The evangelist door-knockers will, if you don't slam the door in their faces first, eventually get around to the old adage, "If you pray to God with an open heart he will show himself to you." The words might differ slightly, but the sentiment is the same. If you really want to believe in God, God will help you to believe.

Bullshit.

If God existed, I would really want to believe in him, but right now, if he's out there, he's doing sod all to convince me.

Do Christians not realise that anyone, and certainly all the atheists I know, would believe in God if there was evidence that he existed? I would. I would love to know. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't it be an amazing thing? Getting past all the terrible things God does in the Bible, knowing that God exists would just be a mind-blowing experience, wouldn't it?

But that's the problem. When I say I want to believe in God, I don't want to believe in him without evidence. My head isn't wired like that. I can't do it. I can't take anyone's word for it and just accept it, without some hard facts. Faith isn't good enough. I want proof. Why is that such an unreasonable request?

I believe in a lot of things, of course. I believe that the Sun is about 150 million kilometers away. I haven't measured the distance myself, but I read it in a book so I trust the people who tell me that that's how far from the Earth our Sun is. But that isn't faith. The fact that I personally have not made the measurement does not mean I believe something without evidence. The evidence is certainly available, and I know if I had the right skills and apparatus I could verify the distance, if I wanted to.

Those nice Mormons who keep visiting me gave me this example: when you go to start your car, you believe that there's an engine inside that will make it go when you turn the key. They were convinced that this kind of belief was the same kind of belief that they have that God exists. It isn't. I believe my car will start based on a body of evidence, namely that the hundreds of times I've tried to drive it in the past, it started. Therefore it would be unreasonable of me to believe that any other outcome would follow the next time I tried to turn the key in the ignition.

This kind of evidence is used by scientists all the time. You can never, ever, prove something by repeating the same experiment over and over again. If an experiment gives the same result a million times over, that does not prove that result million-and-one will follow. However, with a million positive results you have a strong body of evidence to assert that the result, whatever it is, 'always' (strictly in inverted commas) follows, given the same conditions. That's proof enough, and you don't need faith to believe that the next experiment will give the same result.

Faith is belief in something without evidence. But that's not good enough for me to believe in something, and to be honest I have no idea why it's good enough for anyone when they are talking about their religious beliefs. How can anyone simply accept such wild, fantastic stories, without any hard, tangible evidence whatsoever? I say 'tangible' because of course there is a book, called the Bible, which Christians will wave around and tell you contains all the evidence they need that Jesus was the son of God and died for our sins. And yet, I have a book called 'Mexico and Peru - Myths and Legends' which says that my sins will be eaten by Tlazolteotl, God of Ordure (ie excrement), aka 'the Eater of Filth'. Should I believe in the God of Love, or have faith in the God of Shit? The evidence that either is a real god is precisely zero, so I believe in neither.

Tangible evidence is something you could look at and say, "Without a shadow of a doubt, that is evidence for God's existence". And I would believe it. I promise you.

Which leads me on to a final point. Some Christians will say that atheists do actually believe in God but that they deny it. But how stupid would that be? Do you really, truly think that if I believed that some all-powerful being which could send me to burn in a fiery pit for billions of years really existed I would do anything to piss him off? I don't think so. If someone held a gun to my head and threatened to pull the trigger, believe it or not I would be scared. And I would strongly believe that the threat was a real one, given the close proximity of a loaded weapon as evidence.

Christianity's version of God does the same thing to its believers. The threat of an eternity in Hell is very real to many people, and some are genuinely terrified, so much so that it reduces their quality of life considerably. Living in perpetual fear does tend to have that effect. But fear of Hell is not something I have ever experienced, because I simply don't believe it exists. I don't believe God exists. I have no faith in God, because belief without evidence is not something around which I am able to base my life.

I am unable to believe in God, but if God exists I promise you that I want to believe in him. If he exists, it would perhaps explain why so many people believe in him, but would also leave me with the burning question: why did God turn me into an atheist? I'll let you know the answer if I ever get a chance to ask him, but don't wait up for my call. And I certainly won't be waiting up for God to call to me.

A wise man once said, "If there's a design there must be a designer. If there's a creation there must be a creator." Actually he wasn't all that wise, those are the teachings of Kirk Cameron and friends, inventor of the 'atheist's nightmare', aka 'bananas prove God' silliness.

However, what he says is true. If something has been designed, it has to have had a designer. Obviously. So that's God proven, and we can all go home, right? Of course not, because the whole argument is nonsense. You are not proving anything here, nothing at all. You are merely giving a definition for a word. Of course a design must have a designer, because that is the nature of a design. It's something which has been designed by someone, and someone who designs things is, by definition, given the name 'designer'. Similarly, use the words 'creation' and 'creator' in the same way.

