Happy Holidays

Christmas is just days away and I sit pondering the Christian belief system that provides the foundation of this mostly secular event.  Perchance I am wrong, or short-sighted or miss the point, but here is how it looks to me.

Christians believe there is a supreme being that created everything, including humans.  This being not only wired us for all our aptitudes but with all our appetites, and subjected us to a host of ills like cancer, ALS, etc. The being must have created these ills as well since they believe this being created everything.  Thanks a lot, god of cancer, ALS, Alzheimer’s, etc.

Meanwhile, this being allows for a place called hell where humans who are not forgiven will go for all eternity.  Humans banished to hell get there by overdoing the appetites we were given by the supreme being.  If we sin, we will go to hell, unless we ask the being to forgive us.  So, the being creates the possibility of sin, endows humans with a desire to sin, judges us if we do sin and sends us to hell forever.  If that doesn’t sound like the meanest trick in the book I do not know what is.

But, the being decided to provide a solution for the propensity to sin that the being created in humans in the first place.  Now this being is supposed to be all knowing, all smart, sees everything, etc.  But no one told him, her or it if he, she, or it just cleared the books of the notion of sin and allowed us to simply prosecute and punish bad deeds there would be no need for the remainder of this whoopla.  Nope.  He wants a hand in it.  So brilliant being that he or she or it is he, she or it decides that if he just kills his own son then humans can be forgiven for sin.  Is that right?  He created sin.  He created out desire to sin.  He created hell for when we do.  And his solution is to allow his only son to die.  Oh yeah.  This is a smart being.  Duh.

And Christians believe that.  Worse, they believe a virgin gave birth to this god/man son.  Really? They believe a star somehow hovered over a village.  Really?  Any star that close would fry the entire earth.  They believe other entities sent by the being flew in the air and sang.  They told mere humans not to be afraid.  Really?  You are a simple shepherd keeping watch over your flock by night when emissaries from a supreme being appear in the sky over your head, singing, and tell you not to be afraid.  Holy cow.  Why not just send a neighbor up the trail to say the being has a son, come and see.  Nope, not this being.  He, she, or it loves the melodrama.  So typical.  Create fear then say do not be afraid.

Christians also believe the son of the being was perfect, without sin.  Well, why didn’t this being just make all of us that way?  Is that too much to ask since he is creating everything anyway.  Think of all the pain and guilt we could have avoided if he had just made us really in his own image like he made Jesus.  No, this being seems more interested in the stupid plot that says I made you want to sin, you sin, I send you to hell, unless you love me and my perfect son, whom by the way, I am going to kill.

And the folks that believe this stuff think I should say Merry Christmas?  That is as daft as believing the earth is flat.  Christmas in fact is a very dismal, very scary time because according to the belief system if it had not happened we would all go to hell.  Worse, we have to support the illogic of a being who is willing to have his son die a torturous death after an impossible birth and be merry that he was born while knowing his fate.  Not for me, thank you very much. 

Happy Holidays.

Smug and Sad

I am a newly admitted atheist.  There are a range of emotions I have experienced as a rookie non-believer that in many ways surprise me.  Feeling smug and feeling sad are among those new feelings.

Fourth grade at Christmas time and I knew Santa was not real.  So did others in my class.  But many believed him to be real and looked forward to the gifts he would bring and looked forward to setting out cookies and milk for him to consume when he entered the house on Christmas Eve.  I felt smug.  I knew those other kids were fools and simpletons and that someday their eyes would be opened and they would see that Santa as portrayed in poems, and movies and songs was a mythical figure.  Yes, there was evidence he was real:  the cookies were gone, the milk consumed, and presents appeared under the tree.  But I knew that evidence was the result of an adult conspiracy to perpetrate the myth.  In hindsight, when I believed in Santa I should have been totally freaked out that some strange man would enter our house undetected in the middle of the night.  Scarier still is that he watched me all year, all the time, to determine whether I was naughty or nice.

But I digress.  Santa is not real and I felt smug in that knowledge when surrounded by peers who still believed.  I did not puncture their bubbles or pour out their Kool-Aid.  I waited, confident that they too would know someday.  I was smug.  And I was right.  Despite what one may see on the Hallmark Channel, few adults believe in Santa.  I did not shift from a belief system that supported the existence of Santa to another belief system.  I discovered the veracity of the fact that Santa was a myth.  Moving from belief to knowledge is, or should be, part of ongoing human evolution.  But I really do not care if you believe in Santa or not.  I will not attempt to persuade you to reject that belief.  I will not engage in arguments to demonstrate that his existence is mythical based on science and what we know of reality.  I would only do so if someone engaged in an effort to convince me that Santa was real.  Otherwise, I believe you have the right to be wrong and that I have the right to be right.  Smug.

