Christian local businessman pops over to the annual free “Skepticon” conference to see what’s going on. Thinking, understandably so, that it might be all about skepticism on UFOs and ghosts and whatnot (which it somewhat is), he’s treated to a few minutes of Sam Singleton’s parody act of a holy-roller revivalist sermon, not promoting gettin’ saved, but parodying religion and promoting skeptical atheism — and the crowd participating in the parody by, not yelling “amen!,” but rather “goddam!”

So, said Christian businessman runs over to his neighboring gelato and smoothie business and posts a sign reading:

“Skepticon is not welcomed to my Christian business,”

where it remains for anywhere between 10 minutes (he says) and two hours (others say), possibly violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The near immediate result? Atheists with access to the Intertubes (purt near ev’rybody), went apoplectic and completely decimated his online rankings on such social media services as Urbanspoon, Yelp, and Google reviews. I mean, decimated. (Although, will taking a store’s ranking down to 1 star, or 5%, or whatever on one of these, really harm a business? Especially in a town that’s not very social media savvy? Meh, doubt it. But it’s still something that would make a struggling businessperson’s stomach turn to water.)

So, he posted an notpology on his Web page: a very thinly veiled ”please lay off, m’kay?!” apology. After that made the rounds of critical mockery, he posted an extensive and reasonably sincere-sounding apology over on Reddit, where his infamy across the world was begat. Some atheism/skepticism bigwigs and muckymucks accepted the apology. Others did not. Boy-howdy, did they not. And this is where my opinions on the matter begin….

As this drama played out, plot twist by plot twist, my own views changed somewhat with each new development.

• Posted the sign: I freaked-the-flip out.
• I learned he posted it after watching some undeniably inflammatory and reverse-offensive Sam Singleton: I nodded my head sagely and with tee-pee’ed fingers murmuring, “Indeed. Quite understandable, wot!”
• The notpology: “OMG hes such a lyingjerk!!1!”
• The full apology: “Ah, good show, old bean!”
• JT Eberhard’s non-acceptance: “Yeah! Totally! We ride!… whoa… wait a second… Really?”

See, JT Eberhard’s a quickly-growing muckymuck of atheism in his own right. He’s the driving force for the first three years of Skepticon and is a very vocal opponent, and mockerizer, of religion. And nearly all the time I agree with nearly everything he posts (although, I find his frequent use of profanity completely unnecessary and juvanile… but whatchya gonna do). Yet, I’ve decided that in this late stage of this already getting old issue, his approach (the first “non-acceptance” post linked above, and his ironically-titled follow-up: “We Have No Choice But To Invade Gelato Mio” is wrong and likely do to far more harm than good. (But FSM help the person who tries to suggest JT might be wrong about something, unless you already happen to be in his inner-circle of friends. You take your metaphorical life in your hands. But, here goes….)

There is a time and a place and a need for bulldog firebrands. And, in JT’s day job, I rather think his style of take-no-prisoners scorched-earth approach is necessary! As he’s “a campus organizer and high school specialist with the Secular Student Alliance,” I believe he has to work on a daily basis dealing with some absolutely terrible bigotry from people in positions of unquestioned authority toward kids who have little to no defense against the religious intolerance they face. He has to defend students’ rights, legal and ethical, to express their beliefs and even form legally-allowed student clubs and associations which are constantly under attack from school administrators. Atheist students, especially those still in the closet and in much need of vocal and voracious support, need people like JT and his “give no quarter” single-mindedness. And I celebrate him for it!

But, there’s also a need, and a time and a place, for choosing one’s battles, deciding when discretion is the better part of valor, and allowing the “enemy” to slink away with a noggin-bump, instead of nuking them from orbit and then salting the earth for good measure. Yes yes, I know, JT’s actual demands are:

“Tell me bigotry is unacceptable.  Tell me offense is not the same as breathing life into prejudice.  Tell me that punishing somebody for disagreeing with you or thinking your beliefs are silly is immoral.  And tell me you will make a donation that will actually help make the world a better place rather than inviting us to patronize your business for an insignificant discount.”

…and they’re not unreasonable demands, really. (Well, there’s valid debate over whether demanding a struggling small business owner [who is likely in great debt and probably not even paying himself a wage -- if the average situation of small business owners is applicable in this guy's case] make a large personal donation is unreasonable or not. Although, I can see how that 10% discount the guy’s offering might be seen as patronizing and a cynical ploy to simply help his business.)

But it’s not just the demands themselves as much as it’s the inflammatory approach and words JT uses. The demeanor, the tone, the insults, the mockery he uses, feels to me less like a noble battle, and more like curb-stomping the local bully after getting a lucky break and jumping him when his back was turned. And while in the battlefield of protecting students from bigoted school boards and principals and teachers, for the sake of establishing proper laws and rules and making sure they’re enforced, one does not concede the battle until the other side gives unconditional surrender. But in the battlefield of public opinion, media, the general public, that approach does the atheist “movement” far more harm than any possible good.

In the minds of the general public, they see a situation where a local businessman does something, and are shown by the outraged minority that the something was discriminatory and bigoted, we now have the upper hand. We now are seen by many people as having rights and that there is discrimination that goes on, and the general public (including liberal Christians), now have the seed planted in their head that discrimination’s not cool and we’ll call them on it. They themselves may not disagree with the bigotry, but at least they may be thinking about the repercussions of it and may even be questioning the bigotry itself as something they never really thought about before. It’s not a big win, but it’s progress.

Then, the guy apologizes, and the atheist community at-large generally, and publicly, accepts it. What happens? The general public and the liberal Christians have their preconceptions of the angry, religion-hating atheist challenged! We’re shown as reasonable, ethical, diplomatic, and perhaps even calmer and more sane than your average holier-than-thou religious leader and spokesperson who appears on FOX News. Now they’re more willing to listen to what we have to say, to consider our positions, to truly rethink their bigotry and not just the outward acts of discrimination. Now they’re willing to concede issues and work with us in other issues.

But then, what happens when prominent atheist spokespersons demand heads on spikes? (Metaphorically.) The walls redouble in size, the shields go to maximum, and the us-versus-them mentality is reinforced. The general public and the liberal Christian (which, really, by and large, are greatly overlapping Venn Diagram circles), believe their preconceptions are well-founded and continue to ignore our valid complaints and criticisms.

If we let this one bigoted business owner go, probably not having had a real change of heart but just a show of one, what do we really lose? If we accept his sincere-sounding apology and let him off with tail tucked between his legs and a stern “Okay, off with you — but we’ll be watching,” is that really so terrible if it means we gain great PR and the willing and open ear of millions of other people? So he’s not beaten into submission — but will anything we do really, possibly, change his “heart”? Do we seriously think that we can possibly convince this guy he was truly wrong by continuing to berate and insult and bash him and demand things of him? Will that make him, and many like him, watching this, see the light? Have a true conversion?

No, it will not. No amount of continued battle against him will truly change him or others, and will only harden them all to us. But diplomacy, some forgiveness, leniency, will not only be more productive to our cause in the long run and on a wider scale, but may actually do more good in setting this guy on a path to the real and sincere atonement that is currently being demanded at the point of a verbal spear.

*blog post image taken from this lifehacker post: “Venting Frustration Will Only Make Your Anger Worse.”

Deceptive Campus Leafleteers

Was feeling feisty today so stopped to reprimand some street preachers who were giving out information on Jesus under false pretenses. If your message is that good, you shouldn’t have to deceive to spread it. The first one took his tongue-lashing with dignity and silence. The second one to stop me only wishes he did. You asked for the story, here it is.

Guy A:  “Would you like a basketball schedule?”

When I turn this over, it looks like a religious document. Why did you offer me a basketball schedule and then give me a religious document?

“Because it’s important.”

If it’s so important, why didn’t you offer it to me directly? Why did you try and sneak your message in on the back of something else?

“Because then people wouldn’t take it.”

Yes exactly. And yet you have today decided that I don’t have the mental capacity to make my own decisions on what I do and don’t want. You’ve taken position of arrogance that you know so much better than I, what I need, that you’d rather trick me in to chancing upon your information than give me a chance to make my own decision. Can you see why I might find that disrespectful to me and my fellow students?

“Uh”

Further, if this message is so important, if it truly is backed up by evidence, if it bears fruit in the lives of those who embrace it, then it should be able to stand up on its own. The message of God shouldn’t need to trojan horse to be considered by his own creation.

“Silence”

You’re not here to help give me information about the basketball season, you’re taking advantage of my desire for that information to give me something else, something you want to give me, but haven’t given me an honest proposal which I can decide on. If you were a business that would be called bait-and-switch, and it would be illegal. But you’re not selling anything, so it’s not illegal, it’s just dishonest, and frankly hypocritical for a follower of a diety who commands truthfulness. I think these issues are important, and I like talking about them, but I’m not going to take your information because I don’t appreciate the way you’re approaching my campus.

“Ok”

Stay warm, and take care.

And I walked off.  Then, this other guy starts making eye contact with me at the other end of the block. I don’t cross the street on my own campus to avoid people, and they were over there anyway.

Guy B: “Hi there, would you like a basketball schedule?”

No, I wouldn’t, and as I explained to your friend, here’s why….lists off an abbreviated version of the above.

“Can I show you a scripture that explains why I’m doing this?”

Sure

“I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. – John 5:24 so it says here that God gave us the Bible so that we could have everlasting life.”

Ok, that’s very nice that he said that’s why he wrote the Bible, but if another book also says it was written so I could have everlasting life, how do I know which one is true? What evidence should I base that judgment  on? Isn’t it reasonable to expect evidence to be available in order to decide which book or claim to put faith in? You would probably say that God gave you the ability to reason, so would you agree with Thomas Jefferson who once said, “Question with boldness, “Question with boldness, even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the [the use of] of reason, than that of blind-folded fear” or faith?”

“Do you believe in God? How about Heaven or Hell?”

  No

“Can I ask how you came to not believe?”

Sure, I found a lot of things that made sense if God existed, it explained a lot of mysteries, but there were some things that didn’t quite fit with the real world too. So I started looking, not for things that I could fit in to the assumption of God’s existence, which there were plenty, but for evidence that implied God did actually exist, specifically and necessarily. I didn’t find any, so I decided that belief was unjustified.

“Can I share some more information with you?”

If it’s that evidence that God does exist that I mentioned earlier, I would be most excited to hear it, yes please!

Proceeds to try and claim the bible’s internal writing prove it’s divinity. 

Freshly armed with historical facts from Dave Muscato’s talk at SOMA, I proceed to rip each argument apart, and growing weary of countering each argument as it was brought up in response to the previous one’s failure, got him to admit that:

a) The fact that Darth Vader’s rise to power was prophesied by the Jedi does not mean the Star War’s canon is real

b) Harry Potter’s internal consistency and the accuracy of its manuscript to the author’s intent is not good evidence for its reality.

c) The age of the Iliad does not justify using it to create a belief system

d) His evidence was no better than theirs

Sooooo, let’s try and get back to the original question, do you have any evidence that I should accept the proposition of God, Heaven, and Hell?

Of course he wanted to try more and more approaches instead of admitting he didn’t have any evidence, so I took the opportunity to force him to admit the following, none of which he was happy about but was forced to concede because they were based on his own words and flowed naturally from his attempts to defend the Bible’s contents. 

a) God is really emotional sometimes, and his temper get’s away from him and needs to be talked down

b) We are more loving than God. The Bible says 1) God is love 2) love is not jealous 3)God is a jealous god. So we are expected to love our fellow human beings more deeply than God loves us, because he embodies only the agape form of love and does not hold the full range of positive feelings toward us that other forms of love require.

c) God’s patience with the men, women and children murdered and the virgins raped by the Israelites was slightly less than it currently is with us. A patience that apparently causes him to do absolutely nothing for more than 2000 years despite promising to be basically “right back” (Matthew 16:27-28)

d) Jesus was not that worried about keeping families together nor advocating peace. Having previously insisted that not a single thing in the bible was metaphor or figurative, he simply promised to look in to this passage in Mathew 10:

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father,  a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

e) He would never punish his child with fire, death, or permanent shunning, based on whether or not they choose to obey, even if he had provided a way to avoid it, he would not continue to stoke a fire in his house for the express purpose of irreversable punishment but God is just to do so.

f) God created hell, and continues to allow it’s existence for the express purpose of punishing people with it, even though he could create a less horrific option at any time, or simply let someone die and have the absence of heaven be the punishment.

g) God killed himself, to satisfy  a debt he owes to himself, because of a contract he made with himself, which being capable of all things he could change at any time since we already established he’s capable of being two contradictory things at the same time. Further unless God is subject to a universal morality outside himself, there is nothing compelling him to use blood in order to alleviate sin,  a crime, punishment, and recompense all defined by himself.

He tried to claim that because God set up this contract before mankind existed it wasn’t immoral. I pointed out that

1) he could have easily chose a less gruesome, more loving option, one that didn’t so coincidently line up with desert tribes animal sacrifice customs, and

2) making a decision before a circumstance presents itself does not alleviate one of moral responsibility, as he readily agreed that making a decision to punch all people wearing red shirts in the face before having noticed he was wearing a red shirt would not absolve me of punching him in the face now that he had violated my rule.

h) Jesus did not actually make the greatest sacrifice ever made, since he knew he was going to be resurrected. Even though he would only be resurrected if he was sinless, he was both incapable of sin and fully aware that he would not sin so his sacrifice was less than that of any human who’s ever given up their life for another with no promise of immediate resurrection. (he really didn’t like that one, but wasn’t willing to admit that Jesus could have sinned or been ignorant in order to get out of it)

i) That even though his opinion doesn’t matter, and it’s not his judgment  it’s God’s, he does have to agree that it’s justice for a human to suffer in hell for all eternity if they have sex out of wedlock, even if the rest of their life is completely virtuous. He has to hold that belief or contradict God.  (It would actually be more virtous if he was simply afraid of God’s wrath, avoiding a bully’s beatings, but he’d rather be a pious accomplice in this entirely unequitable sentence.)

j) He has no actual justification for preferring his translation of the Bible over all the others, besides that it better aligns with the teachings his church believes.

k) If his friend owed him a debt and he intended to forgive that debt out of love he would simply forgive it if it was in his power, without setting up a perpetual punishment for failure to comply. But God isn’t getting rid of the debt, namely the death that is the wages of sin and the damnation that follows, he’s demanding obedience in exchange for the debt, if you fail, you get put on a payment plan that never ends.

After each of these, I offered to return to my original question of what evidence existed that suggested God is real. Anything that we should look to that is not used by any number of other supernatural claims, that actually implies why his belief is true.

Finally he had had enough and I needed to get to class, so he offered to give me information to get in contact with his Pastor to hear more.

I kindly, but honestly explained that thus far he’d failed to offer even a single bit of evidence of what I originally requested, so considering that he represented his church and seemed well versed in it’s teachings, it didn’t suggest that my time would be well spent rehashing this conversation with his pastor. But I gave him a SOMA card and earnestly encouraged him to contact me if they did in fact have any evidence, as I would eagerly accept legitimate evidence for God and Jesus and humbly repent.

He didn’t want to do that, he wanted me to call  his pastor because he was a busy guy and it would be better if I called him.

I asked him, do you have any evidence on which to assume that I am in fact less busy than your pastor? He didn’t but wanted to insist that it was me who was ‘checking out’ so I took the opportunity to make him admit one more thing:

l) the fact that his pastor wouldn’t call me but would take my call meant that the decision was not in fact mine, but ours, meaning that if his pastor did have convincing evidence to share he was making the decision not to share it with me, and let me burn in hell, since I was most willing to listen.

With that he reluctantly took my card, and I encouraged him to call or email me should he come across that evidence we’d been searching for today.

