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Edward Webber
7 December 2015
The Irrationality of Christian Belief
Humanity has invented, and later dismissed as myth, tens of thousands of religions used
to explain away ignorance, centralize power or reassure in times of fear. The latest of these
persistent myths is the Judeo-Christian religion, given reverence and respect for the same
fallacious reasons as those who worshiped Ra, Zeus, Bai, Gong Gong, Isis, Osiris, Yama or any
of the other million or so gods of antiquity. The claim is the same; unreason is still the
prerequisite. Like all other religions before it, the Christian religion survives only through a
carefully crafted combination of indoctrination and sophistry. From arguments from ignorance,
We dont know how life began on Earth, to appeals to authority, The last 17 sitting US
presidents have been Christians, to shifting burdens of proof, You cant prove God doesnt
exist, a plethora of post hoc and sharpshooter fallacies, The Bible contains predictions which
came true, appeals to emotion, What if youre wrong? Youll go to hell!, to the ever shifting
of goals posts, The fossil record is full of missing links, Christian belief is built upon failures
in logic. It is this collection of logical gymnastics which compel the otherwise rational thinker
into a quagmire of irrational belief or short circuit their higher level reasoning ability from day
one. It is a well-honed quagmire in which a minority ever climb out.
The Judeo-Christian religion is a rather new addition to the codex of mythologies,
arriving in the Greco-Roman world between 1-30ce. Dictionary.com explains the JudeoChristian belief succinctly:
The religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Christians believe
that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, sent by God. They believe that Jesus, by dying

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and rising from the dead, made up for the sin of Adam and thus redeemed the
world, allowing all who believe in him to enter heaven.
As religions go, Christianity is fairly uninspired, mimicking and whole cloth adopting
various aspects of competing religions of the time, as was customary in the region. Pagan
religions regularly shared various beliefs among each other. Despite centuries of conflict in the
region, Christianity developed in an atmosphere conducive to the spread of religion. The earliest
Christians, inspired by the ease of which their newly formed religion was permeating the
surrounding areas, noticed this and were quick to declare their deity, God, a deity they adopted
from Judaism, had sent his son "in the fullness of time." The Pax Romana brought about by
Caesar Augustus had drastically reduced crime, which allowed for the development of roads
throughout the Empire. Such luxuries both improved the flow of information throughout the
empire and provided citizens newfound leisure time to ponder such religious matters.
Christianity entered an environment already rich with religious diversity. First-century
Roman Palestine offered the ancient religion of Judaism, the political religion of the Roman
state, the personal religion of the mystery cults, and the intellectual and ethical schools of Greek
philosophy. The foundation of Christianity was Judaism, of which early Christians adopted
whole cloth without so much as a paragraph rephrasing. Jesus, the apostles, and the earliest
converts to Christianity were Jews and as such their sermons were presented in a Jewish context.
The Judaism of the time spoke of a coming messiah and the creators of Christianity, noting the
cliffhanger ending, werent about to let an opportunity for a sequel go to waste.
For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable. In
400 BCE in Aphorisms, Hippocrates surmised when a person is on the brink of death, any
measure which prevents death is a preferable measure. In modern language this phrase is known

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as Desperate times require desperate measures. Such was the common circumstance of the
ancient citizen and many on Earth today. When firmly held in the clutches of desperation, people
revert back to their more animalistic nature. Reason centers of the brain shut down as blood and
oxygen is diverted to fight or flight areas such as motor function and muscles. Evolutionary
development has led humans into a stage where, when the times get tough, the rational brain
goes on holiday. In his book, The End of Faith, Sam Harris pleads with the reader, The only
angels we need invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons
we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind: ignorance, hatred, greed, and faith,
which is surely the devil's masterpiece. Evolution, however, has dealt humanity a losing hand,
as when life becomes difficult, reason is the first to go. The devils masterpiece, in this scenario,
is the default setting.
Poverty and extreme circumstances are not the only means to bypass mans rational
thought processes. A far more insidious method is to indoctrinate, usually from a very young
age, in order to short circuit the developing minds reasoning ability before it ever has a chance
to set its roots. Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man. That was the
Jesuit motto, alleged to be attributed to Francis Xavier, the co-founder of the Jesuit Order, in
which he mused once a childs mind has been fully indoctrinated there is little risk of them
breaking free. The result is a lifetime devotee to whatever manner of thinking the poor sap is fed
during his most vulnerable and ignorant years. The Christian holy book, Holy Bible, commands
parents indoctrinate their children to which nearly every Christian on Earth loyally abides
without hesitation, dutifully proving Xaviers point. Deuteronomy 6:7-9 says, "And these words
that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your
children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and

