The Antitheocrat

Let’s get this out early and not hold anything back.

“All” religion is a lie.

Regardless of if you believe in a god or culturally connect to a religion and attest to that connection when asked, you are helping perpetuate a lie, if not outright telling one.

Lets start at the beginning because I am willing to accept religion may not always have been a lie. The person who started the lie may simply have been crazy, delusional or a wondrous story teller. We know it wasn’t god because we know the history of many religions and beliefs enough to show the hand of man in action developing and changing them. Even if we were to credit the existence of gods and if it were a god who told the first story, the story is now so corrupted and distorted it can’t be shown or proven to be the same as those first spoken words. Maybe the first person – as it was a person – was trying to impress someone with his knowledge or control someone in which case religion did begin as a lie but I have no more proof of that than there is proof of god/s and no proof that religion was the intended outcome. Lets at this point assume a story teller because none of us know where religion began and story telling doesn’t attribute blame to religions founders. The stories told by that first person may then have been taken too literally – intentionally or not – by someone who went on to teach to others. Eventually the story became a truth presented without evidence (because lets face it, it was just a story). At the point of the first someone spread the truth-without-evidence, the story became a lie. Some of those initial people may have been scammers spreading the lie deliberately, like the more modern examples of Hubbard (scientology) and Smith (mormonism). Some may have accidentally forgotten that it was a tale they were telling and not have made that clear (or just insane) but as the older religions have grown and questions have arisen – and gone unanswered or ignored – all religion has become a lie. A lie perpetuated for some time by the power hungry, the wealth seekers, the scam artists, the ignorant and the socially driven.

Lying for religion has become habitual in many – maybe most – cases, so ground into a persons mind they are unable to see it for themselves. Any attempt to enlighten them to their flawed position is cause for defensive, even aggressive behaviour. I don’t know how much I blame these people for the lie because the lie itself is defended by ideas such burning in hell, a lower place in a next life, a life without meaning, a world without law or morals and the social stigma of being disowned by your community/family/friends. There are people who claim they are not religious because they find aspects of religious dogma or practice repulsive and yet they will profess to believe in jesus and god (the very things that make the doctrines and dogma religious rather than political, business or social ideologies). This claim has become part of the fabric of the lie for some preachers, oddly enough the sort of preachers who cause other to not want to be religious in the first place. It can be hard to blame these “non-religious” people for telling the religion lie and continuing it. Blinded as they are to the truths of religion and indoctrinated to believe the lie of religion, the religion that tells them that questioning or being without it would be worse than anything they can imagine. The only hope for these people is the hope that they can be educated and see how clouded their minds are and discover that breaking from the lie is not the end but a bright new beginning.

Personal reasons for belief aside, the religious foundations of your reasoning remains a lie.

At a professional level we know that in the USA alone there are some 250+ preachers who no longer believe in a god yet still preach the doctrines. As members of a group trying to find new lives for themselves they are the obvious professional liars for religion. Take a second look at who is selling you the lie next Sunday, it may be one of that number or one of those as yet not known. These are the lesser scammers amongst the professional liars and maybe it seems impolite at this point to call them liars. If you found yourself in the position of having put aside everything in life and trained to do nothing but sell a lie, how would you feel if you found out late in life that you were selling a lie. There must be older people facing death who have this same troubles, suddenly questioning the lie and thinking how much life was wasted must get harder the older you get. These preachers find themselves continuing to sell the lie out of fear of isolation and/or financial ruin but at least they are trying to improve their situation. The best professional liars and scammers are the ones you can’t feel any concern for. These people are more obvious and it must take a special sort of stupidity, loneliness, fear of death, gullibility or an extreme need to protect your personal lie to not see the cash begging televangelists for what they are. Televangelists make street preachers look like – for want of another word – saints.

Lying comes in degrees but at all levels it is still lying.

At an individual level religion is a lie to yourself. A lie protected by worthless terms like faith that help to excuse the fact you know deep down that your beliefs is unfounded. Many believers don’t even know the doctrines or texts of their lie, their only defence against counter argument is to make meaningless statements, exhibit anger, behave irrationally or demand unwarranted respect (or any combination of the afore mentioned). The problem with your personal lie is that it is rarely kept personal. You lie to children and propagate the lie. Some liars use the lie to repress other people and deny them rights. Liars congregate to support others in their lie and to justify their own lie. There is strange idea that is sometimes spoken out loud, the idea that the more liars there are the more truth there is in the lie. You also lie to people about having some higher truth though you know you can’t prove there is any truth in the lie. You will try to avoid confronting conversations with statements like “it makes me feel good”, stating that no evidence could possibly change your mind, and taking questions as a personal affront. Some people go to the extent of denying evidence or deny having been offered evidence in defence of their lie. Respect for the lie is the final argument most liars make, as if lying was respectable and honest questioning the lie were a crime. You lie about personal experiences being god. Experiences that can generally be better explained in natural scientific ways you explain as god because it better supports your personal lie. As a example, if a family member dies and you dream of it only hours before, you will forget the months of suffering and intimate knowledge of the persons health concerns to jump to the conclusion that god sent you a message. A rational mind not tied to the lie would assume their mind was running through the obvious outcomes, maybe to prepare you for the worst, and the timing was simply because of their prior knowledge.

