The State is my Shepherd

“Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation. If you really want to look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ–who I think was the first socialist–only socialism can really create a genuine society.”--Hugo Chávez, Socialist dictator of Venezuela

Indoctrination comes in many forms, but religious indoctrination is certainly the most effective. In recent history, Socialism, the economic system and political philosophy, sought to replace Christianity with its government-based worldview. Vladimir Lenin, one of the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution deliberately set out to recruit Christians into his political party in order to educate them in the spirit of the Socialist programs. He knew they were susceptible to indoctrination. Ludwig Feuerbach, a predecessor to Marxism/Socialism, advocated combating religion in order to renovate it and to invent a new, ‘exalted’ religion. I call this new religion the cult of government.

In the West, Socialist dogma is presented as an alternative to Christianity. The similarities between Christianity and Socialism make this possible. Socialist thought is rooted in Christianity. Karl Marx, the father of Marxism/Socialism, was deeply impacted by religion. Although Marx’s father was Jewish, the family became Christian when Marx was young. Judeo-Christian concepts were instilled at an early age. In one school essay, a young Marx reveals his early Christian indoctrination and his solidarity with the oppressed by writing, “Who should not gladly endure sorrows, when he knows that through his continuing in Christ, through his works God is honored?”

As a young man, Marx was introduced to the work of Friedrich Hegel, who he cited consistently
throughout his life. Marx was part of the Young Hegelians, a group of influential leftists who promoted their particular interpretation of Hegel’s work. Because of his religious upbringing, there is no doubt Marx was drawn to the Hegel’s use of Christian vocabulary.

Hegel concentrates on the sinful aspects of man’s condition. He cites the Christian apostle Paul who spoke of humankind being alienated in their thinking because of sin and ultimate redemption through Jesus. Marx saw the oppressed as needing salvation from the evil capitalists just as Jesus and Paul voiced the need for salvation from this world of sin. Both offered a plan of redemption—one though the State and the other through vicarious redemption.

While Marx ultimately distinguished himself from Hegel in many ways, the foundation of his dialectical materialism and other concepts are rooted in Hegel’s concepts, which were laden with rich Christian concepts of oppression, alienation, submission, and redemption. Hegel’s Master-Serf dialectic mixed with Marx’s inherited Christian empathy for the oppressed assembled a foundation from which the Marxist concept of class struggle was built.

Socialists see humankind as corrupt and in need of guidance through laws and regulations while Christianity sees humans as alienated from the supernatural realm and in need of “spiritual” guidance. Both attempt to legislate morality according to their precepts and standards. Just as religion uses threat of a torturous afterlife as a deterrent from its moral standards, many Marxist or left-leaning governments dictate morality through threats of imprisonment, bans and Pigovian or “sin” taxes. The idea of a sin tax is to place an excessive tax on a product or service as a means to deter their use. In many communist countries, pornography is entirely outlawed. In the United States, a progressively democratic-socialist state, there are numerous sin taxes, such as the excessive tax on cigarettes and environmental laws. In recent years, the US has instituted countless new sin taxes and proposes countless others—such as “fat” taxes on fattening food and carbon taxes on companies to reduce pollution. This cult of government, as religion, seeks to shape the morals of its citizens to conform to State-sanctioned morality through taxes and bans.

Christianity and Marxism/Socialism are nearly identical. The only glaring difference is one
postulates a supernatural utopia and the other an earthly one. Both must manipulate and control their adherents to achieve their utopias. Human freedom must be suppressed—whether it’s through new laws and regulations, through an unfeasible religious moral code or through fear and intimidation. Each has setup elite groups to facilitate the methodical overthrow of individual freedom and replace it with a collective morality, which leads to tyrannical behavior by the
leadership in the end.

In his essay “Two Concepts of Liberty”, the great 20^th philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin describes how governments seek to control its citizens as children and how they ultimately fall into tyranny and dictatorship, thus destroying freedom and brutalizing its individuals. This has been demonstrated throughout history with the French Revolution, the Soviet Union, the Crusades, the Taliban, and other Islamic governments. He states facetiously about the British Empire in an interview, “Human beings are children. We must first herd them together, create certain institutions, make them obey orders, and we hope later they will see how well we’ve done for them.... It always leads to bad consequences in the end.”

