Jen from BlagHag.com posed a really good question today on her blog:

“If you knew God was real, would you actually worship him?”

It’s an interesting question, though not exactly a fair one. A fair question would be, “Is there anything that could convince you (a) (G)od was real?” I could unequivocally answer that with a “yes, of course.” I’m a skeptic, not a bull-headed cynic. But as for worship this deity? Oh so many equivocations!

The real question is: What version of God are we talking about? Are we talking about Morgan Freeman God from Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty? Because that version of God seems almost worship-able. Though, ironically, that version of God seems like someone who doesn’t really need people to worship him, and would most certainly not send people to eternal torment for the crime of not worshiping him.

The more someone does not demand and require you to love and adore them on threat of pain and punishment, the more worthy they are of being loved and adored.

But if the question must be limited to the Biblical god, the question becomes nearly impossible to answer because the Biblical god itself is impossible. The El/Elohim/Adonai/Yahweh character is so fractured and schizophrenic as to be self-contradictory. He’s presented as being omniscient, and also having human-like limitations of knowledge and upcoming events. Omnipotent, and also woefully impotent. Any incontrovertible proof of the Biblical god’s existence would necessarily have to show God to be only one version of the many that is contained in the Bible.

But, in general and predominately, the god depicted in the Christian Bible is a vile, bloodthirsty, capricious, psychopathic, cruel, deceptive thug. He’s no more worthy of worship than a tyrannical dictator would be. Or a stalking psycho, who demands your love else he’ll kill you, is worthy of love. This is a character that delights in psalms that praise bashing infant skulls against rocks, that subjugates women as property and condones slavery, that commits genocide and orders others to commit genocide for entirely immoral reasons, that lies and deceives.

If God, in any version that adheres in any significant way to the Biblical god, were proven without doubt to exist, I would not worship this evil creature. It wouldn’t be worthy of it any more than Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Pol Pot, or a psycho stalker would be worthy of worship.

And the fact that this Biblical god would, presumedly, have the power and ability to smite me doesn’t make the tyrant worthy. Having created me and having the power to kill me does not inherently make a creature worthy of love and adoration if their ethics and behavior is schizoid and their love is dependent upon threats of torture. They’re worthy of fear and loathing.

If this god was not omniscient, as some Biblical passages (and pure logic) suggests, then, like a subject under Stalin’s USSR or the East German Stasi, I might pretend worship in order to save my skin. Although, I’d like to think I’d have the integrity to refuse. If he is omniscient, well, he’d know I’d think he was an evil thug, wouldn’t he, and there’d be no sense in pretending.

Fortunately, the Biblical god is simply impossible. At least, any creature that contains even half of the qualities as described by the Bible. Might a deist god, an uninvolved and non-personal creator god, exist? Maybe. But the universe looks and acts exactly as it would if this god did only set things in motion and was nothing like the god of scripture. In which case, it wouldn’t seem that kind of god cares about worship anyway.

The Iron Chariots Wiki is a fantastic collection of knowledge, info, facts, resources that serve as a “counter-apologetics.”

According to the site:

Iron Chariots is intended to provide information on apologetics and counter-apologetics. We’ll be collecting common arguments and providing responses, information and resources to help counter the glut of misinformation and poor arguments which masquerade as “evidence” for religious claims.

The complexity of issues surrounding religion ensures that any proper assessment requires us to delve into a number of philosophical, historical and sociological topics…

They got the name for their site from this verse:

“And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron - Judges 1:19″

(Kinda makes you wonder, eh?)

Anyway, I came across this comprehensive analysis of the Sermon on the Mount. As a Christian, like most Christians, I had always thought of it as the greatest example of divine wisdom possible. And, like most Christians, I never really gave it much more thought than that. Since losing my religion, I’ve done more Biblical study than I ever did as a believer, but this part of the NT has escaped my attention up to now.

This Iron Chariots investigation really makes a person question how anyone could really hold the Sermon up as an example of inspired wisdom, much less divine. At least, anyone who’s really read it. The Wiki uncovers a mess of contradictions and bad advice just from a superficial reading — and they don’t stop at just a superficial reading.

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.”

John W. Loftus has a brief post in his continuing series “Reality Check: What Must Be The Case If Christianity is True,” about God getting your attention. He makes a very good point in revealing that there is no objective evidence that an omnipotent and omniscient deity is trying to get the whole world’s attention, despite scriptural claims that he’s quite capable of doing so. In actuality, the fact that his believers are doing all the work of getting peoples’ attention, and not doing that great of a job at it either, is rather telling in regards to if not the existence of said deity — then at least his actual interest level in the whole endeavor.

