A message to god believers

A lot of christians and other god believers are active through their faith in helping other people. Running or giving money to charities, using their free time to help disadvantaged people... that's all very laudable. But I'm asking you, if you really believe that you will go up to a place where you'll spend your time having picnics with Bambi if you die having being a good citizen of the Earth, then why postpone the time of your death? Maximize you chances to heaven and minimize the waiting by doing life threatening heroic actions of goodness!

There are innumerable opportunities to put this precept in action. For instance, go to conflict zones and help civilians. There are for sure many places where such an attitude would be useful. Wikipedia maintains a list of such ongoing conflict zones. Pick up a destination and buy a one way ticket.
A few people used to do that during the history of christianity, dedicated nuns and priests. But what about the other 99.99% of others? Well, they buy SUVs to lower their chance of dying in a car crash and are too busy working to pay the loans to help other people.
Take example on the suicidal bombers. They are truly dedicated to their faith and beliefs. It is too bad they are busy killing people instead of saving lives. But by risking your life to save other human beings, YOU can prove than being a fundamentalist is not always a bad thing.
Trust me, it's a win-win situation here. If you save lives, you increase you chances of being welcomed in the kingdom of Jesus and Donald Duck. And if you've got a family and are afraid of leaving it behind you, don't worry, god will take care of it.

So what about me, do I help my fellow man like I'm advocating in this post? Well no. I don't believe in god as a start, which makes me amoral. So as I will end up in hell anyway why bother?

On religion

I find it difficult to discuss about religion with a believer. The fact that the concept of god is based on faith and not on rationality makes it impossible to argue. Faith doesn't need logic or proof, you have it or not. It's a concept that sustains itself, that exists only because of its own meaning. Religion is nothing more than the oldest and most powerful meme.
Some time ago, a friend of mine which I previously knew as atheist told me she converted herself to christianity. I received that news as a shock. I tried to probe her about what triggered this sudden belief. She wasn't too eager to drill on the subject but basically told me she that had an illumination. Reflecting on that I realised I shouldn't have been so surprised, I already knew she believed in predicting the future by reading tarot.

Imaginary dialogue with an afterlife salesperson

- There's a lot of different options here, could you help me ?
- Sure. It depends a lot on what you're ready to do during your lifetime. This product for instance requires that you follow a set of 10 easy rules.
- What do I get ?
- A place in the countryside with gentle animals all around.
- Sounds a bit tame.
- Ok. Let's see. Would you be willing to undergo a small penis alteration ?
- What ?! No way.
- How about having several wives but abstaining from alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee ?
- Tempting but I work in the IT industry. I couldn't quit coffee.
- What about this offer that comes with 72 virgins.
- Hmm, sounds like a lot of teaching to do. What's required ?
- You have to put on several pairs of underwear and blow yourself up.
- Huh, anything else ?
- There's this new product that instead guarantees you 12 sluts and...
- Ok, deal.

The Agnostic Bus

For my first post I'd like to talk about the Atheist Bus campaign. I submitted a comment today. Let see if they publish it. This is what I wrote :

I was very happy to learn about the atheist bus initiative. But then I read the slogan and was pretty disappointed. The simple addition of "possibly", which may have been made to satisfy the ASA, makes the message not atheist but agnostic. An atheist by definition doesn't have any doubt about the non existence of god. The remaining of the slogan makes also in my opinion two wrong assumptions. The first one is that believers cannot enjoy life. The second that someone believes because he's worried. Most atheist may think that the reasons to believe are rooted in fear but this remains debatable. I guess the aim of this slogan was to be as general as possible, trying to speak to as many believers as possible but unfortunately it fails to convey any strong message for all the aforementioned reasons. I would have preferred something like "There is no god. Now stop fighting for it and be free." If the word possibly was really added because of the ASA, what about using the money to lobby for the right to freely express the real atheist views ?