In my previous post On Prayer, I discussed how the answer of no to prayer is evidence enough to show it's ineffectiveness. I'd like to expound a bit on this. There are two reasons to pray. One reason is because you want to either ask god for something or give him praise. This first reason is the subject of my previous post, and I focused my attentions in that post on debunking this reason; however, there is a second reason to pray and that is to affect some type of change in your surroundings, perhaps your personal life, or perhaps the lives of either friends and family or even lives of complete strangers, such as the president of the united states. There is a little bleed-over to the first reason here, in that if you are praying for a change in your surroundings i.e. 2nd reason, then you are possibly asking god for something i.e. 1st reason. I say possibly because it is not an automatic thing to be asking for something when you are wishing for something. You can pray that change will come around (wishing) but you can also literally ask god to bring about the change (asking). Both ways are considered prayer and so there is enough distinction in my mind between the two that I've decided to split them up this way. Now, a reason for explaining god's choice to answer no to a prayer was offered in response to my earlier blog. The reason was this: prayer is always about god's over-arching will to be served out. As in Jesus' prayer of "Let this cup pass from me, but not mine but thy will be done". God has veto power over the prayers offered to him. His will, will be completed first and foremost in this point-of-view. As an atheist who has no belief in god nor prayer, this idea is perfectly fine with me, yet it is also perfectly fine for the christian. How can this be? I'll tell you.
My point about prayer is that it simply does not work the way it is purported to work. The christian-minded argument offered above is poignant in how clearly it supports my argument. Jesus said "ask anything in my name and it will be done to you". Jesus is god (not really, but you know what I'm saying). Jesus also said "not my will but yours", so in his human-form, Jesus is slightly less than god. If God's will is to be done over our prayers, then prayer is ineffective. It can offer no change to the course of actions god has decided to embark upon, as is meant when God's WILL is referred to. There is no point in praying to a god whose will may or may not coincide with our wants and desires. If a prayer is offered up for the healing of cancer, and the cancer goes into remittance or even goes away completely, you can rest assured that was god's plan all along. He had no need for you to pray, asking him to heal the cancer. Your wish and god's will simply coincided with each other, and as a result it looked like god answered your particular prayer. but that is clearly not what happened. God's will just happened to be for the same course of action and happenstance that your prayers were asking for. Your prayer was no more effective than if you had asked for nothing. Infact it was completely In-effective. God's mind was made up well before you ever uttered a single, solitary plea.
Now, If you offered up a prayer for the healing of cancer and the cancer was not healed, again your prayer was ineffective because it got vetoed by god's over-arching will to allow the cancer to continue eating away your body. In this case your prayer did not coincide with god's will and so it went unanswered (in your mind). There is no difference in a prayer seeming to be answered and one that is seeming to be unanswered. In either case, prayer is a pointless exercise. Prayer is commonly viewed as an active agent in the determining of life's course, but clearly in the argument of" god's will be done", prayer simply cannot induce a change in the environment through the workings of an outside source such as god.
Prayer can be an active agent, in a manner of speaking, if the act of prayer is such that it awakens an internal source for a solution. If it makes one feel up to inducing the change themselves, then prayer becomes an active agent. Psychologically, prayer can be quite a panacea. It can buoy the mind and spirit (physically amounting to the same thing). It can prod someone to begin to search for solutions to the problems they are grappling with, as in the non-biblical adage "God helps those who help themselves". In this case, prayer can offer solace to the sufferers, and a clear-minded path towards absolvement of life's travails. But notice there is no need for god in this scenario. The prayer(s) are not actually being lifted to heaven and heard by the ears and heart of god, who then intervenes on behalf of the praying person. No, god is irrelevant in this type of prayer, other than playing the role of another well-ingrained panacea. It is the person doing the praying who is refreshed by the act and then able to pull him/herself up by their bootstraps to begin the work of solving or at least getting around their problem. In this manner and only in this manner can prayer be a useful tool. To think that praying can actually make a god change his mind about how your life will proceed, is to be naive at best, and it also violates the idea that god's will must be served above all else.
More than anything else, prayer is one of those things that can never be proven or disproven, because it simply exists within our minds. It's kind of like saying there's no such thing as liking something or there is definitely a such thing as non-memory. Ideas are just that, ideas. If the idea allows for the lessening of suffering, then it is a good idea, but only if it does so universally. If it lessens the suffering of some at the expense of others, then it is not a good idea. Religion falls squarely within this category. If prayer helps some psychologically, but not others, then is it a good idea to hold onto as a pillar of having faith? I would say not, because of the very fact that it is so many things to so many different people, but across all spectrums it supports religions which do not always exist for the universal betterment of mankind. The act of prayer may hold some benefit for mankind, but not within it's current light as seen by many christians. And while it may not by itself be evidence enough against the existence of god, it surely doesn't help the christian's cause.
Showing posts with label Jesus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jesus. Show all posts
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
On Prayer
Why do people pray? What is prayer? What is a person doing when they are praying? Does prayer succeed? Does it fail? Or both? Or neither?
Friends and family (Christian) have been saying (typing) to me recently, that they are praying that I will come back to god. The have told me that Jesus can fix my headaches, and that wherever two or more are gathered.... so I'm being prayed for. I am glad that people respond in such a way when they hear of my interpretedly spiritual decrepitude. It makes me feel good knowing that there are people who feel afraid for me, because of the life path I am on. I am not gladdened that these people think I am wrong and headed for trouble, that part actually saddens me, and so I return the favor to them by feeling bad that they are so happily misguided. I am happy that these people are concerned with my well-being. That is a nice thing to have, outside concern. My family is the most concerned, obviously, and I have known that for a while. Even though I have thought my way through my beliefs to a conclusion, they seem to think that (because of their beliefs) if they pray to god hard enough or long enough, he will cause me to see the error of my ways, and return to the fold. They have been and are praying for me to be saved (again). They love me, and are afraid for me. They think I have chosen poorly (as though there were ever a choice to be voluntarily made) and as a consequence I will be going to hell. I'm not sure if every member of my family thinks this part about hell. I am simply basing my assumptions on my knowledge that most of them have stagnated in their religious stance for the past 30 years. To be fair, perhaps some of them have softened on the whole lake of fire business, but I really don't think so.
In earlier blog posts I have discussed the fear factor involved in religion, and nowhere does this element seem more clearly illustrated than in the conviction my family has about the need for their prayers for my soul.
I am an adult. I will never return to being a child. I am also A-theist. I will never try to believe in god again. I don't know there is no god, just as I don't know that I will wake up tomorrow. I do however have reason to trust that I will wake up. I take care of my body, I am nowhere near the end of my average male life expectancy and I have no debilitating diseases or chronic syndromes. These are some of the reasons how I can trust that I most likely will wake up tomorrow, alive and well. I don't have to pray that I will wake up; I just rely on the reasons I have squirreled away to come through once again for me. However, I have no reason to trust that there is a god. For all practical purposes, god has always been an invisibility. He no longer walks in the cool evening breeze amongst the flora and fauna of the garden as he did according to the author of the book of genesis. We (no one) has ever seen god. No one has ever heard god, no one has tasted him, touched him or smelled him. The only thing people have ever been able to do about god is think about him. There is no argument to be made about the physical existence of god. He simply has not been here. Which is why we have to "Believe" in him in the first place. If he were here, then belief would be a redundancy. We don't "believe" in gravity, we experience it. We don't "believe" in viruses, we experience their flourish (unpleasantly to say the least). We have never physically experienced god so we have to " believe" in him or not. Having no physical reasons to think god exists, I also have no reasons to think that prayers to him will either succeed or fail. I'll get back to the whole success or failure thin in a moment, but for the time being understand my family and to a lesser extent friends think otherwise.
To them the belief in god, en-masse, is itself a reason to believe he exists. Because the vast majority of all humans who are living or have ever lived, have also believed in some sort of supernatural creator/overseer being, my folks say he must exist, indeed no doubt in their minds about his existence is warranted in light of this fact. Superficially, this is a reasonable position to take, superficially. Everyone believes the sun will burn you if you stay out in it too long with no protection, but how many of us have ever seen an ultraviolet light photon (I say photon not ray, because this is the smallest amount of light that exists). None of us have ever seen one without the aid of a spectrometer, but there's the rub. With the aid of a spectrometer, we can see one (or billions). With the aid of a telescope we can see the rings of Saturn, something the New Testament authors could not do. The problem with such thinking is that there have been many issues over the millennia that have been believed by the vast majority of living folks, the most obvious example being the earth being flat, that have been outright wrong. Just because everybody thinks something, doesn't make it true. If the claim is ridiculous, like the claim made by Copernicus that the earth was not at the center of the universe, then either the claimant must be exiled or the claim itself must be meticulously investigated. Luckily for us, Copernicus' claim was validated, as were Newton's, Einstein's and Planck's. But, at this point we have to ask, well "why do people think something is true if it's possible for it to be untrue?". What do you think? My thoughts are:
1. There are varying degrees of human intellect, governed by genetics and environment, which give rise to varying degrees of depth of insight about metaphysical issues, such as the existence of god i.e. some people are smarter than others, or at least have proven to be so far, and as such have been able to delve deeper than most into philosophical questions.
2. Most people are of average intelligence and have little to no interest in asking deep questions, they simply want to live life.
3. Many "truths" about the big questions were formulated by people living pre-dark ages, pre-enlightenment, in fact just post-iron Age.
4. Those who have subsequently dug into the big questions have perpetuated for most everyone else the "truth" about life.
5. Curiosity didn't kill the cat, it made the cat realize it wasn't a cat, it was a bulldozer.
6. Time has ingrained in the minds of most people, incomplete data sets about the world, sets gathered by folks woefully unaware of much important but unattainable information (germs, molecules, radiation, neuroplasticity, geological deposits, the speed of light and it's inviolability, etc...).
7. The longer intellectual apathy remains, the more difficult it is to replace with new information.
There are many other reasonings I have about why people think untrue things, even in the blinding light of their untruth, but for now I'll go on to prayer. Prayer is something that many people hang their religious hat on as being evidence of god. So I ask, what is the purpose of prayer? When someone prays, they are asking for something from their god. If they are not asking for something then they are not praying, but praising. You can either ask god for something or tell him he's great, that's about it. So when people pray they are asking for something. The point of prayer is to receive something. It doesn't matter what, just something. You can pray for anything you mind can come up with. You can pray for impossibilities, like the destruction in a supernova of our own sun next week, or trivialities like your awaking the next day to find that you are happy again. or you can pray for things in the middle of these two extremes, things like your dog's leg will get healed from the fracture he sustained, or you'll find a job soon, or the weather will cooperate while you're on vacation. There are varying degrees of difficulty about prayer request subject matter, some are more improbable than others. but the thing about prayers that seems to get glossed over is that while we all (well I used to pray) pray so that our prayers succeed (I know of no one who deliberately prays for their requests to be denied) and result in our getting what we are praying for, they most often fail miserably. Adherents of prayer never seem to accept this reality. They do however have an endless supply of excuses for why things didn't turn out the way they wanted; things like " god works in mysterious ways, or sometimes the answer is no" and so on.
The things is, prayer is designed to work for our benefit. It does nothing for god. According to the religious, god owns everything, so for him to give stuff away is not the same as it is to parents down here. For us, the joy of giving our kids stuff can be precisely attributed to the fact that we have a limited supply of such stuff, and although we may get a little smug about ourselves and how hard we had to work to get this stuff, we do know that our kids will enjoy it even if only for a brief time. The sacrifice we made, does make us feel good, since we did it on behalf of our kids, and it was truly a sacrifice. So when we pray for something to happen, or to be given or granted, and it doesn't happen, those prayers have in fact failed, haven't they? For something to fail, effort must be made. With prayer, no effort is made, so no failure can take place. If god is capable of answering prayers, and all the Christians I know believe so, then he is incumbent to do so. Since it is obvious that prayers are regularly unsuccessful, then it stands to reason that there is no god up there, hearing those prayers at all.
A familiar refrain comes to mind now, one that harkens back to the earlier stated " sometimes the answer is no" that is, " Just because we don't get what we think we might want when we pray, doesn't mean god hasn't heard our prayer. It just means that god has something different (and the implication here is better) in mind for us. This is why many prayers go unanswered". I respond to this by asking that you think about this situation: A person who has contracted the Ebola virus by simply living in a region of the world that this virus thrives (Eastern Rift Valley, Congo) prays to the Christian god for healing for themselves. This person dies within two weeks, after suffering through ever-increasing agony as his internal organs are rapidly liquefied. he progressively gets worse, eventually coughing up the lining of his stomach, which is now purely black. The disease destroys his body exponentially, but everyday he prays for healing. His body not only is destroyed but it becomes a harbinger of the deadly virus, which turns him into an Ebola factory. Simply simply breathing it in can spread the virus, and so our praying victim's body is now a spreader as well. His prayers are not answered. He dies. So the question is, what greater purpose did god intend for this person, such that he had to endure the utmost agony prior to his premature death? We as a society gained no more information about how to prevent this disease through his infection, we did not suffer a global epidemic because efforts WERE made to contain the virus (mind you the man was not praying that god would spread the word about the virus, he just wanted to not die). Obviously the man suffered and died, so his immediate prayer was unsuccessful. I have no guess as to what possibly better or more valuable answer god could have been delaying for this man. By the way, if you'd like to read a real author's account of this incident, which did actually take place, read Douglas Preston's The Hot Zone. Also, I'd recommend reading Dr. Bart Ehrmann's great expose on the problem of suffering, God's Problem, how the Bible fails to answer our most important question; why we suffer.