So the question, the argument, or the 'proof' that there must be a designer (in this case God) is nonsense, because it assumes that we have established, indeed proven, that what we are talking about (the universe) is actually something which falls under the category of 'design', or 'creation'.

At no time do those who use this argument attempt to justify their claim that the universe was designed. They start from the unproven base point that the universe was designed. It just was. No debate, no justification. That's what they assume. Incorrectly assume, of course.

But how much design went into universe? We can look at its beauty, look at the stars and the galaxies, and imagine that someone put them all there in a visually pleasing arrangement, but that's all we are doing, imagining. The fact that galaxies form certain patterns is fascinating, but it isn't evidence of design. It's evidence that the laws of physics are acting upon the contents of space, matter, energy, and all the building-blocks of the cosmos, and at a particular place in the universe a galaxy formed, according to those laws.

If this is design, then are we saying that if I throw a handful of sand into the air, the particular pattern its millions of grains of sand leaves was purposefully designed by me? Did I know how those grains would fall to the ground? Was I ever able to influence their final positions? No, because all I did was set the sand in motion, and the laws of physics took over and led to the final pattern at my feet.

This is not design. However, it is an example of cause and effect. Without the cause, ie the fact that I picked up the sand and threw it, there would be no effect, in this case a scattering of the sand on the floor. Going back to the universe, we can now apply 'cause and effect' to everything we see, rather than 'design equals designer'. The universe exists (we know that because we can see quite a lot of it), so we have an 'effect', namely 'the universe got to be the way it is'. So the big, big, big question is, naturally, how? Or in other words, what is the cause? What put in motion something so huge that the end result was our universe?

Science says 'the Big Bang', and has a substantial amount of solid evidence to back up that rather large claim. Christianity, and indeed Judaism, says, 'God did it', and offers a couple of lines in Genesis to make its case, along with many intellectual arguments, essentially all of them faith-based, with no backing from hard, scientific evidence whatsoever.

Lack of solid evidence for God's involvement aside, is this proof that God was the designer of the universe? No, because if God created the universe, he used the Big Bang to do it. We know that, because the science behind the Big Bang Theory (reminder: in science, theory = explanation) is so solid and all-encompassing. If anything, the Big Bang was the most cataclysmic 'throwing of sand' possible. All energy and matter expanded from a single point at tremendous speed, and after approximately 14 billions years it all ended up where it is now... although I've missed out a few details there, naturally!

At best, this is a deist version of God, setting the process in motion but having no further influence on events. Such a God did not sit down and design anything, and certainly did not have a plan in mind. Did God, a supernatural being, cause the Big Bang? We don't know. Did 10,000 supernatural beings cause the Big Bang. Equally, we don't know. What then gave rise to the Big Bang. Again, we simply do not know.

The universe happened. We know that because we live in it. And although we don't know why it came about, we do know a lot about what happened once things had been set in motion. We know that the universe was not designed. We therefore know that there was no designer. The universe as we see it was not created 'as is', so there was no creator. We cannot prove that God, or a team of gods, or a hive-collective of Borg-like beings did or did not set the universe in motion, 14 billion years ago. So the nonsense statements from people like Kirk Cameron, that a banana is evidence of God's wonderful design skills, or that creation must have a creator, are just that - nonsense. These people never at any point attempt to prove that 'creation', as they call, it was actually created. They just say it was, and hope you didn't notice. They have no proof, no evidence, no argument. No chance.

We all know that if atheists get into a debate with Christians it will eventually boil down to this: we're more moral, no we are, but evolution sucks, no it doesn't, yes it does, there is all this evidence for it, yeah but you'll burn in Hell, no we won't... etc. We are diametrically opposed in our opinions and beliefs. We will never agree, but we still argue our corner because we feel we're right and the alternative is wrong.

So why don't you ever see debates with Christians forcing their beliefs onto other Christians? Of course what I mean is other Christians who, okay, believe in God and Jesus, but don't believe in all the things that some other Christian denominations do.

Let's take the classic examples: the age of the Earth, the Flood story, and Hell. And, why not, let's add in evolution for good measure.

When was the last time you saw, heard about, or read, an article where a Christian attacked the views of someone who believes in the literal, 6-day creation story, and that the Earth is only 6000 years old? Many Christians, indeed most Christians don't believe that this is how our planet and our universe came about. Plenty of fundies will insist that this is true, and plenty of atheists will say it's not. But I've never seen a debate where 'moderate' Christians put themselves forward and said 'well actually, I'm a Christian and I think that you, Mr Fundie, are dead wrong about that.'

