These pages are based in the United States
and are protected by the
1st Amendment.
Religions
These pages
discuss the popular world religions.
I believe in none of them.
Please read the atheism page introduction
for background to this.
- Religions
(and here
and here)
(Have you ever studied a religion other than the one you were brought up in?)
- Sam Harris
points out that everyone is an atheist about other gods and other religions.
"The faithful do resist the bogus certainties of religion
- when they come from any religion but their own.
Every Christian knows what it is like to find the claims of Muslims to be deeply suspect.
Everyone who is not a Mormon knows at a glance that
Mormonism is an obscenely stupid system of beliefs.
Everyone has rejected an infinite number of spurious claims about God.
The atheist simply rejects one more."
- List of deities
-
Isis, Nut, Ra, Osiris,
Zeus, Apollo, Gaia, Poseidon,
Cupid, Janus, Terra, Bacchus, Hercules, Luna, Nemesis,
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto,
Thor, Odin,
Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Ganesh, Kali, Krishna,
Baal,
Satan,
Yahweh,
Allah, God
- I don't believe in any of them.
"Now begins the 6th of the 28 stages of meta-generation for
Jessel, the Trifelge Putenard,
Ruler of Kosock and the Outerlands,
destroyer of the Nonsphere ..."
Adam Buxton
provides an alternative "Star Wars" commentary for the
inauguration of the
Pope.
If you don't believe in a religion, then pretty much all its solemn ceremonies
look as mad as this.
-
"Theology"
(and here
and here),
unlike every "-ology" in science,
is splintered into
a thousand incompatible camps,
with no findings at all
that are agreed upon by all practitioners.
Clearly the problem is that
unlike every "-ology" in science,
there is no mechanism for proving
something true or false.
- One strange consequence of the existence of "theology"
is the idea that scientists are speaking
"outside of their field of expertise"
when they discuss the existence of God.
But who is
qualified to
discuss the existence of God?
Scientists, who study reality
(and philosophers to some extent),
it seems to me.
I see no reason why "theologians" are so qualified.
-
The Emptiness of Theology
by Richard Dawkins
- "When has theology ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious?
I have listened to theologians, read them, debated against them. I have never heard any of them
ever say anything of the smallest use, anything that was not either platitudinously obvious
or downright false."
Islam (separate page)
Judaism (separate page)
Hinduism
Sikhism
- Sikhism
(and here)
- The play
Behzti ("Dishonour")
was cancelled after riots by Sikh extremists in Britain in 2004.
Terrorism works.
- Forced marriage in Sikhism
-
Shame, The Sunday Times, January 21, 2007
- The story of Jasvinder Sanghera and forced marriages among
traditional Sikhs in Britain.
- I'm not much of a respecter of "traditional culture".
"Traditional culture" just means
"the stuff your ancestors believed",
back when people knew far less about the world than they do now.
As I have said many times,
the best thing most people in the non-western world can do is
abandon the culture and beliefs of your ancestors, as I have,
and adopt something better.
- Jasvinder Sanghera
is eloquent on how PC westerners fail to stand up for the victims
of traditional cultures:
"We're in denial about this even being an issue.
But we have to start seeing this as a UK problem.
This PC culture we have created here is a nightmare.
Forced marriage isn't an issue of cultural understanding.
It's about people abusing other people. So why not face facts?
We know forced marriage happens across a number of communities,
but the figures tell us they are predominantly south Asian, so let's not get all PC about things.
It doesn't help."
Buddhism
The religions that have been invented recently
tend to be just as mad as the religions that were invented long ago.
The racist, anti-semitic
Nation of Islam
believes that whites were created by
a man called
"Yakub".
They believe that ... Oh for heaven's sake.
Who cares.
- Islam
- Nation of Islam
(and here)
- The racist
religious fundamentalist
Malcolm X
- The boxer Muhammad Ali
- The irony in Muhammad Ali's sad name change
sums up the inability of some American blacks
to criticise non-white abusers of blacks.
