I had a long talk the other day with someone. We'll leave the identity out, but "X" was truly concerned and really wants to make sure I don't spend eternity in hell. This is a serious concern for "X." For anybody not aware, I grew up in, and have lots of friends from the world of, Christian Fundamentalism. Christian Fundamentalism teaches that the Bible is literally perfect or at least WAS literally perfect in its original form, and is meant to be taken literally except for the parables.

In other words, Noah literally loaded a real boat with every single land animals (including dinosaurs) and snakes and donkeys and bushes literally spoke, and Jesus was actually born of a virgin for real and if I don't accept the gift and "surrender" my will to the guy who sacrificed his own son, I will actually end up literally burning in agony long after the earth and sun have expired - time enough for eighteen billion universes to be born and die.

To most of the people who will end up reading this note, this is neither news nor anything very weird at all. I'm just letting it be known where "X" was coming from. And I find it difficult to keep my mouth closed when this sort of thing comes out.

Now a lot of people from both sides - believers and unbelievers - both end up saying the same thing to me: Well, if you don't believe it, what's the big deal? If it's all a bunch of nonsense, why don't you just smile politely and let them believe what they want to believe?

It's a fair question, I suppose. Here's the reason why I allow myself to get involved.

Truth matters. Untruth matters. If it's true that there is a literal heaven or hell awaiting each of us, Christianity is INFINITELY more valuable than this short life. And if it's UNTRUE, this short life itself is INFINITELY more valuable than Christianity.

If the Bible is the real deal, climate change does not matter. Why? Because if the Bible is the real deal, God is going to burn this planet anyway and start over with a new planet. That makes environmentalism a complete waste of time. And many of the Christian policy makers believe this - thus they have no interest in combating climate change. They already know what's going to happen, so it doesn't enter into their minds to do anything about it.

And then again, if the Bible is NOT the real deal, then we are ignoring climate change for no good reason and we are allowing our planet to be destroyed for no other reason than that we don't think we need to care about it.

So the mission needs to be to find Truth. How does one go about finding truth?

This question REALLY raises a lot of craziness with a lot of people. How is truth accessed?

There are a lot of lies out there, and for everything you believe there is something else that you reject. For instance, if you think the earth is fixed and does not move, you cannot believe that the earth orbits the sun. If "A" is true, then "B" is false. Finding truth, then, is the process of discriminating between Fact and Falsehood.

Again: Finding Truth is the process of discriminating between Fact and Falsehood.

 How do you discriminate between Fact and Falsehood? Well, Facts jive with other Facts and there is a way to demonstrate them - either by experiment or logic. Falsehoods usually conflict with Facts and there is no way to demonstrate them. So to find Fact, you have to be able to identify and reject Falsehood.

One good analogy is a Firewall or virus protection. On a computer you usually have some kind of protection from malicious files on the Internet. Let's say you want to download a program and you get it from some kind of shady Russian site. What happens when you click on it? Something pops up saying "Uh... wait a second. Something looks wrong. This looks like a virus. Are you sure you trust this or do you want to take a step back and consider before you continue?"

We humans have the same capability. I call it the "BS Filter." Falsehoods can look false - or they can look true. Sometimes it's hard to tell. That's why we have brains - so we can figure out what's going on. It's not a good idea to take your firewall/virus protection off before accepting a file, and it's also not a good idea to turn off your "BS Filter" before accepting a belief.

But some people talk about Faith as if it is the pathway to discovering truth. What is faith if it is not the process of turning off your firewall/virus protection/BS Filter?

If you have to turn off your virus protection in order to download a program, chances are it's a virus. If you turn it off, then download and install it, and it changes the way your virus program and firewall behave... there's something pretty suspicious about that.

 So:

1. Truth is important

2. Truth is the implication of facts.

3. Facts can only be identified if we can also identify Falsehood.

4. Falsehoods can only be identified if we use our BS Filter.

5. Faith means bypassing the BS Filter.

6. Bypassing the BS Filter is dangerous because you lose the ability to discriminate between Fact and Falsehood.

7. Therefore, faith is dangerous.

Does this make sense?

If a story is meant to be believed, will it not be believable?

How about if a story is meant to be believed on pain of death and torture? Should it not be believable then?

How about you? Do you find that Christianity makes it through your BS Filter? Do you think it's believable or does it require you to turn off your BS Filter?

Seems to me there can only be two options. Either Christianity is perfectly plausible to you - which is insane - or Christianity is not plausible but you accept it anyway - which is even more insane.

If you want to know why I think Christianity is not plausible, you can start with Constantine and canonical law, then look into the hundreds of pre-Jesus "Jesus stories" that make Christianity look EXACTLY like a plagiarism, then look into non-biblical evidence for Jesus, then look into the history of Judaism (starting with Moses, who was raised in Egyptian mythology), then look into the history of Yahweh (who was originally the War God of the Caananites, under Baal - and not seen as the "only God" until later in the same book), then look at the talking bushes, snakes, and donkeys... then you can consider the idea that God is unable to forgive us for being less than perfect unless we acknowledge that he sent himself to be sacrificed by himself to himself by impregnating a virgin with himself.

So does that story make it through your BS Filter, or did you turn it off in order to accept it? It's gotta be one of the two.