For prayer to work, there has to be someone or something on the other end. We have no idea if there is, so at best prayer is wishful thinking, EVEN IF WE GET WHAT WANT. There is no way to verify that prayers have been answered because there is only an open dial tone at the other end. Inexplicable healings of cancer do not point to god's existence or the efficacy of prayer. They point to inadequacies of our understanding of pathogens. God has no interest in our knowing more about diseases and how to prevent them, and subsequently god's children don't have any real interest in knowing more about this stuff either; they are content with wishing on a star. By praying for respite, Christians and (other praying folk) are testifying to their own willful and preferred ignorance of the real causes of suffering in the world. A great website to make you think is www.whywontgodhealamputees.com The basic premise of this website is god has never regrown an amputees limb, ever. How is that to be explained outside of the familiar responses of mysterium and "quit arguing with me". Prayer doesn't work, because it can't work without god. God simply doesn't exist. If you think he does, you are mistaken. You might be comforted by the thought that there is something more than ourselves watching out for us, but that doesn't make it so. You might also be comforted by the thought that your prayers will be answered, but you are mistaken. Even if the outcome you hope for eventually comes to fruition, you will have no reason to authoritatively say it was because you prayed for it. I know my friends and family are distraught that I am no longer of their faith, but for them to think that by praying that my mind will be changed/opened/ softened or whatever is simply to misunderstand the person I am. There is no way I could ever believe in a god now. I see too clearly how he is creation of ourselves. If you are reading this, and you are one of the ones praying for my salvation, thanks, but no thanks. Why don't you instead go for a walk in nature, or help feed a hungry person, or teach some child to read, something, anything that would be constructive. While I appreciate the concern, you should know that no amount of prayer for me would/could never work, because your prayer's are unheard by anyone but you.
Friends and family (Christian) have been saying (typing) to me recently, that they are praying that I will come back to god. The have told me that Jesus can fix my headaches, and that wherever two or more are gathered.... so I'm being prayed for. I am glad that people respond in such a way when they hear of my interpretedly spiritual decrepitude. It makes me feel good knowing that there are people who feel afraid for me, because of the life path I am on. I am not gladdened that these people think I am wrong and headed for trouble, that part actually saddens me, and so I return the favor to them by feeling bad that they are so happily misguided. I am happy that these people are concerned with my well-being. That is a nice thing to have, outside concern. My family is the most concerned, obviously, and I have known that for a while. Even though I have thought my way through my beliefs to a conclusion, they seem to think that (because of their beliefs) if they pray to god hard enough or long enough, he will cause me to see the error of my ways, and return to the fold. They have been and are praying for me to be saved (again). They love me, and are afraid for me. They think I have chosen poorly (as though there were ever a choice to be voluntarily made) and as a consequence I will be going to hell. I'm not sure if every member of my family thinks this part about hell. I am simply basing my assumptions on my knowledge that most of them have stagnated in their religious stance for the past 30 years. To be fair, perhaps some of them have softened on the whole lake of fire business, but I really don't think so.
In earlier blog posts I have discussed the fear factor involved in religion, and nowhere does this element seem more clearly illustrated than in the conviction my family has about the need for their prayers for my soul.
I am an adult. I will never return to being a child. I am also A-theist. I will never try to believe in god again. I don't know there is no god, just as I don't know that I will wake up tomorrow. I do however have reason to trust that I will wake up. I take care of my body, I am nowhere near the end of my average male life expectancy and I have no debilitating diseases or chronic syndromes. These are some of the reasons how I can trust that I most likely will wake up tomorrow, alive and well. I don't have to pray that I will wake up; I just rely on the reasons I have squirreled away to come through once again for me. However, I have no reason to trust that there is a god. For all practical purposes, god has always been an invisibility. He no longer walks in the cool evening breeze amongst the flora and fauna of the garden as he did according to the author of the book of genesis. We (no one) has ever seen god. No one has ever heard god, no one has tasted him, touched him or smelled him. The only thing people have ever been able to do about god is think about him. There is no argument to be made about the physical existence of god. He simply has not been here. Which is why we have to "Believe" in him in the first place. If he were here, then belief would be a redundancy. We don't "believe" in gravity, we experience it. We don't "believe" in viruses, we experience their flourish (unpleasantly to say the least). We have never physically experienced god so we have to " believe" in him or not. Having no physical reasons to think god exists, I also have no reasons to think that prayers to him will either succeed or fail. I'll get back to the whole success or failure thin in a moment, but for the time being understand my family and to a lesser extent friends think otherwise.
To them the belief in god, en-masse, is itself a reason to believe he exists. Because the vast majority of all humans who are living or have ever lived, have also believed in some sort of supernatural creator/overseer being, my folks say he must exist, indeed no doubt in their minds about his existence is warranted in light of this fact. Superficially, this is a reasonable position to take, superficially. Everyone believes the sun will burn you if you stay out in it too long with no protection, but how many of us have ever seen an ultraviolet light photon (I say photon not ray, because this is the smallest amount of light that exists). None of us have ever seen one without the aid of a spectrometer, but there's the rub. With the aid of a spectrometer, we can see one (or billions). With the aid of a telescope we can see the rings of Saturn, something the New Testament authors could not do. The problem with such thinking is that there have been many issues over the millennia that have been believed by the vast majority of living folks, the most obvious example being the earth being flat, that have been outright wrong. Just because everybody thinks something, doesn't make it true. If the claim is ridiculous, like the claim made by Copernicus that the earth was not at the center of the universe, then either the claimant must be exiled or the claim itself must be meticulously investigated. Luckily for us, Copernicus' claim was validated, as were Newton's, Einstein's and Planck's. But, at this point we have to ask, well "why do people think something is true if it's possible for it to be untrue?". What do you think? My thoughts are:
1. There are varying degrees of human intellect, governed by genetics and environment, which give rise to varying degrees of depth of insight about metaphysical issues, such as the existence of god i.e. some people are smarter than others, or at least have proven to be so far, and as such have been able to delve deeper than most into philosophical questions.
2. Most people are of average intelligence and have little to no interest in asking deep questions, they simply want to live life.
3. Many "truths" about the big questions were formulated by people living pre-dark ages, pre-enlightenment, in fact just post-iron Age.
4. Those who have subsequently dug into the big questions have perpetuated for most everyone else the "truth" about life.
5. Curiosity didn't kill the cat, it made the cat realize it wasn't a cat, it was a bulldozer.
6. Time has ingrained in the minds of most people, incomplete data sets about the world, sets gathered by folks woefully unaware of much important but unattainable information (germs, molecules, radiation, neuroplasticity, geological deposits, the speed of light and it's inviolability, etc...).
7. The longer intellectual apathy remains, the more difficult it is to replace with new information.
There are many other reasonings I have about why people think untrue things, even in the blinding light of their untruth, but for now I'll go on to prayer. Prayer is something that many people hang their religious hat on as being evidence of god. So I ask, what is the purpose of prayer? When someone prays, they are asking for something from their god. If they are not asking for something then they are not praying, but praising. You can either ask god for something or tell him he's great, that's about it. So when people pray they are asking for something. The point of prayer is to receive something. It doesn't matter what, just something. You can pray for anything you mind can come up with. You can pray for impossibilities, like the destruction in a supernova of our own sun next week, or trivialities like your awaking the next day to find that you are happy again. or you can pray for things in the middle of these two extremes, things like your dog's leg will get healed from the fracture he sustained, or you'll find a job soon, or the weather will cooperate while you're on vacation. There are varying degrees of difficulty about prayer request subject matter, some are more improbable than others. but the thing about prayers that seems to get glossed over is that while we all (well I used to pray) pray so that our prayers succeed (I know of no one who deliberately prays for their requests to be denied) and result in our getting what we are praying for, they most often fail miserably. Adherents of prayer never seem to accept this reality. They do however have an endless supply of excuses for why things didn't turn out the way they wanted; things like " god works in mysterious ways, or sometimes the answer is no" and so on.
The things is, prayer is designed to work for our benefit. It does nothing for god. According to the religious, god owns everything, so for him to give stuff away is not the same as it is to parents down here. For us, the joy of giving our kids stuff can be precisely attributed to the fact that we have a limited supply of such stuff, and although we may get a little smug about ourselves and how hard we had to work to get this stuff, we do know that our kids will enjoy it even if only for a brief time. The sacrifice we made, does make us feel good, since we did it on behalf of our kids, and it was truly a sacrifice. So when we pray for something to happen, or to be given or granted, and it doesn't happen, those prayers have in fact failed, haven't they? For something to fail, effort must be made. With prayer, no effort is made, so no failure can take place. If god is capable of answering prayers, and all the Christians I know believe so, then he is incumbent to do so. Since it is obvious that prayers are regularly unsuccessful, then it stands to reason that there is no god up there, hearing those prayers at all.
A familiar refrain comes to mind now, one that harkens back to the earlier stated " sometimes the answer is no" that is, " Just because we don't get what we think we might want when we pray, doesn't mean god hasn't heard our prayer. It just means that god has something different (and the implication here is better) in mind for us. This is why many prayers go unanswered". I respond to this by asking that you think about this situation: A person who has contracted the Ebola virus by simply living in a region of the world that this virus thrives (Eastern Rift Valley, Congo) prays to the Christian god for healing for themselves. This person dies within two weeks, after suffering through ever-increasing agony as his internal organs are rapidly liquefied. he progressively gets worse, eventually coughing up the lining of his stomach, which is now purely black. The disease destroys his body exponentially, but everyday he prays for healing. His body not only is destroyed but it becomes a harbinger of the deadly virus, which turns him into an Ebola factory. Simply simply breathing it in can spread the virus, and so our praying victim's body is now a spreader as well. His prayers are not answered. He dies. So the question is, what greater purpose did god intend for this person, such that he had to endure the utmost agony prior to his premature death? We as a society gained no more information about how to prevent this disease through his infection, we did not suffer a global epidemic because efforts WERE made to contain the virus (mind you the man was not praying that god would spread the word about the virus, he just wanted to not die). Obviously the man suffered and died, so his immediate prayer was unsuccessful. I have no guess as to what possibly better or more valuable answer god could have been delaying for this man. By the way, if you'd like to read a real author's account of this incident, which did actually take place, read Douglas Preston's The Hot Zone. Also, I'd recommend reading Dr. Bart Ehrmann's great expose on the problem of suffering, God's Problem, how the Bible fails to answer our most important question; why we suffer.
For prayer to work, there has to be someone or something on the other end. We have no idea if there is, so at best prayer is wishful thinking, EVEN IF WE GET WHAT WANT. There is no way to verify that prayers have been answered because there is only an open dial tone at the other end. Inexplicable healings of cancer do not point to god's existence or the efficacy of prayer. They point to inadequacies of our understanding of pathogens. God has no interest in our knowing more about diseases and how to prevent them, and subsequently god's children don't have any real interest in knowing more about this stuff either; they are content with wishing on a star. By praying for respite, Christians and (other praying folk) are testifying to their own willful and preferred ignorance of the real causes of suffering in the world. A great website to make you think is www.whywontgodhealamputees.com The basic premise of this website is god has never regrown an amputees limb, ever. How is that to be explained outside of the familiar responses of mysterium and "quit arguing with me". Prayer doesn't work, because it can't work without god. God simply doesn't exist. If you think he does, you are mistaken. You might be comforted by the thought that there is something more than ourselves watching out for us, but that doesn't make it so. You might also be comforted by the thought that your prayers will be answered, but you are mistaken. Even if the outcome you hope for eventually comes to fruition, you will have no reason to authoritatively say it was because you prayed for it. I know my friends and family are distraught that I am no longer of their faith, but for them to think that by praying that my mind will be changed/opened/ softened or whatever is simply to misunderstand the person I am. There is no way I could ever believe in a god now. I see too clearly how he is creation of ourselves. If you are reading this, and you are one of the ones praying for my salvation, thanks, but no thanks. Why don't you instead go for a walk in nature, or help feed a hungry person, or teach some child to read, something, anything that would be constructive. While I appreciate the concern, you should know that no amount of prayer for me would/could never work, because your prayer's are unheard by anyone but you.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
On John 3:16
" For god so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believed on him should not perish, but have ever lasting life" John 3:16. Most famous verse in the bible. The hallmark of the christian contention that god is love, that the news of the gospel is "good news" and that we are sinners "saved" by grace. On the surface, this verse certainly seems like the definition of altruistic mercy, but just as in life, all that glitters is not gold. There are many,many things we encounter in life that seem to be one thing, but upon closer inspection and longevity of exposure actually turn out to be the opposite. Pitbulls seem to be great dogs until the day they kill a child for no apparent reason. When we sit in a chair,it seems as though our derry-air is in contact with the seat surface,when in reality, what we feel is the miniscule repulsion of trillions and trillions of atoms pushing us away from the their surface. It seems as though we snap opur fingers and we see, hear and decide to do this all at the same moment, but actually the decision to snapthe fingers happens before the act, and we see our fingers snap before we hear them snap. Our mind is a clever mechanism, capable of editing what is offered to us for observation into a false, but seemingly true narrative of observed events.
The christian's contention is that faith is what replaces evidence. The atheist's contention (which is coincidentally mine) is that any extraordinary claim, such as a god existing, must be supported by extraordinary evidence, faith is only circular. This verse states " that whosoever believes on him...." This seems to be a supportive statement of the faith side of things, yes? but let's look closer, shall we...
For god "SO" loved the world. The author could have said " For god loved the world". He did not. By inserting the word "SO" into the sentence he introduced an element of standard of comparison, which is a form of evidence. God didn't just simply love the world. There was a very high degree of affection that god had for the world, high enough to warrant the sacrifice of his son on its behalf (as is evidenced by the use of the word so), as opposed to a very low degree of affection for the world, which would not have warranted such a sacrifice. Using standards of comparison is what we animals do. We weigh the benefits and detriments associated with the options available to us, and use our deterministic brains to guide our behavioral choices. It is a completely natural (nonsupernatural) process. If god SO loved the world that he blah, blah, blah... then god himself was doing the same thing that we lowly animals do all the time. He weighed the benefits and detriments associated with his choices and chose accordingly. He decided to love the world not unconditionally mind you, but to such a degree that his love level would be enough to allow mankind a justified return to grace. Not very godly, not very godly at all. SO this first portion of the verse reveals that the most highly-touted verse in scripture pointing to the wonder of god and the greatness of his love for us, actually is evidence against god being god. Else, why would he need to "SO" love the world, in order to save us. It is easy to see however how a human author of such a story could think that such a wording of a verse would seem to be foolproof in it's evocational ability, but that would be because we humans are nothing but the smartest animals. It has been trial and error all along. I've yet to figure out why religious folks seem to be so averse to the trial and error process. How is it that religious folks need someone who is not going to screw up and learn something by doing so. And how do they come to think that such a scenario is even possible. What makes them think a god existing is even possible? I am getting off track.
We've examined the first part of the verse, so let's continue with the second part.