Look I’ll give this guy credit, the conversation was incredibly civil and well-intentioned. He knew his pitch well, and knew scriptures by chapter and verse. He stood out in the cold and talked with me for some time, and I thanked him for his sincerity and care but also pointed out that despite all that love and concern he was showing by being out here, he was somehow able to simultaneously believe that I deserved to burn in hell forever if I didn’t sign the license agreement on the Yahweh/Jesus v2.0 software installation, and I found that a disturbing thing for him to think about another human being. Realizing he was simply outmatched today (it didn’t take much, I’m no theologian, these are glaring issues for someone with a critical eye), he agreed that it was simply his belief, he believed it on faith, and didn’t have an external reason for having faith in that instead of something else or nothing at all, he simply thought faith was a good thing to have, and this was the thing to have faith in.

We said cordial goodbyes and shook hands.

The lesson here is that you shouldn’t debate consumer feedback on your marketing tactics. 

*Update*

Here is the website of the church these gentlemen belong to.

http://heritagebaptistchurch.cc

They are building their own little empire right here in Kansas, with mass printing, for sale of course, based on the promise the secret to getting in to heaven. They are contructing a new 700 seat church building and have their own education system from elementry through university where “Degrees offered include pastoral theology, elementary and secondary education, missions, and church ministry.”

It looks like it was no fluke that the nice gentlemen I spoke with knew his stuff, Barnabas Smith is the Assistant to the Pastor at  Heritage Baptist Church.

http://heritagebaptistchurch.cc/barnabas-smith-assistant

Freethinking, and atheism itself, is as old as ancient Greece and Rome with Epicurus, Seneca, Emperor Marcus Aurelius. . . . But there are few comprehensive essays critiquing the idea of a creator omni-god, Yahweh and Jesus in particular, that’s as thorough and reasoned as Bertrand Russell’s 1927 essay, “Why I Am Not a Christian.”

What he wrote in that famous essay is nothing new, not today and not even in 1927 — but he examines the basic and common claims for God, the “first cause” claim, the moral argument, the justice argument, from design, etc., and dismantles each one. Then, goes on to touch on how the teachings of Jesus are not nearly as wise and good as people like to think.

While many writers since Russell have written exhaustively on these subjects (and more, such as the ontological argument for God and the Kalam first cause variant), Russell’s essay serves as a hallmark on the topic.

I imagine a theist reading this and quipping, “You’re treating Russell’s essay as dogmatically as you accuse believers and our Bible.” Big difference between what Russell wrote and the Bible: these standard arguments in favor of atheism, unlike revealed religious scripture, don’t have to be told to you or taught — anyone capable of reason and logic can come up with the exact same thoughts as Russell, independently and in solitude. In fact, a great many atheist, including myself, have done exactly that. Before I even heard the names Dawkins or Hitchens or Bertrand Russell, as a believer questioning all I’d been taught to believe, I’d come to all the same conclusions as Russell (and Epicurus and Seneca and Hitchens), and eventually discovering, “Hey! What I thought were great insights, are old hat! Millions of non-believers have arrived at the same conclusions I have — except some of them have written them into exquisite books.”

Everyone is born an atheist, with lack of belief in any gods. The luck of what culture you’re born in and what parents you’re born to, determine what revealed, unquestionable dogma you’re indoctrinated with. You’d never know anything about hell, Jesus, Yahweh (Kali, Allah, Buddha, Confucius, Krishna, Zeus, Pele, etc.) unless someone told about it and taught you to believe it as truth. But you can be born into any religion, any culture, with any background, and if you give it honest thought, you can come to the same realizations on your own as these great thinkers.

It’s official, I am now a regular contributor to the new, up-and-coming blog site for atheism advocacy: Atheism Resource.

Their… er, I guess our tagline, is: “Big questions deserve big answers.” In that spirit, my first offering over there is a two-part essay on atheism and its role (or lack of) in determining ethics and meaning to life. Big enough for ya?

• What Does Atheism Have to Offer? Part 1
• What Does Atheism Have to Offer? Part 2

I end the essay with what I think is one of the best observations about appreciating life from the humanist perspective, by Paul Kurtz.

Well, go check the site out, it has some great contributors (me notwithstanding), including the incredible and impressively intelligent and well-read (if somewhat crass and crude) JT Eberhard. He’s embarrassingly young for being so enviably sharp and effective, and even lives in the same town as I do. While I will always be some curmudgeony blogger, I fully expect JT to become one of America’s foremost advocates for rational atheism. People will one day in the not-too-distant future be including Eberhard in the same breath as Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris.

Anyway, I hope I can add something of value, or at least interesting, to the discourse. T’would be cool for Atheism Resource to at least place around the likes of The Friendly Atheist and Debunking Christianity. (…whom we need to get plugged by on their sites, hint-hint, Adam. *grin*)

Hmm, maybe we can be looked at as the BoingBoing of atheism?

(This is the 10th edition of my Alpha Course reaction. For the first and all past posts, see the Alpha Page.)

Hopefully this will be a short post as well; I don’t seem to have that many notes for this session. I think Nicky is kind of winding down a bit as he’s coming to the end of the course.

One side remark: In small group, it’s been brought up a few times that people wished there was an additional, more advanced course than Alpha. There is. It’s called seminary school. It’s basically this, except in Greek.

Well,let’s get right to it….

Does God Heal Today?

Right at the beginning of the video, Nicky starts talking about what’s called, “words of knowledge.” This is basically any kind of information a person believes they receive from God/Holy Spirit about another person, their ailments, their concerns, etc. In Nicky’s example of experiencing an American faith healer, John Wimber (more on him in a second), the preacher handed out words of knowledge like, a woman here has a bad back, a man here has a back that’s been hurting him, etc. No way! A huge room full of people, and there are some with bad backs? You need the Holy Spirit to tell you this? The preacher then mentioned “a woman who’s barren.” According to the CDC, 10% of women can’t conceive. Tell a congregation of people that “there’s a woman whose barren,” and if there’s more than 10 or 20 people, you’re going to get a hit.

Speaking of “hits,” these words of knowledge are really nothing more than “cold reading.” It’s basically where psychics and faith healers, throw out vague, ambiguous, somewhat common ailments, names, information, that will likely hit on someone in the audience, fishing for a response.

That’s an ethical illusionist describing cold reading. This is a known, unethical, immoral, con-artist “psychic” using cold reading:

This a-hole preys on grief, using psychological tricks to feed off of peoples’ desires to find comfort with their loss, and makes a lot of money doing it.

Now, faith healers? Well, there some like Peter Popoff and Benny Hinn who do the same thing. And a lot of smaller, low-profile faith healers do the same thing. But funny thing about cognitive biases, is some faith healers (and psychics), some, do believe their own abilities. That John Edward clip shows a con-artist fully aware of their scam. But you get someone who truly and sincerely believes in the gift of healing and “words of knowledge,” and when they’re in front of people and they get an impression of “someone here is having back pain,” even though that’s as vague as possible and the most common ailment of people over 25, they could actually believe this is a communication from the supernatural and not just their own subconscious feeding them a tip.

And, as you can see in that clip above, people want to believe, even when it’s obviously groundless. And the belief, and positive reinforcement of the subjects, just encourages the sincere “healer” in a kind of feedback loop, that they have a spiritual gift.

I can’t link to it, because it’s filled with crude language, but Penn & Teller’s B.S. had an episode last year on astrology. (You can Google/Youtube for it.) The astrologer was doing a reading for a lady, and the lady herself brought up, without any prompting, her son’s (?) illness. The astrologer never said anything about it. But in the after-interview, when asked if she thought the astrologer was successful in reader her, she claimed that the guy had somehow known about her son and his illness! So, why, yes, the astrologer was amazingly accurate!

People want to believe what they want to believe, and their mind, that gray cottage cheese in the skull, will use all kinds of tricks to help the person maintain belief in the face of overwhelming cognitive dissonance!

Back to Nicky. The faith healer he mentioned he saw, was John Wimber. This is something I found on him:

-  Wimber and his team of traveling faith-healers once conducted a “healing meeting” in Leeds, England, which happened to be attended by five doctors who were born-again Christians. To summarize the doctors’ general observations, one of them stated that there was not any evidence whatsoever of any true physical healing that occurred at that evening’s “very expert performance” (which included “many minutes of assorted shakings, tremblings, smilings, fallings, swayings and utterings” as so-called evidence of the working of the Holy Spirit’s healing power), but instead all the evidence pointed to “all the textbook characteristics of the induction of hypnosis.” In their joint statement, the five Christian doctors said:

.

“Hypnotic trance with suggestion is a powerful psychological tool. It has many uses. Psychosomatic disorders and physical symptoms related to neurosis [sin] are very likely in the short-term to respond to this treatment. Relief of pain as in dental extraction or childbirth is relatively commonplace with hypnosis. In Wimber’s team meeting we saw no change that suggested any healing of organic, physical disease. Given the concern of many attendees to be of use to their neighbors, some very helpful suggestions were undoubtedly made during the numerous trance states. (Emphasis added.) [...]

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Professor Verna Wright, M.D., Rheumatology, concluded that the great dangers of Wimber’s “miraculous healing teaching” are: (1) “it discredits the person of Christ because of the very obvious failures, when we claim to serve a Savior Who never fails”; (2) “it undermines the Word, because it elevates a new form of ‘revelation’ — so-called words of knowledge or prophecy”; (3) “it deceives Christians and breeds a race of gullible believers, taken in by virtually anything”; (4) “it increases the agony of suffering”; (5) “it removes Christian comfort”; and (6) “it diminishes Christian testimony.” (Cited in Masters, p. 227)

Hmm.

According to Nicky, why is faith healing and other supernatural events able to go on today, despite the previous coming of Jesus? Because we are living in the end times, between the 1st and 2nd comings, in which the wall between the world and heaven is porous. Wow. That’s some mental gymnastics. He even had a chart! So it must be true.

Problem is, it’s kind of stretch to say that the end times are neigh, since the same was said 2,000 years ago, and yet — here we still are:

“Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” — Matthew 16:28

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“But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.” — Luke 9:27

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“Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.” — Matthew 23:36

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“Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” — Matthew 24:34

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“Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.” — Mark 9:1

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“Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.” — Mark 13:30

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“Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.” — Luke 21:32

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“Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” — John 21:22

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“But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none.” — 1 Corinthians 7:29

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“Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” — 1 Thessalonians 4:17

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“I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:23

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“Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son….” — Hebrews 1:2

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“But now once in th end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” — Hebrews 9:26

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“Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.” — 1 Peter 1:20

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“But the end of all things is at hand.” — 1 Peter 4:7

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“Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.” — 1 John 2:18

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“The Lord is at hand.” — Philippians 4:5

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“For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.” — Hebrews 10:37

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“The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass. — Revelation 1:1

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“The time is at hand.” — Revelation 1:3

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“Behold, I come quickly.” — Revelation 3:11, 22:7, 22:12

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“Surely I come quickly.” — Revelation 22:20

No wonder Nicky has a problem with words he thinks mean one thing, and everyone else thinks mean another — the Bible has the same problem. “At hand,” “quickly,” “shortly,” these phrases kinda mean usually less than two millennia. Not to mention Jesus mentions that the coming of the reign of heaven on earth will happen before everyone hearing his words die! The actions and message of his teaching also implied a world-is-about-to-end form. He constantly taught people to forget the burying of their dead, it’s unnecessary; to sever ties with their families, the coming of heaven is neigh; give up your worldly possessions, you’re about to not need them.

And yet… here we are. So, of course, apologists need to find some way to rationalize God/God’s son preaching like the world is about to end, when it clearly hasn’t, and thus kludge together this idea that oh! He must have meant some kind of overlapping period of time where the kingdom of heaven is upon us now, and… it’s not! Despite the fact that there’s no clear, direct indication in scripture of any such thing. After all, it can’t be that Jesus (or rather, the people who wrote the gospels literally decades after Jesus died), was simply wrong.

Which brings us back to the question: This is supposedly the most important message God has for all humans, of all times. And the best he can do is inspire a book that barely makes sense and requires people to have to retrofit rationalizations on top of stuff that appears to contradict reality? Seriously? Either Yahweh is (a). an idiot, (b). cruel and completely without any compassion for the conflict, confusion, uncertainty that his “divine word” has/will inspire, or (c). doesn’t exist.

Nicky tells a story of how he messed up the cartridge in his knee, it was all swollen, and it was giving him terrible pain. He refused to acknowledge a “word of knowledge” about “someone with knee pain,” (why, that’s as rare as back pain!) but finally gave in and told people he had it. So they prayed over him. Guess what happened: a condition which is completely known to self-heal, did! Miracle.

Here’s the funny thing: (and I don’t mean “funny: ha-ha,” I mean “funny: stop punching me in the eye!”) Why is it all faith healings are conditions that are unseen, unobservable, can be cured by medical treatment, have been known to go into remission, and/or can be healed by the body itself? Isn’t that kind of odd? Cancers, diseases, arthritis, aches and pains, broken things, mental states…. You know what never gets healed? Amputated limbs. Third-degree burns over the body. Ebola. Death when a person’s been dead longer than the possibility of medical science reviving them (e.g.: on the slab for days or even post-autopsy). Surely is the power of God can do these things 2,000 years ago during a time of incredible superstitious belief, and can cure tumors and bad backs, it can cure amputated limbs and people dead long enough for rigur mortis, no? Or, were these verses lies?

“I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” — Mat 17:20

“And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.” — John 14:13

Of all the Bible, few passages are as unambiguous as those: You pray for something, no matter how little faith you have, in Jesus’ name, and it will be done! Are you saying there’s not a single Christian in the world with more than a little faith who has sincerely prayed for a loved-one to have a leg be restored, or 3rd-degree burns healed?

Why won’t God heal amputees?

Small Group

Love my group! I don’t recall the direct path of conversation, but they’re pretty unanimous that it’s immoral and terrible to fall back on the “blame the victim” rationalization for why a prayed-for healing didn’t “take.” That, “My prayer is fine; you just didn’t have enough faith!” vileness. (Besides, as we see above, you only need faith the size of a mustard seed for anything to be possible.)

Most people in the group say they think praying for people isn’t so much about healing people, as a means of helping victims of illness/injury and the people around them deal with the stress of the situation. That’s certainly a noble, generous, beautiful sentiment, and I can’t fault anyone for that! Neither can irascible ”militant atheist,” Christopher Hitchens:

Hitchens also faces three groups of people seizing on the moment: haters who want him to suffer; believers who want him to convert to their faiths; and others who pray for God’s intervention on his behalf.

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Hitchens says the first group of haters should “go to Hell.” As for the second group who want him to convert, he replies: “Thanks, but no thanks.” As for the third group praying on his behalf, he says: “It’s fine by me, I think of it as a nice gesture. And it may well make them feel better, which is a good thing in itself.”

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“I’m perfectly sure that there is nothing to be gained from it in point of my health,” he tells the Associated Press, “but perhaps I shouldn’t even say that. If it would do something for my morale possibly it would do something for my health. We all know that morale is an element in recovery. But incantations, I don’t think, have any effect on the material world.”

(This is the 9th edition of my Alpha Course reaction. For the first and all past posts, see

After last week’s monster of a post, you’ll be glad to hear that this week’s will be shorter than usual. But first, a couple of semi-related things I’d meant to refer to in earlier posts but missed.

In the last post, I briefly discussed (due to the subject of “speaking in tongues,” or glossolalia), the concept of left and right brain hemispheres, and how one controls language and the other is the emotional center. Sometimes the emotion, to convey it to others or even to express it for one’s self, the language centers of one half of the brain need to be bypassed in order to “speak” directly to the emotional regions of the right-brain.

Well, here are a couple of absolutely fascinating videos which address this dual-brain dichotomy.

I Can Smell Your Spicy Brains!

The first is an excerpt from a show about the brain, and features Alan Alda interviewing a doctor and a patient who has had the connection allowing the two brains to communcate, severed. The results are fantastic:

There used to be a model of “understanding” the human, the personality, called dualism, that was the accepted and simply assumed model since Plato at least. Philosopher René Descartes did a lot of work on the subject, so we’ll often hear it refered to as “Cartesian dualism.” It’s basically this: The brain and the mind are two separate and distinct entities. The mind is a result of the spirit, or animae, and operates with the influence of, but apart from the physical brain. Of course, this belief, utterly philosophical (and religious) and not based on any hard evidence, makes sense to those who believe in the soul, spirits, ghosts, etc.

