“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.

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

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

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

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

Wait, I’m not sure you did take a minute to pause and think about it. Go ahead, I’ll wait for you.

OK, if you do believe in hell, go ahead and skip right to the link below. If you are a Christian but don’t, take a second to realize that you’re in a minority both now and most certainly in 2,000 years of Christian belief. You’re like a Democrat who thinks Reagan had it right, or a Republican who believes in socialized healthcare for everyone. Keep in mind that most of your fellow Christians do believe in a literal hell, then read the page linked below:

• Do Christians realize they will see people burning in hell from heaven?

Finished? If so, that’s all I really wanted from you is to read that and think about it a little bit. You’re free to go.

However, I do, of course, have some of my own thoughts on the subject if you’re interested….

First, to the believers in hell: How do you justify its existance? Yeah, it’s in the Bible so it must be true, yeah yeah, end of story. But the Bible says a great deal of things, most of which you likely ignore–so why hang on to hell in context of a god that’s all-loving and mercy and just?

Well…unless you’re one of those like Pastor Fred Phelps and his followers who revel in the belief that God is hate and hates the world, then I guess your belief in hell is internally consistant. Uhm, you can go now.

But back to you loving-god/hell-believing Christians, how does this make sense?

- God creates humans to be capable of sin.

- God allows sin to take place.

- God sets up a place of eternal horrific torment, a punishment literally eternally unequal to the crime, that’s the default destination for the souls of theses flawed creatures he created (creatures who didn’t ask to be created, much less in a “world of sin”).

- To avoid this far excessive default punishment, you have to believe the creature who set this situation up loves you and you love him.

Now, please explain to me how this is not extortion at best, and sadistic cruelty about a million miles away from “loving, just, and merciful”.

Also, please explain why it took this god 4,000+ years before he decided to actually let anyone know about hell, before he decided to suddenly spring it on humanity. (To understand what I mean, keep reading.)

Alright, non-hell-believing-Christians, thanks for waiting. So, why do you believe in this Jesus of the Bible fellow, but buck the whole entire theological reason for him to even exist at all? That is, to be the substitutional sacrifice whose spilled blood pleases God enough to let his sucky weekend be the exchange for your eternity in torment?

Well, you’re in the minority, but your numbers are quickly growing. The reason, I suspect, is because after 2,000 years of simply accepting the paradox of a loving god who casts his “children” into fire, Western humanity is finally realizing that’s seriously effed-up! To use the whole “father” metaphor Christians love, the whole concept of hell is like a father who has a child who keeps getting into the cookie jar no matter how often dad says “no”. So, dad one day gets tired of it and hands his daughter over to a band of thugs he knows of, fully knowing that they’ll rape her and beat her and torture her and leave her broken body in a shallow grave on the side of the road.

Those of you Christians who don’t believe in hell probably never conciously thought of it like that, but subconciously knew it. An all-knowing, all-powerful overgod who created literally everything and is responsible for judging souls and what happens to them, can’t possibly have a hell and still be the god of love, justice, charity, mercy, etc. Good for you!

But you’re not off the hook.

You use this Bible as your source for guidance in what this god wants, his will and instruction, you pull verses from it to prove god is love, in fact–you’d have absolutely no knowledge of the god of Abraham and his self/son Jesus without this book. However, the book very plainly describes the existance of hell.

Now, the current popular non-paradise afterlife belief is obliteration, and there are a handful of Bible quotes that seem to support that. Here is a list of passages which can be used to justify both hell and obliteration:

• Is There A Hell?

Well, what do you think? Let’s forget for a second that the Bible is filled with self-contradictory passages, the hell passages seem pretty specific and straight-forward while the obliteration ones sound euphemistic for the fate the left column describes. If the Bible is to be believed en toto, to reconcile these two columns, it makes a lot more sense that the right-side is the more general and metaphorical side while the left is more literal–doesn’t make much sense the other way ’round.

