From The Members: Contributor – Shaherah

Why is race so important when it comes to religion and being an atheist? Well, let me show you why I think it is:

Bid slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect …(Titus 2:9)

Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord. (Colossians 3:22)

Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as to Christ …(Ephesians 6:5)

Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed. (1 Timothy 6)

Blacks were forced into this religion by slavery. Their mental and physical abuse was endorsed by this wicked philosophy of evil men. Most people don’t know these verses are there, because they don’t read the bible. They spend their entire lives “studying” the same book one passage at a time, and conveniently skip over these parts (mainly guided by preachers at churches)

I urge all people, especially black people, to actually read the bible and study what they believe in. You’ll see what you’re actually worshiping…a philosophy of evil men, based on an immoral mythical character that endorsed the slavery of your ancestors.

- Shaherah

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Undercover Atheist

Being a undercover atheist can sometimes be the most annoying thing ever, but it is a annoyance that I must deal with if I plan to have any piece of mind. Now when I say undercover atheist, I am not referring to a nonbeliever who pretends to be a christian just to see what goes on inside the church, I have more of a life than that (hopefully I didn’t offend anyone if that is something that you partake in). I am referring to the fact that I hide my true beliefs in order to keep drama down with friends and issues with my family at bay.

My family is very religious. I have always wanted to tell them of my disbelief in our supreme, righteous, all knowing daddy (AKA god) but I fear what the consequences of that might be. I NEED MY FAMILY! I need to be able to talk to them constantly. I need to be able to attend family dinners and not have everyone treat me as if I am a step child. So I hide how I truly feel about religion in order to protect myself from losing any love from my family. I go to church with them sometimes, listen to them pray, and I will even give them a dollar or two for the “building fund that never seems to add anything to building.” Thats about as far as I will go though.

Now I know most of you are probably saying that, “I should not have to hide my true self from my family. They should love me know matter what I believe in.” Well that is true but you must also remember that this is religion that we are talking about. Religion has a way of making parents kill their children, preachers butt fucking little boys, countries going to war and killing millions, etc, etc!! My family might be understanding and love me anyway, but that is a risk that I am not willing to take. I would much rather sacrifice being a open atheist rather than be without my family. That might change one day in the future but at this current point in time, that is how I am.

When it comes to my friends, I tend to be a little more vocal about my beliefs but I hardly just tell people that I’m a atheist. Friends are easy to replace and I tend to surround myself with people who are not judgmental. I’m a geek and I love science so the people I hang with are usually the same way. I do have a few however, that are stupidly religious (Is stupidly a word? Like someone please tell me as I’m to lazy to google it). If you say one bad thing about the bible, they get all offended. Yesterday, I said “fuck you preacher, talking about come to church on time and your ass be late for every church event there is,”on twitter. My ex girlfriend (notice I said ex) got so offended, that she went on a big rant about how I was going to hell. My reply to her of course was that “I love the heat” LOL.

So that is my “Undercover Atheist” life in a nutshell. Now for all of you who are going to call me weak and a hypocrite, take this into consideration. Imagine you are a young man who just graduated from college. You are going to the Air Force in April but you have little money on hand and a ton of bills to pay. You are the victim of a crapy economy so finding steady work is hard to come by until you leave in April. The last thing you need is to be fighting with family and friends when you seriously need their help. Well if that alters your opinion of the situation, know that that is my current state. I really need all of my bridges intact.

If you are going through something similar, please share.

Rodney

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Questions Theists Should Ponder

