The Uncomfortable Truth

When I was a young boy I had a horrible and haunting experience. It was a few days after my seventh birthday, and I was awoken by the sound of my Grandad calling my Nan from the bottom of the stairs. I ran to see what I could do. 

He was stood there with blood all down his lips, neck and chest. To my innocent eyes it looked like a very bad nosebleed. I ran to tell my Nan about the nosebleed, and it was this fact which she took at face value. Grandad was having a nosebleed. The tissues were in the kitchen. I should go off to tell him. She would follow on in a bit. No big deal.

A few minutes later I was kneeling on the blood-soaked floor of the kitchen, cradling my beloved Grandad, as he died. His eyes were begging me to help him. There was nothing I could do but hold him.

I finally came to terms with this in my late thirties.

When I was 19, I met with a psychologist who explained how my tendency to run the incident through in my mind could have been shut off by grief therapy, had it existed when I was seven. Later still, another counsellor asked me to honestly ask myself what a seven-year-old me could have done... really? The honest answer was nothing, but that fact took a while to sink in.

You see, the problem is that as I got older, and studied more about first aid, First Response & pre-hospital emergency care, in these increasing levels of complexity, I saw that incident from a more and more informed perspective. I lost sight of the fact that I was only a seven year old kid, with none of the knowledge I gained as I grew up.

This 'Grandad's Death Apologism' ultimately led me to have some serious delusions about how his demise was my fault, because I didn't perform some, now, routine actions which may have saved him. Such as recognizing that it wasn't an epistaxis for starters!

An astute reader will already know where this story is headed. This is a blog about religions and their follies after all. So, where do we usually find events recorded by ill-informed, scientifically ignorant authors whose stories are later retold from more modern and complex perspectives as more information becomes available?

Yes... The Holy Bible.

The job of the Christian Apologist is to deny the actual words of the authors, the stories within the text as seen through primitive eyes, and make up new ideas to explain what they meant, and why the stories actually meant something other than what they say.

Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a text by Aaronid "Priestly" scribes of the 6-5th centuries BCE, writing around the time of or just after the Jewish exile in Babylon, whose Yahweh speaks everything into being from some pre-existing materials, such as space, water and soil. Meanwhile, Gen 2:4b-Gen 3:24 is a text two hundred years older, written by Elohists who were following their tradition of Yahweh moulding humans, animals and plants out of the earth, clearly more from an agricultural perspective.

These texts actually have messages all of their own, but modern Creationists cannot bear to accept that these are from two traditions, which if taken at face value, clearly demonstrate that Yahweh is a human literary construction, used as 'Priestly Propaganda'! Instead, they have to find a way to construct a narrative that explains how the second, older story is a clarification of a period within the first, younger story, and tells us that they are both, in fact, telling a single story.

They are rewriting the story from a point of view of having both an agenda and a new set of data. Just as I did with my Grandad's death.

When you fail to take a story, or an account of an event, at face value, and forget the knowledge level of its author(s), or participants, you diminish your ability to objectively analyse the truth of it. If you're not 100% honest in your dealing with Bible texts, you relinquish any claim you have of understanding some 'arcane knowledge' or 'hidden truths' held within the text.

I didn't know about pulmonary pathologies, traumatic cardiac events, haemostatic techniques, CPR, or Stroke management when I was seven. I had to be honest about that before I could recognize the truth of my Grandad's death. If you're honest about the Creation myths of the Bible, you must accept that they inadvertently undermine the veracity of your god claim... in short, they explain the circumstances in which you can be certain your god isn't real... and never was. 

This is the uncomfortable truth!

When Atheists Have FAITH In Science

"You would have to be remarkably resistant to brainwashing to resist the claim - endlessly repeated - that we are our brains. The notion that our consciousness, the self to which successive moments of consciousness are attributed, our personality, our character, personhood itself, are identical with activity in our brains is so widely received that it seems downright eccentric to profess otherwise." - Raymond Tallis "Aping Mankind"

Until this last weekend I have never understood why theists say that "atheists have faith in science", or that "science is our religion."

I do now.

