Why Christians Lie (and believe lies)
(From the beginning, let me point out that this post concerns my personal experience with Christians. I am certainly not saying that all Christians lie on a regular basis or as a habit. I am suggesting, however, that Christians -by definition- are more susceptible to believing lies and ignoring the truth.)
There is something that has become so obvious within the last year that I feel the need to comment on it. Christians seem to have a really hard time with truth. They don't like truth. They try to redefine truth. They hide from the truth.
You only need to look to the current state of affairs in our American government to see clearly how right-wing, flag waving Christians in power use lies as a tool to accomplish their goals. Lying seems to be second-nature to vocal Christians. Many vocal Christians seem to feel empowered to lie and immune from the truth. A certain President comes to mind.
The debate over evolution in this country is also a good example of this. When scientific fact disagrees with religious dogma, the science has always been attacked. The Christian school board members in Ohio who were promoting creationism, went out of their way to try to pretend it had nothing to do with religion. Why did they do this? Why did they lie? Why would you promote creationism if you weren't religiously motivated? Did these IDiots, who were all voted out of office, really think for a moment that anyone was going to believe this? Do Christians who try to distance religion from ID and creationism not realize how transparent their illusion is?
When faced with the facts of disasters, starvation and the deprivation of human life over many parts of the world, Christians have to find some safe haven to hide from the ugly truth. The truth that their all-loving God allows this to happen - wills this to happen. What will it be? Will of God? Original sin? Free will? All of these things are lies. Just keep repeating them to yourselves believers, and maybe all of the truth and reality of our world will simply go away.
Of course, the problem of truth is not always so benign as to be limited to the conscience of believers and the moral contradictions that their faith bestows. Christian dishonesty seems to me to be a going concern.
In my business, every fish-wearing, obvious Christian that I have ever had dealings with has lied or attempted to rip me off; Every single one. Now I am only referring to those who had a picture of Jesus on their wall or wore a fish emblem on their shirt or jacket. I am sure I have dealt with Christians who didn't feel the need to literally wear their religion on their sleeve who have not behaved dishonestly. For my part, it certainly would make my business dealings a lot more simple if all Christians had to wear a fish. At least I would know to be on my guard in dealing with them.
In my area there is a car dealership, Nice Cars, that has a whole school of little Jesus fish across their billboards and on all of their marketing. They even put the fish on the back of the cars on the dealer label. Used car dealer: Christian. Hmmm. A nice fit in my opinion. On the same tack, I have also found right-wing Christians to be some of the most greedy people I have ever met. For a group of people who have an exclusive deal for immortality, they certainly seem obsessed with gaining as much 'worldly' wealth as possible and holding onto all of it.
I have wondered why so many of the Christians that I have dealt with behave this way: dishonestly. The answer I found is actually quite simple and obvious. If a person bases the entire worth of their life on a lie, then naturally objective truth and objective morality suffer. It is my opinion that any believer, at least those above a minimum intelligence, who really thinks honestly and completely openly about what their religion teaches and states as truth will have to reach a conclusion that, at a minimum, a great deal of what they believe are lies. In order to save their faith, they must reject their own common sense, their own morality when it comes to the atrocities of the bible and the obvious contradictions and factual errors, and lower themselves to a level which allows the worship of a oddly humanly flawed and mistake-prone God.
Is it any wonder then that this crosses over into their every day lives? One of the major reasons that I started this blog is that I firmly believe that religion, Christianity dominantly in my country, has a negative impact on individuals, families and cultures. The bad far outweighs the good, and the good could be accomplished without the lies. Let me be blunt. When I say lies, what I mean is faith. Faith is nothing more than allowing yourself to believe lies. Where is the morality in that? Where is the good in that?
I will continue this later.
Tagged as:faith,christianity,atheist,atheism,religion
posted by Alan @ 1/19/2006 06:38:00 PM
23 Comments:
Great post Alan. I agree with a lot of what you say. I don't know if it's that they just lie or if it's that they are completely delusional. I'm sure it's a combination of both.
Alan,
Don't blame you for being frustrated. I am too. And this little expression: “IDiots,” almost tossed me out of my chair with sardonic laughter.
Not all believers are the same. Check us out or write us off. Nevertheless, I'm intrigued by your insight.
bill
Alan:
The truth of the fact is, from its first inception, Christianity has been fraught with lies galore.
