The Gospel According to Internet Atheists (Episode III- The Holy Roman Empire Co. Ltd.)

Welcome back, friends, to the TRUE story of the Bible and the Church (according to the collection of atheists on the internet). In this, the third and final installment, we will see how the church simultaneously created and destroyed Western Civilization and is to blame for everything that’s wrong with the wold, including mosquitoes, nuclear war, and Male Pattern Baldness.

The Gay Debate: Chapter Two- Building Bridges

Welcome back to a Gay debate about Gay marriage. When I last left you, I had spelled out the need for objective moral values in order to take EITHER side in this debate. Now I intend to take a minute to explain how much we all have in common. If your mind is easily blown, you may need a helmet- or a mind diaper.

The Burning Rubber Duck of Sin

Your Rent a Friend is Listening to Stunt by BNL

His mood is: It must be summer because I can’t remember what day it is.

Welcome back to the GOSPEL! To refresh your memory, here’s the hot rockin’ acronym that’s been lighting up the top of the Pop Metaphysical Charts:

G– God made you to have a personal relationship with Him.
O– Our sins separate us from God.
S– Sin cannot be removed with good works.
P– Paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again.
E– Everyone who trusts in Him alone has eternal life.
L– Life with Jesus starts now and lasts forever.

So far we’ve taken a good look at the person we call “God.” He made you to have a personal relationship with him. In a previous episode I unpacked some of his defining traits, so you can check that out. But of course, I’m only scratching the surface. Summing up the eternal God in a two page semi-weekly blog is like drawing New York City on a Napkin.

I Think, Therefore I Scribble (Or: Cogito, Ergo Ducky)

Your Rent A Friend is Listening to The Fall, by Nora Jones.

His mood is… too tired to go chasing pirates.

I think, therefore I am. How about you? Do you think? If not, what makes you think you exist? Oh, I guess if you thought you existed, that would be you thinking. It was a silly question anyway. I guess what I’m getting at is the fact that you’ve probably heard this phrase before: “I think, Therefore I am” (Or, in the original French, “Cogito, Ergo Sum,” and in Pig Latin “Iway inkthay, ereforethay Iway amway.”). But have you ever wondered where it came from? Good thing you have a Rent A Friend like yours truly to clear up the vast mysteries.

Actually “Cogito, Ergo Sum” is Latin, but the guy who made this phrase popular was French. His name was Rene’ Descartes, and he was trying to find a way to reduce philosophy to the most basic of self-evident premises. It doesn’t get any more basic than realizing that you exist. If you need a lot of evidence to believe that you exist, just give up. You’re never going to be anything but a skeptic.

Objective Morals and the Fish Slapping Dance

Your Rent a Friend is listening to the likes of the Killers, Foo Fighters, and Everclear thanks to Pandora.
His mood is pretty good. 58 out of 50 I’d say.

I was setting fire to old tires full of orphan kittens this morning when I realized that the only thing that has kept me from making arson (Burning down hospitals, specifically) a full time career is all the time I spend selling drugs to grade school kids as a way to fund the local chapter of the Illinois Nazis. Racism isn’t cheep you know. Not the real, fascist, genocidal kind. So, I thought I could start splitting my time between drugs and theft more efficiently by forcing other people to rob for me by threatening their wives and children with high explosives and anthrax. Every successful person has a team under them. Look at Jim Henson, Oprah, or Attila the Hun just to name a few examples. And I want my career as a Fascist polluting racist thieving drug czar to be more than just a hobby. I want it to be really big, because I want the world to be a better place. It’s a lot of work, but I really feel it’s the right thing to do.

The Blind Men and the Elephant (and Zoo Keeper Adventure Steve)

Your Rent A Friend is listening to the score from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
His mood is pretty good, though his contacts are pretty dry .

Whenever people talk about the differing religions of the world, someone will come up with the following analogy, or some variation thereof. In fact, mine is a variation thereof. So there. Of.

There is a zoo where works zoo keeper Adventure Steve. He takes care of all of the animals, including an elephant named Zito. The elephant in turn takes care of his rubber duck. The rubber duck doesn’t take care of anyone. She just floats around in Zito’s water dish.