For some, those analogies are anathemas. "How could that be true?", they cry. "Science is a process," they argue. "It's a collection of models which best fit the observations we make of the world around us. It is driven by research and evidence. We don't need faith to believe it. The evidence is there!"

The problem comes when atheists start to defend science like it can never be wrong. They really do start to sound like Christians defending the Bible, or Muslims defending the Qur'an. Science for these people isn't the nebulous constantly shifting and improving body of "best models we have at the moment" we all know it is, for them it's rigid, and certain. No more so than the people who have come to believe the all-pervasive, yet pseudo-scientific belief that "we are our brains" and therefore we do not have conscious free will.

I can already hear many of you shifting in your seats and a few gasps of air have been gasped in an incredulous manner as that last bit sank in. Yes, I did say that the evolutionary psychologist position that we are our brains is nonsense. It is a scientifically religious concept, or Scientism if you like.

If you want to believe that we humans are only a by-product of trillions of sodium-potassium exchanges in the neuronal matter of our brains then fine, stop reading now and go grab a coffee, or have a lie down. For those of you who aren't fooled by this homeopathic account of consciousness and actually want to understand where I'm coming from, strap in.

When I suggested this idea to an atheist on Twitter recently I was immediately branded a "closet-Creationist", accused of being insane, Called "Mr Black and White" (whatever that means), and because I have a disability which affects my memory (I'm not kidding) I was called a liar. Apparently he's all for us being our brains until faced with the evidence that one key component of fibromyalgia (which I suffer from) is memory-loss, which according to him I don't suffer from, instead I'm just choosing to lie to him. If we are our brains, as suggested, I cannot lie to him. I cannot reasonably be held responsible for any action I take because, according to him, I am the victim of an evolutionary drive to do whatever it is I'm currently doing. So, even if I was I would not be lying to him, my brain would be. I'm absolved of all guilt. So the statement "there are no murderers, only victims of brain activity" is also a valid according to this neuromaniac. It rather makes you wonder doesn't it? But, this does illustrate one underlying principle of Neuromania, similar to a condition we see in theists all the time, which we call "cherry-picking of facts!"

What do we get when we point out that God wasn't a nice guy in the Bible?
Lots of Bible passages cherry-picked to show he was (or that Jesus was) and personal insults.

What do we get when we point out contradictions in the text of the Bible?Lots of apologetics, and links to websites and blogs and videos teaching us ignoramuses why these contradictions aren't contradictions. And personal insults.

What do we get when we claim Jesus was likely a mythical god and not a real person?Lots of Bible passages claiming to describe him as real, links to the Gospels, more videos, articles written by believers and so on. Oh... and personal insults.

Guess what I got when I told this fellow that neuromania was a thing and we are not just our brains?

You guessed it... Cherry-picked studies, links to books and videos which supported his views, and the aforementioned incredulity and ad hominem attacks... exactly what we've all come to expect from theists.

People who think science is awesome (myself included) must also realize that science isn't definitive. There are many faults with it. Almost every study suffers from a degree of bias. Most scientists go to great length to iron out these biases, or at least own up when their sample-size isn't as big as they'd like, or when people dropped out of the study, or when something didn't otherwise go to plan, or even when they weren't meticulous enough, but there are people who perform studies with such tunnel-vision that they publish without noticing even the basic flaw in their methodology, or results. Their premise is incorrect to start with, or their conclusions are all wrong at the end.

One of the key "we are our brains" (WAOB) studies is Libet's experiments which showed that our brains "light up" on an EEG moments before we are aware of the desire to move a hand. This suggests that the brain activates our hand movement before we are even aware that we have actually made the decision to move it. This study was flawed for a number of reasons but it completely forgot that it is entirely possible that the area of the brain controlling the hand movements lit up because it had been told to, by the mind of the subject being studied. A conscious decision activating the brain which fed-back a confirmation code, which the participants mistook as the decision itself, which then led to the hand being raised.

Think about that. There are a few scenarios worth considering:

One :
The areas of our brains which control hand movement lights up.
We become aware of the need to move our hands.
We move our hands.