The problem is, we know without a doubt that everything about the person, behavior, personality, wants and desires, fears and memory, are all derived from the physicality of the brain. We know this because the brain can be manipulated, whether from internal damage (disease, stroke, etc.), by injury, and by experimentation (surgery, drugs, focused magnetic resonance), and any changes can create marked and stark changes in the “person.”

Case after case of people suffering brain trauma show people going from very kind and nice to mean and cruel, and the reverse. People with Alzheimer’s, in which the brain is literally being disintegrated, suffer extensive and constant personality changes. Neurologists have done studies where parts of the brain will be temporarily “turned off,” resulting in subjects who no longer recognize they are within their own body! They perceive their own body as someone else following behind them! People whose brains are changed, become completely different people. Even our senses can be tricked to fool our brain into short-circuiting the body awareness. People who’ve had changes to the only organ we have to perceive our world and tell us what is “real,” experience different and altered realities.

So naturally, this raises the question: If all of our personality, everything we are, exists in the physical brain — what happens to “us” when we die?

Something to think about, eh?

Is God Good? Or Is Goodness Godly?

The next miscellaneous topic involves the question of morality and God. Is what is “good” and “evil” that way because they are objectively so? Or because God arbitrarily decrees them to be?

See this page for an excellent explanation of this ancient question and how either way it’s answered, is not good news for believers in Yahweh: Euthyphro Dilemma.

If there is an objective right and wrong, good and evil, that exists outside of what God says — then God is unnecessary as we can determine that good and evil ourselves. In fact, we constantly do when we read something in the Bible, like Yahweh’s command to slaughter all people, children included, in a town, tear open mothers’ wombs with sword, but keep all the virgin girls for themselves — and we declare that as cruel and terrible. On the flip side:

“The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are then in this situation: is that difference due to God’s fiat or is it not? If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good.” – Bertrand Russell

Why And How Should I Tell Others

OK, on to Nicky for this week.

We walked in on the video already on progress and missed the few couple of minutes. I don’t think we missed much, though. Nicky was in the middle of a story about William Wilberforce’s efforts to abolish slavery in the U.K. I think it was his point that individuals can make big differences. Yeah, that’s sometimes true. Especially if the individual happens to be a major public figure or has access to Parliament.

But then he then went on to talk about Nelson Mandela, and his belief that it’s not kings who change the course of history, but the masses. Indeed, that’s true! For example, the entire rise of modern capitalism is attributable to the French Revolution, not any important individuals in it. The Scottish Rebellion, not particular individuals, changed the course of feudalism. As Bertolt Brecht wrote:

“Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?”
– from Bertolt Brecht’s “Questions from a Worker Who Reads”

It is indeed the masses who build, who create, who change, and develop our world.

But the point Nicky is leading to, is it’s the masses who were tasked to spread the word of God. Evidently, this understandable and perceptive belief that masses affect change is the key to rationalizing why God would put the responsibility of telling the world of his plan to damn everyone to eternal torment, because he so loves the world, unless you believe in the resurrection of himself/his son, onto the shoulders of humans traveling on foot and camel and horse. The most important information of all the world, and all eternity, in fact, affecting the entire world and vital to each individual at the cost of their eternal soul, and it’s revealed to/by one man in the desert, preaching to other people, who are then tasked to spread it on their own.

A concept that utterly absurd and ridiculous must be rationalized. So naturally, the apologist has to grasp for a reason, and Nicky decides masses of people overthrowing apartheid, or abolishing slavery, is the same as passing on the news that everyone in the world in all corners and the farthest reaches, are damned by a loving God unless you follow some rules he gave to a handful of men in a superstitious time. I dunno. Maybe it’s just me, but I think an all-wise, all-knowing all-creator could think of a better method than a giant game of “Telephone” to tell people “Do this or burn for eternity.”

Nicky states that “Christianity is not a blind leap of faith — it’s a reasoned step of faith.” Once again, we see Nicky has a very weird concept of what words mean. Here’s a book filled with events that can be proven didn’t happen, and some that at best can’t be corroborated by any evidence outside of the book, and events that violate everything we know about how the world and reality works, written in a time and place overwhelmingly superstitious and myth-filled — and we’re told we must believe this despite the fact it’s illogical, unethical, and unreasonable, and similar in these ways to thousands of other mutually exclusive religions on the planet, all of which are predominantly believed in by people who were raised to believe it simply because of the luck of where and when they’re born…. And I’m to accept that doing so is a “reasoned” step of faith and not a leap?! Funny, I have a feeling that the Muslim Imam and the Hindu Maharaj and the Shinto Kannushi and the Buddhist Monk and the Scientologist Tom Cruise and the Hari Krishna cultist and any of the thousands of religious leaders in the world would say the exact. Same. Thing. And each has their own revealed religious books and scrolls and whatnot to present as “evidence” that they’re right.

At some point Nicky said, “It’s OK to say ‘I don’t know. . . I don’t know — I’ll go away and find out.”

Whoa. Pick my jaw up off the floor! That is the most (nearly the only) reasonable, logical, rational thing Nicky has said the entire video series! Indeed, if you don’t know an answer to a question, the only intellectually honest response is, “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

But unfortunately, Nicky is pretty much only saying that in order to appear that faith is a reasoned step. Because I have yet to see an apologist in any debate ever say, “I don’t know.” They all seem to claim to know the answer to any question, and will try to claim the answer is in the Bible. Just like the pastor last post did, she never said “I don’t know.” She tried various empty apologetic answers and ended up with some non sequitur of a story. Religious leaders actually hate to say “I don’t know.”

On the other hand, the very basis of scientific inquiry, of skepticism, is “I don’t know — let’s find out!” Ask a scientist how life began on earth, they will all say, “I don’t know. We have some hypotheses, but we don’t know. We may never know.” Ask any religious apologist, and they’ll tell you exactly how life began, and have the scripture to prove it. Why did the universe begin? Pre-Big Bang? The intellectually honest scientist says “I don’t know. We have some theories, but we may never know for sure.” The apologist, will not only tell you with certainty, but will tell you the mind of God and the purpose for it! Ask a scientist what the meaning of life is, and nearly all will say something like, “Don’t know. There probably isn’t any meaning beyond the meaning we make for ourselves.” The apologist knows exactly why we’re here, will tell you why you’re here, and what God wants and desires. And yet, scientists and skeptics get pegged as the arrogant ones.

Not just apologists, but most believers will do the same things. Especially the more fundamental, evangelical. But in this group of liberal Methodists in small group, saying “I don’t know” is perfectly alright! And I love them for that. Even the one guy in group who is the most boisterous and full of stories, he has no problem saying “I don’t know.” And because of that, I have a great deal of respect for these people.

I’m afraid, though, that it might be amplified — this ability to admit “I don’t know” — given the environment of inquiry we’re in, with this Alpha Course. But, probably not. I think each of these people are sincere and forthright enough to admit they don’t know. Well, except the one lady who see humans as clay to be molded and broken by dictator-god’s whim. Her answer is simply God knows and it’s not even our place to question. Sheesh, these darn silly inquisitive brains we have! How dare we have the audacity to use them to question and explore and discover and wonder “what” and “why”!

Nicky made some claim that evangelist Billy Graham has spoken to half the world’s population. What?! There’s nearly 7 billion people on the planet. I can’t believe that even since 1950 his total audience has been 3 billion people, much less 3 billion currently living people. Heck, there’s only 2.1 billion Christians in the world! And most of those are people in third-world countries who don’t exactly get out to the stadiums and watch TV all that much.

But here’s the coup de grâce of the night, in marked, ironic contrast to his claim that Christianity is a reasoned step, he said: “You can argue about contradictions and evidence and suffering — but you can’t argue with your story!” Translation: screw evidence and logic and reason, personal anecdotes trumps all!

Really, Nicky. Really? Let’s examine this claim, that the ultimate proof of religion is the personal story. Remember what I just said about 2.1 Christians? That means there’s at least 4.6 billion people who aren’t, and each of them has their own personal story for why they’re Hindu or Ba’hai or Janist or Muslim or Buddhist or Zoroastrian or Wiccan or etc etc.

Think about it this way: Someone comes up to you, they same perfectly nice and reasonable. They tell you this story, a very personal story about how their child was ill, seriously ill. And doctors couldn’t do anything. But the family prayed and prayed, and miraculously the child got better and is now healthy! That’d be a pretty impressive personal story, no? Now what if that person then tells you they’re a Hindu and the god they prayed to was Ganesha? Would you find their story particularly convincing then? No? But they believe it. They’re very sincere, very honest… very certain. Why is this story not enough evidence for you to believe in the power of Ganesha? There are 4 or 5 billion people with similar personal, intimate, powerful, sincere stories of how Allah, Vishnu, Ganesha, spirits, ancestors, the Goddess, crystals, etc. etc. ad nauseum changed and touched their lives. Why are their stories not compelling to you?

Why would you expect your story of how Yahweh or Jesus affected your life be any more compelling than any of the other billions’ of sincere, good, loving peoples’ stories?

If someone’s personal story, of a different faith or god or religion, is not enough to convince you, then you obviously accept that for a person to believe something is true, evidence needs to be objective and not personal. Otherwise, why don’t you believe every magic trick ever done by an illusionist is real magic? You saw it with your own eyes! Why don’t you believe every optical illusion you see as a real violation of the laws of physics? Your own senses told you it’s real. Aren’t your own senses, your own experiences enough to be convincing evidence?

If it’s not adequate evidence to convince someone a playing card was torn and magically repaired itself, how can it possibly be good enough evidence than a man/god came to earth, raised the dead, cast out demons, was himself raised from the dead, and ascended to heaven — all as some plan to save humanity from the fiery wrath of a disembodied mind who loves you enough to extort you into loving him? As Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” And someone’s personal experience is actually the least reliable evidence there is. Otherwise, magicians would be out of a job, insane asylums would be empty, cops would never need to ask more than one person “What’d you see happen?”, and every religion would be accepted as real, no matter how mutually exclusive they are.

Small Group

Well, I guess that’s pretty much it. As for my small group notes, all I have is something about how we’re supposed to assume that when God said to Adam and Eve, if you eat the fruit, “surely you will die,” he meant “one day,” and not immediately. When there’s nothing anywhere else in the Bible, at all, that Adam and Eve were supposed to be immortal when they were created.

And I also have a note about how someone in group expressed how one of the reasons, ways, that they were led to Jesus, was because someone actually stopped to listen to their concerns. No doubt, that act is a very powerful act — listening with sincere interest in someone’s concerns! I wonder, what if that person who had stopped and listened hadn’t been a Christian evangelist, but had been a Moonie? Or a Hari Krishna? Or a Buddhist? Or…an atheist? Would that have been the trigger to get him to become of one those (non)believers?

Oh boy. I’m going to try to keep in reigned in, but this is going to be a doozy edition (as if the previous novels haven’t been). Wife and I attended the weekend Alpha retreat which included three Nicky videos and discussion sessions after each one. Plus, there’s the whole weekend experience surrounding it to talk about.

Camp Galilee

As I’ve mentioned in past posts, I went to Camp Galilee Methodist Church Camp when I was a teen. It was a very formative, wonderful experience, and the crest of my religious belief. Saturday, we had two Nicky and talk sessions (one of which rather emotional), and nice bonfire. So Sunday morning, after a terrible sleep on a horrible mattress in a rather nice cabin, I was exhausted. But after a tasty breakfast, everyone went down by the lake for a devotional and I stayed up at camp to read a bit from Paul Kurtz’s Affirmations: Joyful And Creative Exuberance; a humanist “devotional.” Then I had a moment to write this:

It’s 8:30 on a beautiful morning here at Camp Galilee. It’s overcast, cool, slight breeze, the tease of rain in the air. For me, that’s a perfect morning. I’m sitting on a park bench maybe 200 feet from the pavillian where when I was a camper here, 15 years ago, we had our nightly services and testimonials and music and song. I gave my testimony as a Christian there at age 17. It was sincere, and I felt I was filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, I know it to have been a very human, very wonderful, self-created emotionalism. It was an incredible feeling, one that I can just touch with the “tips of my fingers” when I performed in plays, sometimes when I watch an effective play or movie, hear a particular song. It’s an awesome feeling, this kind of pathos, no less wonderful because I had it in during a period of religious delusion. I actually treasure that time; I’ve come to terms with it. I’m glad it’s in my past, and I feel I now understand the emotion better, and I’m extremely glad I can have bits of it when I can enjoy touching art or feel awe and wonder at some amazing aspect of the universe. And having that past experience, I can relate better to other humans who continue to feel that emotion in connection to a religious belief. I can understand their not wanting to even entertain the idea of giving that up. The shame of it is, though, that one does not need to give that feeling up. And, like the “mysteries” of the universe, science, reality, understanding it does not eliminate the wonder and, dare I say, goodness of it.

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A formation of Canadian geese just flew over, honking the entire way. A few moments ago I heard the call of a buck. All around me is the sound of the wind through the trees, dead leaves shifting and tossing, and nuts falling from trees to crash to the ground or bonk on a roof and roll off. Earlier in my life I used to do this — sit and just listen to nature. It was the best part about camping as a Boy Scout, taking those moments. I’m thankful for this moment right now, this feeling of refueling.

Just a few more words about camp before I move to the meat of the weekend:

The camp is nice and well-kept. The food was really good. We, about 25 of us (?) were the only ones there. I didn’t get a chance to really explore some of the buildings I was most familiar with back as a camper. At the front of the mess hall was a giant, cartoon-looking cross with cartoon crown of thorns and three giant cartoon nails. Was pretty disgusting and disturbing, really, having this symbol of torturous death made cartoony and venerated for kids to see every day at camp.

But then, when I was 16 and 17, I would have loved it. In fact, during my early 20s I had a cross necklace made from three nails and copper wire. I thought it was great. Amazing what one accepts as normal when you’re brainwashed to accept death-worship and sado-masochistic “salvation” rituals as good and beautiful.

Our Gifts

After we arrived, we filled out a questionnaire ranking our “spiritual gifts.” It was actually both fun and amusing. A lot of questions like “I enjoy doing things with my hands,” and “I like to share my faith with other people.” Naturally, I scored that last question low. But questions like, “I enjoy sharing my knowledge of scripture with others” pretty high! Of course, the reason being different than what the survey authors intended.

I ended up with my top three “spiritual gifts” being: Knowledge, Teaching, and Working with hands (arts and crafts). Hmm, I have knowledge about Biblical contradictions and issues, like teaching about them, and painting D&D miniatures. Wonder how I can use these gifts for the church.

Who Is The Holy Spirit?

Well, let’s get started. I’m going to deal with all three of Nicky’s videos in a row, and then address the small groups. Stay tuned — that part gets heated(ish).

In the companion book, Nicky has a point that reads: “‘Holy Ghost,’ ‘He’ not ‘it,’ resisted.” He didn’t address this in the video; I wish he had. It’s already ridiculous to think of the over-God as “he” as that implies gender which implies sex organs — and you have to wonder a. What does the creator of all existence need with sex organs; and, b. Who would he use them with? An even less embodied entity, known as a “ghost” or “spirit,” having sex organs as well? Well, I guess it’s important if you’re going to impregnate a young woman. (Which also makes me wonder: The angel pretty much just told Mary what was going to happen, I don’t recall her being asked. Was her impregnation consensual?)

