Faith over reason armando ortega

FAITH OVER REASON HOW RELIGION DESTROYS YOUR LIFE BECAUSE IT PRIVILEGES FAITH OVER REASON AND FORCES YOU TO LIVE IN THE ALTERNATIVE WORLD OF RELIGIOUS FANTASY Author: Armando Ortega Mata RELIGION DESTROYS YOUR LIFE BOOK 2. © 2014 Copyright by Armando Ortega Mata Derechos Reservados To contact the autor write: armandortega@yahoo.com This is the second book in the 10 book series ―Religion destroys your life‖. See the titles of the books at the end of this volume. . The series is also available in Spanish, as ―La Religión Destruye tu Vida‖.

Cover design, David Isaac Medina davimedinas@gmail.com The autor recognizes the great help gotten from the best website on quotes from all over the world, www.goodreads.com VERSION 1.00 . . .

Dedicated to all men and women who are fleeing from the slavery of Religion

Table of Contents: RELIGION: THE GREAT DESTROYER THE ONLY ENEMY OF REASON FAITH IS IGNORANT, BLIND AND STUPID BIBLICAL FAITH IS FAITH IN THE VOID THE PROMISES OF THE FAITH THE PRAYER OF THE BELIEVER FREE THINKERS SPEAK ABOUT THE ERROR OF PUTTING FAITH AND BELIEFS OVER REASON AND SCIENCE IRRATIONALITY AND FANATICISM TO INCULCATE FAITH TO CHILDREN IS THE BIGGEST HARM YOU CAN MAKE TO THEM RUSSELL’S TEAPOT THE PERVERSION OF FAITH PERSONAL TESTIMONIALS THE FANATIC ZOMBIE DOES NOT LIKE “BRAINS” TRYING TO “REASON” DO YOU THINK THAT YOUR FAITH IS RATIONAL? I WILL LET OTHERS TO PERSUADE YOU ABOUT THE USELESSNES OF FAITH THE CRUTCHES OF FAITH RELIGION WASHES YOUR BRAIN BLIND BY DEFINITION RELIGION IS NOT GOOD WHAT DO YOU PREFER TO SAY TO YOUR CHILDREN HEY, YOU, MINISTER, PASTOR, PRIEST AND SIMILARS IRRATIONALITY EVERY DAY WHAT I WOULD SAY TO MY CHILDREN IF ONLY THEY COULD LISTEN "YOUR FAITH IS A JOKE" -Pat Condell WOULD YOU BET AGAINST PASCAL? IN DEFENSE OF FAITH BY THE THEOLOGIAN RICHARD SWINBURNE: MY REFUTATION CLOSING QUOTES ON REASONING AND SCIENCE LOOK FOR THE OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES “RELIGION DESTROYS YOUR LIFE”

RELIGION: THE GREAT DESTROYER ―We walk by faith, not by sight‖, wrote Paul to the corinthians, describing, unwillingly, the irrationality of faith and Religion; not only the Christian Religion, but all religions; and not only that, but also the destructiveness of faith and any system of faith.

You do not blind fold when you walk inside your home or walk across the street; you do not step into an abyss hoping for an angel to rescue you (not even Jesus did it); you do not drink a glass of cianide expecting that a supernatural force will invalidate the chemistry of the venom while permeates your body; you do not refuse a medicine that will heal your body; you do not…WAIT! While this book goes to print, in february 2015, the actor and director Van Kilmer, a ―Christian-scientist‖, is about to die, and is refusing to take a scientific medical treatment because he sees it as a betrayal of his faith. This is reported in nydailynews.com ―Val Kilmer‘s family says actor‘s faith is hampering tumor treatment: report. Family members told TMZ that Kilmer, a Christian Scientist, has been trying to pray away his throat ailment, rather than seeking medical treatment.‖ That is what I speak about in this book and the whole series ―Religion destroys your life‖. In this case this book is about the glorification of faith and deprecation of reason made by christians and religionists everywhere. Read Blaise Pascal: ―Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.‖

THE ONLY ENEMY OF REASON Religion is the enemy of questions. Faith is enemy of investigation, questioning and reasoning. Blind faith is the road to blind ignorance. With fear, ignorance and faith form a vicious circle, an infernal Trinity, a prescription for disaster. It is not possible to build a human life, in the full sense of the ―human‖ concept, when you base it on credulity of the supernatural, in obsolete dogmas and practices, in a frontal challenge to reason, evidences and reality.

That is why Religion destroys your life, not only turning you into a certified ignorant, but also because it teaches you that the antithesis of critical thinking, of that which makes you human, is a virtue. It teaches that the inexistent exists, that the improbable and never proved is what gives meaning to human life, that the real and eternal world is what you don´t see, not the one you see.

The definition of ―faith‖, by itself, should be sufficient cause for prudent people to reject Religion. ―Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.‖ (Hebrews 11:1). And the writer then makes a calling to Christians: ―Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.‖ (Hebrews 12:4).

This absolute certainty is against common sense, against reason and logic. If you barely can trust that which is evident and proven, how can it be rational to accept and trust in what is only a narration without evidence?

The writer of Hebrews almost said it: ―Faith is to believe in what you know that it does not exist‖. That is why you can have a very strong faith in any of the gods invented by man, including Jehova and Jesus. I say that faith is to believe in what you can not prove, to believe and accept things that are irrational, to start with.

Isn´t stupid that the crown of intelligence in the known universe, man, has to start the glorious journey of his life being taught the greatest lies of all?

Faith is what makes millions of persons slaves of the Watchtower; faith is what moves millions to believe that ―god‖ appeared to Joseph Smith and gave him a golden plates book and some colored stones to translate it; faith makes millions walk for several days to gather at the Virgin of Guadalupe sanctuary in Mexico city; faith is what makes millions bow and pray daily towards La Mecca; faith is what makes thousands to scourge and bleed themselves to mortify (kill) their bodies; faith is what pushes hundreds of believers to explode themselves in the midst of a multitude or crash a Boeing full of passengers against a building; faith is what gathers millions of people every Sunday to sing praises and ask pardon to an imaginary being that can not hear them or answer them, because it does not exist.

And no faith is better than the other. If otherwise, what is the standard for measuring if not facts and reason?.

I ask priests, pastors and ministers: What evidences do you have that god and satan exist?, that there is a heaven and a hell?, that there are souls and angels?, that some book was written or inspired by god?, that there is life after death and that your religion is the true one and the other religions are false? I want evidences, proofs, not free affirmations, no biblical passages, not groundless suppositions. How do you know that what you preach in the church is really true?

By blind faith thousands accept that a charlatan named Jose Luis Miranda is ―Jesus Christ in the flesh‖ (when he started his ministry he was only ―apostle Paul‖); by blind faith thousands of believers have given millions of dollars to the houstonian Joel Osteen, every week; Through the exploitation of blind faith The Vatican has accumulated the greatest wealth in the planet; by blind faith a thousand followers drank Kool Aid with cianide, administered by the minister Jim Jones, in the Guyana massacre; only by blind faith thousands have chosen to die and refused profesional medical care; and you can add many more examples of the destructive power of Religion and the leaders who exploit blind faith.

Christians should not be offended because I use the phrase ―blind faith‖, since the same Bible so qualifies it when it says that ―we walk by faith, not by sight‖ (2 Corintios 5:7).

The human mind is a ―sack of contradictions‖: factors and characteristics that give it life and elements that produce ruin and even death. On one side we have reason, free thinking, an investigative, skeptic and analitical mind, common sense, the willingness to know, the spirit of solidarity with people in all the planet without discrimination, passion for facts, education, reality and science, logic and clear thinking.

On the other side are fear, ignorance, blind and unquestioned faith, irrationality, superstition, fanaticism, the colonized, manipulated and slaved mind, fallacies, rationalizations and consent of the unjustifiable, cognitive dissonance, intelectual squizofrenia, brain zombization, hysteria, hipocrisy, herd thinking, the sense of moral superiority, intolerance, the conditioning to be submisive and refusing to think independently, opposition to scientific progress, anti-intellectualism, the lulling and dulling of the critical faculties, the closing and hardening of the mind, dogmatic thinking and viral stupidity.

Which of these philosophies of life have you adopted for daily use? We must all realize that the absolute priority of faith over reason is what makes Religion a force so destructive.

FAITH IS IGNORANT, BLIND AND STUPID Let us make a short list of what religious people believe: Mormons believe that a god that does not exist appeared to Joseph Smith and gave him an engraved golden leaf book, which Smith translated and turned into the Book of Mormon; they believe that many gods live in a distant galaxy, one of which came to Earth as Jesus Christ; that when the mormons die they will turn into gods; that Smith and the higher leaders of the church had many wives by the command of god; that in heaven or that distant galaxy mormons will have many wives and children; they believe that their president prophet talks with their god directly everyday; that the black color of negroes is a divine punishment because white is the color of god; they believe that some dead mormons are emperors of the moon, Mars, Venus and other planets. They don‘t know that Joseph Smith was a defrauding charlatan, that the Book of Mormon was a novel stolen from Salomon Spaulding, that all the mormon system is a castle of crimes, fraud and lies designed to have power over people to extract their wealth.

Jehovah‘s Witnesses believe that they will save themselves selling books and magazines, which are written by the will of god who talks with and inspires the Brooklyn New York prophets; they believe that the end of this ―system of things‖ is very near, so near that they have set several dates and failed about a dozen times (next date: 2034, because after 1914 ―man will live 120 years‖).

They don‘t know that they are slaves and non-pay salespeople in a giant system of mental manipulation whose real objective is financial gain and power over people.

Catholics are the oldest of the surviving Christian sects, and therefore they have had more time to invent fables and other fictions: they believe that saints descend from heaven and appear to people and make miracles (example: the Virgin of Guadalupe, in México); they believe that saints cry and shed tears when they need more money; they believe that children that die without baptism can not enter heaven; they believe that there is a

Purgatory after death, a kind of temporal hell for a few hundred or thousand years, and you stay there till you are punished for all your sins done while living, but you can get out sooner paying for masses and buying indulgences (I say: if the Purgatory is temporal, Hell is temporal); they believe there is a hell where all non-Catholics will go to burn forever; they believe the priest has magic powers because he can transform bread and wine into the real body and real blood of Christ in the mass; they believe priests have power to pardon sins and exorcise demons; they believe the massive killings done in the Cruzades, the Inquisition, the Cristeros war and Canada Massacre are highly accepted by god because they maintain the purity of the Christian doctrines; etcetera. They don‘t know that the Vatican and his agents are the largest religious mafia in the history of the world, with objectives of sex, money and power.