Two:
The areas of our brains which control hand movement lights up.
We become aware of the desire to move our hands.
We decide to move our hands.

Three:
Our minds tell our brains to activate our hands.
The areas of our brains which control hand movement lights up.
We become aware of the decision to move our hands.
We move our hands.

In all three cases the EEG lights up moments before an awareness is felt and then the hand is moved. Exactly what Libet saw.

If your argument is that we move our hand exclusively because the brain tells us to and we have no conscious control over that action, you're ignoring the possibility that the brain is being told what to do by something outside itself and the decision was in fact entirely our own; and that deciding to do something involves the subconscious as much as the conscious parts of our minds, and the non-physical as much as physical parts of our brains. It's a bit like arguing that workers on the factory floor make the shoes their boss tells them to make, whilst forgetting that the factory output is controlled by market forces. If you only have a method for assessing the actions of the factory boss, you're missing half the picture aren't you? In the above second case the brain tells our hand to move and we decide to do it, so there is an active participatory control mechanism in place between the brain and the hand. In the third instance the brain is being controlled from somewhere else which cannot be examined.

You can only test for things you can test. Aren't we telling theists that all the time? We admit openly that we could be wrong. There might be a god. However, given that we cannot test for one it can be assumed that there isn't one. And yet, the WAOB crowd refuse to accept that, since we cannot test for the mind, we could be wrong about there not being one!

If we are our brains and we have no conscious control over anything we do, we cannot be any more in control when we are awake than we are when we are asleep. We cannot be any more in control when we perform neurosurgery to cure a person of epilepsy than we are when having an epileptic fit of our own. This makes no sense at all.

I hope you can all understand how ridiculous that notion is though, because our legal systems can. After all, I wonder how many WAOB fanatics would be willing to stand up in a Court of Law to defend a paedophile accused of rape and murder, by stating for the record that he is under the complete control of his brain, carrying out only evolutionarily dictated actions (or actions determined by damage to otherwise normal areas of the brain) and therefore cannot be held responsible, so should be allowed to go free without any punishment?

Any takers?

Let's be honest here for once, shall we? The WAOB concept is all fine in principle, but not a single one of us truly believes it when taken to its extremes, any more than we think a theist would truly believe in a god when we take her beliefs to their extremes. We know what we think of ourselves, we can direct other people to become aware of our emotions, of other things in our spacial environment, or talk in the abstract about so far incomplete ideas. We can experience guilt, which we may or may not chose to use to change future actions. We can fight our supposedly evolutionary preference for 0.7 hip-to-waist ratioed women, or women from our own class, caste or "race", to settle down with a rotund, or skinny lady from the opposite side of the colour spectrum to our own, just because she has a similar sense of humour, or likes the music of Schubert and knows how to make a great omelette! Yes, I do know that all of these things can be explained, it is claimed, by evolutionary psychology, but it really is just the scientific equivalent of theistic apologetics isn't it?

When we look for someone who is similar to us they say it's because of our evolutionary compulsion for tribalism. Yet, When we look for someone opposite to us they say it's because of our evolutionary drive to widen the genepool. I call this having a bell for every tooth. We can find "research" to support every position under the Sun, so why bother with any of it?

The bottom line is that I think, rather than the declaration "We are our brains!", the very best we can do, if we want to remain honest and, most of all, consistent, is make the claim that "We could be our brains!" And, if you decide that makes me a closet-Creationist, insane, or whatever else.

There's apparently nothing either one of us can do about that.



For an in-depth study as to why Neuromania is wrong, see Prof. Raymond Tallis' excellent book "Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity." This blog represents an incredibly simplistic view of the arguments against scientism. If you only go by what I've said, I really feel for you. You need to look for better evidence than what I've said. You, more than anyone, need to read Prof. Tallis' book. :)


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Who is Mr. Maker?

The God posited by most Christians is one with ultimate, or infinite, power.

We see that term "maximally great" coming up from time to time.

However, if you think that a god exists and he is the creator of the universe, and everything in it, at which point do you make the leap from there to his power being greater than all other gods?