Muhammad Ali's very name sums up what is wrong with the Nation of Islam:
-
He was born Cassius Marcellus Clay,
named after the heroic white anti-slavery campaigner
Cassius Marcellus Clay.
- At age 21, he changed his name to "Muhammad Ali",
the same name as the
brutal Arab slave-owner and slave-trader of Sudanese blacks,
Muhammad Ali of Egypt
(also
here),
Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, and founder of modern Egypt.
"Muhammad Ali viewed the territory comprising Sudan as an extention of
water, land and resources, namely gold and slaves.
...
Muhammad Ali's administration captured slaves from the Nuba Mountains and west and south Sudan
...
Muhammad Ali's reign in Sudan and that of his descendants is known in Sudan
for its brutality and heavy-handedness."
"Until 1843 Muhammad Ali maintained a state monopoly on slave trading in Egypt and the pashalik."
"Muhammad had many male and female slaves.
He used to buy and sell them, but he purchased more slaves then he sold.
He once sold one black slave for two."
- So this black boxer
had the name of a white liberator of blacks,
and he changed it to the name of an Arab enslaver of blacks.
Muhammad Ali of Egypt
was the only famous person in the world called
"Muhammad Ali"
when the boxer adopted the name.
Did he not know?
Did he not care?
Is slavery of blacks ok so long as you are Arab?
Has he ever regretted adopting the name of a slaver?
Tell me here.
-
Still the greatest,
Al-Ahram Weekly Online, Egypt,
6-12 Dec 2001,
openly celebrates the fact that the boxer
abandoned the name of a slave-liberator
and adopted the name of a slave-trader:
"He renounced his slave connection,
and took the name of the great Muslim Albanian ruler of modern Egypt Muhammad Ali.
He changed the consciousness of his people. He raised their pride and dignity."
- The boxer said:
"Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn't choose it, and I didn't want it.
I am Muhammad Ali, a free name
- it means beloved of God - and I insist people use it when speaking to me and of me."
- Louis Farrakhan
- Killings by the Nation of Islam
- The Nation of Islam killed Malcolm X in 1965.
They killed many other members
they had a problem with.
- The Nation of Islam
drowned children in a sink
and shot their mothers
in 1973.
- The Zebra murders
(and here)
-
14 innocent white men and women were tortured and murdered in 1973-4 by
black racists from the Nation of Islam.
Not a "splinter group" either
(the Nation of Islam provided their defence lawyers).
Police suspect that 71 murder cases in that period may have been by this racist group.
- The Beltway sniper attacks, 2002
- 10 innocent people killed by a
Nation of Islam member.
- The snipers said:
"We will kill them all. Jihad ... Allah Akbar!"
"Our minarets are our bayonets, Our mosques are our barracks, Our believers are our soldiers."
"Islam. We will Resist. We will conquer. We will win."
Of the victims:
"They all died and they all deserved it. We will not stop.
This war will not end until you are all destroyed utterly."
-
And
CNN still claims it was nothing to do with Islam.
Would they cover for Christian killers like this?
Black racism and anti-semitism
Racism is racism, whether it comes from whites, blacks,
Arabs
or anyone else.
One of the side-effects of the successful campaign against
20th century white racism
has been a relative lack of interest in racism from non-whites,
even to the extent of
movies praising racists like Malcolm X.
This attitude is also notable in crime, where white crimes against blacks
seem to be publicised far more.
For example, compare the publicity given to
the vile killing of James Byrd
with
the vile killing of Ken Tillery.
As another example, there is (rightly) a movie about the
Ku Klux Klan killings in Mississippi,
but there is no movie about the Zebra killings
or, say, the racist
Yahweh Ben Yahweh killings.
Maybe there are good reasons to be selective like this.
But I wish people would just admit that they are being selective.
- White nationalism
(and here).
- Black nationalism,
its sister philosophy.