From the virgin birth of Jesus to his crucification, much of it is mere folklore converted to scriptural purposes.
It would have been absolutely fine if Christians would keep the lies to themselves; the problem arises when they try so hard to propagate such nonsense as "truth", in the form of Creationism, Intelligent design and other piece-meal bullshits.
Seriously
The Beast
Why are Atheists so hate-filled and angry? You'd think they could practice a little detachment. They don't want anyone else's God pushed on them, so you'd think they could leave those who choose to believe in God alone.
And why only attack Christians for trying to push their faith off on others. Why not attack Muslims? Or Jehovah's Witnesses?
And you can't equate fundamentalist Christianity with the basic faith. It's simply not the same thing at all, in terms of beliefs, attitudes, or basic ways of living.
And to say that when Christians are "faced with the facts of disasters, starvation and the deprivation of human life over many parts of the world, Christians have to find some safe haven to hide from the ugly truth," is simply not true. Yes, Christians may try to offer or find an explanation that helps them and others make sense of great tragedy, but they don't hide from the truth.
Christians, of all varieties, are usually on the frontlines of trying to make a difference in the world. From Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Social Services to the Baptist Missionaries, Christians are hard at work in developing countries and wherever tragedy strikes, feeding people, building homes, nursing the frail, sick, and elderly, when their own governments ignore them.
And why do they do it? Because they believe that God compels them to love mankind as God loves.
You might want to stick to condemning the specific individuals whom you believe have wronged you, or you might try a little forgiveness.
Hey Alan. Seth here. LONG response but its been a while.
First of all I totally agree. - Christians can be jerks, but I think I can one-up you. It was also christians who owned, beat, raped and killed slaves. It was christians that lynched innocent black men and women because they thought that they were sub-human. It was Catholic preists that molested small boys, using their confidence as religious mentors to lure small children into their evil chambers. It was (and is) christians that killed other christians in ireland battling a 400 year old grudge with a burning hatred in their eyes. There were German Christians who stood by and watched Jews be railed off to furnaces. Christian men leave their wives and kids every day. Christian men cheat on their taxes. Christian men kill on the battlefield singing hymns. And yes, Christian men were and are...used car salesmen.
Muslim men and women throw themselves into crowded places only to blow themselves up in the name of their God, and then they get their flying lessons and blaze into the tallest buildings on earth hoping to see the bliss of heaven for the sheer joy of hating the people that they are slaying. Are atheists exempt from this party? I think not. Atheist men decide because they feel that since they have no moral or religious code to live by then its okay to kill their victims and eat them. (dahmer) they also feel that it is their duty to mail people they don’t like bombs and blow their limbs off. They also inspire fanatical rulers with their antisemitc and anti-God rhetoric to feel that Jews are the slime of humanity. (Hitler had "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" issued to every soldier in the German army)
On the other hand, it was a Christian that first set foot on the Moon. It was a Christian President that sent him there. It was a Christian that led the Civil-Rights movement that paved the way for equality in America. It was a Christian who discovered the big-bang theory. It was a Christian that proposed that the Earth was Round. It was a Chrisitna that first said “I think therefore I am.” It was a Christian that invented electricity. It was a Christian that wrote 41 symphonies died at the age 35 and has been called the greatest musical genius of all time. It was a Chrisitian that shook his thing on the ed sullivan show, changing music in America and the world forever. It was a Christian who painted his fantastic vision of a starry night, but wait, it was an atheist that said wrote "Faith means not wanting to know what is true." Nietzsche (although from the sound of this post it sounds like you know the author of this quote) It was an atheist that gave us “the old man and the sea” it was that great atheist german shrink who gave us all of those theories regarding the role our unconscious plays in influencing and even determining our actions, and that we are secretly hot after our moms. it was Marx that argued that the primary driving force behind nature and culture was matter, not Absolute Spirit.
Whats the point? There is good and bad on either side faith. If history and the news tell us anything it is that there is defintely something wrong with humanity. Humanity is flawed. It is easy to accumulate a mass of atrocities and blame them all on religion and faith, but we can also mass a wonderful amount of literature and art because of religious inspiration.
