovered pornography when I was a young teenager, and while my parents had taught me about honestly and freely about sex ever since I was a kid, I have no real explanation for the religious struggle I experienced at first watching this. Like many young men I became fascinated/horrified by “lesbian porn” (which really isn’t an honest presentation of lesbianism since most of the women in those videos are perfectly willing to sleep with men too). The thought that two women, and by implication two men, could be attracted to each other sexually was something that my mind, and my environment at school, taught me was a sin, yet despite this it was a core sexual fantasy that I engaged in. Masturbation should have been something fun and enjoyable, but instead I compartmentalized it as a sin because the visiting priests, football coaches, and teachers would say it was, and so not knowing any better I cursed myself as I indulged in fantasies and self-abuse. 
I eventually got over this, though when the girls in my imagination eventually started becoming men too that started me on a long arduous path that I’ve explored in other essays, but I wanted to use this example B—– because it demonstrates a facet of Nietzsche’s argument.
who was a cog in the wheel of machinery had only a finite amount of free time. A worker worked, and that remaining time was when he was afforded some freedom. Realistically the man would most often spend his wages on beer which would lead to temperance movements later on, but that space of time afforded man either some leisure or contemplation. As such the Church sought to dominate that time, however rather than recreate a god that would fit with contemporary innovation and progress, the Church held dogmatically to the old god as Nietzsche explains:
It may be my religious background, but I was always taught that the only way to grow faith, or lack-thereof, is to have your position challenged so that you can re-assess what it is that you actually believe.
Oh no, sorry Nietzsche Nietzsche. Sorry.
my concern was not to explain out an atheistic concept, but rather to defend Nietzsche from the title I so happily embrace. Many point to Nietzsche, and his rather bushy moustache, as a champion of godlessness, but those fools who try and hurl such mud only wind up looking like fools themselves.
wrong with atheism. I think what did it the most was an interview he did several years ago in Playboy (yes I read the interviews in Playboy, it’s the last respectable part of that magazine) where he was wearing a little red “A” on his lapel. When he was asked about he stated that it was a symbol for atheism and that the pin was part of a “National Coming Out Day” for atheists. Two points. One, while I do recognize that atheists are some of the most misunderstood social groups and there is severe prejudice against us, appropriating “Coming out” offends me as an ally to LGBTQ individuals as it should to anyone with half a brain. Two, wearing a symbol for your ideology and criticizing Christians for their revering of the cross is not only ludicrous it’s detestably hypocritical. Atheists don’t need symbols to tell them who they are. That’s the point. You can’t create an ideology around negating another. But that’s where I stand.
when it comes to relationships, you need to find someone who respects you, not someone who agrees with everything you believe in. Keep trying with her, because from what you’ve told me about her, she sounds like a lovely person, and the fact that she’s openly gay as well probably doesn’t hurt. Loved the picture you sent by the way, you two are so cute.
and falling in love with yet other chunks of complex matter. We now understand essentially how the trick is done, but only since 1859. Before 1859 it would have seemed very odd indeed. Now, thanks to Darwin, it is merely odd. Darwin seized the window of the burka and wrenched it open, letting in a flood of understanding whose dazzling novelty, and power to uplift the human spirit, perhaps had no precedent—unless it was the Copernican realization that the Earth was not the centre[sic] of the universe. (367).
writing you these letters. I don’t want to burden you.
doubt about putting Jesus of Nazareth to death that he does everything in his power to save his life, finally washing his hands of the entire episode when the Jews demand his blood. That is pure fiction. What Pilate was best known for was his extreme depravity, his total disregard for Jewish law and tradition, and his barely concealed aversion to the Jewish nation as a whole. During his tenure in Jerusalem he so eagerly, and without trial, sent thousands upon thousands of Jews to the cross that the people of Jerusalem felt obliged to lodge a formal complaint with the Roman emperor.” (47).
be dangerous, it’s impossible to attain an ideal because it is without concrete form and therefore can never be attained. Now this is not me being an armchair atheist B—–, I’ve just never understood why no one seems interested in the details of Jesus’ life. When I was going to school I had a Christian education class in middle school. Our teacher was the baseball coach and quite possibly the biggest fat-headed idiot in the history of western society. To put it in perspective he once beat an armadillo to death in front of his athletes, and was fired from his job for teaching students that Dinosaurs were a conspiracy against Religion to disprove Jesus. Yeah…let that sink in.
fact that Paul was more interested in giving commands than actually talking about Jesus the man.
Sermons. This activity disturbed me at the time, because I honestly cared, a little, about the practice of worship, but to my surprise nobody else did. Girls were supposed to wear dresses or tasteful skirts, but instead they wore porn star skirts with leggings, as if that helped, while the boys forgot ties, or didn’t wear ties, and would be slapped with a detentions. It wasn’t just the dress-code though B——, in the middle of worship I would look at my fellow students and they were all so apathetic, they couldn’t give three shits why they were there. And after all that, when we would return to the classroom, they would discuss getting drunk and gossiping about who was sleeping with who. It was the most pathetic display I’ve yet to actually witness, and quickly learned me up good to the fact that many Christians liked to wear their Christianity on their sleeves.
around 11 sexual partners in a given year, that is hardly a small village. That drive exists in proportion to the actual expectancy to have sex.
masturbate or have sex on a regular basis lower the chance of forming prostate cancer. Orgasms have been shown to actually help people suffering from illness, because blood shifts to the genitals it has a chance to move back through the heart oxygenating it more effectively. Couples indulging in sex regularly deepen their intimacy and strengthen their psychological bonds which are crucial for the creation of a healthy atmosphere for raising children. Obviously it’s ridiculous to make our lives a non-stop fuck-fest, but no sane person is asking for that.
The only part of it that surprised me was that it wasn’t the father secretly having sex with a male prostitute. Josh Duggar molested his sisters and I took note during the FOX interview with Megan something-or-other, that when the father described the attacks he made especial note of the language, “He touched them over the bra. You know, it wasn’t rape.”
(it’s East Texas after all) came in and decided he was going to give the sermon for the week. And of course what better place to talk about sex than chapel? I don’t remember much except the embarrassment and pity again, for the man confessed to us that he had had pre-marital sex. This confession was followed by tears and light crying. Now to high school boy who thinks about boobs every three seconds, this story and reaction was asinine and has only become more so after years or reflection.
This has been a long letter B——, and I apologize for making it so, but my intellectual reaction to Lewis was frustration and annoyance rather than introspection. Lewis makes plenty of little points that are relevant to a Christian soul, but he all he offers is little points.