The Flood story. Nobody believes the Flood story, or at least nobody should take it as a credible, literal story of a world-wide deluge, coupled with a rescue plan for every species on the planet. It's a folk tale. It simply cannot be true. But how many Christians do you see complaining about the stupidity of the Creationist Museum and their portrayal of the Flood, and their insistence that dinosaurs went onto the ark? The majority of Christians don't believe that, so why don't they speak out and say so?

Hell is something that most Christians probably believe in, but which version of Hell are we talking about here? Is Hell a cold place or a hot place? Are you burned forever in flames, or are you merely 'separated from God'? Plenty of Christians disagree with the fundamentalists, who say that you have practically no chance at all of escaping the fire unless you sing to Jesus 10 times a day and wave your hands in the air like you just don't care. So it's not just what Hell is that is different, it's how you get there, or indeed avoid getting there.

And as for evolution, well the Pope believes in evolution, and a billion Catholics can't be wrong can they? Actually, thousands of Baptists might not share that view. But even if they say they disagree, will anyone high up in the Catholic Church stand up and declare, 'Baptists (and assorted others), you are wrong, and because you are wrong you cannot be truly Christian'?

The answer is no, and it's the same answer to all of these questions. Few Christians will go on record to denounce the differing beliefs of other Christians. But why not?

Here's why: most Christians, like most atheists, just want a quiet life. They want to believe what they want, pray how they want, worship how they want, without getting into the bitter fighting which creates the 'atheist versus Christian' headlines. Most Christians are okay with other Christians... the belief in Jesus and God is all that matters and so long as you're not one of them there atheist low-lifes, you can just get on with it. Yes, they will lay into you if you're an atheist. They will condemn you, tell you you're immoral, criticise you for not believing in their one true God. But if you do believe in God, that's okay. The details are not important.

Surely this is a ridiculous position to take. If you are someone who will look down your nose at an atheist, shouldn't you also be deriding Christians who choose to believe that certain sections of the Bible don't apply, or should be interpreted differently? If two Christians believe in different things, then at least one of those Christians is wrong. One (or both) of those Christians has put their faith in something and that faith is misplaced, and of course each believe it is the other one who is in the wrong. Shouldn't they be chastising each other for being so wrong, for going against some of the teachings of the Bible?

Look up 'places of worship' in your local yellow pages and see how many different types of church you can find. The reason there are so many different denominations is that they all worship differently, all believe slightly, or sometimes radically, different things. But there are no books by Baptists called 'The Methodist Delusion', no 'Lutheranism Is Not Great' written by disgruntled Presbyterians. None of that. In general, Christians of different denominations, with a broad spectrum of beliefs, go about their business and get along just fine.

So why is there such a huge conflict between atheists and Christians, when in fact there are so many different versions of Christianity that they should all be telling each other 'we're right and you're wrong'? By definition, at best all but one of the many denominations of Christianity cannot be correct. If this is the case, why criticise atheists for not believing, when most other Christians don't believe every passage in the Bible means the same thing to every Christian?

Fundies, if you want to pick an argument please tell other Christians that they aren't actually real Christians. Oh that's right, they already do. This article does not apply to fundamentalists. Those nut-jobs will pick a fight with anybody. As will atheists of course, but with good reason - we have religion rammed down our throats all the time by Christian do-gooders who won't leave us alone and can't work out that we just don't want to know. Atheists are trying to stop religion being forced onto us.

We'd all be a lot happier if religion was less intrusive into other people's lives. If the early-morning God Squad stopped knocking on the door, we wouldn't complain. By contrast, when was the last time an atheist approached you, or came to your house uninvited, and offered to share a message of non-belief with you?

If people want 'no sex before marriage' that's fine, but we don't want them pushing that belief onto those who don't go to their church. And atheists would stop criticising religion if the religious stopped criticising us for not believing it. But meanwhile, we'd all appreciate some fair play here. Christians, please go to one of the other churches in your area, fling open the doors, and tell everyone inside that they are wrong to believe what they do. When you realise why this is exactly analogous to telling atheists we are wrong to believe what we do, maybe you'll understand why atheists have to constantly defend our position, when all we really want to do is live and let live and completely ignore any and all religions.

Sometimes only a few words are enough to give you a sense of what I feel about people such as the head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique, who recently had this to say about condoms:

"Condoms are not sure because I know that there are two countries in Europe, they are making condoms with the virus on purpose," he alleged, refusing to name the countries.

Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected "in order to finish quickly the African people".

My three word opinion of this man? The first thing that came to my head while I was reading the story, reported by the BBC, was, "You fucking twat". And I'd gladly say that to his face. Cretins like this are the reason that people don't use condoms, then because they still want sex, and still have sex, they are unprotected, and infect each other. More people are dead because of the Catholic Church's stubborn refusal to accept that it is human nature to fuck when they feel like it - abstinence programs DO NOT WORK, and if the Church is saying that condoms are wrong, that leaves horny young people with time on their hands ready to risk their lives, just because the Pope says so.

