LETTERS TO THE FREETHINKER MAGAZINE REFUTING RELIGION

PUBLISHED IN THE FREETHINKER DECEMBER 1997

The bishops here in Ireland have been meeting to discuss the vocations crisis, among other things.
 
As an atheist, I am certain that for anybody to encourage vocations to the priesthood is a terrible mistake – for it is asking young men to become slaves to a religion that is neither believable nor truly good.
 
The Catholic Church demands huge sacrifices and even martyrdom for her sake, she has no right to do this for she has no honest evidence for her doctrines. Her using of miracles as evidence is clearly fallacious. When she says we cannot understand why evil exists, it is clear that she is only guessing; she says that miracles are done to support her teaching, but it may be that we cannot understand their purpose either.

When God’s ways are so mystifying, why shouldn’t Satan’s be the same? Why can’t Satan do good miracles for an evil purpose that we will never be able to discover?
 
An all-good God would not ask you to suffer for a religion that has no evidence.

Catholicism following Christ condemns doubt as sinful. You cannot help what you sincerely think, so, though doubt can be evil, it can never be sinful.
 
The Catholic Church praises the good works of venial sinners, though they are simply informing God that they will do good when it suits them. The good is just a pretence. The prayers of sinners are insults. Catholicism is an immoral religion.
 
Anybody who supports the Catholic Church by giving her money or going to Mass is to blame for the suffering of those who have been abused by her priests. The Church must hold that the priests should not be exposed and be punished, for it does grave spiritual damage to her and she believes the soul comes before the body. By assisting her, you are assisting a cult that would have abuse covered up for her sake, which is detestable for has no evidence that she is the right religion.
 
Now you will see that the fall in vocations is a cause for celebration!

PUBLISHED IN THE FREETHINKER JULY 2002

Has anyone noticed that belief in God makes a person worse morally despite outward appearances? If I hit my brother without believing in God I am hurting the brother and not God. If I believe in God my act is even more malicious because I am also intending to affront a being of infinite goodness who therefore must hate sin infinitely meaning as far as intent goes there is no limit to my evil. I mean it is an infinite insult. Those who propagate belief in God are soldiers of evil. Religion will answer it makes the good we do infinitely valuable as well and that redress the problem but the trouble is that only a handful reach sainthood level early in life and the Church says anybody can become a saint so we are more sinful than good when we fall short. All sin must be equally bad when it is all infinitely offensive to God for infinite means cannot be any greater and is unlimitedly great.

The doctrine of God implies that since God is the law and is not subject to the law that people must agree with him for to honour God because he is God is not really to honour God but to honour goodness but God wants us to honour him in reality and as Jesus put it with all our hearts and souls and minds. They must not divorce goodness from God but fuse the two. Since God is supreme there can be no law over him to punish him or reward him for what he does which raises the problem of how we know we can trust him. Christianity says just trust him. But it is immoral and downright bigoted and arrogant to just trust a being that makes such serious demands on us: love me with all your heart and do what I say and condemn what I condemn even if my rules make no sense to anybody. It is like marrying somebody within seconds of meeting them. The god concept then is inherently violent and intolerant and bloody. Believers insist that we atheists have no business judging God and finding him guilty of abusing the human race if he exists for we are not above God in order to sit over him in judgement.

The Catholic priest, Anthony de Mello, wrote in his famous book Awareness that to need anybody is not to love them because if they won't give you what you need then you refuse to be happy so it is manipulation. He says we should be detached from all things to be happy and to be really capable of love. I say to work, this advice requires that we should not need God. Yet Jesus said we should prefer him even to the parents who made us and love God with all not some of our faculties. That makes Jesus one of God's biggest enemies and the craftiest purveyors of misery that ever lived. The frightful unnaturalness of what he asked is plain for you cannot put God first when you are more sure you exist and that others do that you are that he exists. If Jesus rose from the dead the Satan was responsible and perhaps Satan hypnotised the soldiers to take Jesus out of the tomb and dump him and forget about him while he pretended to be the risen Jesus. Jesus was the one who said you know the Devil's disciples by their fruits. God and Jesus make mental health a sin.

Religion says that God is all-good even though he allows evil to bring good out of it. It follows then that evil is necessary for good or at least certain kinds of good to happen. Good is just good and it is unintelligible to say that good is better when evil has produced it. God destroys the desire to make human life pleasurable and long.

How the God-cultists with their dark implications can expect to make a lasting contribution to world peace is beyond me.

PUBLISHED IN THE FREETHINKER MAY 2003

Steuart Campbell (Freethinker, March 2003) justly objected to a letter of mine that said that the existence of Jesus was uncertain by saying that the same was true of most historical characters. However, the point I was trying to make was lost in the editing. What I originally wrote was that the Catholic priesthood disrespect children by trying to condition them in their impressionable state "to honour a man whose historical existence is not as certain as say that of Adolph Hitler as God ... himself. They are even to die for that man rather than blaspheme him like the apostles allegedly did".

There can be no doubt that if Jesus claimed to be God or the Son of God he was claiming that he should be trusted and obeyed for as a supernatural all-knowing being he knows what is best for us and we should put our reservations aside. All I meant was that it is crazy to make Jesus an authority on morality and to put him before yourself and your own thinking when his existence is not capable of absolute proof. Christianity says that there would be no room for faith if we could prove beyond a doubt that Jesus was the Son of God. But there is still room for faith if Jesus could be proved to have existed for his existing does not mean he was what he claimed to be. But to make such serious claims for Jesus that he was God or the Son of God would mean you would have to be totally sure that Jesus existed otherwise you are insulting God. We can't be sure enough so the Church is guilty of that gross blasphemy. Jesus was certainly a false prophet (and therefore condemned by the Law of Moses as a fraud at Deuteronomy 18 which he regarded as God's inerrant word) for when he made his claims he was promising that the evidence for his existence would be of the highest calibre and it is not. Personally I am certain that Jesus never existed.

PUBLISHED OCTOBER 2003 FREETHINKER
  
Keith Porteous Wood in his article Religious Fundamentalism Rules the Roost (Freethinker, August 2003) has frightening insights into the strength and growth of fundamentalist religions.
 
I believe that the Christians are right that prayer develops their faith and makes them take it more seriously and that people fall away from the faith when they stop praying. That is why I think it is very important that prayer be exposed for the superstitious uncharitable activity that it really is. If people get ashamed of praying it will lead to a downslide in religious influence.
 
It is certain that human life is absolutely valuable. The biggest essential for human life is consciousness. Consciousness is more important then than free will or memory or virtue. This means that nothing ever justifies suffering for consciousness is hurt by suffering. Yes, we have to cause some suffering for a greater good but it would mean that a God would have no justification for making suffering possible for he has the power to prevent all suffering unlike us. For example, he should not have made viruses to cause agonising diseases. Prayer implies that God needs to make us suffer for a good reason which is therefore a total insult against the dignity of human beings.
 
Everything we get in life comes about as the result of a worldwide process for all events effect each other. When you are praying you intend that a lot of things will happen both bad and good in the world to make the forces of chance give you what you ask for. Is it not fanaticism and criminal then to ask for the gift of patience when so many terrible events and deaths had to happen before you could get it? Is it not fanaticism to ask (indirectly) a God you only believe in but do not know to kill people to give you what you want? You are trying to get people killed over a belief because that is all that God is. God makes life cheap when you can try to kill just for the sake of a belief when you need proof.
 
If prayer does any good it does it in spite of itself.