Pentecostals believe that the hysteria created by their ministers in every assembly is proof enough of the power of the Holy Spirit (the loudest they cry, the most convincing of the power—they never thank the power of electricity and electronic microphones); they believe that they don‘t need medicine to heal and believe, they only have to trust in the power of prayer; they believe that they can speak in other languages without previous study; they believe that they can drink poison or be bitten by poisonous snakes without getting hurt; they believe their pastors can perform miracles by the power of god (excepting cases of amputees—because ―that is tempting god‖). They don‘t know that 99% of their pastors are charlatans experts in the extracting of money thru painting pies in the sky and threats of eternal damnation in hell.

And we could continue with Baptists, Methodists, Adventists, Aaronites, New Jerusalem, Pare de Sufrir, and more than 10,000 christian sects. All of them manifesting beliefs that are ignorant, blind and stupid when seen in the light of reason. And everyone of their followers accept it when they see it on other sects, except, of course, their own group which is the true religion.

If you want to verify how deep you have fallen into the precipice of faith, take paper and pen and make a list of all the fables you have been told and you have accepted as true without asking for (and receiving) evidence, proof or real confirmation. You can start with Eden and the talking snake, the deluge, the parting of the sea, Sodoma‘s destruction, Jonah and the whale, the virgin birth, the resurrection, and so on.

You may barely accept that faith may be ignorant and blind; but you refuse to declare it stupid. However, I want to remind you the news reports on the last days of August 2013: two dozen members of the Kenneth Copeland´s church got sick of measles in Newark, Texas (near Fort Worth) because Copeland preaches against vaccination. This church teaches that their god is powerful and therefore when you trust medical science you are really distrusting god. Taking medicines is a sin for them. They see verification in apostle Paul saying in Romans ―for whatsoever is not of faith is sin‖ (14:23). (Google ―Eagle Mountain International Church‖).

BIBLICAL FAITH IS FAITH IN THE VOID Let´s read Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:18-5:7. ―While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. …For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. …For we walk by faith, not by sight.‖ Perfect faith is, then, the zombi estate, gone, abstracted, alienated, disconnected from reality, crazy.

In John 20:29 Jesus says ―Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.‖ Now read John 21:25 ―And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.‖ How´s that for exaggeration? Do you believe THAT?.

It remains clear that to have faith you need to renounce the evident, what is seen, renounce to common sense (snakes and donkeys talking, human beings being awashed in stomach acids for 72 hours and surviving, virgin births and resurrections, etc.), renounce to the use of reason. Therefore, it is against faith to ask, to question, to doubt and investigate.

Having faith is to let fear, superstition and fanatism, all children of ignorance, to be the directing principles of your life.

Faith will never stand to reason. Having faith is saying ―ok‖ to intolerance, because your god is the true god, not the other´s; your book is the one inspired not the other´s; your pastor is the divine prophet but the pastors of others are false teachers.

Having true, total and absolute faith means to be ready to die for your god and to kill for him (you can go and find dozens of examples in your Bible and you can mark them with the color of blood). Your faith can be so big that you will let die your own children without doing nothing to save their lives (you can find two

or three dramatic cases every week on the internet). You will not authorize blood transfusions to your children because ―life is in the blood‖ and your Religion is a Religion of death. You will not allow vaccinations or medical attention to your family because that would be to question the power of your god. Like the ―father of the faith‖, you will be disposed to slay your own son in the altar of your god.

THE PROMISES OF THE FAITH Faith carries with it the seeds of its own destruction were it not so blind, deaf and mute. I am talking about the promises made to the faithful believer. Paradoxically, the stronger the faith is, the weakest it is, because it is unable to demand the fulfillment of the promises that were made for it.

But there is nothing that religious leaders are not able to turn exactly into his contrary, that is, to mean exactly the contrary of what it plainly says, the abusers of faith teach that ―the promises of faith‖ are the promises and commitments that believers have to do, in order to be more dedicated to their god. This is translated or made a reality in the act of giving more money to the leaders, within the possibilities of the believers and even beyond. You can find sermons and entire articles on the internet speaking of ―the promises of faith.‖ IMAGINE Of course, the Bible presents god as trustworthy, as the allpowerful father who fulfills his obligations and promises: ―And, behold, this day I am going the way of all the earth: and ye know in all your hearts and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you; all are come to pass unto you, and not one thing hath failed thereof. Therefore it shall come to pass, that as all good things are come upon you, which the Lord your God promised you.‖ (Joshua 23:14-15). All promises, except ―the promised land‖, never fulfilled, as you can read in Joshua chapter 7.

Religious motivation is based on the basis of the offering of the heavens and the stars. Let´s see a few of those promises: ―For I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children.‖ (Isaiah 49:25); ―But my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches.‖ (Phillipians 4:19. On the contrary, this god and his agents take away most of their money); ―For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith

the Lord.‖ (Jeremiah 30:17. In every city of the world there are hospitals full of sick believers); ―There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.‖ (Psalms 90:10.

False, as much as any falsehood); ―ALL THINGS are possible to him that believeth.‖ (Mark 9:23. No comments); ―Bless the Lord… who healeth all thy diseases (Psalms 103:2-3); ―I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. (Psalms 31:25. Everyone has seen several); ―Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee.‖ (Psalms 50:15); ―They shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.‖ (Isaiah 40:29-31); ―And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good? (1 Peter 3:13-16); ―No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper.‖ (Isaiah 54:15-17); ―Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?.‖ (I John 5:4-5); ―Also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.‖ (Matthew 21:2122); ―He replied, ―Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‗Move from here to there,‘ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.‖ (Matthew 17:20); ―Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.‖ (Matthew 6:31-36); ―The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.‖ (Psalms 34:1-7); ―And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.‖ (Matthew 28:20); ―Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.‖ (John 16:20-24). ―And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not

hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover." (Mark: 16-16-20). Enough.

If you are a Christian believer, these promises of the faith, are personal, are yours; and now you know that The Promiser has failed you. You have given him everything for nothing. Can you believe him when he says that he will give you eternal life in heaven? If he has not been able to fulfill – or has not wished to fulfill – his earthly promises, will he be trustworthy, or willing or powerful enough to comply with you WHEN YOU ARE COLD DEAD and have not one red cent to fill his holy coffers?.

THE PRAYER OF THE BELIEVER In a religious website there is a prayer that says (please note the aversion to the use of reason and the surrender towards blind faith): ―Lord, I believe, but increase my faith. Release me from sterile reasonings and teach me to believe without proofs. Help me so that I can learn thru teological study all what you want to teach me, Lord, and that I always remember that it is thru prayer where I can know you better and learn more than thru reading and study.

Help me to remember daily that you are, Lord, the fountain of all wisdom and truth and both will come to me thru sincere prayer.

You are the master of the univers and I owe you everything. Fill me with your Holy Ghost and I will never stray from your will.‖ That is the quid of Religion: to believe without seeing nor asking proof or evidences. Which means that Religion is fertile terrain for quackery and fraud. For confirmation go and watch the Pope in action, or Joel Osteen, or Cash Luna, or Osho, or any priest, minister or bishop.

If you close the door to reason to open the doors of faith, you are really opening the Pandora´s box from which come forth all the evils of the world. Religion and faith are a box full of ghosts, goblins, phantoms, witchcraft, spirits, demons, divination, reencarnations, clearings, conjurings, sorceries, guardian angels, archangels, powers of the air, nahuales, demonic possesions and exorcisms, princes of the dark, gods, goddesses, astral trips, transfigurations, resurrections, heavens, hells, limbos, purgatories, ascensions, raptures, divine pourings, miracle pregnancies, apocaliptic visions, prophecies, prophetic dreams, celestial languages, miracle healings, revelations, ―revelations‖ (―Sister Candy, last night you were revealed to me in a divine dream, so come with me‖), anti-christs, celestial beasts, golden paved cities, fire and brimstone rain, stars falling from the sky, universal floods, pilgrimages, transubstantiations, DC7 planes full of spirits that are thrown into volcanic craters, threats of the end of the world, ―voices‖, golden plate books, translating stones, etc.

History, and the experience of many of the readers, has proved, more than once, the thesis of this book (Religion destroys your life), and you can see new cases everyday on the world wide web.

Thinking, being the supreme function of the brain, tell me how can it be good to renounce to the world of reality and rationality and to fly to for shelter in the world of faith and credulity? To renounce to your natural curiosity and hunger for learning to go running and take cover in the convent of submission to ideas lacking of all logical, rational and scientific support?

Is it so big and overbearing your need to believe in something incredible, that you are ready to turn your life around nothing? Do you think that all faiths and religions are ridicule, except yours?

Can something good come out of blindly believing any religious invention charlatans throw at you? Is it not an irrationality and even foolishness to believe in the dogmas of the church without demanding overwhelming proof that they are true, especially when it refers to, as it is said, doctrines with eternal consecuences?

Does somebody has, taking advantage of your exorbitant faith, the moral right to induce you to realize inhuman and immoral acts, criminal acts against the physical and psychological integrity of yourself and others? Is it not a zombie the person that (1) does not think by himself and (2) blindly obeys orders; and would he be the ideal human being? Sure he would be ideal for those who feast on religious multitudes, but would it be the ideal human being for the good, progress and survival of humanity?

Can someone be an ignoramous and a connossieur at the same time? In the same way, you can not be a believer and a thinker, about the same theme. If you say that such thing is possible, do this experiment. Imagine that you are a believer in the Virgin Mary, and you believe that the Queen of Heavens, came down to the Tepeyac hill just ouside old Mexico City. You believe that she appeared three times to the native Juan Diego, and that finally she stamped her image miraculously with the color of the roses in the Ayate or giant cloak that Juan Diego hung in his neck.

And you believe that ―the brownie virgin is our protector, or

redeemer and there´s nothing to fear‖ (and you chant it to the rythm and melody of the National Hymn of Spain). That is belief, faith.