1. Why Can’t Prayers really heal people, like the blind or someone with AIDS?
2. Instead of praying and not getting answers, why aren’t you getting up and doing something about the homeless and the unfortunate? Do you really feel accomplished because you prayed?
3. How can you be a Christian and judgmental at the same time?
4. How do you justify God punishing Adam and Eve for something they did before having any knowledge about good and evil?
5. What will happen in the Afterlife to the people who never heard about your religion?
6. What if the god you believe in isn’t the real God? How do you know it’s not some animal or tree?
7. What makes your “evidence” so compelling?
8. Why do you hate Atheism so much?
9. Why does the Bible order you to kill so many people? And why does it support things like slavery?
10. Why is the Bible inconsistent?
11. How do you decide what parts of the Bible to take literally?
12. Why does God not make any appearances, now that we have the technology to record and measure it?
13. Why do you think your God is paying attention to you?
14. If knowing God and Jesus is so important then why would god leave it up to man to take care of it for him?
15. Why are you so hell-bent on asking Atheists, “How did you get here”?
16. Can you prove to me that God exists in a way that will also show that Zeus does not?
17. If Gen 3:24 is true, why hasn’t anyone found the Cherubim and the ” flaming sword which turned every way”?
18. It’s been proven that modern humans originated from Africa. Yet, the Adam and Eve story claims the first Humans lived in a garden in Eden, near 4 rivers. ( Most of which no one can find). One of these rivers mentioned is the Euphrates, which runs through Iraq, Syria and a portion of Turkey. What’s the truth? Did man come out of Africa or near the Euphrates River?
19. How can a God have emotions, i.e. jealousy, anger, sadness, love, etc., if he is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent?
20. “God is all merciful,” we hear quite often. Wouldn’t it be more merciful of God to simply snap sinners out of existence rather than send them to hell?
21. Why haven’t we seen God reattach severed heads, restore someone who was burned alive or regrow amputated limbs?
22. Why does God entrust the spreading of ‘His’ word to sinners? Why doesn’t he do it himself?
23. If God is calling these people “home”, why are we putting the murderers of these victims in prison? How can we punish a man or woman for doing God’s will?
24. Why can’t we wait until we get to Heaven to worship God ? Why would it be too late?
25. What is the purpose of prayer? What can a finite being on Earth possibly tell an omnipotent, omniscient deity that he doesn’t know already?
26. Revelations is supposed to take place on Earth. What if we colonize the moon or Mars or inhabit a self-sustaining space station? Do we escape “judgment”?
27. If the earth was covered by a complete global flood, every living creature killed except those surviving on the ark, why are there many completely unique animal species in Australia that are found no where else on the earth?
28. If god created the universe out of nothing, why did he need dust to create a man; why did he need that man’s rib to create a woman? Why not create them the same way he created the universe?
29. In the “Last Days” Jesus is supposed to appear in the clouds. How are the Christians on the opposite end of the world going to see him? Are there going to be millions of Jesus’? What about people that work underground? What about people in deep space?
30. The highest rainfall ever recorded in a 24 hour period was 47inches in the Reunion Islands in 1947 (during a severe tropical storm). To cover the whole earth to a depth of 5.6 miles, and cover the mountain tops (i.e. Mount Everest), it would need to rain at a rate of 372 (three hundred and seventy two) inches per hour, over the entire surface of the earth. Can rain fall at such an astronomical rate? Where did all the water come from?? Where did it all go to??? And would not the dynamics of the earth be so out of balance (tides etc.) that the earth would become so unstable that it would wobble off into outer space?
31. If Noah’s flood supposedly covered the earth for a year, regardless of whether or not all the animals could fit on the ark, what the heck happened to all the plants? Can you imagine a cactus surviving under 4 miles of water for a year?
32. Christians say that God is NOT the author of confusion. Can you say, Tower of Babel?
33. After 9/11 a lot of people have been tossing around ” god bless America”. Why do they keep saying this? From the looks of it god hasn’t blessed anything. If god had blessed America, the 9/11 event would’ve never happened.
34. If the garden of Eden was a perfect paradise as Xians claim, then why did Eve even want to eat the fruit? Wouldn’t a perfect place provide everything a person would want or desire and thus she would want nothing?
35. I have often heard that faith is all that is necessary to believe in God and accept the Bible as true. If this is true aren’t all supernatural beliefs true since they also require “faith”?
36. Why didn’t God just kill Adam and Eve after the Fall and start from scratch? Actually, if God is all-knowing wouldn’t he know that man would need to be killed eventually anyway, (the biblical flood)? Why create Adam and Eve at all?
37. Many Christians believe that God is a thinking being, that he solves problems and makes a way for them when troubles come. Does God Think? If God is thinking, did he know his thoughts before he thought them? If so, again, where is his freewill and how is God thinking at all if everything seems to be one uncontrollable action/thoughts?