I feel the same way about those who hold religious beliefs; who believe that there is some sort of supernatural entity behind some curtain who knows all things and created all things and is capable of a personal relationship with well over 7 billion humans.  The science denying such a notion is obvious.  The human experience confirming the lack of divine intervention by such a being is profound.  The very notion that there is in each of us an eternal, ethereal consciousness called the soul is pure wishful thinking based on ego.  I had no existence prior to birth and will have no existence after death.  If there was a part of me that was eternal it would not have had a beginning. 

Human cultures are rife with gods and always have been.  From Hunab-Ku of the Mayans, to Ra of the Egyptians, to Zeus of Greeks, to Mohammad of the Muslims, to Jesus of the Christians there are a multitude of so-called divine entities, prophets, demons, and supernatural beings.  Humans have created these gods in their own image to answer questions about our existence, explain phenomenon, and provide some respite from fear of the unknown.  No faith believes in the existence of the deities of the other faiths, so everyone is an atheist when it comes to religions other than their own.  For Christians specifically there is no tangible evidence to support that Moses, Abraham, or Jesus ever existed.  The Bible is so riddled with both false and inconsistent information it becomes unbelievable.  No, there are no god or gods any more than there is a Santa.  But I will not attempt to persuade you to reject your beliefs.  I will only do so if you attempt to convince me Jesus is real, god is real, Zeus is real, Ra is real, etc., etc. I know what you believe is false and know what I know is true.  Truth should always trump belief.  Smug.

And yet I remain sad.  I watch the funeral of President George HW Bush in the National Cathedral and feel sad.  Not for Bush.  But for the millions of us who believe erecting such an edifice was appropriate.  Those who believe that the robed religious leaders are somehow tuned into a supreme being, that the Armed Services choir and orchestra playing religious music is OK.  That we had the gall to stamp “One Nation Under God” on our currency.  Might as well have said one nation under Zeus.  We present ourselves as fools and charlatans.

I am sad that for many of the people I know and love my lack of belief upsets them deeply.  I have been unfriended on Facebook and have been told unless I believe as they believe I am not an appropriate friend.  Amazing.  It saddens me.  In fact, it adds proof to my lack of belief.  If all those who are close to me would simply pray for me, or pray that I would have a sign like becoming blinded on the road to Houston or receiving stone tablets from a mountain, or even getting a divine email, then if there is a god I should be converted.  Not gonna happen.  If that many believers request something from their god and noting happens how can they remain believers?

I am sad at the loss of friends, family, loved ones.  I am sad that this commercial, secular time of year must be wrapped in myths like virgin births, stars hovering over villages, choirs of angels singing, etc.  I know it is all nonsense.  And yet, there are those who are more committed to those beliefs than they are to Santa.  That saddens me deeply.  Why we cannot simply enjoy a holiday season that emerges from the notion we give to each other because we care for each other without all the messy ridiculous religious crap I do not know.  And I shop downtown and note that the City Council is broadcasting religious Christmas Carols through speakers on the sidewalks paid for with my tax dollars.

Christmas time.  Smug and sad.

Not yet mad.

Prayer without Helmets

“A Georgia high school football player who came out of a game with an injury and then lost consciousness on the sideline has died, officials said.  Dylan, a linebacker, was transported to WellStar Spalding Regional Hospital and then airlifted to Grady Hospital in Atlanta. He was pronounced dead Sunday night from a head injury.  After Dylan was transported to the hospital, players and coaches from the two teams came together and knelt to pray for his recovery, Peach County High School said on Facebook.”  (Marlena Baldacci, Devon M. Sayers and Eric Levenson, CNN, Updated 8:49 AM ET, Tue October 2, 2018)

The Facebook pictures show both teams together on one knee with all their coaches praying.  Clearly folks in the stands are doing the same.  Once again, sky daddy disappoints.  They prayed before he died.  He died anyway.

Just received the list of prayer requests from my wife’s church.  Long list.  I suggested we forward the list to those who prayed for Dylan, but no, god did not listen to that crowd.

How much evidence will it take to convince people that prayer is pointless because they are praying to an imaginary friend who never responds?  If there was a god why wouldn’t he/she save this young man?  Nope, must be part of that mysterious, mean plan of his.

So, go ahead and pray to the god of concussions, the god of cancer, the god of ALS, the god of Alzheimer’s, the god of heart attacks.  If you believe god is the creator of everything he must have created these ills as well.  Prayer won’t help.  Never does.  Sometimes I think the people who pray are the ones who played without football helmets.

God Does Not Answer Prayers

I suppose I should begin by saying that I do not believe in God.  I do not believe there is some sort of supernatural entity that created everything, is omniscient and omnipotent.  It is all a myth.

One of the ways I reached this position was to look at prayer.  If you have been following this blog you know my faith crisis began with the crash of the Germanwings flight in March of 2015.  (http://one-eyedbobongod.blogspot.com/2018/05/i-didnt-want-to-be-atheist.html.)  Since then the evidence just grows and grows.  Prayer is not answered.  And the best way to demonstrate that is to look at the prayer attributed to Jesus.

