Lying

[I_am_not_mafia]

Does lying for Jesus count as good works?

It's strange how religion can make otherwise completely honest people lie. My brother has always been a very honest person and not at all manipulative. But he wanted my help with an article he was writing. He said it was intended to be provocative to get a debate going. So I asked him if it was for posting on a discussion forum and he was non-committal and I was led to believe that it was. The title of it is "Atheism is irrational".

Now since my brother has joined this cult, everything I ever see him do in his spare time when we both see each other at my parent's is to further the spread of his religion. I am morally opposed to spreading ignorance. I am a scientist after all and the whole point of doing science is to develop our understanding about how the natural world works. A big part of that is educating others. After all there is no point learning how the natural world works if no one else can develop those ideas. So I certainly wasn't happy about the idea of helping him spread his ignorant beliefs. I see religion as a behaviour altering parasite that redirects people's entire lives to spread to other people. My brother is a classic case. He's asked for opinions in the past before, like when he was trying to create a design for a pro Xtian T-shirt. Trouble is that he asks for advise but then never accepts it so you find yourself having to argue your case and then wonder why the fuck are you trying to help him spread his ignorant beliefs?

The article was full of utter pish as you would expect. Absolutely every line could be refuted and I certainly wasn't going to go through it improving his argument. But I basically pointed out enough for it to be read by other people so they could be bothered reading through it and educate him. Because as it was no one was going to read it. Basically all I did was point out that atheism is not a doctrine developed by Richard Dawkins and the 'new atheists' (fuck I hate that label). I also pointed out that he was only talking about strong gnostic atheism and applying it to all atheists. I explained that most atheists were agnostic atheists and that there are many reasons why people might be atheists so you can't say that all of them are irrational if you don't know their reasons. I mean I wouldn't ever argue that theism is irrational without exception. If you live in a theocracy and haven't been exposed to any information to the contrary then it is perfectly rational to believe in something totally incorrect.

Anyway, next time I visited my parents he was there was on his laptop working on something with my mum looking over his shoulder. He 'joked' that he had better not show me what he was working on. Turns out that the article was actually a book that he gives out to atheists he meets. It was never intended to be a forum post or article. The whole reason I changed my avatars on here recently was because I thought that he might be joining up and didn't want him to realise who I was. What the fuck is the point of handing out a deliberately provocative book to people who have gone off to read it by themselves? It's not like they then have the opportunity to then debate it.

Actually it's going to be, "I'm an atheist" with "Here, have this book that will really piss you off by using a strawman argument". Which is basically what I told him would happen after I found out what the original intention was.

Of course he denied being manipulative and speaking to my mum afterwards she denied it as well. But then she was under the impression that it was intended to be posted on a forum as well.

To be honest, I'm not sure if he even realised that he was being manipulative. Religionists are so used to re-writing history in their mind with their confirmation bias assigning everything positive to their god and thinking that the end justifies the means. But a line had been crossed and I can never trust him again.

So as far as I'm concerned, if extreme religious belief can make even my brother start lying, then there is something inherently manipulative and deceitful in its nature.