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A Question Of Conscience

Hey, religious dudes and dudesses, I have been atheist for about forty of my forty-seven years, so the ways of religion were rolling off my duck-like back before they really got hold and I've been out of the spiritual soup so long now I can barely remember what is feels like to wear that coat of just one colour.
So, I have a quandary about your religious ways.
I reckon it's probably not an easy one to tell the truth about and I'm unsure if you'll be able to honestly answer, even though it's just a hypothetical ponder.
Anyway here goes, I'd really like to know how you would react if the following paradigm played out...
On your pillow when you wake tomorrow is neatly folded piece of obviously ancient but beautifully pressed parchment with your name magnificently inscribed in actual gold upon it. It is a note from Yahweh, God, Allah or (insert your chosen deity here) and you know it's from your one and only "big-chief mighty wishes" because everyone else in the world got one too and they ALL say the same thing.
Dear (insert your own name.)
After a great and careful consideration of the terms of my contract, I have determined that eternal paradise is no longer on the menu for the great majority of humanity. I have the ones I want; I like Leonardo, Einstein, Socrates. I've had some great laughs with Elvis, George Carlin and Mark Twain's a hoot!
Yeah, I know, they should all have gone to hell but if I hadn't rescued them, I'd be stuck with all those mind-numbingly boring sycophants! I tell ya, sometimes it's like heaven's had a zombie apocalypse but enough of my woes, and back to yours, lol.
Heaven's off the ticket for almost everyone; let's say, if your not as spectacular as Old Jo', that's J.S. Bach to you, then you're furnace fodder.
Sorry about that and all but hey, what ya gonna do; I'm the big boss and it's been my shindig since I created day one. I mean, none of you puny humans can prove you're not merely a figment of my imagination, anyway!
So, where was I?
Oh yes, keep up with the commandments because you really invented most of them yourselves anyway.
Good luck, and Peace-out,
Your ever 'loving'
Super-special, Super-daddy
(or whatever it is all you arse kissers are calling me now).

To be precise, if your god removed the promise of a pair of wings and an eternal lease on a comfy cloud with a to-die-for view, would you still follow and spread the 'good' word?

Now, don't give me any nonsense about "God wouldn't change the rules", we all know your god's first rule change wrath was global genocide via flood! And then his second change of heart was a complete rule rewrite courtesy of the Roman Catholic Church. They're his rules after all. And, when it comes down to it, your god's reputation is ALL POWERFUL (Omnipotent) so, if you are of the opinion he can't change the rules then you are suggesting that that's something outside your god's power, which denies his omnipotence! You can't have it both ways!

For me, as an atheist, it's a moot point; my conscience is built from empathy and my prize, therefore, is the smile of my fellow human (awww, yeah I know, sickening but it about covers it) but for you, the non-freethinker, if you would choose the same 'path' and continue to obey the previously, 'divinely enshrined' rules then isn't that evidence that you, as I and millions of other freethinkers across the world, are entirely capable of being good without god?
Further though, if you decided you would not continue with the dictates of whichever brand of authoritarian manifesto to which you are enthralled, then surely, must you not conclude that you are ONLY being 'good' because of your scripture's delicious looking carrot and whippy-whippy stick?
Now, to me, that's not 'a good conscience' but the valueless obedience a slave would employ as a survival technique.
So, come on, I'd really like to know, would you follow the path without the prize?

And as an extra final spin on the ponder...
If, in answering the question above, you would choose to 'be good', I'd ask you the same question you've been asking atheists for decades... "what reason would you have to be good without god?"

This is one of the Too Many Questions
PEACE
Crispy
Please leave a comment - Anything will do
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OR ONE OR MORE FINGERS!

System Of Abuse

A recent headline detailed cases of sexual abuse during 'spiritual cleansings'...
"
Second woman raped during 'spiritual cleansing,' officials say
A man charged in April with raping a woman in a Santa Ana motel room under the pretense of performing a "spiritual cleansing" involving raw eggs has been charged with sexually assaulting a second woman using the same ruse.

Alberto Flores Ramirez, 36, allegedly met his first victim on an online dating site and lured her to the Aloha Motel by telling her he could help bring her children to California from Mexico.

The victim told authorities that the man said he would perform "a spiritual cleansing on her to get rid of her negative vibes," according to the Orange County district attorney's office.

Ramirez is accused of rubbing raw eggs on the victim's body and fondling her and then sexually assaulting her. A second victim came forward after seeing reports of the first case on a Spanish-language television station, authorities said Friday.

The second women allegedly told investigators that she also was lured by promises of a "spiritual cleansing" and met the suspect at the same Santa Ana motel in February.

"
Los Angeles Times - L.A. Now


So the question is why were two young women so easily duped; why were they so gullible that they could be convinced they could be cured by magic & mumbo-jumbo? And, furthermore, why did they think they needed curing in the first place?