" that he gave his only begotten son".
Some christians I know argue that evidence does exist for belief in god. It is just evidence that we do not understand, we cannot understand, because god works in mysterious ways. I submit that this part of the verse contradicts such a statement. Infact all of the bible's memorable verses do exactly what this verse does; they frame the sentiment in a context we CAN understand, in this case, love for a child. If god's ways are so mysterious, then how is that the bible ended up being written in such a way that we can understand? Death we understand. Love we understand. Jealousy we understand. Retribution we understand. Justice we understand. Fairness and unfairness we understand. All of these affects are how the bible frames it's messages of life-assurance. This verse is no exception. The author offers as evidence of the level of god's love, the fact that he willingly sacrificed his son, on our behalf. This is a form of evidence, albeit one that is severely deficient in it's degree of verifiable truth. By including the word "So" in the first part of the verse, the author's hands were tied. They had to include some evidence to illustrate the level of love implied by the word "So". So doesn't this give credence to the christian's point? NO. They say simlutaneously, that god's plans are unknowable, because we as humans cannot understand god, but if god were intent on hiding his true nature from us, then why bother giving us a book full of feeble attempts to explain the heavenly nature of he and his minions in words and phrases we are overtly aware of, and completely capable of understanding; love, death, etc...?
Such a book, to those who read it a lot, is both credible evidence for the existence and wonder of god, and impossible for mankind to fully understand, as it is from the unknowable, unfathomable mind of god. This is self-reinforcing logic, and also bull-corn.
Christian : "I'm right, because I understand it, and you're wrong because you don't. The things I don't understand are still true, it's just that I'm not meant to understand them cause I'm not god, and the things I do understand, I can because god has chosen to reveal them to me".
God: " I'm right because I wrote the book, see it says so right here. You're wrong because you can't understand my plans because you are not me, see it says so right here." Bullox!
Enough of the second part, onto the third:
"That whosoever believed on him". This part is self-contradictory to the earlier part of the verse that said that god so loved the WORLD. If god's affection were for the entire world, then this part is unneccessary. Because this section of the verse is included, it makes clear that the verse was authored by a human being. It is riddles with elements of psychological bullying, jealousy, and low self-esteem. Only those who freely choose to believe the verse says the truth, will reap the benefits of exhibiting such faith, all others can literally go to hell. This is not love for the world at large, it is pedantic, juvenile, short-lived and ultimately disingenuous affection for the population that most resembles the author in mindset. Those of like mind will follow suit more easily. Independant thinkers represent more work for the clergy to bring into the fold and thus they quickly become not worth the effort. Infact, this verse reveals that god's affection surely does not extend to the entire world, and furthermore that he could never have intended to extend such affection out to the entire world, all because of the clause included, the catch in the deal... you have to believe.
And so we come to the final part of this awesome verse:
"Would not perish, but have everlasting life." Reward for good behavior. Another example of a context which we lowly humans can fully understand. We know what it is like to receive a reward for good behavior, and what better reward than to be able to live forever, pain-free? But, doesn't logic tell us that if something is the truth it must exist wholly independant of any type of influence. Math is math, It doesn't matter if it is cold outside, or if your mother-in-law is a bitch, 2+2 =4. Math is independant of human concerns. Belief in god however, is intricately tied up with humanity. Infact without humanity, god would be unnecessary. If god actually existed, then the belief we obviously are capable of harboring, should need no reward (such as ever lasting life) attached to it, precisely because of the inimitable truth of it, kinda like math. The truth of the concept would be the truth, and we would recognizeit as such even without the reward, kinda like math. As parents, we bribe our kids all the time, because they won't do what we ask of them otherwise. They are too busy playing to sit down at the table and eat, or wash their hands, or pick up their toys. So I can hear the christian saying right now, that we are like children to god, and he attached the reward of everlasting life so that we would be more inclined to do what he asked of us, knowing that what he was asking of us was in our best interest, even if we did not know it. Yes, that seems to be what we do with our children, but it is not. Picking up toys, eating dinner at the time we have designated, etc... are all things that are in our (parental) best interests, not the children's. A kid will eat when they are hungry, if they break a toy, they will quickly adopt a new one. parents are the ones who want things to be a certain way, and we try our best to instill these ways onto our children, and there is nothing wrong with that, as long as we acknowledge that in reality it is primarily for our benefit that we do such things. God, who doesn't exist, has rewards attached to belief in him, because, the authors and perpetuators of religion know that without such rewards, belief in god becomes a very hard sell indeed. This reveals the falsity of god's existence more than anything else. Because the author included the reward in the verse it reveals that this verse was authored by not an omnipotent god, but a person who was not very sharp in psychology, which makes sense if you consider when the words were probably written.
John 3:16 is not what it seems. It is not an appeal to discard evidence in lieu of belief, it is instead a wholehearted validation of the reliance we all have on evidence. In this case the evidence is not for god's existence but rather for the human authorship of this verse and indeed the entire bible. It shows that god had to wratchet up his level of affection for us to get us back home, it also shows that christians do indeed rely on evidence to "believe" in their premises; evidence like god giving his son, see that shows he loved us so much, he gave his son up....
It also shows that he didn't love the whole world, only the part that loved him back.
It also shows that god was not confident enough in the veracity of his omnipotence, so much that he felt it neccessary to sweeten the deal by attaching immortality to it.
Truth is truth, regardless of how many people believe it. The attempt to sway the populace into his corner, with the offer of immortality is all the evidence I'll ever need to know that god is a figment of the imagination, and nothing else.
The christian's contention is that faith is what replaces evidence. The atheist's contention (which is coincidentally mine) is that any extraordinary claim, such as a god existing, must be supported by extraordinary evidence, faith is only circular. This verse states " that whosoever believes on him...." This seems to be a supportive statement of the faith side of things, yes? but let's look closer, shall we...
For god "SO" loved the world. The author could have said " For god loved the world". He did not. By inserting the word "SO" into the sentence he introduced an element of standard of comparison, which is a form of evidence. God didn't just simply love the world. There was a very high degree of affection that god had for the world, high enough to warrant the sacrifice of his son on its behalf (as is evidenced by the use of the word so), as opposed to a very low degree of affection for the world, which would not have warranted such a sacrifice. Using standards of comparison is what we animals do. We weigh the benefits and detriments associated with the options available to us, and use our deterministic brains to guide our behavioral choices. It is a completely natural (nonsupernatural) process. If god SO loved the world that he blah, blah, blah... then god himself was doing the same thing that we lowly animals do all the time. He weighed the benefits and detriments associated with his choices and chose accordingly. He decided to love the world not unconditionally mind you, but to such a degree that his love level would be enough to allow mankind a justified return to grace. Not very godly, not very godly at all. SO this first portion of the verse reveals that the most highly-touted verse in scripture pointing to the wonder of god and the greatness of his love for us, actually is evidence against god being god. Else, why would he need to "SO" love the world, in order to save us. It is easy to see however how a human author of such a story could think that such a wording of a verse would seem to be foolproof in it's evocational ability, but that would be because we humans are nothing but the smartest animals. It has been trial and error all along. I've yet to figure out why religious folks seem to be so averse to the trial and error process. How is it that religious folks need someone who is not going to screw up and learn something by doing so. And how do they come to think that such a scenario is even possible. What makes them think a god existing is even possible? I am getting off track.
We've examined the first part of the verse, so let's continue with the second part.
" that he gave his only begotten son".
Some christians I know argue that evidence does exist for belief in god. It is just evidence that we do not understand, we cannot understand, because god works in mysterious ways. I submit that this part of the verse contradicts such a statement. Infact all of the bible's memorable verses do exactly what this verse does; they frame the sentiment in a context we CAN understand, in this case, love for a child. If god's ways are so mysterious, then how is that the bible ended up being written in such a way that we can understand? Death we understand. Love we understand. Jealousy we understand. Retribution we understand. Justice we understand. Fairness and unfairness we understand. All of these affects are how the bible frames it's messages of life-assurance. This verse is no exception. The author offers as evidence of the level of god's love, the fact that he willingly sacrificed his son, on our behalf. This is a form of evidence, albeit one that is severely deficient in it's degree of verifiable truth. By including the word "So" in the first part of the verse, the author's hands were tied. They had to include some evidence to illustrate the level of love implied by the word "So". So doesn't this give credence to the christian's point? NO. They say simlutaneously, that god's plans are unknowable, because we as humans cannot understand god, but if god were intent on hiding his true nature from us, then why bother giving us a book full of feeble attempts to explain the heavenly nature of he and his minions in words and phrases we are overtly aware of, and completely capable of understanding; love, death, etc...?
Such a book, to those who read it a lot, is both credible evidence for the existence and wonder of god, and impossible for mankind to fully understand, as it is from the unknowable, unfathomable mind of god. This is self-reinforcing logic, and also bull-corn.
Christian : "I'm right, because I understand it, and you're wrong because you don't. The things I don't understand are still true, it's just that I'm not meant to understand them cause I'm not god, and the things I do understand, I can because god has chosen to reveal them to me".
God: " I'm right because I wrote the book, see it says so right here. You're wrong because you can't understand my plans because you are not me, see it says so right here." Bullox!
Enough of the second part, onto the third:
"That whosoever believed on him". This part is self-contradictory to the earlier part of the verse that said that god so loved the WORLD. If god's affection were for the entire world, then this part is unneccessary. Because this section of the verse is included, it makes clear that the verse was authored by a human being. It is riddles with elements of psychological bullying, jealousy, and low self-esteem. Only those who freely choose to believe the verse says the truth, will reap the benefits of exhibiting such faith, all others can literally go to hell. This is not love for the world at large, it is pedantic, juvenile, short-lived and ultimately disingenuous affection for the population that most resembles the author in mindset. Those of like mind will follow suit more easily. Independant thinkers represent more work for the clergy to bring into the fold and thus they quickly become not worth the effort. Infact, this verse reveals that god's affection surely does not extend to the entire world, and furthermore that he could never have intended to extend such affection out to the entire world, all because of the clause included, the catch in the deal... you have to believe.
And so we come to the final part of this awesome verse:
"Would not perish, but have everlasting life." Reward for good behavior. Another example of a context which we lowly humans can fully understand. We know what it is like to receive a reward for good behavior, and what better reward than to be able to live forever, pain-free? But, doesn't logic tell us that if something is the truth it must exist wholly independant of any type of influence. Math is math, It doesn't matter if it is cold outside, or if your mother-in-law is a bitch, 2+2 =4. Math is independant of human concerns. Belief in god however, is intricately tied up with humanity. Infact without humanity, god would be unnecessary. If god actually existed, then the belief we obviously are capable of harboring, should need no reward (such as ever lasting life) attached to it, precisely because of the inimitable truth of it, kinda like math. The truth of the concept would be the truth, and we would recognizeit as such even without the reward, kinda like math. As parents, we bribe our kids all the time, because they won't do what we ask of them otherwise. They are too busy playing to sit down at the table and eat, or wash their hands, or pick up their toys. So I can hear the christian saying right now, that we are like children to god, and he attached the reward of everlasting life so that we would be more inclined to do what he asked of us, knowing that what he was asking of us was in our best interest, even if we did not know it. Yes, that seems to be what we do with our children, but it is not. Picking up toys, eating dinner at the time we have designated, etc... are all things that are in our (parental) best interests, not the children's. A kid will eat when they are hungry, if they break a toy, they will quickly adopt a new one. parents are the ones who want things to be a certain way, and we try our best to instill these ways onto our children, and there is nothing wrong with that, as long as we acknowledge that in reality it is primarily for our benefit that we do such things. God, who doesn't exist, has rewards attached to belief in him, because, the authors and perpetuators of religion know that without such rewards, belief in god becomes a very hard sell indeed. This reveals the falsity of god's existence more than anything else. Because the author included the reward in the verse it reveals that this verse was authored by not an omnipotent god, but a person who was not very sharp in psychology, which makes sense if you consider when the words were probably written.
John 3:16 is not what it seems. It is not an appeal to discard evidence in lieu of belief, it is instead a wholehearted validation of the reliance we all have on evidence. In this case the evidence is not for god's existence but rather for the human authorship of this verse and indeed the entire bible. It shows that god had to wratchet up his level of affection for us to get us back home, it also shows that christians do indeed rely on evidence to "believe" in their premises; evidence like god giving his son, see that shows he loved us so much, he gave his son up....
It also shows that he didn't love the whole world, only the part that loved him back.
It also shows that god was not confident enough in the veracity of his omnipotence, so much that he felt it neccessary to sweeten the deal by attaching immortality to it.
Truth is truth, regardless of how many people believe it. The attempt to sway the populace into his corner, with the offer of immortality is all the evidence I'll ever need to know that god is a figment of the imagination, and nothing else.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Evangelicals are the worst people in the world
I know, I know, the title is terrible and mean-spirited, but they are horrible. I just finished watching the movie "Jesus Camp". A friend had recommended it to me a year or so ago, and I saw it tonight at the movie store and decided to rent it, thinking I would be laughing my ass off. For the first two scenes or so, I was. But very soon I realized the film was not a comedy, but rather a tragedy, or maybe a horror, I haven't decided yet.
It is a film, very well made by the way, about the evangelical demographic in America, and how the adults of this demographic are "teaching" their children to literally pray for America to be "revived" and to "return" to being a christian nation. I have never wanted to live in another country more than I do right now; however, I have also never wanted to offer resistance to lunacy more than I do right now either, and it would be hard to justify criticism of a certain populace within this country if I no longer were in this country.