Marx, Hegel, and Feuerbach understood the value of Christian indoctrination. Christianity emphasizes empathy toward the poor and downtrodden. It teaches people to be dependent. They play on fears and demonize individualism. Marxists/Socialists have seized these doctrines and incorporated them into their dogma. They view us as children and the goal is a massive nanny state, whose ultimate end is totalitarianism and tyranny.

A freethinker opposes both religion AND socialism.

My prediction regarding the Rapture

Mark my words: It will never happen. You, Christians, will be waiting and waiting for nothing. It will not happen May 21, 2011, and it will never happen. When you are on your death bed, remember my words: it won't happen.

Jesus was Evil

Jesus was one of the most evil characters in religious fiction. Today, his followers take pride in presenting him as a loving, caring, mild-mannered desert magician/redeemer, but in reality he was cruel and vengeful. He is the first to mention “hell” in the Bible (Matthew 5:22, Mark 9:43, Mar 9:43-44, Mark 9:45). The context is always the same—it’s a consequence for not abiding by his/God’s commands. The threat is used to influence behavior and this makes him cruel and evil in my opinion. He does not love unconditionally as he is portrayed. His daddy/he establishes an unrealistic set of rules and then threatens to cast us to hellfire for eternal torture if we do not abide them. This is the epitome of love with condition.

Why I do not accept Jesus’ divinity (or anyone’s for that matter)

Happy Easter, everyone. This is my favorite pagan holiday because it celebrates fertility—and who doesn’t appreciate that? Well, maybe those who have unintentional pregnancies, but that’s an entirely different topic. For now, I’d like to focus on the Christianized version of this ancient holiday—particularly  Jesus’ supposed divinity, and his mythical resurrection.

I am not certain Jesus even existed. There is no clear evidence outside Scripture, which was most certainly written by those who wanted to perpetuate the myth. A majority of biblical scholars—conservative and liberal alike—concur that the authors of the gospels did not know Jesus personally, but merely relayed stories about him. Most of Jesus’ followers were illiterate Aramaic speakers, while the authors of the gospels were educated Greeks. Therefore, we are certain the writers cannot vouch for Jesus’ existence. However, we know for certain Pontius Pilate existed because we have many outside sources to validate this—from local writings to Roman logs to physical evidence of his actual house.

If Jesus existed, we can be certain he wasn’t divine. First, there were a number of messianic claimants during this time in his particular part of the world. He was most likely just another uneducated peasant claiming the mantle of Jewish savior. Second, and most obvious, there is no such thing as “divinity”. None of his miracles can be substantiated. Nothing he did has been verified by extra-biblical sources. Most magicians and miracle workers during this time were charlatans and there is no reason to think otherwise about Jesus.

Finally, people cannot rise from the dead. It’s impossible. If he existed, was tortured, and lay in a tomb, his body was either stolen or he simply wasn’t dead and walked out. Either is more plausible than supernatural resurrection. There was no one living at that time in that part of the world to verify this event and we have no rational reason to believe it happened.

While some of what Jesus said was “good” and “moral”, we have no reason whatsoever to believe he was divine or supernatural. It’s highly likely the stories of Jesus of Nazareth were either outright fiction or embellished stories of one of many poor, radical Jewish miracle workers in the Middle East two thousand years ago.

Come, let’s reason together (Isaiah 1:18)

In my former life, I wanted to be a Christian apologist. Seriously and don’t laugh. Christian apologetics is the attempt to offer a rational explanation for the faith. Apologists seek to defend the faith against objections through public lectures, debates, books, and websites. The idea is to argue that Christianity is reasonable and evidence-based, but requires metaphysical considerations. That caveat is where my contention lies. A common argument is God exists, and man can know that God exists, by means of revelation, both in nature and through the Bible. This field has sprouted many famous apologetes, including St. Thomas Aquinas, C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Ravi Zacharius, Josh McDowell, Hank Hanegraaff, and Lee Strobel.

