Entertaining Theist Online

[Ahh!]

To start,

 

Apologetics

(Too stupid to see Christianity fits their definition of a cult)

http://www.apologeticsindex.org/

 

Zetatalk

When I was 14 I actually believed this shit.

http://www.zetatalk.com/

 

Any of the links at the bottom of this page on the Black Hebrew Israelites (Black people who think the slaves were the "true Jews")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hebrew_Israelites

 

Nuwabianism (their main site is shut down because of tax evasion- this is the best source I could find)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuwaubianism

 

Jews For Allah (name says it all)

 

http://www.jews-for-allah.org/

[Ahh!]

I think the Nuwabians should get an award for strangest religion in history. Aborted fetuses forming an army? Vampire owned blood banks? What kind of education did this dude have?

[Thurisaz]

Zetatalk

When I was 14 I actually believed this shit.

http://www.zetatalk.com/

 

Oh yeah, that one. Insane in content and insane in design.

[R. S. Martin]

I had no idea what Zetatalk is but I'm reading…….I've seen this story before—long time ago. I see serious problems with it that have nothing to do with religion and everything with culture. Read this:

 

 

 

 

The professor glances up angrily when Danny pushes the door open and strides in. Spring term is over, and always annoyed by the demands of students he considers beneath him, intrusions during his free time are barely tolerated. The professor catches himself and putting on the smooth and well practiced mask meant for the hordes of students clamoring for his attention after lectures, says with feigned indifference, "Yes?" "I'm a reporter with the Tribune, sir, and would like to do an article on that lecture you gave on Crop Circles in Cedarburg the other day. You know, the one about where our weather changes are leading."

 

Do you see what is wrong with it? That reporter has no right barging in on a prof for an interview without arranging an appointment. He does not even know that the prof is in his office that day and the prof has every right to be angry. Thus, the author violates both reporter and academic norms. No true-to-life story does that. Obviously, the author does not know academia and is operating out of total stereotypes. If he doesn't know this stuff, how am I expected to trust his knowledge about my personal future???

 

Danny had been expecting this. The editor rejected his story too quickly, barely reading it. "Is that why the weather's gone nuts and the compasses don't ever seem to work right anymore?" The professor lifts his pole and flips the line out into the shallows again before answering. "It's going to be a pretty rough ride, son. Mammoths were found flash frozen in Siberia, been frozen like that for thousands of years, with buttercups in their stomach. Buttercups, where there isn't a blade of grass for hundreds of miles, now. The Earth turned under them, son, and moved them to a polar zone. They weren't the only species to go extinct for no obvious reason. There've been dozens."

 

This makes no sense. I've lived in a cold climate all my life where the earth freezes solid every winter. It makes no sense that a huge animal is frozen solid before it digested some wild flowers. It takes longer than that to freeze a body. And this is supposed to be a huge body. And the stomach would be one of the last parts to freeze. This sounds like the buttercup is still identifiable. That's just plain crazy! Even if the body were dead, the stomach juices would change or disolve a flimsy flower like a buttercup before the stomach froze.

 

Danny is chewing his lower lip slightly, his eyes moving from side to side, breathing rapidly, but is clearly running out of arguments. "It's all theory, no one knows for sure." The professor flips his line out into the river again, easing back against the tree trunk, knowing the argument has been won. "There's plenty of human history to support it. Its part of Egyptian and Mayan written history that the rivers turned blood red during the 12th Planet's passage, and what do you think the Bible is talking about in the Book of Exodus when it says the rivers were turned to blood? Moses walking in the valley of the shadow of death? That's the volcanic dust blocking out the sun. You want to know why Moses and his folks could walk through the Red Sea? The sea floor heaved, that's why. That's the last time something like this happened to the Earth, and we're about due for another one."

 

I've seen more credible reasons for the "water turned to blood" story. Also for the Red Sea story.

