As I said before, Christianity is a hard target to avoid when it comes the black humour provided by intolerant, bigoted religious crackpots. This time I may have been able to hit two religions with one post though. (The pictures are nothing to do with the text they are just here to make the blog look pretty 🙂)

Part of the problem seems to stem from Religions, being inherently “faith” based (surely by definition) superstition cults, trying to bring themselves into the modern, post-Renaissance era of logic and reasoned thought.

Now, I am not trying to say that in today’s world, everyone needs logical reasoned thought to carry out their actions – the evidence of each day proves this to be false – but that for some reason, certain religious organisations / individuals feel the need to try and rationalise their beliefs and prove they are following the “One True Faith” while all others are heretics and unbelievers who are going to hell. Obviously this is a good reason why the big three religions are never going to tolerate a fully open and equal society (In the UK Catholic opposition to recent legislation is a good example).

Anyway, on to today’s black humour. The ever pleasant Westboro Baptist Church has a website titled “God Hates Fags” which is littered with offensive, intolerant remarks far from the standard Christian doctrine of love thy neighbour. When I first followed the links to this site, I assumed it was pure parody and had been written as a send up of various Baptist Churches. Sadly, checking the wonderful Wiki showed this not to be the case. It is a legit Church, although not affiliated to any other Baptist church (yeah, that makes it better…).

This is a Christian church (affiliated or not) which has come up with some weird interpretation of the New Testament that allows them to morally justify their amazingly objectionable behaviour. The Wiki site has a list of their prejudices, the titles of which are entertaining enough. Fortunately not only do WBC hate Black people, Gays, Jews and Muslims but they hold Catholics and Mormons in equally low regard. You could almost say it was balanced…

This alone would be disturbing and somewhat upsetting for people who live in the area (I hope), but a scan of their website produces a page with this as the title: (read original)

August 20, 1995 – The Night America Bombed Westboro Baptist Church With An IED (Improvised Explosive Device) In A Cowardly Move To Stop WBC’s Anti-Gay Gospel Preaching – Thereby Bringing Down The Unmitigated And Irreversible Wrath Of God Upon This Evil Nation, Manifesting Itself In The Daily Bloody IED-Deaths Of American Soldiers In Iraq And Other Places. (See Documentation below).

Don’t you just love long, rambling, ranting, titles like this. You can imagine the person typing it never pausing for breath as they vomit hell fire and damnation on all sinners. It’s like a pantomime all year round.

They continue:

Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) had been faithfully preaching for four years when a local whore stepped forward to run for District Attorney on a platform that she would shut down our ministry. She was elected and immediately began filing criminal charges against our members until the number of charges filed by local authorities exceeded five hundred. By August 20 we had just completed four weeks of back-to-back trials in Emporia, Kansas, where venue had been changed to. The local authorities in Topeka – from the police to the prosecutors, to the elected and non-elected officials in every branch and every level of city, county and state government – were encouraging crimes and malicious prosecutions against members of WBC.

They were working hand-in-hand to establish a zeitgeist so that every piece of filthy scum was encouraged to come to the pickets and attack us physically and verbally, being assured of three things:

1. There would be NO consequences to them criminally.
2. One or more members of WBC would be prosecuted.
3. There was a support group in town called Concerned Citizens of Topeka established to fight against the religious ministry and message of WBC by providing legal and financial support to anyone who attacked or accused us. That group would provide an attorney for the attacker to help navigate the process of prosecuting WBC members – pro bono!

Crimes against WBC members were a regular (almost daily) occurrence. The local newspaper was printing daily stories, editorials, and letters to the editor to demonize, vilify and marginalize WBC and her little flock of slaughter.

The whole page continues in this vein. Ranting, offensive insults in the name of God. It is hilarious but I am amazed that they have not been sued to within an inch of their lives (although part of me suspects that would just martyr them and generate “support” in the manner of Kent Hovind)

Right enough of offensive, idiotic, evil, petty minded idiots hiding behind the banner of Christianity, we have our first Islamic entry!

On a website called MuslimMarkets there is a blog post (oddly using the Christian calendar) which explains the true religion of God.

Now, before I address some of the main inconsistencies with this post, I need to look at the first one. This whole document assumes the existence of God and looks at the differences between paths to worshipping that deity. It is strange in that it also looks at Buddism, Confucianism (etc) who certainly do not provide a path to worshipping the “One true God.” Now with this in mind look at some of the extracts from that document:

Like every other religion or philosophy, Islam also claims to be the one and only true way to God. In this respect it is no different from other systems. This booklet intends to provide some evidence for the validity of that claim. However, it must always be kept in mind that one can only determine the true path by putting aside emotions and prejudices, which often blind us to reality. Then, and only then, will we be able to use our God-given intelligence and make a rational and correct decision.