Okay, tell people that abstinence is the only sure way to avoid catching sexually transmitted diseases, but have some common sense: tell them that if they must have sex, to use a condom. However the Catholic doctrine is that condoms are totally forbidden... which just leaves the strong urge to have sex, competing with the ability to abstain when you're feeling frisky, because God says so. I know which urge I'd put my money on to win every time.

But this is worse. This man is actually putting the blame on the condom manufacturers themselves, accusing the very companies whose products would help to prevent the spread of the disease, saying that they are intentionally infecting their own condoms with the HIV virus.

The claim is of course ludicrous. Even if you tried to do what this idiotic Catholic moron claims, the virus would not live outside the human body for anywhere near long enough for it to be able to survive the manufacturing process, be taken from the factory, transported overseas (he said these were foreign condoms), be distributed to local retailers, be bought by the person using them, hang around in their box/packet for further hours if not days, and then somehow, miraculously, still be a live, infectious virus when used during sex. Total madness.

Archbishop Francisco Chimoio, in case you missed it the first time, you're a fucking twat. Or at least you would be if you weren't celibate.

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Links:
Shock at archbishop condom claim (BBC)
Mozambique's fear-monger (LA Times)

You think religion is weird? No, this is weird:

Click to see the weirdest book title ever

And okay the title is weird enough, but just read the description. Then look at the price. I'm in the wrong business! Then, when you think you've seen it all, click here and here and here.

All by the same author, and every one's a winner! Weird!

The Bible does not contradict itself. Well of course it does, but then Christian apologists have all kinds of sneaky tricks up their sleeves to explain away the discrepancies within the pages of the Bible. What Christians don't seem to realise, and what BryanAJParry picks up on in the video below, is that many, many books were left out of the Bible when it was being put together, purely and simply because they contradicted the core message the early Church was trying to cobble together.

You can easily get 100% of people to agree on something if you exclude those people who do not agree, which is what happened when the various Christian bishops got together and decided which books would go into the Bible and which would be left out.

Why does the God described in the Bible kill so many people (around 2.7 million, plus the entire population of the world minus 8, during the Flood)? Would a good God do such a thing?

The answer to this question is fairly simple. Let's set out the steps involved in reaching the answer:

• Christians will tell atheists that 'morals come from the Bible, and if they didn't, we'd all be murderers'. What this means is that Christians say that they only behave because the Bible tells them to do so. Without God's word we would all be raping and murdering each other. Newsflash: I'm and atheist and I haven't killed anyone. Yet.

• What re-inforces these guidelines is the ultimate punishment - burning in hell forever. If you do bad things (and even if you don't) and don't accept Jesus into your life, you will be pitched into the fire and tortured for all eternity. As deterrents go, it's a good one, and many, many Christians are deeply traumatised, even paralysed, by the fear that this part of their belief system puts into their heads.

• There are no consequences for God. He is the highest power. Nobody can tell him what to do. Nobody can call him to account for his actions. He can do what he likes and without fear that he will be punished until the end of time. So like Caligula, Hitler, and the many other supreme rulers whose power is absolute, he does. The God of the Bible kills people, and orders others to kill for him. Anyone who doesn't bow down to his will is punished.

Christians do not believe that the God of their Bible is evil, yet if you put him up against the most sadistic butchers and genocidal maniacs in history, he would rule the roost. You can't get Christians to understand this concept of course, because to them God is different. We shouldn't try to justify God's actions, because he makes the rules, and apparently by comparing ourselves to him we are missing the point. At least that's what all the fundies to whom I've ever put this description of God have told me. God is God and you can't question him because that's the way it is.

No, I don't understand it either.

What this is saying is the classic 'do as I say, not as I do'. Rather than lead by example, the Christian God does not even try to set a good example. Rules are rules. Orders are orders. Do as you're told and you won't get hurt. Worship him or burn. But God can do what he likes. Always has, always will.

Parents can be like that of course, and the same fundies mentioned above are adamant that this is the correct analogy: you would tell a child to do something that you would not necessarily do yourself. Maybe tell them not to play with matches, for their own protection. Or don't say naughty words, even though as an adult you might let out the odd 'fuck' or 'shit'.

But these two examples, and others like them, are part of a child's education. They don't know what matches are, what fire can really do if it gets out of control, so the little sticks with the red blob on the end need to be put off limits until their minds can comprehend many more things. And bad language? I personally say the word 'fuck' as many times as I can fit it into my day... but not when I'm on the phone to my mother, or in a shop, or at a bank. There's a time and a place for such language, so kids need to be told that certain words are 'bad' because otherwise when grandma comes to visit and gives them a dry, wrinkly kiss, your sweet child will say, 'can I have some fucking chocolate now?'.

