new testament

GodisPretend.net is 4 Years Old!

I hadn’t really realized how long I had been running this site until I looked up a few older posts a few weeks ago. This website has changed shape, servers, and domain names in those four years, but the central theme has stayed the same: religion is inherently violent and has no place in modern civilized society. As sort of a blast from the past, I present to you the first four blog posts I ever made on this site.

Subservience of Women
“What better move to make when writing the bible than to include a post to keep women in submission for all of time than to include the obligatory “men are better than women” verse.

The first epistle to Timothy brings us this travesty.” (Read More)

Evolution vs. Creation
“Life. Where did it come from? What does it have in store for me? What can I expect after life on earth?

Don’t know. It depends. Decomposition.” (Read More)

Don’t Pray For Me, Argentina
“I’ve got to hand it to Christianity. They have a pretty good racket setup. What most likely started as a simple way to keep the uneducated working class in check has become a self-perpetuating machine with all the right gimmicks built right in. Such as ‘We are right. Everyone else is wrong.’ Gotta love that one. No tolerance for diversity, no compassion for your fellow man, no ‘love thy neighbor’ (wait a tick…)” (Read More)

What Foxholes?
“You’ve probably all heard it. “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Oh really? What foxholes? And why wouldn’t they be down there? Are foxholes lined with Holy Water or some atheist repellant? I understand what this message is trying to convey, but that doesn’t make it anymore based in fact. The fact that people keep repeating this drivel only continues to lend to its credibility.” (Read More)

Happy Easter (Zombie Jesus Day)!

I hope everyone had a fantastic Easter. I know most people on this site will not have celebrated Easter like the majority of people that I saw and heard from today. Some people reading this may be offended to even hear me say Happy Easter. To those people, I can only stress that you must take deep breaths and not get so worked up about verbal expressions.

I celebrate Easter much like I celebrate Christmas: as a time to be with family and eat larger-than-average amounts of food. To me, there’s no shame whatsoever in calling the holiday “Easter”, since it has little to nothing to do with Christianity in its origins. Christians are the ones who look like assholes celebrating the day with chocolate bunnies and plastic eggs. After all, aren’t they supposed to be celebrating the resurrection of the man that made the ultimate sacrifice for them? Seems like Pagan fertility icons wouldn’t fit in very well with the whole “dying for your sins” nonsense.

Online PhD has information on degree programs for people who are looking to further their knowledge about topics like religion and philosophy. Of course it’s well documented that atheism is more prominent with people holding advanced degrees. Make up your own mind. 🙂

Either way, I hope everyone had an enjoyable day. If you speak to any Christians tomorrow, ask them how they reconcile the Pagan origins of the celebration with their intended meaning. Maybe it’ll make them think twice in December before they launch another War on Christmas campaign for their evergreen trees and twinkle lights on Jesus’ birthday.

God is a Murderer

This post isn’t much; just a list of examples that illustrate that the Abrahamic God is a sordid murderer. Someone sent me these a loooong time ago, and I cannot recall the source. If you know where these came from, please let me know.

  • 1 Kings 20:30 : God makes a wall fall on and kill 27 000 of an army retreating from some Israelites.
  • 2 Kings 2:23-24 : 42 children are killed for calling a prophet “baldy”, by two she-bears.
  • Judges 20:35 : The Lord smote the armies of Benjamin resulting in the death of 25,100 solders.
  • 2 Samuel 6:6-11 : God kills someone for accidentally touching the Ark of the Covenant.
  • Genesis 6:17 : “Behold, I, even I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall perish”
  • Genesis 19:24-25 : “Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven, and He overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.”
  • Exodus 12:29-30 : “Now it came about at midnight that the LORD struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of cattle. Pharaoh arose in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was no home where there was not someone dead.”
  • Numbers 14:12 : Because of Israel’s unbelief and refusal to enter into the promised land, God said, “I will smite them with the pestilence.” Numbers 14:36-37 And the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing up a bad report about the land–the men who brought up a bad report of the land–died by plague before the LORD.
  • 2 Kings 17:25 : God sent lions that attacked and killed men who refused to fear God.
  • 2 Kings 19:34-35 : 185,000 Assyrians were killed in one night by an angel of the Lord.

If you know of any more instances of murder, genocide, or crass cruelty, post them in the comments and I’ll add them to the list.

Shady Land Deal in the Bible

I came across an interesting Bible passage today. Matthew 13:44 states, “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the whech when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.”

This, to me, seems to be very un-Christian behavior. Finding treasure on someone else’s land, concealing it, withholding knowledge of such from the rightful owner, and then buying the property to gain ownership. This reeks of dirty dealing, secrecy, and back stabbing; things I was always led to believe were not becoming of good Christians. Moreover, the man that said the above quote is Jesus himself. So God (via his son) condones this sort of behavior.

Say the above happened, and this asshole bought the land with the treasure. I would like to know if any kind of mineral rights existed in ancient Palestine. Would simply purchasing the parcel of land entitle one to any treasures that were contained below the surface? If petroleum, gold, silver, uranium, etc. are to be considered precious commodities, then certainly a treasure comparable to heaven would be included in such rights.

Yes, I know that is an absurd comparison, but, to me, it illustrates that people, including Jesus Christ himself, will say anything to make the prospect of an afterlife as appealing as possible. By appealing to mankind’s lust for treasure and conquest, Jesus lays out a situation in which an underhanded transaction takes place with clearly concealed ulterior motives with the goal of enjoying a treasure while excluding others from said enjoyment. If this passage is to mean anything else, then it could have been written so many different ways.

Of course, no matter how much Jesus was trying to wow his starry-eyed observers, he certainly resorted to an appeal to force mere passages later with, “So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:49-50)

When push comes to shove, if the promise of treasure can’t convince someone to do something, threatening to burn them eternally should prove a useful tool of persuasion.