Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis points out a growing propensity for atheists to describe Christianity (and religion) as a virus. There are several fairly incendiary quotes that he places throughout the article, but the most disturbing ones imply that children would be better off if taken from their parents. One of the quotes, by Jilian Becker is as follows:
“Has anything caused as much human suffering as religion? You might say disease, but religion itself is a disease, of the human race and of individual minds. Persecution, war, torture, terror, bodily pain, mental anguish, profound misery, wasted lives are the chief products of religion.”
Becker has evidently not heard about a certain atheist-based philosophy known as Marxism, which seems to have incurred many of the same suboptimal effects that she ascribes to religion. Usually the atheist will counter that Marxism itself is a religion, and that the terrors produced by that philosophy should be placed in the “religion” column. I guess they’re hoping that people don’t figure out that they’re full of diseased monkey snot.
In addition, religion is clearly not a virus, because it is something people embrace. Viruses, in my experience, are usually something people know to avoid.
The point is that calling people uncomplimentary names because they do not embrace a faithless world, while annoying, has little result beyond, well, annoying people. Even making sophmoric comparisons between religion and a virus requires little more response than “You’re an idiot”. But before they engage in the despicable activity of threatening a person’s family, atheists need to remind themselves what happens when one gets between a mama bear and her cubs.
From the comments below the story:
I had the same procedure done to me once–not because I was a hunger striker but because they were afraid I was hemorrhaging profusely into my stomach.
They take a tube and they shove it up your nose, and then it goes down into your esophagus. In my case, like in most others, it doesn’t go through all those u-turns gently..
But the worst of it was that when you’ve got a big, thick tube going up your nose and down your throat, it feels like you’re being strangled. It’s just that you’re being choked from the inside of your throat instead of having someone cut it off by wringing your neck. It probably doesn’t need to be said that it also makes you feel incredibly nauseated.
They brought two giant orderlies into the ER to hold me down–so I’d stop screaming about how I was choking to death and stop trying to pull the tube out of my nose and up out of my stomach.
As big as the orderlies were, and as bad off as I was at the time (I’d lost almost 70% of the blood in my body by that time), I remember thinking I’d rather take a swing at them, and hit them with something in the ER big and heavy–rather than have to sit there with that tube in my nose for one more second.
They’re doing that to those hunger strikers every day?Yeah, that’s torture.
Christopher Hitchens on Water-boarding:
“You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.”
So the SCOTUS looks bound and determined to make “same-sex marriage” the law of the land. First, they appear ready to strike down California’s Proposition 8, while paradoxically striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) because “it interferes with states’ rights to define marriage for themselves”.
I maintain that there is no such thing as “same-sex marriage”, since marriage, by definition, is a heterosexual union, just like apple pie, by definition, contains apples.
I would like to digress a bit and point out an error I sometimes see people make: CA’s Prop 8 did not “ban” same-sex marriage. No same-sex couple that hires a pastor in CA and has a ceremony performed, and puts it out that they are married, is going to go to jail.
In any case, what disturbs me most about all this nonsense is that there are Christians who feel it is their duty to heap scorn on their brothers and sisters in Christ who deny the preposterous notion that two men (or women) can get married to each other. These self-righteous chumps think that they are somehow honoring God by defending the “right” of a man to stick his thingy up another guy’s butt. I’m sorry, but you’re wrong, and you’re wrong. The plain reading of Scripture is that marriage was instituted by God as a heterosexual union for the purposes of companionship and procreation (“It is not good for the man to be alone”; “be fruitful and multiply”), full stop. There are no penumbras or debatable passages on this.
At the same time, I’m annoyed by Christians who–in a very pagan move, indeed–insist that only government recognition can make a marriage legitimate. Flapdoodle. The state can declare that only same-sex marriages are now legal, and that heterosexual marriages are illegal, and the heterosexual marriage would still be legitimate, and the same-sex marriage illegitimate. Government has no place regulating a God-ordained institution.
This guy for the most part gets it, especially with his closing paragraph:
There is no rescue from the self-deception of sin except for the salvation that is ours in Jesus Christ. While doing everything else required of us in this challenge, the faithful church must center its energies on the one thing that we know we must do above all else — preach, teach, and live the gospel of Jesus Christ.
One other thing I’d like to point out: the purpose of this drive to legalize “same-sex marriage” is not to establish “marriage equality”. It is, rather, to destroy the meaning of the word “marriage”. It’s a very Orwellian move, a grab for power, because once words have no meaning, then information cannot be transmitted, and people are more easily controlled.
Plus, there is the future potential that legislation that legalizes same-sex marriage will result in a limiting of religious freedom. Consider, for example, what Denmark did last year. Don’t think it can’t happen here…
Read it here. Also, don’t fall for the line that “28.6% of the people under the age of 18 that were murdered were done in by poison, while only 8.1% were killed with guns”. What Table 2 is saying is that, of the people who were murdered with poison, 28.6% of them were under the age of 18. Reading further into the report, it becomes clear that handguns are the most popular murder weapon.