I am so sad for the children in this movie. These kids have bought the evangelical bullshit message hook, line and sinker, and they think (as do their parents) that they "decided" on this position of their own accord, through the diligent efforts of both their parents and the pastor of a christian children's camp, to willfully indoctrinate them into thinking the things they now have no choice but to think. I mean the parents really believe they have raised their kids to "choose" to be evangelical christians. These are preteen kids, kids who joyfully and willingly preach to other kids, put on puppet shows about how the world is going to end just as soon as enough people pray for jesus to come back and think they have supernatural abilities such as jibber-jabbering literally in blatherous nonsense (which they call speaking in tongues, mind you, the sounds they make (as do their parents) are NOT long-deceased languages or even remnants of languages, they are just nonsense vocables), being able to prophecy (mind you, the prophecies these kids give are always given in the most vague and generalized manner, exactly like astrologers give their "readings", and never are they checked up on later to verify their accuracy) and "discerning of spirits", whatever the hell that means (the little girl who claimed she had this "gift" also clearly had no idea what the hell such a set of words were possibly referring to, you could see it on her face and hear it in her voice). The kids go to a camp in North Dakota for, I guess a week, and get preached to every night about sin and the punishment that accompanies it. The "pastor" lady even consciously picks a graphic of the word death (the wage of sin according to Romans 6:23) that has, what she described as, dripping blood falling off the letters of the word. I mean she actually typed the word, and then purposefully chose the bloody font for this particular slide in her powerpoint show she was preparing for the kids to see that evening. The kids were psychologically beaten up with the idea that if they had ever been or were currently being "phony" in their claims to "righteousness" that their hypocrisy was in need of being cleansed, literally. She had those kids come up and hold their hands out so that she could pour water from a water bottle over them to "wash" the kids' hands clean of the sin of hypocrisy. Needless to say, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to say it anyway, these kids were in tears at these sessions, and they clearly wanted to be. That is what has incensed me so much. These poor children, only a little older than my own son, were bawling over their sinfulness, how bad they were as people, and the adults were not only allowing this to take place, they were actually CAUSING it to take place. The had not only hoodwinked their kids into thinking they were terrible people, but they had, even worse, taught their kids that by recognizing their own horridness, they could then be "fixed" if only they prayed real hard for god to "forgive" them. And so, these kids weren't crying because they were afraid, they were crying because they were happy. They had a way out of going to hell. These were tears of unbridled relief and subsequent gratitude. I absolutely hate the practice of ridicule in education, and the evangelical contingent in this country is absolutely mired in it.
First: Get them to believe they are going to burn in hell for forever, just because they were born. Make them think that through no fault of their own, they have to suffer the worst tortures imaginable, eternally.
Second: Get them to accept this fate through constant reminders of their innate sinfulness, until they have no mind to analyze the validity of such an accusation.
Third: Tell them that they can escape this fate, if they do the religious thing i.e. Verbally "accept" jesus as their lord and saviour, and confess their sins to everyone who will listen, so that their humiliation will be complete, and they will have no ability to "choose" otherwise.
Fourth: Get them to go and tell everyone they know the exact things they themselves have been inexcusably exposed to, so that they become "warriors of christ".
PEER PRESSURE!!!!!
And I'm not talking about teenagers here who struggle with the decisions brought on by peer pressure, decisions like "should I or should I not", or "I know better but all my friends are doing it so maybe I should to". Teens can analyze for themselves, even though most do not, they at least have the ability to. No, these are 9, 10, and 11 year olds. Kids who will adopt whatever behavior they are asked to adopt, if there is a clear reason to do so. Evangelical adults are bullying their children into corrosive and destructive mindlessness, and they think this is an acceptable child-rearing technique. Indoctrination is TERRIBLE!!!! it's inexcusable and should be a criminal offense. All it does is disengage the victim from the process of critical thinking. No 11 year old should think they are capable of preaching, to anyone, about anything. They are not experts at anything yet, except for howto be a kid. For crying out loud, 11 year olds can't drive a car, they can't vote, they can't drink alcoholic beverages, or smoke. They are disallowed these, for one simple reason, they are not cognitively developed enough to be able to understand all the ramifications and responsibilities of these behaviors. So how in the world do the evangelical parents of this country think that although their kids can't do all the above mentioned activities, they can and should be poisoning other equally impressionable kids with unsubstantiated nonsense like they do in this movie? I would like to shoot these parents, or better yet, go back in time and sterilize them.
They have these kids actually touching buildings and praying that jesus (even though he is rather inconveniently dead, and has been so for thousands of years, if he ever existed at all, which is questionable) will cause the planned parenthood clinic housed within to close down. These kids have been lit with a flame of ignorance and sympathy for the unborn by their parents. They can't possibly be educated enough on both sides of the debate to be able to say, as the children they are, that they are pro-life. They claim to be pro-life, because they have only seen the side of abortion that the churches show. The inflammatory side, the one with all the dead babies, and the little plastic fetuses that look just like a tiny baby, etc... they have not seen the other side, enough to weigh for themselves the data and decide on their own. Their parents think certain things, and then choose to indoctrinate their kids in a similar vein.
This movie touched on a lot of subjects of which I am well aware, having grown up in an evangelical christian home. Creationism vs evolution, abortion, national christianity, the end times, the need for constant repentance and the ultimate need for salvation. All of these are topics which have driven me away from the ridiculousness of christianity. You could see the fear in these kids eyes, and felt the resonation of memory, having been bombarded on a bi-weekly basis with these toxins for nigh on twelve of the most impressionable years of my life. And that is the basis for the whole sham, as I have written about in some of my earlier blogs. FEAR. There is an assumption that there is a continuation of our life in some capacity after we die, and that capacity is directly determined by our choices and activities while we are alive now. This assumption comes from the fact that we feel like we are conscious beings, and that our consciousness is a manifestation of an invisible greater world of spirituality, one which we cannot see. Based on this assumption of spirituality, christians assign a place of good or ill to our post-life selves. It is this heaven and hell that outlines the real basis for the fundamentals of the christian faith. Christians don't fear hell,because they've chosen the right path. They also "know" that non-christians have everything to fear because they have not chosen the right path. They have constructed this farcical fantasy world, which is wholly dependant on fear, and in doing so have ensured that those who are exposed to it have to choose one way or the other. It is all based on the false assumption that we go somewhere after our deaths. Once that assumed foundation is forged, the good vs evil scenario is as valid a scenario as any other, and it is the one christians hang their hat on. But the foundation is false, and consequently the structures built upon it, such as the christian faith, are also. Even for those religions or spiritual people out there that are not of the christian faith, the fundamental assumption that we are transcendent of our corporeal selves, is not true. How do I know, because I am not a child, and I no longer have to fear the boogeyman of death. I and my wife have taught our son that when living things, like people die, they turn back into dirt, over time. He is four and thinks that is really cool. When he is older, more capable of abstract thought, he will inevitably come to us with the familiar questions of what happens to "us" when we die. Thankfully, I know our answers will remain unchanged. We are not filling him with bullshit, and I am so glad that I was able to jettison all the bullshit I injested in my youth. But I still feel like vomiting after having watched that putrid filth tonight.
It is a film, very well made by the way, about the evangelical demographic in America, and how the adults of this demographic are "teaching" their children to literally pray for America to be "revived" and to "return" to being a christian nation. I have never wanted to live in another country more than I do right now; however, I have also never wanted to offer resistance to lunacy more than I do right now either, and it would be hard to justify criticism of a certain populace within this country if I no longer were in this country.
I am so sad for the children in this movie. These kids have bought the evangelical bullshit message hook, line and sinker, and they think (as do their parents) that they "decided" on this position of their own accord, through the diligent efforts of both their parents and the pastor of a christian children's camp, to willfully indoctrinate them into thinking the things they now have no choice but to think. I mean the parents really believe they have raised their kids to "choose" to be evangelical christians. These are preteen kids, kids who joyfully and willingly preach to other kids, put on puppet shows about how the world is going to end just as soon as enough people pray for jesus to come back and think they have supernatural abilities such as jibber-jabbering literally in blatherous nonsense (which they call speaking in tongues, mind you, the sounds they make (as do their parents) are NOT long-deceased languages or even remnants of languages, they are just nonsense vocables), being able to prophecy (mind you, the prophecies these kids give are always given in the most vague and generalized manner, exactly like astrologers give their "readings", and never are they checked up on later to verify their accuracy) and "discerning of spirits", whatever the hell that means (the little girl who claimed she had this "gift" also clearly had no idea what the hell such a set of words were possibly referring to, you could see it on her face and hear it in her voice). The kids go to a camp in North Dakota for, I guess a week, and get preached to every night about sin and the punishment that accompanies it. The "pastor" lady even consciously picks a graphic of the word death (the wage of sin according to Romans 6:23) that has, what she described as, dripping blood falling off the letters of the word. I mean she actually typed the word, and then purposefully chose the bloody font for this particular slide in her powerpoint show she was preparing for the kids to see that evening. The kids were psychologically beaten up with the idea that if they had ever been or were currently being "phony" in their claims to "righteousness" that their hypocrisy was in need of being cleansed, literally. She had those kids come up and hold their hands out so that she could pour water from a water bottle over them to "wash" the kids' hands clean of the sin of hypocrisy. Needless to say, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to say it anyway, these kids were in tears at these sessions, and they clearly wanted to be. That is what has incensed me so much. These poor children, only a little older than my own son, were bawling over their sinfulness, how bad they were as people, and the adults were not only allowing this to take place, they were actually CAUSING it to take place. The had not only hoodwinked their kids into thinking they were terrible people, but they had, even worse, taught their kids that by recognizing their own horridness, they could then be "fixed" if only they prayed real hard for god to "forgive" them. And so, these kids weren't crying because they were afraid, they were crying because they were happy. They had a way out of going to hell. These were tears of unbridled relief and subsequent gratitude. I absolutely hate the practice of ridicule in education, and the evangelical contingent in this country is absolutely mired in it.
First: Get them to believe they are going to burn in hell for forever, just because they were born. Make them think that through no fault of their own, they have to suffer the worst tortures imaginable, eternally.
Second: Get them to accept this fate through constant reminders of their innate sinfulness, until they have no mind to analyze the validity of such an accusation.
Third: Tell them that they can escape this fate, if they do the religious thing i.e. Verbally "accept" jesus as their lord and saviour, and confess their sins to everyone who will listen, so that their humiliation will be complete, and they will have no ability to "choose" otherwise.
Fourth: Get them to go and tell everyone they know the exact things they themselves have been inexcusably exposed to, so that they become "warriors of christ".
PEER PRESSURE!!!!!
And I'm not talking about teenagers here who struggle with the decisions brought on by peer pressure, decisions like "should I or should I not", or "I know better but all my friends are doing it so maybe I should to". Teens can analyze for themselves, even though most do not, they at least have the ability to. No, these are 9, 10, and 11 year olds. Kids who will adopt whatever behavior they are asked to adopt, if there is a clear reason to do so. Evangelical adults are bullying their children into corrosive and destructive mindlessness, and they think this is an acceptable child-rearing technique. Indoctrination is TERRIBLE!!!! it's inexcusable and should be a criminal offense. All it does is disengage the victim from the process of critical thinking. No 11 year old should think they are capable of preaching, to anyone, about anything. They are not experts at anything yet, except for howto be a kid. For crying out loud, 11 year olds can't drive a car, they can't vote, they can't drink alcoholic beverages, or smoke. They are disallowed these, for one simple reason, they are not cognitively developed enough to be able to understand all the ramifications and responsibilities of these behaviors. So how in the world do the evangelical parents of this country think that although their kids can't do all the above mentioned activities, they can and should be poisoning other equally impressionable kids with unsubstantiated nonsense like they do in this movie? I would like to shoot these parents, or better yet, go back in time and sterilize them.
They have these kids actually touching buildings and praying that jesus (even though he is rather inconveniently dead, and has been so for thousands of years, if he ever existed at all, which is questionable) will cause the planned parenthood clinic housed within to close down. These kids have been lit with a flame of ignorance and sympathy for the unborn by their parents. They can't possibly be educated enough on both sides of the debate to be able to say, as the children they are, that they are pro-life. They claim to be pro-life, because they have only seen the side of abortion that the churches show. The inflammatory side, the one with all the dead babies, and the little plastic fetuses that look just like a tiny baby, etc... they have not seen the other side, enough to weigh for themselves the data and decide on their own. Their parents think certain things, and then choose to indoctrinate their kids in a similar vein.
This movie touched on a lot of subjects of which I am well aware, having grown up in an evangelical christian home. Creationism vs evolution, abortion, national christianity, the end times, the need for constant repentance and the ultimate need for salvation. All of these are topics which have driven me away from the ridiculousness of christianity. You could see the fear in these kids eyes, and felt the resonation of memory, having been bombarded on a bi-weekly basis with these toxins for nigh on twelve of the most impressionable years of my life. And that is the basis for the whole sham, as I have written about in some of my earlier blogs. FEAR. There is an assumption that there is a continuation of our life in some capacity after we die, and that capacity is directly determined by our choices and activities while we are alive now. This assumption comes from the fact that we feel like we are conscious beings, and that our consciousness is a manifestation of an invisible greater world of spirituality, one which we cannot see. Based on this assumption of spirituality, christians assign a place of good or ill to our post-life selves. It is this heaven and hell that outlines the real basis for the fundamentals of the christian faith. Christians don't fear hell,because they've chosen the right path. They also "know" that non-christians have everything to fear because they have not chosen the right path. They have constructed this farcical fantasy world, which is wholly dependant on fear, and in doing so have ensured that those who are exposed to it have to choose one way or the other. It is all based on the false assumption that we go somewhere after our deaths. Once that assumed foundation is forged, the good vs evil scenario is as valid a scenario as any other, and it is the one christians hang their hat on. But the foundation is false, and consequently the structures built upon it, such as the christian faith, are also. Even for those religions or spiritual people out there that are not of the christian faith, the fundamental assumption that we are transcendent of our corporeal selves, is not true. How do I know, because I am not a child, and I no longer have to fear the boogeyman of death. I and my wife have taught our son that when living things, like people die, they turn back into dirt, over time. He is four and thinks that is really cool. When he is older, more capable of abstract thought, he will inevitably come to us with the familiar questions of what happens to "us" when we die. Thankfully, I know our answers will remain unchanged. We are not filling him with bullshit, and I am so glad that I was able to jettison all the bullshit I injested in my youth. But I still feel like vomiting after having watched that putrid filth tonight.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Another fatal flaw
Recently, a reader friend made the observation that, in their opinion, the primary focus of my blog posts seem to be centered around the old testament god, and not so much the new testament christian one; so, here's one for those who share this sentiment (although in my own defence, I have always felt my criticisms were really directed towards the new testament side of things, but nevertheless).