We must lay at least some of the blame for this abuse at the pages of the religious texts.
Throughout religious books we find the fallacious information that humans are born valueless, in 'sin', that the completely natural human urges, we all have, are to be discouraged as intrinsically 'dirty'.
The religious texts preach that YOU, I and these poor women were ALL born rotten.
I ask you, is it possible for someone to conclude, "I need cleansing," without being repeatedly told, for their entire life, "You are dirty"?
If their spiritual instruction had not included such humanity hating claims or if their family and friends had ridiculed the offensive disparagement contained therein, would 'dirty' have been something they would have termed themselves?
If they did not think their souls were already to some extent 'damned to burn in hell for eternity', would these women have put themselves into such a dangerously exposed situation?
If there was no all Pervasive Fallasphere and we had an absence of religious oppression and 'subjugation to the books', could these poor women have been duped in this way?

And then to examine where these victims got this notion that they have a magically eternal, if sinful and inferior, invisible body part in the first place? Again, that would be the fault of these loathsome religious texts; each one purporting and supporting, in it's own supremacist ways, the notion of a shit-stained death-escape pod.

But are the scriptural fairy tales the only institutions of control that are guilty, in some part, for this abuse?
It's reasonably obvious that if, via standard school education, the victims had been made aware that the spiritual bollox is flummery to hoodwink the stupid, they'd not have become vulnerable to this monster's mythological construct but also, and perhaps more importantly the monster, similarly enlightened, would not have thought it up or at least not considered it as having a chance of working.

Now, I'm not condoning anything here but who is to say what is the supernatural effect of this magic egg massage ritual? Or can speak to its likely efficacy?
It is, I understand, a widespread practice among the superstitious of South America.
Can anyone truly deny that he has done what he said? What proof would there, or could there, be that he has not cleansed their 'souls'?
Does anyone have a mucky-ghost detector? A 'shiny-soul-o-meter'? Does ANY church or religious body have such a device as could define the cleanliness of a human's scripturally depicted Casper? Can anyone prove these women did not get exactly the service for which the asked?
Can anyone prove that the procedures he carried out are not 'the' way to spiritually cleanse a human?
I'm not saying they are, just that can anyone prove it?
The body part that the religious pretend they have is undetectable, so without evidence to the contrary, one may only assume that its 'cleanliness condition' must also be undetectable, so how can it be legitimately claimed that the undetectable filth on their undetectable body part has not been removed, improved or cured by this monster's ritualistic interference?
I think you'll agree that while the body part which he claims to cleanse is undetectable, it cannot be legitimately claimed that he as failed so to do. His or anyone's claims for this magic ritual have just as much validity, as the claim of the invisible body on which it is supposed to have effect or, indeed, the claim that the 'Casper within' somehow got scuffed and muddy merely by climbing into its human husk.
The point is...
ALL spiritual belief enables spiritual extremists and predators.
While the faithful believe the irrational as fact, irrational acts of faith are inevitable.

Surely, if one interprets groundless fantasy as reality one may not then legitimately complain when another interprets the fantasy differently that their view is groundless.

I do not wish for this man to be released, he's clearly a predator and should not be allowed to prey on the stupid but really, while the soul remains in the realms of unproven fantasy, how can any actions taken upon it be seen to have failed or succeeded?
Would that not require proof of 'spirit', proof that 'spirit' is capable of holding the property of 'cleanliness' and proof that the victims' 'spirit' condition was 'unclean' or less clean before the attacker's interference?

There's no denying this is a vile attack on two stupid women but the attacker was aided and abetted not only by the anti-human agenda of the books, the publishers and teachers of the books and the religious friends and family who, with every prayer, support the religious books' derogatory view of humanity but also by the state education systems, which completely failed, for fear of upsetting the already hoodwinked and the massively powerful magic lobby, to deliver a proper, well rounded education and lastly, and leastly, the women themselves, who are guilty of letting themselves fall foul of the fallacious hope of heaven carrot and fear of hell stick.
Whilst this crime was committed by a single individual, the conditions in which it was conceived and perpetrated were engendered and facilitated by endemic failings of our society to properly address the fallacies that are nourished by these vile manifestoes of subjugation and, with that in mind, can he really be said to be solely responsible? And with that in mind, where does the ultimate responsibility for the conditions of the crime lie?
For me...
The buck stops
at the books.

In conclusion, shouldn't we be attempting to bring an end to doctrines based in the irrational belief that 'if you don't live in permanent state of groundless fantasy you are valueless'? Shouldn't we be doing much more to rid humanity of this destructive cultist thinking?
You can probably guess what I think, although, if you've read my earlier posts, you'll not need to guess.

Additional:
Another, strikingly similar, news report of the 'system of abuse' in action -
"A psychic is facing jail after he was found guilty of duping young women into performing sex acts."

BBC News - 22 June 2012

More religious insanity perpetrated on the innocent in...
His Blood On Your Hands
The Cost Of A Ticket To Heaven


This is one of the Too Many Questions
PEACE
Crispy
Please leave a comment - Anything will do
The best communications are often,
THREE WORDS OR LESS
OR ONE OR MORE FINGERS!

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21 days in May


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