Nicky says the Spirit was involved in creation. How’s he know this? The Bible says so! Well, sorta. He quotes: “The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.” ~ Gen 1:2. (‘course, read the second creation story in Gen chapter 2, and you see God does all the work himself — and in a different order from chapter 1). We’re assuming “the Spirit of God” is a separate entity and not a poetic reference to God. In fact, the OT only mentions “Spirit of God” whereas only the NT has “the Holy Spirit.” The Hebrew in the OT translates what we call “spirit” as “breath” or “wind.” Interestingly, the Jews have always read this as the equivalent of the power of God, not as a separate entity. Even in the Attic Greek in the NT, the word for “spirit” translates to “breath” to match the intent of the OT writers. It wasn’t until the Vulgate Latin version of the Bible was translated, around the 5th century A.D., that “breath” became “spirit.” And it wasn’t also until that time that the concept of the trinity, of the “Holy Spirit” being a separate entity was even created.

Kind of odd that the “Holy Spirit” wasn’t thought of as an entity by God’s very “chosen people,” and it wasn’t until the early Christians were separating themselves from the other mystery cults of the region that the Holy Ghost was separated from the entity of God.

Nicky refers to Samson’s breaking his bonds thanks to the help of the Holy Spirit. I found that an interesting reference. Samson was basically an original “suicide bomber.” See this happy happy representation of the story: Samson’s Final Mass Murder.

Nicky mentions that the Spirit “sets us free from the negative,” and while it may be instantaneous for some people, for others it can be a life-long process. Well, that kinda covers all his bases, doesn’t it? Make you wonder just how powerful the Spirit is if it could take all life long to have an impact. Sounds suspiciously like it depends on how much work each individual puts into changing their own life.

The OT can be “summed up in one word: promise.” Funny, “blood-thirsty” is what first comes to mind.

“God says, ‘I will give you a new heart!’” Nicky says. Whoa, doesn’t that affect “free will” in some way? I mean, if God is intervening to make new hearts, and change you life, and have the Spirit make you a new person, isn’t that de facto an a violation of non-intervention on free will? But that’s not surprising; the Bible is also filled with instances in which God violates his most, er, second-most precious gift of “free will” by making people do thing, softening and hardening hearts. In fact, the entire murderous slaughter of countless Egyptian males, boys, infants, and probably unborn, came about because God specifically intervened and intentionally “hardened” the Pharaoh’s heart (“And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.” Exodus 4:21).

Guess the “new heart” God gives you is a lemon?

Nicky tells a story of an unruly boy with a bad attitude, who “accepted Jesus” and, according to his grandmother (?) became a whole new person. Again: isn’t that altering free will? But even more important: Wouldn’t it be, like a whole lot more loving and fatherly and just to, I dunno, do that whole “new heart” thing to people who could really use it….before they act their free will by horribly harming others? I mean, if God’s going around blowing the Holy Spirit around and changing people’s behaviors and attitudes, wouldn’t it be cool if he did that to someone before they raped someone? Or murdered someone? Or embezzled the company pension fund? Or opened fire in a school? You, know, give new hearts when it really matters and not just to kids who very likely just went through a stage anyway? Just an idea.

Then later that night we learned… What Does The Holy Spirit Do?

(You mean, changing hearts isn’t all?)

Nicky begin this video with a metaphor for how we’re (re)born into the Spirit: “When a man and a woman come together in an act of love, a physical baby is born….” And… what if a man and a woman come together in an act of rape? Or molestation? Or a drunken hook-up after the bars close? Ya gotta think your metaphors through a little better, Nicky. You’re basically telling us we get effed by the Holy Spirit.

As children of God, Jesus, on the cross, took our sins — past, present, and future. Naturally, we’re back to asking the perennial question: How?! By what mechanism does that work? Some would dismiss the question as unimportant, advise to just accept it. But it really is an important question; it speaks to the nature of this god and his power. On the one hand, he could have just snapped his Spirit fingers and BAM! we’re all forgiven. But instead, he enacts a bloody sado-masochistic torture and death which results in all his followers venerating the symbol of bloody and painful execution. If you don’t think this doesn’t do something to inform the general culture of Christianity, you’re not looking from the outside enough. The arrogant and righteous violence mixed with martyrdom-minded persecution-complex, comes from the worship and idolization of bloody death. Remember, at the core, it’s not about “sacrifice” because (a) nothing but 36 to 48 hours was actually sacrificed; and (b) the torture/murder is completely superfluous when Yahweh has the power and ability to forgive at-will.

Plus, let’s look a little deeper at this whole forgiveness thing, Dr. Freud. For what is this magnanimous uberdeity forgiving us, anyway? Sin, right? What is sin? It’s not inherently unethical things, as the Bible is soaked with unethical behavior that God’s cool with. Sin is offending God, not necessarily harming self or others. God is deigning to forgive us for offending him. You have to wonder, just how insecure and flawed an omni-everything god must be to feel it necessary to (a) feel offended by us; and (b) cast our souls into eternal torment because we offended him for 0 to ~80 years or so. You’d think a megagod capable of creating an infinite universe filled with galaxies and black holes and quasars and nebulae and photosynthesis and the wonders of human imagination, would kind of be bigger than the very very human weakness and failing as feeling offended by puny humans, and inordinate and unfair levels of vengeance for said offendedness.

Nicky says relationships grow by communication. Well, indeed they do! I agree, Nick ol’ boy. So, he says, the Spirit helps our relationship with God by helping us pray.

Uhm, do we really need to deconstruct this? OK, let’s go for it.

Having a one-way conversation at God, mediated by another entity, is being equated with having direct two-way, real-time communication with another person. Sure. Carry on….

He states that “the divisions within the church are such a tragedy,” by which he means the various Christian denominations. Well, whose fault is that?! There are supposedly around 3,800 different denominations. Even though most of those are tiny and insignificant, we all know that of many significant and serious denominational splits so drastic that they virtually form whole different religions: Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Jehovah’s Witness, Mormon, Assemblies of God, Seventh Day Adventist, Lutheran, Charismatic Pentecostal, Branch Davidian, and on and on. The differences spawn, at the core, from very divergent interpretation of a book that was compiled nearly 2,000 years ago. Doesn’t this huge list indicate that there must be something wrong with the message if it results in such conflicting and contradictory interpretations — to the point in which long and bloody wars have been fought among them?

Ah, the apologist will say, it’s not the message that’s the problem, but human apprehension of it. Yeah, you know, that still goes back to the responsibility of the crafter of the message. If I’m writing a message to someone, a message so important, so vital that their life literally depends on their understanding the message, and having excellent intelligence sources, I know that the recipient of the message will be a little confused, a little slow, have some issues with receiving the message properly, isn’t it incumbent upon me to make sure I make the message as clear and unambiguous as possible?

My puny human brain can come up with a handful of ways I would, given the power of omnipotence, impart the most important message in all existence to flawed humanity. And the least effective way I could come up with would be a book written during a primitive time by ancient people in an age steeped in superstition and utter misunderstanding of nature and reality. The claim that an omni-power/knowing being could come up with a way that looks suuussspiciously very human-created, can only mean (a) Yahweh is an idiot, (b) Yahweh is a mean, cruel, sadistic bastard, (c) Yahweh doesn’t exist and the Bible really is a creation of ancient people steeped in superstitious and barbarous beliefs. Occam’s Razor would lean toward which answer?

So here’s a funny bit: At the beginning of this video, Nicky states that all of us have the Holy Spirit within us from the time we’re born. It’s up to us to decide to accept it or not. Then, toward the end of the video, he states that “people without the Spirit in them do not belong to Christ.” Sorry, didn’t you say we all have the Spirit with us? Pedantic contradiction pointing when there’s much more serious issues to point out; sorry for the diversion.

Nicky then talks about how we must “grow the family,” we must share the message with others and bring more people to Jesus, and the Spirit makes it easier for us to do so.

Now, I know I’ve gone on about this many times in my blog, but I don’t recall if I’ve addressed this in the Alpha posts yet. This is the concept that served as my Final Straw into atheism after years of research and debating and trying to find answers to my questions and the issues I saw. No parables or metaphors, here’s the theological setup: God sets up a system of eternal reward which can be paradise or eternal damnation. He sets up the rules and conditions by which he’ll judge you upon death (or the End Times, depending on your denomination). This is a pretty big deal, yes? I mean, no denying, this is The Big Deal of all deals! So, what does God do to tell we subjects, we victims, of this setup? He avoids telling anyone about it until a few thousand years into humanity’s history, and then lets a handful of people in a desert land in on the secret. And then commands this small group to go by foot and tell other by mouth of this Ultimate of Big Deals.

Really? This is the best the all-knowing, infinitely wise god of gods could come up with telling humanity that they’re doomed to damnation unless they do the one thing that will save them from it? A process that looks suspiciously like the methods and activities of a cult.

OK, analogy: (I think I have said this in Alpha posts…) I’m a loving, caring, forgiving father with many children. I pull one aside and tell her, “Say, here’s a secret I’m telling you and only you: If any of you, my children and your children, fall asleep tonight laying down, I’ll come chop your arms off with a rusty saw. Now, go forth and tell your siblings.” And I do this knowing that it’s impossible for her to possibly tell all her siblings and their children — and that the default result will be rusty arm removal since sleeping lying down is just the normal way humans behave.

The rational, ethical Christian naturally understands that this is a problem. Which is why it often crops up in serious discussions (like the small group here), what does God do about people who lived before Jesus? Or in places where humans haven’t reached with the Gospel? And the rational, reasonable Christian will rationalize that a loving god would never be so evil as to damn people who didn’t hear about Jesus out of sheer luck of where and when they’re born! And good for them for rationalizing this.

But let’s step it back a step, shall we? If God is willing to reprieve and not damn countless billions to hell because evangelicals hadn’t told them they’re sinful and evil and need to accept a torture/murder as a process of forgiving them, then why not skip the whole mistranslated, misapplied, war and suffering-starting Good News altogether?! The existence of the Bible and it’s rules and bigotry and racism and misogyny and cruelty, has been responsible for unimaginable suffering throughout the world, and it still does. And yet, evidently, God could and does bypass the whole thing in order to not cast into hell people who haven’t encountered his blood-thirsty Bronze Age tome. Result: (a) Yahweh is an idiot, (b) Yahweh is a capricious, fickle, psychopathically cruel and arbitrary dictator, (c) Yahweh doesn’t exist. Occam’s Razor says…?

Finally, in this video, Nicky ends hammering on an idea that he kept beating throughout the video: God’s offering us a “free gift” of the Water of Life! We just need to accept it.

Funny how we have such different ideas of what “free gift” means. In my world, a free gift would be:

“Hey, Joe. I have this cool widget for you.”
“Ah, thanks! Do I owe you anything for it?”
“No, Joe, it’s free!”
“Why, thanks, pal.”
“Think nothing of it.”

In Nicky’s world, “free gift” comes out more like:

“Hey Joe, I’ve this widget for ya. It’s a free gift for you!”
“Oh cool. Thanks.”
“Wait a second there, Joe. Where ya going? The widget is going to cost you. You need to be my servant and do what I command and give me love and devotion.”
“Whoa whoa whoa, pal! That’s not ‘free,’ that’s a pretty penny! Never mind, I don’t want your gift.”
“Oh, Joe? You don’t want the gift? OK, Joe. If you won’t take the gift, I’ll stab you in the face with a bear.”
“Holy crap, pal! Your gift isn’t a gift at all! It’s extortion!”
“Love me.”

Love those gifts you’re forced to take under pain of eternal torture!

The small group discussion after this video got very interesting, and involved me having a small row with a pastor. But, that’ll come in the combined discussion section. For now, on to video three…

How Can I Be Filled With the Holy Spirit

So, if you accept the extortionary exchange, you too can be filled with the Holy Spirit. And some people react to the Spirit physically, like falling from the “gale” of God. Sort of like this?

Physical reactions to emotionally charged situations are a part of the human makeup. It’s why you can find in every human religion of every culture, people reacting physically to ceremony, ritual, any situation in which there is a communal, emotionally charged atmosphere, and an expectation of physical reaction!

Nicky tells a story of a service in which people weren’t told about possible physical reactions to receiving the Holy Spirit, and were shocked by the them. First of all, you have to live in a cave to not have in some way encountered the idea that falling, or weaving about, or vocal emissions, and the like, don’t happen in emotionally charged Christian events. It’s not necessary for the pastor in attendance to have to tell the audience about such things for some of them to have been pre-suggested of such reactions. Secondly, because we can see people from all over the world react to emotional ritual in similar fashion, there’s a semi-universal physical response that’s triggered in many people regardless of whether they’re in a Christian service, a Sufi, a Hindu, an aboriginal, a Zulu, tiny cult, etc. ad nauseum, ritual.

But Nicky spends most of his time talking about “the most obvious of the spiritual gifts” (because healing people from indisputable death and restoring amputations and moving mountains I guess just aren’t obvious enough now-a-days) of speaking in tongues.

Nicky is very careful to remind people that being given the gift of speaking in tongues does not make one a “first class Christian,” but that it’s simply a gift that some receive but certainly not all. That’s the last reasonable thing he says.

He claims that while speaking in tongues, “the speaker is in full control.” And yet, later, he claims that speaking in tongues is a method one has to leave control of their rational language when speaking to God, allowing the spirit to speak through them when human words just won’t do. Huh, that doesn’t sound like full control!

He says that the only way to start speaking in tongues is to just start speaking, and he gave an example of how once when he was in a very hightened emotional state, he did so and he started speaking in tongues to God. This goes back to the fact that every religion, every culture, has and venerates as holy various unusual behaviors people experience when in hightened emotional states in a religious context. Ancient Greece had the bacchates or maenads, followers of Dionysus (who, by the way, shares many specific similarities with Jesus) who would send themselves into frenetic emotional states during worship. Sufi dancers spin themselves into emotional fugues (“whirling dervishes”). Many native Americans fast and “sweat lodge” themselves into hallucinogenic states where they can receive guidance from the spirits. Hindu is filled with various emotional states one sends themselves into, Tantra being one of the disciplines of, in order to become more spiritually aware.

The list of ways in which various religious beliefs give context to the way we humans can play with our own minds to provide alternate states of “awareness” goes on and on. It’s not unique to Christianity, and speaking in tongues, it’s universal to being human and having gray cottage cheese meat organ serving as the material that controls our senses, our awareness, our perception of reality.

Recent studies have indicated that glossolalia is not a uniquely Christian practice. Glossolalia is practiced by a large number of native non-Christian living religions around the world. Glossolalia is found amoung the “Inuit (Eskimos), The Saami (Lapps), in Japanese seances in Hokkaido, in a small cult led by Genji Yanagide of Moji City, the shamans in Ethiopia in the zar cult and various spirits in Haitian Voodoo. L. Carlyle May shows that glossolalia in non-Christian religions is present in Malaysia, Indonesia, Siberia, Arctic regions, China, Japan, Korea, Arabia, and Burma, among other places. It is also present extensively in African tribal religions. http://www.goodnewsaboutgod.com/studies/speakingtongues.htm

Glossolalia. That’s the name given to the act of speaking in, essentially, gibberish. Dan Barker, a former evangelical preacher and now co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, was a guest at last year’s Skepticon in Springfield, MO. (He’ll be back for this year’s in November.) He told the audience that speaking in tongues used to be a pretty common thing of his when he was religious. But now he recognizes the emotional state and the psychological triggers of it, and if he wanted to, even now as an atheist, he could put himself into a state where he could glossolalia again.

Fortunately, not all glossolalia is delusional. it’s left-brain-bypassing emotional root is used by a couple of my favorite musicians: Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance (and increasing success as a film music composer) has used the glossolalia she’d developed since she was 12 in her etheral/ambient/world music singing.

And Jón Þór Birgisson from Icelandic band Sigur Rós also incorporates glossolalia to create their music’s otherworldly sound:

These incredible artists understand that the semantic meanings of intelligible words can get in the way of emotional impact. Just as Nicky said, sometimes there’s not the words to properly express a feeling. He’s right! And we have an entire half a brain that operates separate and even in opposition to language. There’s nothing spiritual, mystical about it. It’s an aspect of human psychobiology.

(Seriously, though, if I may say, Dead Can Dance is one of the best music groups evah!)

Oh goodness! This has been a chore of post! But we’re almost done:

Small Group

And here is where once again I learn my “classmates” are cool… and pastors/preachers/etc. are purveyors of blatant BS.