38. Genesis 1:28-29 shows that man and all the animals were first created herbivorous. Most young-earth Christians (ones that believes the earth is less than 10,000 years old) say that the fall of man resulted in carnivorous animals (hence death of animals). So, why did God punish the animal kingdom, making animals kill and devour each other because of man’s mistake? Or, if you’re an old-earth Christian (one that accepts that animals existed on earth for billions of years before man came on the scene) then how come fossils show carnivorous animals existed before man?
39. I have often heard from many believers that even Satan has a presence in the church, which is why even in church people can still have impure thoughts. If Satan can find his way in the church, how do Christians know that Satan didn’t find his way into the Bible and twist the whole book?
40. Does God know his own future decisions? If God is all-knowing he actually shouldn’t have any decisions to make at all. Nor can he choose anything over something else. For that would mean that he is neither omniscient nor omnipotent?
41. If God is all-knowing, how could he be disappointed in his creations?
42. If a spirit is non-physical but the human body is physical, how does a spirit stay in our bodies?
43. God struck down the Tower of Babel angry at the intent of the people that built them, if this is the case, many of the great pyramids ( which are bigger than any ziggurat) around the world should be rubble also, yet many still stand today. Were not the Egyptians and many other ancient pyramid builders reaching toward God /The Heavens?
44. Why did God flood the earth to remove evil?
45. Why would an all-powerful god become flesh in order to sacrifice himself to himself so that his creation might escape the wrath of himself. Couldn’t god, in his infinite wisdom, come up with something a little more efficient?
46. The Bible says that God is a jealous God . How is this an example of a moral absolute of which man is supposed to follow?
47. If god is omniscient and ” god is love,” why would he allow a child to be conceived, knowing that that child would one day reject him and spend eternity burning in a lake of fire?
48. What is the purpose of prayer? What can a finite being on Earth possibly tell an omnipotent, omniscient deity that he doesn’t know already?
49. Some say Jesus was the all-knowing God. Jesus would have known then that when he died he’d be in heaven in less than 3 days to rule. If Jesus is alive and ruling today, what did he sacrifice?
50. God knows that men are sinners, untrustworthy and evil, why does God leave it up to fallible man (clergy..etc) to teach others about his word? Why would he put our eternal souls at risk if he loves us so much?
51. If God has such a tremendous problem with uncircumcised penises, why did he make man with foreskin in the first place?
52. Did Noah have fish on-board? Salt or Fresh? Since fresh water fish would die in salt, and salt water fish would die in fresh, only one type of fish would survive. Yet….?
53. Why does the omnipotent, omnipresent God need help from man or angels to spread his word or do acts?
54. How did Jesus ascend to Heaven in the Flesh when Paul says that flesh cannot inherit the kingdom of Heaven?
55. If God wants us to live right and choose “the good,” why did he create evil?
56. I hear Christians all the time speaking of a spiritual war between Heaven and Hell, if this is true does God have limitations of power?
57. The Bible is full of phrases beginning with, “and the lord saw”. Didn’t he know before hand?
58. How can a psychologist condone belief in something not proven to exist, when people are put into mental institutions on a daily basis for the same thing? i.e. aliens, fairies, imaginary people (Multiple Personality Disorders..)?
59. If Christians say they know God exists and that he will work miracles, what do they need faith for?
60. Brain, or shall I say, body transplants, will eventually be possible, where would the soul be then? Where is the soul?
61. If God really wants us to know him, why doesn’t he place the knowledge of him in our minds at birth?
62. If God was Jesus’ father (not Joseph), then why is Jesus’ family tree traced through Joseph?
63. What image of God was man made from? Couldn’t have been a moral one or physical one.
64. Why can’t God appear before everyone at the same time? Everyone in the world would then “know” he exists and not have solely “believe”?
65. According to the New Testament Matthew 5:17 says “Do not suppose that I have come to abolish the Law and the prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to complete. I tell you this: so long as heaven and earth endure, not a letter, not a stroke, will disappear from the Law until all that must happen has Happened.” So since Jesus has not returned the “Law” is still in effect, so why aren’t we still burning witches, stoning adulterers and disobedient children, killing homosexuals, ostracizing people that work on the Sabbath (nurses, doctors etc.), flinging blood onto the horns of the alter, pulling off the heads of small birds, and don’t forget human sacrifice to God (Leviticus 27 P.28 )?
66. If there is freewill in Heaven yet everyone has chosen good and is happy, isn’t that proof that God could have made us with freewill, choosing good ( God ) and still being happy on Earth?
67. Why does God have a plan? Man is limited in power so we make plans because we are not all-knowing nor all-powerful. If God has a plan, isn’t he reduced to a mere finite being?
