Retort?

Keepin’ the Man Down… I mean the Woman…

The Vatican announced Thursday in a general decree that it will excommunicate anyone who would attempt to ordain a woman as a priest and the woman herself. Is this surprising? When Paul says that a woman should remain silent in the church (1 Corinthians 14:34-35), he means sit down and shut the hell up! What the hell do you know?!? You are a woman, created only after man and with the stain of being the first to succumb to temptation (even though Adam fell too ’cause he didn’t want to lose the only available “piece” that was around at the time…). When will you women learn? It is a MALE god, with a MALE son. Sure, he was born to a female…a female that was knocked up by a MALE “Holy Spirit!” (Actually, reading the story, sounded more like rape, but hey…) And the suppressive Catholic money machine moves on…

Charles Colson’s “The Faith”

As some of you already know, I have been approached by Zondervan books and asked to read Charles Colson’s book, “The Faith: What Christians Believe, Why they Believe it and Why it Matters.” First of all, let me start of that I think that it is pretty presumptive for Mr. Colson to try to encompass all Christians within the title. Not all Christians have the same beliefs, even when it comes down to core beliefs such as the role that the “Holy Spirit” plays in todays’ society. Read more

The Evolution of Religion

God may work in mysterious ways, but a simple computer program may explain how religion evolved

By distilling religious belief into a genetic predisposition to pass along unverifiable information, the program predicts that religion will flourish. However, religion only takes hold if non-believers help believers out – perhaps because they are impressed by their devotion. Read more

Book Reading And An Update

I am currently reading Charles Colson’s book “The Faith.” This was sent to me along with a request to read it and have a dialog with Charles about the book. I am looking forward to it.

A small update on the site. A few conversations get started on various topics here and I wanted to simplify personal dialogs on the site to make them more manageable for those involved in the conversation. From now on, you may comment to specific comments. That is to say that, like a forum board, comments can now be threaded. I know that there are some of you that will appreciate this a bit….(rival….)

Contest Winner: Tyler Clark

With a solid showing of 3.96 out of 5, Tyler Clark’s essay entitled “My Journey to Reason” is the winner of the book contest. I have already contacted Tyler to verify his address and congratulate him. Congrats, Tyler!

The Muslim Calendar

Although this blog is named “The Jesus Myth,” I like to discuss other “religions” as well.

One thing I find interesting about Islam is its calendar.

One would think the year ‘1′ in the Islamic calendar would coincide with a particularly noteworthy event — perhaps the most important event. After all, Christians date their calendar from the birth of Christ (or at least very close to it). One would think Islam would have year ‘1′ start at Muhommed’s birth (or death). Yet that is not the case.

In 622, when  Muhommed was more than fifty years old, he and his followers made the Hijra from Mecca to the oasis of Yathrib — later renamed Medina — some 200 miles to the north. He had already angered the pagan leaders of Mecca, and there had already been an attempt on Muhammad’s life. Muhammad had sent emissaries to Medina to ensure his welcome. He was accepted by the Medinan tribes as the leader of the Muslims and as arbiter of inter-tribal disputes.

Shortly before Muhammad fled the hostility of Mecca, a new batch of Muslim converts pledged their loyalty to him on a hill outside Mecca called Aqaba. Sira p208 conveys the significance of this event:

Sira, p208: When God gave permission to his Apostle to fight, the second {oath of allegiance at} Aqaba contained conditions involving war which were not in the first act of fealty. Now they {Muhammad’s followers} bound themselves to war against all and sundry for God and his Apostle, while he promised them for faithful service thus the reward of paradise.

That Muhammad’s nascent religion underwent a significant change at this point is plain. The scholarly Ishaq clearly intends to impress on his (Muslim) readers that, while in its early years, Islam was a relatively tolerant creed that would “endure insult and forgive the ignorant,” Allah soon required Muslims “to war against all and sundry for God and his Apostle.” The Islamic calendar testifies to the paramouncy of the Hijra by setting year one from the date of its occurrence. The year of the Hijra, 622 AD, is considered more significant than the year of Muhammad’s birth or death or that of the first Quranic revelation because Islam is first and foremost a political-military enterprise. It was only when Muhammad left Mecca with his paramilitary band that Islam achieved its proper political-military articulation. The years of the Islamic calendar (which employs lunar months) are designated in English “AH” or “After Hijra.”

This only underscores the primacy of violence in Islam.

Of course, your Islam apologists would, yet again, complain that we’re reading a “translation” and that the only true Quoran (or Haddith, or whatever) is Arabic and that we must only talk about the Arabic version.

What’s absurd about that claim is that the vast, vast majority of Muslims don’t read Arabic at all. So I guess all those Muslims aren’t real Muslims.

I don’t think I need to speak fluent German in order to understand “Mein Kampf.” Any idiot could translate that book into English, and I’d have a pretty good idea how sad Hitler’s brain was.

It is time for the human race to move beyond this kind of superstitious nonsense, this root of intolerance, bigotry, racism and genocide.

Contest Update 3

We are approaching the final stretch! At 8:00 PM CST, all entries will be automatically published. Find all the entries and info on how to cast YOUR vote here.

Contest Update

With one day left to go, the response to our book contest has been great! (I would like to thank those that linked to the contest: Pharyngula, Debunking Christianity and a host of others that I simply must add to the blogroll.)

The contest section that we are building for this contest (and the others that may come down the pipe) will have a healthy dose of reading material for you to digest over the next couple of days. I will not be publishing the entries until tomorrow night so that all entries have a fair shot at the voting process. All will be posted at the same time and voting on all will end at the same time. I plan on posting them all at 20:00 CST May 6. Voting will end on Sunday, May 11 at 20:00 CST. Good Luck and fill up that inbox!! The address once again is bookcontest@thejesusmyth.com.

For Your Consideration

We have the ability to turn TJM into a sort of MySpace social network for atheists. This would mean that you could have a yourname.thejesusmyth.com address with the ability to have a blog, add friends and so on. Anyone up for this?

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