Remember the story in the BE-Attitude link of Jesus talking about Lazarus and Abraham, and the torment and inability to cross the chasm. An oddly specific and detailed story to be a parable about paradise versus just dying.

But, I can see another reason why believing in hell is tough to deal with (as if a loving god tormenting you for eternity for the crime of his creating you flawed and prone to sin in the first place isn’t enough). There’s no precedent for it in Judaism. You know, that cultural religion that Jesus belonged to, is responsible for the Old Testament including the Commandments and supposed prophesies of Jesus, and tells of God’s Chosen People and their search for/bloody taking of God’s Promised Land? According to Judaism, there’s no hell. You get whatever blessings or curses due to you in this life, and applied to your decendents, not in any afterlife.

Now, this seems like a rather big thing to just kinda forget to tell your Chosen People about. Did God forget, or did Moses or the prophets forget to relay the message? Was God dictating The Laws to Moses and they get skipped?

“…but if the victim of rape is a virgin, then the rapist may pay her father her cost and she then must marry her rapist. Also, if a non-virgin is raped in town but no one heard her cries, she must be stoned to death along with the rapist. Oh, before I continue to give you My Laws, Moses, I need to tell you about this little thing where when you die, my mercy ends and I send you to eternal torment…for eternity. To be tormented. I dunno, some people might consider that a big deal, I guess. But it’s OK, in four thousand years I’ll send myself through a virgin to have a really sucky weekend before I return back to heaven as if nothing happened, and that will give you all a chance to avoid my, I mean, the hell. Somehow. Yeah, I don’t know exactly how that’s supposed to work either–I’m just hoping no one questions it too much.
OK, where was I…. Oh yeah, shrimp and the gay buttseks–both are abominations….”

Yeah, based on the blood-soaked attrocities, genocide, laws, cruelty and capreciousness of OT Yahweh, I could see hell as being perfectly in line with this god’s modus operendi. But, it’s a concept foriegn to His Chosen People until a small group of cult-like believers of this Jesus fellow started writing about eternal damnation and paradise.

But I guess some people even today get off on the idea that they get to be up in paradise while the people who didn’t believe in god in the same way as them get eternally tormented. To them, paradise is that much moreso knowing that.

But what about those of you who believe in hell but find it absolutely cruel and terrible? Think heaven will be heaven knowing most of the humans that ever lived, including many friends and family, have been cast away and sent to the eternal flames? Or do you hope and pray that once you’re up there, you’re knowledge of this is blissfully removed like a lobotomy?

Over the couple frigid weeks I’ve seen more than a few comments on the Intertubes mocking “global warming” because of the unusually cold weather. A few on Facebook, some on Twitter, a few blogs, and even a Web comic I follow made a snarky global warming mock.

If the mockery is meant as an ironic joke, I tee-hee right along with it. But I suspect that most, if not maybe all, of the comments I’ve seen have been meant as a sincere dig at the idea of global warming. (Interestingly, nearly every one has been by someone who appears to hold a “conservative” worldview. I have suspicions why, but for this post I’m only going to focus on science, not socio-politics.) And, naturally, when you have a concept called “global warming” and yet you’re in weather that freezes skin within minutes, it’s only natural to play with the apparent contradiction. But I think it’s important to understand why this is not a contradiction at all.

The most important thing to remember, (whether it’s in this case or other topics that involve complex trends, theories, or processes), is to not confuse a data point with the trend. That is: the particular weather in a particular area on a particular day, with the overall average climate for the entire planet over the course of decades. See the huge difference in these two things? The weather for, say, southwest Missouri, or even the entire middle America, for two weeks in 2010 is just one tiny data point in a trend for an entire planet over the course of 100 years. An extremely cold patch of weather does not disprove the concept of “global warming” (which is a subset of “global climate change”) any more than a very hot patch proves global warming! An unusually hot summer is also just a data point in the trend and should not be examined independently when a much larger trend is being investigated.

