Response to Doug Hardt's Critique

On Alaska Images and a Church/State
issue regarding this site



This page is in response to some of Doug Hardt’s comments at:
Church, State & Atheism

Doug Hardt’s is a Christian and takes a different approach to the problem of religion and government entanglement. Those who want the government to sponsor religion, only want the government to sponsor their brand religion. Christians who want Creationism in public schools only want Biblical Creation and not Hindu, American Native, or any of the hundreds of other religious ideas of Creationism. I admire Doug Hardt’s comments on keeping religion and government separate and it would be great if many, many more Christians would see the necessity for keeping religion and government separate. The problem is that most Christians either do not care, or they see no problem with the government sponsoring Christianity and the Christian idea of a God.

I don't have a problem with people who believe in Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Vishnu, Thor, or Zeus, as long as, I am not expected to believe in the same, or use taxes support a weak God who can not take care of itself. Many of the Christians I met do have a problem with my not believing in their God, and because I am not with them -- then I must be against them, "for whoever is not against us is for us" (Mark 9:40)

Over the past fifteen years, I have communicated with thousands of Christians who believe that the United States was founded on the Bible, Ten Commandments and on the Christian religion. Nothing can be further from the truth. The United States was founded upon the principle of freedom, freedom to be religious, or freedom to reject religion and the freedom not to have our government favoring one brand of religion over another -- especially with tax dollars. While the United States is based upon the principles of freedom, there is no freedom within religious dogma as religious authority is tyrannical and dictatorial -- dogma reigns absolute.

I agree with Doug Hardt’s assessment of his fellow Christians who act with hatred toward those of us that do not follow their particular brand of religion in: "Why Church / State Separation is Crucial."

My response to Doug Hardt’s, "Attempting to Argue Responsibly - Holding Atheists and Theists to the Same Standard."

I ask the following unanswered questions of all good Christians:

1. Why is the majority of Christians silent when the government endorses their religion over all others?

2. Why is the majority of Christians silent whenever non-believers are harassed and terrorized by their fellow Christians?

All of the Christians I've met thought that they were good Christians and being a Christian place themselves on a higher standard. Even those Christians who go around harassing and terrorizing people in the name of their God think of themselves as good Christians. I do agree that there are good Christian people who are tolerant and do not push their brand of religion. For me that is more of an exception than the rule. Yet, many of these good and decent Christians are silent as their brothers and sisters in Christ demand that the government promote their brand of religion, ie., Christianity. Are the majority of Christians silent because they approve of the government endorsing their religion? I also see the majority of Christians silent when families are terrorized by their fellow Christians on separation of Church and State issues. Doug Hardt is an exception to the rule, where are all the rest of the good Christians that support a separation between government and religion?

I would like to add, those Christians who react with hatred toward non-believers, do so with the sincere belief they are carrying out Christ’s message. The Fundamentalist Islamic Taliban are just as sincere as the Christian, or even more so, for they believe in giving up their life in support of their religion and go straight to Heaven for carrying out the will God. However mislead the Taliban are, they are spiritual. How do decent law abiding citizens deal with such evil in religion? Does it do any good to point out to the Christian religious right who demand the government recognize their God over all the others gods, that such demands are contrary to freedom loving people? Christians who demand that their God be posted in public schools, publicly prayed to, displayed on U.S. currency and pledged upon by public school children, is ugly, intolerant and evil. Yet, all I see is silence from the Christians community whenever politicians promote the Christian God with public funds.

Doug Hardt says, "I have never met a spiritual person who was capable of violence (except possibly in self-defense)." Therein lies the problem. Religious people who carry out violence think of themselves as very spiritual. Christians who bomb abortion clinics and commit other acts of violence, do so, because they are "so very spiritual" and so full of their God. Christians like to think of Christianity as something that is good (while I admit there are good Christians) that is not always the case. Just being a Christian does not make someone good. Example:

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." (Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York Mariner Books, 1999, p. 65.)