Religious man does not equal good neither does atheist man equal good. Conversely, Relgious man does not equal bad, and Atheist man does not equal bad. Take you and I for instance. You don’t cheat on your taxes. Neither do I. You don’t cheat on your wife, neither do I. You are nice to people when they are nice to you, so am I. You have told a lie or two in your life, (assumtion) so have I. You have done things you wish you had not, so have I.
Religion is not the cause of the problem of evil in the world and Atheism is not the answer.
Seth
seth, One cavil, the greeks knew the world was round, before Jesus was born
For Christians, "truth" is little more than what they've been told to believe. This pervision of truth is not based on correspondence with objective reality, reason, science, evidence, data, etc. Maintaining a belief and discounting ample contradictory evidence is the definition of delusion.
However, some Christians are good, honest, hard-working, dependable people. Seriously. What we must remember is that there is a great deal of diversity among Christians just as there is among atheists. I'm sure we've all encountered wonderful Christians and moronic atheists.
"Why are Atheists so hate-filled and angry? You'd think they could practice a little detachment. They don't want anyone else's God pushed on them, so you'd think they could leave those who choose to believe in God alone."
Oh what complete and total bullshit. If you're not angry, then you're not paying attention. No one is hate-filled. This post made it perfectly clear right at the start that this is not about bashing. Try reading before jumping off the "I'm such a victim, pity me" cliff.
When theists stop trying to force their goofy fairy tales on everyone, there'll be no reason to talk about them at all.
Thanks for the comment. We like your site. We're going to have a few things to say about the church(es).
Reply to Seth,
I understand your response but I think that you missed a large point of my post, or perhaps it is just difficult to make the point clear.
I would never deny that as individuals, there are good and bad in any group. My point is that a religion or any doctrine or teaching that denies objective truth is inherently flawed and is destined to do harm.
Hitler did not embrace atheism. Atheism as a cause has never prompted genocide. Soviet Russia opposed religion because they did not want to power share with the church. Most fascist leaders go out of their way to accommodate the church, particularly the Catholic Church history shows.
If a Jeffrey Dahmer can't eat other humans with God watching and has to declare himself a non-believer, then that is the result of a deluded mind. BTW, I had never heard that he was an atheist, that's a new one on me.
My point again is that if a religion tells you that you have to believe this fairy tale, this version of creation, this particular man or literary character was superhuman, in other words - a pack of lies, then a thoughtful, intelligent, reasonable person who has to identify with this religion is forced to either lie about what they really believe or delude themselves into believing the fairy tales. Therefore, they are forced to be more gullible and more likely to confuse fact with fiction.
I could go on and on about the argument that you need to believe in non-sense in order to have meaning in your life - the basic argument I get from Christians, but I will save that for another post.
Reply to Dawn,
"You might want to stick to condemning the specific individuals whom you believe have wronged you, or you might try a little forgiveness."
Jeez, Dawn. Which post were you reading? I believe that is exactly what I did, condemn individual Christians.
You seem to miss, or deny, the point of my post which is that belief in the unbelievable is inherently a dangerous and damaging thing.
"Yes, Christians may try to offer or find an explanation that helps them and others make sense of great tragedy, but they don't hide from the truth."
Perhaps you are technically right here. You don't actually hide from the truth of disaster, tragedy and injustice. You actually hide from your own lies as to the nature of your god. Your all-loving, benevolent god allows all of this to happen every day. He allows the slow and tortuous death of an infant dying from starvation (an infant whose birth could not be prevented because a Christian zealot President stopped funding for birth control as a part of foreign aid). He directs hurricanes to hit one of the largest impoverished groups of people in the United States. He gives them a bit of a fake out by making it seem that they were OK, only to then slowly flood them out of house, home and life.
As I stated in my post, if you had bothered to read it, you will have to pull out one of the old and tired apologists arguments to explain why your god allows these things to happen. Either it's not his fault but the devils (laughable), or it is because all humans are born deserving of eternal damnation (just plain evil), or it is all a part of gods little game called free will - where he enjoys torturing us as examples of how we somehow made some mistake or misstep along the way (ridiculous on the surface).
If you have a new explanation, I would love to hear it.
To your assertion that Christianity has had an overall good effect on the world, I would have to just say "Bull Shit!". I could just as easily say that Hitler made a great road system and industrial complex in Germany and did a lot of other 'good' things. That certainly doesn't forgive all the damage that his delusion caused nor does it make him a good man. Nor do the good acts of good people forgive the atrocities of religion. A person wiser than me once said that good people will do good things, but only religion can make good people do bad things.