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4169

The best part of the whole thing, though, is at the end when he summarizes thus:

“That’s what I think is the biggest tragedy of those who accept the supernatural: They’re missing out on the wonder of science. When you look at a 30-ton block of coral and conclude that magic must be the only way a single small man could have moved it, you have stopped trying to learn, and you miss out on a truly delightful and creative application of mechanics.

When you dismiss medical science because of its imperfections and turn instead to magic-based therapies, you abandon any meaningful understanding of how your own body actually works.

When you settle on a conspiracy theory as the explanation for what happens in world news, you effectively stop searching for other sources, and you miss out on the real causes and motivations that drive what happens in politics and economics.

The answer is to be more skeptical, and to require a higher standard for what you believe. Keep on thinking, keep on questioning….”

So, a couple of online articles have colluded to make me comment on the subject of Bible literacy:

• Oldest known Bible goes online
• Why a Real ‘Year of the Bible’ Would Horrify Its Sponsors

The first article discusses how the oldest known collection of books of the Bible, once part of a single collection which has since been pieced and parsed here and there, are coming back together as an online collection. What’s interesting about this is that it points up something most Christians don’t realize: There is no “original Bible.” This earliest collection was compiled 400 years after the last of the known gospels were written. Think about how long ago 400 years ago is from today…1600 AD. The Renaissance, more or less. From then to now is about the same amount of time that passed between the events depicted in the New Testament were supposed to happen and when the various and sundry stories were collected into one book.

Well, I’m fudging a little: It was about 350 years after the events that the more powerful and connected Christian leaders, who fought tooth and nail to eliminate many many of the less politically powerful Christian sects (like the Gnostics), got together under order of Emperor Constantine and decided what books, gospels, and epistles were to become “official” religious canon…because Constantine didn’t like all this bickering and fighting among the diverse orders of the religion he recently became a part of. Even by that time, 300+ years after Christ, the existing gospels and Pauline letters were copies of copies and passed around as individual documents. There is no original Bible, and more important, there is no original of any single document which makes up any of the Biblical books.

Not only that, but this article also discusses a topic very troubling to most Christians but is old hat to any Biblical scholar: The various gospels and letters have been changed and edited over time, so that what we have now in most Protestant and Catholic Bibles is not what was is depicted in Bibles 800 years ago and even more so what existed 1600+ years ago! One of the big examples is the ending to the Gospel of Mark (which is the earliest written gospel, on which Luke and Matthew are heavily based and even copied from). In the earliest known copy of that story, it ends with the women running away from what they encounter at the tomb and the Gospel saying they told no one of what they saw. Some decades later, a coda was added to make it fit more in line with some of the later “official” gospels like Luke.

Then, in that second article linked above, “Why a Real ‘Year of the Bible’ Would Horrify Its Sponsors,” we read a bit about how Christians today really have little idea what’s in this “Word of God” they revere:

A 2000 survey showed that even 60 percent of those chapter-and-verse-quoting Evangelicals thought Jesus was born in Jerusalem rather than Bethlehem. Similarly, a 2004 survey of high school students found that 17 percent thought “the road to Damascus” was where Jesus was crucified and 22 percent thought Moses was either one of Jesus’ 12 apostles or an Egyptian pharaoh or an angel.

When I was a kid and a teen, growing up Christian, I was encouraged to read and study certain very important verses. Sunday School, church camp, I encountered the same usual verses over and over, and invariably they were the verses involving God loving the world, Jesus is the one and only way, etc. Interestingly, I never encountered passages like these:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household.
Matthew 10:34-36 (RSV)

Or Matthew 12:46-50 in which Jesus ignores and refuses to recognize his own family. Or Matthew 5:18-19 and Luke 16:17 where Jesus tells his followers the old Law of Moses is the Word of God and none must break them. Which makes things awfully awkward for Christians who want to claim we don’t need to kill the married victims of rape (Deuteronomy 22:23-24), nor sell our virgin daughters to their rapists (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), nor sell daughters into sex slavery (Exodus 21:7-11), nor eat shrimp because they’re an “abomination” (Leviticus 11:9-12), nor kill our children if they disobey (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). Just to name a few of the hundreds of fun rules and laws God gave Moses and his other prophets.

