Better Than Faith is a resource for anyone questioning faith. Whether you are doubting your own faith or you just want to shine a light on religion and expose some of its dirty little secrets, you should find something here to help you.
We feel that where there are proselytizers trying to convert people to their religion, there should be a voice of reason to help those people make an informed and rational choice instead of potentially caving under the confusing mind games and bullying that many preachers use.
If you would like to join us, we would be glad to have you. If you want to start your own group, we wish you the best of luck, and we hope that our materials will help.
This photograph causes a cringe to tighten my spine. Reading the tract informs us that they added the…Earth…to this image in order to give a sense of scale…what it doesn’t say is that the distance is totally wrong. In fact, this tract would be ridiculously long in order to actually display the proper distance and scale of Earth vs. Sun. Being the geek that I am, I decided to take a moment and point out exactly how far off “YOU ARE HERE” is.
The diameter of the stellar body on this photograph fudges to about 8 inches (I measured it by matching the curvature to a similar object, in this case a ceramic plate.) The planet Earth has an elliptical orbit around the Sun varying in distance according to its position in that orbit, the mean distance between Earth and the Sun is 14,960,000 10^6 km; the mean diameter of the Sun is 1,392 10^6 km. That means that the Earth should be placed 8,5977 inches away! That’s 2,388.25 yards…for those Americans in my audience, let me lay this one out. To display appropriate scale of Earth to Sun the tract would have to be a length of over 23 football fields.
Commanding General’s Spiritual Fitness Concerts. They have been going on for years at Fort Eustis and Fort Lee, but these disturbing misuses of government funds and abuses of soldiers’ rights have only recently been brought to our attention.
Remember California Proposition 8? Aka California Marriage Protection Act, aka The Mormon Proposition: a measure that added a new provision to the California Constitution that provides that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California.” Well, it was just ruled deeply unconstitutional by a federal judge today, August 4, 2010.
"Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples," Walker, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President Ronald Reagan, wrote in his opinion.
"Race restrictions on marital partners were once common in most states but are now seen as archaic, shameful or even bizarre," he added. "Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of equals."
This tract has a slightly different layout than others. It punctuates pages with center, bold, ALL-CAPS headings, and numbered lists.
“MAN’S GREATEST NEED
Sin has separated man from God. To be separated from God at death means to spend eternity in Hell, because God will not excuse sin, and sin must be punished. Man is sinful, but God is holy. The blood of Jesus Christ is God’s way of meeting man’s greatest need.”
Wow. The jargon density in this paragraph is amazing. Of course, it doesn’t quite explain what “man’s greatest need” is after all, does it? It just threatens the reader with Hell right up front and center and…that’s it. I open this tract and immediately it’s pointing at gun at me, “You need something! The blood of Jesus Christ fulfills this need!” A person who is at least culturally Christian will fill this void of explanation with their own experience, but anyone else is going to look at this with a bemused stare and put it down again.
So, this tract is about blood. Excuse me, I mean, this tract is about BLOOD. So let’s look at the numbered list in the section that tells about this BLOOD. Specifically the blood of Jesus Christ. (For the sake of clarity, I omit the Bible references from these outtakes; often they are superfluous noise anyway.)
I want to thank Tim for accepting the challenge to debate this very important question. He was easy going through the whole process and very nice to work with. The reason I asked him to do this was because an atheist on a message board was ridiculing the resurrection. I challenged him to a debate on the topic and never heard back from him, but Tim did respond and I am glad he did.
Here is a story of a person who performed miraculous things, inexplicable and witnessed by many people. Lots of people follow this person, believing in the divinity they have witnessed and accepting the divine consequence of the stories they have heard from other followers. This person carried a message from Heaven which has been delivered far and wide. And finally, this person died and bodily resurrected.
Q4. Do you think that the Resurrection gave rise to Christianity or do you think that Christianity gave rise to the Resurrection? Why do you think so?
A4. None of the above. I hold that the idea of resurrection from the dead is an ancient idea, way back to the old farmer religions where death and rebirth was a symbol of the season cycle. Like so many other religions, Christianity incorporated many miraculous memes into it, including the concept of a resurrection. Prove me wrong
Q4. What are your sources of history about the early church? About the earliest Christians and what contemporary people were thinking about Jesus? One of your pivotal arguments seems to be that the elite Jews would have hated Christianity for its message (that whole eye of the needle thing isn’t exactly wooing the rich, for example). History indicates that you are right about this, and that early Christians were not from this class at all. Can you bridge the gap and show us that a portion of these Jews did indeed convert, against their theological convictions? And did they mention why they converted? (As in: did they report being a witness to the resurrection?)
This photograph causes a cringe to tighten my spine. Reading the tract informs us that they added the…Earth…to this image in order to give a sense of scale…what it doesn’t say is that the distance is totally wrong. In fact, this tract would be ridiculously long in order to actually display the proper distance and scale of Earth vs. Sun. Being the geek that I am, I decided to take a moment and point out exactly how far off “YOU ARE HERE” is.
This tract has a slightly different layout than others. It punctuates pages with center, bold, ALL-CAPS headings, and numbered lists.