The Nation of Islam is for me no different to the
Ku Klux Klan.
-
Islam,
and racist "black power" ideas,
have had an unfortunate influence
in the black community in America.
One sad finding is that
blacks in America are far more likely to be anti-semitic than whites -
despite the huge and disproportionate
involvement of Jews in the history of black liberation.
This illustrates a sad law of unchanging human nature, that
hatred does not have to be based on reason.
Doing good for people won't make them like you.
- Rev. Al Sharpton
-
It is interesting that all the major riots by black Americans
have come in modern times
(since the 1960s),
when discrimination and poverty are far less than they were in the past.
It seems a universal truth
(see the history of Ireland for another example)
that revolutions happen not during times of oppression,
but rather during times when that oppression is lifted.
- And it need hardly be pointed out the irony that
the anger, hatred, racism and violence
in these riots
comes not from the respectable middle-class blacks who work for a living,
but rather from people who do not work, but live off the taxpayers' generosity.
This is true in cities throughout the West (independent of race).
The ones who hate the taxpayer the most are the ones who live off the taxpayer.
Again, doing good for people won't make them like you.
- And similarly, doing evil doesn't necessarily make
you unpopular.
Islamic countries are the main
slave traders of blacks in the world today,
but no one seems to care.
Xenu
- "In Scientology doctrine, Xenu is a galactic ruler who, 75 million years ago,
brought billions of people to Earth,
stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs."
It's not a joke.
They actually believe this.
Xenu as depicted in the
South Park episode
"Trapped in the Closet".
Click to play video.
-
The Church of Scientology
(also here)
- Introduction to the cult
- What makes the cult special is that its teachings are secret.
You have to pass through various stages
and pay large amounts of money before you can read them, and it protects these secrets using all the legal machinery at its disposal.
The "secrets" are nonsense of course,
and all this is a device to protect them from analysis and criticism.
Unfortunately for the cult, you can now save your money and read its teachings
at sites all over the world.
See here
or here.
- The basic summary of their world view is in
OT 3.
- The Fishman Affidavit
(and here)
- Scientology controversy
- Critics of Scientology
- Scientology and the legal system
-
Scientology beliefs and practices
- South Park
(and online)
- The cult
has recently been a threat to free speech on the Internet.
-
SCIENTOLOGY v. the INTERNET,
Skeptic vol. 3, no. 3, 1995.
-
The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power,
TIME magazine, 1991.
- The cult installs censorware for all its members.
This has been cracked.
Here is the
List of words and sites members cannot see.
- A Piece of Blue Sky
(also here)
is banned in the UK.
See here.
- In fact, the entire book is online
here
and
here.
- The Profit (2001),
a film that is banned in the US!
See here.
- Operation Clambake
or xenu.net and the cult's battles with:
-
Google "Scientology"
to see,
as with Islam,
how much trouble the cult is having with the
unstoppable
free speech of the Internet.
Anti-Scientology sites,
and sites publishing Scientology secrets,
are all over the top search results.
- Of course,
Christianity was once like this.
Click to read the forbidden secrets of the cult.
From here.
Close
So what are we to make of
the vast number of contradictory religions?
None has been able to persuade the whole world of its truth (or even a majority of the world).
We often focus on the large number of believers in a religion,
and forget about the much larger number of people who don't believe it.
4 billion people don't believe in Christianity.
5 billion people don't believe in Islam.
Science is not like this.
Science has prestige with everybody.
Religion only has prestige with those who believe that religion.
Tribal creation myths and polytheism have little prestige
among Christians.
Christians rarely realise that their myths look like that to atheists.
- The power of science's prestige is illustrated by the fact that
a number of irrational, unscientific religions
have tried to add "science" to their name:
Doesn't the sheer number of elaborate and contradictory belief systems
on this page
tell you something?
Even just within Christianity alone,
what would Christ make of this mess?
Surely it is obvious that all these religions are human inventions,
floating along without any standards of evidence that might knit them together.
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