Now let´s think, let´s reason. Let´s start reading the discourses of Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, at the beginning of the 1800´s, given in the Virgin of Guadalupe catedral. Now let´s read the work of the mexican historian Joaquin García Icazbalceta in his ―Letter about the true origin of the image of our Lady of Guadalupe‖. And we can continue reading the writings of Fray Juan de Zumárraga trying to find at least a small mention of the apparition. And to finish we read the history of the Catholic Church related with dozens and dozens of apparition myths. Let´s reason every bit of information. On the one hand, the church tells you that there was a miracle; on the other hand the historical facts tells you that there was an invention. What will you do? To continue believing you need to smash your own rational mind. But if you process and reason all the information, you will not be able to maintain your faith in the Virgin of Guadalupe. You got faith paying attention to lies; you lose it accepting realities.

How to condense everything in one phrase? The stupidity lies in ―believing‖, because faith does not need proofs in favor neither accepts proofs against.

FREE THINKERS SPEAK ABOUT THE ERROR OF PUTTING FAITH AND BELIEFS OVER REASON AND SCIENCE GUSTAVO LE BON AND FAITH. ―So, beliefs are always determined by the way of suggestion and not by the way of reasoning. We all know how intolerant is every religious belief, and the despotic dominion that those exert over the consciences… These (religious) feelings have very simple characteristics: worship of a supposedly superior being, fear of the magical fear he supposedly has, blind submission to his commands, impossibility of discussing his dogmas, the desire to generalize them, tendency to consider as enemies those who don´t admit the dogmas… The fact that the general beliefs are, sometimes, philosophic absurdities, it was never an obstacle for those beliefs to triumph; and it seems that the triumph in not posible without their containing an absurdity… Let´s simply remember how tenacious religious superstition have been through centuries, contrary to the most elemental logic… The multitudes never have had thirst of the truth. They avoid the disgusting evidences, prefering to dedicate themselves to error, if the error seduces them.‖ (Psychology of the Crowds).

H. L. MENCKEN ―Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the ocurrence of the improbable.‖ STENDHAL ―All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.‖ ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER ―Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.‖ ALDOUS HUXLEY ―You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with

such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent, but not as yet, quite intelligent enough.‖ DERREN BROWN, WRITER AND MENTALIST, ABOUT INSULTING TRUTH ―Everyone can be a true believer in anything: psychic habilities, christianity or, as Bertrand Russell classically sugested (with irony), in the fact that there is a teapot orbiting the Earth. I could believe any of these things with total conviction, but my conviction does not make them true. In fact, it is an insult to proper truth to declare that something is true only because I believe it.‖ JAMES RANDI, UN-MASKER OF CHARLATANS ―No amount of belief turns something into a fact.‖ BERTRAND ALFRED WILLIAM RUSSELL, MATHEMATIC AND PHILOSOPHER, ASKS FOR EVIDENCES ―The fact that an opinion has been widely propagated, is not evidence enough that it is not absurd; in view of the stupidity shown by the biggest part of the human race, it is more posible that a widely propagated belief will be a foolishness.‖ NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, astronomer and presenter of the new COSMOS series. ―The good thing about science is that is true, whether you believe in it or not.‖ ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, WRITER ―Beliefs are obstacles in the road of learning.‖ SALMAN RUSHDIE, writer ―If you were an atheist, Birbal," the Emperor challenged his first minister, "what would you say to the true believers of all the great religions of the world?" Birbal was a devout Brahmin from Trivikrampur, but he answered unhesitatingly, "I would say to them that in my opinion they were all atheists as well; I merely believe in one god less than each of them." "How so?" the Emperor asked.

"All true believers have good reasons for disbelieving in every god except their own," said Birbal. "And so it is they who, between

them, give me all the reasons for believing in none." (From "The Shelter of the World‖, The Enchantress Of Florence).

SAM HARRIS, WRITER ―While firmly believing, without evidence, is considered a sign of madness or stupidity in any other area of our life, faith in God still maintains an immense prestige in our society. Religion is one area of our discourse where is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could be certain. It is revealing that this aura of nobility extends only to those religions that have many members. Anyone who is caught worshiping Poseidon, even at sea, will be considered crazy.‖ (Letter to a Christian Nation).

JEAN DE LA FONTAINE ―All people easily believe what they fear or wish.‖ AMY ALKON, WRITER, ABOUT STARTING TO THINK ―Doubt has a bad reputation. To doubt does not mean that you have stopped believing. It means that you have started to think. Sheep do not doubt. It is posible that you will go farther in life questioning things…‖ CHRISTELL STOCKS AND THE RIGHT TO QUESTION ―To promote hate and discrimination against another human being, just for thinking differently is an example of intolerance. And don´t let out of your sight that the freedom to question, criticize and even satirize any system of ideas, whether religious or secular, are universal rights of everybody, considered in the articles 18 and 19 of The Universal Declaration of the Human Rights. No one is victim or victimizer only because some religious beliefs are questioned or criticized. Persons have human rights; ideas and beliefs don‘t.‖ ―If the ‗truths of god‘ were full and clear then nobody would doubt their veracity. Once you start to question and demand rational answers and irrefutable evidences, you realize that the idea of the gods is not an answer but an excuse. A fallacy of

appeal to ignorance is not a valid response to answer any question.‖ (https://www.facebook.com/SecularHumanismo).

KATE SMURTHWAITE, COMEDIAN AND POLITICAL ACTIVIST IN ENGLAND ―Faith, by definition, is to believe in something without evidences. And I don´t do that because I am not an idiot.‖ FRANTZ FANON, PSYCHIATRIST AND WRITER, ON THE ATTACHMENT TO BELIEFS ―Sometimes people have a base of beliefs that is very strong.

When they are presented with evidence that goes against such belief, the new evidence can not be accepted. It would crete a extremely uneasy sensation, called cognitive disonance. And because it is important to protect the core of the belief, they rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that does not fit into the core of the belief.‖ CARL SAGAN, IN HIS BOOK ―THE DEMON HAUNTED WORLD‖ ―One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if someone has been subjected to a fraud for too much time, the tendency is to reject any proof that it is an hoax. Finding the truth stops being important to us. The falsehood has devoured us. Simply, it is extremely painful to accept, even before ourselves, that we have fallen into the trap. As soon as one gives power to a charlatan over oneself, recovery is almost never posible.‖ PABLO NAVEIRA, ARGENTINE THINKER, ON MYTHS AND SUPERSTITIONS ―We see daily how superstition has invaded every inside corner of the world. Has flooded with myths the life of men, promoting absurd, contradictory and abstract criteria, presented as the supreme explanation to all questions, whose ends are the suppression of all criticisms. It is the chimerical thinking, far from good judgement and reality that the enemies of reason have perpetuated to use against mankind.

―Those vile and valueless men: religious leaders and intelectual swindlers of every kind; persons impervious to understanding, strange to any good end commited to destruction; moral carcasses of society, and the open ostentation of the vilest intelectual contempt of our species. They, the most nefarious, base and shameful sample of human insignificance, outcasts of the wisdom road. ―Those insensible and despicable monsters that sink the human being in the nauseous waters of ignorance. Those mean characters asphyxiate the free man, denying his rights and despising his knowledge. They, the precursors of all evil, longing destroyers and wicked deniers of the truth. In them I identify the enemy of reason, of the objective good, even of humanity. ―But the day will come when superstition will be put aside by knowledge; the ‗divine truth‘ will be replaced by truthfulness.The wicked system we call ‗Religion‘, that lulls the human mind and suffocates the longings for progress, will become a bad memory, the remanent of a dark age whose last redoubt were ignorance and conformism. Then, the light of knowledge will open a way through the fog of the faith and the insolent speech of the insolent credulous will be silenced by the undeniable weight of reason, ignoring every omen, curse or threat of divine punishment that have been imposed to men. ―We will extol human values one by one. We will witness the birth of a new civilization of free men, worthy and courageous, whose voices will for reason and dignity. There will be no tolerance for obsolete and murderous fundamentalist systems.

No more savage and absurd doctrines whose perpetuation is based on stupefying, dividing and belittleing humankind, under the stupid idea of a divinity begotten by fear, perpetuated by ignorance and now desmythicised by the most marvelous trait evolution gave us, reason. ―Mankind will advance, developing and defining goals; while those who prefer being left behind in the fantastic world of religions, so effectively designed, will continue yearning for

salvation that some imaginary messiah proposes them from the furthest corner of their own minds.‖ LEON TOLSTOI, WRITER, ABOUT FREE THINKING ―Free-thinkers are those who are disposed to use their minds without prejudice or fears in order to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges or beliefs. This mental state is not frecuent; but it is essential for correct thinking, which being absent, discussion will be worse than useless.‖ (War and peace).

CARLOS AZAGUATE VELAZQUEZ ―Religions are parasites feeding on poverty and ignorance.

Organized cults profit with the lack of knowledge and the absence of questioning from persons who are victims of the uncertainties of their socioeconomic systems. It is redundant to say that religions are human inventions that only provide emotional support and the ilussion of security.‖ LUIS ANGEL BAUTISTA, IN THE FACEBOOK GROUP ―DEBATE DE ATEOS, AGNÓSTICOS, ESCÉPTICOS Y RELIGIOSOS‖, ON THE LACK OF CRITICAL HABILITIES OF BELIEVERS: ―The christian who eats fish on friday laughs at the muslim that refuses pork meat, who at the same time scoffs at the jew who refuses crustaceans. The lubavich who swings at the lamentations wall looks with astonishment to the christian knelt over a recliner, while the muslim orients his prayer rug towards mecca. However nobody thinks that the straw in the other´s eye is equivalent to the beam in his own eyes. Neither can he think that the critical spirit, so pertinent and always welcome when it refers to the neighbor, should be applied to his own system of beliefs.

Man‘s credulity surpasses what can be imagined. His refusal to see reality, his desire of a happy show, even when coming from the most absolute of fictions, and his will of blindness have no limits. They would rather take fables, fictions, tales for tots, than to face up the cruelty of the real, that forces one to endure the

evidence of the tragedy of life. To conjure death, the homo sapiens sets it aside. To avoid solving the problem, supresses it.