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when you lie down, and when you rise. The authors were wise enough to realize a lie repeated
often enough becomes the truth, at least to those without the skills nor motivation to critically
examine them. During the Nazi regime in the 1940s, the US Office of Strategic Services
summarized this methodology in context with Hitler:
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or
wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave
room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time
and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie
sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner
or later believe it.
They could have just as easily been speaking of the narrative of any deity of antiquity, including
the Christian deity, God. Hitler, it seems, was merely adopting a tried and true method.
Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to
evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you. Dawkins pleads with parents in his book, The
God Delusion, for them to allow their children to learn about different ideas, different
viewpoints, to encourage them to question what they are told. Dawkins continues, Let children
learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own
conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether they are valid, let
them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so. It is no wonder children who
grow up in a Christian household tend to be Christians as adults, just as those in Jewish
households tend to be Jewish as adults, Muslim households rearing Muslim offspring. In fact a
vast majority, 63% for evangelical Christians at last estimate, of children raised in religious
households end up worshiping the deity of their caregivers. This percentage increases to 80% for

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Jews. If any religion were true this number would not track nearly as well. We would see a one
religion, or atheism, gaining ground on the others, even in families which followed a different or
no religion at all. Indeed, researchers do see such a trend, in the nones, those without any
religion at all. This is the trend one would expect to find if there was no compelling evidence for
any of the claims of the various religions, just as any unsubstantiated rumor slowly loses ground
to non-belief, so too do the baseless claims of Christianity. With lifespans topping 100 years for
many people around the globe, 62% familial adoption is torturously slow intergenerational death.
One which could drag on for tens of generations to come before it finally joins the obscurity
ranks of the religions of the Greeks or Egyptians or Mayans, some worshipers of whom had to
completely die out before their religion was finally laid to rest in the annals of myth.
Does anyone following a religion ever stop to ask why indoctrination, violence and
repression of contrary ideas is necessary if their beliefs are in line with reality? If a religion were
true then science class wouldn't be a threat, logic wouldn't be an enemy and evidence wouldn't
need to be ignored. If Christianity, or any religion, were true the most brilliant men alive, the
most highly educated, the most skeptical among us would follow it. Reality shows those with the
best knowledge of reality reject the claims of every religion. Such a realization must give the
budding believer pause. The people who spend the most time making the most accurate
predictions and specific, reproducible explanations of reality are atheists. Over 85% of the
National Academy of Sciences in the United States are self-declared atheists. How do Christians
ignore all of this and continue talking to thin air in the hopes their wish will be granted this time
in a desperate gambler's fallacy? Its madness. If Christians want to ever see peace, they will
need to see reality first. That reality has no gods, Muslim, Christian, Pagan, Buddhist, Mayan,
Greek, Roman, Egyptian or otherwise. Until the myths die, people will die fighting over whose