In the new testament, god supposedly sent his son to pay for the sins of mankind by dying in our place (John 3:16). Also in the new testament, god and his "son" are purported to be different incarnations of the same being (Matthew 1:22-23). Jesus calls himself god, or at least he leads his disciples through indirect implication to call him as such (Matthew 16: 13-20). Additionally, lest anyone forget, god is also supposed to be omniscient, he knows everything. Now, it seems to me, that since god and jesus were the same being, this must mean that logically, jesus was also omniscient. If we are to believe the bible's teachings, jesus must have known ahead of time that he was going to be killed, as he was really god and all that. Infact, he did know ahead of time (Matthew 16:21, 17:22-23, 20:17-19). This is afterall, the "good news" isn't it, that there was someone to offer a reprieve for us from god's wrath. Additionally, jesus knew he would be resurrected ahead of time (Matthew 26:64). So here's the rub, if jesus, being the omniscient being he supposedly was, knew he was going to be killed ahead of time, then the sacrifice would have actually been a sacrifice, but unfortunately he also knew he would be resurrected ahead of time. HE KNEW HE WAS GOING TO BE RESURRECTED BEFORE HE EVEN DIED. This is not sacrificial in the least, infact it completely destroys all semblance of a sacrifice being made. It's only sacrificial if the act itself is horrible and simultaneously altruistic. It is in the unspeakableness of the act that the sacrifice is made. If I throw myself in front of a moving car, pushing a mother and her baby out of the way, but I do so knowing I will not be harmed in any way, then I have made no sacrifice at all. Infact I have only done what anyone with my particular power should do. If I am invincible, then, if afforded the opportunity to save someone, I should do so without a second thought, and people should have an understandable expectation of me to do so. I hesitate to say people would have a right to expect me to do such a thing, but an expectation of me to do so, seeing as how I am invincible and all, is not out of reason .
Jesus knew he was going to be resurrected after he died, so the sacrifice not a sacrifice. He did not actually die, he died and came back to life. A real sacrifice would have been if he had died and never came back to life, butstayed in hell on behalf of all sinners for all of eternity. I mean that's the punishment for humanity if we reject the "lamb of god". We won't get a three-day pass in hell (which is a place that really doesn't exist, see my other blog posts or visit www. godvsthebible.com), so why do christians think jesus spending three days down there is enough to satisfy god almighty? The afterlife for jesus, be it ever so short, was not part of the sacrifice, the death was it. It was in jesus' dying, that supposedly god's wrath against us lowly humans evaporated. It doesn't say " For god so loved the world that he temporarily gave his only begotten son (three days maximum and then he took him back) blah,blah,blah... No, the death was what mattered. If he was resurrected then the death was not truly death to begin with, and this point really becomes clear when we see that jesus knew he was coming back anyway before he ever took a nail in the ol' slapmaster. The "good news" is retarded. The god of the old and new testament was a sheister, which really means the men who concoted him, the history of mankind which concoted him over thousands and thousands of years were sheisters, and not very good ones at that. There wasno resurrection, there was no sacrifice, furthermore, there wasnever any need for one, because god simply doesn't exist. God's laws are not laws, they are fabrications of the collective mind of humanity, which is why they make absolutely no sense. I'll give the bible this though, it does imply that man can never understand god. That is absolutely true, but not because god is some unknowable being; rather it is because god is no longer needed; whereas when he was invented, or rather they were invented, god was sorely needed. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of all invention, and at one point, humanity needed to invent god, because we were too intelligent to sit idly by without some explanation of ourselves, and yet we were still too incapable of learning what the world really was. Happily we are no longer as incapable, but apparently we have collectively decided that our intelligence and our thirst for an explanation is now a moot point, because god and religion have been around for so long, we might as well keep them.
Logic tells us the story of jesus' sacrificial death and victorious resurrection is false. It is one thing to believe in something without evidence to support it, it is another thing entirely to completely disregard evidence which clearly contradicts a particular premise, just because you aren't comfortable giving up your belief in the false. I understand that belief in Christ gives many, many people comfort, but not for one instance does that mass comfort make the story itself real. Mass delusions have existed in the past, and a few mega-mass delusions are still around today. Still, I know that this entire blog post will have no effect on the willfully blinded. They will continue to wallow in the slop of religion, lapping it up happily, all the while begging for more putrid filth (which they are convinced is 5 star cuisine) to be dumped into their sty. They will also continue to believe that the arabs are heathens and wrong and that they are christians, and are consequently right. Problem is every religion is wrong, no matter how right it might seem. Open your eyes folks, the emperor is just plain naked.
In the new testament, god supposedly sent his son to pay for the sins of mankind by dying in our place (John 3:16). Also in the new testament, god and his "son" are purported to be different incarnations of the same being (Matthew 1:22-23). Jesus calls himself god, or at least he leads his disciples through indirect implication to call him as such (Matthew 16: 13-20). Additionally, lest anyone forget, god is also supposed to be omniscient, he knows everything. Now, it seems to me, that since god and jesus were the same being, this must mean that logically, jesus was also omniscient. If we are to believe the bible's teachings, jesus must have known ahead of time that he was going to be killed, as he was really god and all that. Infact, he did know ahead of time (Matthew 16:21, 17:22-23, 20:17-19). This is afterall, the "good news" isn't it, that there was someone to offer a reprieve for us from god's wrath. Additionally, jesus knew he would be resurrected ahead of time (Matthew 26:64). So here's the rub, if jesus, being the omniscient being he supposedly was, knew he was going to be killed ahead of time, then the sacrifice would have actually been a sacrifice, but unfortunately he also knew he would be resurrected ahead of time. HE KNEW HE WAS GOING TO BE RESURRECTED BEFORE HE EVEN DIED. This is not sacrificial in the least, infact it completely destroys all semblance of a sacrifice being made. It's only sacrificial if the act itself is horrible and simultaneously altruistic. It is in the unspeakableness of the act that the sacrifice is made. If I throw myself in front of a moving car, pushing a mother and her baby out of the way, but I do so knowing I will not be harmed in any way, then I have made no sacrifice at all. Infact I have only done what anyone with my particular power should do. If I am invincible, then, if afforded the opportunity to save someone, I should do so without a second thought, and people should have an understandable expectation of me to do so. I hesitate to say people would have a right to expect me to do such a thing, but an expectation of me to do so, seeing as how I am invincible and all, is not out of reason .
Jesus knew he was going to be resurrected after he died, so the sacrifice not a sacrifice. He did not actually die, he died and came back to life. A real sacrifice would have been if he had died and never came back to life, butstayed in hell on behalf of all sinners for all of eternity. I mean that's the punishment for humanity if we reject the "lamb of god". We won't get a three-day pass in hell (which is a place that really doesn't exist, see my other blog posts or visit www. godvsthebible.com), so why do christians think jesus spending three days down there is enough to satisfy god almighty? The afterlife for jesus, be it ever so short, was not part of the sacrifice, the death was it. It was in jesus' dying, that supposedly god's wrath against us lowly humans evaporated. It doesn't say " For god so loved the world that he temporarily gave his only begotten son (three days maximum and then he took him back) blah,blah,blah... No, the death was what mattered. If he was resurrected then the death was not truly death to begin with, and this point really becomes clear when we see that jesus knew he was coming back anyway before he ever took a nail in the ol' slapmaster. The "good news" is retarded. The god of the old and new testament was a sheister, which really means the men who concoted him, the history of mankind which concoted him over thousands and thousands of years were sheisters, and not very good ones at that. There wasno resurrection, there was no sacrifice, furthermore, there wasnever any need for one, because god simply doesn't exist. God's laws are not laws, they are fabrications of the collective mind of humanity, which is why they make absolutely no sense. I'll give the bible this though, it does imply that man can never understand god. That is absolutely true, but not because god is some unknowable being; rather it is because god is no longer needed; whereas when he was invented, or rather they were invented, god was sorely needed. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of all invention, and at one point, humanity needed to invent god, because we were too intelligent to sit idly by without some explanation of ourselves, and yet we were still too incapable of learning what the world really was. Happily we are no longer as incapable, but apparently we have collectively decided that our intelligence and our thirst for an explanation is now a moot point, because god and religion have been around for so long, we might as well keep them.
Logic tells us the story of jesus' sacrificial death and victorious resurrection is false. It is one thing to believe in something without evidence to support it, it is another thing entirely to completely disregard evidence which clearly contradicts a particular premise, just because you aren't comfortable giving up your belief in the false. I understand that belief in Christ gives many, many people comfort, but not for one instance does that mass comfort make the story itself real. Mass delusions have existed in the past, and a few mega-mass delusions are still around today. Still, I know that this entire blog post will have no effect on the willfully blinded. They will continue to wallow in the slop of religion, lapping it up happily, all the while begging for more putrid filth (which they are convinced is 5 star cuisine) to be dumped into their sty. They will also continue to believe that the arabs are heathens and wrong and that they are christians, and are consequently right. Problem is every religion is wrong, no matter how right it might seem. Open your eyes folks, the emperor is just plain naked.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Questions for the Christian
The following are a list of questions for any of you Christians out there to ask yourself. I'd love it if anyone wanted to actually answer them for me by commenting.
1. What are you in need of salvation from?
2. What is sin?
3. How do you recognize it?
4. Is sin a source of fear, resignation or delight for you?
5. How do you gauge your behaviour?
6. What is heaven?
7. How do you know it exists?
8. Does being a Christian make you personally a better person, all by itself?
9. How do you know you possess an immortal soul?
10. Do you tend to reconcile contradictory passages of the bible, if so, how?
11. Do you recognize contradictory passages in the bible?
12. Do you base your personal sense of morality on what is found in the bible, or do you form your own ideas for morality on what you've learned as you've aged and observed your surroundings?
13. How do you know god exists?
14. Do you base your belief in god on the writings in the bible, your intuition of the existence of a soul, your sense of morality, the wonder of the natural world, etc....?
15. Where is heaven? Hell?
16. How do you know hell exists?
17. How do you know the christian god is the correct model, and all others are not true representations?
18. How is blasphemy any worse a sin than any of the other possible sins mankind could commit?
19. Which of the two versions of the biblical ten commandments do you adhere to?
20. If, on the eve of your death, you were to find out definitively that there is no god, heaven, hell, sin, or christ, would you regret any portion of how you lived your life?
Have fun, and please answer honestly.
1. What are you in need of salvation from?
2. What is sin?
3. How do you recognize it?
4. Is sin a source of fear, resignation or delight for you?
5. How do you gauge your behaviour?
6. What is heaven?
7. How do you know it exists?
8. Does being a Christian make you personally a better person, all by itself?
9. How do you know you possess an immortal soul?
10. Do you tend to reconcile contradictory passages of the bible, if so, how?
11. Do you recognize contradictory passages in the bible?
12. Do you base your personal sense of morality on what is found in the bible, or do you form your own ideas for morality on what you've learned as you've aged and observed your surroundings?
13. How do you know god exists?
14. Do you base your belief in god on the writings in the bible, your intuition of the existence of a soul, your sense of morality, the wonder of the natural world, etc....?
15. Where is heaven? Hell?
16. How do you know hell exists?
17. How do you know the christian god is the correct model, and all others are not true representations?
18. How is blasphemy any worse a sin than any of the other possible sins mankind could commit?
19. Which of the two versions of the biblical ten commandments do you adhere to?
20. If, on the eve of your death, you were to find out definitively that there is no god, heaven, hell, sin, or christ, would you regret any portion of how you lived your life?
Have fun, and please answer honestly.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
On Living Life
I used to be a Christian. I grew up in the protestant pentecostal tradition. At times my family would attend church three times a week, regularly, with an occasional "revival" attendance thrown in for good measure. By the time I got to high school, I identified myself with christianity, which is no doubt what my family was openly striving for. I'm ok with that. I don't harbor any ill-will toward my parents for their choices in how they raised me. I know they were doing what they truly thought, and still think, was the right thing by me. Indeed, the intentions of my wife and I are to do the same, raise our son in the best manner we think. It just happens, that we think oppositely of my parents. From a familial standpoint, that's fine. Maybe not from a sociological vantagepoint, though, but whatever.
Obviously (if you're reading this blog), I no longer identify myself with the christian faith, and thankfully so. I walked away from what never truly resonated in my mind, even as a high-schooler (or maybe its especially as a high-schooler). Having been on both sides, I enjoy looking back and poking holes in what used to seem like a forbidden-to-touch wall. I understand the many different approaches to christianity, the different protestant denominations may employ, some of which are less formidable than those of my childhood, but that recognition in no way excuses the capability of such a faith from the wayward behavior of a few rogue denominations. The whole is responsible. Otherwise, the different denominations cannot be gathered under the same umbrella term of christianity. I'm getting away from my topic, so let me return to task.
I'd like to discuss one particular idea of christianity that has always bothered me, even when I was a kid. Christ lived a life that christians readily model their own after. I can't say how many times I've heard over the years, from christian friends, that they are trying to live like christ. Honestly, most of you are familiar with this idea, aren't you? It really is one of the hallmarks of Christianity. Now aside from the obvious fact that most people are either incapable of doing so, or are truly (secretly) uninterested in doing so, there is something else that really bothers me about the idea of living the life of somebody else, even if they were the greatest person ever to live. How do we know someone else may not possibly be an even better person than Jesus? I'll repeat that. How can somebody really believe, to the point of action on their own part, that Jesus was the best that could possibly be, and that no one else will ever be as good of a person? Jesus was the son of god! That's how a christian can believe such a thing.
But aren't we all god's children, according to the bible? What makes Jesus so special?
He was/is part of the triumverate godhead, one of three. That's how Jesus is more special than we are.
So the son of god was not really that, he was really just god. But didn't the bible say we became as god, knowing good from evil because of original sin (see earlier post On original sin)? And weren't we made in the image of god?
My point here is, I think it is counterproductive to try and live the life of someone else, anyone else!!!!