Having to die belongs to mortals: the ingenuous and foolish believer knows that he is immortal, that he will survive the universal hecatomb.‖ ALFONSO LOPEZ WRITES IN THE FB GROUP ―RELIGION DESTROYS YOUR LIFE‖ (Now destroyed by believers). ―To justify his beliefs the believer has to give consent and justify the unjustifiable: genocides, infanticides, human sacrifices and other atrocious acts described in the Bible. Besides he has to love and adore the being responsible por such atrocities, twisting his mind to have a distorted conception about what is worthy of admiration and what is justifiable. The christian must believe by faith the miracles and unbelievable tales described in their holy book, which are highly improbable. To this end the writers of the Bible managed to formulate in it the terrible idea that the greatest of all virtues is faith, the belief without evidence, and, in many cases against evidence. ―This forces the christian to go against those evidences, against science at any price and against reality itself. Going this way against human progress and his understanding of the universe, it carries him to censor science. In old days this was done with brutal force, mainly with the inquisition, when the church was all powerful. Nowadays they intrude into politics to intervene in education and impose religious dogma and also their values crushing freedom of conscience in the people. ―The ambiguity of the scriptures and the high quantity of contradictions in the Bible opens the door to innumerable denominations, all of them believing to hold the correct interpretation, which has caused division and conflicts that end in war and genocides as terrible as the ones mentioned in the Bible.

The urgent message about the coming of the end of the world has induced many to commit irrational acts to be nearer to the end of the world and to witness the arrival of their saviour y take active

part in the fulfillment of the prophecies. The irrationality is not in fulfilling the prophecies themselves, but putting the planet in the brink of its destruction thru those irrational acts.

Religious beliefs are indemonstrable. Reality contradicts them, and they are contradicted also by good logic and good reasoning. Therefore, to continue justifying those beliefs believers most adopt irrationality as their banner and prefer it to rationality.

Religious beliefs turn believers into irrational and dangerous human beings. Though the measure in which they are so depends on how much they extend their religious beliefs to the external world, that is, outside their minds. This has been proven once and again, religions and religious beliefs are destructive.‖

IRRATIONALITY AND FANATICISM Blind faith is the big highway to the country of fanaticism.

Some believer has said: ―Religion is not bad. What is bad is when people are carried by passion and turn into fanatics.‖ (Now you understand why sunday sermons are 99% emotional appealings: pastors want a fanatic crowd at their whims). Those who say so forget that fanatism, intolerance and violence are not the beginning but the result of blind faith, exclusivism, the assumed moral superiority and full consecration to the cause of their god.

That faith make us irrational, is confimed by Martin Luther, the starter of the protestant reformation (he lived from 1483 to 1546, in the years parallel to the discovery of America and the conquest of Mexico). He says: ―Reason is the Devil's greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom... Throw dung in her face to make her ugly.

She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism... She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets…. Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but -- more frequently than not -- struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God…. There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason... Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and... know nothing but the word of God… Reason should be destroyed in all Christians… Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason… To be a Christian, you must "pluck out the eye of reason." … People gave ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon.

Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system,

which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth…. We know, on the authority of Moses, that longer than six thousand years the world did not exist… But since the devil's bride, Reason, that pretty whore, comes in and thinks she's wise, and what she says, what she thinks, is from the Holy Spirit, who can help us, then? Not judges, not doctors, no king or emperor, because [reason] is the Devil's greatest whore.‖ (Quotes via http://www.jesuscult.com/Luther_Anti-Reason.htm confirmed thru other sources such as http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/luther.htm

TO INCULCATE FAITH TO CHILDREN IS THE BIGGEST HARM YOU CAN MAKE TO THEM ―A child should be taught not only to read. He should be taught to question what he reads. Teach them to question everything,‖ said George Carlin.

Parents have to decide whether to educate their children towards faith or towards reason. John Locke, at the end of the XVII century said that the development of the faculty of reasoning is an inalienable duty of the parents. To act according to reason is the most valuable good of infancy and the ultimate goal of every educational process. ―Even in his political theory, speaking about the state in which men would live naturally if the civil society wouldn´t exist, Locke takes for granted that reason would be the capacity that would allow man to be free and at the same time declares that the development of such faculty is a unavoidable duty of parents. These should watch over and care about the education of a child so that, when turning into an adult, he may be able to act freely, that is, rationally.‖(Article ―Del papel en blanco al gentleman virtuoso‖, Romina Pulley, in www.agoraphilosophica.com.ar).

And this critical attitude should be taken to every area of our lives, not only the ―spiritual‖ area. Jose Saramago wrote: ―We don‘t have to be so naive to believe everything we are told. We have to be critical. We don‘t have democracy, we have plutocracy, the power of the rich. Money has the real power, the multinationals.‖

RUSSELL’S TEAPOT If you believe that because your faith is shared by millions, it means that it is sure, certain and truthful, you are wrong, because, if you think again, there are a lot more millions that don´t have it.

And this applies to all religions; so, numbers don´t mean anything, in any of the two directions. These are not criteria of truth: the antiquity of the belief, the number of its followers, the sincerity of its affiliates, neither the stupidity of her dogmas.

Bertrand Russell devised this illustration: ―If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.‖

THE PERVERSION OF FAITH The worst thing that can be done to a word or concept is to propose it and use it in a sense that is absolute opposite to his natural meaning. A clarifying example is the argument of the novel 1984, by George Orwell, where, to say it in a way, white is black, and black is white.

That is precisely what religious leaders have being doing with ―Faith.‖ They say that faith is something natural, that is felt, like a headache is felt, although can not be proven. They say that evidence is not needed to believe; that believing is evidence enough of what is believed. Therefore they deduce that faith is the most reasonable thing that exists. Of course, they are speaking about the things they believe, not the things that the people from the religion on the other side of the street believe. It is a reality that Jehovah exist and that Christ lived, died and was resurrected; but it is not a reality that Allah exists, that the prophet Mahoma sliced the moon in two parts and ascended to heaven on a horse, or whatever. Their faith is reasonable because is theirs; the faith of the competition is irrational and without evidences.

For other religious leaders the proof of faith consists in the oral and continued repetition of what is believed. An apologist priest says in the web: ―The apparition of the Virgin of Fatima is true, and it is true as much as you deny it.‖ When beliefs can not be supported rationally, they invent the resource of ―another type of knowledge‖, other ―category of knowing‖, the kingdom of the supernatural, the acquisition of knowledge outside of the processes of common sense, observation and the scientific method. There is a whole discipline devoted to this: it is called Theology and her right hand is called Apologetics. I would say that Theology is the art of turning lies and fantasy into ―realities.‖

PERSONAL TESTIMONIALS For credulous, their ―personal religious experience‖ or ―conversion‖ is the equivalent of reality, similar to any experience in the physical world. They say that science has been wrong many times, that science does not explain everything, and finish saying that science and its discoveries will be the ruin of the world.

Of course, a little pokeing will find them using scientific advances to protect their comfort and prolong their lives.

To strengthen their vision of the faith, attempting the submission of reason to their credulity, they go so far as to affirm (without proof) that reality does not exist, that we live an illussion, that we can‘t be sure of anything. Not being able to susbtantiate their faith, they try to unsubstantiate reality. If we diminish reason we can open the doors to superstition, any superstition, without remorse. And faith is given the certainty that it is negated to reason.

Once the brain has lost all his practical usefulness, it can be given any use that is convenient to manipulators. And in order to faith having more worthiness, the next step is to transfer it from faith in himself to faith in ideas, things, concepts, characters and another´s philosophies and dogmas. And so the biggest defect of faith, which is irrationality, now it turns into a virtue, and from now on the brain will use faith as his main tool to ―think‖ or to continue feeling the illusion of thinking.

He who is sure of something, and also who is sure of everything, does not feel the need or the compulsión, with himself, to think. Therefore, his brain doesn´t give space to doubt because it considers it as a betrayal to faith. To examine, investigate, question and demand answers turn into a taboo. Gears do not shift in the transmission of the brain, and from now on all movement will be in reverse. Reason has been defeated by irrational credulity. And now, it doesn´t matter what the spiritual leaders do, say or write: the credulous disciple will accept, defend

and justify any lie, fraud or criminal act. The believer will have turned into a zombie, a fanatic.

THE FANATIC ZOMBIE DOES NOT LIKE “BRAINS” You take an impartial look at this imitation of a human being, and ask yourself: how is it posible that this friend of mine who was a prodigy of rationality has turned himself into an irrational idiot, an intellectual slave? How did he let himself to be caught in the cobweb of mysticism and religión? Who transplanted his brain?

What can be more dangerous for the human mind and the whole humanity, than this perverse system that makes a man to abandon reason, logic and common sense, that forces him to reject clear and evident facts, disturbing reality so successfuly, moving him into mental, sexual, financial and emotional enslavement for life; in exchange for a slice of a pie in the sky, the illusion of living forever, and ―doing god‘s will‖?

Can ignorance, fear, credulity, hope and good will, be exploited to such a degree? Is it that some demoniacal being, if a reality, resolved to turn the earth into a lunatic asylum.

You answer me that everyone is free to believe whatever he wants? Or that faith in the gospel is superior to any oher kind of faith? Can you affirm, without blushing, that to reject reason and logic is a mental attitude desirable for human beings? I tell you that you may believe whatever you want. It is your life; but don´t expect meto join the coryphaeus that use their hysterical magnetism to place faith and obedience over science, knowledge and critical thinking, not to mention common sense.

Is it intelligent to surrender everything to a cause, as bad as any similar cause, in exchange for a promise to be delivered after your death, when you can not go back to protest for the fraud?

TRYING TO “REASON” In the first attempt believers do in order to use reason and logic, they immediately fall into irrationality, and triumphantly shout: ―God exists, because you can not prove that he does not exist. For you to prove that God does not exist you would have to be God himself because you would have to be everywhere at the same time to be able to say HE IS NOT HERE, and you would have to know everything because if you don‘t know something this could be the existence of our God.‖ So, the proof of existence it is that there are no proofs of his inexistence.

The argument proves too much, because it is arguing that something, anything, exists simply because there are no proofs of its inexistence. If the argument proves that Jehovah existes, it also proves that Quetzalcoatl exists, that Allah exists, that Osiris exists, that Mitra exists, that a thousand gods invented by man are real.

The ―rational‖ bases of credulity are laughable. Make reason shine by its absence. They pervert critical thinking. They scoff at the basic rules of logic and reasoning.

