The Prodigal Atheist

 Recently, a pamphlet was dropped at my house from a local Christian church. "God wants you to be 100% certain when you die you will go to heaven," it said. Of course, the pamphlet leaves out the fact that the Bible also says that no such certainty is available to us, for we are all condemned to, as the great St. Paul assures us in Philippians 2:12-13, "work out our salvation in fear in trembling."  Despite this glaring omission, the pamphlet goes on to assure the reader that there are several things a person must "know from the Bible to be 100% sure" you will go to Heaven and not hell. The first and most important of these is that "you are a sinner and you don't deserve to go to heaven, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23)." This reminded me of a classic nineteenth century fairy tale about an ugly duckling. It is the story of a duckling who, when hatched along with his brothers and sisters, is ridiculed ...

ASH WEDNESDAY IS when Catholics smear ash on their forehead in the shape of a cross to remind themselves that they “are dust and unto dust they shall return.” The point of smearing such ash on one's face, other than selling the Catholic brand of guilt, is to remind people that they should be ashamed of being human, and aspire to become "like God," just like the serpent promised Adam & Eve they would become if they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. After all, no "tree" (in the form of a cross) claims to be as infallible as Catholicism in proclaiming to know what God defines as good and evil. And the only way to overcome this shame is to aspire to "become like God" by shuffling loose one's own sinful and mortal coil and becoming completely a pure idea of one's righteousness. Outside of religion, an idea of one's self is defined as our ego, and the sense that a person's ego is so special that it deserves nothi...

WHY WOULD ANYONE ever confess to a murder they did not commit? Stranger still, why would anyone confess to a murder they could not commit, because it occurred 2000 years before they were ever born? As crazy as it may sound, people confess to crimes they did not commit more often than we might think. And confessing responsibility for the murder of an innocent man over 2000 years ago is not only common, for many around the world today, it is considered to be a requirement to being seen and accepted as a morally responsible member of the human race. But how does admitting responsibility for the murder of an innocent man 2000 years ago make a person more “moral” than defending one’s innocence of such a crime? If anything, such a “confession” would only seem to make a person morally dishonest. So why are so many billions of people around the world not only so quick to make such a confession, why do they even teach their own children of their need to do the same thing to be “saved”? And in...