Can you see this first assumption is vital to the whole argument. Taking it at face value, this “booklet” can actually only serve to convert other believers of the “one true God” (Christians and Jews). Being a good “Islamic” document it attributes most of it’s content to the workings of God and assumes that the reader is using their “God given” intelligence to assess the information provided. If you dont feel your intelligence was given to you by God a lot of what follows in the “booklet” is empty.

The rest of the booklet advances some arguments as to why Islam is the true faith: (Emphasis mine)

There are several arguments, which may be advanced to support Islam’s claim to be the true religion of God. The following are only three of the most obvious. The first argument is based on the divine origin of the names of the religion and the comprehensiveness of its meaning. The second deals with the unique and uncomplicated teachings concerning the relationship between God, man, and creation. The third argument derives from the fact that Islam is universally attainable by all men at all times. These are the three basic components of what logic and reason dictate necessary for a religion to be considered the true religion of God. The following pages will develop these concepts in some detail.

Sadly the author of the blog post is trying to use logic to prove the illogical and is doomed to failure.

The first argument is basically Islam means surrender of will to God, therefore it must be the true faith. Seriously. It claims that because other religions are names given by man they must be lesser religions. The mind truly boggles.

With a bit of logical sleight of hand, the first argument concludes:

Thus, Jesus like the prophets before him and the one who came after him, taught the religion of Islam: submission to the will of the one true God.

Dont you just love that sort of conclusion.

On the God and Creation argument it gets more convoluted. It begins with a somewhat jumbled paragraph:

GOD AND CREATION

Since the total submission of one’s will to God represents the essence of worship, the basic message of God’s divine religion, Islam, is the worship of God alone. It also requires the avoidance of worship directed to any person, place or thing other than God. Since everything other than God, the creator of all the things, is God’s creation, it may be said that Islam, in essence, calls man away from worship of creation and invites him to worship only his Creator. He is the only one deserving of man’s worship, because it is only by His will that prayers are answered.

Now, I have read this a couple of times and I still can’t make it look like anything other than a very, very circular line of reasoning. Nothing else in this section clarifies it, rather it muddies the water by saying that because Islam calls for the worship of the creator it must be true.

At least the first argument is structured as an argument, the second one is basically a collection of self referential statements. It even appears to conclude:

Belief in this declaration of faith requires that one submit his/her will to God in the way taught by the prophets of God. It also requires the believer to give up the worship of false gods.

Again, this is not an argument, it is not a logical line of reasoning, it is not a reason to suggest that Islam is the one true faith. It is just a statement which pretty much true about any of the Big Three religions.

The booklet moves even further away from being a logical argument as to why Islam should be followed and onto a list of statements on Islam. The third argument begins:

THE MESSAGE OF FALSE RELIGIONS

There are so many sects, cults, religions, philosophies, and movements in the world, all of which claim to be the right way or the only true path of God How can one determine which one is correct or whether, in fact, all are correct? One method by which the answer can be found is to clear away the superficial differences in the teachings of the various claimants to the ultimate truth, and identifies the central object of worship upon which they call, directly or indirectly. False religions all have in common one basic concept with regard to God they either claim that all men are gods, or that specific men were God, or that nature is God, or that God is a figment of man’s imagination.

Thus, it may be stated that the basic message of false religion is that God may be worshipped in the form of His creation. False religions invite man to the worship of creation by calling the creation or some aspect of it God. For example, prophet Jesus invited his followers to worship God, but those who claim to be Jesus’ followers today call people to worship Jesus, claiming that he was God.

Oddly, the whole argument revolves round a fallacy (the followers of Jesus do not worship Jesus per se – even the holy trinity is a different matter) and it certainly does not address Judaism. (Or atheism for that matter)

To try and dismiss Buddhism the following is used:

Buddha was a reformer who introduced a number of humanistic principles in the religion of India. He did not claim to be God, nor did he suggest to his followers that he be an object of worship. Yet today most Buddhists who are to be found outside of India have taken him to be God and they prostrate themselves to idols made in their perception of his likeness.

By using the principle of identifying the object of worship, we can easily detect false religions and the contrived nature of their origin. As God said in the Qur’an:

“That which you worship besides Him are only names and you and your forefathers have invented for which Allah has sent down no authority: the command belongs only to Allah He has command that you worship Him; that is the right religion, but most men do not understand.”
[Qur’an 12:40]

Again, this is a line of reasoning which is only even slightly valid if you are already a Muslim. If you are a Buddhist (and I think most would object to being accused of worshiping an Idol in the Image of Buddha), the writings of the Qur’an are meaningless. A logical argument can not be constructed in this manner.

Now, the “Booklet” continues in a similar manner, saying Islam must be the correct faith because it says it is and it says all others are wrong. Hopefully few people will be oblivious to the inherent fallacies when the logic is stripped down, it is a shame that when the nonsense is wrapped up in words some people start to fall for it’s magic.

This is already the longest post known to mankind (and it must be true because it says here that it is), so I will stop now. I may revisit the Booklet for more logical fallacies another time.