It has been told many times, and I repeat: he who affirms the existence of something, has the ethical obligation of presenting evidences of his affirmation. Do you say that your god exists?

Prove it. Do you say that the Bible is a book inspired by god? Give us proof that its content could not be written but by a god. Do you say that your religion is the true one? Give us the evidences. Do you assure that man has a soul and that such soul is immortal?

We want to know the proofs. Do you believe that Jesus Christ was begotten by a god and not by a man, and that once dead he came to life? You have the moral obligation with yourself to get the proofs, to be absolutely sure that what you believe is true. When you find those proofs, show us the evidences.

DO YOU THINK THAT YOUR FAITH IS RATIONAL? If it is faith, by definition is not rational. If it is a rational conviction, it can not be called faith. You don‘t need to have faith in the force of gravity, because it is a reality. You don‘t need to have faith in evolution because it is a natural biological process.

You don‘t need to have faith in the laws of physics or chemistry, because they will continue working, whether you believe or not in them.

Faith is for such things as phantoms, heaven, hell, miracles, demons, life after death, guardian angels, purgatory, transubstantiation (turning bread and wine into the true body and blood of Christ), the apparitions of the virgin Mary, the intercession of the saints, the translation of the Book of Mormon, the clearing of Scientology, the holiness of the prophet, etc.

I WILL LET OTHERS TO PERSUADE YOU ABOUT THE USELESSNES OF FAITH Daniel Dennet said: ―To me, what is really dangerous in religions, is that they give you a golden excuse to stop thinking… for people to say ―I don´t have to think about this, because my religion tells me this is good, this is bad, this is clear, this is white, this is black, and I don´t have to reflect about it.‖ The comedian Bill Maher says: ―If faith is the conscious suspension of critical thinking; then it has nothing worthy of admiration.‖ Benjamin Franklin said: ―To see by faith is to close the eyes to reason.‖ Hypathia of Alexandria, in the movie AGORA: ―You do not question what you believe. I can not do that. I should not.‖ Thomas Paine wrote: ―To argue with a person who has renounced to the use of reason, is like administering medicine to the dead.‖ (Also attributed to Voltaire).

The writer Stephen King says: ―The beauty of the religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once god (or satan) is accepted as first cause of something that happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance… logic can be happily thrown across the window.‖ This is attributed to Buda: ―We should not believe in sayings, simply because they were said; neither in traditions, because they have been transmitted from the old times; neither the writings of the sages, just because they said it; neither in fantasies, suppossedly spiritually inspired; neither in deductions based in some casual supposition; neither what it seems to be an analogical necessity; neither by the mere authority of our instructors and teachers. But we should believe when the writing or doctrine or saying is corroborated by our own reason and

conscience. That is why I taught not to believe what is heard; but when it is consciously believed, to act in accordance and fully.‖

THE CRUTCHES OF FAITH The whole man does not need crutches. Crutches are needed by invalids and disabled. In the same way a functioning brain should not use the tools of disability. The main tool of disability is faith: faith based in fear, the sense of guilt, humiliation and sacrifice.

Apologists of Religion, mainly the accomodationists, unashamedly ask for not taking away the ony hope believers have. ―People need comfort in this difficult world,‖ they say. ―People need faith to face death‖, they say.

Which is an advocacy for lying. Lying for god has no excuse, and lying is the greatest sport on the religious arena. What a despicable profession. And for believers, what a pity to live a lie for 80 or 90 years. Believing in immortality, heaven, hell, angels, demons and a hundred fabrications… with zero evidence. True, human stupidity is infinite. Man does not have any protection against his own appetite for fraudulence.

Robert Ringer said it, or should have said it: one of the greatest yearnings of the human being is the desire to be deceived. Right, and it so it happens that to feed that tendency there is, already, a group of wolves most willing to fleece the flock.

I am speaking of the clergy, the pastorate.

A devote life is a wasted life. You don‘t need religion or faith or god or a savior or conversion to give purpose or meaning to your life.

When man is freed of his ignorance, superstition and induced fears and guilt, he can walk briskly and fast toward a better life, without the crutches of faith and religion.

RELIGION WASHES YOUR BRAIN It does not washes it to leave it clean, healthy and funcional.

It ereases your highest faculties and fills it with the excrement of dogmas, superstitions and prejudice. If you admit that mankind has had many gods thru its history, and still has them, you will have to admit that it has not been because man has evidence of their existence: they have those gods by sheer faith. Somebody has told them that that particular god exists, and listeners have believed them, without asking for any proof.

Do you wonder, sometimes, how there could be thousands of men with the mental capacity to ―create‖ a god? You could call them ―god creators.‖ What it is even more amazing is that billions believe such tales. Even culturally advanced people such as the greeks had a giant pantheon.

To believe without proof is a recipe for disaster. If all those gods had a real existence, there would have been, already, a pitched battle of the gods, so that mankind could know which is the true god, or which is the greatest. Christians say that such final battle will take place in the future, and they already know who the winner will be (hint: the one who is losing today is the one who will win at the end). We can tolerate that every country may have their own welter weight wrestling world champion; but the affair of the gods should be something serious.

BLIND BY DEFINITION Every faith does not go further than being nothing but blind faith. Do ignorance and blind belief have a right to displace reason, in your brain? Can the ―knowledge‖ acquired by emotion and faith, be superior to the knowledge which is product of observation, analysis, common sense and reason?

There is a group of manipulation professionals, called theologians and apologists, who affirm such superiority. And, of course, every Religion has its theologians que assure us that their beliefs are the correct ones, while the beliefs of the church on the other side of the Street are false. Their god is the true god: the other gods are creation of the devil. Same thing for their contradictory doctrines and interpretations.

Truly, all faith is non-rational to start with. And, if a concept is real, is not faith. Example: aspirin takes away pain.

Faith is to believe that there is a god, that he listens to you and he cares about you. But every religious person believes the same thing with respect to his own god. It is evident that believers in every one of a thousand gods, they are being successful in prayer .01 percent of prayers and 99.9 of prayers are losing time, that is, only one of every thousand believers. If you take into account that not all prayers are answered as wished, the percentage of success is even lower.

Then, faith is an hoax to start with, and a self-deceit to continue. So, the most dishonorable of all professions is to motivate people to ignore and restrain his natural capacity to reason, so that they may embrace a system of living based on blind obedience.

So, the essence of belief is: ―Do not think because I will think for you‖; ―Do not reason because the thinking of man is trash before god‖; ―Spiritual things must be understood spiritually‖; ―We are only pilgrims in this world; our true homeland is in heaven‖; etc.

RELIGION IS NOT GOOD What good thing can come out of this? How can a sane person tolerate or accept this system of destruction of the natural capacity man has to think critically? How could we say that Religion is good for human beings? How can a system be good when it represses knowledge, reasoning, human rights and the freedom to think? How can Religion be good when it subjugates these precious things to the dictates of retrograde theologians who are friends of dictatorships, sexual perversión, wealth accumulation, impoverishment of the nations and the crushing of the basic human rights of men, women and children?

What is church but one more dictatorship with slaves in every nation of the planet: blood hungry, collector of submissive servants, decimator of humanity, and enemy of science and technological advancement?

Faith is directly connected with fanaticism, intolerance, abuse of force and violence. It can not be good the tree that produces so evil fruits. We all should have something of Thomases in the brain and ask for proof any time it is deserved. We know, of course, that the character Thomas of the gospel of John, is only a retorical device or literary resource, and in no way it is a person that really existed.

Christians can not speak about logic, reasons and evidences as a result of ―having faith‖. Faith excludes them. It is not the same to arrive at a conviction or reasonable certainty as a result of analyzing reasons and evidences, than to reach any kind of conviction ―of what is not seen,‖ which is the main characteristic of religion and pseudo-science.

Read what my martial arts hero, Bruce Lee, said: ―It is well known that, in the end, the individual comes to believe what he repeats to himself, independently of the reality or not of the affirmation. Each person is what it is due to the type of dominant thoughts that he allows to occupy his mind.‖

―Ignorance and fear are the parents of all superstition. The worried imagination of the primitive man weaved the idea of god‖ (Emma Goldman, 1869-1940, philosopher, pedagogue and atheist journalist from Lituania).

WHAT DO YOU PREFER TO SAY TO YOUR CHILDREN Learn to think and reason: cuestion everything, absolutey everything? Or, don´t worry, others have already thought for you, just believe what they tell you?

Don´t allow anyone to restrict your freedom of thought and expression? Or, you will earn the heavenly glory if you accept tales, fantasies and irrational thinking?

That doubt and investigation are the best friends of truth? Or, that believing lies with absolute conviction is the road to salvation?

That asking for evidence and opting for critical thinking gets you knowledge? Or, that accepting affirmations without proof is healthy for the human mind?

That the capacity and use of rational thinking is the highest quality of man in comparison with the rest of the species? Or that faith is superior to reason and is the greater good?

HEY, YOU, MINISTER, PASTOR, PRIEST AND SIMILARS I am making a call to your conscience and integrity of the most pure and honest part of your being, so that you may acknowledge which is the nature of the call you make when promoting, preaching and proclaiming your religion.

Do you realize that you are asking people to refuse the claims of reason and follow a ―nice‖ feeling of the heart?

Do you realize that you are asking them that when there is a conflict between facts and beliefs, to set aside the facts and surrender to faith? To subjugate reason, rationality and free thinking and put them as the walking carpet of faith without proof, blind faith, the faith that obeys without mumbling? That they should not worry about investigating anything because your god gave all the answers to all the questions in an old two thousand years book? That they don‘t need nor should ask evidence of anything?

Don´t you remember those glorious years when you could have your own opinion, right or wrong, but the result of the free exercise of critical thinking? When you were free and able to demand proof, evidence, facts, because you lived in the real world, not always pleasing, but real?

Can you feel yourself as a full human being when you know that your critical thinking has been eroded, when you do not feel free to think and even less free to express yourself? Do you resign yourself now with incomplete, false, irrational and illusory information?

Do you realize that ―to put everything in the hands of god‖ is to renounce to the only property that makes you different to irrational animals? Is not this exactly the same as making yourself a lobotomy or a brain extirpation to offer it in the altar of vested interests that are not yours?