See, I was like most Christians who only knew the John 3:16-type stuff of the Bible, until I was 17 or 18 and decided if I was going to be a good Christian, maybe even become an apologist or Biblical scholar, I should actually read the whole Bible. That’s when I read all about how God condones slavery and neither he nor Jesus (nor Paul for that matter) say a single word against owning people as property. In fact, women are property in the Bible from beginning to end, and owning slaves is fine for any good follower of Yahweh. I read how God sent bears to slaughter children who made fun of one of his prophet’s baldness (2 Kings 2:23-24) (not to mention the countless other instances in which God kills children en mass, such as the innocent first born of Egypt instead of giving Pharaoh a Paul-like Road to Damascus vision and change of heart), and the song of praise to God for killing children like this gem:

O daughter of Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall he be who requites you with what you have done to us! Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!
Psalm 137:8-9 (RSV)

Praise be to the God of Love and Forgiveness.

The long way ’round to my point is this: Actually reading the Bible started me in realizing that the Bible is nothing more than a collection of myth and history (most of it fabricated) of an ancient patriarchal and superstitious Bronze Age people who were a nomadic offshoot of Babylonian culture. Followed by the stories (mostly copied from various older Near/Middle Eastern myths [see mainly Mithra, Horus, Dionysus and Krishna]) about an existence-questionable cult leader who believed the world would end within his followers’ lifetime (Mark 8:39 to 9:1, Mark 13:30-33, Matthew 16:28, Matthew 24:34, Luke 9:26-27).

And the history of the religion, why it’s survived this long instead of going the way of countless other religions that sprang up in that teeny-tiny patch of dirt, aka: God’s Promised Land, is because a Roman Emperor decided he wanted to add another religion to his collection of religious beliefs, of which he had many, and thus gave Christianity political protection. Followed by another Roman Emperor (Theodosius I) who spread it across Europe, foisted upon Europeans at the point of a spear. When you’re forced to convert or die, the religion will tend to take hold.

Back to the original topic: most Christians have not a clue what’s in the Bible. Like the fundamentalist Republican Representative who wanted the Ten Commandments displayed in Congress, most Christians can’t even name them. Well, of course the problem there is that in the Bible, as opposed to the mass produced porcelain replicas you find at Christian gift shops, there was actually two different sets of Commandments given to Moses–the pre- and post-broken tablets. Evidently God changed his mind about some stuff in between. Oh, and neither set were actually ten of then, but who’s counting. Most people who check the box marked “Christian” on forms do so simply because that’s how they were raised to answer the question, and have maybe been armed with a verse or two and some nice stories about an Ark, a manger, and a cross. Most Christians have no clue about the actual blood-soaked, misogynist, psychopathic, stone-age level of morality and ethics found in the book they believe to be the Word of God.

Read the whole thing sometime, cover to cover, including the “boring bits.” It is, after all, the very Word of God, is it not? At the very least divinely inspired by the all-creator. If you believe this to be true, then shouldn’t you actually have read it over and over again? It’s the most important document ever compiled, if it is truly God’s history and instruction book to all of humanity. I guess the first step is deciding which version of the compilation of ancient scrolls and letters is the true God-intended “official” one….

About 40 minutes into the show, they start talking about personal experience and revelation, and how revelation is inherently a personal experience and can not be transferable to other people. That is, one person’s experience is not proof that another person who has not had the same experience should believe them and take up their beliefs–especially the more extraordinary the experience. Test this: Pick any belief system you completely disagree with, whether it’s Islam, Wicca, fundamental Christianity, Hindu, whatever. Now imagine someone from that belief gave their testimony to you, very sincerely and emotionally, of their experience of communing with The Goddess, or Vishnu, or Krishna, or Mohammad, the Virgin Mary, etc. Would you just on the power of their telling of their personal experience, no matter how emotional and powerful it was for them, convince you to believe their religion? Didn’t think so.

