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.”

(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:

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“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.

.

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.)

(Update: I just read Stephen Butterfield’s reaction to this night’s topic — if you have to read just one, read his! It’s much better written and entertaining, and the core of our reactions are almost identical!)

(Update 2: I just discovered my iPhone’s WordPress app renamed my blog post the same as a previous post. I just fixed it. Sorry for any confusion.)

Was thrown for a bit of a loop at first: we were supposed to do the section on the Holy Spirit this night, but evidently the two-part Spirit section is being saved for the “retreat” this weekend. This night we discussed Ol’ Scratch, El Diablo, Mr. Mephisto, Dick Cheney, or, the devil.

Before I get into mocking, er, critiquing this night, a word about this weekend’s retreat. I’m looking forward to, in this extended and casual setting, to maybe get into some real discussions with people. I hope so. On the other hand, being a weekend in which people have to drive for 2 hours and spend half a weekend out in the quasi-woods, I have this slight guilt-pang that makes me not want to ruin anyone’s weekend by being a caster of doubt and skepticism. (In a moment, you’ll see why after this night, that lack of desire to spread guilt is increased.)

Which leads me back to the difference I see between Alpha host Nicky Gumbel and the fellow classmates. I have no problem saying that Nicky seems like one of the nicest fellows you could meet, and I would love to spend a day with him. But make no mistake, he’s the enemy. He’s a promulgator of bad reasoning, uncritical credulity, logical fallacies, and out and out lies. Yes, lies. You can’t be as steeped in Christian apologetics as he obviously is, and not have encountered factual contradictions to the things he’s telling earnest listeners as truth. For example, using Tacitus, Josephus, etc. as “contemporary sources” for the historical events of the gospels, when that’s demonstrably, factually not true.

Now, I don’t put him in the same category of liar and deceiver as most televangelists, TV psychics, and the like — people who are outright scamming others with full knowledge of the untruth of what they’re doing and don’t care. Nicky is one of the believing liars. He has a good heart, he believes what he’s saying, his ends are sincerely selfless. But he uses selective reasoning, rationalization, selective memory, cognitive biases, and cognitive dissonance to just brush aside the information that contradicts what he wants to be true.

And worse, he’s teaching scores of others to do the same.

In contrast, the people he’s preaching to, the people in the congregation in his videos, the people in my class, are innocents. They aren’t apologists who, presumably, are familiar with the counter-apologetics, with religious history, with anthropology, ancient history, biblical exegesis, etc. They’re everyday people who were raised to, if not outright believe Christianity as true, to at least respect the concept and imbue it and its teachers with a position of authority that makes you prone to accepting what they say about it uncritically.

And, more and more as the weeks progress, I’m respecting my classmates more. I still feel sorry (hopefully not in an elitist, sanctimonious way) for them and their belief, but the more I learn about what and how they believe, I have hope. I’ll explain more about this later in the post.

The subject of this session was: How Can I Resist Evil? (It’s funny: earlier that day I read an article that pointed out five things people think is in the Bible, that aren’t — at least not the way people think — including Satan and hell.) Nicky starts out with the claim that it’s easier for people to believe in the devil than it is for them to belive in God. Evidently, because there’s so much pain and suffering in the world, that the evidence is just too clear in favor of the devil’s existance. (Huh. So, what’s that say about the quality and non-hiddenness of evidence for God?)

Nicky makes a lot of claims actually, and I have a diatribe perculating, so I think I’ll try to just state his “arguments” and make a brief reaction, then do a comprehensive summation and reaction.

Nicky (heh, “Old Nick” is an nickname for the devil) says we can know the devil is real because… the Bible says so. Yeeaahh. The Bible also says unicorns and leviathans are real, that representative numbers of all the animals in the world could fit on a boat, people once lived for centuries, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Sorry, I need something a little bit more than the Bible’s claim that something exists.

Another reason to believe in the devil is because Christian through the ages believed in him. *sigh* Christians through the ages have also believed in transubstantiation, but you don’t see me believing the cracker turns into the very literal body of Christ after you eat it. (Yuck!)

And finally we should believe in the devil because of, “reason.” (Iiiirronny!) This goes back to the claim that the suffering in the world makes the devil self-evident. First, yeah, there’s metric assloads of horrific suffering in the world, no argument there! But how do you get from the existance of suffering to “devil diddit!”? You need need to show steps B, C, and D if you’re going to get from A to E. The suffering in the world could just as easily be from Vishnu, of the opening of Pandora’s Box, or a collection of bad karma, or, maybe, I know this is like a wiiild and crazy speculation, but maybe it could also simply be because that’s the way the world happens to work. But, more on that later.

What’s the devil’s goal? Why, to destroy us, of course! Why? Er, because God loves us? Uhm, more on that in the final summary as well.

What are the tactics the devil uses to destroy us? Well, one of the biggies is doubt! No surprise there. Tell people that you have to believe the dogma, claim that faith (belief without good evidence), is the highest of virtues, and that doubt is a tactic of the forces of evil — and you don’t want to fall prey to he forces of evil, do you?! It’s a very devious, insidious, and effective, maintaining-of-belief tactic religion uses. Er, that is, that cults and Christianity uses, at least. Buddhism, for example, actively promotes doubt in its tennents. Buddhism teaches to not take anything it teaches on face-value, on faith. Buddhism teaches you to “kill the Buddha.” But virulent religions that desire more and more followers, universally venerate faith and vilify doubt. And here Nicky continues to promote that meme.

(Again, one of the reasons I resist speaking up in class — more so now than ever. I have no respect whatsoever for the religion, but I respect the people, and I don’t feel comfortable putting them in the uncomfortable position of dealing with the viscious cycle of doubt and guilt that my challenges and questions may induce. A blog is one thing: it’s impersonal and voluntary — you have to come here and choose to read it. At the meeting, I’d be imposing myself upon them. However, after this small group session, I have (as I said), more respect and a little less fear. But we’ll get to that.)

Then Nicky claims that God didn’t want us to know evil. That, too, will come in the summary.

He says that God gave us all things to enjoy (in the pre-Fall existance). Hmm, except free will, if we have no knowledge of good and evil. But that will be addressed in the main rebuttal, also.

Nicky states that the prohibitions God gave us is actually very small. Oh? There are over 600 Laws of Moses and just over half of those are what are called “negative commandments,” which means commands to not do something. Sounds like a pretty hefty list to me. (Examples of the “positive commendments,” rules to do something, include such superior moral commands like selling your daughter to her rapist if she’s unbetrothed, and stoning her if she is married or engaged and no one heard her cry out. After all, just because her attacker may have had a knife at her throat, doesn’t mean she may not have liked it and thus needs to be killed, right, God?)

Here’s a good one: Next Nicky talks about how at the root of the evil that was done in the Garden, the real negative result, was a “break in the trust and friendship” between God and human. I dunno, I think a pretty significant result is the supposed switch from paradise to now a world of perdition, disease, disasters, and man’s cruelty toward man that magically resulted from eating the fruit. The cursing of all humanity for millennia because of the error of two people. That seems pretty significant. And this trust and friendship thing? Yeah, that’s coming up, as well.

The main tactic the devil uses, according to Nicky? Putting thoughts in your head! That’s right. Oh, having thoughts of doing naughty things isn’t itself a sin, according to Nicky (guess he’s never read Matthew 5:28, “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart“), but the thought is what gets us to sinning, so the devil has just planted the seed. Thus the devil is responsible for doubt and temptation — the first is a threat to belief in something that may be absurd if you think about it, and the second is something that all humans have. What a setup!

I guess that’s really all the devil has left to be able to do: create thoughts. After all, God already has the murder, rape, genocide, all taken care of on his own. God, through smiting, floods, commands to slaughter towns and cities, angel of death killing Egypt’s first-borns, etc., is responsible for at least 2.5 million deaths and as many as 25 million. The devil? 10, which was the result of a bet he had with God. So, God, giving Job as much reason as possible to reject him, is as responsible for those as well.

The devil plants doubt; God has psalms praising him for the heads of the children of his enemies being dashed against the rocks, and God’s warriors cutting open the wombs of his enemies’ pregnant women (Psalm 137). The devil creates thoughts; God uses bears to slaughter a group of children who had the audacity to call one of his prophets “baldy” (2 Kings 2). The devil tempts; God praises a man who offers up his daughters to a mob to be raped, and uses their virginity as a selling point no less (Lot).