So can we look at God in the same way? Is this a father and child relationship, with him up there the Dad, and us down here his innocent, wide-eyed offspring? Hardly. If your children didn't do what you said would you bury them under tons of rubble, reminiscent of the damage caused by an earthquake? Would you drown your little boy because he refused to kneel before you and praise you daily? If your teenage girl got pregnant while still at school would you take her by the hair and suspend her over a well-stoked fire for a million years?

The fact that those punishments seem to be inhuman is exactly the point. They are inhuman. No sane human would do that kind of thing. Those are the types of punishments only a madman or a non-human would carry out. Non-human? Maybe something like a god, perhaps. The God of the Bible. Invented by humans, but perhaps the most inhuman and inhumane concept in the history of human imagination. And this is what Christians believe is the best role model for our world.

You can keep your evil God fantasies. I'll stick with the tooth fairy. At least she doesn't pull out your molars and stick rusty pins in your gums if you don't pray to her. At least I hope not.

You couldn't make this stuff up. You really really need religion to generate stories like this one.

The Indian government has withdrawn a controversial report submitted in court earlier this week which questioned the existence of the Hindu god Ram.

The report was presented to the Supreme Court on Wednesday in connection with a case against a proposed shipping canal project between India and Sri Lanka.

Hindu hardliners say the project will destroy what they say is a bridge built by Ram and his army of monkeys.

Read that again. People, real people, living in the 21st century, believe that a bridge was built by the god Ram and his army of monkeys. An army of fucking monkeys. And they actually believe this shit, and have forced the government of India, the most populous democracy in the world, to back down over it.

Worried about the adverse reaction from the majority Hindu population of the country, the Congress Party-led government has now done a U-turn and withdrawn the statement submitted in court.

Even Christianity doesn't have stories as stupid as this one. That is, if you forget about Noah's Ark. And Jonah and the whale. Oh and the talking snake... okay I give up. They're all just as bad as each other.

Link to the full article

It's Ramadan again, and during this holy month of Islam, Muslims are required to abstain from food, drink, smoking and sex from dawn until dusk. Since Ramadan moves backwards by several days each year, it now falls during early autumn (in the northern hemisphere at least), which means that over the years the daylight hours during Ramadan will be longer and longer. So Muslim tummy rumbles will get bigger and bigger as the years pass by.

Right now, if you're a Muslim in London, England, today's dawn was at 5:59 am and dusk is at 7:52 pm. That's almost 14 hours without food or drink. Unfortunately for Muslims, the further away from the equator you travel, the more extreme are the boundaries between daylight and night, so in Reykjavik, Iceland, the world's most northerly capital city, the Ramadan fast lasts for almost 15 hours (5:57 am to 8:47 pm).

And that's just when Ramadan falls in autumn. When Ramadan drifts back towards June, Muslims are in big trouble. In London, mid-June, dawn begins at around 4:00 am and dusk doesn't roll around until about 10:00 pm! They are allowed to have breakfast, but only before dawn, which means getting up in the middle of the night, and then waiting until after 10 pm, before they can even have a sip of water. Madness. Any cheating, for example by sneaking a pork pie into a darkened room, is strictly forbidden (for a multitude of reasons).

But it gets worse, much worse, because those Muslims daft enough to follow the rules to the letter in Reykjavik will probably give themselves some serious medical problems. For one thing, in June there is no dusk in Reykjavik, and no dawn either. Yes the sun does set, but light is still visible, therefore no dawn/dusk. Since the rule is 'dawn to dusk', Muslims shouldn't eat for the whole 24 hours. Even if you take the sunrise/sunset times you'll find that Icelandic Muslims must fast between the hours of 3am and midnight. No food or water for 21 hours, each and every day, for a whole month.

Further north? Forget it. In Murmansk, Russia, the sun doesn't set at all in June. If you are a Muslim in northern Russia you would have to stop eating and drinking permanently for the entire month of Ramadan. You would, in fact, die.

More evidence (if it were needed) that God, in this case Allah, doesn't exist: if he was up there he'd have known that there would be technical problems with the dawn/dusk rule in certain parts of the world. Just more evidence of the arbitrary and ridiculous rules of crackpot religions. If you're a northern Muslim, do yourself a favour when Ramadan moves back into June - book a 4-week vacation in Florida. I'm sure the American people would love to see you all.

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Links:
Gaisma - Sunrise, sunset, dawn and dusk times around the World
The World's most northern

Another day, another Christian group censoring free speech. This time the incredibly stupid creationist Kent Hovind, who is still in jail, has managed to get his followers on the outside, a group called 'Creation Science Evangelism', to fraudulently force the take-down of every single video on YouTube which criticises Hovind.