I’ve argued with plenty of Christians—laypersons and pastors alike—but I have never had an opportunity to debate a full-fledged apologist. Recently, I was meeting with my State House Representative, Sheila Butt, and she told me her son, Kyle, is an apologist who has written numerous books. He currently works at Apologetics Press, a publishing house established in the 70s and based in Montgomery, AL. He publicly debated Dan Barker, president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation in 2008.

I asked for his email address and wrote him that afternoon, introducing myself, and giving him some background information about my upbringing in the church. Kyle posited the first question, “What militates against belief in God?” Perfect starting point, I thought. I responded immediately explaining that all we have is the material world and we need clear, testable, measurable evidence within this realm to demonstrate a god’s existence. We don’t have that, therefore I reserve judgment on whether there is or isn’t a god. I followed up with a question as to how he personally determines whether a statement or proposition is true or false. No answer.

Next, he introduced the concept of indirect observation asking,

“So, using the concept of indirect observation, we could agree that we could know some things about an item or entity without ever having direct contact with that entity. For instance, we could know how big a planet is that circles a distant star by measuring the wobble of the star and using our knowledge of gravity to infer the planet’s mass, etc. Are we on the same page here?”

I explained that indirect observation is but one component of science. Scientists don’t build entire theories and laws on inference alone while religion does. In science, indirect observation can be used at various stages, but ultimately we must have testable, measurable evidence if we are to send a spacecraft to the hypothetical planet. We wouldn’t dare send the craft without having exact measurements of distance, gravitational pull, mass, surface temperature, etc. The beauty of science is that it’s predictable. Sure, it’s fun to speculate or infer an intelligent agent as a source of creation, but ultimately you have to define this entity and it has to be testable and measureable if it interacts within the material world.

He pounced on my statement that scientists don’t build entire theories and laws on indirect observation. Like any good Christian, he brought up evolution commenting that the theory is built on indirect observation, which is entirely untrue. He cited Eugenie Scott’s quote from Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction, “Indeed, no paleontologist has ever observed one species evolving into another, but as we have seen, a theory can be scientific even if its phenomena are not directly observable.” Classic quote-mining. It’s almost as if he reached into a grab bag of evolution quotes and hurled what he thought was the best one. Fortunately, I anticipated this sort of standard response and explained that she’s entirely correct. Paleontologists CAN’T observe evolution, because they deal with fossils. However, biologists HAVE observed speciation many times. It’s well-documented and I offered to provide documentation. My subsequent email took him to task on evolution, where I explained that DNA specifically shows relatedness and common ancestry of all life. The fossil argument is irrelevant to me and has no bearing on whether I accept evolution as fact or not. Because of DNA, to deny we are related to apes is to deny we are related to our fathers. Fossils are merely icing on the cake these days, because it further validates the magnificent scientific truth.

After my last email educating him on evolution by natural selection, abiogenesis, DNA, and paleontology, I haven’t heard back. It’s been eight days and I suspect I won’t hear anything else. My repeated question as to how he personally determines the truth of a statement/proposition was left unanswered. So much for “rationally defending the faith”. I appreciate him being a good sport, but I expected so much more. Oh well, on to the next one.

Here is the entire conversation -->

Example of Christian Anti-Intellectualism

Yesterday, I was discussing with a Christian the lineage of Christ as outlined in Scripture. The lineages appear in Matthew 1:1–17 and Luke 3:23–28. If one were to compare Jesus’ bloodline side-by-side, one would see it is completely and utterly inconsistent. However, Christians do not read the Bible in this manner.

Christians normally read the Bible in a devotional manner rather than comparatively and intellectually. They select a passage, read it, and use a dogmatic view instilled by their pastor or other Christian leaders to interpret—essentially justifying anything that might stand out as a contradiction or error.