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myth gets marketing rights, because everyone knows without the marketing they would suffer
the same fate as every other myth, lost to obscurity. A fate suffered by every other bad guess,
wrong idea and incorrect conclusion.
While indoctrination plays a sizable role in perpetuating the ranks of Christianity, it is
hardly the sole means. From its inception, violence has played a pivotal role in keeping the
Christian faith alive. In Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson made clear the frivolity
of violence in creating homogeneity in religious belief, Millions of innocent men, women, and
children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet
we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To
make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. With all of Christianitys torture
and wars and Crusades and Inquisitions it has but temporarily suppressed dissent. Reality always
prevails. In recent years, many Christians continue to wage the same Crusade their ancestors
once did, with millions continuing to be slaughtered in African countries such as the Central
African Republic, where over 800,000 non-Christians have been forced from their country and
those who refuse to leave are killed in what Human Rights Watch is calling The Forgotten
Conflict. These violent oppressors will eventually learn, just as everyone before them have
learned, Swords can win territories, but not hearts. Force can bend heads, but not minds (Mirza
Tahir Ahmad). For all of their violence, Christians have not once made their deity more real. The
truth will never be swayed by the sword, for reality is that which exists whether or not someone
believes in it.
While violent suppression by Christians of competing ideas has continued into the
modern era, many have taken to what can lamentingly be described as the enlightened mans
Inquisition, apologetics. While apologetics is hardly new, having been used to describe those

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who defended their religious beliefs as far back as 120-220ce, it has seen a resurgence in a more
sophisticated, one might say diabolical, form in recent decades. Given the utter lack of good
evidence for Christianity, as if there were good evidence faith would not be a prerequisite, these
apologetic arguments revolve around a host of interwoven facts and logical fallacies in order to
convince audiences. While any Christian defending their belief, from the parishioner to the Pope,
would be considered an apologist, there are now professional apologists who base their careers
on honing their art of sophistry and rhetoric. Proponents such as William Lane Craig, Ken Ham
and Lee Strobel have ceased all productive contributions to society and have dedicated their time
to the debating and public speaking circuit, for a fee. These pious con men have made an art out
of bending the truth, creating mazes of facts only to hide a fallacy in innocuous terms, assertions
and questions purpose built to lead even the most rational layman down a road of irrationality, a
road which they hope will lead to a generous donation to their respective religious foundations.
Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would
be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic (Carrol). In such apologetics come the foundational mortar
of which the believer must base their ideology, the logical fallacy. The very basis of the irrational
belief is described in a single word, a word not penned until the manuscripts of Aristotle, logic.
Centuries earlier, around 400bce, Plato hinted at the differences between assumption and valid
argument. It is he who coined the term form, later used to differentiate formal and informal
logic. Over a millennia later logic has, over many iterations, become the basis of all knowledge.
If a prediction is made it is via logos, or logic. In fact, it is difficult to imagine any tool more
powerful in the arsenal of the investigator than logic. This is precisely why any good apologist, if
the phrase escapes self-contradiction at all, is well versed in logic. I am a master of logic and a
powerfully convincing debater. In fact, against my better judgment, I can talk myself out of

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doing anything. Jarod Kintz muses in his book, $3.33. It is with fallacies, a kind of betrayal of
logic, we fool ourselves, we trick our minds into accepting the unacceptable. Studies have shown
even the most intelligent among us can justify absurdities. The most intelligent simply create
more robust and elaborate irrationalities intertwined with ardent truths as camouflage. Fallacies,
however compound, once understood expose the falsehoods within. It is these fallacies which
belie every Christian argument, no matter how sophisticated or poetic.
God did it. From the creation of the universe, if such a scenario is coherent, to the
introduction of life on Earth, to placing the 4-year old childs cancer into remission, the warm
womb of explanatory power the Christian deity provides is an alluring web. "I believe God
created the world and holds it together. Just how he did that is up for debate, but whatever
conclusions you come to about the earth's origins, God did it (Arends). In her article, Carolyn
Arends triumphantly declares no matter what the explanation, her deity is what did it. Such
attribution is often connected to positive occurrences, such as life or beauty or wonder. When a
man arrives at great prosperity God did it: when he falls into disaster he did it himself (Twain).
Such a fallacious line of reasoning is the hallmark of the apologist, for an all-knowing deity who
is all-loving a believer cannot allow themselves to admit their deity has failed in many aspects.
In the words of Eddie Izzard, If there is a God, his plan is very similar to someone not having a
plan. The truth is more dastardly, as God did it, an appeal to ignorance, tends to be a simple
restating of Im finished thinking.
If you don't understand how something works, never mind: just give up and say
God did it. You don't know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don't
understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is