Link to a sample video removed by CSE

This has meant that not only are the videos gone, but some people have had their accounts removed for having those videos on their accounts. Most notable are RabidApe, RichardDawkinsNet and the Rational Response Squad (RationalResponse). RRS's account had only recently been falsely taken down by Uri Geller, in a similar way.

What makes this all the more egregious (hey, first time I ever wrote that word!) is that in his videos Kent Hovind always made it absolutely clear that none of his material was copyrighted:

Of course his intention was that Christians would pass it around among themselves, but if you make something public domain you can't add that kind of restriction. You also can't take it back.

Creation Science Evangelism have tried to do exactly that. They are now saying that the videos are copyright, that those who post extracts from them have infringed that copyright, and their DMCA notices to YouTube have led to mass removals of any video even using still pictures and tiny clips of Hovind.

Point of fact: even if the videos were fully protected by copyright, fair use laws say that you can use short extracts for purposes of parody and criticism. Most of the videos removed do exactly that.

Of course this is all totally illegal and the fight is on. The Rational Response Squad is preparing to help sue Creation Science Evangelism. Click here for more detailed information about what has happened and the fight to restore sanity to the situation, and/or watch this video:

Message to Kent Hovind and Creation Science Evangelism: you are not getting away with this.

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Footnote:
Damn, the scale of this is worse than I realised. If you go to YouTube and search for 'Hovind' (or click here) then click on many of the obviously anti-Hovind links, they have virtually all been removed by CSE. Here's one that escaped the cut (for now):

You might also note that there many of Hovind's lectures still available on YouTube, ie ones without criticism, so promoting his message. Strange that CSE didn't decide that they too were violations of their copyright isn't it?

On Monday and Tuesday of this week I stumbled on a live-video church meeting - Stickam in its wisdom had decided to throw up a link to a particularly reprehensible set of people who gather under the name of Raven Ministries. Information about them and links to their site/services are given at the end of this post.

I spent quite a lot of time watching and listening what they were teaching, and also talking via text to some of the other people watching. Following each of the two 'lessons', one of which was a full blown evangelical service (including hand-waving, Bible-brandishing and speaking in tongues - the full nine yards), I asked the host pastor some searching questions. I explained I was an atheist, but he still decided to provide me with answers. I always thinks it's a mistake for them to do that, but his prejudices, instilled in him by his religion, were clearly close to the surface, so I had no trouble at all getting him to admit the hateful things I describe here.

The content of the shows, and the answers themselves, has led me to write this open letter to Raven Ministries:

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Dear Raven Ministries

I spoke to you for a couple of days, on Stickam, as Gisburne20000, and learned all I needed to learn about your ministry. My conclusion is that without doubt your church is one of the most morally bankrupt organisations I have had the displeasure to encounter in all my time investigating the various forms of religion.

The prime example of why this is so was the woman (I believe it was a woman, though I didn't make a note of her screen name), who explained that she had problems in her life and then found help with those problems by her faith in Jesus. We (there were other atheists there, some of whom I know personally) asked her one or two questions about what those problems might be. It turned out that her deepest fear, the root cause of all her problems, was that she feared that she might go to Hell.

That sickens me, it really does, because it means that it his her belief in the myths of the Bible which has caused her this distress, only for those same beliefs, in her mind, to come to the rescue, to hold out a solution to her ills. Without Christianity she would in fact have no such problems, and have no need for spiritual help. You will not, of course, see it from that point of view. You won't see that this is as if you had offered her a cure for a fatal disease... just after you injected her with the disease in the first place. Without you, and people like you, there would be no disease, no Christian disease, to infect people's minds. If she did not fear Hell, she would not need Jesus.

The contempt I have for your teaching stems from your basic belief, namely that every human on the planet is guilty, tainted at birth by sin. A new-born baby, popping its head out into the world for the first time is, to you, damaged goods, rotten to the core, a dirty child full of sin. Not potentially a sinner. Already a sinner, already bad.

No doubt you bring up your children to believe that they are inherently broken, and that Jesus can 'fix' them. There are no morals in that, at least no positive morals that I can find. What you are teaching your children is a form of slavery, that nothing they will ever do will be worthy, that every day they cannot but do wrong things, because that is the way it is, and that the only way out is to pray, as a servant, as a SLAVE, to their lord and master. They can only be helped by giving up their freedom, and becoming mindless sheep, herded towards God by helpful ministers in churches such as Raven Ministries.