So, running the weekend’s three small group discussions together, it started out discussing “gifts.” The consensus of the group is that we’re all born with our “gifts” and that circumstances bring them out in us. So then I wonder, if anything you can do is a “gift,” how do you know it’s a gift and where it came from? By what scale or guide can you determine your courage, or rising to an occasion, or ability to sing, or whatever, is a spiritual gift as opposed to just something that’s a part of your DNA/experience/training? If it’s something so ephemeral and ambiguous, and these are qualities that people all over the world of all religions (and no religion) can have — what’s the point of calling it a spiritual gift?

Don’t remember what brought it up, but one person mentioned that judging other people is bad, because you will be judged by the same measure you judge others. And no one should judge, because we’re all human and we all have failings, etc. But isn’t that just the pernicious trap of religion? We all have failings, failings are sinful, you must pray and return to religion for forgiveness, and repeat the cycle forever.

Before Christian missionaries arrives to the Polynesian islands,  their belief system had no proscriptions regarding sex. There was no “sin” or divine offense in regards to (consensual) sexual behavior. Oh but food, they had tons of rules about food! When to eat what, who could eat what. If the wrong person ate the wrong thing at the wrong time, you offended the gods!

Then the Christians came and guess what they brought with their conversion? Food became no big deal, but sex! Now there’s where Christian excel at creating guilt and shame and attributing sinful behavior.

In both very different examples, you have a human biological drive (eating and sex) that become favorite tools of the religion to vilify, create issues, and then force you to return to the religion for a solution to the arbitrary constraints. Religion creates this viscous circle of co-dependence necessary for its very survival! Richard Dawkins had it right on when he coined the term “meme” as a mind virus, and religion was the most virulent of the mind viruses.

The second night we had a pastor sit in with the group. She made this absurd claim, as we discussed whether God sends good people to hell regardless of faith, that Gandhi was a Christian. I know I must have made a significant face of shock and annoyance at such an outright untruth. He was very much a devout Hindu. (And a probably pedophile, but that’s never been proven. He only wrote that he liked to sleep with naked young girls and not have sex with them to prove the strength of his faith; he never wrote about any failures he may have had in his own testing.)

Again, the general consensus among most of the class was that no, God would never send good people to hell for simply not believing! Of course, this does make me feel good about these people (have I mentioned I like Methodists?) They are moral, ethical, caring people with good hearts! Unfortunately, the god they say they follow is a cherry-picked one of their own creation, and not the Biblical Yahweh. (Actually, that’s very fortunate, not unfortunate, when you think about it.)

According to the Bible:

Matthew 18:8-9: If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.

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Matthew 25:41, 46: Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. … And these shall go away into everlasting punishment.

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Mark 9:43-48: … into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

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Luke 16:22-24: And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.

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John 5:28-29: The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.

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2 Thessalonians 1:8-9: In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction.

That’s a short list.

(Oh! I should warn you, that video has a couple of F-bombs, in case you have kids around or something. But please, do watch it its entirety! It’s not very long and it makes excellent points which must be thought about by the believer.)

So, if you’re going to believe in Yahweh, the god of the Bible, you have to believe that he send people to eternal damnation those who don’t follow his rules, those who offend him. (See earlier posts for the illogical, unreasonable, immoral situation of sending people for eternity of pain and suffering for offending his delicate sensibilities; and the extortion of forcing people to looove you, using your “free will” by the way, or else  it’s lakes of fire for you.) If you don’t believe in this god, you don’t believe in the god of Jesus and Paul and the disciples of the Bible, plain and simple.

If you don’t worship the god of the Bible, that has set up rules and demands that you worship him and not offend him, lest he torment you forever, that’s great! You are a moral, ethical, thinking person. But you have no right nor reason to call yourself “Christian.” Congratulations: you’re a deist, or a pantheist, or a transcendental theist, or maybe Buddhist, why not. But you’re not a “Christian.” Everything about being a Christian comes from what JC is supposed to have preached — and I guess, if you believe that he was the son of God, then you have to accept that what he supposed to have said is gospel truth, so to speak. And what he said is unambiguous: God judges and he sends those who don’t follow him into eternal torment.

Now, I know as a modern, moral, ethical, thinking person, this is anathema to you, this idea of a god so capricious, petty, vengeful, cruel, let’s face it, downright evil. And well you should have a problem with this concept! It’s ancient, superstitious thinking. But, that’s the Bible all over — ancient, Bronze Age, violent, superstitious thinking. And that is the root, foundation, “soul” of Christianity and you can’t cover up the truth of it with rationalizations and cherry-picking. The Christian believes the Bible is the word (or at least directly inspired word) of God himself, and unless you’re Mormon, there have been no further revelatory decrees and manuscripts from God since. What’s in the Bible, is what’s “true.” If you don’t like what the Bible says, good! You’re a good person. But you can’t just make up your own ideas of what God is and wants and does, and still call yourself a term (“Christian”) that applies only to people who do believe in the only source of “knowledge” that imparts what it means to be a Christian.

So, good news: Most of the people in small group (and that church and Methodism and modern, liberal Christianity) are moral and thinking enough to not believe what the Bible says. Bad news (for them): That makes them not Christians. (Well, at worst, they’re Christians who are ignorant of what it means to be a Christian.)

I say, if you’re going to ignore most of the Bible, rationalize away and negate the stuff that’s cruel and immoral, and basically defang God and believe in a god and messiah that’s not the one depicted in the book, just go ahead and jettison the label and the burden of immoral, illogical religion altogether! Be the good, ethical person you already are who loves your family and friends, does good works, etc., and do it because you already know it’s the right way to be, and you know it despite what the book/religion says! You’re already using your reason, your empathy, your ethics to pick-and-choose what make sense to you, and you do so completely at odds with the religion and its dogma and orthodoxy. So, take the logical step and chuck off the label “Christian.” It’s ridiculous to keep calling yourself something you’re not.

Well, that who topic of sending good people to hell lead to a discussion of theodicy, which naturally brought the observing pastor into the discussion. To her I asked the basic questions of suffering in the world: Why is there an excessive amount of it when there’s ample proof a barest fraction is all that’s necessary to test faith (if that’s the intent)? Why is it a good, fair, and just thing for people to be able to use their free will to horrifically harm innocents (if free will is the holy price to pay for so much suffering)? Why can’t God simply create a world where we have limited ability to cause so much harm to others, and not realize we’re limited (since he is all-powerful)? Etc etc. And at each question, at each challenge, her response was not just basic apologetics that don’t address the question asked, don’t provide any sort of answer, simply moves the goal-posts, and don’t stand up to logic and reason.

It actually got a little heated. Well, not anger heated… although, I admit that for my part, I did (and do) get a little pissed. For example, she actually brought up the rationalization that others’ suffering is perhaps to help others feel compassion. I leaned forward and scowled, and I knew my voice was emotional, when I challenged, “Are you telling me that the horrible death a child in the arms of a mother in Africa, dying painfully of starvation and cholera, and the despair of the mother, you would go to her face and ell her, ‘I know you are suffering, but feel joyous because your suffering and child’s death is teaching some people how to donate money’?!” That angers me.

That then led to the ultimate ridiculousness, when she broke into some story she obviously learned in seminary, about how John Wesley (the founder of Methodism) was on a boat Moravian missionaries during a bad storm. And their singing and lack of concern gave Wesley hope and reminded him that death and suffering is nothing compared to his relationship with God.

Yeah. It’s one of those answers pastors are really good at. Where they don’t actually answer the question posed, but they usually sound good and positive and hopeful, and distract you from the question or concern. And the usual questioner will often go away, feeling like they were answered even though they really weren’t. Ghost whispering psychics are good at that too. Watch John Edwards of Sylvia Brown sometime. When they give a “miss” (as in, like, claim the subject’s dead relative may have died from something they didn’t or something), they will snake and prevaricate and basically distract the audience away from the miss. And people feel comfortable that they got the answer they wanted, and felt good about it. Although, interviews with psychic audience members days later, many times will report the opposite feeling once they had a chance to think about it.

In this case, as this pastor started in her story, I could tell she lost. (No surprise there: I’ve read and seen debates and interviews with Christian apologists of world-class level all of who miserably fail at answering the question of suffering.) The conversation was over, and she was going to do some hand-waving for a while. I looked at her with unhidden incredulousness and disgust, and sat back quietly, waiting for her to finish her pointless and unrelated tale. I was done with her. I only wish I could know whether or not the other people in the room recognized her smoke and mirror act.

So, I’ve mentioned the one lady in class who has a very authoritarian outlook of God (which is actually a more Biblically-honest belief than everyone else in the room — if more immoral belief). Interestingly, the conversation did turn to gays, and the fact that they can’t help being born gay. (I am so glad that from what I could tell, (most?) everyone in the room recognizes a person does not choose to be gay. Have I mentioned I like Methodists? Baptists: you can bite me.) I don’t recall exactly what was said, but something related to that appeared to make that lady seem to reconsider he homophobia a little bit. At least, I hope.

Speaking of more Biblical belief, there’s one other guy in the group who has mentioned a couple of times, “Even the devil believes in God.” (This is in response to that earlier conversation about whether or not good people who don’t believe will get punished or not.) He says when he was himself not really committed Christian, he had a friend point to the Bible where it says that the devil believes in God, and it blew his mind. Really?? That’s like saying, “Even Sauron knows the One Ring can be destroyed, because it says so right here in Lord of the Rings!” C’mon, think about it. Let’s say god Yahweh is indeed a myth, that would mean that the Bible and all it says (in regards to supernatural creatures at least) is also myth. Thus, the devil and what he does or does not believe, is also a myth. Q.E.D. If I don’t believe in god, I don’t believe in the devil and what he says either.

On the third day, on the subject of spiritual gifts, I was also impressed that the group as a whole was not just skeptical but negative about TV faith healing. But goodness, more about that in a later post for a more recent week. (I’m like, two weeks behind now.)

Well, I hate to say it, but I think I may have to give this session short shrift; it’s been a week, (such a week), and all I have is my scant notes on the session. (No wonder Stephen Butterfield uses a tape recorder.) And the worst part is that this session is the one I finally spoke up and got involved in conversation!

Ironically, I can impart less about that small group time than any other as I was so busy being involved, I didn’t write any notes. But I’ll try to see what I can recollect. In any case, I’m sure you’re not too disappointed, dear reader, considering the novellas I’ve been writing for my last four session reactions!

So, this session was entitled, Why and How Should I Read the Bible. Nicky Gumbel makes a summary argument for why to read it with the points: It’s the most popular book, the most powerful book, and the most precious book.

First of all, the fallacy of the appeal to popularity can be dismissed by simply pointing out how popular Harry Potter, the Twilight series, Stephen King, and Greek myths are 3,000 years after their original believers, but the popularity of these things makes no difference upon the reality of the material. Popularity does not make a thing truthfully valid. Hey, the Koran is as popular with almost as many people, does that increase its validity and necessity?

Don’t forget, the popularity of the Bible was given a leg up by the fact that all of Western Europe was forced between 500 and 1600 AD to be accepted as almighty truth by the point of a spear and the flames of the stake. Such popularity campaigns kind of help ingrain the book as a cultural icon.

So Nicky calls the Bible “God’s revelation of himself.” (I see the problem I’m going to have by doing a gloss over on this subject — conciseness means increased snarkiness. Well, I’ll try to be kind…) You have all the wisdom, intelligence, and knowledge in the world, I bet you, a puny human, could come up with five ways better to reveal yourself than to do it in the form of a book, of disparate writings by humans, written and collected during a time in human history rife with superstition and mythology. A book of writings is likely the very worst possible choice one could make to transmit the ultimate rules, plan, and guidance for humanity and the depiction of salvation from eternal torment. Not only is it subject to lack of historical credibility and thus is usually rejected by most everyone who reads the Bible who was not raised to believe it, but its ambiguity and internal inconsistency and just plain un-wise content has itself been a terrible source of pain and death and war and strife and conflict among believers themselves.

One of the points in the book we have regarding what Nicky would discuss, lists “historical difficulties.” I was intrigued, but I think Wife was even more so. When the video said “Nicky discusses historical difficulties… which have now now been resolved,” and then went back to Nicky already in progress, she scoffed out-loud. I don’t blame her; that’s a pretty big thing to just skip over.

I can only assume he supposedly addresses issues like how there’s no record anywhere outside of the Bible of the Egyptians having Hebrew slaves, in fact, they were trading partners with the Hebrew tribes, not slavers. And the Egyptians were neurotic record-keepers. No record of any Harod ordering the murder of firstborns, and that’s a pretty big thing for historians who recorded the acts of Harod to have just missed. There’s inconsistencies regarding what king was ruling where, when; and contradictions of such facts even within the Bible. There’s stories of wars in the Bible that never took place. This is tip of the iceberg — the Bible is filled with “facts” that are either completely missed by the countless non-religious scholars, and “facts” that don’t jive with overwhelming historical contradicting evidence. I’m curious how Nicky dismisses all of it.

He claims that the Bible is therefor an authority for teaching, rebuking (nice), correcting, and training in righteousness. And why can he say it’s an authority? Because it itself claims itself to be an authority. How convenient.

One of the claims he makes that really perked my ears was the claim that the Bible is an excellent guide for how to care for children. Oreally?

1. God tells Abraham to kill his son, and Abe’s going to do it. (Doesn’t matter if God pulls a “psyche!” right at the last minute.)

2. Lot offers his daughters up to a mob to rape and beat, and even uses their virginity as a selling point.

3. God kills all the firstborn of Egypt, which presumably includes children and infants, all of whom had nothing to do with the Pharaoh’s “hard heart.” …which God himself hardened.

4. God provides rules for selling your daughter into slavery.

5. Rules for killing your unruly son.

6. The act of childbirth is inherently sinful and leaves the mother unclean until burnt offering are made.

7. God commands Moses to kill everyone in a town, except the virgin girls (many of whom must presumably be children), who he will then take for wives (read: sex slaves).

8. If a man rapes an unbetrothed girl (and in those times, an unbetrothed girl still living with her father is likely very young), he may then pay the father a fine and take the girl for his wife.

9. If you make God angry, he will burn you and your children to death.

10. Ah, a goodie from this book “100% inspired by God”: Psalm 137:8-9:

11. A great prophet full of God’s devotion, asks God to smite a group of children making fun of his bald head, so God obliges by slaughtering the children via two bears, leaving the town in mourning, but not so much as a howdy-do about it.

Yeesh! That’s not even scratching the surface of the OT! It’s filled with laws, rules, and stories of atrocities and horrors committed against children. But the NT doesn’t get off that easy:

12. Jesus tells his disciples to leave their families and consider them dead. Not just that, but according to Luke, actively hate your family: “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

13. Jesus tells a young man who just lost his father to “Let the dead bury their own.”

14. Prophesies that “Brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death” by his arrival.

15.

	Mat 10:35	“Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
	Mat 10:36	and a man’s foes will be those of his own household.
	Mat 10:37	He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;”

16.

These are the words of the kind and loving Jesus. I’m sorry, but this Jesus character is no less a jerk than the OT Yahweh. But the greatest preacher of Jesus’ continues the family values hatefest:

17. Paul’s view on marriage is pretty clear: Don’t. Unless you just absolutely must have dirty, sinful sex, then you might as well marry.

18. Paul honors Abraham and Lot as good men of God, because they were willing to kill and torture their children in the service of God.

This is the inspired word of God? Beautiful and revealing? And this isn’t even a sliver of the bloodthirsty, vindictive, hateful, psychopathic content of this supposed guidebook for life.