"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter." Adolph Hitler, in a speech delivered April 12, 1922 Published in "My New Order"

"I am now as before a Catholic..." quotation from Hitler was recorded in the diary of Gerhard Engel, an SS Adjutant, in October 1941.

Hitler tried to convince the German people that he was doing God's work. Hitler, himself may have believed he was doing Gods work and also believed that Jesus died for his sins. Isn't that what Christianity is? Being a Christian did not make Hitler a decent person. Hitler was a Catholic Christian, but of course, there are those Christians that make the claim that Catholics are not real Christians. I am still trying to find out what a real Christian is. Who is the real Christian? Is it the Catholic, Mormon Missionary, Jehovah's Witness, the Once Saved Always Saved, or (you fill in the bland______). Could it be that they are all frauds?

" Do you not know that every religion in the world has declared every other religion a fraud? Yes, we all know it. That is the time all religions tell the truth -- each of the other." -- Robert Ingersoll, from a lecture titled "hereafter"

I think what Doug Hardt was describing was a decent person and not necessarily a spiritual person. Being religious, or being spiritual does not make a person a decent person. Are there some Atheists and non-believers that are not decent people? Of course, but I have not seen any non-believers claiming that a person must be an Atheist or a non-believer in order to be a decent person. Being religious or spiritual does not makes people better, people wanting to be better is what makes them better. People are just as good as they want to be, with or without religion and with or without spirituality.

A Meme

Meme: An element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation. Oxford English Dictionary

A question on the mind virus came up during the course of email exchanges, because I included a comment made by Donna Gore, that is on my Religion page about religion being a mental illness. Because many people do not understand the nature of a mind virus, or a meme, I am including a few comments on a meme. For those interested in getting a better understanding of the mind viruses should read: ViRUS OF THE MiND - The New Science of the Meme by Richard Brodie. And, yes, the link is a plug for the book. Also: Memes and Mass Delusion. Or, look at: Memetic Lexicon I list a couple of quotes from that page to further clarify the meme:

MEME: (pron. `meem') A contagious information pattern that replicates by symbiotically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic. (Wheelis, quoted in Hofstadter.)

MEME-COMPLEX: A set of mutually-assisting memes which have co-evolved a symbiotic relationship. Religious and political dogmas, social movements, artistic styles, traditions and customs, chain letters, paradigms, languages, etc. are meme-complexes. Also called an m-plex, or scheme (Hofstadter). Types of co-memes commonly found in a scheme are called the: bait; hook; threat; and vaccime. A successful scheme commonly has certain attributes: wide scope (a paradigm that explains much); opportunity for the carriers to participate and contribute; conviction of its self-evident truth (carries Authority); offers order and a sense of place, helping to stave off the dread of meaninglessness. (Wheelis, quoted by Hofstadter.)

Click here: For more on the Christianity Meme

I stand by Donna Gore’s description of religion as a mental illness. If I am going to be infected with a meme (virus of the mind) I want that meme to help me to think logically and apply some reason in my thinking process. Morality based on reason is by far superior to morality that is based on the superstitious emotion of religion. The sense of people helping one another is a basic human instinct and a principle that is/was practiced many places in the world without Christianity. Just as being Christian does not make a person good and decent, not being a Christian does not make a person bad, or cruel.

The Meme Machine The following is a quote from The Meme Machine:

"Christianity is a closed belief system that does not rely on any external references whatsoever in order to justify itself. The system only really works when you grow up with it and assume its teachings gradually. If you were to come across them in adult life, and took them on fresh you would probably be aware that they make no sense in pieces and only as a whole, most of the teachings make very poor logic."