We have no idea, in god terms, how much power making this universe requires. For all we know this could all be a level one class at god school. 

"Great work Yahweh, I like what you've done with physics there. The gravity is really good, but that dark matter is... Class, look at Yah's universe for a second. Look at the way his dark matter flows through his space. That's really neat Yah... 'A+', but be careful not to over reach in your next assignment in Level Two's blended reality project."

How does anyone know that this god is maximally great? It's like bees thinking I'm some fantastic ethereal creature just because the hive I made for them was of perfect quality, by their standards.. The only difference being that occasionally a bee-keeper is going to pop along and make (at least) his existence known.

This brings me back to a point I made in an earlier post. Let's say God did make this universe, does it follow that He is in charge of it still? How can we be sure that the god in charge now is the same one who created it all? Did you make the car you drive?

All we have to go on is a rather simplistic view posited by ancient people's who were keen to move away from a polytheistic concept into a more monotheistic view which affords far better control of the flow of ideas and, ultimately, distribution of power.

Of course it could also be true, that the Elohim (plural) created the universe and everything in it for the LORD (God) who has since assumed control over a prefab universe. Elohim is a plural (essentially the distilled essence of all the gods) so why isn't it so that a group of gods made everything? This could account for Yahweh's inability to change anything dramatically, or intervene to stop tornadoes from tearing up houses in the US Bible-Belt! He just doesn't have that sort of juice!

Any of these scenarios could be true, so why is it that the standard Christian idea, that God rules the universe He created, so pervasive?

The church wants it to be this way and their "sheep" just lap it all up.

That's the only reason I can think of. 

Onus Probandi

I've been off for a while. My apologies, but my health fluctuates so sometimes I'm unable to focus clearly enough to write extensively.

Back with it now though.

While I've been away I've noticed that many theists on twitter, and in TV debates are still using the old fallacy of trying to turn the debate around and putting the onus probandi, or burden of proof, back onto the person denying the claim that they are making. This argument from ignorance is truly annoying.

Theists think that they get to claim whatever they like and because we cannot prove them wrong they get to claim victory.

The problem lies in their inability to extrapolate. If we cannot prove a god exists, then the god must be real, right? Well, they cannot prove that a universe-creating troll exists, so that must be the real truth. How would we ever decide which one was responsible for creating our universe? Then there's Bertrand Russell's cosmic teapot. How do you prove him to be incorrect? Is the teapot going to collide with any future mission to Mars? Does NASA need to take it into account?

Sometimes you achieve minor successes. I recently got one theist to admit that humans make up gods, but he couldn't get his head around the idea that the one he follows might likewise be a human invention. How frustrating! The cognitive dissonance required to apply rules to other ideas, but not your own, is beyond me.

Theists also tend to demand greater evidence for the negation of their claim than the claim they are themselves making. If I told you that I could fly without mechanical assistance you wouldn't be expected to prove me wrong, and likewise it wouldn't be incumbent upon you to prove that humans could not fly under any circumstances. I would not expect you to provide anatomical evidence, such as examples of bone or muscle tissue, or models of the physiological makeup of humans etc. etc. The onus is on me to provide you with evidence, perhaps by actually flying!

This moving of the goalposts is irritating, but like the shifting of the burden of proof it is just aimed at shutting down the conversation. It's the debating equivalent of "I am, but what are you?"

Why should an atheist be expected to be an expert in archaeology, chemistry, cosmology, physics, biology, anatomy, evolution, geology, theology, philosophy, literary studies, Biblical studies, history, climatology, or many other theoretical and physical sciences, arts and social sciences, just to defend their rejection of a theist's ridiculous claims? Atheism is the adoption of single position on a single claim. The burden of proof lies on the person making the claim, not on you or me.

Theists need (constantly) to be reminded of that.

In a recent to-ing and fro-ing in the local paper's letters section a contributor claimed that the Bible was true because he had knowledge of 40 excavations which proved the Bible to be historically accurate. Several problems arise as a result of this comment, but chief among them is the fact that even if the Bible was 100% reliable in its account of history and every single detail was absolutely true, nothing about that would be proof of a supernatural entity creating, or controlling, everything!