Robert M. Price, biblical scholar, fellow of the Jesus Seminar, and unbeliever, comes to the defense of the Bible in a speech that you can hear of the Point of Inquiry podcast. I admit, it’s a good speech and it’s one of the reasons why I love Bob Price. In essence, we shouldn’t hate on the Bible any more than we would on The Iliad or any other ancient work of literature. They’re all filled with both beauty and horror. And indeed, that’s true. The Bible, like any ancient work of humans, does have some shining glimpses of impressive human artistry and innovation and pathos. But the problem is, the Iliad is not being held up by people as a guidebook for life, as the inspired word of God, as perfect and divine, and as a reference to answering life’s questions. Millions of people do use the Bible for such lofty goals. On its own, Main Kampf is an interesting look into the mind of a megalomaniac paranoid sociopath. It’s just a book. But when neo-Nazi’s hold it up as a guidebook for how to treat other races and how to behave, one is justified to vilify the book itself.

Would people still be racist a-holes without Hitler’s autobiography? Yeah, sure. But would people also perform child genital mutilation (circumcision), be as fervent in homophobia, be as bigoted and hateful toward women, as warlike against other cultures, as arrogant in the absolute certainty of what they believe an uberbeing wants them to do in regards to others’ rights and liberties, if they didn’t have this book of despicable inhumanity as their Word of God to guide them? I don’t know….

Back to the course….

Nicky makes this absurd comment that “God didn’t say ‘don’t murder, steal, commit adultery,’ because he wants to take away our fun — but because he loves us.” First of all, which god? Because oddly, pretty much every human culture regardless of what god they believed in, has/had rules regarding doing harm to other people. It has nothing to do with God saying don’t, it has everything to do with a codification of what humans already know (aside from socio- and psychopaths) due to our evolved sense of empathy — that pain and harm sucks, and it feels terrible to do pain and harm upon another person we can identify with. Our sense of empathy tells us this, not some revelation from a god. Plus, we evolved, like pretty much every primate, to thrive in a community. As a species and as individuals we do a lot better in groups than we do individually. And to allow this to happen, we have to not harm each other just as we don’t want others to harm us. This is evident in primates, it’s evident in every human culture that’s never come in contact with Judaism or Christianity.

A Greek philosopher once wrote: “Is what is morally right, right because God approves of it or commands it, or rather, does God command it because it is right?” Think about that.

If it’s the former, than there is no objective morality and God is just making it up as he goes. By what should we judge God’s morality? If God says slavery is good, and sending your daughters out to be raped is just fine, is it so simply because he’s the tyrant to be obeyed lest he squish us? That’s not morality, that’s dictatorial decree.

If it’s the later, then why is God necessary then? If he’s just the middle-man for morality, the fact that humanity near-universally has come to similar beliefs in regards to what’s generally moral, indicates God is superfluous, and if anything, we are not only right but justified by necessity to question the (im)morality of the Bible.

Small Group

I wish I could talk more about small group, but I don’t remember much. I don’t recall what prompted me to start talking, but I recall asking a pointed question that resulted in some discussion. But the most important thing I recall, is I was met with general positivity and not like I was offending or insulting anyone. *whew!*

I tried to be very conscientious of how I was coming across, asking about… I recall a bit! Asking about why wait until anywhere between 20,000 and 4,000 years to send himself/Jesus as a solution for salvation is he’s all-knowing. Why not just start with Jesus/salvation if he knew he was going to have to anyway. Acts like the flood simply point up how he doesn’t seem to be all knowing if he admits to making mistakes and doing (lame) “solutions” that don’t stick. Wouldn’t it be better for him and humanity if he allowed reasonable suffering and forgiveness at will, instead of through the torture of Jesus centuries later?

Much of the conversation was around similar topics, and all I recall getting for answers were opinions like, “because,” “free will” (?!), “I don’t know.” Which, of any answer I’m most OK with, it’s “I don’t know.” It’s the most honest answer there is. (Although, most religious people who are cornered into saying “I don’t know” often don’t act like it. Most of the time they’re claiming this about God’s intent and that about God’s will and the other about what God wants, as if they know the mind of God. But, well, in a way they do, don’t they?)

God’s will always seems suspiciously like the will of the individual who claims to know God’s will.

Update: now that I wrote my reaction, I read Stephen Butterfield’s reaction to Week 5. As usual, his response is quite cogent, succinct, and well-written. (Hmm, it also appears the Gumbel film he’s watching is a little different that ours.)
Here’s a good bit from Stephen’s blog:

Moving into top gear now, Gumbel adds that the Bible is “a love letter from God”.

A love letter?

I must admit I haven’t had many love letters in my life, but the ones that I have received have been conspicuously lacking in grizzly tales of mass human slaughter, rape, and torture. If I were to receive a “love letter” from a lady whose career highlight to date was the extermination of the entire worlds population (with the exception of 8 individuals), and that such a lady also had an unhealthy fascination with torturing homosexuals and the non-religious, I think it’s safe to say that her letter would hardly ‘warm the cockles’ of my heart. And I doubt that I’d be inviting her over to my parents’ home for Sunday luncheon anytime soon. I’ll go out on a limb here and admit that those kinds of “love letters” are, to me, a tad unattractive. Maybe that’s where Gumbel and I differ.

(click to read)

(This is part 4 of a 10-part reaction to The Alpha Course. Part One: Twisted history; Part Two: The cruel illogic of substitutional atonement; Part Three: Faith makes mountains of of molehills.)

This week’s Alpha Class was on the power of prayer. This was a particularly… interesting.

But before we get into it, some preliminary info: As you may know, uber-blogger Friendly Atheist mentioned my blog recently! In the comments, someone mentioned a much better British atheist blogger who chronicled his own Alpha Course experience: Stephen Butterfield’s “Alpha Course Reviewed”. If you’re here to read a non-believer’s reaction to Alpha Course, go read his! He’s a better writer and actually had dialog with other attendees. If you’re here reading this because you know me, still go read Stephen’s — it’s better and he writes with a sexy British accent. I’ve only read the first few posts of his; I want to be able to write my own reactions unaffected by a better one.

And now, before I discuss problems with prayer, another interlude:

A’Campin’ We Will Go!

Later in the month, the Alpha Course group will be going on a retreat to a Christian camp for a day. Basically, it’s a few more Nicky videos, lots of discussion, and some of your regular religiousy activities. Wife and I are going ahead and going; I’m intrigued. And, I think, it’ll be a good opportunity for me to actually discuss stuff, and hopefully with the more open-minded people of the group who aren’t immediately offended by questioning. (Although, after reading some of Stephen’s posts, I’m encouraged to make opportunity to start talking out in small group more.)

Another reason I’m interested in going is because it’s at the Christian camp I attended years ago as a teen, and I’m kinda of curious to see it again. Hey, I may not believe any more, and I may even look back on that period of the most religious time of my life with chagrin and embarrassment – but it was still one of the best times of my life with great memories, regardless. I can look back on that time and not feel threatened about who and what I was then, and just enjoy the nostalgia.

I’m not worried about being re-converted — they’re Methodists; evangelism and strong-armed “encouragement” isn’t one of the qualities of Methodism. A few years ago I went to a Promise Keepers weekend, and that is a hard sell! (But then, Promise Keepers are mostly evangelical Baptists and Assemblies of God and the like.) If there was any message of that “retreat” is “Kill the atheists! Kill the feminists! Kill he socialists!” Well, not literally that message, but that was the feeling imparted! Very scary experience. This Alpha retreat should be relaxing/annoying at worst, and fun at best.

In a way, my camp experience, particularly the one of the summer before my senior year, was the instigator of my path toward eventual atheism. That was the peak of my belief: I was extremely active in my youth group, I’d performed dramatic interps for my church, wore “Christ Rules” t-shirts to school, I felt I was full with the spirit. That last church camp, I won awards for memorizing the most verses (no Old Testament stuff, of course, they gave us the nice ole letter to Romans to study), and I had been told I was “quiet but whenever I said something, it was wise.” (Yeah, this was teens saying this about another teen. OK, then. But I sure took it seriously back then.)

All this instilled in me a burning desire to become a pastor! I knew that had to be my calling. I’d visited a couple of religious colleges, I’d requested admissions and scholarship info, I knew what God wanted for me!

And then, naturally, I did what was entirely logical: I decided if I was going to study and interpret and preach the Bible, I should finally read all of it. How’d that go? Well, let me give you a clue in the words of Isaac Asimov:

“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”

And in the words of Mark Twain:

“It ain’t the parts of the Bible I don’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts that I do understand.”

Actually reading the Bible cover-to-cover didn’t immediately deconvert me! But it did start some very serious questioning and doubting and searching that would culminate in my finally taking off the God-Goggles some 10 or 15 years later. Serious enough seeds of doubt that I ended up not pursuing that education and career in the ministry. Reading “God’s Word,” all of it, turned a very passionate Christian youth on a mission into a half-hearted young Christian adult with a permanent nagging feeling that Something Is Wrong Here.

So, prayer. This is apropos, as during that time of extreme belief turning into doubt, I did a lot of praying, for wisdom, faith, strength, and understanding. I wonder, wouldn’t that be a perfect opportunity for a god to have answered those prayers? He could have answered them, and then he’d have one more warrior bringing more and more people to his belief. Instead, it can only be assumed by the believer that God saw fit to not answer my sincere and earnest prayers and result in someone who very possibly may contribute in others’ deconversions. If God were real and answered prayers, does that make sense to you?

So Nicky began his section on How and Why Do I Pray with a joke about the atheist who is clinging to the side of a cliff. He calls out to anyone to save him. A voice, God, tells him to trust him and let go. The atheist considers, then calls out “Is there anyone else who can save me?” Cute joke, I chuckled; it’s just a joke… at atheists’ expense, designed to show how stubborn and pig-headed atheists are… OK, now I’m offended. But seriously, it’s just a silly joke but it does help contribute to this image that atheists have that even if presented with adequate evidence, we’ll refuse to accept and believe — nothing can be further from the truth.

We’re atheists (especially we deconverted ones, and life-long ones who have stopped to examine the issue) exactly because we’ve carefully looked at the evidence and have found it less than compelling. Ask an intellectually honest atheist if there’s anything that could convince them to believe in (a) God, and they’ll say “Sure” and give you examples of what kind of evidence they would find compelling. I have two answers to this question:

1. This sounds like a flippant answer, but it’s actually the most sincere one: If there is an all-knowing God, he would know exactly what it would take to convince me — more than even I know myself.

2. And this list could go on forever, as long as my imagination holds out, but for example, the words “I am Yahweh, the God of the Bible, and I exist” could be formed out of the very stars in the sky and be seen by the whole world. That would convince me. (Should be nothing for a God who supposedly created the universe, “stopped the sun in the sky” (?!) so Joshua could fight all night, and perform laws-of-nature-violating miracles for all the world to witness left and right millenia ago.

But, no, no amount of personal anecdotes, voices from God, single-person experienced events will convince me any more than they would convince a Christian that the god a devout and passionate Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist or Sikh or Moonie or Raelian would convince a Christian. I require the same amount of rigorous evidence that it would take to convince me of alien visitation, ghosts, ESP, etc. As Carl Sagan said: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

The existence of an omni-everything god that refutes everything we know about science, the existence of original sin, salvation through Jesus, etc., is about the most extraordinary claim that can be made — so I’m going to need a lot more evidence than a book written during Bronze Age by people steeped in myth and superstition, and individual personal feelings that look suspiciously like the feelings and personal stories of anyone from any other religion and belief system.

But, I can be convinced. This is different than a lot of believers I encounter who will even say outright “Nothing you say can convince me different from what I know in my heart.”

But, back to Nicky and prayer.

Nicky states that prayer is the most important thing a Christian can do, “it’s what we’re made to do.” Well, if the premise of a personal god who answers prayers is true, then I can’t disagree with that statement. But let’s just jump right in to the login here:

a. Why does an all-knowing god need to hear prayers? Wouldn’t such a god already know what’s going on and what’s needed?

b. If everything goes according to God’s plan then what does prayer accomplish? Was God going to make things go one way, but will change his mind based on prayers he receives? Is he involved in the world at all times or not?

c. Why must people pray continuously? And in groups or have multiple people pray for the same thing? Does God not care until enough people perform the ritual of prayer? Your child’s a drug addict performing crimes to support his habit and is on a self-destructive path. Does God not care, or not even know, until the parents pray X number of times for their kid to be saved? If the girl with leukemia dies despite all the prayers of family and friends and church-goers, does that mean God didn’t get enough participants on the prayer petition?

Nicky says “God always answers prayers,” and the Bible supports this claim:

• Matthew 7:7  ”Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
• Matthew 17:20  ”For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.”
• Matthew 21:21  ”I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”
• Mark 11:24  ”Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
• John 14:12-14  ”Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.”
• Matthew 18:19  ”Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

Read that? God/God’s son/God’s greatest prophet/etc. says in no ambiguous terms that you only need to have a little faith, and whatever you want in his name you’ll get. No equivocation, no “except…”, no “however…”. No, what is claimed in the Bible is: “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.”

But of course, we all know that that isn’t true. So, what do apologists like Nicky do to try to explain why the results of prayer seem to look suspiciously like random occurrence or the results of human effort to fulfill? He has to come of with a list of caveats and conditions that Jesus never said anything about:

• God won’t grant wishes, sorry, prayers that “go against his nature.”

I’m sorry, what? What’s against his nature? According to the Bible, he’s raised the dead, will move mountains, has stopped the movement of the sun (?!), and committed genocide. Seriously, what’s against his nature??

• He won’t grant prayers if there’s problems in your life (?!), in your relationship with God, or on a path of rebellion.

This is classic “If it didn’t work, it’s your fault, you must have done something wrong” that you find in all religions, superstitions, witchcraft, majik, The Secret, every woo. Despite the fact that Jesus supposedly said you only need a bit of faith and you can have a mountain moved. Go fig.

This rationalization for why a prayer won’t be answered is incredibly cruel! You’re a child being raped on a regular basis by a family member, and you pray every night for the horror to stop, but because you’re not perfectly righteous God isn’t convinced to answer the prayer? Your mother is suffering from Alzheimer’s and dying a slow and terrible death, but because your faith isn’t at least the size of a mustard seed, he ignores the prayers? Millions of people are dying painful and slow deaths from starvation despite the prayers of millions, including, I’m sure, at least a few truly selfless and full-of-faith people, but God is ignoring these prayers because someone among them is on a rebellious path?

If you follow Nicky’s (and standard apologetic’s) logic to their natural conclusions, these must be the case. Which has to reveal one of three conclusions:

1. Nicky and other apologists are utterly wrong about how prayer works, in which case, all their “answers” about God are suspect at best.

2. This Yahweh is a real cruel bastard not worthy of worship.

3. The god of the Bible doesn’t exist.

Occam’s Razor, anyone?

Plus, these rationalizations: God won’t answer if you don’t have enough faith or on a rebellious path or your relationship with God isn’t “right,” that kind of contradicts the testimonies of people who were supposedly on the edge, have hit bottom, were “wretches” and utterly unworthy but call out to God is desperation. According to Nicky, God’s not inclined to answer prayers under those conditions. So, if he does, that also shows:

1. Nicky doesn’t know what he’s talking about; or,

2. God is capricious and fickle and can’t be trusted.

3. Oh, or, the god of the Bible doesn’t exist.

And Nicky’s third rationalization as to why the result of prayer is unpredictable, untrustworthy, and apparently random:

• God won’t answer prayers for the wrong motive.

See many of my examples above and test for whether the motive to stop rape and molestation, terrible suffering from disease, and mass death from starvation, include bad motives. And yet all those things, and more, and worse, continue for so many people despite earnest and sincere prayers.

The world looks like it operates under one of two principles:

1. Yahweh exists but must be truly evil and deplorable. Or,

2. The world moves along exactly like it would if there were no involved god who interferes in the world.

Occam’s Razor….

Nicky tells this story of a close friend who died of a heart attack, despite Nicky’s (and presumably, the friend’s family’s!) prayers for him not to. Nicky’s rationalization as to why God didn’t answer the prayer? Because, basically, things would have been different if things happened differently, is his explanation. Uhm, yeah, pretty much. And there’s no way we could know, and disprove that, is there? Convenient. If the friend had lived, maybe he’d have died a slow and terrible death from Alzheimer’s so, the heart attack was a mercy? Maybe the friend wouldn’t have enjoyed his daughter’s college graduation? Maybe he would’ve gotten ill during he and his wife’s anniversary cruise vacation. Who knows how things could have been different if different things had happened.