68. How could the all-merciful/loving God watch billions of his children burn over and over again for eternity?
69. Before reading and writing were invented (5000BC), on what basis did God use to judge the people who died before the Hebrew and Greek text (BIBLE) were written?
70. Many Christians tell me that I will “burn in hell”. If I have a soul, how can a soul burn? Aren’t souls non-physical entities?
71. How can one hold to the barbaric belief that something has to DIE in order to appease a god for a bad deed?
72. Why does SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) occur? Why would God allow a baby to live for such a short period of time? Why not just let them not be born in the first place?
73. If Jesus was nailed and died on Friday evening, and walked out of the tomb on Sunday morning, where’s the 3rd NIGHT he predicted?
74. Many Christians claim that hell is merely existence outside of God? presence. If this is the case, then Jesus could not have descended into hell (being God Himself). As a result, are you sure your sins are forgiven?
75. Ten to twenty percent of all women who discover they are pregnant suffer a miscarriage. Also, it is estimated that anywhere from 14 to 50 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. Seeing this is all part of God ‘s plan, does this make God the world’s number one abortion provider?
76. What if, when you get to Heaven, you saw God causing pain and suffering out of anger or for the purpose of entertaining himself. What if he required people in heaven to praise and worship him non-stop even to the point of causing his worshipers discomfort, pain and boredom. What if, when he was bored, angry, or jealous, he would create natural disasters to make himself feel better. Would you still follow him?
77. In Leviticus, the bible condemns homosexuality as an “abomination”, giving some Christians a reason to hate, harass, torture and kill gays and even picket their funerals with ” God hates fags” signs. In the same book of the bible the eating of shellfish is equally an “abomination”. Are these Christians planning to go after the patrons of Red Lobster next?
78. Christians will tell you that if a baby dies it goes to heaven. Why then are they so against abortion? All the child is being deprived of is the opportunity to go to hell. Either that or god expects unborn fetuses to accept Jesus.
79. If one could prove to you incontrovertibly that Jesus and God were all human fabrications would you still believe?
80. It is often said that God allows evil because one could not meaningfully appreciate good without experiencing its opposite. Why is it necessary to experience the opposite of something in order to appreciate it? Must I experience death in order to meaningfully appreciate life?
81. Bible literals want you to believe that God’s Word in the Bible is meant to be taken literally. If this is the case, why was Jesus fond of explaining things in parable and metaphor? Was Jesus literally discussing the biology of mustard seeds, or was the mustard seed parable meant to be interpreted figuratively as faith?
82. Liberal Christians say some parts of the Bible are literally true, but much else is to be interpreted figuratively as allegory. How do you know which is which? What distinguishing criteria are used? How can you be certain “God” is a literal and not a figurative concept?
83. Consciousness is the result of a physical brain, how could God being metaphysical be said to be conscious or sentient without having a brain?
84. Considering how Leviticus is considered old law, and that Christians do not obey it anymore, why do they always use it to defend homosexuality being an “abomination”?
85. Why did this alleged god create humans as an animal form of life that gets sick and die and experience pain and has a limited mind when ‘it’ could have created humans as a form of pure energy or of some indestructible material, and was totally sinless; and had pure thought? If  god was omnipotent ‘it’ could have easily have done this.
86. If a god is omnipotent how did ‘it’ fail to foresee that Satan would turn against ‘it’?
87. If God is omnipotent and he has a plan, then why did he not create the universe as it will be one second after the plan has succeeded? Who or what prevented him from doing that?
88. What is a god supposedly made of?
89. Exactly how did the alleged worldwide flood kill off all the world’s sea creatures? How does one go about drowning a fish?
90. The large majority of people who have ever existed could not have learned of the Bible or Jesus Christ. And many people after-wards have found other religions or no religion at all to be more convincing, sometimes while being very virtuous. Do all these people really deserve eternal torment because of that?
91. Is it reasonable for the Creator and Ruler of such a vast Universe to be preoccupied with the sexuality of a species living on a tiny little planet?
92. If the Christian god was all loving and all knowing why did he let religious figures such as Mohammed or Gautama Budda be born, knowing that they would mislead people from the ‘true’ faith and trick the majority of the world’s population into burning forever in hell?
93. If one is obliged to follow all the teachings of the bible then why is engaging in homosexuality or adultery any worse than “suffering a witch to live”, “muzzling the ox that treadth the corn”, “reaping the corners of thy field”, “marring the corners of they beard”, “plowing with an oxen and an ass”, “hating thy brother in thy heart” or “eating frogs, shellfish and eels” ?