What on Earth makes him think it does?

If an excavation of, let's say, Tell ed-Dab'a, the home of the Canaanites* in Egypt, revealed intricate details of their religion, supporting every word of the Bible in remarkable detail, why should that prove Yaweh is real? After all, an investigation into Roman ruins does not in any way prove that Julius Caesar was a divine being. No examination of Japanese texts or temples proves that the Emperor is godly! Why do these people make that leap from A to WTF?

I think you can probably sense that I'm somewhat frustrated by these situations. I perhaps need to take a lie down and do an Apache-language crossword puzzle or a 10,000 piece jigsaw, perhaps even nail a jelly to the ceiling. Something less difficult than trying to argue with theists about their own responsibilities in the "god-debate"!

Remember:

onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat

The burden of proof lies on the claimant, not the person denying the claim.

*Excavations revealed that the language of the inhabitants of Tell ed-Dab'a was Semitic, therefore they would have to have been Canaanite. Further evidence of the nature of their religious ideas and burial methods cemented the fact. The idea of a sudden Hyksos invasion, previously accepted by many historians as the true history, but now acknowledged to have been an exaggeration, was attributed to Manethos, an Egyptian historian who must have thought that a sudden attack on Egypt sounded sexier than the centuries of slow migration by Canaanites which actually is known to have happened.

So What?

This post is for the atheists.

In my everyday conversations with theists I get a great deal of scripture quoted at me and a fair bit of the "God did this" and "God did that". As atheists, you probably all do. I mean, what else do we expect?

Theists are taught to prosletylize at us. It's in their books after all. Many of them are taught to follow certain scripts too, and this is the point we must get into our heads when we speak to them. They are parroting key lines and phrases taught to them at their places of worship. Particularly the Creationists. It's easy to believe that getting through to these folks is impossible, but it isn't. I know from experience that very often your seed of rationality can take months, or years, to bear fruit.

A little while ago I got a message from a chap who had been deconverted by something I had said months earlier. It had played on his mind and it sparked a realization. Though still a believer in an ultimate power, in a deist fashion, he no longer accepted Creationism as a valid model. Planting that seed is very important. You never know what might grow from it.

We've all heard the lines from the Theist Script a decent few hundreds of times. I don't need to reiterate them here, because the answers we should be giving don't come from a vantage point of defending our positions at all. 

In aikido, defence strategies are defined by the circle. Almost every technique relies on taking the opponent's attack and redirecting it back onto them. A swirling motion guides the attack from where it was going to where you want it to go, until ultimately it ends in a throw, a lock, or a grounding. Our strategy in defence of these theistic attacks on our credibility should be the same.

This is where the "So what?" comes in. 

The theist says "God did this..." so our answer has to be "So what? How does that action prove the current state of being of your God?" She says "God said this..." so our answer should be "So what? Why is this more important than what other gods are saying? What if it is more prudent to ignore these words in favour of our own, more successful philosophy?"

Recently the two earthquakes in Nepal have been in the news and it didn't take long for someone to attribute some of the discoveries of people alive in the rubble as 'God's mercy.' It may come across as cynical, or even nasty, but our response has to be "So what? Why did God create that earthquake in the first place? Why save that one person, but kill so many others? If it was a purely natural thing, why did God not save everyone?"

More often than not we get "the Creation happened as per the book and evolution is rubbish/lies etc" argument. Jeesh, how often do we get that?

If you'll recall in my earlier post I discussed how the idea that a god created the Earth and universe in no way supports the argument that he/she/it currently has anything to do with us.

Our answer to the "God created everything" statement has to be "So what? Why does that matter? What proof is there that this god, or any other god, interacts with us? What if, in creating everything, he blew himself to pieces? How can you get from 'God did it' to 'God still exists and he cares about what we do'?" 

There's no point arguing about science, especially abiogenesis or evolution. "How did life begin?" Is a common question. Saying "I don't know" shuts down their line of thinking because they are fuelled by anti-evolution websites which we all know they've got bookmarked already to go. Avoid trading facts with these folk. It does very little good.

