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MOVE A MOUNTAIN?  WE'RE STILL WAITING!

Mark Smith

 

 

 

Jesus said to move mountains "with faith as small as a mustard seed..." (1), yet the mountains remain unmoved. Jesus said, "ask, and you shall receive..." (2), yet prayers remain unanswered.  Jesus said, "sell your possessions and give to charity..." (3), but judging from what the "faithful" drive, Christians have yet to take that one seriously.

 

Common sense. Common sense. Common sense is what Christians use to filter out these "wild & crazy" statements of Jesus. Sure, Christians "believe" them,  as long as those statements are safely tucked out of harm's way, in a Francis Schaeffer upper-story type of "belief" (4). But you'll not find any Christians, with faith "even as small as a mustard seed," preceding road construction crews through the Rockies! Why? Common sense!

 

Freethinkers find this... inconsistent, yet encouraging. I am sure that to an "omnipotent" Biblegod, it is no harder to move a mountain than it is to, say, raise a dead body. Yet the same Christians that spend volumes of hot air defending resurrections of their dead savior gods, will spend twice that amount trying to hold onto their cars, or weasel out of moving mountains!

 

Face it, Christians- you don't believe (or practice) that mountain crap any more than we Atheists do. It's just that we don't halt our unbelief at claims of moving mountains. We Freethinkers have taken the words of Jesus, "if it offends you, cut it off..." (5) to include even bibles that offend our common sense! We cut off the whole offensive book-- you, bits and pieces; but we are both working from the same foundation: common sense. We both use common sense to filter out what seems to be the crazy parts to us.

 

We would encourage you to continue this freedom of thought. The reasoning upon which you have rejected moving mountains, continue that thought process to all the goofy crap contained in your bible, including resurrections. Think! Free your mind! If Biblegod can't even move a little molehill here and now --and he can't-- how the hell could he have been moving dead bodies way back when?????

 

Moving a mountain --right here, right now-- that would do more to silence us Skeptics than all the debates in the world! You Christians, with a straight face, make a claim that 2,000 years ago, a dead Jesus came back to life. But the only "proof" you Christians offer to back up this Christian claim is a book written by Christians for Christians! And Peter the Apostle, your chief architect of this claim, is a self-confessed four-time liar, who even lied under oath!!!! (11). With this for “proof” please pardon us for being a bit skeptical!

 

I'm sorry to say, but you'll need more evidence than what’s written in a book (The New Testament) to refute my common sense. For my common sense also says that IF all the supposed miracles in the New Testament had actually taken place, then the largest mass conversion in history would have also taken place. The Jewish intellectuals, experts in the law and prophets, they would have seen the supposed miracles and the supposed fulfillment of prophecies; they then would have done what any rational man would have done when faced with such an avalanche of evidence: they would have humbly converted.  And the pragmatic Romans, had they seen the hordes of dead brought back to life (6), people able to walk across rivers and lakes (7), and wounds being instantly healed (8); the military potential would have been enormous! No more spending months building bridges, no more wounded or dead soldiers. Rome would have an invincible, immortal army! The emperor himself would have beaten the door down to get to Jesus. And the Apostle Thomas, who knew the track record of Jesus,  who supposedly had seen and smelt many a stinking corpse raised by Jesus from the dead, when presented with the claim that Jesus had now risen from the dead, Thomas didn't believe it. (9) And Paul, AKA "Saul," who had lived through all the supposed miracles of Jesus, didn't convert till years later! In other words, he wasn't impressed enough to convert until he got knocked off his ass by a god, or so the story goes. (10)  

 

Why didn't these people believe????? Surely any of us modern Freethinkers would have converted in a heartbeat!  IF all the supposed miracles had actually taken place, these people above must have been the stupidest, dumbest, most ignorant morons to have ever been born. No rational mind, when faced with such overwhelming evidence, could look it square in the face, and act as if it never existed. They acted as if the "miracles" NEVER EXISTED!!!!!  Hmmmm….