To do such a thing, we have to suppress the individuality which makes us who we are. In the attempt to contort our consciousness into a religious mold, we must sacrifice our true selves, for better or worse. For sure, there are some, for whom a change of landscape is a good thing. The serial rapist who finds god and repents of his ways, is doing himself and society a favor in looking to an outside source for help. I don't think most would argue that point, but I also think most would agree that if that is all the guy does for his rehabilitation, he is only superficially dressing the wound, while leaving the "infection" stolidly in place, perhaps to resurface later in life. Suppression is never the best medicine, even if the suppressed is a horrid behaviour. For the rest of us non-serial-rapists, I think we do ourselves a great disservice by happily jumping into the sludge of religious subjection. No matter what any religion says, there is no concrete reason to believe we live beyond death. We might, but we might not. Its sad that so many people in this world give up living a happy and worthwhile life because they think the one coming up after they die will be better. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers have a fantastic song that I have sort of adopted recently as a soundtrack to my Atheistic life, called "Two Gunslingers". If you get a chance, listen to it, even if you don't like Tom Petty's unique voice. Perhaps, an afterlife will afford many an opportunity for a better life than their current one, but even if that turns out to be the case, what validity is there in voluntarily sacrificing any available happiness they might find in this life? I am not saying jesus lived a life of torture and destitution, the bible does enough of that. What I am saying is if you are going to try and live a good life, one that has a meaningful impact on the people and world around you, shouldn't you look for a more contemporary example to model yourself after, perhaps your own valuable mind? Jesus, had no reason to discuss Carbon Footprints, because the industrial revolution was still 1750 years away. He had no reason to suspect that disease was not caused by demonic possession, because the germ theory of disease was well in the future. I know he said many positive things regarding how to live a meaningful life, but he also said some horrible things, which instilled fear in the minds and imaginations of those who heard or read what he said. But that is not the point. The point is your own life is your own life. You might be a better person than Jesus, and there's no reason to think otherwise. You have the opportunity right now to live life, happily, miserably or somewhere in between. You can choose. Jesus asked that we live one of the last two choices right now, so that we could have the first choice after we die. That sounds like the definition of an empty promise. There was no way jesus could verify his claims, but he asked anyway. I'm sorry, but I don't see the virtue in giving up a opportunity in hand just to have a later opportunity of the same nature given back to us. Jesus may have been a good person, but he was not you, and his choices or decrees might've been ok for him back then, but why in the world would we think those proclamations are more valid than what each of us can think of ourselves right now, especially in the light of all the knowledge about the world we have, that he did not? Your life is worth living, because you are you. Don't waste your chance, you may not get another one.
Obviously (if you're reading this blog), I no longer identify myself with the christian faith, and thankfully so. I walked away from what never truly resonated in my mind, even as a high-schooler (or maybe its especially as a high-schooler). Having been on both sides, I enjoy looking back and poking holes in what used to seem like a forbidden-to-touch wall. I understand the many different approaches to christianity, the different protestant denominations may employ, some of which are less formidable than those of my childhood, but that recognition in no way excuses the capability of such a faith from the wayward behavior of a few rogue denominations. The whole is responsible. Otherwise, the different denominations cannot be gathered under the same umbrella term of christianity. I'm getting away from my topic, so let me return to task.
I'd like to discuss one particular idea of christianity that has always bothered me, even when I was a kid. Christ lived a life that christians readily model their own after. I can't say how many times I've heard over the years, from christian friends, that they are trying to live like christ. Honestly, most of you are familiar with this idea, aren't you? It really is one of the hallmarks of Christianity. Now aside from the obvious fact that most people are either incapable of doing so, or are truly (secretly) uninterested in doing so, there is something else that really bothers me about the idea of living the life of somebody else, even if they were the greatest person ever to live. How do we know someone else may not possibly be an even better person than Jesus? I'll repeat that. How can somebody really believe, to the point of action on their own part, that Jesus was the best that could possibly be, and that no one else will ever be as good of a person? Jesus was the son of god! That's how a christian can believe such a thing.
But aren't we all god's children, according to the bible? What makes Jesus so special?
He was/is part of the triumverate godhead, one of three. That's how Jesus is more special than we are.
So the son of god was not really that, he was really just god. But didn't the bible say we became as god, knowing good from evil because of original sin (see earlier post On original sin)? And weren't we made in the image of god?
My point here is, I think it is counterproductive to try and live the life of someone else, anyone else!!!!
To do such a thing, we have to suppress the individuality which makes us who we are. In the attempt to contort our consciousness into a religious mold, we must sacrifice our true selves, for better or worse. For sure, there are some, for whom a change of landscape is a good thing. The serial rapist who finds god and repents of his ways, is doing himself and society a favor in looking to an outside source for help. I don't think most would argue that point, but I also think most would agree that if that is all the guy does for his rehabilitation, he is only superficially dressing the wound, while leaving the "infection" stolidly in place, perhaps to resurface later in life. Suppression is never the best medicine, even if the suppressed is a horrid behaviour. For the rest of us non-serial-rapists, I think we do ourselves a great disservice by happily jumping into the sludge of religious subjection. No matter what any religion says, there is no concrete reason to believe we live beyond death. We might, but we might not. Its sad that so many people in this world give up living a happy and worthwhile life because they think the one coming up after they die will be better. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers have a fantastic song that I have sort of adopted recently as a soundtrack to my Atheistic life, called "Two Gunslingers". If you get a chance, listen to it, even if you don't like Tom Petty's unique voice. Perhaps, an afterlife will afford many an opportunity for a better life than their current one, but even if that turns out to be the case, what validity is there in voluntarily sacrificing any available happiness they might find in this life? I am not saying jesus lived a life of torture and destitution, the bible does enough of that. What I am saying is if you are going to try and live a good life, one that has a meaningful impact on the people and world around you, shouldn't you look for a more contemporary example to model yourself after, perhaps your own valuable mind? Jesus, had no reason to discuss Carbon Footprints, because the industrial revolution was still 1750 years away. He had no reason to suspect that disease was not caused by demonic possession, because the germ theory of disease was well in the future. I know he said many positive things regarding how to live a meaningful life, but he also said some horrible things, which instilled fear in the minds and imaginations of those who heard or read what he said. But that is not the point. The point is your own life is your own life. You might be a better person than Jesus, and there's no reason to think otherwise. You have the opportunity right now to live life, happily, miserably or somewhere in between. You can choose. Jesus asked that we live one of the last two choices right now, so that we could have the first choice after we die. That sounds like the definition of an empty promise. There was no way jesus could verify his claims, but he asked anyway. I'm sorry, but I don't see the virtue in giving up a opportunity in hand just to have a later opportunity of the same nature given back to us. Jesus may have been a good person, but he was not you, and his choices or decrees might've been ok for him back then, but why in the world would we think those proclamations are more valid than what each of us can think of ourselves right now, especially in the light of all the knowledge about the world we have, that he did not? Your life is worth living, because you are you. Don't waste your chance, you may not get another one.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
On Verifiability and Universality
If Christianity is true, then it should be verifiable outside of itself. the bible should be unnecesary in order to prove the truth of Christianity. If any religion is TRUE, then it has to possess a quality of universal believability. Religion has to be universal, or it cannot be true, because truth is universal. I speak of Truth in the grandiose scheme, not in the everyday scheme. Truth has to be universal, or else it would not be truth, only opinion. If religion is the truth, then it has to universally true, but no religion is universal. Since religion is designed for and by humans alone (all other animals and plants having no need for it) it is up to us to detemine the criteria for religion's truth. Since no one religion can claim universal belief across the board, it stands to reason we have not yet found a religion that is the truth, except for morality. Morality, is universally agreed upon, by those capable of understanding morality. No one believes murder to be the right thing to do (psychopaths are unable to understand that murder is wrong, because of brain abnormalities). Lying is universally agreed to be wrong, even by those who do it constantly to gain the upper hand. Morality is the one area that all of humanity agrees on, and it is the church of humanism that preaches morality as it's "dogma" if you will. If there is a qualifying religion in regards to truth, it would have to be secularism, humanism, non-supernaturalism, whatever you'd like to call it.
There are those who would say their religion is not universal yet, but will soon be, we just haven't waited long enough. Certainly the abrahamic religions all count on this. I would say this: If one particular religion is true and others are false, then it is a colossal waste of time (if you are the deity) to allow the other religions to persist. Why not be universal in your coverage. The very fact that there are so many other religions points all too clearly to each of them being manmade, otherwise there would never have been any religions but one. A monotheistic god would be unsatisfied with partial acceptance of his decrees, commandments, and indeed his very existence. The idea that a monotheistic god wants only those adherents who come to him voluntarily is silly, in that any religion (TRUE) that can only attract a certain portion of the population cannot in good consciousness claim itself to be the one True religion. Since it is the Truth, shouldn't it be unabashedly clear to anyone who ever comes into contact with it, that it is the way to follow? There should never be any question in the minds of us, if there is one true religion. There should be no such things as atheists. We should not be able to turn away from the trueist religion. But of course we can and do. Our very presence is testament to the inadequacies of religion. The very presence of so many contradictory religions is testament to the inadequacies of them all. The only universal thought process we have is secularism. Nature is going nowhere, and there is no other nature to compete with the one we have. There is no avenue of deniability about nature's truth or existence. It is here for all to see and enjoy. If we can't universally agree upon something, it cannot be the truth. Science searches for the grand unifying theory of the four forces of nature, Gravity, electro-magnetism, The Strong Nuclear Force and the Weak Nuclear force. Science does not have a grand unifying theory yet and so it (science in general) does not purport to have found that Einstein's special theory or general theory of relativity is the theory that explains it all. Neither does science say that Quantum theory explains everything. Neither do the two theories agree with each other. Universality of agreement and acceptance is required if something is to claim itself as the Truth. No religion can claim itself to be the Truth, precisely because no religion is universal in its acceptance or agreement. We do not need more watering down of the religions that exist, we need a completely new religion. A religion that is accepted everywhere by everyone. We already have this religion, it is called Life. So go live it.
There are those who would say their religion is not universal yet, but will soon be, we just haven't waited long enough. Certainly the abrahamic religions all count on this. I would say this: If one particular religion is true and others are false, then it is a colossal waste of time (if you are the deity) to allow the other religions to persist. Why not be universal in your coverage. The very fact that there are so many other religions points all too clearly to each of them being manmade, otherwise there would never have been any religions but one. A monotheistic god would be unsatisfied with partial acceptance of his decrees, commandments, and indeed his very existence. The idea that a monotheistic god wants only those adherents who come to him voluntarily is silly, in that any religion (TRUE) that can only attract a certain portion of the population cannot in good consciousness claim itself to be the one True religion. Since it is the Truth, shouldn't it be unabashedly clear to anyone who ever comes into contact with it, that it is the way to follow? There should never be any question in the minds of us, if there is one true religion. There should be no such things as atheists. We should not be able to turn away from the trueist religion. But of course we can and do. Our very presence is testament to the inadequacies of religion. The very presence of so many contradictory religions is testament to the inadequacies of them all. The only universal thought process we have is secularism. Nature is going nowhere, and there is no other nature to compete with the one we have. There is no avenue of deniability about nature's truth or existence. It is here for all to see and enjoy. If we can't universally agree upon something, it cannot be the truth. Science searches for the grand unifying theory of the four forces of nature, Gravity, electro-magnetism, The Strong Nuclear Force and the Weak Nuclear force. Science does not have a grand unifying theory yet and so it (science in general) does not purport to have found that Einstein's special theory or general theory of relativity is the theory that explains it all. Neither does science say that Quantum theory explains everything. Neither do the two theories agree with each other. Universality of agreement and acceptance is required if something is to claim itself as the Truth. No religion can claim itself to be the Truth, precisely because no religion is universal in its acceptance or agreement. We do not need more watering down of the religions that exist, we need a completely new religion. A religion that is accepted everywhere by everyone. We already have this religion, it is called Life. So go live it.
Monday, April 28, 2008
If it's too good to be true, then it probably is
Every single person that has ever lived or ever will live on the earth is fatally guilty of trespassing the mandates of the eternal god of christianity. We will all die and spend eternity in unending agony for simply being born into the original sin perpetrated by Adam and Eve. There is no repose from this fate; either for those who have lived, are living now or will live at some time in the future; no possibility of escaping the fires of hell. Except for the life of a man named Jesus. Approximately 2000 years ago, this man magically appeared on the earth, claiming no biological father, but only a biological mother and none other than god almighty himself as his father. He lived a life as we all do and died when he was in his 30's (I'll be no more specific as I am unaware of any definitive length of this man's life ever having been recorded), but his death was prearranged, by the man upstairs who oddly enough was also him, to satisfy himself? that all humanity should be given an opportunity to evade the damnation planned for them. By dying, he would represent the death of all of humanity, taking on the original sin that the species procured at birth and satisfying the edict of death as payment for sin, or so we are told by the christian church. Seeing as he was actually god, he only stayed dead for three days, at which point he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and came back to life, proverbally sealing the deal. The devil was satisfied (or was he), god was satisfied (how obtusely grotesque is that), and of course, all of humanity was satisfied, right?
Wrong. All of humanity was not satisfied, indeed hardly any of humanity even knew of the sacrifice made on their behalf. even to this day there are plenty of people who could give a rip about jesus and his ultimate sacrifice, having never heard of the christian belief system.
Now, we've all heard the phrase "if it's too good to be true, then it probably is".
It is a rule of thumb we all live by on a regular basis, without even thinking about it. Imagine not living by this rule and you'd be in a world where you'd not only open every piece of junk mail you got, advertisements shouting at you about outrageously fantastic deals, but you'd jump at every single one you read, immediately. Unfortunately, a lot of us do this anyway, hence the inherent success and badness of advertising flyers (another blog, another day). In this world, you'd never think twice about taking prescription medication, wondering if there'd be any side-effects. Gamblers live in this world sort-of, if only in the sense that they operate on the assumption that they can buck the odds enough times to make a living at it.
But, if it's too good to be true then it probably is!!!
So, we left off at the point where we were all headed for hell and then jesus showed up as the answer to our (at that point) unvoiced prayers, salvation for us all. What's great news, in fact christians even call it the "good news".
What "good news" could possibly be better than " You're not going to be spending the rest of time in agony, flesh burning continuously. I've paid your debt, you can now come live with me and my invisible father (who's also, curiously, me) in a paradise of your dreams, where everything you could imagine will be there for your pleasure. Just think, rivers of milk that somehow never curdle, even in the open air and warmth of sunlight, and honey that never sours despite the same exposure to the elements. Roads will be paved with gold (although as we all know, abundance causes decline in value) and the whole of limitless heaven will be enclosed(however that's possible) with gates made of pearl (which as I understand it is a substance akin to pretty, hardened, oyster vomit). Doesn't that sound like a deal and a half? How could you say no?"