How can you say now that something is obvious, logical, rational if you have renounced to your thinking power?

How can you say to a child to NOT trust in his capacity to think and reason? How can you say to the same child that Santa Claus exists, o does not exist, if there is no criterion to qualify any affirmation or negation of something?

Can you say to someone, with full conscience, to blindly obey without questioning anything, that is, to zombize himself, because that way he can feel as a son of god and worthy of eternal bliss in heaven? Must humanity change this world and this real life for a pie in the sky?

How can a person separate, distinguish and compare one faith with another if, to start, you are asking him to not access his reasoning capabilities, to not think by himself, when you tell him that logic is not a tool to use by the children of god?

If he could not analize, reason and doubt, how will he be able to know that this faith is divine and the other is demoniacal?

How can you demand absolute faith from him if he does not even know which is the object of his faith and what distinguishes it from what he should not believe? Or, are you asking him to have faith in nothing?

What exactly distinguishes faith in god A, from faith in god B, from faith in god C, if by principle you repudiate the use of reason, because you do not allow your parishioner to ask, analize, demand proof, and move in the domains of logic and common sense?

How can you ask someone to flee from ignorance if theonly way to do it is to know, to gather information, to doubt, to demand evidence and study both sides of any proposition?

Do you allow the members of the church to read books written by exmembers of the congregation or by members of adversary churches? What do you fear? Could they read something that you want them to ignore? Could they discover the true origin of your religion? Could they lose the faith?

If you had been in Ephesus with the apostle Paul, would you have tolerated that horrible book burning described in Acts of the

Aspostles? If you had been present in the process and condemnation of Giordano Bruno, and your vote were the difference between his life and death, would you have voted for his life?

Do you realize that when people –YOU- ignores reason, it is able to do and consent to any thing detrimental to another human being?

Have you ever been conscious of your fanatism and how far it can lead you? I ask you the same question I have made to others: if you were Abraham, would you have obeyed the divine command to kill your son? In all cases the answer has been positive.

Voltaire said it very clear: ―Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the mad daughter of a wise mother.

These daughters have too long dominated the earth.‖ And ―The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.‖ And also, ―If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.‖ "All good Christians glory in the folly of the Cross. Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense."

And he also wrote: "Superstition, born of paganism and adopted by Judaism, invested the Christian Church from earliest times. All the fathers of the Church, without exception, believed in the power of magic. The Church always condemned magic, but she always believed in it: she did not excommunicate sorcerers as madmen who were mistaken, but as men who were really in communication with the devil."

I feel that I am throwing pearls before swine, to copy a phrase that you may have read in a book of tales.

Do you realize that your values are now directly related to the concepts of fanatism, dogmatism, intolerance, fantasy, blindness, mythology, extremism, ignorance, fundamentalism, credulity, murder, squizophrenia, visions, revelation, division, oscurantism, ingenuity, brain washing, irrationality, discrimination, superstition and stupidity?

IRRATIONALITY EVERY DAY You only have to take a cursory look at the daily news on the internet to see the irrationality of religion expressed, thru the world, in the most irrational ways. There is a complete list of news websites in drudgereport.com You can also see some selected cases in the Facebook group ―/groups/lareligiondestruye/‖ or you can enter to the page ―religion poisons everything‖ located in Facebook: ―/GodIsNotGreat‖.

To mention just some samples: 1.- Thousands die every year because they refused medical treatment, from vaccines to blood transfusion, etc., aducing religious reasons (god says it is a sin, god has promised healing, etc.)

2.- Thousands bleed in the pilgrimages to sacred temples, whether ruining their knees or flagellating their backs with piercing whips or many other ―sacrifices‖ promoted by the clergy to apease their gods. Some even are crucified in Mexico, Philipines and other religious and irrational countries.

3.- Thousand believe that a priest can say a few magical words and turn a piece of wheat bread into the very real body and flesh of Jesus Christ, and turning standard wine into real blood.

The irrationality can be confirmed just by observing that, to date, no believer has asked for pre- and post- scientific analysis of the bread and wine before and after the so called transubstantiation.

They are so happy believing lies.

4.- Believers can be absolutely sure that their beliefs are true and rational, while at the same time are absolutely sure the beliefs held by people from other religions are false and irrational. Just listen to an argument between a mormon and a scientologist, from two of the craziest cults on Earth. Hindus believe there is a monkey god who travels thousands of kilometers at a single somersault, as Jared Diamond writes; but they, the christians,

believe their resurrected god with a real human body was taken from Jerusalem to heaven.

WHAT I WOULD SAY TO MY CHILDREN IF ONLY THEY COULD LISTEN I love you. And this is my legacy to your own children: make reason, intelligence and openess the compass of your life. Throw to the trash all beliefs in the supernatural.

Be warned of people who consider faith a virtue. The antithesis of critical thinking is dangerous. Beware of groupthink.

Shun those who ask for unquestioning obedience. To doubt and question will never be wrong.

Mind blindness results in unquestioning acceptance of dogmas which are senseless at least and destructive most of the time.

Faith over reason is easier for the weak of mind, the ignorant and over-emotional. Faith without evidence is immoral. Infantile indoctrination is immoral. Set apart from those that rant against science.

Never tolerate abuse or abusers. Never accept subjugation of women, mutilation of children, genocides under the name of any god, or justification of any crime.

Be responsible and demand responsibility from others. Do not accept mediocrity in thought, words or actions. Take the road less traveled. The masses are almost always wrong. Do not let your need for friends to carry you into a bunch of ignorant, fearful, superstitious and religious people.

See reality in the eye. Identify the deniers of reason and abusers of ignorance and faith. Recognize myths for what they are. Use critical inquiry and shun dogmatic thinking. Avoid those who say that god is on their side. Do not follow the way and company of dodos.

Do not trust religious people, much less the tartuffes of the world. They always show their pious side to lower your defenses.

Do not believe anything. Believe nothing. Allways check the data.

When offered proof, still beware. Fallacies and lies are clothed like facts. A claim of knowledge may be just a deluded and hysterical faith. Prejudice and wishful thinking is often sugar coated with conviction.

Religion divides people, causes disension and power struggles. Get rid of it, in any form.

Never surrender your reason to anyone´s faith.

Beware of those who have all the answers or ―the answer‖.

Do not let the inmates run the asylum. Fanatics don‘t care about any and all harm and damage they may do because their faith is able to justify even the bombing of the earth in a billion pieces: that is why you see them so happy when a tsunami takes away 250,000 lives, or an epidemy sweeps the planet. They are happy because these events fit their catastrophic view of life.

Believers are here but their heart belongs to a restored earth, a golden age that will happen when all the enemies are destroyed; that is why they deny or delay any realistic response to today‘s issues.

Humanity has never learned the principles of nature or the lessons of history. Charlatans and liars will start a new religion everyday, and millions will follow any tale, the more harebrained, the better.

This life is all the life you have. Do not exchange it for the promise of an afterlife. This planet is all you have: take care of it.

Question everything. Reject faith, fear, humility and obedience. Don´t be ignorant. Don‘t be credulous. Question authority and those that arrogate authority to themselves. Have allways on your natural detector of hypocrites.

Keep your mind open to new ideas, additional information, new facts, better arguments, hypothesis and theories. Every idea, system, group or person has his history: do not ignore it.

Do not squander time in fantasies and spiritualism; and do not believe any tale. And do not allow anyone to take advantage and exploit your errors, faults and guilt. You are not a sinner. You do not need salvation. There is no god, heaven or hell.

At last, beware of theologians and profesional apologists that will attempt to present their tales as real and rational facts. Do not accept, surrender or submit to anyone or anything.

(And here is the clincher‌)

"YOUR FAITH IS A JOKE" -Pat Condell "If you criticize religion, then, every so often somebody will say to you - quite disapprovingly - ‗you may not have faith in god, but you could show a bit more respect for those people who do‘.

And, you might find yourself thinking ‗well actually, maybe they‘re right. It wouldn‘t hurt to show a bit more respect – after all, nobody likes to be told point-blank that their religion is a crock of delusional garbage and a force for evil in the world. That, what they call ‗faith‘ is merely fear dressed up as virtue. And that their puerile beliefs are a strait-jacket on the whole of humanity.‘ That‘s bound to put anybody‘s nose out of joint.

So yes, maybe I could show a bit more respect.

The only fly in the ointment is – I don‘t actually feel any respect. I have tried, I really have, and I feel just terrible about it, but it just isn‘t there.

I suppose I could lie to myself, and pretend for the sake of people‘s feelings – because we all know how delicate and tender they can be these days.

But, the bold truth is, I don‘t actually care about their feelings - at all; not even slightly.

Of course, I realize that should weigh heavily on my conscience – but luckily my conscience knows when it is being bullied and manipulated – so it doesn‘t care either.

My conscience knows that there is no earthly reason for anybody on this planet to respect religion - in any way. Indeed, purely on the evidence religion itself provides, in such regular abundance, there is every reason to actively disrespect it to the point of outright abuse.

And quite frankly, the fact that religion gets so little abuse, compared to what it really deserves, I can only attribute to the unbelievable tolerance, restraint and plain good manners of atheists and secularists everywhere.

So, if you are a religious person, and if you‘re thinking of demanding more respect for your beliefs, please try to bear in mind that you and your religion are already getting way more respect than you‘ve ever deserved. Your faith is a joke. Your god is a joke. He‘s so absurd, he‘s an embarrassment even to people who don‘t believe in him – and he and you still have it all to prove.

So far, no proof has been forthcoming, nor is it likely to be; as we all well know – so respect, I‘m afraid, is out of the question. The best you can hope for is amused incredulity – and that would be on a good day.

People say ‗well, you can only truly understand faith when you have faith‘ – which I take to mean when you‘ve suspended your critical faculties and hypnotized yourself into believing a load of fascist nonsense about your eternal soul, then, you‘ll understand faith – well, I can certainly believe that.

Faith peddlers like to put themselves beyond question by claiming that their faith ‗transcends reason‘ – the very thing that calls it to account – how convenient. Yes, faith transcends reason - the way a criminal transcends the law. The word ‗transcendent‘ is very popular with religious hustlers because they never have to explain precisely what they mean by it – other than some vague, superior state of understanding, more profound than ‗mere reason‘ – which is crude and simplistic next to the subtleties and profundities of belief without evidence.