 

"The Earth stops its rotation just before the shift, that's well recorded. That's in the Bible too, in the Book of Joshua. The Sun stood still in the sky for more than a day. And over in Mexico, on the other side of the world, it was night. And all this accompanied by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and immense tidal waves."

 

Who but a fundy would say this??? Science has not yet found "the day the sun stood still."

 

He told me the government knows about this, has the dang thing in its sights and is watching it barrel towards us, and is saying nothing to the rest of us!"

 

Very seriously unrealistic. It does happen to be identical to the attitude of distrust and suspicion fundies have toward government and higher education. They think the spirit tells them all they need to know, beyond a basic edcuation. That raises another question for me: If the spirit is so smart, why would anyone need a basic education? I mean, surely the spirit could teach anybody to read and write and do elementary math. It's the more complicated stuff that we should have to need education for. But they turn it around and say they need an elementary education but the spirit tells them all the more complicated stuff. Very strange, if you ask me.

 

"The stream is turning red, like blood, and the fish are bobbing up one by one, belly up, dying from whatever it is."

 

I guesss the humans would not be so healthy, either. If this red dust is killing the fish, it would do something to the humans, too. It seems not to have affected them at all, except for their perplexity that it's dark in the middle of the day.

 

he looks up at the general and says in a worried voice, "Sir, I still haven't been able to get through to my wife and kids. None of us have." The General snaps back. "I told you that'd have to wait! We've got bigger worries than that right now."

 

This, too, sounds like a fundy idea of how "worldly" people behave. I see more of it among the religious than the nonreligious. It's simply inhumane and that's the way fundies are. Just one more clue that this thing was written by and for fundies about a world they know nothing about.

 

"We've got a good position here, the river on one side and the mountains on the other. Not many can get to us unless we bring them over, like we did you.

 

I'm not sure how that is supposed to make sense. Mountains and rivers don't mix. Anyone can follow a river. Or sneak through mountains. If landing from the river is so easy, then there are wide flats on either side of the river. Entire nations exist on major river plains. This is more evidence of having been written by someone who doesn't know what they are talking about.

***************

 

Finally I got to the end. I skipped part of it because it was nothing but weird descriptions of their heaven. I don't think I ever read more than the opening chapter back when I was a kid because the rest would not have made sense. I am quite sure that this is the type of stuff my mom did not consider relevant to us. It teaches things about the end of the world that the Old Order Mennonites don't hold to. On top of that, it makes cutting-edge modern technology appear good, which simply defies the foundational principles of the horse and buggy communities. For them, not being of the world means not having the technology of the world.

[Ahh!]

The whole Zetatalk thing-

 

There was this lady named Nancy Leider who claimed she could talk to aliens called Zeta Riticuli. She went on a bunch of radio shows around the country and told everyone the world as we know it would end in May 2003. A giant planet named Nibiru would pass the Earth causing a polar shift. Millions would die. The sun would be almost impossible to see for 50 years. California would sink. Arizona would explode with volcanic activity. Utah, oddly, would be perfectly safe. Some people panicked and sold all their stocks to get money for survival supplies. May came and passed. She went on the radio saying that she made the story up to trick the government (uh-huh- that's when my otherwise gullible mind figured out this was total B/S) and the shift would happen at some future time. It seems though she might have actually believed her claims- I hear she shot her dog the day of the "shift" to euthanize it. Either that or she was willing to kill an innocent animal to look crazy.

 

These are the things you believe when you've read the book of Revalations and Sci-Fi books waaaayy too much.

[Thurisaz]

These are the things you believe when you've read the book of Revalations and Sci-Fi books waaaayy too much.

 

What, you mean the Cosmocrats and Chaotarchs aren't real?!

 

The Decalogue of Elements must've taught you that!!!

 

(Yeah, well, outing myself as a Perry Rhodan nerd. I'd have used Bab5 references, but I thought they wouldn't have been nerdy enough )

[mwc]

A giant planet named Nibiru would pass the Earth causing a polar shift.