When I pointed out to this individual that the lineages were inconsistent, he said, “I will go and find a book written by a Christian that discusses this.” I implored him, “No, go to the Bible and look for yourself.” He refused. He plans to read a Christian justification of this contradiction before viewing it for himself.

This is pure anti-intellectualism of the highest degree and demonstrates the depth of indoctrination.

Hooray for Church-Sponsored Vacations!

It’s that time of year again! Pack your bags, round up your dusty ole passport, dig up that Hawaiian shirt you love so much (you know, the one that makes you look like Rick Warren), and get your flippy-floppies out—it’s vacation time...er...I mean, mission trip time! Time to go tell some third-world peasants about Jesus, hammer a few nails in a decrepit schoolhouse, and catch some rays!

Good times. I often reminisce about the days when I would travel to some god-forsaken place and tell uneducated, illiterate dark-skinned people about the zombie magic man. They latched on to the story immediately. Is there any wonder 500 people “come to know Christ” during these trips? A tall, well-dressed white man has come to their village to tell them of an invisible man in the sky who can give them anything they want if they just ask. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, as long as it makes you feel good. You're a god.

After being in that dusty place for a couple of days, it’s time for the real treat—the beach, shopping, or hitting the bars. My favorite mission trip was to France. I spoke to a group of youth for an hour and attended some dinner parties. Three days in Paris, three in Dijon for "mission work", then back to Paris for three more days. Ahhh…telling people about Jesus has never been so luxurious.

Upon return, it’s great to strut through the church—people patting you on the back for being a good Christian. You told those darkies about your white god. Show some photos of cute, foreign children, pass around a primitive looking headdress you picked from a street vendor, and cry when you describe the old woman you lead to Christ. You’re the man. You’re special. You “feel” like God has “blessed” you. You come home to 21^st century amenities and all the peasants are left with is piles of LifeWay propaganda littering the streets.

Be proud! You're doing the Lord's work!

Original Sin—A Lesson in Biblical Contradiction

• Rom. 5:12, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."


• Rom. 5:19, "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners"


• 1 Cor. 15:22, "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."


• Rom. 3:10, "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one." (Also see 1 John 1:8 and 10, Rom. 3:12)


• Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Although most evangelical protestant denominations preach about original sin, the phrase does not exist in the Bible or Jewish writings. According the evangelical interpretation, the Hebrew god sets up the scenario, watches a talking snake (which is never described as “Satan”) coerce his creation into sinning, punishes Adam and Eve, then tells the world (through humans) that he is loving, caring, and will redeem us.

Paul introduces the concept of original sin and the “inheritance” of sin and teaches it as the heart of his Christian theology. He establishes Jesus as a human/deity sacrifice to atone for the alleged “sin” of Adam. It is interesting to note that while Paul invents a theology of atonement based on the offering of Jesus as a human sacrifice for sin, Jesus does not preach death as atonement. The gospel according to Matthew, Jesus says: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” (Matt 9:13 and Matt 12:7 NIV). This is an explicit rejection of Paul's teaching.

Further, the concept of Original Sin is unsupported in the Jewish scriptures:

• Deut. 24:16, "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin."


• 2 Kings 14:6, But the children of the murderers he slew not: according unto that which is written in the book of the law of Moses, wherein the LORD commanded, saying, The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children be put to death for the fathers; but every man shall be put to death for his own sin."


• Ezek. 18:20 "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him."


• Ezek.33:20, "Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. O ye house of Israel, I will judge you every one after his ways."


• Jer. 31:29-30 In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge."


• Gen. 7:1 "And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation."


• Job 1:1 There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.


• Job 1:8 "...my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?" (Job 2:3)


• Luke 1:5-6 "In the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, there was a priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abia: and he had a wife of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. (RSV)

Why are we responsible for the sins of Adam and Eve? How can a person be “guilty” of ancient sin he did not commit? How can one be morally flawed when he is in the womb? A god who allows people to be punished for something they did not do is not just. A god who is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent should simply erase such flaws. Can he? Is he unable or unwilling?

This concept of atonement and redemption are entirely Pauline and are not part of Jesus’ or Jewish doctrine.