There are people in this world who do not share your beliefs, and it might surprise you to realise that I am not necessarily talking about atheists. I've spoken to many people, atheists and Christians alike, most of whom understand that a child is born with a clean slate, and that what they do in life is what is important, not what some mythical fruit eater is supposed to have done 6000 years ago, or in whatever time period you place the 'talking snake incident'.

All the questions I put to you were not just random thoughts I had on the spur of the moment. They were designed to make you show your true colours, to put your personal prejudices on the surface. They revealed what you are, because if it's your belief that God wants you to deliver those answers, it's my assertion that you are the one hiding behind 'God's word' and giving your own personal opinion. You can say it's God's word if you like, but if you agree with it, you are of the same opinion.

So you, personally, feel that millions of Jews should be burned for all eternity in hell fire, simply because they do not accept Jesus into their lives. This despite the fact that Jews believe in the same God, and that the Old Testament is a big part of their religion as well as yours. I asked you if God was justified in sending the millions of Jews in Hitler's Holocaust to Hell to be burned forever. You maintained that he was.

You, personally, believe that homosexuality is unacceptable. You cannot accept a homosexual who does not repent of this so-called sin. By extension, if God will burn homosexuals in eternal fire, it is your opinion that this is not only acceptable but that it is a just and fair punishment.

I could go on, but your list of prejudices truly sickens me. From talking to others who share your views, I know that they, and you, will routinely say that 'this is not MY opinion, it's God's opinion. But such an answer is only valid if you can tell me that you disagree with your God. What do YOU think should happen to homosexuals when they die? What do YOU think should happen to unrepentant atheists, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and other religions?

You cannot say that you have no opinion, because you do. If you say that you 'do not know' if the Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust should be eternally tormented or not, why do you not know? Because you haven't thought about it? But if I asked you if sticking pins into a cat's eyes for fun was right, would you have an opinion, immediately, despite never even considering the question before? Of course you would. So you DO have an opinion about the torture of non-Christians.

If you agree with God, then by extension that becomes YOUR opinion. If you disagree with your God... well, that leads you into interesting territory doesn't it? But of course you don't disagree. Your opinions exactly match those of your God, do they not? You believe that non-Christians should be burned forever. YOU believe that, because you believe that what God does is right, always. Have the courage to stand up and say, 'Jews and gays should be tortured in Hell'. I doubt that you will, but inside you know that that is what you feel is right, because you know it's what your God feels is right. And you agree with your God... right?

One more question to consider is this: if you went to Heaven, as you no doubt hope and believe you will, and God gave you the job of hurling Jews and homosexuals into Hell to be tortured forever, would you do it?

I think you would. And if you are a person who would do such a thing, you are immoral to the core, and do not deserve any more of my time. THIS is why I contend that your faith has no morals. Yours is a religion of fear, shown clearly by the woman I mentioned earlier, whose only real problem is that fear of eternal punishment has gripped her life. You, and your ministry, have planted that fear into her mind, before seducing her with the tantalising thought that if only she takes her medicine, prayer to your God, you can lead her to the cure. Your religion is her drug. You have a church of spritual addicts, my friend, junkies for Jesus.

The cure for the woman's fear of Hell is straightforward enough: she simply has to accept that God is not real, that Hell does not exist, and that when she dies she will encounter exactly what she experienced before she was born: nothing. Her alternative is to spend her life in paraonoia, constantly feeling that she is being watched, her every movement, thought and action scrutinised, weighed and judged... or so you tell her. No wonder churches like yours are full of people with problems. They are problems of your making.

However this has been a good experience for me, a turning point. Before today I doubted that I needed to continue to talk about atheism. Even before I wrote this letter to you, I had closed down this web site and my Stickam account, both of which I used to communicate with and help other atheists, and those losing their faith and in need of reassurance that disbelief in a supernatural being was not a bad thing.

In the last year I have received maybe 30 or 40 emails from people explaining how my videos, my book and my blog helped them to finally realise that they no longer believed in God, that Christianity was not something they could accept. Yep, atheists have 'witnessing' stories too.

It was difficult for me to give up that work, but I had decided to do it, and had been thinking about it for several weeks before doing so. But my encounter with your ministry has changed my opinion. If there is one thing I learned from your twisted brand of evangelism, it's that regardless of personal cost to me, I should not waver in my efforts to help people who need guiding away from the immorality that churches like yours are teaching.

As you see, my web site is back, and if you take a look around you will see an extensive array of resources. More importantly, you will see that there are many, many atheists making videos with the sole purpose of uncovering the twisted, false morality of churches like yours.

I'd like to give you a short passage from my book (available on Amazon, I highly recommend it!), a lesson to you about the reality of the sin you profess that your God abhors:

Consider these two questions:

• Is there anything that anyone can do, by their actions, their words, their thoughts, to avoid going to Hell, other than accepting Jesus into their hearts?