One day, a bus full of philosophers came to the zoo on a field trip. They were the Society of Smarty Pants Philosophers (the S.S.P.P.), and their field trip was also a contest (As everything is for the Society of Smarty Pants Philosophers). When they got off the bus, they were all blind folded and lead to the elephant to see who had the smartest pants (metaphorically speaking).

Is there a Ducky in Pascal’s Box?

Your Rent a Friend is listening to Dashboard Confessional

His mood is negatively effected by cheap French Onion Soup

Are you a gambler? Do you love the thrill of tossing those dice, spinning that wheel or pulling the leaver? Are you, like me, seriously disappointed by the new slot machines where you push a button? I mean, seriously! Push a button? Pulling the leaver is half of the fun! Where else in life do you get to pull a leaver anymore? Maybe if you’re a mad scientist creating a monster in a lightning storm, but for the rest of us (Or mad scientists in nice weather I suppose) we want the leaver! Don’t take away the only interaction I have before my money disappears forever! I want a leaver to pull and spinning pictures of fruit! I’d get that feature in my next car if it were available.I myself am not really a gambling man. The primary reason is this: I will always lose. You’re better off betting against me than against the Chicago Cubs. If there are dice in my hands, I am going to lose. I think it’s my spiritual gift. Which brings me to today’s topic. What if I could offer you a bet with a certain and amazing pay off?  Yes, you have to pay in at the front, but you can’t lose anything, and you have the chance of winning vastly more than you can possibly imagine. Sound good? Let me give you a metaphor: “Is There a Ducky?”!

Fake Math and Flying Spaghetti Monster

Your Rent A Friend is listening to: Count Basie Radio on Pandora.com

His Mood is: Good, baby! It’s ALL good.
(Rent-a-friend’s note: The email address at which to reach me is now a hotmail address for reasons which elude me. In short, if you ever wish to email me, it will have to be at hotmail because my gmail account imploded and cannot be recovered. Like the deathstar. Poof. I knew I should have put a screen on that thermal exhaust port!)

If you’ve been reading this blog faithfully (and by the look of my stats about four of you have), you know that I have been attempting to prove the existence of Objective Truth as outlined in my Metaphysical Map. If you haven’t been reading my blog, you probably think I am on powerful drugs which are not necessarily prescription. Let me assure you all that I know exactly what I’m talking about. I am talking about TRUTH! And part of the reason I am talking about truth is because I wish to tell you about Jesus. It’s not as much of a stretch as you might think to go from Metaphysical outlines of objective truth to a Jewish carpenter who claimed to be God.

God Part II (In a Nutshell)

Though it has nothing to do with my topic, I wish to start with an example of how marriage really can be an amazing partnership. My wife and I, working together for mutual triumph, recently achieved a 500 note streak on Guitar Hero. 500 notes!
I know, right? I was so psyched! I think it is an excellent start to our seventh year of marriage, and I thank God for her.
Speaking of God (For aside from being your Rent A Friend, I am the Transition King), this is part two of my explanation of the nature of God.

The reasons the Biblical God is my foundation for the Metaphysical journey are several:

First, I am a Christian and I know Him. He’s real. It would be profoundly stupid for me to start with some other god, none of which I believe to be real, when I am trying to map out the nature of truth. Also, with almost all other religions, their god (Or gods or godess or what have you) is not the eternal, self existent creator of all from nothing.  This means you have to start a step before them with the pre-existing universe, whatever it was, and then go back to find out who or what made THAT and what proto-universe They lived in… and frankly, it gets me dizzy trying to figure out where, if ever, the process might end. So, we’re gonna Occam’s Razor all of that and assume that we only need one God and one universe. Otherwise we’ll need a padded cell and a lifetime supply of Aspirin.
There is much that can, has, and will be said about God/Jesus, but for right now my purpose is to prepare you for the Metaphysical journey, and it starts with God.
Thus I present here the relevant nature of God in a nutshell and the ways in which He is surprisingly different from other gods:

1. God is ETERNAL. He exists outside of time (Which he created) but can act inside of time. He had no beginning and will never end.
The god of Mormonism, for instance, lacks this divine aspect. Its idea of “God” is that any man can become god of their own world by being Super-Mormon. Thus, our god was once a man, born on another planet under another god, and he earned his way up to his present status as the man-with-the-biggest-desk. The god he once lived under was once himself a man who earned his way up the corporate ladder under a still different god, and so on. Despite the built in stairway-to-heaven structure, it is still considered rude to refer to Mormonism as a “Pyramid Scheme,” so don’t do that. Of course the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians had a fun bunch of comic book hero gods and goddesses, almost all of which came into being by being born, or built, purchased on e-bay, or in one case, popping out of Zeus’s head like some giant zit. Of the 330 millions gods of Hinduism (No, seriously, 330 million! Imagine the endless potential for holidays!) only one is actually eternal- The Brahman. The rest are forms or facets of that one which emerged from him at some point. Also, some would argue that the Brahman is more of an impersonal force than a god per say, but that’s another semantic blog for another semantic day.