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photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don't go to work
on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. (Dawkins)
What do we know about the Christian deity, God, anyway? The God of the Old
Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a
petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic,
homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal,
sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully (Dawkins). Ask an average Christian follower
to describe their religions deity and you will receive nearly as many descriptions as followers.
The god of Christianity is, however, quite specifically described in Holy Bible. He, and it is
referred to as masculine, is all-knowing (Prov 15:3) yet constantly surprised (Gen 11:5), is
visible (EXO 24:9,10) yet invisible (JOH 1:18), cruel (JER 13:14) yet not cruel (JAS 5:11), allpowerful (Jer 32:27) yet too weak to win against chariots of iron (Judg 1:19), all-loving (PSA
145:9) yet created evil (Lam 3:38) and suffering and disease, all-forgiving (James 5:11) yet
unable to forgive you if use his name in vein (Mark 3:29), unchanging (MAL 3:6) yet constantly
changing (JON 3:10), infallible (Gen 1:31) yet regularly disappointed in his own creations (Gen
6:6). If the descriptors themselves were not internally paradoxical, such as an all-powerful being
unable to create another all-powerful being, the contradictory nature of his descriptions
throughout the holy texts would certainly void all assertions of intelligibility.
What if youre wrong? A question credited to Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century philosopher
and mathematician, Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will
come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose,
you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists. The implication of such a
question is if nothing is lost in believing in God then its worth it, just in case he does exist. This

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line of reasoning suffers from a host of problems. It assumes there is no penalty for belief in the
Christian god, when there is. Serious believers spend a great deal of time in churches, give a
percentage of their income to the church and volunteer a large amount of time in their church for
little to no benefit to themselves or society. This doesnt even take into account the high cost of
magical thinking itself. They indoctrinate their children, of whom if they ever escape sabotages
their familial relationship and trust. Followers of religion persecute those who do not follow, or
do not follow the same, religion. The cost of accepting ignorance, God did it, as well as
resisting progress by adhering to, and forcing on others, antiquated customs and laws. This says
nothing of the life pleasures one loses by following boot-neck religions such as Christianity,
pork, shellfish, physical intimacy, self-worth and a general thirst for knowledge. Pascals Wager
is a losing bet, especially when you consider how many gods have been invented. Which one to
believe in? Even Christianity has over 40,000 different sects. Which, if any, is the right one?
The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can't all
be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It's a possibility, you know. You
must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing
contentions is to be skeptical. I'm not any more skeptical about your religious
beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of
work, they're called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation. (Sagan, 162)
We didnt just come from nothing. Thomas Aquinas made the original argument,
"Nothing is caused by itself. Every effect has a prior cause. This leads to a regress. This has to be
terminated by a first cause, which we call God." It is by far the most popular argument for the
Christian god in modern times. Purveyors of creationism often cite this argument as the
origination of life on Earth. Life cannot come from non-life, therefore God is the trope of Ken