It's far more important to ask questions than to present arguments:

"So what? What does X mean to Y?"

"How do you know that?"

"Why is that significant?"

"Why should I believe that?"

and so on.

However, that said, there is another set of questions which we often overlook, because we assume that the person we're speaking to is fixed in their belief and cannot be swayed. The first question is: "On a scale of zero to one hundred, how certain are you that you are correct!"

This puts the theist in the position of having to put a number on their belief, and it gives you an idea of what you're dealing with.

The next one is: "What evidence could I present to you in order to lower your belief score by just one point?" This establishes whether the theist is using evidence (or what they consider to be evidence) to form their beliefs. Technically it measures their doxastic openness... how willing they are to hear other people's opinions and change their minds if necessary.

The last one is: "What one single piece of evidence could you offer me to change my mind and make me believe in God?"

This sets in place their best pitch. Something you could explore with them, or later, or work on the next time you see them.

So, what do you do if they pitch something which makes sense and actually changes your mind? Not necessarily converts you to their religion, but makes you stop and think. What's your best strategy?

It's simple. Revise your thinking! If you feel that you might have got it wrong then do your research and assess your stance properly, and, if you are wrong, change your mind to better fit the evidence.

In other words, there's no point going into these discussions and asking questions if you're afraid to change your own mind.

If you do, so what?

"The Bible is True"... but which version?

As a part-time hobby I like to discuss ideas with the Jehovah's Witnesses [J-Dubs] which blight the streets of my home town every week. I only do it every now and then because some of them have banned me from visiting their stall after being unable to properly answer my questions. I'll explain why this week I even got one of them to ask me "What's the purpose of your coming here today telling us this? What difference does it make to you what our beliefs are?" Let the fact that this comment came from a Jehovah's Witness, famed for going door-to-door peddling their crap, who at the time was sitting behind a desk in a pagoda full of Witness literature and with signs outside proclaiming God to be this and that wonderful thing, sink in for a moment... yes.. indeed!

The reason I annoyed them this week was because I approached them with the topic of "Versions of the Bible"; my pitch being that for every line in the Bible which can be interpreted two or more ways there forms a pathway which leads to a new version of the doctrine. It's not as sketchy as it sounds.

For instance, if you believe that the account of The Creation [A] is true, as they do, then that's one version. If you don't then that's another. If you then consider the comment made by God prior to the Flood in which mankind is limited to 120 years [B] and think that this is a countdown to destruction, as the J-Dubs do, then that's another factor to consider, as is the idea that the 120 years is a literal age-limit set on each of us.

Putting them together we get four different versions of the story:

God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days and gave Mankind 120 years to shape up = AaBa
God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days and limited Mankind to lifespans of 120 years = AaBb
The story that God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days is an allegory but he did give Mankind 120 years to shape up = AbBa
The story that God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days is an allegory but he did limit Mankind to 120 year lifespans = AbBb

So we have the four versions... Of course there are other versions of each of these but I'm trying to keep this simple for now.

Out of two lines of text we can derive FOUR different versions of the Bible. I told this to the male J-Dub but got the standard "They're not versions, they are just different opinions." Well, I'd love to know what a version is if not a different opinion on the text. Clearly whether one has the opinion that God did create the Earth etc. in six days, or not, informs your practice of your faith. It informs your reading of other texts too. So how you interpret that one line does make a big difference.

As it is with other lines, and events.

Take for instance the event in the Bible when God supposedly appeared to Moses on a hill top [C]. The story says he appeared to Moses in a pillar of smoke. Now then, some interpret that as Moses having an actual visit from God manifesting as a pillar of smoke [a]. Others say that the fire and smoke was to cover God's face from Moses and so God appeared more as a man than the smoke itself [b]. Does this not fundamentally change your view on what your God is, or can be?

I personally think it was a charlatan's trick and Moses was making the whole thing up, making use of rudimentary pyrotechnic skills he'd learnt from other charlatans descended from Abraham. who you'll remember pulled a similar trick earlier on. However, we're talking about other people's interpretations here so mine do not matter.

