Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1836

How Christians Reacted After Ex-Pastor Ryan Bell All But Confirmed He’s an Atheist

Via Bo Gardiner, we see how upset some Christians were to learn that Ryan Bell‘s year-long “experiment” with atheism seems to have ended in the ex-shepherd’s conclusion that he does, indeed, no longer believe in God.

A commenter at the Christian Post fumed:

“This is nothing more than rebellion, and at the expense of many of the rest of us. What selfishness and irresponsibility, no matter what the personal struggle.

You need the Christian religion (and yes, Christianity is a religion, the true religion) to worship God, and God must be worshiped.

Those who have entered into a genuine relationship with Christ Jesus are the most loving people.”

As we see on this blog virtually every day.

Over at the right-wing website Free Republic, commenters also worked up a head of steam:

“How appropriate that Oprah Winfrey gave this guy a show on her wretched network.”

Hell’s bells, man – that’s Rob Bell, not Ryan.

“What a dirtbag. Sorry, without Christ your ‘good deeds’ are worth *****.”

“Calling evil good and good evil… where have we heard that before, I wonder?”

“I was wondering if he is dating a male or female.”

“Seems as though he is sewing the devils fruits to me.”

“Smells like someone is having a mid-life crisis.”

“He is not smart enough to be able to see the difference between religion and belief.”

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light….. Isaiah 5:20.”

“Being good without boundaries. The serpent couldn’t have said it any better.”

“No God, no concience… No God, no peace… Now come out of the closet faggot.”

I read through the entire thread and there’s not a kind or understanding comment anywhere in it. If I were Bell, I wouldn’t want anything to do with that kind of Christian love either.

When Westboro Baptist Church Protests in Colorado Today, a Large United Crowd Will Await Them

This afternoon, Westboro Baptist Church will be in Pueblo, Colorado protesting the use of recreational marijuana and approval of same-sex marriage.

But they’ll have guests waiting for them with signs of love instead of hate.

James Ward is the interim president of the Southern Colorado Equality Alliance. He said he hopes the signs send a message.

“This community is one of the most loving, accepting communities I’ve ever lived in. I want to make sure that the message is given to Westboro and people in general,” he said.

As for the protest against recreational marijuana in Pueblo West, the owner of Marisol Therapeutics said his employees will not engage any of the protesters and it will be business as usual at his shop.

Mike Fletcher, a member of the Atheist Community of Colorado Springs, will be speaking at the event and posted (on Facebook) an early version of the speech he plans to give. I think his message is a beautiful one and he gave me permission to reprint it here (with minor edits):

We stand here today, a Pueblo united by a higher ground, love.
We stand united, besides our differences…
Different economic standings, different faiths, beliefs;
Difference in the color of our skin, sexual preference.
Believing in one God, different gods, and no gods.
We stand unified… against hate.
We understand that love is love. And that’s all that matters.

Our friends across the street travel to spread the word of hate.
We stand steadfast, bonded, forged… by and for love.

They yell that it’s unnatural, an abomination.
Yet homosexuality has been recorded in over 1500 different species around the world.
But there is no hate or malice in their world. Only ours.
Only by people like them. So I wonder, doesn’t that make hate unnatural, an abomination?
Homosexuality is well-documented in a couple of species that differ from us genetically by only a little over 1%… the chimpanzee and bonobo apes.
Yet, like those of us here celebrating love, they also show other human characteristics: Compassion. Equality. Understanding. Love.
Based off that, I’d have to argue that these animals, these apes, show more humanity than members of our own species, that do all they can to spread and spew hate.

I invite our friends across the way to do something…
The universe has done it for billions of years…
Life has done it for millions of years…
Society has done it for thousands of years…

Evolve.

That’s how you respond to a hate group.

Creationist Finds a New Way to Proselytize at Taco Bell by Getting the Workers to Do It for Him

Whenever I go to a restaurant or coffee shop and they ask for my name, I’ve gotten used to saying “Bob.” It’s a reflex at this point. Instead of going through the motions of pronouncing my real name and spelling it out for someone who doesn’t really care and just needs to use it once, I prefer making things easier for everyone.

When a Taco Bell worker asks Creationist Eric Hovind for his name — an interaction that ought to be quick and simple for a guy named “Eric” — he decides to make their jobs harder (certainly more uncomfortable) by telling them his name is “Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Then, as he says, “all you gotta do is sit back and let them witness for you.”