Which implies another horrible cruelty inherent in the idea of prayer, and unanswered ones: Despite the fact the Bible says God will grant any, any prayer, God uses unanswered prayers in which horrible death and disease and destruction happens in order to teach other people lessons. He kills one person in order to let a survivor see the valuable things in life? How is that at all fair to the person who suffered and died? And to their family? Nicky can feel better about learning a valuable life lesson, but the friend’s family is now husband-less, father-less, so that Nicky could learn something.

God lets millions die from starvation so that we could feel thankful for what we have? Thousands die and thousands homeless after an earthquake or a tsunami, so that some survivors could learn a life lesson?  Really? That’s the way a wise and merciful god would work things out? Really?!

Looks more to me like things happen because we’re in a universe where there are laws of nature and no overbeing is at the wheel.

Then Nicky goes into this long and tedious story about a friend who got a divorce he didn’t want, found God, then his ex-wife finally agreed to go see Billy Graham with him, and she found God, and now they’re back together. Nice story, I suppose. Assuming the two aren’t co-dependent and terrible for each other and it’d be better for them to move on. I dunno. If things happened differently, things would be different. But it sounds to me more like these individuals are responsible for their own actions. The guy kept acting, doing things, to stay in touch with the ex-wife and reconnect. Kept showing effort. She made the decision to see him again, and in a place of extreme emotional manipulation (the Billy Graham thing). I blame/credit the individuals for answering their own prayers.

Group Session

The first question asked in group was: Did you used to think of answered prayers as coincidences? (Something like that.) That actually made the group a little uncomfortable, I think, as some answered, yes they used to. I’m making a gross assumption that if this were asked in a Baptist group, there’d be almost unanimous “No, everything is done through God’s will!” But this group is a little more thoughtful (than my imaginary Baptist group), and reasonably contemplates coincidence. But, as usual, evangelical literalists tend to follow the logic of their religion better than thoughtful people: If God always answers prayers, including intentionally not granting them as a means of answering, then coincidence is indeed quite impossible. God is in control of all blessings and all pain and suffering. …including when he “let’s things happen.”

Imagine a father of children, and one of them has an accident and is terribly hurt. In fact, she’s bleeding to death! But you, as her father, decide not to answer her cries to take her to this hospital, you ignore her even though you’re perfectly capable to taking her to the hospital in time. You have the ability. But you want to teach the other daughter a lesson about playing in trees. You let the hurt daughter die needlessly.

Questions: Is that a glorious and praise-worthy act, or cruel sadism? Would we consider this man a good and wise father, or an uncaring psychopath?

Someone in group mentioned that we are not worthy, none of us are worthy, of answered prayers and salvation. “We don’t deserve it; none of us deserve it. But God gifts it to us anyway.” (I think it was the authoritarianist lady who had previously said the clay is unworthy to question the potter breaking it last week. She has issues.) Again, according to Nicky, if this is true, God wouldn’t answer any prayers. Wish people would agree on their dogma. Anyway, how cultlike, Marine corp, wife-abusing of an outlook that is? You’re not worthy, you’re wretched, you’re flawed. No one can love you. Except our god, and only of you believe like we say you should. Tear you down and then make it so you have to depend on our belief in order to have any semblance of self-worth. That’s really sick and twisted, in my opinion.

Fortunately, not all Christians, like Wife, (consciously) believe this. But then, I don’t see how a person can be surrounded by people who do believe this, listen to hymns and contemporary Christian music that’s saturated with this message, read material that encourages this message, and not internalize it. Let is sit in the subconscious. It’s a pernicious and powerful message.

The group also talked about some of the topics above, but not very deeply. Some of the last comments included “God gave up a child” for us (really? But I thought Jesus was God, and no one gave up anything! He had a really, really bad weekend — though not near as bad as some people have suffering from cancer for months, or what the Inquisition put many non-believers through — and then he got his life and body back, and then ascended right on to heaven to be/be-next-to God. Nothing was given up. At all); and that hated “Never gives you more than you can handle,” which is a complete lie people tell themselves to feel better. If that were true, there’s be no Christians killing themselves, turning to drugs, or turning against God or becoming non-believers (for emotional reasons, as opposed to evidential reasons).

But, those happen all the time.

And finally, at the end of the evening, a quiet fellow spoke up and testified how God quite literally saved his life. He spoke very emotionally and impassioned about how his life has turned around thanks to his faith. A couple of weeks earlier he’d mentioned how he had taken actions to turn his life around and be a different person after he “accepted Jesus,” but people tend to conveniently forget that they made the change, they made different decisions, to have a different and better life.

But naturally I feel for this guy. He had a crappy life as a young adult, was on a road to self-destruction, until he stopped and now is so grateful for his different path. This is why I can’t speak up in this environment. If I challenge or question or doubt the very existence of his believed cause for his “salvation” in this life, he will understandably feel attacked, insulted, defensive. I’m in their “house” calling them self-deluded (even if I’d never use those words!) I am, for no other reason than to suggest things aren’t the way they may think they are, an a-hole jerk.

But the terrible irony is, in my estimation, I’m praising and complimenting these people exactly because it is they who changed their lives! No capricious god did it for them, they made better decisions and changed their behavior and made better lives for themselves! They’re capable and strong, and it really saddens me to see people who went through such life-changing redirections to give themselves no credit for their accomplishments and yet all of the blame for the bad things in their life.

In conclusion, I want to provide a link to think about:

Why won’t God heal amputees? http://whywontgodhealamputees.com

First, I got a mention on Friendly Atheist! OK, full disclosure: I asked him about it. But he was kind enough to make a mention on his site. I’ve been a reader of Friendly Atheist for quite some time now, and I’m quite the fan. So, I’m gleeful.

From the comments on that post, I’ve discovered that a lot of atheists and other non-theists have come in contact with the Alpha Course. And their reactions have generally been similar to mine. But one person posted a link to a blog by a fellow (Stephen Butterfield) who’s also been posting his reactions to the course — and it’s fantastic! He’s so much more succinct and clear and interesting to read than my babbling rants. His 2nd post, “Why Did Jesus Die?”, is really a great read. One of the reasons is because Stephen actually engages his discussion group in challenges and dialog – something I’m having a very hard time trying to do. But his doing so makes for some fun, and educational, reading. Check it out!

Oh, and I just came across a link I blogged about a couple of years ago, on the subject of God “never gives more than you can handle” drek. That sentiment keeps popping up in discussion. Here’s an essay I read in ’08 that I think is the best response possible to that canard: Reasonable Doubt About the Problem of Evil/Needless Suffering As A Test

(This is part two of a (potentially) 10-part series on my response to the Alpha Course. Part one, with an explanation of what all this is, is found here: Explore the Meaning of…Bitten Tongues.)

(Post-pre Script: I’m finishing this at 3am and don’t plan on re-reading to proof-read, so please forgive errors and typos.)

So, night two. The first night I walked out with a thinly repressed feeling of ire and frustration. The second night felt like relaxing into the second half of a root canal. You know there’s no escape and it must be done, so you just relax into the Novocaine masking the pain, and allow yourself to float until it’s over.

OK, that was harsh; it wasn’t that bad, I just like the analogy. Let’s just say it wasn’t as bad as last week, but I still had face pain from keeping from eye-rolling all night. It’s a few days since that night, so my memory is a little hazy, but here’s what I can recall from my notes:

So Nicky opened up this night’s video with a fatuous attempt to use an old George Carlin (or is it Sam Kennison?) comedy bit about how odd it is that people wear crosses. It’d be like wearing an electric chair or a hangman’s noose. He was trying to make a point as to why Christians revere the cross, which is this night’s theme of explaining why, allegedly, Jesus, allegedly, died as a gift to us all. But his reasoning (which are as old as apologetics itself) is barbaric (despite trying to deny it) and illogical.

Atheism is not nihilistic, cynical, or despairing. Most atheists experience great meaning and joy in our lives, and are passionate about engaging with the world and making it a better place.

Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

This last Wednesday I began attending a 10-session weekly Bible study course at the behest of my wife who wanted to involve my non-belief outlook and feedback. I’m going to give it one more shot, but if this first session is any indication of what the rest of it’s going to be like… *sigh*

The course is called Explore The Meaning of Life: The Alpha Course. by an English Anglican priest, Nicky Gumbel. Evidently, he’s taken this course, which has been around for decades, and turned it from being an introduction for new Christians into a study for people outside the faith looking to understand more about Christianity. (While I’m by far no expert, I can safely say that as a non-believer, I already know more about Christianity than I ever did as a believer and more than most of the life-long believers in the class.)

Here’s the nightly setup: provided food, then a video, then break into small groups (15-ish people each) for discussion. Let’s just say the food was OK and then it was downhill from there. Seriously, though, I went in with a positive attitude and hope for the best! I had reservations whether I’d feel comfortable speaking up at all, (aside from introducing myself, I didn’t), but I didn’t have much apprehension about the content. Until 2 minutes into the 30-minute video.

Interestingly, for a course designed to welcome and speak to the outsider, to open the whole thing up with Nicky explaining to a congregation that Jesus was real, he was the son of God, and he was resurrected and here’s all the proof of it — it doesn’t really set much of a tone for open questioning and investigation. The first thing Nicky talked about was being “an atheist” and then reading the New Testament one week his first year of college, and concluding “This is true!”

Really? This would be like if I read The Iliad one day and afterward said, “It’s true! I now believe in Zeus and Hera and Aeschylus!” His deciding the story of Jesus and the early church is true because he just read about it is less than compelling. But, of course, he didn’t stop there; and for the rest of the video, as he described the “evidence” for Jesus, I grit my teeth and desperately wanted to turn away like I do with “America’s Funniest Home Videos” (a highly ironic title), with empathetic embarrassment and shame mixed with disgust. His list of evidence…

“He Existed”
Nicky brings up the claim that Jesus existed because non-Christian writers mentioned him. So, he must have existed, right? He mentioned historians Tacitus and Suetonius, and in the companion book he includes Josephus. *sigh* Fish and barrels.

Here’s the problem: none of these guys were contemporaries of Jesus. Each of them were born after Jesus was killed. They had no 1st-hand experience of Jesus, the events that are described in the Gospels, nor his disciples. As “external evidence” for Jesus’ existence, they’re pretty flimsy.

Not only that, but what each of them had written regarding Jesus, was simply a comment or description about Christians. All this proves is that there were Christians in the 1st and 2nd centuries, that’s all. Well, we know there were Muslims within 200 years of when Mohammed was said to dictate the Quran and then fly to heaven on a horse, but their existence doesn’t prove Mohammed flew to heaven.

Now, the apologist will generally bring up the issue of historical certainty, and how can we actually know someone existed in the past as some kind of attempt at bolstering validity for Jesus while lowering the certainty of all other historical persons (…yeah, doesn’t make sense to me, either). In fact, this was even brought up in the small group discussion by someone with a degree in historical something-or-other. He used Harry Truman as an example, though most apologists use George Washington or Julius Caesar.

Here’s the deal for why we can say with certainty why some people existed, and have low levels of certainty and outright doubt about others, and anyone who professes scholarship in history should know this: our acceptance of historical persons is based on the amount of contemporary writings that exist which mention that person as well as the scope of context in which that person was mentioned. In the case of Julius Caesar, we have recorded decrees he made written down at the time he said them (not 50 to 150 years after such is the case with the gospels), we have writings from friends and family of Julius, we have writings from people who served under him, from his enemies, countless artifacts carved and sculpted with his likeness while he was alive, etc. ad nauseum. The amount and the variety of purpose of evidence we have for Julius Caesar are ponderous. On the other side of the scale, we have nothing written of, by, about Jesus while he was alive; we have 4 (if you include Pliny the Younger) non-Christians writing about Jesus’ followers starting around 30 or so years after his religion began; and then some narrative stories about Jesus written by believers beginning around 50 years after he lived. As far as historical material goes to prove Jesus existed, much less did and said the things he supposedly did, it’s pretty much entirely inconsequential at best and dismissible most likely.

This is not to say this proves the man, Jesus, didn’t exist at all! He may have, despite the fact there’s significant debate within Biblical scholarship whether he did or not (which counters one of the small group’s leader’s claim that no one questions Jesus’ existence). But there’s certainly no valid evidence proving he did. (In fact, it’s known that there were active Christian sects during the first few centuries, that did not believe Jesus ever existed in the flesh. It’s also theorized by respected Biblical scholars, that based on Paul’s writings, he himself was one who worshiped the spiritual conception of Jesus and did not believe him to have had a physical body. That doesn’t prove anything, but it does show that no, there are many, even Christians, who do doubt Jesus the man existed.)

There’s just as much external evidence that Jesus was based on Apollonius of Tyana as there is that Jesus himself existed.

“Evidence” within the New Testament.
And that’s the last time Nicky mentions any non-Biblical “evidence.” Well, no wonder considering how scant it is. For the rest of the video, all of his evidence was to be Biblical passages. Yeah. That’s like my quoting passages from The Iliad to prove the gods of Olympus, from The Quran to prove Mohammad, from Dianetics to prove Xenu. Think Nicky would accept my trying to prove Vishnu and Brahma exist by quoting passages from The Bhagavad Gita? Yeah, didn’t think so. But he sure seems to think quoting a religious text written by believers is a perfectly valid and reasonable source for impartial “evidence” for what Jesus is supposed to have said and did. (Don’t forget, all written down beginning no sooner than 50 years after the fact, and with contradictions among the stories themselves.)

“Teaching centered on self” as opposed to outward.
This was an interesting bit of evidence I’d never heard from an apologist before! Evidently, one of the ways we know Jesus was what he said he was, was because unlike all other preachers and rabbis and prophets even, Jesus put himself center-stage and taught about himself forging sins and being the way to heaven. Huh. Oh, yeah, that’s why I’d never heard an apologist use that argument before: it royally sucks and even William Lane Craig recognizes that. Heck, even banana-man Ray Comfort recognizes that!

First of all, 1st-century Judea was rife with messianic preachers claiming to be…messiahs. The Bible itself (that source of impartial and valid evidence for, itself, that it is) refers to other messianic false-prophets and teachers.

I wonder, if because Sun Yung Moon and David Koresh are self-focused messiahs who profess to be the way to God, if we should take them at their word?

“Evidence supporting what he said.”
Next, Nicky focused on Jesus’ teachings and works as evidence for his existence. Well, see above on why using quotes from a book to prove the claims of that book proves nothing more than that book at least exists.

But then he brought up one of my favorites: that Jesus’ actions were the fulfillment of prophesy! Yeah, that’s iron-clad evidence alright. This was brought up again in small group where someone said with great sincerity that it’s mind-boggling to believe that someone could do the same things as predicted centuries earlier and it not be miraculous! Oh boy, where to begin….

First, let’s take a second to remember that Hebrews, Judaism, the Torah which include the Hebraic histories and “prophesies” were not dead, gone, and missing. Jews knew the material that make up the Old Testament pretty well. Jesus, if he existed, was quite knowledgable of the OT material, the people he preached to were quite familiar, and the believers who came after and wrote the gospels were also, somewhat, familiar with the OT material. In fact, the errors in connecting Jesus with Jewish prophesy display their tenuous familiarity as filtered through the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew texts), at least. At the most cynical, but still entirely possible, the gospel authors would have had no problem at all writing Jesus as doing things that would appear to fulfill prophesy.

Which leads right to the fact that much of what is believed to be fulfillment of prophesy, isn’t. Some of it is just plain wrong, like being born of a virgin. That was never prophesied in the OT material. Isaiah wrote “of a young woman.” Hebrew has words to mean “virgin,” and they weren’t used. However, the Greek translation mistook it for “virgin” which is why the synoptic author of Matthew, in order to make Jesus fulfill what he thought was prophesy, had him born of a virgin. (Which isn’t surprising anyway, Matthew being steeped in Greek tradition, where anyone thought to be wise and important was said to be born of a virgin. Plato, Socrates…. The Mediterranean is lousy with virgin-born wise men.)