It’s no wonder the early Gnostic Christians saw God as the evil enemy and Jesus as salvation from God!

OK, stay tuned for the upcoming response to small group; right now, a comprehensive response to the devil’s and God’s actions in the Garden and what’s evil.

(First note that this supposes a literal Garden of Eden and all. Which Nicky obviously believes. If there were no Garden and actual Adam and Eve, then the Christian has a lot more ‘splainin to do in regards to why there’s sin and suffering in the world and God doesn’t do a thing about it.)

So, God creates the universe ex nihilo, out of nothing. Then, what’s he doing with a big ol’ Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? What use has he for it? And moreover, what’s he doing planting it in the middle of his favorite creation’s playground just to tell them No Touchee!? Think about that. That’s like if I were to place a loaded gun in the middle of a kid’s playroom and said, “I’m going to just leave that right there. Don’t touch it, it’ll kill you,” and then walk away. Should I be shocked and amazed to come back and find the children have played with it and accidentally killed each other? Should I be praised for my wisdom for having done such a thing?

Nicky refered to a break in trust and friendship in the Grden. I wonder, is this god even to be trusted in the first place if he’s going to put a Tree of Knowledge in the Garden with quite literally no other purpose than to tempt his innocent children? Gasp! Temptation? That’s the devil’s job! Well, logically, God had to have created the devil if he created everything, so yeah, deception and temptation’s within God’s bag of tricks.

We can stop there and already quite clearly put the responsibility of The Fall on this God’s shoulders. But we can go on….

Let’s say you told a child not to do something, but they did it anyway. What would your reaction be? If you’re moral, ethical, sane, you might be stern with them and give them something of a reasonable punishment, like take a toy away or, if you’re really corporal, give them a smack on the rear. Would you, say, kick them out on the street where there are known killers and pedophiles lurking, give then a kick in the stomach on the way out, and then do the same to all your other children who had nothing to do with the the first child’s disobedience?

No? You’d consider someone who did that psychotic? Well, that’s essentially what God did to Adam and Eve and all their decendents for disobeying him. Eat of the Tree that has no business being there except to tempt you? Why, it’s disease, death, disasters, and all the horrors humanity can come up with for you and your entire species! (And then, when for some strange reason, things didn’t improve, he decides to fix it all by mass genociding the entire world save for a family of…more humans. Wiisse!)

Then, for somehow, God loses his omniscience and has no idea where Adam and Eve are and why they’re hiding. Unless… he’s being snarky and deceptive and acting like he has no idea where they are and why. But more important, his all-knowingness seems to prevent him from knowing beforehand that the kids are going to eat of the Tree? You kind of want to find some way to justify that, yes, God is all-knowing…except he didn’t see that coming! But then, you have a Tree that has no reason to exist in the first place, set in paradise instead of off on another planet somewhere. This God must then either be utterly lacking in any foresight whatsoever, or a complete moron. Or…he planned it all so that he can kick the kids to the curb and blame a serpent.

Speaking of blame, think about this for a moment: Before the eating of the Fruit, the kids de facto had no knowledge of good and evil, right? They were as innocent and naieve as imaginable. So, could they then have possibly known (knowledge!) that is was wrong (evil!) to disobey God? If they were incapable of conceiving of doing wrong, they literally had no idea that what they were doing was bad. And yet, this god smite-kicks them and all of humanity in the teeth for doing something they had no idea was evil when they did it. Psycho!

Here’s something else to think about: God created paradise on Earth before the temptation-fruit we ate. No death, no suffering, all animals vegitarian, presumably. So… why can’t he do that again now? Instead of torture killing himself/his son in a gruesome sado-masochistic blood-worshiping death as an act of forgiving humanity (??!!), why not just snap godly fingers and say, “For I so love the world, all is forgiven! Back to earthly paradise for all!” But instead, we all still live on a world of death and disease and disasters and cruelty. This claim of “free will” is BS, because (putting aside the fact that a god that is omniscient must mean we live in a deterministic universe and thus free will is entirely an illusion), God initially created a paradise where humans had no ability to know of good and evil, effectively eliminating true free will. According to Nicky, God gifted us paradise and intended for us to live pre-Fall. So, logically, any claim that we have to have a deadly world and total free will is meaningless as the opposite was what God originally created and wanted.

“If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to
Then He is not omnipotent.

If He is able, but not willing
Then He is malevolent.

If He is both able and willing
Then whence cometh evil?

If He is neither able nor willing
Then why call Him God?”

~ Epicurus

Imagine, if you will, you are a squire to a Medieval lord, owner of a huge tract of land, with many villages of poor peasants who toil in the fields, wanting nothing more than to live a peaceful life. Say you approach the lord, exclaiming, “My lord, there are marauders in your land! Thieves and killers, riding through and doing evil to your people!” And the lord waves you off and replies, “Let them do as they will, they have that right.” What would you think?

You reply, “But my lord, you are the lord and protector of your lands; why do you let this evil ride about unchecked?” The lord sits on his throne and shrugs. You continue, “And my lord, you have the largest army of footmen, soldiers, and knights in all the kingdom! They can surely eliminate the evil threat at your command.” But the lord says nothing. “We know exactly where they are, the marauders, my lord. It would be nothing for you to have them eliminated, and free your land from this plague of murder and rape and theft!” But the lord says, “I know all that, but it’s important to me to let my subjects do what they will.”

What would you think of this ruler? Who could easily eliminate the criminal element in his land and protect the people, but choses to do nothing? This is the metaphor for the all-powerful god that allows the supposed devil and demons to run as they will through the Earth, doing their evil and resulting in horrible cruelty and suffering, when God could eliminate it with a thought. Like it already once was pre-Fall. What, really, is so great about “free will” that it’s better for the murderer and rapist and molester and terrorist to be able to exert their free will upon innocent victims, when it’s unnecessary? And not even what was originally intended and set up?!

Well, I guess that does it. In summary: Human nature to be tempted is from the devil, doubting belief is from the devil, yet the biblical god is the most evil, cruel, illogical, unreasonable, psychopathic, blood-thirsty, manipulative, deceptive being even written about. I say, you want to resist evil? Avoid the Bible!

Small Group

I was a little disappointed. This session I was really geared up to discuss in class and bring up some questions and… participate. But for pretty much the entire time they talked about Santa (not Satan), the tooth fairy, Halloween, and finally, materialism. (The point being made in the last few minutes of the session that maybe materialism is evil. Amen!)

But here’s the good part: One of the facillitators did start trying to ask questions from the book, and asked something like, “Do you believe occult items like Tarot cards, astrology, Quija boards, are evil and from the devil,” or something like that. And almost immediately, and more than a couple of people, responded, “No.” Including one woman who I was pretty sure would have said they did believe so. From what I can tell, most people in there don’t believe the same as Nicky and most fundamentsalists that demons and the devil acts upon you by using these evil occult objects. Not that any of them ever would use a Quija board, but they just don’t think the devil’s lurking about in such a way. I love Methodists.

It was good to see that faithful Christians that don’t believe in all the “spiritual warfare” rhetoric. That gives me hope, and gives me respect for them. As my wife said at the close of the meeting, “You’re accountable for your own actions — don’t blame evil forces.” I love her!

The only other serious, and on-topic-ish, topic that was brought up, was concern about when a kid discovers parents have been lying about Santa Claus, will they also then doubt Jesus? (Well, according to a lot of atheists who used to be believers — yeah.) I don’t think I caught what explanation anyone came up with as to why Santa is different from Jesus. Something about Santa is a lie parents tell kids expecting the kid to find out, while… Jesus is a… not-lie? parents tell kids expecting them to…not find out isn’t real? That makes all the difference, I guess. Whether or not the parent is expecting the kid to catch the lie or not, if I heard right.

Well, that’s pretty much it. This weekend is the retreat. Pray for me to make it out alive.

I’m going to try something new this time and write my reaction less than 5 days after the event. Like, the next day, maybe. Well, I’ve started it the day after session 6, but I have recordings of Stargate: Universe and Caprica calling me….

(Update: I failed. See mid-way for a bonus Interlude.)