 

And the miracles never having existed IS the only reasonable explanation to explain the behavior of the above people. That's common sense. The Romans never had the reputation of being stupid. Thomas doesn't seem like a dolt from the written accounts of him. And Paul- how many Christians want to accuse Paul of being mentally retarded??? All these people carried on and acted just as if these miracles had never existed, precisely because these miracles HAD never existed!!!! These "miracles" took place only upon the pages of the fictions known as "the gospels" as they were written half a century or more later. To offer any other explanation of the behavior of these people flies in the face of common sense.

 

How convenient, too, that these fictions were written more than half a century after the supposed events. Half a century, in an era when the average lifespan was 30 years, would ensure that most of the people who could dispute the claims would have already died off. Also in the meantime, the country of Israel had been devastated by the biggest war in its history, culminating in the 70 AD destruction of Jerusalem, the temple, and all the written records contained therein. How “convenient” that the gospels weren't written until after most of the eyewitnesses of flesh and paper had been destroyed. It would be like us writing of the prophet of the great God Ath (the god of us Atheists), whose ministry took place in Hiroshima the week before the bomb dropped, who raised more people from the dead than Jesus! We dare you to find any written evidence from Hiroshima to contradict our claims. Yes, how convenient and coincidental. Excuse us Freethinkers for not being gullible or simple-minded enough to swallow such crap. Excuse us for having a brain and daring to use it. If thinking is a sin, consider us sinners.

 

Christians- is your god able, or is your god NOT able, today, to raise the dead? If we were to take a rotting corpse and grind it up like hamburger, would your god be able to raise it from the dead? You have to say yes, or admit your religion is false. Is your god able to move a mountain? How about molehill? How about even a used cigarette butt on the sidewalk???  You say he is? So your god is able to produce better evidence for us Freethinkers than some 2,000 year old book but he chooses NOT to??? You admit to this? Good! You just walked into a trap.

 

I want to read to you a state law, concerning parties that claim to be able to produce better evidence, but refuse, for whatever reason, to do so-

 

PARTY HAVING POWER TO PRODUCE BETTER EVIDENCE:

IF WEAKER AND LESS SATISFACTORY EVIDENCE IS OFFERED WHEN IT WAS WITHIN THE POWER OF THE PARTY TO PRODUCE STRONGER AND MORE SATISFACTORY EVIDENCE, THE EVIDENCE OFFERED SHOULD BE VIEWED WITH DISTRUST.   (West's Annotated California Codes, West Pub. Co, St Paul, MN, section 412.)

 

Christians: either produce the better evidence you are always bragging that your god can do, or prepare to have what meager evidence you've already presented tossed out of the court of human reason. Don't brag of miracles or resurrections in a book, when today in the real world your gods can’t even pick up a feather. Right here and now- move a mountain or REmove your faith. We "evil" Freethinkers humbly await the better evidence (per demanded by the law) to convince us. You claim that through your gods these things and more are possible-- common sense, and reality, and experience, says they are not. We dare you to prove us wrong. We Freethinkers have been waiting 2,000 years for you to move even an anthill by prayer, and all you've moved instead is lots of HOT AIR with your yap yap yapping about Jesus did this and Jesus did that but your Jesus isn’t doing jack shit today, is he??? You Christians sound just like that Bruce Springsteen song “Glory Days”, for all you got to offer the world today are washed up burnt out gods, a bunch of used-to-be’s.

 

“Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture a little of the glory of,

but time slips away and leaves you with nothing mister but

boring stories of glory days”  (Bruce Springsteen “Glory Days”)

 

You Christians are stuck living in your "glory days" of yesteryear, never realizing most of that stuff never even took place. If you Christians weren't so pathetic, you'd be funny. You are just like the 850 prophets of Baal, dancing and prancing and trying to get your gods to do something- ANYthing, except this time the role of Elijah is filled by modern Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers. Get your god off the friggin toilet and have him DO something, for Christ's sake!!!  Please, Christians, enough is enough- it’s way overdue for you guys to put up or shut up.  The best evidence FOR a miracle IS a miracle. That is as obvious as the nose on your face. Less talk, more action.  Come on, move a mountain- even a cigarette butt or a feather--- we're still waiting!!!