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

 

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• Why DON’T you believe in god? (amitoben.com)
• The Problem of evil part 2 (youngchristian20.wordpress.com)
• The Relationship between God and Man in the Garden and in the City (newjerusalem12.wordpress.com)
• Positive Atheism? (vidurkapur.wordpress.com)
• Evolution ‘the theory’ (felixfulfilled.wordpress.com)
• Preschool Family Bible Activity-Tuesday (kidsquestblog.wordpress.com)
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Famous Black Atheists

Hubert Henry Harrison – The Black Socrates

A. Philip Randolph – “We consider prayer as nothing more than a fervent wish; consequently the merit and worth of a prayer depend upon what the fervent wish is.”
Bayard Rustin – Principal organizer of the March on Washington in 1963. He was openly gay, anti-communistic, a socialist, a civil rights activist and also a freethinker
J. A. Rogers – “The slogan of the Negro devotee is: Take the world but give me Jesus, and the white man strikes an eager bargain with him.”

George S. Schuyler – “On the horizon loom a growing number of iconoclasts and Atheists, young black men and women who can read, think, and ask questions, and who impertinently demand to know why Negroes should revere a God who permits them to be lynched, jim-crowed and disfranchised.”

John G. Jackson – The family minister once asked John G. Jackson when he was small, “Who made you?” After some thought he replied from his own realization, “I don’t know.”

John Henrik Clarke – “As a grade school child in Columbus, Georgia, Clarke recalled inventing notes from local white people to allow his access to library books in his quest for knowledge.”

Yosef ben-Jochannan – “The churches can’t help the people when the chips are down because their interest is with the power structure.”

Bobby E. Wright – “Guess what you talk about when you go to church? Everything but what to do, you talk about some God that nobody ever did find.”

John Ragland – Chauncey Bell Herbert Brown Ken Hamblin Walter E. Hawkins

James Forman – Civil Rights Activist

Lorraine Hansberry – Playwright known for her drama, “A Raisin in The Sun“.

Butterfly McQueen – Maid in MGM’s 1939′s Gone with The Wind.“As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion.”  Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Oct. 8, 1989

Charlie “Bird” Parker – was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Parker is widely considered one of the most influential of jazz musicians, along with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. A PBS special on the life of “Bird” (i.e., Charlie Parker) quoted his widow as criticizing Parker’s family for giving him a Christian funeral even though they knew “he was irreligious”.

Deborah Clark

James Baldwin

W. E. B. DuBois

Richard Wright

Gregory Gross

Zora Neale Hurston
Alice Walker – The Color Purple – Interview with Beliefnet. Calls God “Mama”.

Frederick Douglas

Dr. Carter G. Woodson – Negro History Week was started by him.

Gwendolyn Brooks
Langston Hughes