The problem I see with religion is that it passes on mythical information from generation to generation that is believed as fact. What the believers take as fact from their religion just does not make any sense. For example: Virgin births, rising from the dead, living in the belly of a fish for three days and three nights, talking snakes, talking asses, talking to invisible beings (praying) and the sun standing still in the sky does not make any sense -- yet it is believed by millions of Christians as fact. People who talk to, or hear invisible beings talking to them are delusional and should be in a mental hospital, yet Christians who talk to, or hear invisible beings talk to them are considered sane. What is wrong with this picture? Millions of Christians constantly beg (pray) for special favors from their invisible friends (yes, three gods that are one). Yet, all that begging has not ended hunger, poverty, wars, or stopped any disasters (man made, or natural).

Did the Christian God simply evolve out of an earlier Hebrew myth?

Stele Showing the Storm-God Baal
Yahweh Secret ID
Theophany on the Mountain
The Origins of Biblical Monotheism
Genesis Of The Grail Kings

Was Yahweh a mythical Hebrew Storm God that evolved into the God that both the Jews and Christians worship today? The links above suggest that is the case.

It is easy for Christians to look at other religions of the world and see how myth plays a big part in the development of other religions. It is only when the Christian looks at his/her own religion that they no longer see that mythical origin of what they believe. Is it because a Christian can look at another world religion without emotion, applying reason in their thinking process? And, are Christians too emotional to analyze their own religion? Is the concept of the Christian God simply creative myth?

The quest for immortality has been going on ever since humans realized their own death is inevitable. The Boston Museum of Science web page on ancient Egyptian afterlife: Egyptian afterlife. I can not help but wonder how much of the basic ancient concepts of life after death is incorporated and passed into the modern Christian religion.

Religious Experience

Why do people experience religious visions? Could that just be a brain disorder? See: God on the Brain

Hiding Behind Reason?

That's a good one. I do find that Atheism presents a more logical explanation of the universe and an explanation that is based on reason. I don't hide behind reason -- I do try to live it. Am I always reasonable? Perhaps not, but when I find the error I try to correct it to one that makes sense.

Mankind has worshiped and believed in many gods throughout the ages. To believe in a God a person must first make the assumption that a God exists. I have seen no evidence that any God ever existed. The God/s never speak and always in need someone to tell the believers what the God is thinking. All the God/s come down to us from primitive peoples who depended on myth in order to try to understand the world around them. Is that what Doug Hardt calls hiding behind reason?

Why do I present religion (Christianity) as a superstition? Because that is what it is according to: Merriam-Webster OnLine - Dictionary. 1. a: a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation b: an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition. 2. : a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary. And what does the Merriam-Webster OnLine - Dictionary say about the supernatural? 1. : of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil. 2. a : departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature b : attributed to an invisible agent (as a ghost or spirit). I repeat, Christianity is nothing more than another superstition.

And, a person may ask, "What does all this ranting have to do with the separation between Church and State?"

The United States has a secular government, or at least it did have until the mid 1950's when God was inserted on the paper currency, and Children were forced to pledge to a God that no one can define. A great number of Christians in the United States continue mix politics with the majority religion and asking for special rights and privileges, forcing the government to pay for religious school vouchers, donate tax dollars to Christian charities (also, discriminating as they use those tax the dollars) and have their God posted in public schools. See example: RELIGIOUS "SPECIAL RIGHTS" LITIGATION SPREADS AS RLUIPA SURVIVES IN CIRCUIT COURT, or FFRF vs. Ashcroft - Freethought Today, August 2001.

As long as, Fundamentalist, Conservative (or, whatever they like to call themselves) Christian continue to force taxpayers to pay for religious beliefs against their will, I and others like me, will continue to point out the absurdities of the Christian religion. When a religion is forced into the government and onto the public, that is a religion that is no longer personal, it is public.

I still find morality based on reason is superior to morality based on superstition. Perhaps that has a lot to do with the wilderness environment in which I was raised. When living in and with nature -- nature does not care if a person is happy or sad, wealthy or poor, hungry or full, etc... People in a wilderness environment will help and care for each other to survive, or become the way of the dinosaur.

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