How Does God Guide Us, Nicky attempts to explain in this session. In general, this was a session full of special pleading and bad rationalizations. Which is a shame, because Nicky seems like a real nice guy, but his logic and critical thinking skills are nearly non-existent.

He starts by telling us that the Bible is a clear-cut explanation of what God’s will is. Nevermind that the Bible is neither clear-cut nor direct, and is responsible for a great many bloody conflicts among Christians over how the Bible should be interpreted. The book has been translated and re-translated into English alone scores of times, each one with some significant differences in literal meanings let alone what someone can infer from them. And countless denominations of the one religion have branched off with different interpretations of key passages. Like I mentioned last essay, putting your instructions in the form of a book written by many authors is probably the least wise method of communicating to your loved children, that I can think of.

For an example of how the Bible clearly indicates God’s will, Nicky states the Bible states that “marriage is for life.” (Interestingly, evangelical and conservative Christians have the highest divorce rates, more than any other Christian group, and far more than non-believers. Guess they didn’t get the memo about marriage being forever?) But, as you can see here, the Bible, both old and new T., have instruction for divorce. Plus, polygamy and concubines (consensual and non-consensual sex-slaves) is the norm among the holy men of God. So, you know, marriage for life, one-man-one-woman, not too clear. Plus, I guess it’s not adultery of it’s your concubine, so, you know, loopholes.

Nicky states that as you read the Bible, God will bring pertinent verses to mind — especially if you read the Bible daily. Well, duh. If you’re reading the Bible daily, you’re going to hit upon verses pretty regularly that you can apply to your life. Heck, you could be reading a portion about the history of one of the kings of Israel, and there could be a verse that has nothing to do with general instruction or philosophy, but if you want, you can apply it to your life. The Bible is one giant Rorschach test, there’s so much in there talking about everything, like a horoscope you can kludge anything to fit with your life.

In fact, here’s a test: I’m going to randomly pick three verses and see what they say about me.

1. 2 Corinthians 12:16 “But be it so, I did not burden you: nevertheless, being crafty, I caught you with guile.”

Well, let’s see. Thinking about this in my own life, from a Christian believer’s perspective, I could say that no matter how clever I think I am, God, like Paul, is crafty and can see through my walls and hiding. I should not be so prideful.

2. Daniel 4:25 “that you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field; you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and you shall be wet with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over you, till you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men, and gives it to whom he will.”

That my pride, my following my own will and path, keeps me in a self-imposed exile from God’s glory. And God will keep me in the wilderness until I have humbled myself and am thankful for what I have.

3. James 2:13 “For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy; yet mercy triumphs over judgment.”

Hmm, particularly ambiguous and seemingly contradictory…. Oh! That must mean it’s a very wise passage. Let’s see: Just as I have been without mercy in my hardening my heart to God, God will not show me mercy when he judges me. But if I show mercy, God will forgive all and be merciful.

I could do this all day, pick random verses and, like a horoscope without a sign attached to it, passed around among many people, everything can be forced to apply to you in some way.

Let’s try something else. I’m going to pick another passage at random:

“Do we really have to go through?” groaned the hobbit.

“Yes, you do!” said the wizard, “if you want to get to the other side. You must either go through or give up your quest.”

Wow, that’s actually some pretty good advice — clear and unambiguous. Obviously, this means that if I want to achieve a goal, I must see it through and go where it takes me. If I’m not ready to do what it takes, I may as well give up. (I didn’t say I was going to pick another specifically from the Bible, did I?)

Ah, how about this:

You will feel on top form, in good humor without really knowing why. You will want to achieve something amazing. You will be very attracted by a member of the opposite sex.

Why, I was in a good mood today! And indeed, at work, I’m doing my best to compile a collection of unique and helpful “insights” for our “strategic learning” program. And, heh, when am I not attracted?

Oh, oh wait, this was for Sagittarius today. I’m Pieces. Never mind, this doesn’t apply at all!

Nicky uses phrases through the video like he “sensed” God speaking to him, and he “thought” he understood what God was saying…. That’s the problem with having an involved, personal God, isn’t it? You’re all the time having to guess and assume and sense and do all this slippery, rationalizing to “hear” God and suss what he’s supposedly saying to you. Don’t you think that communication from an all-powerful being with a Plan and Intent would look a lot less like one’s own imagination and wishful thinking?

He says that the Spirit also compels us, and guides us. And that we come to recognize the “voice” of the Holy Spirit, just as one recognizes the voice of a spouse. And yet, pretty much every believer (who’s not on medication for hearing all kinds of voices), still has to interpret events, read clues, try to figure out what the “voice” is saying. When I hear my wife speak to me, like Nicky used as an example of his voice to his wife, I hear her tone and timbre, pitch and quality, and most importantly, I hear the content of her utterance to me. And even more importantly, if I didn’t quite hear or I misunderstood, I can ask her what she said and she can clarify. And no outside observer, witnessing my wife tell me to empty the litterbox, could tell me that what I heard was not a voice and not a message. That is, with the “voice” of the Spirit, not only do you have to guess at the message and even whether the message came from a supernatural intent, but every message from the Spirit looks suspiciously like coincidence and serendipity and pattern-recognition and confirmation bias. Nicky is really reaching trying to equate a spouse’s voice/message with a Spirit’s.

Nicky says we should “test the Spirit” and the message we think we receive. (Some examples he gives as messages: you should give so-and-so a call; and, you should write such-and-such a letter. Huh! Thoughts like that could never just come from your own mind!) But Nicky’s method of testing? Since God is love, (or IS he?!) if the message is a loving one, it’s from the Spirit. Really? That’s the test? First of all, I refute his premise that his Biblical God is love; and secondly, people from all religious faiths have thoughts of love. Is the Spirit guiding all of them too? If so, why bother with being a Christian?

Another way God guides us is through Common Sense. Well, a. all people of all faith can experience common sense, so see above; b. “common sense” is actually a very poor indicator of truth and can be counter-intuitive and lead us to false conclusions all the time.

Interlude – Sunday School

Time for another interlude!

So, it’s nearly a week later; I got side-tracked. Before I get back on subject, here’s a bonus critique of my visit this Sunday to my wife’s Sunday School class. It was actually worse than Alpha Class! With Alpha Class, in the small group at least, there’s a lot of opinions, personal conversation, questions, and admission of uncertainty even! In Sunday School, it’s pretty didactic. When someone asks a question, the teacher has an answer and makes it in an authoritative manner. The only really challenging questions that were asked that caused the teacher to kind of falter and be forced to admit uncertainty, and also prompted him to even praise the question asker — was asked by my wife! She’s so cool.

So, the class discussed Paul’s letter to Romans, chapters 3 and 4, the topic being primarily whether God is justified to judge people, and whether salvation is through faith or works. Heh.

OK, quickfire. Their comments, my reactions:

“God is no longer just the god of the Jews.”

So, why was he the god of the Jews in the first place? Why pick one small, nomadic group of people in the middle of a tiny patch of desert to be the god of for centuries, before deciding “Oh! I’ll be everybody’s god now!” No, we know quite well the evolution of Yahweh: He started out as one of the Elohim of Canaan where the Hebrews broke off of. He, like all the gods of the region, was a tribal god, belonging to a single group of people — not a god of the universe. This is supported by the oldest verses of the OT in which Yahweh acknowledges the existence of other gods. Supported by all the places in the older verses of the OT in which Yahweh shows to be completely non-omniscient. And non-omnipotent. (e.g.: “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.) When one tribe/people/nation overtook another, it was considered their god beat the other’s. That was quite simply the common belief throughout the fertile crescent, and the Hebrews were no different. We know this from extra-biblical archeology, and from clues within the Torah/Talmud itself.

It wasn’t until the kingdom of Israel was established that Hebrew pantheon (the borrowed Canaanite El, Yahweh, Adonai, etc.,) merged into the single Yahweh and became an omni- deity. Still the god of the Israelites, but as the believers changed, so did their god. And when the Christian cult developed, so too did Yahweh, once again.

“Their [the Jews'] belief in salvation was the Law [of Moses].”