It’s not clever; it’s just a dick move. Hovind never thinks about how he’d feel if he were behind the counter and someone asked him to say “Allah is Lord” or “God doesn’t exist.” Because the methods don’t matter to him as long as the end result is that his God gets a shout-out. He also doesn’t care about the other people eating there. At best, this is just a pointless annoyance. At worst, he’s putting workers in a very uncomfortable position.

By the way, I feel the same way about atheists who rearrange books in a library or bookstore so that the Bible is moved to the fiction section. All that does is make it harder for the workers who will eventually have to put the books back and the customers who won’t be able to find what they need.

Also, if your religious beliefs can change because someone yelled “Jesus Christ is Lord” at a Taco Bell, then you know what? The Christians can have you. It’s clear that their bar is comically low.

This Song About Sexual Purity Sends the Wrong Message to Young Women

You know how if you ever have pre-marital sex, you have no integrity and deserve no respect?

Because that’s the message I took away from this abstinence-themed “parody” of One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful”:

Does anyone else find it ironic that this song is based off of one sung by a boy band that is popular precisely because they make girls want to take off their clothes?

(via Christian Nightmares)

Seven States Ban Atheists from Holding Public Office

The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, discusses how seven states ban atheists from holding public office, even if those laws are unenforceable.

You can read more about this issue here.

A rough transcript of the video can be found on the YouTube page in the “About” section.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the project — more videos will be posted soon — and we’d also appreciate your suggestions as to which questions we ought to tackle next!

And if you like what you’re seeing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon.

Arrested for Driving, Saudi Women Will Now Be Tried in Anti-Terrorism Court

At the beginning of December, NBC, BBC, and other news organizations reported that 25 year old Loujain al-Hathloul and 33-year-old Maysa al-Amoudi had been arrested at the Saudi border. Their crime? Driving while female.

The women have been in custody since, and it looks like their situation is going from bad to worse:

The cases of the two women, Loujain al-Hathloul and Maysa al-Amoudi, were sent to the antiterrorism court in connection with opinions they expressed on Twitter and other social media sites, according to four people close to them.

Hathloul and Amoudi are both activists in Saudi Arabia, working to challenge the prohibition against women driving. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world to ban women from taking the wheel. As the New York Times notes, this prohibition is not managed through an official law, but Saudi Arabia does not grant driver’s licenses to women. Muslim clerics in the nation have been very vocal in their opposition to allowing women to drive.

Hathloul and Amoudi have taken to social media to express their own opposition to these bans. You know, the “terrorism” of having a different opinion than ultraconservative religious leaders.

This isn’t the first time Saudi Arabia applied such Orwellian terms to dissent, either.

The Specialized Criminal Court, to which their cases were referred, was established in the capital, Riyadh, to try terrorism cases but has also tried and given long prison sentences to a number of human rights workers, peaceful dissidents, activists and critics of the government.

Human Rights Watch recently warned that the “Saudi authorities are ramping up their crackdown on people who peacefully criticize the government on the Internet.” It said that judges and prosecutors are using “vague provisions of a 2007 anti-cybercrime law” to charge and try Saudi citizens for peaceful messages posted online.

It’s a common tactic of religious and other totalitarian powers, but as ever it says a lot about the fragility of your ideas when you need to charge non-violent dissenters like Loujain al-Hathloul and Maysa al-Amoudi with “terrorism.”

(via Think Progress. Image via Shutterstock)

Argentinian President Adopts Seventh Son of Jewish Family in Order to Counteract Werewolf Curse

There is a legend in Argentina that a family’s seventh son in a row will become a werewolf.

While it sounds like little more than a scary story, it was so fervently believed that it could actually entail deadly consequences for seventh sons.

Fear was so rife in the country that families would often give up their seventh-born sons for adoption or even kill them.

In the 1920s a law was passed to counteract the legend. It offered presidential protection, a gold medal and a scholarship for all studies until their 21st birthday but only for Catholic families.

So how is this news now? Well, five years ago, Argentinians decided it was time to demonstrate the progress that had been made in such areas and repealed the law.

I’m just kidding. The law was actually extended, to include sons born to families of other faiths.

Which is still progress of a sort, I guess.

This past week, the first Jewish seventh son, Iair Tawil, was adopted as a godson by Argentinian President Cristina Kirchner, who wrote on Twitter:

It was magical to receive Iair Tawil, the first presidential godson in national history to profess the Jewish faith. Iair, 21, is completely sweet.

There is no word, however, if President Kirchner will be inviting Tawil to the presidential residence when a full moon is expected…

(Top image via Shutterstock)

Can an Atheist Repent?

See at PostSecret:

How do you repent when you don’t believe in God?

I would say there are simple answers to that, even if the word “repentance” usually has a more religious connotation.