If you hear a senior clergyman, and you will, using the word ‗transcendent‘ to explain the nonsense he claims to believe, then you know two things: one, he doesn‘t know what he‘s talking about; and two, he doesn‘t want you to know what he‘s talking about either.

Faith doesn‘t transcend reason at all; faith sidesteps reason – it runs away from reason because reason threatens its cozy bubble of delusion. So faith disqualifies reason the way a dutch criminal court disqualifies truth and the witnesses – and for much the same reason.

If you‘re a believer, your faith allows you to adopt a set of beliefs that make absolutely no sense, knowing that you won‘t be measured by whether they make sense, but by the level of piety that you exhibit in believing them. In other words, your willingness to deny reality becomes a measure of your virtue.

No wonder religion is so popular.

But what a price you pay for this ‗virtue‘. You‘ve been persuaded that believing in the impossible is your only hope… how did that happen?

And that your purpose is to worship something beyond your understanding, defined by and only accessible through, selfappointed intermediaries. Your thoughts, your words and your identity, are no longer solely yours to decide; but are subject to the approval of those who have assumed authority over you – through your faith.

The people who‘ve told you that you were born with something wrong with you - c‘mon - in a state of ‗sin,‘ no less. A condition that can only be cured by complete submission and obedience to them – surprise, surprise – from the moment you‘re born ‗til the moment you die.

And if all this doesn‘t exactly flatter your ego - and why should it - Don‘t worry, we can give it a special name to make you feel better, and persuade you that you‘ve still got some dignity – let‘s call it ―faith‖, and let‘s deem it to be the highest and most noble and profound of all virtues; and let‘s pretend that it comes from within. When we all know, that nothing about your religion is allowed to come from within – because that would give you strength and freedom – the two things your religion wants as far away from you as possible.

Faith is the grip that clergy have over you.

It‘s the invisible rope around your neck that pulls you along the road they want you to travel – for their benefit, not yours.

It‘s a dead-end word.

It‘s a word of bondage.

It‘s a word that lets you believe what you‘ve been told to believe -without feeling that you‘ve been told what to believe, but you have – and you can stop pretending any time you like.

It‘s not a virtue - that‘s the last thing it is.

It‘s an abdication from reality.

It‘s a dumb act of self-hypnosis.

It‘s a cowardly copout.

It‘s gullibility with a halo – and hiding behind it is like pretending to be an invalid.

So, I don‘t really understand exactly what it is that I‘m supposed to respect.

It seems to me, I‘d need to be some kind of moral contortionist to respect something that noxious – something that depends for its existence on a closed-mind – and it is clearly dragging humanity in the wrong direction; giving us false ideas about ourselves, and about the nature of reality.

I feel, if I respected that, I‘d be needlessly contributing to the stupidity and ignorance of the human race – and that is one thing I don‘t want on my conscience; no offense.

Peace."

-Pat Condell

WOULD YOU BET AGAINST PASCAL? Blaise Pascal, the brilliant french scientist of the 17th century was also a christian apologist (jansenist-catholic) who created an argument for faith in god using probabilities. The argument is known as ―the Pascal‘s wager‖. I mention it here because is constantly used by believers to this day.

The Pascal‘s wager says that you must believe in god and live as if he exists, because it is the most reasonable thing to do. If there is no god you will lose nothing when you die. If there is a god you will gain everything; but, what if you remain an unbeliever and die and discover that there is a god: you will lose everything. So, the wise thing is to believe, to wager that god exists. So, believing you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

If you bet against believing in god, Pascal says, "It is to the glory of religion to have for enemies men so unreasonable..."

Of course, the god Pascal is thinking about is the Christian god. There must be because, he says, it is the only god that sent his only begotten son.

So, you woud not bet against Pascal argument, or against your own eternal destiny, right?.

Wrong. The argument is as weak as it can be. It is even weaker than the argument written by Justin Martyr around the year 160 when he says, in his Apology, that Christ was resurrected because even the phoenix dies and came back to life every 500 years, in Egypt.

It is wrong because it proves too much. It can be used, and it is used to worship all the gods man has invented, and to follow all religious systems man has created. Pascal says that you can not refuse participation because you are already in a wager by the simple fact of living. But I say you are not in ONE wager, you are in thousands. That is crazy, as all religions are.

Wishing for god to exist, does not advance one iota the evidence to prove that god exists. Pascal does not specify who will we wager WITH. God or myself? If god, which god? I can not bet against myself because once I am dead I will be really dead.

Besides, I am not willing to wager with someone invisible, inaudible, untouchable, deaf and mute. As much imagination as I may have I have never dealt with any imaginary being.

Besides, what if I wager with the wrong god? What if the messenger of another god visits me tomorrow and asks me to wager with another god, and I have already given my life to Jesus? And how do I know which one is the true religion? Do I have a right to ask some questions before I choose?

Of course, Pascal and those using his wager will tell me that they already know that their own religion is the true one, and their god the real one; and that everything else is ignorance and superstition.

If I want to play it safe I would have to consider all gods and all religions and ask admission to every church. But I fear I don´t have enough money to pay everyone every sunday.

Pascal tells me that I have nothing to lose believing and going to church and take holy water and eat the eucharist. But I will lose my time, my resources, my life, this life, the only one I am sure to have. Besides, I will have no freedom to think, to speak or to write. At churches the pastors never surrender the microphone.

I refuse to wager. I don´t want to remain an eternity singing to the creator. So, see you in the purgatory or in hell. When you open the windows of heaven, if you make it, don´t forget to wave your hand.

IN DEFENSE OF FAITH BY THE THEOLOGIAN RICHARD SWINBURNE: MY REFUTATION When theologians defend faith, the first thing they do is to put it in an equal stand with reason; then they put faith over reason. At the end, they disqualify reason. And the damage is done.

Richard Swinburne (wrote ―Faith and reason‖), Alvin Plantinga (wrote ―Warranted christian belief‖) and even the charlatan William Lane Craig, with many others, have postulated the compatibility of faith and reason. ―Reasonable faith‖ is the name of one of WLC web sites. To reach such pairing of concepts they have to pass over reality, logic and common sense.

Swinburne argues, in Faith and Reason, that the other faiths, outside Christianity can not be true because they have diferent dogmas and goals. In the first chapter Swinburne levels the concept of ―there is a god‖ with his contrary ―there is not a god‖ and labels both concepts as ―beliefs‖. That is logical chicanery. To believe and not to believe are considered positive faith and negative faith. And to Swinburne positive faith is more probable because makes people take actions related to such beliefs.

He says that ―although it cannot be proved conclusively that there is a God, on balance the various arguments taken together show that it is more probable than not there is a God‖. Well, if the apologist can extract from you a small concession with every one of his arguments, he can certaily add up probabilities into something possible.

He says that ―people believe things if and only if they believe that their evidence makes them probable‖, so he puts a slab of belief supporting a superior slab of belief to reach a probability.

And watch how Swinburne has already ―evidence‖ into the declaration without having to present and evaluate any evidence.

He lists several ―beliefs‖ that, he says, are based on reason and not in experience, such as 2+2=4, and ―every event has a cause‖, and ―almost everyone dies before reaching the age of

125‖, etc. ―They have the status of basic propositions to which the believer ascribes a high degree of prior probability, and often form our background beliefs (or ‗background evidence‘ or ‗background knowledge‘) which we take into account in judging the probability of beliefs.‖ Then, with a straight-faced declaration declares evident the resurrection of Christ this way: ―A person may continue to believe a proposition while his evidence for it changes. I may a few years ago have assembled a lot of historical evidence which, I believed, made it probable that Jesus was raised physically from the dead. I therefore believed the latter proposition. I may now have forgotten the historical evidence, and yet continue to believe that Jesus was raised. My evidence now may be only that I once did, honestly and conscientiously, examine historical evidence and reach the conclusion that Jesus was raised. This evidence about my past investigation may be my present grounds for belief.‖ While he maintains that personal evidence that something is more probable than not probable is ground enough for a reasonable faith, he contends that Christianity and the christian god are more reasonable that competing options. How feeble the basis of Religion. I see it as saying ―we lack 99% of evidence, but there could be a 1% probability‖. Only a useless god could provide his slaves with that amount of protection.

Then Swinburne, when speaking about the nature of belief, inadvertently gives us a glimpse of the pervasiveness of atheism in the believers. He says that believers always act according to their beliefs, that is, beliefs translate into actions. To me that means that we can uncover true beliefs examining actions. So, let us make an exercise and amplify it to other believers and other religions: is there any explanation to the thousands, if not millions, of cases of abuser priests against women and children and the prevalence of coverups from the Pope down to the bishops, in the Catholic Church. My conclusion is direct: they do not believe any of the things they preach. The whole system is a sham. Those with the time, resources and intelligence to find if there is a god, if

Jesus really existed and the gospels are true stories, have found since the very beginning that everything is an imposture.

Is not that the same conclusion that you draw from the history of everyone of the sects, like Mormonism, Aaronism, Davidians, People‘s Temple, Scientology, Pentecostals, etc.?

As does every apologist, Swinburne starts to talk about factual faith (an oxymoron), strong faith, less strong faith, etc. That way he explains away any examination we could do.

What a sacrifice one has to make to read a theologian. Now he justifies the weakness of faith and says that the real culprit is ―lack of purpose‖. If faith is the queen of virtues, how could such mundane thing as lack of purpose derail the jewel of the crown?