Wow. Uhm, comparative religion, 101: The Jews didn’t believe in “salvation.” To the Hebrews, all punishment and reward from God came during their life, and through the lives of their descendants (which is why SO MANY of the prescriptions from God involved cursing of descendants). They didn’t believe in any kind of afterlife, heavenly reward, and certainly no eternal punishment. Strangely, God decided to leave the concept of souls, heavenly reward, damnation, secret from his “chosen people.” At least until some subversive cult rose up, with a horrible misunderstanding of the OT, and started trying to convert as many people as possible.

According to Paul, chapter 3, no one was righteous in God’s eyes, “not a one”! Strange. Abraham was called righteous. Noah was the only righteous man in the world, supposedly. Lot’s righteousness saved him and his family. Anyway, according to Paul, Abraham was righteous because of his blind faith (because there was no Law of Moses during his time. Nice of Paul to think of that.) This, according to Paul, was the crux of salvation: faith. And yet, arguably one of the biggest controversies of Christianity for 2,000 years, has been the war between Paul and James and faith versus works. According to James, faith is nothing without works. If all you have is faith, then you have nothing because your faith isn’t evidenced. Even your reward in heaven would be determined by your earthly works. In fact, according to James, (chapter 2 somewhere as I recall), Abraham’s “justification” (righteousness) was solely because of his works. (Evidently, his willingness to strap his son down to an alter and put a knife against his throat, being among his righteous works. It doesn’t matter that God said “Psyche!” at the last moment — the fact that he would test someone in such a way is despicable and evil, and Abraham’s willingness to do so is also evil and reprehensible.)

And there’s Jesus in the gospels also discussion how one’s actions will save or condemn you, which are many.

I so wanted to bring up this well-known (I thought) contradiction of faith/works, but I didn’t have courage.

Speaking of reprehensible, the teacher brought up substitutional atonement as if it’s the most wonderful thing in the universe! “God’s like, ‘I’ve got this [sin] taken care of; this guy’s going to serve your sentence.’” Where, anywhere else in society, would we allow an innocent person to serve the sentence of a guilty man, and let that man go free, and call that “mercy” or “justice”? (See my earlier post, “Why’d Jesus Die?” for a full lesson on the cruelty and absurdity of this topic.)

“They [the Jews] knew Jesus would come and die for their sins, they just didn’t know when or exactly who he’d be.” (Probably would have helped if Isaiah prophesied his name would be Yeshua instead of Emmanuel, but oh well. Then Amy Grant would have to have had a different hit song among 1980s Christian teens.) No, no. That’s bunk. The Jews did not have any prophesies of the sort. They did have prophesies of warrior-kings who would slay the enemies of Israel; and interestingly, like Isaiah and Daniel, the books we get most of the “prophesies” of Jesus from, these saviors would be described having come in the very book, or would be referring to the nation of Israel rising up. The idea that the Jews were/are waiting for “a messiah” is Christian imposition on Jewish religion that began centuries later  in order to help bolster the claim that Jesus = God and his coming was foretold, and the “chosen people” are just too blind to see.

“You didn’t sacrifice the runt of your flock, you sacrificed your prized animal, or else it’s not really a sacrifice.” In reference to the greatness of God’s sacrifice of having himself killed to satisfy himself. As I said a few blogs before, this too is BS. What was sacrificed, in regards to Jesus? He was tortured and killed, which is no small thing. But then a day later he rises bodily from the dead as if nothing happened. He goes around and makes visits to his disciples. He, despite no record anywhere of this, appeared to hundreds. Alive. And then ascended bodily into heaven to have his place as God/at the right-hand of God for all eternity. Seriously, what the frakk was sacrificed in this?

And thanks to Paul, the concept of circumcision was bandied about all class. Hooray for primitive child genital mutilation! (Don’t get me wrong, the act of foreskin removal isn’t even close the horrors countless girls face still today from female genital mutilation in the Muslim world — not even close! But the fundamental issue is the same: non-consensual and completely unnecessary cutting off of genital pieces off infants for entirely religious reasons. No one can reply to this subject better than Christopher Hitchens:

(forward to him and the rabbai starting at 12:32 [one minute long segment])

Back to the Alpha Class

So, back on the guidance via common sense topic: Nicky claims God will not guide you to marry someone who you don’t find attractive.

*blink blink*

Really? Silly me. I, and 5 billion non-Christians, thought, one tends to strike up romantic relationships based heavily on attraction first. I guess people start considering marriage with people before they realize they’re attracted to them or not?

I guess this statement of obviousness is supposed to represent “common sense.” Score a point there. Except, that in no way whatsoever puts God on a higher probability than basic biological urge and mating attraction.

(It’s really evidently to me that I’m in a particularly impatient, snarky, cynical tone of voice. I want to apologize, but honestly, I can’t. Despite all of Nicky’s sincere niceness, friendliness, good-person-ness, he’s spewing complete unreason and drivel. At best! With things like how God teaches others lessons, and substitutional atonement, he’s teaching people to accept pure cruelty with a smile. And that tends to piss me off.)

Nicky tells a story of a friend who, when he was in college, was in love with a girl. Unsure if it was meant to be, they decided to separate for a few months to see what happens. Then, despite their attempts to not see each other, they happened to run into each other within a couple of weeks, and surely, that was a sign.

I’ll be brief: First of all, cute story. Second of all, any amount of that from 1 to 100% could be fiction. Oh, not that anyone was lying! Intentionally. Be we all know how a story can get slightly tweaked in the telling, made a little cuter, point up a coincidence, made a little more interesting… retelling after retelling, a little more and more. And each time we remember something, a little bit differently, we reinforce in our memory the new version and sincerely believe it. Until years later, the final story could be a great story! And anything from a little, to complete fabrication. It’s an anecdote, I have no way to verify it and no reason why I should accept it at face value.

Cognitive bias is at work in our brains all the time, and it can be counted on more than the accuracy of memory.

There’s a famous experiment a psychology professor performed, which has been recreated in various way since then with the same results, in which the day after the shuttle Challenger blew up, he asked his students to write down where they were and what they were doing and what they felt when they first heard about the explosion.

Then, years later, he contacted those old students, and asked them to recall the same information. What happened? More than half of them remembered their experience with significant differences. Some people’s remembrance was wildly different.

But, here’s the most important part: Many of the people who remembered it significantly different, rejected their own recorded memory from the day after the event! They claimed their recollection then, after the event, was the one that was wrong and their current memory was the correct one!

(This is why circumstantial evidence in court is actually considered more valid than eye-witness testimony. That gray cottage-cheesey mush in our skulls we think records our perceptions and experiences like a digital recorder, is notoriously and deceptively flawed and faulty.)

Nicky ends his sermon with an admonition to not be in a hurry when waiting for God to guide you. After all, he says, God took decades to deliver on his promise to Abraham.

A) Abraham is a purely fictional character; a mythical figure that was a hybrid of Canaanite “father figure” characters, the ancient Hebrews used to teach why their people had many of the traditions they had, and were in the place in the world they were in. Most religious historians accept that even the story of the Great Child Sacrifice switcharoo story was a “just-so” story to explain the shift from human to animal sacrifice the ancient Hebrews had made. B) Abraham didn’t have to interpret signs and feelings to know what God promised — heard the guy’s very voice and had visits from angels who spoke in no uncertain terms. It’s kinda easy to have “faith” when you can actually have a two-way conversation with a walking-talking deity that provides no ambiguity or uncertainty or hiddeness in his existence.

While on the subject of God’s guidance, here’s another brief video that discusses what that guidence is/has been like, Biblically:

OK, almost done here; I have this week’s “Chuck” calling me now….

Small Group

Because I’m in a bad mood, I have to recenter and thus repeat, I like these people in small group. They’re good people. (Good people convinced to believe horrible things and call it good in some Orwellian mental conditioning.) You know how evangelical Christians use the analogy to explain why they’re so in-your-face, of if you know someone is about to be hit by a car, would you not do anything possible to save them? I feel almost the same way in my desire to help people use critical thinking and skepticism. Granted, it’s not as dire as the belief of if I fail, you’re going to be eternally tormented, but I still think it’s very important for people in particular and humanity in general, if we’re to survive, to get rid of religious credulity. So, it hurts, my integrity, to not proselytize skepticism to these people.

Anyway. So, let’s see if I can vaguely recall any of small group discussion….