It does sound like a fantastic offer, doesn't it; one which comes with only one caveat; believe everything that jesus said, no matter how stupid it sounds.
So who is it that offers the incredulous? Who are they that offer something for nothing, or something so great for something so small? Is it our parents? Do they deliberately tell us lies in order to get what they want, with a total disregard for the detriment to us? Do trusted officials such as the supreme court justices ascend to their positions by practicing sleights-of-hand? Do our most closely-held friends and associates regularly deceive us for their own benefit and amusement? For the most part, the answers to these questions is no. We do not count these people (people we trust) as those who would trick us, or who would promise us something they knew they couldn't deliver on. No, it is the used car salesmen, the conmen of this world that we expect such behavior from. It is they who prey on our geatest weaknesses. The sheepishness of some, the trust of others are what play right into the hands of the conmen of the world. Jesus was just such a conman. He played upon the fears and hopes of the people he was around. His familiarity of the jewish traditions (being jewish) was good homework for him, and he did his homework. He duped enough people to ensure his name would be in the headlines for a long time, but a conman is a conman.
OK, enough with the inanity.
IF we were all sinners, guilty of our supposedly common progenetor's disobedience, and IF we were all subject to spend eternity in a hell for this transgression of guilt by association, and IF jesus were sent to save us from this because he was truly the son of god and the only one capable of doing so, then and only then would this be a good deal.
If, however, none of the preceding conditions were true, then the deal was and is irrelevent. So some guy died 2000 years ago. I feel bad for him, as much as I can feel bad for someone who lived that long ago. As crass as it might sound to the ears of some, I simply don't care about him or his "sacrifice". An event that, at best, might have happened over 2000 years ago rightfully has no bearing on my life today. I believe I am a good person. I know my wife is a good person. I know our son is a good person. If every person on the face of the earth would concern themselves with being good people all the time, what need would there be for religion?
Wrong. All of humanity was not satisfied, indeed hardly any of humanity even knew of the sacrifice made on their behalf. even to this day there are plenty of people who could give a rip about jesus and his ultimate sacrifice, having never heard of the christian belief system.
Now, we've all heard the phrase "if it's too good to be true, then it probably is".
It is a rule of thumb we all live by on a regular basis, without even thinking about it. Imagine not living by this rule and you'd be in a world where you'd not only open every piece of junk mail you got, advertisements shouting at you about outrageously fantastic deals, but you'd jump at every single one you read, immediately. Unfortunately, a lot of us do this anyway, hence the inherent success and badness of advertising flyers (another blog, another day). In this world, you'd never think twice about taking prescription medication, wondering if there'd be any side-effects. Gamblers live in this world sort-of, if only in the sense that they operate on the assumption that they can buck the odds enough times to make a living at it.
But, if it's too good to be true then it probably is!!!
So, we left off at the point where we were all headed for hell and then jesus showed up as the answer to our (at that point) unvoiced prayers, salvation for us all. What's great news, in fact christians even call it the "good news".
What "good news" could possibly be better than " You're not going to be spending the rest of time in agony, flesh burning continuously. I've paid your debt, you can now come live with me and my invisible father (who's also, curiously, me) in a paradise of your dreams, where everything you could imagine will be there for your pleasure. Just think, rivers of milk that somehow never curdle, even in the open air and warmth of sunlight, and honey that never sours despite the same exposure to the elements. Roads will be paved with gold (although as we all know, abundance causes decline in value) and the whole of limitless heaven will be enclosed(however that's possible) with gates made of pearl (which as I understand it is a substance akin to pretty, hardened, oyster vomit). Doesn't that sound like a deal and a half? How could you say no?"
It does sound like a fantastic offer, doesn't it; one which comes with only one caveat; believe everything that jesus said, no matter how stupid it sounds.
So who is it that offers the incredulous? Who are they that offer something for nothing, or something so great for something so small? Is it our parents? Do they deliberately tell us lies in order to get what they want, with a total disregard for the detriment to us? Do trusted officials such as the supreme court justices ascend to their positions by practicing sleights-of-hand? Do our most closely-held friends and associates regularly deceive us for their own benefit and amusement? For the most part, the answers to these questions is no. We do not count these people (people we trust) as those who would trick us, or who would promise us something they knew they couldn't deliver on. No, it is the used car salesmen, the conmen of this world that we expect such behavior from. It is they who prey on our geatest weaknesses. The sheepishness of some, the trust of others are what play right into the hands of the conmen of the world. Jesus was just such a conman. He played upon the fears and hopes of the people he was around. His familiarity of the jewish traditions (being jewish) was good homework for him, and he did his homework. He duped enough people to ensure his name would be in the headlines for a long time, but a conman is a conman.
OK, enough with the inanity.
IF we were all sinners, guilty of our supposedly common progenetor's disobedience, and IF we were all subject to spend eternity in a hell for this transgression of guilt by association, and IF jesus were sent to save us from this because he was truly the son of god and the only one capable of doing so, then and only then would this be a good deal.
If, however, none of the preceding conditions were true, then the deal was and is irrelevent. So some guy died 2000 years ago. I feel bad for him, as much as I can feel bad for someone who lived that long ago. As crass as it might sound to the ears of some, I simply don't care about him or his "sacrifice". An event that, at best, might have happened over 2000 years ago rightfully has no bearing on my life today. I believe I am a good person. I know my wife is a good person. I know our son is a good person. If every person on the face of the earth would concern themselves with being good people all the time, what need would there be for religion?
Sunday, March 2, 2008
On Hope and Faith
Keep the Faith.
Abandon Hope all ye who enter here.
You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm tellin you why..... You're gonna go to hell, and cook for eternity in ovens of burning brimstone......
DAMNATION AWAITS!!!!!
Heh, heh, heh, heh....
Christians would have us all believe that the principles of Faith and Hope are the greatest possible gifts we could ever have been awarded by their god-head.
Hogwash.
Neither of these ideas are conducive to living a fulfilled life, they are only ideas born of unmerited, wholesale fear.
Consider the word Hope. It conjures mental pictures of pleasantness, freedom from unhappiness, bliss. It represents the wish of every single person. However, contained within it, is the implied sinisterly opposite despair.
You cannot have one without the other. No Hope, No Despair (the words hope and despair are easily interchangeable with the words good and evil).
To illustrate what I mean, ask yourself the following question:
"Without evil, how would a person be able to distinguish good?".
If everything were good all the time (as is the example of heaven), how would a person be able to retain the exuberance of eternal pleasure, without ever growing numb to it's effects?
In order to fully experience anything, good or bad, the opposite of what you're experiencing has to exist and be known to you, or you'll never be aware of what you're experiencing. A person could never live in unending bliss because of this paradox. Eternal bliss is impossible because without it's opposite (torture) being somewhere in the mix of eternity, we would not recognize it as being bliss.
In the same way we would not know what cold felt like without the corresponding hot, we would also be unable to distinguish hard from soft, tall from short, good from evil or hope from despair. There is a spectrum of experience which we all are subject to. Without it, we would be automatons with no gamut of feelings.
Now let's consider the word Despair.
What does this word conjure? Thoughts of helplessness, inherent "badness", imprisonment in unhappiness. Now ask yourself in what ritualistic, weekly excercise a person might hear these words spoken. Christians, especially those hell-fire and damnation evangelicals that so wisely want to turn our country into an 18th century theocracy, love to spout out these threats of condemnation to human comfort every weekend (and sometimes during the week if a revival is in town) to the flocks of folk who are all-too eager to "repent" of their evil (there's that word again) ways and be safely returned to the fold, only to stray away as soon as the service is over.
If heaven is the object of hope for christians, then hell has to be the object of despair. As I said before, we can't do without despair, so hell has to exist if heaven exists. But imagine if we took the despair of hell out of the equation. We would be left with Hope on one side and nothing on the other. How then could the Hope of Heaven possibly exist? Actually, I should ask why then would anyone even care about a possible heaven? If no one feared death, or financial difficulties, or disease, or any other malady humanity is subject to, then would anyone even consider afterlife? Of course not, because an afterlife is a form of Hope, and without the form of despair (fear of death), an afterlife becomes pointless and redundant.
If we eliminate the idea of hell, then we needn't bother with the idea of heaven.
Contrary to what christians profess to the media, especially moderate ones, my thought is that the idea of hell is radically more important to their dogma than the idea of heaven is.
I submit that despair is always the initial deciding factor in whether someone believes in something or not. A person will consider whether their possible belief in an idea will offer them hope, but only because they need hope to counter a preexisting despair they may or may not already be aware of (this is one of the sad realities of evangelical churches, that they more often than not, instigate the feelings within their own congregations which lead said congregations to
"be saved"). Said another way, A person will choose to believe something if it offers them the chance at hope for the future, because the past has overwhelmingly offered them despair. This being the case, the idea of hope is always secondary. It is what is utilized to counter despair. Again, without the despair, why the hope? Despair, or the Fear of it, is without a doubt the absolute foundation of all the abrahamic religions. Fear of what will happen to us after we die is an idea that has led many a person to the altar.
Romans 6:23 says “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of god is eternal life through christ our lord”. This is a good example of how despair is offered first and then the promise of hope secondarily counters. I will concede that there have been people converted because of the hope offered by the salvation message; however, the hope would be meaningless if the converted-to-be didn't either already fear something, or didn't get led to believe they had something to fear. During altar calls (public admissions of guilt, to those of you who've never been to a protestant church service), people tend to attach themselves to the immediate benefit of their actions and at that time the benefits of converting usually outweigh the threat of not converting by a dramatic margin, which is, at best, a flimsy reason to convert. Indeed the very idea of death can terrify millions of people at any given moment, but it is also quite fleeting and easily forgotten in lue of what sounds good for dinner.
There is also the herd mentality which some might offer as a reason for prospective-converts to move out of their pew. If so many other people are doing it, they might either look bad in the eyes of someone in the church who knows them, or they might be simply hedging their bets, in the idea that if so many people are going down front maybe they should too. A superficial look at both of these reasonings will all-too-easily reveal their fundamental basis of fear. The herd mentality is itself a defense mechanism, designed to ward off attackers (representations of fears held by the herd). Christianity, Judaism and Islam were all founded on the principle of Fear. Look at the terms “Lord” and “God-fearing” for an easy illustration of this.
An example from the bible (the inerrant word of god mind you): Luke 12:5, “But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after killing the body, has the power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.” Now. I’m not completely sure if the author is referring to god or “the devil” here ,but that is beside the point. It is this foundation of fear that supports the pillars of Christianity.
Having this foundation, Christianity offers a way around this fear; Do what Jesus said. Believe he was the ticket to heaven as the son of god sent from above to pay the debt of all mankind. If you do, you can subvert the eternal damnation in store for you after you die and instead receive eternal comfort. It provides hope to counter the fear. In organized monotheistic religions, hope comes after fear, not before. Christians who truly believe they are saved, obviously don’t live in fear for their lives or souls, for the simple reason that they have chosen the path of eternal comfort, hope in Jesus' not being a crazy, lying lunatic. In their eyes, sinners (all the rest of us) have chosen the path of fear and despair, by recognizing jesus as being just another dude (who most certainly no longer abides ). My personal hope does not lie in this fantasy realm of Christianity, Islam or Judaism, because I reject the notion that my life is in any way subject to manmade hopes and fears. I no more hope for anything fantastic than I fear for anything cataclysmic. I do not center my life's philosophy around the fear of death or the loss of loved ones as one might suppose. That might seem improbable to many,but what I mean is although I would miss them beyond comprehension, I do not now fear for their deaths, because I of course recognize that everyone will die. I certainly do not wish for anything cataclysmic to happen to any of my loved ones, but I also understand that this wish is only a wish. It has no bearing on whether anything will ever happen to them or myself. At the same time that I don’t fear for their death, I also don’t hope to see them after they or I die. I spend my life with them and myself each day, because this life is what I know we are in possesion of. I no longer waste the time I have with them.
I actually think the principles of Christianity belittle the preciousness of life, rather that preserve it, as the term “sanctity of life”, which is thrown around like a hot potato by evangelicals these days, would imply. The very idea that my life now is less important than an unprovable afterlife is an idea that I find not only preposterous but also wildly arrogant on the part of both christians and their fictitious god.
For example: I ask someone to play monopoly right now, and they say no because they want to play a better game of monopoly after they die. This doesn’t make any sense but it’s the same as saying “ I’m not going to live my life now, because I’m going to have a better life after I die” My hope lies indeed in myself and my family. I am a thinking person who did not need to be created in order for me to be worth placing my own trust in.
Faith is unnecessary. Having faith in something rather than trying to find a real natural-born answer, is simply taking the lazy way out. It is the same as saying, "I don't know what this is about, so I'll just make up something and tell everyone I believe that". In that respect, what most christians do is even lazier, in that, most christians that I can remember from my days growing up in evangelical churches in the south, don't even bother to waste time thinking up something on their own. They simply latch on to what everybody around them has already said. Faith is the belief in something without the evidence to back it up. This is absurdity. If there is no evidence to show that a crime has been committed, then how do we know one actually was committed? Of course we don't, this is precisely why the courts don't allow hearsay evidence to be admitted as evidence. Better yet, why would anyone claim that their bank was robbed, if no money was missing and no employees witnessed a robber coming into the bank and sticking it up? Should we just have faith that the person saying there was a bank robbery is telling the truth? Should a jury convict the person he says robbed the bank without any evidence to support his claim? Of course not. An even more absurd notion is that christians somehow think that having faith is virtuous or noble. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens,
“Christianity requires us to voluntarily relinquish our single greatest attribute, our ability to think critically.” Any institution that encourages us to not critically question the principles of its existence is not an institution worthy of subscription to. Blind faith is an excuse to gloss over the inconsistencies of outdated dogmas. To paraphrase another fellow rationalist, Sam Harris, “Religious moderates don’t ask the question of how they came to be moderate in the first place. At one point, all religions and religious people were fundamentalist. At what point did the fundamental side of religion give way to the moderate position and why did it do so? The answer is certainly not that the religions themselves evolved to be more “modern-thinking. It is that religious moderation is the result of centuries of rational freethinking individuals who have questioned the validity of fundamentally religious dogmas. Those dogmas simply could not stand up to the constant barrage of disbelief, and over time they melted into the sanguine christianity we see today". To now chastise religious fundamentalism, if you are a moderate, is to deny the very root of your own existence. Religious moderation provides a cover for fundamentalists who exact terrible events on the world by creating the ban associated with the questioning of religion. I speak of religion in the abrahamic sense, because hinduism, buddhism and other various eastern religions espouse the practice of not harming or causing suffering to other living beings, above all else . It is, by-and-large, off limits to question someone’s religious beliefs. Blind faith is, in the eyes of it's posessors not only virtuous but also impervious to disbelief. This should not be, and it is my hope to contribute in some way to the overturning of this menace of rationality. Life is worth living without faith in the preposterous, and we need not hope for anything outside of the ability to experience our life as long as we have it.