If you did something wrong, then make amends for it. Promise yourself you’ll never do it again. Apologize to those affected by your actions. Do something good to make up for whatever you did that was bad. Think more carefully in the future so you don’t make the same sort of mistake again.

How would you repent?

A Year After Giving Atheism a Try, Former Pastor Ryan Bell Admits: “I Don’t Think That God Exists”

It was almost a year ago when Ryan Bell, a professor and former pastor of a Seventh-day Adventist church, announced that he would “try on” atheism and “live as if there is no God” for 12 months.

I didn’t agree with his methodology at the time. I felt like he was just exploring an alternative option, not actually “becoming” an atheist. Hell, most atheists don’t even read books by Richard Dawkins or attend gatherings with other non-believers, so how would doing those things give Bell a real sense of what being an atheist was like?

But he got a taste of what being an atheist was like much sooner than expected. Less than a week after announcing his experiment, Bell was fired by his Christian employers at Azusa Pacific University and Fuller Theological Seminary because, according to Bell, “They simply feel they cannot have me as a part of the faculty while I’m am in this year long process.”

Readers of this site came through in a big way and helped raise more than $27,000 for his family as they coped with this sudden unemployment.

…

That year has come to an end. So what has Bell decided about God?

In an NPR story today, he told reporter Arun Rath that atheism just makes more sense to him now‘:

“I’ve looked at the majority of the arguments that I’ve been able to find for the existence of God and on the question of God’s existence or not, I have to say I don’t find there to be a convincing case in my view.

“I don’t think that God exists. I think that makes the most sense of the evidence that I have and my experience. But I don’t think that’s necessarily the most interesting thing about me.”

Wow…

So, over the past year, Bell critically analyzed the beliefs he grew up with — and professed from the pulpit — and realized that the evidence just didn’t support it.

If only more people had the courage to put their faith under such scrutiny.

Bell isn’t necessarily an “enthusiastic” atheist, but neither are millions of other Americans out there. He also doesn’t claim to be certain about his atheism — but that’s also on par with most atheists: We’re open to evidence for God’s existence. We just don’t think there is any.

To be sure, I would’ve supported Bell either way. Even if he came to the conclusion that Christianity still rang true for him, I would’ve applauded the fact that he bothered questioning those beliefs at all.

He took something that he, at one time, felt incredibly certain about and put it under a microscope, knowing there was a chance he wouldn’t like what he saw. Most people fear that. They would never do what he did. It’s like jumping out of a plane without knowing if there’s a parachute inside. Bell found a parachute even if it looked nothing like what he imagined:

“I think before I wanted a closer relationship to God and today I just want a closer relationship with reality,” Bell says.

Bell has a new job, by the way, putting his Humanism in action. He’s working with a group called People Assisting The Homeless (PATH). He worked with them when he was a pastor, but now, it’s just more evidence that he can still be good without God.

What Chinese Christians Got For Christmas: Another Police-State Crackdown on Their Faith

There’s little or no freedom of religion for Chinese Christians:

Two days before Christmas, members of a rural Christian congregation in the eastern city of Wenzhou welded some pieces of metal into a cross and hoisted it onto the top of their worship hall to replace one that was forcibly removed in October. Within an hour, township officials and uniformed men barged onto the church ground and tore down the cross. … Provincial authorities have toppled crosses from more than 400 churches, and even razed some worship halls in a province-wide crackdown on building code violations.

Many Christians say their faith has been singled out because authorities, wary of its rapid growth, are seeking to curb its spread. …

Churches in Wenzhou and elsewhere in Zhejiang were first told last year to turn off any spotlights shining on their crosses at night. A few months later, the congregations were ordered to remove the crosses or face forced demolitions. Resistance by local Christians has led to violent protests, bloody clashes and arrests of pastors and churchgoers.

I have no reservation about defending Christian worshipers against these illiberal state shenanigans.

Unfortunately, the Associated Press story doesn’t just stick with facts that show the actual injustices being perpetrated here. Author Didi Tang adds ominously that authorities in Wenzhou

… have banned all Christmas celebrations or related activities in the city’s kindergartens and grade schools.

How is that part of the same phenomenon? If you want to express your religious feelings, it’s a fine idea (and a basic human right) to do so in your home or your favorite house of worship. In schools? Not so much.

Tang overplays her hand with that bonus line about children and schools.

The rest of her article is easy to agree with; and when we (atheists) mock the idea that Christians are being persecuted, we should add “in the West.” Elsewhere, there are real risks to being a Christian, as we’ve pointed out before.

(Image via Shutterstock)