If you believe that the reason you do good things is that "God compels you to love mankind as God loves", then do me a favor and never direct any of that 'God Love' toward me. I think that I would prefer to avoid it if you don't mind.
I am having the same problem on my blog where christians do not read the WHOLE POST or they fail to understand it, or they are so programmed that they cannot SEE any other viewpoint but their own. They perceive disagreement or another viewpoint as an attack or ridicule because they are told in church that they are victims. It's like all that stuff that is crammed into their brain Sunday after Sunday, and in lots of denominations more often than that, that they just cannot hear or see anything else. It's like they are hypnotized. I can say this from first hand experience because I was a christian for 30 something years of my life. I am 51 now. Once you are away from it, then your eyes become open and thinking clears up. I have only been in a church for weddings and certain occasions since admitting my atheism, and the longer I am away, the more absurd religion is to me. All sitting in the pews, facing forward like Borg on Star Trek, a pastor who is no better than you or I are is repeating the same message over and over and over again..week after week, year after year, just like Hitler did to the Nazi soldiers and citizens of Germany. . . repeated messages, drill it in the brain, hammer it in. Because of this conditioning christians and people of other religions really do believe the lies. The lies are truth to them.
im sure alan can handle the problems stardust. but just in case, i wont drop by your blog and save you the unwanted angst.
seth
Reply to Stardust1954,
Wow. Do I ever agree with you. Your background sounds very similar to mine, being a former xian and lover of astronomy just for starters. I am going to check out your blog tomorrow when I have more time. Thanks for your comment.
Hey Alan,
you said:
"My point is that a religion or any doctrine or teaching that denies objective truth is inherently flawed and is destined to do harm."
first of all, i am not so sure that we should throw out objective truth. i am sure no one here as a problem with 2+2=4. there seem to be plenty of mathmatical absolutes in universe. Besides, how can you believe that you are right if you dont believe in objective, or absolute truth?
Overall I do understand your veiw here and i dont feel that i missed the overall point of your blog. If anything i was not as clear as i should have been. The point of my entire response was to say the it is not religion that makes a man bad, or gives him his tendencies for baddness, although we have not really established what is bad, but i am sure we CAN agree that Mankind is already naturaly flawed.
I felt that you were saying that the reason that man is flawed and the cause of the flaws in man is religion. That is where i might have misunderstood you. thirst for power, greed, jealosy, envy, slander, arrogance, pride, folly ect., these are all things common to all men. I do think that religion can become an unwillingly vehicle for some of these things, just like enron became the unwilling vehicle for power-hungry and greedy liars. I think that it is these flaws are really at the root.
but if you are really arguing that excepting the exsistence of a diety makes you more apt to lie and believe lies then i think that maybe your stretching it a bit. as you said about dahmer or kaczynski, being an atheist did not make them a killer. they were just crazy. i would say the same thing for Chrisitans that ripped you off, they were simply liars or crooks. The thing that makes it shitty is that they are liars and crooks wearing the symbol of something that is the antithesis of what they are representing.
What I am presenting seems to be in line with your view on the problem of evil and evolution,-that the men who blow themselves up would have blown themselves up or found some other way to identify themselves with evil whether they were radical muslims or not. Just a bad apple in the larger gene pool of humanity that needed to be eliminated, right?
you said
"Hitler did not embrace atheism. Atheism as a cause has never prompted genocide."
The basis of truth used by Nazi Germany was the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest. The leaders of Germany saw their nation as a superior group a “Stronger People” and the rest of the world as an inferior people, a “Weaker People”. The source of truth derived from Nietzsche thought that man is the source for good and evil.
"The stronger must dominate and
not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all...If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile." -Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf
my point is that it would not have mattered if Hitler were Atheist or worshiped a smoldering terd, he would have still shown the same tendencies for evil.