Abandon Hope all ye who enter here.
You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm tellin you why..... You're gonna go to hell, and cook for eternity in ovens of burning brimstone......
DAMNATION AWAITS!!!!!
Heh, heh, heh, heh....
Christians would have us all believe that the principles of Faith and Hope are the greatest possible gifts we could ever have been awarded by their god-head.
Hogwash.
Neither of these ideas are conducive to living a fulfilled life, they are only ideas born of unmerited, wholesale fear.
Consider the word Hope. It conjures mental pictures of pleasantness, freedom from unhappiness, bliss. It represents the wish of every single person. However, contained within it, is the implied sinisterly opposite despair.
You cannot have one without the other. No Hope, No Despair (the words hope and despair are easily interchangeable with the words good and evil).
To illustrate what I mean, ask yourself the following question:
"Without evil, how would a person be able to distinguish good?".
If everything were good all the time (as is the example of heaven), how would a person be able to retain the exuberance of eternal pleasure, without ever growing numb to it's effects?
In order to fully experience anything, good or bad, the opposite of what you're experiencing has to exist and be known to you, or you'll never be aware of what you're experiencing. A person could never live in unending bliss because of this paradox. Eternal bliss is impossible because without it's opposite (torture) being somewhere in the mix of eternity, we would not recognize it as being bliss.
In the same way we would not know what cold felt like without the corresponding hot, we would also be unable to distinguish hard from soft, tall from short, good from evil or hope from despair. There is a spectrum of experience which we all are subject to. Without it, we would be automatons with no gamut of feelings.
Now let's consider the word Despair.
What does this word conjure? Thoughts of helplessness, inherent "badness", imprisonment in unhappiness. Now ask yourself in what ritualistic, weekly excercise a person might hear these words spoken. Christians, especially those hell-fire and damnation evangelicals that so wisely want to turn our country into an 18th century theocracy, love to spout out these threats of condemnation to human comfort every weekend (and sometimes during the week if a revival is in town) to the flocks of folk who are all-too eager to "repent" of their evil (there's that word again) ways and be safely returned to the fold, only to stray away as soon as the service is over.
If heaven is the object of hope for christians, then hell has to be the object of despair. As I said before, we can't do without despair, so hell has to exist if heaven exists. But imagine if we took the despair of hell out of the equation. We would be left with Hope on one side and nothing on the other. How then could the Hope of Heaven possibly exist? Actually, I should ask why then would anyone even care about a possible heaven? If no one feared death, or financial difficulties, or disease, or any other malady humanity is subject to, then would anyone even consider afterlife? Of course not, because an afterlife is a form of Hope, and without the form of despair (fear of death), an afterlife becomes pointless and redundant.
If we eliminate the idea of hell, then we needn't bother with the idea of heaven.
Contrary to what christians profess to the media, especially moderate ones, my thought is that the idea of hell is radically more important to their dogma than the idea of heaven is.
I submit that despair is always the initial deciding factor in whether someone believes in something or not. A person will consider whether their possible belief in an idea will offer them hope, but only because they need hope to counter a preexisting despair they may or may not already be aware of (this is one of the sad realities of evangelical churches, that they more often than not, instigate the feelings within their own congregations which lead said congregations to
"be saved"). Said another way, A person will choose to believe something if it offers them the chance at hope for the future, because the past has overwhelmingly offered them despair. This being the case, the idea of hope is always secondary. It is what is utilized to counter despair. Again, without the despair, why the hope? Despair, or the Fear of it, is without a doubt the absolute foundation of all the abrahamic religions. Fear of what will happen to us after we die is an idea that has led many a person to the altar.
Romans 6:23 says “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of god is eternal life through christ our lord”. This is a good example of how despair is offered first and then the promise of hope secondarily counters. I will concede that there have been people converted because of the hope offered by the salvation message; however, the hope would be meaningless if the converted-to-be didn't either already fear something, or didn't get led to believe they had something to fear. During altar calls (public admissions of guilt, to those of you who've never been to a protestant church service), people tend to attach themselves to the immediate benefit of their actions and at that time the benefits of converting usually outweigh the threat of not converting by a dramatic margin, which is, at best, a flimsy reason to convert. Indeed the very idea of death can terrify millions of people at any given moment, but it is also quite fleeting and easily forgotten in lue of what sounds good for dinner.
There is also the herd mentality which some might offer as a reason for prospective-converts to move out of their pew. If so many other people are doing it, they might either look bad in the eyes of someone in the church who knows them, or they might be simply hedging their bets, in the idea that if so many people are going down front maybe they should too. A superficial look at both of these reasonings will all-too-easily reveal their fundamental basis of fear. The herd mentality is itself a defense mechanism, designed to ward off attackers (representations of fears held by the herd). Christianity, Judaism and Islam were all founded on the principle of Fear. Look at the terms “Lord” and “God-fearing” for an easy illustration of this.
An example from the bible (the inerrant word of god mind you): Luke 12:5, “But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after killing the body, has the power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.” Now. I’m not completely sure if the author is referring to god or “the devil” here ,but that is beside the point. It is this foundation of fear that supports the pillars of Christianity.
Having this foundation, Christianity offers a way around this fear; Do what Jesus said. Believe he was the ticket to heaven as the son of god sent from above to pay the debt of all mankind. If you do, you can subvert the eternal damnation in store for you after you die and instead receive eternal comfort. It provides hope to counter the fear. In organized monotheistic religions, hope comes after fear, not before. Christians who truly believe they are saved, obviously don’t live in fear for their lives or souls, for the simple reason that they have chosen the path of eternal comfort, hope in Jesus' not being a crazy, lying lunatic. In their eyes, sinners (all the rest of us) have chosen the path of fear and despair, by recognizing jesus as being just another dude (who most certainly no longer abides ). My personal hope does not lie in this fantasy realm of Christianity, Islam or Judaism, because I reject the notion that my life is in any way subject to manmade hopes and fears. I no more hope for anything fantastic than I fear for anything cataclysmic. I do not center my life's philosophy around the fear of death or the loss of loved ones as one might suppose. That might seem improbable to many,but what I mean is although I would miss them beyond comprehension, I do not now fear for their deaths, because I of course recognize that everyone will die. I certainly do not wish for anything cataclysmic to happen to any of my loved ones, but I also understand that this wish is only a wish. It has no bearing on whether anything will ever happen to them or myself. At the same time that I don’t fear for their death, I also don’t hope to see them after they or I die. I spend my life with them and myself each day, because this life is what I know we are in possesion of. I no longer waste the time I have with them.
I actually think the principles of Christianity belittle the preciousness of life, rather that preserve it, as the term “sanctity of life”, which is thrown around like a hot potato by evangelicals these days, would imply. The very idea that my life now is less important than an unprovable afterlife is an idea that I find not only preposterous but also wildly arrogant on the part of both christians and their fictitious god.
For example: I ask someone to play monopoly right now, and they say no because they want to play a better game of monopoly after they die. This doesn’t make any sense but it’s the same as saying “ I’m not going to live my life now, because I’m going to have a better life after I die” My hope lies indeed in myself and my family. I am a thinking person who did not need to be created in order for me to be worth placing my own trust in.
Faith is unnecessary. Having faith in something rather than trying to find a real natural-born answer, is simply taking the lazy way out. It is the same as saying, "I don't know what this is about, so I'll just make up something and tell everyone I believe that". In that respect, what most christians do is even lazier, in that, most christians that I can remember from my days growing up in evangelical churches in the south, don't even bother to waste time thinking up something on their own. They simply latch on to what everybody around them has already said. Faith is the belief in something without the evidence to back it up. This is absurdity. If there is no evidence to show that a crime has been committed, then how do we know one actually was committed? Of course we don't, this is precisely why the courts don't allow hearsay evidence to be admitted as evidence. Better yet, why would anyone claim that their bank was robbed, if no money was missing and no employees witnessed a robber coming into the bank and sticking it up? Should we just have faith that the person saying there was a bank robbery is telling the truth? Should a jury convict the person he says robbed the bank without any evidence to support his claim? Of course not. An even more absurd notion is that christians somehow think that having faith is virtuous or noble. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens,
“Christianity requires us to voluntarily relinquish our single greatest attribute, our ability to think critically.” Any institution that encourages us to not critically question the principles of its existence is not an institution worthy of subscription to. Blind faith is an excuse to gloss over the inconsistencies of outdated dogmas. To paraphrase another fellow rationalist, Sam Harris, “Religious moderates don’t ask the question of how they came to be moderate in the first place. At one point, all religions and religious people were fundamentalist. At what point did the fundamental side of religion give way to the moderate position and why did it do so? The answer is certainly not that the religions themselves evolved to be more “modern-thinking. It is that religious moderation is the result of centuries of rational freethinking individuals who have questioned the validity of fundamentally religious dogmas. Those dogmas simply could not stand up to the constant barrage of disbelief, and over time they melted into the sanguine christianity we see today". To now chastise religious fundamentalism, if you are a moderate, is to deny the very root of your own existence. Religious moderation provides a cover for fundamentalists who exact terrible events on the world by creating the ban associated with the questioning of religion. I speak of religion in the abrahamic sense, because hinduism, buddhism and other various eastern religions espouse the practice of not harming or causing suffering to other living beings, above all else . It is, by-and-large, off limits to question someone’s religious beliefs. Blind faith is, in the eyes of it's posessors not only virtuous but also impervious to disbelief. This should not be, and it is my hope to contribute in some way to the overturning of this menace of rationality. Life is worth living without faith in the preposterous, and we need not hope for anything outside of the ability to experience our life as long as we have it.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Jesus is Superman
Let's consider, a man not from earth comes to earth as a human baby and represents the salvation of all mankind. He has amazing powers that effect the physical world and can change it in ways that are anti-natural. He is meek around his fellow humans but unshakeable in his attitude towards evil. He is impervious to all forms of danger except one, which if confronted with could kill him. His power is attributed to a heavenly source. He grows up as a human child in a small town and is unknown to the world at large throughout his childhood, but as an adult he has an enormous effect on the entire world. His job is a menial one, but he does his greatest work pro-bono. During a highly troubling time in his adult life, he goes to a secluded, solitary place where he communes with his heavenly father for help and advice. He is murdered, but later he is resurrected.
Now am I recounting the story of Jesus?
No, I was talking about Superman.
Jesus obviously came before Superman, and Batman, and the Green Hornet, etc....
He also was a real person (probably) whereas the superheroes are all fictional characters.
If we examine a bit closer the link between these people we see not just superficial similarities, but also more importantly, the archetypical structure of the solution to mankind's fears and aspirations.
The pyschology of the superhero involves appeals to the "goodness", "morality", "humanity" whatever you'd call it, which is a part of us all. The comic book hero is geared to those humans for whom justice, fair play, and simply doing the right thing is the most natural, namely kids.
We all, however, can see the values that are illustrated and reenforced by these characters. Even such superheroes as Batman and The Incredible Hulk, complete with their darkside are always battling the "forces of evil". Rare is there a superhero who is not illustrative of the qualities we all seek to attain ourselves. They are what we aspire to be (especially when we are kids).
The exhibition of these qualities is what we as humans have been trying to attain throughout our existence, even 2,000 years ago.
In other words the fundamental psychology behind the creation of the superheroes of today, the reason for them if you will, is exactly the same now as it was when the story of jesus was construed. The authors of the gospels including jesus himself, sought to illustrate in a man, the morals they knew would be recognized by their audience at large. The man jesus simply capitalized on the fears he knew to be rampant in his native population. He may or may not have been as calculating as that, he might actually have been convinced he was the son of god, but it's also possible that he was a great con man. It matters not that the stories of his superiority over mankind were transmitted verbally or through writings. The chosen morals were conveyed no matter the medium.
It is superficially more obvious a parallel between characters such as superman or Neo(from the matrix trilogy) and jesus, but the underlying reason for the existence of all superheroes has been with us since our first foray out of the forest and into intelligence.
Now am I recounting the story of Jesus?
No, I was talking about Superman.
Jesus obviously came before Superman, and Batman, and the Green Hornet, etc....
He also was a real person (probably) whereas the superheroes are all fictional characters.
If we examine a bit closer the link between these people we see not just superficial similarities, but also more importantly, the archetypical structure of the solution to mankind's fears and aspirations.
The pyschology of the superhero involves appeals to the "goodness", "morality", "humanity" whatever you'd call it, which is a part of us all. The comic book hero is geared to those humans for whom justice, fair play, and simply doing the right thing is the most natural, namely kids.
We all, however, can see the values that are illustrated and reenforced by these characters. Even such superheroes as Batman and The Incredible Hulk, complete with their darkside are always battling the "forces of evil". Rare is there a superhero who is not illustrative of the qualities we all seek to attain ourselves. They are what we aspire to be (especially when we are kids).
The exhibition of these qualities is what we as humans have been trying to attain throughout our existence, even 2,000 years ago.
In other words the fundamental psychology behind the creation of the superheroes of today, the reason for them if you will, is exactly the same now as it was when the story of jesus was construed. The authors of the gospels including jesus himself, sought to illustrate in a man, the morals they knew would be recognized by their audience at large. The man jesus simply capitalized on the fears he knew to be rampant in his native population. He may or may not have been as calculating as that, he might actually have been convinced he was the son of god, but it's also possible that he was a great con man. It matters not that the stories of his superiority over mankind were transmitted verbally or through writings. The chosen morals were conveyed no matter the medium.
It is superficially more obvious a parallel between characters such as superman or Neo(from the matrix trilogy) and jesus, but the underlying reason for the existence of all superheroes has been with us since our first foray out of the forest and into intelligence.
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