The subject of whether God has a plan for people was discussed some more. I have in my notes: “It’s easy to see after the fact ‘the Plan’ working.” Take any situation in your life. If you’re a believer, you can easily retrofit the idea of it all happening according to some plan through… cognitive bias! Confirmation bias, cherry-picking, back-filling… there are many ways in which we find patterns in events and create a narrative to explain random, coincidental elements. It’s the way our minds are wired.

The apparently homophobic lady mentioned how one night years ago, she woke up in the middle of the night and felt she was being told to pray for her son in Afghanistan. Come to find out later, he was in a “situation” at that same time, and got out of it.

First of all, remember what I said earlier about memory and story-telling.

Secondly, let’s say the events as they were told happened that way. Think about this: How often do you supposed a very faithful believer feels compelled to pray about someone? Now, how often do you think a religious mother whose son is in a war zone would feel compelled to pray for him? Think about how often someone like that might wake up in the middle of the night, worried and concerned? And think about how often someone in the military in a war zone would find themselves in a “situation”? In my estimation, I would actually find it unusual if the coincidental confluence of wake-up prayer for son in war in a situation didn’t happen!

Someone mentioned something about how people weren’t killed on the side of roads back in the past, when they were younger, like they can be now. My first response was to try telling that to the guy the “good Samaritan” came across! But I also thought, if you read any books by people from the 50s and 60s, you’d know that was by no means an alien concept nor was the fear of that happening non-existent. Just read Flannery O’Connor for one example.

Someone said, if Jesus passed by a stranded traveler on the road, he wouldn’t just drive by! He’d stop and help them. Sure. But then, Jesus was a guy would could smite a fig tree at 20 paces. Can you?

One guy mentioned how any time you think your life is going well, you’re being prideful. OK, that was one moment when I got PO’ed at someone there. How dare you minimize and degrade the good in my life and chide and deride me as someone doing wrong because I’m enjoying the good in my life.

Then I felt bad for them. After all, how much self-loathing and emotional abuse does one have to suffer to believe that feeling good about your life is a bad thing?? And then I recalled all the Christian music, from traditional hymns and even children’s songs, to contemporary Christian pop/rock music that is wall-to-wall with the message that you’re worthless, you’re low and terrible, and not worthy of love and forgiveness, but God gives it to you anyway so you better praise him. What other kind of mindset can you have when you’re so constantly beaten down by such manipulative, abusive, evil, battered-species syndrome message!

Then, the same guy later talks about how before he was saved (during the time of his life he referenced as being “good” and thus prideful for having thought so), he had been drinking beer in the morning and smoking dope, before some Jehovah’s Witnesses visited. He described this, naturally, as if it were his low point in life.

Example: cognitive dissonance. Dude, yeah, if you’re drinking beer in the morning and smoking pot, chances are you’re making bad decisions in your life. And if you are thinking that you’re life is going well, you’re not being prideful — you’re being delusional.

Interestingly, this is the same guy who a few weeks earlier told us that after he was “saved,” he started wanting to be a better, different person. He started doing things differently to be more like Jesus. Uhm, might just be me, but it sounds like you are even saying yourself that you made decisions to change, to do things differently, to improve yourself. And in fact, a great many people all over the world make life-altering decisions, turn over leaves, decide to change their lives, make different decisions, and they do so believing in completely different and even mutually-exclusive religions — or no religion at all!

The underlying, overarching (I loves me the mixed metaphors!) message that everyone subconsciously is confirming, is that “stuff happens,” events look a lot like coincidence, and you can change your own life. Once again, God, his “plan,” his guidance, looks so completely hidden and invisible as to be undiscernible from non-existent.

(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

Well, I discovered a couple of days ago that Hasbro acquired controlling ownership in the channel, and they’re giving the channel a complete makeover including a new name (The Hub) and programming line-up. I took a look at the new line-up, and saw something interesting, but not surprising considering who bought them: the educational programming is being replaced with high quality shows like “Transformers”, “G.I. Joe”, “Pound Puppies”, “Family Game Night”, “Clue”, and the like. Your basic 30-minute product commercials.

I took a look at the shows that my daughter watches on the channel, where they’re made, and their focus, and found this:

• Adventure Camp (U.S. and U.K.): Animal adventure and education.
• Crash, Bang, Splat! (Australian): Science and creativity.
• The Future is Wild (U.S.): Cartoon featuring teens who have wacky and ridiculous adventures in the far far future Earth, way past human civilization and acknowledges evolution.
• Mystery Hunters (Canada): Part “ghost hunter” type fluff but always ending with skeptical conclusions, and part outright skeptical science-based segments.
• Timeblazers (Canadian): A quasi-”Connections” show focusing on historical events and figures, often debunking myths and misconceptions about legends and the origins of things.
• Time Warp Trio (U.S.): Cartoon featuring time-travelling kids meeting historical characters. A lot of fluff and some misconceptions, but occasionally features good info/representations.
• Truth or Scare (U.S.): Completely worthless and credulous “investigative” show on the paranormal and supernatural, with terrible lessons on pseudo-skepticism which always leads to accepting any claim at face value.
• Tutenstein (U.S.): Ridiculous cartoon featuring an ancient Egyptian boy-king mummy getting into wacky adventures.

Eight shows she watches. All the ones that aren’t U.S. made do a good job encouraging skepticism, science, creativity. Each of the solely U.S. ones fall short but at least make a nod toward science, with the one and only intellectually disgusting show being a U.S. program. It’s bad enough that the U.S. programs lag behind the international ones in encouraging education and critical thinking, but now an American corporation that now owns the channel is going to get rid of all of them in exchange for completely mindless product-shilling drivel.

Actually, the upcoming Hub programming is keeping some of the Discovery Kids shows, but all that they’re keeping are the cartoons and live action dramas that don’t feature any science, educational, or intellectual content.

I believe without doubt that capitalism prefers unquestioning stupidity. Oh, I’m not saying that if you’re a conspicuous consumer you’re stupid! I mean, everyone living in the industrialized west are consumers, no matter what education or intelligence level you are. But the less educated, less thinking you are, the more you can be manipulated by crass marketing and be convinced you have needs that only buying more stuff will fill. The less you’ll get involved in politics and try to change the corporatocracy and oligarchy our current system of government is. The more you’ll keep your head down, work 40-60 hours a week to earn other people their profits. The more you’ll buy things to try to placate your growing ennui and discomfort at life.

There’s a new documentary out now, Waiting for “Superman”, which looks at the very serious problem the U.S. is facing with our education system. It sucks. We rank near the bottom of every list of industrialized countries in science, math, and yet we’re convinced by jingoist patriotic propaganda to always respond with “U! S! A! We’re number 1!” and completely ignore the iceberg that’s already ripped a gash along our hull.

We have a serious culture issue, and it’s illustrated by this change in programming from Discovery Kids to The Hub. We in America are ruled by consumerism, by capitalism, and are encouraged to have a mistrust for anything that appears “smart” or intellectual as being “elitist” or “un-American.” You know what? If being educated, competent, knowledgeable, and critical are un-American traits? You can have my citizenship because this country is swiftly sinking into a technologized third-world.

Fictional character Sam Seaborn, on The West Wing, made one of the best speeches ever spoken on that show:

“Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense.”

And Roger Ebert, in his review of Waiting for “Superman”, says this:

“Our nation is willing to spent trillions on war and billions to support the world’s largest prison population rate. Here is my modest proposal: Spend less money on prisons and more money on education. Reduce our military burden and put that money into education. In 20 years, you would have more useful citizens, less crime and no less national security. It’s so simple.”

I couldn’t possibly agree with the character nor the man more than I do.

Before I get into this night’s topic, “How Can We Have Faith,” I wanted to break away for a moment for…

An Interlude: Ideas, Identity, and Debate

I write these posts like I write all my blog posts — very stream-of-conscious. I write as fast as I think it, and I pretty much never edit. What that often means is that my musings tend to get tinged with a goodly amount of emotion and a lack of refinement. And reading through my posts, that often results in a certain negativity, snarkiness, perhaps an insulting attitude. And recognizing that in the writing, I want to state in no uncertain terms: I attack the idea, not the person who holds the idea.