If i believed in medical science 4 hundred years ago, a bunch misinformed well intended thinkers, i would have believed that cutting my arm and bleeding me would cure my headache. Did that make them more gullible, no, less informed. Religion does not make one gullible. we are born with that tendency. anyone with kids can tell you this.
you said:
"My point again is that if a religion tells you that you have to believe this fairy tale, this version of creation, this particular man or literary character was superhuman, in other words - a pack of lies, then a thoughtful, intelligent, reasonable person who has to identify with this religion is forced to either lie about what they really believe or delude themselves into believing the fairy tales. Therefore, they are forced to be more gullible and more likely to confuse fact with fiction."
once again i find myself pointing out that it is not just mindless idiots who believe in a Creator and adhere to a religion. some of our greatest minds including one of your fav authors beleived and believe in God. And we can assume that they were all thoughtful, intelligent, reasonable people who identified with a particular religion. There is no proof that any of these people would be more likely to lie or cheat than bernard shaw.
I could be totally off here but I wonder if you have the tendency to blame religion for stupidity and mans tendecy to lie because you cant bare the thought that you may have been SO gullible at one time and it must have been accepting your xianity that made you that way not just your own natural journey through life.
Seth
You atheists need to learn to live with the truth...... and the truth is God exists and christianity is not bullshit as u see it. Just because we live happy lifes by believing and u are stuck crying and bitching about how life is horrible doesn't make our religion stupid. I lived in africa for most of my life, and i can vouch that christianity is doing wonderful things there. It seems to me that in the western world dont have to worry about God what a sad life.......... God gives those people the hope that none of u atheists out there can ever provide with ur negative, pessimistic views of life. And about taking the easy way by accepting christianity???? what is easier believing in a God and our purpose in life or just saying he doesn't exist? sigh. Athiest is just another word for lazyminded in my own opinion, and we africans don't need that thank u.
GOD BLESS us all
You atheists need to learn to live with the truth...... and the truth is God exists and christianity is not bullshit as u see it. Just because we live happy lifes by believing and u are stuck crying and bitching about how life is horrible doesn't make our religion stupid. I lived in africa for most of my life, and i can vouch that christianity is doing wonderful things there. It seems to me that in the western world dont have to worry about God what a sad life.......... God gives those people the hope that none of u atheists out there can ever provide with ur negative, pessimistic views of life. And about taking the easy way by accepting christianity???? what is easier believing in a God and our purpose in life or just saying he doesn't exist? sigh. Athiest is just another word for lazyminded in my own opinion, and we africans don't need that thank u.
GOD BLESS us all
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
You basically say that faith is a lie. So, do you sit in chairs? If you do, I assume you believe they will hold you up when you sit in them.
Actually you do have faith. You have faith that there is no GOD.
Reply to Anonymous coward:
The inane 'Chair Faith' argument is so obviously flawed that it doesn't even warrent a direct response. Chairs are not invisible you idiot. Chairs can be viewed and judged on their merit to hold weight. You need to attend a few more apologists classes before you try to talk to atheists.
Hi there
Don’t we all have problems with the truth or a least some of it? Sure the truth is attractive, yet the same time hearing it can be either very painful or totally indigestible. Imagine that your long life partner whom you love more than anything is having an affair. You get the indicators, do you believe immediately. Or someone you trust has been lying to you all your life and you don’t know about it. Is it easy to unravel all that is in there? The point I am making with these pathetic examples is that as human being we love the truth on one hand and yet find it difficult or impossible to accept on the other, especially when it effects our fundamental beliefs. No one likes there boat turned over. Sure there are religious non thinking believers who won’t listen to rhyme or reason to the point where they would kill anyone to protect their belief system. At heart most human beings would rather kill the truth or one another for the sake of being right no matter if you believe in something greater or not. The atheists think they are right the religionists think the opposite but all is the same, this is fragmented thinking all over the place leading to blame, hatred and expulsion of anyone who believes not the same. So lets attack those who think they are right but are wrong because we are right and they are stupid, is that thinking not inherently stupid in itself. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Gordon,
You obviously have a problem with common sense if you can't decipher that comparing faith in a chair to faith in invisible people is rather .... stupid. But you obviously are above such petty arguments being neither a ‘religionist’ nor an 'atheist'. Give me a break and troll elsewhere.
Why do "Atheist" expect Christians to tell the truth. Who determines what is "truth." And to whom would a Christian give account to for his "lies" if, according to the atheist, there is no God. Are we supposed to give account to other humans, who like ourselves, are evil by nature, committing the same acts that we commit.
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