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Ham and his followers. This is often mistaken for a powerful argument, as we cannot yet explain
how the universe we inhabit came to be, assuming it was not always here. The deception lies in
the exception, God. If everything must come from something, then what created God? This is
called an infinite regress. At some point in the past there must be an originating event, yet if
something truly could not come from nothing then nothing would exist, yet something does. This
also suffers from another assumption, one of supernatural forces, God. There is no requirement
of the supernatural, whatever that nebulous term is supposed to mean, only that something came
about. Even if we accept the assumption a first cause exists, it makes no sense to assume that
cause is the Christian god Yahweh. The idea of a universe-creating god just always existing is
far more difficult to explain than a universe just existing. Intelligence, as far as we know it, is
extremely rare. So why would it be more likely for intelligence to just happen and create a
universe than a universe to just happen on its own? This, beyond the fact this universe-creating
being decided to go one step further and micromanage everything inside the universe via prayer
and voyeur-like monitoring of the masturbation habits of its inhabitants. These far-fetched
notions fall far beyond the explanatory power of a universe just existing from the get-go.
Without a doubt, Christian edicts have been the justification, if not the direct cause, of
many problems in the world today. Christians will often argue that Christianity is what teaches
morals and keeps them from doing evil. This assertion should terrify non-Christians. You dont
need religion to have morals. If you cant determine right from wrong, then you lack empathy,
not religion (anonymous). Research has shown quite the opposite to be true, that non-religious
people are, as a whole, more empathetic, more giving, more kind than their religious
counterparts, especially when it comes to those of differing beliefs. We keep on being told that
religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive

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evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish,
and perhaps above all, more stupid (Hitchens). Take Mother Theresa, so loved by Christians she
was honored with sainthood, as an example of Christian morality. She was not a friend of the
poor, as many will have you believe, she was a friend of poverty itself. She was quoted as saying
Suffering is a gift from God. She, ironic as it was, even fought against women being treated as
more than reproductive livestock. If an honored saint was lacking in morals to an extent she
delighted in suffering, its hard to imagine the average believer stands much chance at all. When
those who adhere most closely to the fundamentals of the Christian religion are the most
dangerous, it isn't the fundamentalists we should be concerned about. The people who promote
"kill the gays" bills, push creationism in schools, pray over their children as they die of easily
treatable diseases, murder non-believers, burn "witches", regularly become ensnared in religious
wars, all follow the same Bible religious moderates promote. That same holy book Christians
claim is true and moral is the same basis for their religion as well. Socrates specifically
addressed this dilemma, called the Euthyphro Dilemma:
If the gods had happened to approve of torture and disapprove of helping our
neighbors, torture would have been good and helping our neighbors bad. Some
modern theists have attempted to extricate themselves from this type of dilemma
by maintaining that God is good and so could not possibly approve of torture; but
these theists are caught in a trap of their own making, for what can they possibly
mean by the assertion that God is good? That God is approved of by God? (qtd. in
Singer)
In truth, religion is not functional at all. Everything religion does can be achieved through purely
secular means. However, there is one exception, one thing religion can do that secular

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organizations cannot, With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people
can do evil; but for good people to do evil that takes religion (Weinberg).
What of the moderate Christians, the ones whose secular morality has overridden their
strict adherence to the Bible? It is asserted, by what are coined moderate Christians, only the
extremists are the harmful people and the moderates live peaceful, productive lives and benefit
the community and civil progress as a whole. This begs the question, what religion are they
referring to? Do these religious moderates promote a custom religion and holy book which has
all of the bad parts removed? Do they pass up indoctrinating their children into magical
thinking? Are they critical of faith, belief absent and even contrary to evidence? The answer is a
resounding, No. Even the moderates encourage people to accept commandments on faith
alone, to abandon their reasoning abilities, to follow the Holy Bible. This means they promote all
the hate, murder, indoctrination, intolerance, rape, abuse and genocide it contains. While a
secular person with an identical moral foundation promotes no holy book, instead promoting
specific ideas and pushing no whole in praise of the cherry picked parts, Christian moderates
promote the whole to everyone else while they pick only the parts they like. If we remove the
unwarranted respect for faith and insert a different ideology this insurmountable error becomes
far clearer. If a person promoted Mien Kompf to everyone around them, while only following the
useful bits about, say, proper planning, and then wondered why Jews were being killed all over
the world, it would be painfully obvious to anyone else the reason such ancillary acts occurred.
Only outside the protected sphere of religious belief can many people begin to understand why,
even if a Christian considers themselves a good person, in promoting the Bible they are
encouraging and promoting all of the Bible based hatred, murder, rape, persecution, mass
shootings, genocide and oppression which stems from the religion and the respect they lend to it.