That’s a little off the subject, but what the caller and the hosts began talking about was Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus and why he received a rare and unique vision to the exclusion of nearly everyone else in the world. The caller tried to offer that he thought it was because Paul was in a position to do the most good to spread Christianity at that time and place. But that raises the question: Why give that transcendent conversion experience to just Paul and not give it to everyone? Forget the middle-man, the books with contradictions and translation debates, the traveling prophets who’s stories are indistinguishable from mad ravings, and just make yourself known, truly known without question, to everyone.

The caller (you really should listen to the show; it’s quite good…but in case you don’t have that time, and I’d love to see some responses here…) suggested that perhaps God has a reason to stay distant, hidden for the most part, because the relationship he wants with us is more important than proving he really exists. That maybe removing that doubt would change or force the relationship.

Here’s where it starts to get good. (Go listen.) The host then suggests if you received a letter that said, “I love you; I want you to love me,” from someone you don’t know…would you love that person? To love and adore another requires that you know that other person. (He, and I agree, suggests that love and adoration also should be earned, not demanded.) You can’t even begin to have a relationship with someone if the other person doesn’t even know you exist. By revealing yourself to a handful (at the very best, currently 1.5 billion out of 6.5 billion–but how many of that 1.5B have actually “known” God and how many just check the box “Christian” on the census form?) you don’t put everyone on an equal ground, the same chance to know you. That’s at best shortsighted and thoughtless, and at worst a clear sign that “loving the world” is not a factor in this deity’s interests.

Just revealing one’s self, unambiguously, to the entire planet, would not force people to truly love you and have respect for and adoration for you any more than a thug who reveals himself from around your curtains and shows you he’s capable of killing you at his whim would elicit respect and adoration for him either. This God would still have to deal with people who honestly love him, those who only say they do to avoid the threat of hell, and those who feel that he’s unworthy of respect even though he’s shown to exist. (For example, it’s one thing for me to find out (a) God really exists–but if it was really Yahweh/El from the Old and New Testaments who existed who I found out really was real, there’s no way I’d worship and love that blood-thirsty, deceptive, callous, racist, sexist, amoral psychopath. The best he’d get out of me is the kind of “Yeah, OK, whatever you say, man–just don’t pull the trigger” you’d get if a deranged psycho had a gun to my head.)

Anyway, what is it for an all-powerful everything creator to give everyone a road to Damascus experience? At least that’d eliminate the grand majority of the world for the last 2,000-6,000 years from having died never having even heard of Jesus/Yahweh/Elohim/etc. and thus not even having the opportunity to have that relationship this God evidently so desperately wants–if you believe, say, Ray Comfort.

So, now that it’s summer, I’ve still almost completely ignored this blog. But, I spend most of my social e-media time on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/liamrw) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/mechphisto), I don’t feel compelled to write articles on here even though I have tons of saved links and news items and others’ blog content I want to comment on. Darn you short attention span time wasters!!

Anyway, so, the iPhone is updating, I just finished re-planting some cilantro and Greek oregano into a new window-box planter…thought I’d at least get one interesting item I’d like to share out of the way today.

“vjack” over at Atheist Revolution has a recent post entitled: “Did Jesus Abolish the Old Testiment.” It starts with a question he received from one of his readers, that goes in part like this:

…why Christians cherry pick from the bible. I brought up stuff from the old testament, like women not being allowed to dress fancy in church. His response was, “That’s mosaic law and we are under a new law now.” I didn’t know how to respond to this. What would you say?

vjack’s response I think is incredibly reasoned and thought-provoking. Well, OK, not to me at this moment, I have to be honest. Because his response, which I agree with 100%, is a response I came up with on my own (and so do many many many former Christians) while I (1.) first read the Bible in its entirety around age 17 or 18, and (2.) once again a few years ago when I was working through those questions and issues that actually reading the Bible sparked so many years earlier.

