A wee bit of Hypocrisy
The other day I was listening to someone rant on about how ridiculous and irrational the Mormons were for believing in all the nonsense their particular religion spews out.
I can’t remember all the details of the rant and they aren’t important for the overly serious material I have to say today, because the odd spat of irony in this particular situation is that the person ranting on about the Mormons was a fundamentalist Christian.
Say what?
Yes, my friend. The person laughing at the ridiculousness of Mormon beliefs simultaneously holds their own version of delusional dogma and thinks it is perfectly rational and sane - in contrast to those idiotic Mormons of course. So I want to talk a bit about some of those lovely Christian non-myths. Please keep in mind that, when dealing with fundamentalists Christians, each of these beliefs are held to be absolutely true in the sense that if we were to Marty Mcfly back in our very own DeLorean, the events would unfold exactly as described in the book of a holiness.
Absurd Fundamentalist Christian Belief 1
A snake had a conversation with an immortal woman, convinced her to eat a fruit. As she and her immortal husband digested the fruit in the nude, the fruit instantaneously changed all their DNA makeup so that they suddenly – and most importantly – felt ashamed of being naked. Also as a side effect they became mere mortals.
If that doesn’t sound like a story straight out of Greek mythology I don’t know what does. Yet, millions of people, and this person included, hold this story to be verbatim true. Alas, those idiot Mormons.
Absurd Fundamentalist Christian Belief 2
A virgin gets pregnant without having sex or ever being touched by semen. Her baby turns out to be the son of the supreme deity. This son, however, has no evidence for being a diety, he is fully human i.e. has all the chromosomes and DNA of a human and is a fully functioning human being. However, like Hercules and other demi-gods he can sometimes do cool stuff like walk on water.
Absurd Fundamentalist Christian Belief 3
The supreme deity gets ticked off at everything he made because the humans aren’t living how he wants them to. So he has a guy and his family build a boat big enough to pack every living species that ever existed on it. The deity then sends every animal on the planet - also all the ones humans don't even know - to them and they pack them in, all living harmoniously together on this massive raft. Then the deity causes it to rain and flood and he basically turns the entire planet into a swimming pool. Afterwards, this guy lands his boat and lets out all the animals. The animals then somehow manage to distributed themselves to different continents where only the marsupials end up in Australia.
Absurd Fundamentalist Christian Belief 4
Back in the day, some angels got really horny and came down to earth to have sex with some hot human ladies. Somehow the immortal angel DNA is compatible with human DNA – sweet – so these hot ladies got pregnant and had lots of babies. These babies turned out to be giants. So yea, there totally used to be giants walking the earth.
Absurd Fundamentalist Christian Belief 5
During an important battle the sun and mood stood still in sky. Gravity and the laws of physics didn’t change but somehow earth had to stop rotating and moving through space - whatever – the battle was super important!
Absurd Fundamentalist Christian Belief 6
When you think things in your mind or say them under your breath a supreme deity can hear them, but not only him all kinds of otherworldly creatures as well, angels and demons too. These otherworldly creatures and the supreme deity can also put thoughts in your head and manipulate you into thinking bad things, so you have to be careful and constantly compare your thoughts with what is in the holy text to check if the thoughts were from the supreme deity or a good otherworldly creature like an angel or a bad otherworldly creature like a demon.
And the list goes on and on...
What’s even more funny – or really sad once you’ve spent a significant amount of time with fundamentalists - about all these examples is that fundamentalists spend tons of time trying to figure out how all these insanely obviously mythological things could have really happened or can happen in the real world.
In an attempt to show them my view of the situation, I'll say to them, its as if they want to prove how zeus could have possibly come down from Olympus and had sex with a maiden to beget Hercules. The level of ludicrousness is the same. My level of disbelief is the same. The real question is why they - finding Hercules mythological - don't find the myths of their particular religion to be just that: myths.
To have these very people laugh at the ridiculous beliefs of Mormons while holding such insane beliefs themselves, only shows how illogical, inconsistent, and self-contradictory humans as a species are.
Something not all that surprising, one might dare say predictable, if you were to think there's nothing extraordinarily special about humans and that they originated through a process of natural selection like every other living creature on the planet.