Despite the name, the Brahman is NOT a comic book super hero. If you can figure out what the superpowers of The Brah-Man would be, let me know. Maybe we can start a new comic book. Bollywood would be itching to make the movie! Or would condemn us as blasphemous heretics! I’m really not sure which!

2. God is ALL POWERFUL. He can do anything that can be done.
This obviously wasn’t the case for most of the old school gods. They were always getting tricked, fooled, manipulated, or coerced. Sometimes they would get stuck under a rock, or injured or killed in personal vendettas and gangland warfare, like our modern Gangsta Rappers. I’m guessing the reason all those old religions died out was the invention of baseball and daytime television. Let’s be honest, between Soaps and Sports, you have everything the “Zeus & Co. Players” could come up with.
A good example of how the Biblical God is different than other gods is just the fact that most of your popular religions have a particular god or goddess for everything. Thor can do thunder, lightning and maybe even light showers coming from the northwest, with strong gusts up to 35 miles per hour, but can he do ferrying the to the underworld? No. For that you need Anubis or Charon. And they can’t do a thing for crops. You need some corn god for that one, like Osiris. And can the corn god do apple trees too? Probably not. The Union would never allow that kind of thing even if he had the time. This is probably how the Hindus got 330 million gods in the first place.
Jesus can do 330 million things by himself, so one God is plenty.

3. He is the CREATOR of all space, time, matter, energy, etc. He created it out of nothing.
There is NO creation account like the one in the Bible except, oddly,  the Big Bang Theory. God made EVERYTHING from NOTHING some finite time ago. All other creation stories have some pre-existing world with water and plants and a sky and probably a Radio Shack and a tanning salon. The Big Bang Theory agrees that the universe popped into existence from nothing, nowhere, and nowhen a finite time ago, but it rejects the idea of a creator and says the universe is un-caused; it sort of made itself, like a rabbit pulling itself out of a hat without a hat. Or a rabbit. This would be an amazing magic trick (without a magician) and well worth the price of admission. No one would argue that it is not infinitely unlikely to happen, but, as it has been said “it only had to happen once.” Some of you think I’m making this up, but sadly I am not. I’ll explain it all some other time.

4. God is ALL KNOWING. He knows all that is, was, or will be, and all that would be were things different. And because he is out of time, he doesn’t need to remember stuff or predict it, he sees it all in an eternal NOW.
Again, all of your other religions have stories where various gods trick each other or where humans fool their gods or pull one over on them. It wasn’t so much a religion as a cartoon with some of these guys. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but when your god has the same problems running the world that Elmer Fudd does bagging a rabbit, you seriously need to rethink whether he’s worthy of worship.

5. God is PERSONAL. Unlike The FORCE (TM Lucasfilms Ltd) He has thoughts, feelings, preferences, characteristics, and a will. While Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn did imply once that the Force ™ also has a will, he may have been speaking metaphorically and certainly does not represent the Jedi Temple, The Council, nor the majority of Jedi doctrine.

6. God’s main motivation/Character trait is LOVE. While he is righteous and just, he loves us with a really BIG love and therefore made a way for sin to be punished (satisfying his righteous justice) and yet adopt us into his family.
There is much left to say, but let me have the Bible sum it up for me:
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Nutshell in a nutshell: God is Big, Unique, and wonderful- and He Loves You!

OK, there is your foundation for the metaphysical map to everything. Whew! Covers a LOT of ground. Now that I have this done, I need to go play some more Guitar Hero. Maybe you should go do the same. I can’t say there is a direct correlation between my excellent marriage and my good Guitar Hero score, but it is worth trying.
Just in case.

rentafriend2000@hotmail.com