It’s not a bad thing, and I mean no negative intent, when I say vjack’s response is not interesting to me…in fact, I mean it as both matter of fact and a complement. See…I was reminded of something this week as my wife and I watched Richard Dawkins’ “The Root of All Evil?“, and part way through we started discussing liberal/non-fundamentalist Christianity and the atheist response. And I gave answers and opinions and analysis which were kernels of understanding I came to on my own a few to several years ago, wrapped with wording and terms and nuance gained from other freethinkers I’ve since read who also deal with the same issues and questions. Then, when we continued to watch the documentary, my words were virtually echoed back to me by Dawkins.

Agnosticism and atheism have been on an upswing lately, people have started coming out and talking about it, and not being ashamed or afraid of being non-believers. It’s almost like a fad in appearance. But it’s not new by a long shot. Ancient Greeks wrote about doubt regarding the gods their contemporaries worshiped, including questions like: “Does [god] command what is moral because [he] decides what it morality; or does [he] do so because morality is absolute and [he's] simply relaying the message? If the former, then morality is still relative…believers have simply shifted the responsibility up one level. If the later, then what is the need for [god] as a middle-man if morality is absolute and universal?” For example.

Then there’s Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius. And after that slews of freethinkers (at least, those not murdered by Christians during the Dark Ages), to Spinoza and Bertrand Russell, and now Hitchens and Dennett and John W. Loftus, who basically have been saying the same things for centuries regarding God(s), belief without evidence, religion. Because let’s face it: atheism is the final point of critical thinking for any person of any culture, any background, former religion or belief system. Any individual, anyone, can come to atheism on their own through thinking through the questions and thinking critically about the supposed answers. The reasons for non-belief don”t change through the ages (like religions constantly do in order to survive in changing and evolving cultures). Atheism doesn’t require any books, tomes, scrolls, or prophets. No figures of authority, no priests or rabbis. No spiritual revelation from any of the over 2,000 gods humans have created.

Religious belief requires revelation. For example: it is impossible for a person to become a Christian without coming into contact with the Bible or another Christian (who uses the Bible). A book that requires stores and libraries full of books to try to interpret it, explain it, rationalize the contradictions and inherent issues in order to bolster a person’s belief in it. Atheism only requires one’s working brain to come to the same conclusions freethinkers have been coming to for millennia.

And so, some years ago I would have found vjack’s response thoroughly interesting and informative. Now, it’s old hat. But, that’s a good thing. It continues to show that for 2000 years the same arguments hold up and continue to be inadequately answered by the believer.

That said, seriously, read vjack’s response. It may be old hat to me, but it’s a good read! And, he has some fantastic links toward the end of his post to some resources which pose issues that demand response from the believer.

Also, some of the comments on vjack’s post are great as well. Some annoying or just plain worthless. But some, like this one, poignant and well-said:

The question is, why do you follow a different law? And, if you are supposed to follow a law that contradicts what is in the old testament, why even have the old testament in the first place? It is obvious that it simply creates confusion, so why not simply publish a version of the bible that is only the new testament and use that at church?

The reality is that no believer knows exactly what they are supposed to believe or follow, which is why they pray for guidance. Given that, if one has that kind of access to a deity, why would they need the bible in the first place? Couldn’t you just ask for guidance and go from there? Or, does this deity only answer some of the time, and how do you know when your god or gods is/are answering? You see, there are endless questions, none of which have answers that are going to (1) satisfy the skeptic, and (2) convince a believer otherwise. I guess the best that I hope for is that they begin to try to actually answer these questions honestly with themselves, which is how I became a skeptic in the first place. That eventually led me to atheism, although I realize that doesn’t happen with everyone.
(TDG)