What In God's Name?

If you’re a parent, what would you think if your child came home from school one day with the news that they are joining a group of kids who discuss strange stories of a person who can perform great feats of magic? If you are not a parent, what if this was your friends telling you this? The magician gains power from a source that destroys cities killing everyone within the city to include their animals, mothers and babies.

Your child becomes excited as they tell you that first they must perform a ritual and give over their soul to this destructive power, and swear allegiance to the power. You discover that the teachings of this group include statements that they must kill all those who do not join them. They are told that to ensure the strength of their group, and to increase their numbers they must recruit many new members.

Many of you can probably guess where I am going with this, but let me remove the curtain anyway for those who are genuinely confused. Your child, or perhaps it’s a friend of yours, has decided to become a Christian.

I can hear the objections loud and clear, yet I have not said anything about the Christian religion that is not true. I could have gone on and painted an even grimmer view, but I figured it would start to give away too much and you would guess it even easier.

I have covered this in the past, but I feel it’s worth repeating here in a new article. There are so many different religions in the world that it’s hard to keep up with them all. One thing they all have in common is that they need followers.

A religion is meaningless without followers to keep it going. Almost daily I hear comments by those of the Christian faith about how they are being attacked by non-believers. That they must actively raise the awareness that Christianity must prevail.

At first I thought it was no big deal. After all, the human race was growing up and finally reaching the point where spiritual threats of fire, brimstone and purgatory didn’t seem to scare them anymore. People are turning away from their church because they no longer fear the unknown. It isn’t the work of the mysterious devil; it’s the work of intellect and common sense.

The way Christianity keeps their flock in line is by the threat that if they do not go to church for their weekly brainwashing session, they will be considered poor Christians and will end up in Hell. The thought of spending their afterlife with something that looks like the reoccurring creature from a Buffy the Vampire episode while sitting in an eternal hot tub seems to be all it takes to keep the sheep loyal.

There are active movements by Christians to control school boards, government positions, and many other seats of power to aid in maintaining the word of God. Days of the humble puritans have come to an end. Now they are finding new ways to brainwash weak humans through technology.

Because I was working on a problem with my Dish Network receiver downstairs I ran across a channel called, “Angel”. This appeared to be a channel for creationism programming, so I watched it for a while and could not believe what I was watching.

The program that was on was apparently a regular show where they interviewed so-called scientists about various biological topics. The goal of the program became apparent instantly. Science has proof that God created the Earth!

Now you would think this would be an extremely cool program if it actually produced such evidence that would back up their claims, but it failed miserably, and almost laughably so.

These scientists brought up statistic after statistic, I’m guessing to amaze their stupid audience, with huge numbers and at the end of every statistic they would add something like, “clearly since the odds of this occurring naturally are so great that something had to have created life”. What kind of crap is that? Even a Christian would think this was nothing short of insulting science.

So apparently the scientific answer to any problem is that if the odds of something occurring are great enough, it must have been magically created. If you’re Christian, and have stayed with me this far, please tell me this is not the view you all accept on how life on this planet was created.

Let me quote one of my own articles entitled, “Does God Need New Lawyers?”

This reminds me of a quote from Arthur C. Clarke which says, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

A great quote, and can be viewed from the creationists position by arguing that because God's work is so advanced, it looks like magic to us. How true, and I'd be willing to accept this if it wasn't for the fact that I take a different position.

I would submit to you that something as complex as nature itself, the natural order of things and the natural evolution of life, appears to be magical to us. It is because of this appearance of magic that some humans believe that it can only have been created magically, by some all powerful supreme being.

Tonight I noticed that apparently this “Angel” channel is the tip of the brainwashing iceberg. It seems they have 36 television and/radio channels that are “Christ-centered”.

Being a parent myself I would enjoy a family friendly network. It would be an awesome thing to have a multitude of channels with nothing but violence free wholesome programming for the family to watch together. Where this lure breaks down is the blatantly, and even sickening, preaching in each and every show. We enjoy watching shows like 7th Heaven, but 24 hours of non-stop "God this" and "Jesus that" would drive me completely whacky!

Now I may not be Christian, but I have no problem with other folks being Christian if it’s the path they choose. My children are not taught to be anti-Christian, or anything extreme like that. In fact, my wife is a Southern Baptist and my daughters are going to Bible Camp this summer. In our house we discuss all religions and yes even God and Jesus from time to time. My oldest daughter does not seem to be leaning toward a Christian path, but our middle daughter might be. We’ll see how it goes.

Do we need television geared toward family programming and great morals with less violence? Absolutely.

Do we need 24 hour brainwashing from one religious group like one of those weird planets from some funky Star Trek episode? Absolutely not.