Before the evening began, after we ate, a high school girl asked if she could ask all of us to consider judging at an upcoming speech and debate tournament. I jumped at the chance; it’s been years since I judges debate. When I was in high school, debate (and drama) was my life. I wasn’t great by any means, but I loved it, and it was really the only thing (aside from role-playing games and reading sci-fi/fantasy) that I had any interest in. And, appropriately for this Alpha Course reaction, and my reaction to my reaction, I recall some very important life lessons I gained from four years of debate.

See, in academic debating, you’re given a topic. In Lincoln-Douglas debate, one-on-one debate, (if memory serves) you got three topics over the course of the year, and it would be a “value” position. For example: “It is better to live on one’s knees than to die on one’s feet.” And in cross-ex (policy debate), team-on-team debate, you had one question for the year and it would be more…policy-related topic. For example: “Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially reduce its military and/or police presence in one or more of the following: South Korea, Japan, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey.” I did both kinds of debate. Over four years, I addressed about 16 different topics that I had to explore, examine, construct positions on, find evidence, dissect, and defend. Both sides of the topic, pro and con!

If you want to do well in intermural debate, you have to do well in constructing and defending completely opposing approaches to a question. You have to construct it, examine it, find all the holes in it. Find the weaknesses, anticipate where others can tear it down. Streangthen them, counter them. And then, do it again for the other side and made sure it’s just as strong and deffinsible of an argument.

Naturally, you may find you personally agree with the pro or con side of the question, and be tempted to spend all your effort defending that position. But you couldn’t, I couldn’t. I wanted to win.

So what did this teach me, this duality, this internal dialectic? A couple of things, neither of which would I really realize until years later:

It made me understand there are multiple ways of viewing the same question, and multiple, valid, approaches. Each with their own set of evidence.

And two: don’t take it personally!

When you’re forced to have to embody the position on a question to the point of trying to prove it, beyond a doubt, to a judge, you learn to put aside your personal feelings. You don’t take the attack of the opposing side as a personal attack against you, even if you happen to be defending the position you may personally feel more connection to — not if you want to win. And you never, ever, attack the person of your opponent — you attack their claims, their logic, the evidence. The person is not the target, the argument is.

And now, years later, since becoming a critical thinker, a skeptic, an atheist, politically and socially aware, I find myself in debates and discussions more often than I ever thought I would “in the real world.” And that lesson from high school is still deeply ingrained: attack the argument or the claim, not the person. Even when I allow myself to be emotional, to have “an attitude,” in my mind and in my intent, I’m attacking a position or a claim. If I sound insulting, it’s because I find the claim to be worthy of ire, not the person. Because I don’t believe that a person is the claim.

But I bet you see a problem with that, don’t you? I recognize it. We all do take our claims –our beliefs, very personally. When someone says, “That thing you say you believe is silly, and here’s exactly why in five points and seven sub-points,” that’s insulting. You feel they’re attacking you personally, right? Because, after all, what are you except for the things you believe?

To be fair, I feel that way too. If someone came to me, and said, “Secular humanism is ridiculous and immoral,” I’d feel personally attacked even though they never said the word “You”. So, I understand when people get upset when Christianity is called ridiculous, superstitious, even barbaric. After all, if you say that about “Christianity,” what does that say about “Christians“?!

And that’s where we, all of us, have to toughen our skin. Because we aren’t our beliefs. Yes, we do act upon our beliefs, we do things based on what we think is true. As well we should! But all ideas, all propositions, all beliefs, are, must, be subject to scrutiny and debate and examination. Because some beliefs, some ideas, are wrong. Many are wrong. And when actions are performed inspired by wrong beliefs, Bad Things happen. When people act upon mistaken ideas, Bad Things happen. Children don’t get vaccinated. Proven medicine gets rejected in favor of magical thinking. Life savings are given to charlatans. AIDS and over-population and suffering ravages areas where condoms and birth control are dismissed as “sinful.” Dangerous herbs are taken. Preventable environmental disasters are ignored. Planes get flown into buildings.

Ideas must be challenged, no matter who puts them forward, no matter who says they’re true. Nothing should be taken on faith alone. And when an idea, a claim, doesn’t hold water, it must be jettisoned; and when a claim is demonstrably proven, it must be accepted regardless of one’s biases or politics or ideas of faith.

This is my code, the way I live my life. It’s the way I live with integrity and truth. My goal is to believe as many true things as possible and reject as many untrue things as I can.

And if one wants to do that, to live with integrity, you have to not be afraid to be proven wrong!

Defend your beliefs, defend your ideas, give them good battles and challenge them vigorously! But you have to be willing to recognize when your arguments are shown to be faulty, your logic flawed, your evidence wanting — to do otherwise is to live lies, and worse, to willingly accept lies over truth. I can think of no worse way to live!

I do take attacks on what I believe personally, despite my admonition to not do so. It’s human. But I believe I’ve lived my life with integrity, willing, eager, to be proven wrong. Over the years I’ve changed my socio-political affiliations, a few very significant ways. I’ve changed my core religious beliefs. I’ve changed what I’ve thought about humanity in general. I’ve changed what I believed about science and about “the unseen world.” And about what I thought of spinach. Because I’ve tried defending my beliefs on these topics with great passion and veracity — and when they failed to stand up to scrutiny, I changed what I believed to fit reality — I did not try to conform reality to my beliefs.

And that’s why I say I attack ideas, not the people. Because I know, from personal experience, that ideas are simply things a person accepts, or not accepts. It’s not who they are. People change, ideas change, beliefs (should) change. Ideas are good or bad, people just are.

(There are exceptions, like, as I said, people who actively choose to ignore reality at all costs in order to not just hold onto their pet beliefs regardless of how flawed they are, but who actively seek to convince other people of the beliefs as well. And, of course, worse yet are people who don’t really believe but take advantage of those who do. Televangelists and “psychics” fall in that category. Apologists like William Lane Craig, Dinesh D’Souza, Ray Comfort, and maybe this Nicky Gumbel, fall in the former category. They, I may attack personally.)

But the rank and file, and normal person who wants to believe in what’s true, very likely all the people in this Alpha Course small group, are people who try to live sincerely and with integrity, and I mean them no insult. I do not direct my attack at claims, logic, reasoning failures, at them personally. Because they’re human, and all humans are victims of cognitive biases and logical fallacies. Heck, falling prey to those roadblocks to accepting reality-based-beliefs, is our default wiring! It actually is what makes us human. It’s not not their fault, it wasn’t my fault when I was in the same boat. It just is.

But ideas, claims, evidence, don’t get such a pass. they get the crucible. And I hold nothing back when I attack a claim or bad logic. Ideally, what survives, is worthy of being believed. And that brings you a step closer to truth and a step away from doing yourself or others harm because of wrong beliefs.

Speaking of….

A Relationship With Jesus

Nicky divides this section into: The Word of God, The Work of Jesus, and The Witness of the Spirit. The “trinity!” A concept, by the way, not actually found in the Bible, but was devised as a rationalization 400 years later as the religion’s leaders were having their councils in order to codify the splintered and fragmented patchwork of guerrilla religion, with all their collected conflicting and contradicting gospels and epistles, into a “coherent” and dogmatic religion that would be accepted by the Roman state as an “official” religion with a unified face. Just saying.

Anyway, I’ve already spent too much time babbling tonight, and, to be honest, this night of Nicky’s rogue’s gallery of logical fallacies was pretty all-over-the-place — I’m not going to be too regemented in how I address it. I’m going to take his general comments, some specific quotes, and just give over-all reactions.

Nicky started the segment stating, “You know when you’re in a relationship.” And you know what? You do. (Unless, of course, you’re a stalker who thinks you’re in a relationship and you interpret all kinds of disparate and unrelated signs and signals as indicators of Zooey Deschanel’s love for you… sorry, I got sidetracked.) Nicky would return to this idea throughout the segment, completely unaware of the irony of what he was saying. As an example of how he knows he’s in a relationship with Jesus, he used his marriage as an example. How does he know he’s married? (Married to the woman that he indicated in the audience and the camera focused on for a moment?) He could point to his wedding day. How does he know he’s in a relationship with Jesus? He can point to…the ressurrection.

Let that sink in for a moment. You caught the errors, right?

Relationship A: He can point to the person he’s in the relationship with. Other people can see that person. That person can smile and nod and agree with the claim that he’s in the relationship with her. And he happened to actually be there to witness the event that symbolizes his particular relationship.