The strangest lie you tell yourself is the lie you tell as you give your tithe. The lie that god needs your money to propagate belief or maybe god can’t act to help people without your money. Maybe you give money because you lie to yourself that god has somehow given your preacher more of its time and he knows gods intentions better than you do; though you both tell the same unfounded lie (maybe your preacher is one of those non-believers, what then?).

Though I have written very specifically of the god lie which is most prevalent in my society it is exactly the same lie told for all unjustifiable religious lies. Aliens, spirits, mystics, pseudo science are all lies in the same vein. When you pay an exorcist, conspiracy theorist, card reader, palmist, crystal seller, ghost hunter, mystic salt seller or feng shui master you help propagate the lie told by other idiots who know nothing more than you could dream up for yourself with a little imagination. Through your actions you support idiots as in the dark as you are and maybe even more dishonest. Finding someone gullible enough to devote their lives to a falsehood – a lie – dishonest people find people equally willing to do anything and believe anything to defend that lie.

When you lie to yourself you make yourself susceptible to a wider range of lies.

It doesn’t matter why you lie. You may lie to protect your belief, you may lie for comfort, because you see no other option, for profit, power or just because you prefer to think your parents were not liars. It doesn’t matter why you tell the lie, a lie told for any reason is still a lie. Your parents didn’t mean to do harm (to my knowledge) in telling you the lie, they like you never had someone to tell them it was a lie and the lie is deigned to protect and propagate itself. Is not wanting to question their teaching really reason enough to not at least consider the lie?

The only reason the telling of religion may be considered something other than lying is low intelligence resulting in the propagation of other people’s lies without the ability to mentally process the lie. This doesn’t change the fact that religion itself is a lie, it just means you don’t need a fully functioning brain to carry on the lie. People of low intelligence may be no more guilty of knowingly propagating the religion lie than that first guy who said a tree had a spirit kicking off the entire religion debacle. Religion today is far from a few insane or mentally impaired individuals telling stories and most people telling the lie are, if willing, able to reason or at least understand the arguments against the lie.

From anyone lips, a lie remains a lie.

The very idea that there are groups of theists calling themselves “apologists” shows that even the most argumentative and defensive of believers know to some degree that that there is something wrong that needs excusing. Entire theme parks are constructed by these people, who have not one scrap of scientific evidence to back the lies they tell. Many have the sole aim of profiting and propagating the religion lie for their own gain knowing as they do that they don’t need to defend their lie to people who lie to themselves. Apologists are well known for phrases like “no amount of evidence well sway me” or “I will not listen to evidence” which indicates that they know they are lying to themselves as well as others. They know evidence works against them. Apologetics ranks no higher intellectually than the undereducated layman who proclaims evolution a lie, reciting arguments made by creationists (another form of apologist) yet knowing nothing of the actual topic and displaying an unwillingness to learn the topic. Apologetics is however claimed as an intellectual pursuits. It is only if you consider basic lying and denial an intellectual skill.

Intellectual dishonesty is any act of not listening to anything but the argument you wish to prevail while “knowingly” ignoring or denying any counter argument or evidence. The intellectually dishonesty often demand that people consider your position on the matter, the very thing they are not willing to do. Intellectual dishonesty is lying at its worst and apologists are the worst being more educated than most liars in religious doctrine.

When you repeat the lies of an apologist you only repeat a better worded lie.

I have seen all of this behaviour time and again. Though I have tried to make this article impersonal, every word of it is based on my personal experiences with religious people. I called religion a lie and I wrote of the actions of its liars based on my entire life’s experience as an outsider, an atheist, a parent and a husband. The lie doesn’t effect my thought processes, I see it for what it is. I see how people act on the lie and how they defend it. I am the person who considered the apologists position (and found it lacking) while having my evidence and arguments ignored. All my life I have listened to the lies, I am just not emotionally connected to them.

If you got angry or defensive rather than thinking about my position; why? How did a life long atheist came to see your long held and highly valued beliefs as a LIE? Why am I calling you a LIAR? Why not consider my position? Try it, consider your own lie and prove me wrong.

I will finish this here but there is much more to say on the topic of lying. In part two (Deceptive, Subversive, Lying-for-jesus, Stealth Religion) I delve into some of the dishonest methods and terms used to convey the lie.

Until next time, may your gods remain fictional,

The Antitheocrat.