It reminds me of Matt Delehany (sp) of the Austin TV/Internet show “The Atheist Experience” who often responds to the question by believers “What would it take to convince you God exists,” with something like “If there is an omniscient god, he knows exactly what it would take to convince me, even better than I know myself.”

From today’s Be-Attitude, short and to the point: A Perfect God Created a Perfect Heaven, Why Then Create an Imperfect Universe?

John Loftus, (former evangelical preacher and theology student who’d studied under the reknown Christian apologist William Lane Craig), author of the thought-provoking book, Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, (and edited the recent collection of essays, The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails), has an interesting blog post today:

“Christianity is a Cultural By-Product and That’s All it Is”

“… I say this evolutionary development looks entirely like the human quest for knowledge–that it doesn’t look as if there is any divine mind behind this human quest. If Christians had faith in any particular era of the past they would believe what they did and that God led them to their beliefs. In this era they say what they do because they live in this era. And although they would reject the theologies and moralities of the past they still think there is a divine mind behind this quest.
[...]
Christian, you believe what you do now. But it is patently obvious that what you believe now is not what the earliest Christianities did, nor the what the Medievals did, nor what the early moderns did, and it won’t be what future Christianities will believe either. You say there is continuity but we must ask if earlier Christianities would embrace you or excommunicate and kill you for what you believe, and we know the answer to that. …”

Greta Christina is the source if my “Atheist Meme of the Day” posts, and today she has an article: “Why Did God Create Atheists? — If God is real, and religious believers can perceive him… why is anyone an atheist?”

There’s really not a thing in this article I don’t agree with!

… “I want to understand the world. I care about reality, more than I care about just about anything. If there really is a God who created everything, who guided the universe and the process of evolution so conscious life could come into being, who animates all life with his spirit — I bloody well want to know about it. I don’t want to be flatly wrong about one of the hugest questions humanity is faced with. In my years as an atheist writer, I keep asking believers again and again, ‘Do you have some evidence for your belief? If you do, please tell me about it. I want to see it.’ And I’m not being snarky, or baiting them into a debate I know they can’t win. (Well… not mostly.) If I’m wrong about this, I sincerely want to know.” …

It’s Everybody Draw Muhammad Day today! Because depicting Muhammad is severe enough of a crime to fundamentalist Muslims that people who have done so have been attacked, beaten, even received death threats.
PZ Myers at Pharyngula posted “Violence is not free speech”, decrying the asinine violence and includes a video of a Danish cartoonist being attacked (he’s not harmed) at a university while giving a talk, appropriately enough, on free speech.
Hemant over at Friendly Atheist explains the reasons why we should all draw Muhammad quite well — I won’t belabor the point (any more). He also includes a compilation of Muhammad drawings; I like the recursive blasphemy of Muhammad drawing himself, and the three identical stick figure one.
Well, here’s my Muhammad doodle:

No, he’s not flying. It’s just him hanging out, chillin’.
That’s enough to be blasphemous, which is patently ridiculous, I don’t feel it’s necessary to, say, have him be smitted by the Flying Spaghetti Monster or doing something gross. The point is to point out the absurdity of being labeled heretic, apostate, evil, insulting, blasphemous, for doing nothing more than innocently drawing a religious figure. Going out of my way to depict the figure as a dog, or a rapist, or particularly ugly or cruel looking, might be free speech which is also perfectly defensible, but I think detracts from the more reasonable message that religion is not universally sacrosanct and people who do not believe should not be victimized by whatever ancient and barbarous rules the believers follow.
It’s enough for me to say, “I don’t believe in Yahweh,” I don’t need to go out of my way be rudely insulting about it.

(Kind of behind and need to catch up –this may be Atheist Meme of the Half Day for a couple days.)

If religious believers can’t say what evidence would change their minds — if nothing could possibly persuade them that their religion was mistaken — then it’s unfair for them to accuse atheists of being close-minded and unwilling to consider other possibilities. Especially since most atheists *can* answer that question. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

If an idea is good, it should be able to withstand questions and criticism, and should even welcome them. And that’s just as true of religion as anything else. When believers passionately insist that religion should be above criticism, it doesn’t make the God hypothesis look stronger — it makes it look weaker. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Not believing in God doesn’t require 100% positive proof that God doesn’t exist… any more than not believing in unicorns requires 100% positive proof that unicorns don’t exist. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

If you care whether the things you believe are true, you need to ask whether those beliefs can be confirmed or verified. And that includes religion. Religion is not a subjective experience that’s true for some people and not others — it’s a hypothesis about the external, non-subjective world. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.