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Meditation 57
Religious Fallacy Day^[1] - 23 October

A day for those who recognize that while a myth can illustrate a truth, it is not The Truth.

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In the middle of the 17th Century, Bishop Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, determined the date of creation to be 23 October, 4004 BC. In memory of his work, we declare 23 October to be Religious Fallacy Day - a day to commemorate all the errors perpetrated on mankind through interpretation of religious texts.

This is not just a day for members of the Church of the Apathetic Agnostic. We invite others to celebrate the day with us; other agnostics and atheists, freethinkers and humanists, and people of faith who recognize the difference between spiritual truths and literal truth.

Use the day to reflect not just on Bishop Ussher and his determination of the date of creation, but also, those who have used religious texts to predict the end of the world,^[2] to claim infallibility for their religious leaders, to execute heretics, to lead their followers into holy war, or to commit suicide. Reflect on the folly, and the waste of human life.

Celebrate the first annual Religious Fallacy Day on Wednesday, 23 October 2002, and on every 23 October thereafter.

Footnotes

1. This is the first day the Church of the Apathetic Agnostic has chosen to recognize. We will be identifying others over the next few months and publishing an Agnostic Calendar of these special days in the Church section of this web site. Some of these days will be of significance only to our members, others to the general non-religious community, and a few, such as 23 October should have near universal appeal (except, of course for those wacky fundamentalists.)
2. By the Mayan calendar, the world is supposed to end in 2012, and if we survive that, then many of the Christians who were disappointed the event did not come about in 2000 or 2001 are now fixating on the 2028 - 2035 time frame - whatever date their analysis indicates is 2000 years after Christ's death / resurrection. Please don't lose sleep over any of these forecasts.

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