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Their being a decent person actually lends credibility to the hateful, violent fundamentalists
because people see moderates saying they follow the Bible, even though they follow barely any
of it, and being a decent person and assume anyone who else follows the Bible will end up
decent. Their living a relatively moderate, stable life, all while proclaiming a personal
relationship with a magical invisible deity, provides cover for those with mental illness, leaving
those suffering such disorders to remain untreated in a warped confusion between sane
religious belief and well-defined psychosis. Indeed, the DSM, the manual used to diagnose
mental disorders clearly describes religious belief under Delusional Disorder. Yet through social
and legislative pressures, and likely a contingent of religious believers on the board, religious
belief, meeting every criterion, is specifically and inexplicably exempted from the official
diagnosis. The difference between moderate members of Christianity promoting the Bible
becomes indistinguishable to promoting the Ku Klux Klan in saying they like the teamwork and
comradery aspects of it. It's incalculable self-deception to ignore all the promotion of violence
and pretend when they tell others to join their cult the new recruits will ignore all the same parts
they do. The fact groups such as the Ku Klux Klan may possess some beneficial aspects, like
community and controlled burn exercises doesn't render harmless all the vile aspects which come
with it. No matter what it's still the KKK, still Mien Kompf, still the Bible. Both the rational and
moral decision is to not follow the whole and instead take a secular path with no cherry picking
necessary, no dogmas to adhere to. Simply promote the good, without the baggage of the Old
Testament and Jesus teaching people how to beat slaves properly.
Surely Christianity provides benefits to society, the ardent follower will protest. Yet, if
bets were to be placed, a safer bet would be to put secular social support up against all Christian
charities in the world combined. Christianity has its food banks, homeless shelters and thrift

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stores which certainly help within communities. Yet secular people have food stamps, WIC,
subsidized housing, public education, national healthcare, Social Security, heating assistance,
grants for college, Medicaid, welfare, foreign aid, military protection, fire departments, police
departments, small business grants and a host of other government programs which work on a
national level involving helping millions of people at a time. When secular government is used
for its purpose, helping the people, there is no need for a charity, Christian or otherwise.
Religion, in reality, is little more than competition for such inclusive programs. Government is
the most efficient means of organizing and dispersing aid and protection, which is why most of
humanity utilizes it instead of living in anarchy. What's interesting is the exact political base
which continually tries to defund every social program offered by government tend to be the
religious, with Christians being loud in their opposition to such programs. Christians, it seems,
want poverty and ignorance to continue so people are forced to run to them for aid, with Jesus
strings attached. Poverty is religion's best friend as nobody is more willing to listen to bullshit
than someone in dire straits. Where well-being breaks down, religion is there to capitalize on the
misfortune.
Rationality is far more than simply following logic, its an accepting of, and aspiring to
discover, the truth of the world around us. It is a means of reliably communicating ideas and
transferring knowledge between one another. Without rational belief one can be made to believe,
and in turn do, anything. That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed
without evidence (Hitchens). As much as one may wish to believe any religion makes them a
better person, it is simply an outsourcing of the credit they themselves deserve for the
improvement. Even in moderation religion proves itself an evil mistress, convincing people to
believe without evidence, demanding they indoctrinate the children they are supposed to build

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the trust of, threatening them with everlasting torment for temporary actions, teaching
generations of defenseless children they are born worthless and broken. Religion, especially
Christianity, is a diabolical con, one we are better off as a species to stow away in the dust bin of
ignorance and superstition. We look back over history and see the great wars fought by people
thousands of years ago and think "What a tragedy so many people were tortured and died over
such primitive myths, but us, our myths are worth torturing and dying/killing over. We're
sophisticated." It may feel good to the believer to believe the fantasy, to have faith, but ignorance
is bliss in the same vein as alcohol is bliss to a drunk, short term happiness for that person and
the bane of everyone else who sees the cold hard reality of their poor choices and must either
make up for their shortcomings or watch them burn up on reentry. I try to deny myself any
illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others,
at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves (Hitchens).

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