Some of the prophesy fulfillment is in conflict. For example, Matthew and Luke both try to fulfill the prophesy of being from the house of David by putting in Jesus’ lineage… but they supply conflicting lineages.

And some prophesy fulfillment is simply twisted and shoehorned to make fit. For example, being named “Immanuel.” Jesus wasn’t named Immanuel, he was named Yeshua. But Christians, desperate to make Jesus fulfill prophesy, decided “Immanuel” was a reference to the Hebraic meaning of “God with us.” (Holy kharp! Typing that, I just recalled the Nazi slogan which was engraved on SS belt buckles, “Gott mit eins uns,” which meant “God with us.” Ick.) Anyway, the problem is, Immanuel is a proper name, as is Yeshua. The fact that it has a meaning that could be applied is irrelevant. Yeshua has a meaning (“salvation”), David has a meaning (“beloved by God”), all Hebrew names have meanings. If Isaiah had said he’d be named David, Christians would exclaim, “Jesus, David: beloved by God!” instead of “Jesus, Immanuel, God with us!” It’s a shoehorn.

Then there’s prophesies that weren’t fulfilled. Isaiah and Ezekiel, where most of the prophesies come from claim the messiah would destroy Judah, would reestablish the Sanhedrin (which, if I recall, is the priesthood that would rule over all Israel), would destroy all weapons and establish peace throughout the world… after bringing all the Jews back to Israel, where all the world would look to for guidance. In his lifetime! None of that has happened, last I checked. The best that Christians can do is to claim “Oh, well, Jesus will do all that…when he comes back! Yeah, that’s the ticket. So, we’ll count those as fulfilled in advance.” Look up “special pleading” in a list of logical fallacies.

Finally, Jesus is a pretty poor partial fulfillment of prophesies… that weren’t even all about the coming of a savior anyway! Most of Isaiah, for example, was describing what the nation of Israel would do and not what some guy would do. But Christians have done some interesting mental gymnastics to make prophesies about the actions of Israel into the actions of a man. Plus, some of the supposed prophesies aren’t even prophesies at all but were present-tense descriptions of existing signs and not foretelling of future events at all (like the maiden/virgin one).

“Evidence for the resurrection.”
Ah, another oldie but… yeah. The empty tomb (which, as Nicky pointed out, wasn’t exactly empty: it had the burial clothes discarded like a butterfly’s chrysalis). Of course he failed to mention that all four gospels are in conflict with each other about what else was found there: a man, two men, a man and boy, angels; and even if the tomb was found open or closed! Meh, minor details. The important thing is that the tomb had no body, right? And we know this because… four religious texts, copying from each other, written 50 to 150 years after the fact, by non-eyewitnesses, and nothing else, tell us this. I’m sorry, but before you go daring us to find some non-miracle explanation for an empty tomb, you kinda need to give us better reason to believe there even was a tomb at all in the first place, much more that it was empty. Something about carts and horses is coming to mind.

Nicky then mentioned, as more evidence, Jesus’ post-resurrection presence with the disciples. How could all of these people have seen him if it didn’t happen? Well, first of all, see above for what I said about the source of this event in the first place. Religious texts, non-witness authors, generations after the event, yaddah yaddah. And even if it could be verified that 500 people saw him, (a) it might not have been Jesus at all they saw, or (b) there are many examples, including in recent times, of mass hallucinations and mass hysteria.

And then Nicky uses the birth and growth of Christian church as evidence that Jesus existed. Huh, I guess that means that since Islam exploded in the hundred years after Mohammed, that proves the claims of The Quran? In just the last 50 years, Scientology has flourished, does that prove Xenu and thetans are real? Hey, Hindu is the oldest still existing religion, shouldn’t that give some validity to its claims being real?

Many apologists use the rise of the Christian religion, so quickly and with people willing to die for their belief, as incontrovertible proof of the Biblical claims. Yeah… no. It’s not hard to find many, many, examples of individuals and entire groups of people willing to die for what they believe: David Koresh’s people, Jonestown, the people who thought the spaceship following Halley’s Comet would pick up their post-suicided spirits, etc. People willing to die for what they believe is proof of nothing, sorry. And quickly spreading religion? Look at the Moonies. How about that guy a hundred years ago who predicted rapture…and it didn’t come. He predicted it again…and it didn’t come. But his followers still followed and believed, and now we have the 7th Day Adventists.

Here’s a little story: Not quite 200 years ago, a man who was a known criminal and con artist, claimed to have used magic glasses to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics into a revealed holy book from God. He convinced people to follow him, despite the fact 1. he was a con man, 2. he could not provide evidence of said glasses and hieroglyphics. These people were persecuted, abused, their practice made illegal, and some were even killed! But they still believed and followed this former con man with the magic glasses. Even after he himself was murdered. Then a latter-day Moses of sorts, led these people, growing in number, out west to their own desert and dead sea.

I’m sure you recognize I’m talking about Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and the Mormons. Here is an example where a crook and liar is able to form a religion in his own lifetime, people are willing to die for a belief in what magic glasses revealed, and before 200 years have passed, they’ve become a major world religion with over 12 million followers.

Then, Nicky actually used C.S. Lewis’ trilemma rationale. He didn’t attribute it to Lewis, but maybe that’s just as well. Basically, it goes like this: There are only three options: Jesus was a liar and thus an evil man full of nonsense, or he was insane and full of nonsense, or he was exactly what he said he was and thus everything he said is true.

Oy vey! Again, where to begin. First of all, it’s a minor point, but even if he were a liar or insane, it doesn’t mean everything he said was wrong or evil! If Hitler said, “Ice cream is tasty and the sky is blue,” just because he was both evil and insane, would he be wrong about those things?

But more importantly, Nicky left out two more perfectly reasonable options (a pentalemma?) One is that Jesus was delusional about who he thought he was, but not insane (there’s a difference, you know). Take the Pope. (Please!) I have no doubt he, as well as the Pope before him, fully believes he’s God’s one true emissary on Earth. Does that make him insane? I believe the Dali Lama truly believes he’s… whatever holy representative and all-wise avatar the Dali Lama is supposed to be, just as every Dali Lama before him. Does that make him insane and entirely nonsensical?

And then there’s the excluded, and most likely, fifth option: Jesus, at least as depicted in the gospels, didn’t exist at all and what he’s ascribed as having said is made up. By sincere, and earnest people, no doubt! Not charlatans and crooks. But at least mostly fabricated, none the less.

This option is highly supported by The Jesus Seminar — a collection of Biblical and historical scholars from all faiths and traditions, who set out to thoroughly research the gospels and then come to a consensus over how much of what Jesus is said to done and said was probable, unlikely, and fabricated. Their findings? Only 16% of what Jesus said is possibly authentic, the rest came from essentially The Telephone Game of oral recounting before being written down, with origins from many cultural sources of the time and place.

In any case, he uses this trilemma (at least he didn’t stoop to using Pascal’s Wager! If he had, I likely would have audibly groaned. I almost did with the trilemma as it was), to point out how wonderful and wise and inspired and divine Jesus’ teachings were. So much so, that their innate wisdom is proof itself that Jesus must have existed and said those things. Yeah, that was one of my big beliefs when I was a believer as well — Jesus’ teachings are so wise they could only come from God-inspiration at the very least. Until I actually started paying attention and stopped using cognitive bias to excuse the warts and flaws.

Here’s a divinely inspired and all-wise guru who speaks in such obscure ways that he’s constantly belittling and insulting his own disciples as “fools.” He petulantly killed a fig tree because it had no fruit for him… out of season. He actively ignored and even disavowed his own family who came to see him, concerned about his preaching (which, by the way, if you were visited by an angel and impregnated by the Holy Spirit and raised a child who could debate with the Pharisees, would you by that point really be concerned about your son’s career choice? Just wondering.) He told his followers that unless they gave up their families, they could not follow him (yeah, that doesn’t sound at all cult-ish). He proclaimed that he came not to bring peace, but to bring the sword (so much for that living-by/dying-by thing). He said he came to set daughter against mother, son against father (ah, family values)! And, he taught the slave how to be a good slave, missing a golden opportunity to, I dunno, maybe say something wise and unexpected about how owning people as property was pretty crappy. “But, Jesus, slavery is culturally appropriate to our time and place in the world! What you’re saying about slavery being evil is oddly moral and beyond our worldly outlook!” “Hey, I’m the Son of God. I can can decree surprisingly different moral attitudes that run counter to your limited human understanding for your culture. Who says I have to teach morality that is curiously apropos for this specific time and place and would be rejected in 1800 years and grossly immoral?” Oh. Oops.

Take what’s considered to be his most wise, divine teaching of all, the Sermon on the Mount. We’re conditioned to instantly think of it as the best sermon that’s ever been preached, that all else look up to. Until you really look at it. The Sermon on the Mount is really nothing more than a slapdash collection of aphorisms and platitudes, of observations and teachings that are pretty banal and common. It’s sloppily put together and far more mundane and less interesting than literally every non-divine earthly pastor I’ve sat in a pew in front of. There’s really nothing in the Sermon that transcends the ordinary, isn’t found in most every religion and culture, nor jumps out as, “Wow, that couldn’t have come from anywhere except the wisdom of God!” Some of it’s even downright bad advice altogether.

The Iron Chariots Wiki has a fascinating analysis of the Sermon that will really open your eyes. …if you daaaarre! Boo.

Bottom line: ol’ Nicky, while a nice enough seeming guy, had absolutely no compelling or meaningful evidence for his belief. It was a painful excursion through a land of irrational thought and fallacies. I couldn’t wait for it to end so I could get to the small group.

Then there was the small group.

OK, first of all, they’re a nice enough group, but I get the sense that I would much rather be in either of the other two groups. My group feels exactly like what I perceive this course to be about: a means to believers to reinforce each other, and return to group-think if you’ve questions or doubts. It’s not really interested in honest inquiry or challenge. (Did I mention the very first thing on the very first night was a video of a man in assumed authority telling you why Jesus and his claims are all real, with “proof” no less?) To help solidify this perception was one lady who described a “spiritual” encounter and very, very emphatically told us all that no one, no one, will ever be able to convince her that it wasn’t what she believes it was. Yeah, that’s intellectually honest. Even I have many suggestions of ways in which what I believe to be true could be disproven. I’m willing to be disproven! But you better have something better to offer than trilemmas and near-angry declarations of “what I believe, is true, and you can’t convince me otherwise!”

And then there was the lady who was upset that her son, who she signed up to go with her, didn’t come. Because he obviously needs some straight-and-narrow religion in his life. He evidently attends the local Unitarian Universalist church, which, if you don’t know, is a gay-friendly all-belief-welcoming quasi-spiritual religionish church. This lady went once and to her eyes their gay-friendly quality was the core of what they were and appeared to have an agenda of pushing gayness on the attendants. I’m not kidding. I so wanted to tell her, “Well, gay people have to have some church to go to where they’re actually welcome.”

Anyway, I think either of the other two groups would be better for me because one is headed by a guy who seems very intellectually honest and open-minded, and the other by a guy who in Sunday School I once attended stood up for the Founding Fathers as being mostly deists. He earned huge props in my book for that. Plus, this interesting event:

After we’d all pretty much eaten, an associate pastor who was not one of the “trained” Alpha Course leaders, gave a welcome to us. Before she handed it over to the Alpha Course leader, she lead us in a prayer. The Founding Father guy leader was sitting next to me, and I heard him under his breath go, “No no no no…” and then huff. Then the open-minded leader guy introduced the course and showed the video, and before he broke us off into groups did not do any kind of prayer or anything. Well, OK, not doing something doesn’t prove anything. But I get the sense that despite the first video of the first night (sheesh! Really?), they’re taking seriously the mandate that Alpha Course should be welcoming to believers and non-Christians alike.

So, anyway, my group. There’s one young woman in there that has significant doubts and troubles believing, but she’s going in wanting to be convinced to believe. Otherwise, the group is pretty much a support group for believers who want to find more encouragement to feel justified in what they already believe. It’s not exactly a place friendly to my counters and challenges. Everything I’ve written above went through my head as I sat silent through the video and the group — can you imagine what kind of reception any of the above would be met by no matter how kindly, gentle, and obsequious I expressed it? Especially by people who state outright how impossible it is to change their mind or who conflate a gay-friendly church with one advocating and encouraging homoshex’ality?

Well, I’ll give it another go and see what happens. See if maybe I’m directly invited at some point to share a thought or opinion. Goodness knows I’m not miserly with my opinions on blogs and Facebook, where it’s a completely open and pluralist environment, and reading them is entirely voluntary. But I’m not looking to argue, berate, insult, demean (even accidentally) people in their “home” where they’re expecting belief-reinforcement. So, I’ll bite my tongue a bit more and see what happens. Joy.

It is simply not true that society needs religion. Countries with high rates of atheism tend to have high rates of happiness and social functioning. This doesn’t prove that atheism makes a society work better, but it does show that we don’t need religion to be happy or good.

Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

“You can’t absolutely prove that it isn’t true” is a terrible argument for God. Just like it’s a terrible argument for unicorns, fairies, Zeus, and the three- inch- tall pink pony behind my sofa who teleports to Guam the moment anyone looks back there.

Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Atheists often get called disrespectful, intolerant, or extremist for saying things like, “I don’t agree with you,” “There are flaws in your argument,” or, “What evidence do you have to support that?” If it’s not intolerant to say these things about politics, science, art, or any other topic, why should religion get special respect?

Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

It makes no sense for religious believers to insist that they know what atheism means better than atheists do. If you’re saying “Atheism means X,” and every atheist you talk to says, “No, that isn’t what it means at all,” perhaps you ought to listen to what we’re saying instead of to your own preconceptions.

Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

We are only beginning to understand consciousness. But an overwhelming body of evidence strongly suggests that, whatever it is, it’s a biological product of the brain, with no supernatural component, and no way of surviving death. We therefore should make the most of life while we’re alive.
Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Today’s Atheist Meme of the Day. Pass this on; or don’t; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

Atheists do see life as having meaning. We simply see that meaning as something we create for ourselves — not something handed to us by an invisible god who supposedly created us.

Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

This is amusing: Earlier today I posted a short blog called “Getting Your Attention” in which I mention John Loftus’ observation that it looks like only believers are really interested in converting people and not any omnipotent or omniscient deity, and a quip from another on what would convince him God exists… I just discover that Greta Christina, (the writer and blogger who I take my Atheist Meme of the Days from), has a new essay: “6 (Unlikely) Developments That Could Convince This Atheist To Believe in God”

It’s also amusing that in the fantastic article she mentions how when asked what would convince her, she used to cheat and just refer to “The Theist’s Guide to Converting Atheists“, by Daylight Atheism blogger Ebonmuse — I’m likely to do the same and just point to Greta’s essay.

Spoiler alert: here’s part of her final summary of her list of developments:

Now, some believers will probably argue that my standards set the bar too high. They’ll argue that I’ve created standards of evidence that are obviously not being met: that I’ve created a counter-factual world in which God might exist, but that clearly is not the world we live in.

To which I reply: Yes. That’s my whole freaking point. The whole reason I don’t believe in God is that there is not one scrap of good, solid evidence supporting the God hypothesis. The whole reason I don’t believe in God is that every piece of evidence anyone has ever shown me in support of the God hypothesis has completely sucked. The whole reason I don’t believe in God is that these criteria — criteria that would be completely reasonable for any other hypothesis — are not being met.

As many atheists point out: If God were real, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. If God were real, it would be freaking obvious. If God were real, nobody would be an atheist. Nobody would even disagree about religion. The most obvious explanation for God’s existence not being ridiculously self-evident is that God does not exist. As Julia Sweeney says in her brilliant performance piece Letting Go of God, “The world behaves exactly as you expect it would, if there were no Supreme Being, no Supreme Consciousness, and no supernatural.”