• Is there anything that anyone can do, by their actions, their words, their thoughts, which would be so bad it would disqualify them from Heaven if, after all they have done, they decide to accept Jesus into their hearts?

If the answer to both these questions is 'no', and many Christians will tell you, without flinching, that this is what they believe, this means that there is only one sin, that of non-belief. Nothing else matters. What kind of immoral justice system would give Adolf Hitler and the Dalai Lama, or Gandhi, the same punishment? What kind of immoral justice system would reward rapists and paedophiles in the blink of an eye, simply because they were 'saved'?

Such an unfair, immoral, evil system of justice is preached, loudly and proudly, by Christianity.

Such an unfair, immoral, evil system of justice is preached, loudly and proudly, by Raven Ministries. But of course your crippled sinners are too busy taking their Jesus medicine to see that, aren't they?

Yours sincerely

Nick Gisburne

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Footnote:
You will find the web site of Raven Ministries at www.BigGrace.com where the pictures on the home page show the fires which, always remember, these so-called Christians believe God himself chose to create, for the sole purpose of torturing any and all non-compliant sheeple (Jews, gays, atheists, etc). Be thankful that this is all a fantasy.

And if you want to drop into the ministry on Stickam and tell them what you feel about them, go here: www.stickam.com/profile/ravenmin. Times as follows:

Monday-Friday - 9-10 AM EST	Bible classes
Tuesday night - 8:30-10 PM EST	Full-blown hand-waving, fire-and-brimstone service

Note: they will kick you out of the channel if you misbehave, but they did answer questions afterwards... you just won't get them to accept that their notion of God describes the biggest torturing son-of-a-bitch in history (or would be if he was real).

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PS: Thanks to my fellow atheists who joined me on my second visit, and for their troubles managed to get kicked out of the room by the Raven moderators. You naughty atheists!

Yesterday a Wiccan won the lottery after praying to his gods. Today the headline is:

Goats sacrificed to fix Nepal jet

Yes those nice (and rarely mentioned) Hindus have proof that their gods work too.

Nepal's state-run airline has confirmed that it sacrificed two goats to appease a Hindu god, following technical problems with one of its aircraft.

The offering was made to Akash Bhairab, the Hindu god of sky protection, whose symbol is seen on the company's planes.

The airline said that after Sunday's ceremony the plane successfully completed a flight to Hong Kong.

What the airline fails to mention is that they probably, in fact I'd say almost certainly, had a few engineers to look at it, when they had a few spare minutes. Just as a precaution, obviously, in case Akash Bhairab was having a bit of an off day.

Religious people are just so (what's the word?) stupid if they think that their god is in any way responsible for fixing something like this, ever. It's like the people who pray that their sick relative won't die on the operating table, then praise Almighty God when he/she comes through and lives. Meanwhile, the surgeon who trained for a dozen years, the team of specialist doctors and nurses, the manufacturers of modern medicines, monitoring equipment and other marvels of science don't get a mention. Similarly, the people who really fixed the plane are forgotten.

The power of prayer, eh? Woop-di-doo.

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Crosisborg tells the same story... better:

If you are concerned about the separation of church and state in the USA, Liberty Magazine has an excellent article describing how evangelical Christians are seeking to turn the USA into a Christian Commonwealth, and why it would be totally against the spirit of the Constitution to allow this to happen.

Religious and Pluralism America's Christian Nation Debate

Well worth reading for the historical reasons for wanting separation of church and state, which modern day Christians are ignoring and perverting to their own ends.

You know how many Christians there are in the US. Lots. Imagine how many of those Christians buy lottery tickets. Millions of them. And what are the chances that many (most?) of them will pray to their God to let them be a winner? High.

Which makes it all the more hilarious when one of the winners of a $330 million jackpot is a Wiccan, who made a deal with those luck-delivering pagan god dudes:

Bartlett, an accountant from Dundalk, said he made a bargain with the multiple gods associated with his Wiccan beliefs: "You let me win the lottery and I'll teach."

I guarantee you that if a Christian had won he would be thanking God, because as we all know it's God who influences the winning numbers, right? So by the same logic, it really must have been the Wiccan gods who helped this man beat the 176 million-to-one odds... right?

I'm in for the EuroMillions this week, so if anyone can let me know which god or gods are the real deal, and can guarantee me a modest share of the winnings if I pray (I'm not greedy, a couple of million will be fine), I'll be on my knees in a flash. Or dancing round a pole wearing nothing but war paint and a smile, depending on the religion (that's the Catholicism isn't it?).

Actually, I won a tenner a few weeks ago and though I didn't pray beforehand, I did praise the great fertility god in the sky when I realised that I'd matched 3 numbers: "Thank FUCK I finally won something!"