Then Swinburne quotes Pascal and comments on him on how to acquire faith in god (the Christian god, of course) by ACTING as if you have it. Here is the quote and commentary: ―‗You want to be cured of unbelief and you ask for the remedy; learn from those who were once bound like you and who now wager all they have. They behaved just as if they did believe, taking holy water, having masses said, and so on. That will make you believe quite naturally.‘ Acting ‗as if‘, i.e. on the assumption that p, is thus distinguished from belief as a state causally efficacious in producing belief that p.‖ Take a look as Swinburne makes a sleight of hand, ―a la Craig‖, when changing to the next chapters he says the following (I will put in higher case the key words): ―In Chapter 1, I considered the nature of ACTUAL belief. We saw how in a sense all beliefs give rise to action and MUST BE BASED ON EVIDENCE. But not all beliefs are rational or epistemically justified in the sense that they arise in a way which makes it probable that they are true. There may be various REASONS WHY IT IS A GOOD THING THAT SOMEONE SHOULD HOLD SOME BELIEF, e.g. that it gives him peace of mind or prevents him beating up his wife. But normally by far the most important reason which makes it good that someone should hold some belief IS THAT THAT BELIEF IS TRUE, BECAUSE

WITHOUT TRUE BELIEFS WE CANNOT FULFILL OUR PURPOSES (that is, attain the goals we seek). But since certainly true belief is so often unattainable and WE HAVE TO MAKE DO WITH BELIEFS AS PROBABLE AS WE CAN GET THEM, I shall consider different, more specific senses in which A BELIEF MAY BE RATIONAL IN THE GENERAL SENSE OF ARISING IN A WAY WHICH MAKES IT PROBABLE THAT THE BELIEF IS TRUE.‖ It is exactly what the propagator of the sham about the mayan prophecies does. Halfway his fat book, after a lot of factual chapters on general mayan archeology, in the change to the next chapter, suddenly, without advancing any evidence, the autor says that the mayans put a date for the end of the world. And he never gives any evidence of the existence of any such prophecies; much less the right translation.

But then Swinburne says this: ―talk of search for ‗knowledge‘ is used simply as a synonym for the search for true belief‖. I refuse to continue searching for a solid morsel of information amidst an amorpous mass of inanity. Apologists can justify anything if you swallow their sophistry.

CLOSING QUOTES ON REASONING AND SCIENCE Edwin Powell Hubble, on Science. ―Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.‖ ―Science deals with judgments on which it is possible to obtain universal agreement. These judgments do not concern individual facts and events, but the invariable association of facts and events known as the laws of science. Agreement is secured by observation and experiment—impartial courts of appeal to which all men must submit if they wish to survive. The laws are grouped and explained by theories of ever increasing generality.

The theories at first are ex post facto—merely plausible interpretations of existing bodies of data. However, they frequently lead to predictions that can be tested by experiments and observations in new fields, and, if the interpretations are verified, the theories are accepted as working hypothesis until they prove untenable. The essential requirements are agreement on the subject matter and the verification of predictions. These features insure a body of positive knowledge that can be transmitted from person to person, and that accumulates from generation to generation.‖ Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/ Bertrand Russell, o science: ―Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attibutable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.‖ Marie Curie, on understanding: ―Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.

Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.‖ Carl Sagan, on grasping the universe: ―For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.‖

Christopher Hitchens, on irrationality: ―Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.‖ Walt Whitman, on the scientific spirit: ―I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.‖ Douglas Adams, on equating belief with understanding: ―I don't accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me 'Well, you haven't been there, have you?

You haven't seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid' - then I can't even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we'd got, and we've now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don't think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don't think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.‖ Thomas Jefferson, on believeing and thinking (more in the site goodreads.com):

―Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion... shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have stopped, should not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws

of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ. ―...Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you... In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it... I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost...‖ Dan Barker, on science: ―Scientists do not join hands every Sunday and sing "Yes gravity is real! I know gravity is real! I will have faith! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down.

Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about the concept.‖ Douglas Adams, on the scientific method: ―Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes.

Religion doesn't seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That's an idea we're so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it's kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because you're not!‖ Christopher Hitchens, on atheism (in a debate): ―Atheism by itself is of course not a moral position or a political one of any kind, it simply is the refusal to believe in a supernatural dimension. For you to say of Naziism, that it was the implementation of the work of Charles Darwin is a filthy slander, undeserving of you, and an insult to this audience. Darwin‘s thought was not taught in Germany; Darwinism was derided in Germany along with every other form of unbelief that all the great modern atheists, Darwin, Einstein and Freud were alike despised by the National Socialist regime. ―Now, just to take the most notorious of the 20th century totalitarianisms, the most finished example, the most perfected one, the most ruthless and refined one, that of National Socialism, the one that fortunately allowed the escape of all these great atheists, thinkers and many others, to the United States, a country of separation of church and state, that gave them welcome, if it‘s an atheistic regime, then how come that in the first chapter of Mein Kampf, that Hitler says that he‘s doing God‘s work and executing God‘s will in destroying the Jewish people? How come the fuhrer oath that every officer of the Party and the Army had to take, making Hitler into a minor god, begins ―I swear in the name of almighty God, my loyalty to the Fuhrer?‖ How come that on the belt buckle of every Nazi soldier it says Gott mit uns, God on our side? How come that the first treaty made by the Nationalist Socialist dictatorship, the very first is with the Vatican? It‘s exchanging political control of Germany for Catholic control of German education. How come that the church has celebrated the birthday of the Fuhrer every year, on that day until democracy put an end to this filthy, quasi-religious, superstitious, barbarous,

reactionary system. Again, this is not a difference of emphasis between us to suggest that there‘s something fascistic about me and about my beliefs is something I won't hear said and you shouldn't believe.‖ Bill Gates, on science and religion: ―I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill.‖ Jules Verne, on science: ―Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.‖ Richard P. Feynman, on science: ―It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.‖ ―We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.‖ ―The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.‖ ―Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.‖ Christopher Hitchens, on science and reason: ―Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.‖

Stephen Hawking, on science: ―Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.‖ ―Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations.

Examples include the double helix in biology and the fundamental equations of physics.‖ ―I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no god. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that, I am extremely grateful.‖ ―There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.‖ ―...What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing us, rewarding us as human judges might.

Thomas Alva Edison, on faith, myths and rationalism: ―When the churches learn to take this rational view of things, when they become true schools of ethics and stop teaching fables, they will be more effective than they are to-day... If they would turn all that ability to teaching this one thing – the fact that honesty is best, that selfishness and lies of any sort must surely fail to produce happiness – they would accomplish actual things.

Religious faiths and creeds have greatly hampered our development. They have absorbed and wasted some fine intellects. That creeds are getting to be less and less important to the average mind with every passing year is a good sign, I think, although I do not wish to talk about what is commonly called theology. ―The criticisms which have been hurled at me have not worried me. A man cannot control his beliefs. If he is honest in his

frank expression of them, that is all that can in justice be required of him. Professor Thomson and a thousand others do not in the least agree with me. His criticism of me, as I read it, charged that because I doubted the soul‘s immortality, or ‗personality,‘ as he called it, my mind must be abnormal, ‗pathological,‘ in other, words, diseased... I try to say exactly what I honestly believe to be the truth, and more than that no man can do. I honestly believe that creedists have built up a mighty structure of inaccuracy, based, curiously, on those fundamental truths which I, with every honest man, must not alone admit but earnestly acclaim. ―I have been working on the same lines for many years. I have tried to go as far as possible toward the bottom of each subject I have studied. I have not reached my conclusions through study of traditions; I have reached them through the study of hard fact. I cannot see that unproved theories or sentiment should be permitted to have influence in the building of conviction upon matters so important. Science proves its theories or it rejects them. I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. I earnestly believe that I am right; I cannot help believing as I do... I cannot accept as final any theory which is not provable. The theories of the theologians cannot be proved.

Proof, proof! That is what I always have been after; that is what my mind requires before it can accept a theory as fact. Some things are provable, some things disprovable, some things are doubtful.

All the problems which perplex us, now, will, soon or late, be solved, and solved beyond a question through scientific investigation. The thing which most impresses me about theology is that it does not seem to be investigating. It seems to be asserting, merely, without actual study. ―...Moral teaching is the thing we need most in this world, and many of these men could be great moral teachers if they would but give their whole time to it, and to scientific search for the rockbottom truth, instead of wasting it upon expounding theories of theology which are not in the first place firmly based. What we

need is search for fundamentals, not reiteration of traditions born in days when men knew even less than we do now.‖ Carl Sagan, on science: ―In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.‖ ―One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we‘ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We‘re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It‘s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we‘ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.‖ ―We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.‖ Galileo Galilei, on science and reason. ―I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.‖ ―With regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them.‖ ―For in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.‖ Adam Smith, on science. ―Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.‖ ―

Nikola Tesla, on science: ―The history of science shows that theories are perishable.

With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of nature and our conceptions and views are modified.‖ Charles Darwin, on science. ―Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.‖ Neil deGrasse Tyson, on science. ―The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.‖ ―... there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.‖ ―No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don't ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.‖ "Science literacy is a vaccine against the charlatans of the world that would exploit your ignorance."

And the last word is for Christopher Hitchens: ―In other words, that the discussion about what is good, what is beautiful, what is noble, what is pure, and what is true could always go on. Why is that important? Why would I like to do that?

Because that‘s the only conversation worth having. And whether it goes on or not after I die, I don‘t know. But, I do know that it is the conversation I want to have while I am still alive. Which means that to me the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can‘t give way is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don‘t know anything like enough yet… that I haven‘t understood enough… that I can‘t know enough… that I am always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of

future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn‘t have it any other way.

And I‘d urge you to look at those who tell you, those people who tell you at your age, that you are dead until you believe as they do.

What a terrible thing to be telling to children. …and that you can only live by accepting an absolute authority. Don‘t think of that as a gift. Think of it as a poisoned chalice. Push it aside however tempting it is. Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.‖

LOOK FOR THE OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES “RELIGION DESTROYS YOUR LIFE” BOOK 1.- Religion destroys your life because it promotes ignorance and represses knowledge.

BOOK 3.- Religion destroys your life because it responds only to the interests of the clergy: sex, money and power BOOK 4.- Religion destroys your life because intents to abolish human nature and exploits the guilt, ingenuity and fears of man.

BOOK 5.- Religion destroys your life because it generates fanatism, intolerance, violence and death.

BOOK 6.- Religion destroys your life because religious fanatism is a mental illness.

BOOK 7.- Religion destroys your life because it is a big lie: there is no god, there is not an afterlife, no judgement day, etc.

BOOK 8.- Religion destroys your life because their very bases, their sacred books are fake, plagiarisms and full of lies, errors and contradictions.

BOOK 9.- Religion destroys your life because it destroys families, cultures and basic human rights.

RECOMMENDED WEBSITES www.csicop.org www.errancy.com https://www.facebook.com/groups/lareligiondestruye/ https://www.facebook.com/GodIsNotGreat http://www.ex-mormons.org www.whyevolutionistrue.com www.infidels.org https://www.facebook.com/groups/lareligiondestruye/ ###