Relationship B: There’s no other person that he can see, address, call up and say “Hey, did you happen to set the VCR for ‘The Big Bang Theory’?” No one can see this person, or ask them questions about the relationship. This person can’t smile and nod. He wasn’t there, 2,000 years ago, when an alleged resurrection took place. There’s no photo album of the event, no cake getting stale in the freezer.

I see some problems with this unequivocal analogy. See, this “relationship” with Jesus, is suspiciously more similar with an invisible friend one has tea parties with than a marriage to a living, breathing person who has to pay for a seat on a plane. You can know you’re in a relationship with someone who you can have a conversation with. And I don’t mean the kind of “conversation” where one person does all the talking and then, if they want to hear back from the other person, has to wait for signs and signals that they have to interpret as feedback from the other person.

If I want to interact with my wife, whom I have a relationship with, I can turn to her and say, “Hey, I love you,” and she can turn to me and reply, “Clean the litter box.” On the other hand, a relationship with an invisible being consists of, “Hey, I love you,” and as a reply you have to say, to yourself, something like, “Ah, I feel a feeling of love back…in my heart,” or, “I had a good day today — God loves me,” or, “birds are singing and I hit all green lights, that must be a sign God loves me.” Do you see my point? When you’re in a relationship, with a real person, you don’t have to have one-sided conversations and interpret your own feelings and external signs as feedback, you can just talk to the other person. And unless you’re a stalker (Zooey, loves me, I know she does), or are in a relationship with a really passive-aggressive jerk, they’ll use a similar means of communication to reply in clear, unambiguous, and perceptible by other people means.

Otherwise, the invisible and the non-existent look suspiciously alike.

How else do we know we have a relationship with Jesus? “The promises of this book [the Bible], which are based on facts, not emotions. Emotions change, facts do not.” Yeesh, where to begin. Which facts are unchangeable? The fact that the women found the tomb already open when they got there, or the fact they had to have soldiers roll the stone back? The fact that four gospels recount four different things found at the tomb? The fact that…well, I could go on for hours. The Bible is filled, cover-to-cover, with facts that change within its own covers, not to mention change with reality. According to the Bible, the earth is in the center and he sun moves. Guess that fact changed. The moon produces its own light, mustard seeds are the smallest seed. Those facts must have changed. Terah lived for X number of years, but then actually lived for Y number of years. Slavery is perfectly OK, and you must kill a willful child, the victim of rape in town, and sell your daughter to her rapist if she’s not engaged. These facts are as immutable today as they were 4,000 years ago.

You get my point.

So, Nicky mentions, that Jesus will not force his way into your heart, you have to invite him in. And once you do, he’s there to stay to give you eternal life. I have to wonder, what about former Christians? What happens there? What happened to the eternity thing? The Spirit “taking up residence”?

I know a lot of apologists respond to this by saying, “They weren’t Real Christians ™ to begin with.” Can you think of anything more insulting, demeaning to say? Oh, what you thought you were, what you believed, with all your heart and mind, with devotion and sincerity and earnestness — you were just lying or fooling yourself. You didn’t really have Jesus in your heart.

Yeah, I know, we skeptical non-theists are doing the same thing, telling people you’re fooling yourself. I guess it’s really no better. But I guess while we’re insulting everyone, the problem with one set of Christians calling another set of (former) believers as not real, has a deeper level of insult. We’re saying all believers are fooling themselves; they’re a group of self-fooled people calling another group of formerly self-fooled people insincere and fake, even though the former group is no different from the later. I guess I bristle at pots calling kettles not-black despite the fact they’re both not black.

I really shouldn’t have to respond to this; the callous absurdity really should stand on its own. But I want to say, I know I sure believed I was a Christian once. I know I believed it with everything I was. If I believed it, if I lived it, if I was sincere and earnest, is that not enough to be a Christian? To have had Jesus take up residence in my heart? As well as the millions of people who were just as sincere in their belief? The many, many pastors and preachers even, who so believed it that they gave up their life to this belief that Jesus dwelled inside them, only to find out (often in anguish and despair) that it was a self-delusion. When most of these millions of people, who when doubts and questions and uncertainty began to creep in, would pray and beg and ask for certainty, and answers to doubts. Why would, in such sincere asking and invitation, if as advertised Jesus and The Spirit took up residence, would people deconvert despite the fact that they really, really didn’t want to?

The only options I see are:

A. They weren’t Real Christians ™ and despite what they thought, weren’t really sincere in their desire — which if that was they case, if so many people could think they had a relationship with Jesus but really didn’t, what does that say about anyone who claims to have a relationship with Jesus??

B. Jesus doesn’t actually offer anything eternally, doesn’t answer prayers for strength and faith and answers to doubts, and breaks promises — which if that’s the case, what does that say about this Jesus fellow and this Bible’s “facts”?

C. There isn’t a Jesus, God, or Spirit as described by this book, and everyone who says they have a relationship with their invisible friend is fooling themselves just as much as the many who used to fool themselves until they stopped.

I know which one I think is true. If it’s one of the other two options, that’s not really an all-wise, all-loving deity I’d feel was worthy of devotion and worship anyway.

“The gift [of the relationship/eternal life] is free — but it cost Jesus everything.” OK, I hate to take what feels like a low blow, but, no, not really. It didn’t cost Jesus anything more than a few pints of blood and 36 hours or so. Think about it: If the crucufuxion and resurrection were true, and really happened as the Bible says, here is what must also be true:

• Jesus is God incarnate. At the very least, he’s of divine origin and nature.
• He knew exactly what was planned for him as shown by his “take this cup from me” prayer to…himself(?) (Not to mention all his prophesies.)
• He knew he was going to be resurrected and return to the right hand of God.
• He was resurrected in body, stayed around on Earth for a time making visits and talking to disciples.
• He did arise, as he knew he would be, back to Heaven.

This all means Jesus didn’t sacrifice a gosh-darn thing. He got his life and body back after a day or so. What was sacrificed? Really? He got to continue his preaching for a bit, start his religion, and pop on up to dad/self in perfect heaven. Seriously, what got sacrificed? What price was paid? What was given up?

For there to be a cost, a price, a sacrifice, something important has to be given up, for good, with no anticipation or belief in getting it back. This did not happen in regards to Jesus. He didn’t give anything up for more than a day and a half, and he knew he was going to get it back, he did, and he got more in return, which he knew was going to happen — and even planned for it.

Not only does the concept of “original sin,” the fall of Adam/man, make no sense and embodies a barbaric and psychopathic concept of blame and cruelty, but the atonement theory is entirely devoid of meaning and substance. The very foundation of Christianity, its raison d’etre, is empty and false and pointless. There is absolutely no purpose, need, basis for the very foundation for Christianity at its core. Christianity is a phantasm on top of a fantasy, surrounded by a house of cards.

Finally, from Nicky, we have this gem: “Everybody exercises faith all the time. Sitting in those chairs, you have faith they’ll hold you.” Name that fallacy: false equivocation equivalence. The kind of faith one has in the stability of a chair is not remotely close to the kind of faith needed to believe in an invisible disembodied intelligence that has a personal relationship with humans he blames for their failings despite him being their all-knowing/all-powerful creator. Wee bit different.

I have sat in chairs. I have sat in many, many chairs. The number of times a chair failed to hold me, I think I can count as two, maybe three. I can touch the chair. I can look at it and see how sturdy it is. I can ease myself into it and test its strength. I have observed a great many people sit without failure in a great many chairs. The expectation I have in the ability of any given chair to hold me, while I can not be absolutely 100% certain of its doing so, is so high as to constitute a reasonable and rational belief that the chair will hold.

This is the same for other things I can’t know for 100% sure: the sun will rise tomorrow, I will awaken from sleep tomorrow, the next plane I fly in will take off and land safely, gravity will cause this computer will fall to the floor if I push087)*&7 off&087mylap…. Sorry.

Different levels of evidence and experience cause different levels of “faith” so that “faith” exists on a continuum between Utterly Unreasonable and Without Merit, to Maybe/Maybe-Not, to Near Absolute Certainty. One cannot make any claim they want, with terrible evidence, sketchy experience, bad logic, and claim faith in that proposition is as equally reasonable as faith in the stability of chairs in general.