So... should we add this event to the narrative? With the Creation [A], the 120 years comment [B] and the new Moses smoke trick [C] what combinations are now available?

AaBaCa
AaBaCb
AaBbCa
AaBbCb
AbBaCa
AbBaCb
AbBbCa
AbBbCb

That's eight versions from three events, using only two possible versions of each story.

The Bible is beginning to look like those old Steve Jackson books I used to read as a kid, where I got to pick my own story through the book. only this time instead of only my character dying the Bible wipes out over 2 million!

How about we add the parable of the "Water into Wine" [D]? Either Jesus really did make wine out of water [a], or it is a narrative explanation of the Jewish rite of passage [b].

I won't bore you with the details but that makes 16 possible versions.

Then what if we add the Raising of Lazarus [E], the 100 Zombie Saints [F] and on and on back and forth throughout the texts of the Old and New Testaments... how many versions of one book can there be, each with a unique narrative through the text?

At no point have I touched on how many printed versions there are, but if you even take one fundamental narrative, that of the idea that sin leads to an eternity in Hell, and you realize that the original Old Testament didn't feature Hell at all, and that even some versions of the New Testament lack that idea, you now see how utterly incompatible these books are from one simple change in dynamic.

So when I ask you which version of the Bible you trust to be the whole truth I'm not talking about the KJV, or the NIV or the YLT or KJV2000, I'm talking about all these little ideas and events and how you the reader, the believer, chose to form your ideas about what you believe. If as a conservative estimate we suggest that there are 100 lines in the Bible which can be taken two ways each, the total number of possible pathways through the Bible is 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376.

Of course this is a rather facetious way of looking at it, but I think that if Christians are going to go down the line of saying that "The Bible is true" as so many insist on doing, I think we do get to ask "which version"... because I do not see that it is such a stupid question after all.

Hello... and welcome to my new blog!

Hi... my name is Universal Blasphemist. So-called because as an atheist, and staunch anti-theist, I would be considered a blasphemer in all religions. This is my new blog.

A few things you should know ahead of time.

1. I like bullet-pointed lists.
2. I like the term atheist and consider labels to be important. I don't care if you don't.
3. I err towards changing minds rather than insulting people.
5. I like to maintain an air of mystery.
6. I write sporadically and often miss weeks on end, simply because I have too much going on.
7. I am Welsh and revert to speaking in Welsh when I'm angry with someone, or something.
8. I am in my 40s, overweight and a fibromyalgia experientialist.
9. I prefer people who spotted there's no number 4 in this list and are bothered by it.

That's all I feel I should explain at this point. So, if, as time goes on, you want to know more, I suggest coming back to find out... or just ask me at @UBlasphemist on twitter.

I'm currently writing a really long blog post on street epistemology... but it's taking absolutely ages, so in the meantime, to save me having to write it at all you could just go out and buy, rent, loan, steal (maybe not steal) a copy of Dr Peter Boghossian's book "A Manual For Creating Atheists" or check out Anthony Magnabosco's delicious videos on YouTube.  The consumption of both is time well spent.

I'll also be aiming to get all philosophical about other subjects which might help in debates with theists such as the Biblical Creation, logical problems with the Christian god(s) and the existence of Jesus. I'll also hit the bell on subjects such as Islam and Buddhism and even a few pages on pseudoscience, tarot reading, my favourite podcasts, people from the atheist movement and some interesting books I've found along the way.

On that note, if you're there thinking that everything you read these days is the same old shit and everyone seems to be writing vampire stories, or teen-angst crap, or books about the trials of shopping and want a new, intelligent and often disturbing book which might keep you up all night because the act of putting it down will seem dirty and sinful you should try "21 days in May" by CrispySea... it'll turn your blue eyes brown again... or some shade of black that Dulux hasn't gotten round to describing yet.

I'm not all about the plug... but since I do like it when other people get to like the stuff I like I'd feel remiss if I didn't tell you all where to go... in a manner of speaking!

Cheers

Use the links to the right of your screen to navigate my posts, alternatively use the archive at the bottom of each page. Bye.

Come back soon... miss you already...

:)