The planet Nibiru is real...very real...if you're a Sumerian that is since it's in their writings where it originates. Most sane people equate it with Jupiter (possibly Saturn). Going from memory they believed their gods came down to earth from that (wondering) planet long ago.

 

There are many people who believe that this planet will be returning soon (it had an orbit of roughly 3600 years according to the texts). Of course a planet the size of Jupiter heading our way should be fairly easy to spot but maybe they have a cloak or something?

 

Anyhow, it's crackpots like this that make finding real information about ancient Sumeria (and Akkadia, etc.) damn near impossible since they clog up the search engines with this junk and some of the websites start out looking reasonable until you get to this crap.

 

mwc

[R. S. Martin]

Anyhow, it's crackpots like this that make finding real information about ancient Sumeria (and Akkadia, etc.) damn near impossible since they clog up the search engines with this junk and some of the websites start out looking reasonable until you get to this crap.

 

mwc

 

Mwc, I suggest if you want real information, meaning scientifically reliable, forget about search engines and websites. Go to a library and get some scholarly scientific literature--the kind of stuff that is too valuable to post on websites for free. You might be interested in the author I'm reading right now on Mithraism: David Ulansey. He speaks indepth about the night sky of the ancient Middle East, and how this may have brought about the Mithraic religion. I'd have to check to be sure but I think he speaks about a planet that was believed to come around about every 3600 years.

 

The complicated thing with reading scholars is that each book is part of an on-going discussion and presents another side of the argument. If you like having things spelled out for you in black and white you won't like reading them. But I think anybody who has deconverted probably does not think in black and white terms. There are many sides to a story and each book will come at the topic from a slightly different angle. Good luck!

[Ahh!]

"But I think anybody who has deconverted probably does not think in black and white terms."

 

I wasn't really a religious believer in this stuff per se. I just heard it on Art Bell and freaked out.

[mwc]

Mwc, I suggest if you want real information, meaning scientifically reliable, forget about search engines and websites. Go to a library and get some scholarly scientific literature--the kind of stuff that is too valuable to post on websites for free.

Oh, I agree with you about this. Unfortunately, at least in my area, the public library is rather...let's say behind the curve...when it comes to any of this kind of thing. It takes a trip to the university library to get anything of value and then you cannot check it out unless you are a student (I am not).

 

I also made my statement as a warning to those who might be interested in following up reading about the Sumerians (an interesting people by the way) as you will most definitely find yourself reading the strangest of things if you're not careful. You take the good with the bad when it comes to the internet.

 

You might be interested in the author I'm reading right now on Mithraism: David Ulansey. He speaks indepth about the night sky of the ancient Middle East, and how this may have brought about the Mithraic religion. I'd have to check to be sure but I think he speaks about a planet that was believed to come around about every 3600 years.

Thanks for the pointer. I have a long reading list right now but I'm always glad to add to it (with any luck I'll be getting to this book about the time this planet returns at the rate I read ).

 

The complicated thing with reading scholars is that each book is part of an on-going discussion and presents another side of the argument. If you like having things spelled out for you in black and white you won't like reading them. But I think anybody who has deconverted probably does not think in black and white terms. There are many sides to a story and each book will come at the topic from a slightly different angle. Good luck!

You're quite right. Since I've deconverted I'm much more willing to listen to all sides and base my views based on the evidence at hand as opposed to simply allowing someone else connect the dots for me. If new evidence comes along I'm happy to hear it and, if it appears to have merit, adjust my views accordingly.

 

Unfortunately, I believe this is also the reason that many people have the false impression that scholars are "wishy-washy" and the like. The arguments become tedious to follow and there is rarely a hard and fast "solution" offered. I understand this is how the system works (it shocked me initially that the scholars didn't have all the answers but still debated them) but it seems most people aren't told this and instead go for the institution that does offer the hard and fast, simple and unchanging, answers.

 

mwc