Small Group Discussion

Ah, small group! A refuge from the inanity of Nicky Gumbel. (How’s that for irony?) OK, seriously, small group discussion time is a lot less stressful… while still being stressful. A lot of thoughtless things are said, irrational claims made — but the group of people there are sincere, nice, friendly people who are just looking for stability in their lives, meaning, contentment amongst a world of suffering and fear. I can’t really blame any of them for their contradictory and/or fallacious statements, they’re no different than me or you or any other human as we’re all wired to be credulous, irrational, believers. Skepticism is a learned ability, critical thinking is a learned skill — if you don’t learn it, you’re not born with it, you don’t have it. It’s just the way we evolved.

Two early humans in the savanna. They see the grass move out in front of them. Early human Abbu-Abbu says, “The grass moved! It must have have been from an intentional agent with a mind. I bet it’s a lion, or a hyena! I’m going the other way!” And the other early human Bamu-Bamu says, “Hmm, I’m skeptical about that grass moving. It could be any number of causes, most likely the wind or even just an optical illusion. Until I have more evidence of what caused it, I’m continuing on.” Which early human likely lived long enough to breed more offspring?

Back in the first few hundred thousand years of human existence, it was just fine to be credulous and believed what the authority figures of the tribe told you. The leaders, the shaman. Not just “just fine,” but your life depended on doing what they said and believing what you were told and no harm came from seeing agency in natural events. But like it or not, (and a great many conservatives hate it), we live in a science-based world of airplanes and atomic energy and mass communication and hydrocarbon fuel burning, and we no longer live in little tribes and villages of like-minded people where we can simply avoid coming in contact with people who don’t believe in the same tribal gods as you. We live in an interconnected world where belief matters, because your actions matter on a scale far larger than just you and your family. We, as a society, as a species, can no longer afford to be credulous and un-critical.

…but I’m back to babbling. What I mean to say, is I have nothing against the small group people. If anything, and I know this sounds condescending and patronizing, but I feel kind of sorry for them. But I have hope. I learned critical thinking and skepticism late in life. There are many, many, I know of who learn it even later. I have hope.

But there, in that group, is not the place for me to try to edumacate anyone. So, dear reader, you get to enjoy the brunt of my venting hot, molten critical think-goo!

So one person in group exclaimed that platitude I’ve long come to despise: “God won’t give you anything you can’t handle.” Before I could roll my eyes, one questioning (but wanting a priori to be Christian) person replied, “Why do some people commit suicide, then?” I was so proud. To which the original speaker said, “That’s not God.” Yyeeaahh. There’s the old double-standard. If it’s good, it’s God’s doing. If it’s bad, God had nothing to do with it. If a tornado killed eight but spared a person who survived in the rubble, God is responsible for the miracle survivor, but God’s neither blamed for the tornado nor for not saving the other not-so-miracle-worthy victims.

I’ve expounded on this before, and no doubt I will repeatedly, you can not have an all-knowing, all-powerful uberdeity, and at the same time absolve that deity of responsibility for all the suffering that happens on equal terms with the credit for all the good-despite-the-summering you want to attribute to him.

Many agreed that having faith, believing and accepting Jesus, makes you a better person. It made them better people. Some continued to explain that after deciding to be better Christians, they wanted to be better people. Hmm, you don’t think that their being a better person happened at all because they wanted to be a better person, do you? I mean, it’s not like they actually said they made decisions and wanted to change or anything.

Oh wait, they did!

See, funny thing. A great many of the 6.5 billion people on the planet are good people, happy people, doing good things and making ethical decisions. Which is funny when you remember that 5 billion of that 6.5 are not Christian. And, if there were something special, powerful, spiritual, mystical, certain about becoming Christian that makes you be a better person, naturally, one should be surprised to hear that: the majority of people in American prisons are Christian, there’s higher divorce among Christians and even more among fundamentalist Christians, “Christian nations” like the U.S. have as much or more crime and social deterioration as non-”Christian nations.”

Conclusion: Being Christian has no effect over whether you’re a good, or better, person. Making the decision for yourself to be such, is what makes the difference.

Hmm, the homophobe was back again this week. She’s the one person I have actual negative feelings about, for the person herself and not just the things she says. She said this time, “God is the potter, we’re the clay; we don’t have a right to question if we’re smashed by the potter.” Wow. How authoritarianly amoral is that. That’s one of William Lane Craig’s favorite canards: what is right is right for no other reason than because the guy who could kill you says it’s right. I’m actually not being facetious, this is what he believes (and evidently many ordinary Christians as well). Translation: Might makes right.

Odd that the same people who think this way have this silly thing against the likes of Stalin and Mao and Kim Jong Il. I mean, this is dictator apologetics. If the guy who has the power to kill you, ruin your life, lets you live only because he hasn’t decided to kill you yet, is to be worshiped and followed because he has that power, where’s the morality in that? The love, relationship, devotion? It amazes me that people can say one moment, “God wants a relationship with you and loves you,” and the next minute say, “and he has all the right and power to smash you and kill you and you can’t question it.” What kind of relationship is that?!

Oh yeah, that abusive husband and battered-wife-syndrome relationship I spoke of last time.

I saw Kirk Cameron’s “Fireproof” a couple of years ago (*shudder*), and there was a scene where the dad was trying to get through to his non-believing son. And he tells him “God’s love and forgiveness is endless!”, and literally two minutes later he tells him that God won’t forgive forever, when you die his wrath will be his to have. I can’t grasp the cognitive dissonance this belief demands.

Anyway, after the potter/clay Might Makes Right dictator’s love lady said what she did, a few people is class made disagreement and objection noises, and I was gladdened by that. Although, it was a disappointingly mellow disagreement. I think people are working out the problem with having an all-powerful uberdeity and at the same time one that’s not responsible for smashed clay.

One of the final issues of small group actually addressed the idea of an all-knowing God. Someone mentioned something that raised the question whether or not God saw it coming. Someone brought up the notion that “God learned” to do things differently. (An idea The Wife really latched onto; hate talking for her, but I believe she’s really big on the idea that God has learned and evolved over time, from Testament to Testament.) But the problem with that, is that that precludes any chance of God being omniscient. If God is all-knowing, he can’t “learn” because he already knows all. And a non-omniscient god is not really a god that I think we should be looking to for wisdom or morality.

I mean, if this is a god that despite creating the universe, didn’t know enough to put in the Bible, his revealed book of wisdom and rules to live by, “Hey, slavery, seems cool right now, but I’m kinda thinking that’s not a good idea. Oh, and don’t kill your kids, whether because they’re disobedient or because they were raped, doesn’t matter. I see that as being a no-no in the future. Pfft! Screw the future, that’s just plain wrong, you know. Oh, and uhm, seems like killing animals is all fun and stuff, but I see myself one day coming down to have a really bad weekend in order to let you all, stop… killing animals, I guess — but why wait 2,000 years, I’ll just do it now! Find me a virgin…. Wait! I’ll just decree by fiat, no dying (however temporary) needed, that all are forgiven because I say so– Wait. No, gimmie the virgin. Sorry, maiden. No, virgin….” …if he didn’t know enough to put the proper stuff in the Bible to begin with, or DO the proper stuff to begin with (e.g.: to avoid genocidal flood, or even sin-prone humans), why is he even worthy of worship and be trusted with the whole eternal-punishment-for-finite-life-of-non-Christianity-being post-mortem judgement thing? Or any decision people who believe in him say he wants?

Of course, that explains why in many places in the Bible, especially throughout the Pentateuch, God seems to be very un-knowing and ignorant of a great many events and facts. From anticipating his completely innocent humans would eat from the Tree he negligently put among them, (like a parent who would put a box of knives and glass shards in a room of toddlers), and that humanity would grow “wicked” and need a good mass-murder via a world-wide flood because somehow that’ll learn ‘em, to needing to tell the Israelites to bury their poo so that when Yahweh walks among the camp he won’t be surprised by it, to not knowing the Canaanites would have iron chariots and thus be unable to stop them for the Israelites….

…but then, the Bible also has a great many passages that says God knows all, he knows the heart of every man, he knows the end of time as he knows the beginning, he knows all events before they occur, and he empowers those he chooses with prophesy so they can impart bits of what God already knows will come to pass. So, you know, we’re left with contradiction — imagine that.

(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.

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.

“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.

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.”

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.”

“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.” …

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.