Matthew 6: 9-13 is where Jesus taught his disciples how to pray.  Let’s look at that prayer.  OK, our father who art in heaven is a belief statement though we have no idea where heaven is nor do we have any proof that this god is our father.  (Kind of bothers me that god was willing to sacrifice his son and then believers turn around and call god their father.  Are believers the children of god?  If so, clearly he is willing to sacrifice them.)  Even so, Jesus suggests that we hallow his name, that is make his name holy and honor his name.  Next Jesus asks that his kingdom come.  Has that happened and I missed it?  I see no godly kingdom anywhere, and those Muslims who fight for such are considered radicalized terrorists.  So no, there is no evidence that Jesus’ request for god’s kingdom to come was answered.

Then Jesus asks that god’s will be done on earth the same way it is done in heaven.  This is really almost funny.  Since there really is no heaven and no god to rule it believers could argue that this portion of the prayer was fulfilled.  Again, there is no evidence that god’s will is being done on earth.  If what we see around us is god’s will then some are worshipping a truly evil god.  Or, as conservatives believe, god picked Trump.  Only good I can see from that is it awoke the liberals.  So no, there is no evidence that god’s will is being done on earth.

Give us this day our daily bread has come true for many, but for the millions who are starving that has not happened either.  One would think that Jesus would also have asked for clean water for all, but he didn’t.  Again, there is no evidence that god is providing food for his subjects.  US food stamps are doing a better job of that than god, and the same people who love Trump hate food stamps.

Jesus then asks that god forgive our debts or our trespasses as we in turn forgive the debts of others and/or the trespasses of others.  Right.  I called my mortgage company and asked them to forgive my debt and they laughed.  If we are talking about sin here, then seeking god’s forgiveness for sin does not seem to work well if there is also a hell where god is willing to punish sinners for all eternity.  If Jesus died for our sins and he requested that god forgive us all our trespasses then why is there a hell?  Nope.  Makes no sense.  So no, even within the circle of believers there is no evidence that god has forgiven us debts or trespasses, much less evidence outside the circle of believers.  And I wonder if it would simply be easier for an all-powerful god to defeat the devil and end sin.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  Clearly this request has not been answered.  We are tempted every day so Jesus’ request to keep us out of temptation was obviously ignored.  We have not been delivered from evil.  All one has to do is read the news to see the evil men and women do every day.  The real bone of contention for me is that if god created us he gave us the appetites for evil then blames us when we act on those appetites.  What kind of parent would knowingly give their kid a drug addiction and then blame their children when they used drugs?  The whole notion is insane.  No, there is no evidence that god has removed us from temptation and delivered us from evil.

Jesus concludes his model prayer bragging on god.  He is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever.  Really? He cannot seem to answer simple prayer requests from his number one son.  What kind of power is that?  What kind of glory does such a being deserve?  What kind of kingdom is he running where he asks us to pray and provides no evidence that those prayers are answered?  So no, based on previous unanswered requests it appears this god is not worthy of such bragging.  If we are to pray it would be nice if god at least answered the prayers of Jesus as a model for us all.  Rather than giving us a model prayer what we need are some model answers. 

We have no evidence god answered Jesus’ model prayer requests.  If so, why pray for anything?

Alien Point of View

I find it liberating and illuminating to assume the point of view another person, a person who is different than me.  I read a book in high school entitled, Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, and it had a profound impact on my thinking.  Griffin was a white journalist who in 1961 dyed his skin very dark and entered the southern United States as a Black Person.  His experiences are amazing.  Ever since, I try to imagine the world through the eyes of others:  A Syrian refugee, an African mother watching her children starve, a Muslim Jihadist who hates America, a fourth generation Mexican American, a hedge fund manager, etc.  I have very little in common with these imaginary people, and I can only guess what they may be thinking or feeling.  But I am enlightened by the mental effort.

It seems only reasonable to advance this mental exercise to include a sentient alien life form.  I picture an incredibly knowledgeable being, carbon based, bipodal who is capable of conversation in my own language.  I picture a female being with luminescent eyes, hairless head, and thin limbs.  Though wise and knowing she is blessed with empathy as well.  She comes to me as I walk a lonely path in a forest at night, with a full moon lighting my way.  I hear crickets and owls and nocturnal beasts scurrying in the dark before a wind and a wush and she stands before me.  Her thin mouth smiles.  I feel no fear as her features hold no anger, no hostility.  Just a smile and a deep curiosity as she gazes at me and me at her for the first time, taking in our similarities and differences.  She tells me her name is Sitio.  We begin a dialog.

She asks why I walk the woods at night in the dark all alone.  I tell her that though there are many humans I love and many humans with whom I enjoy sharing time and space, I feel the need to remove myself from them for alone time, to think, to ponder, to reflect.  Yes, in answer to her question, this was to be such a time.  No, Sitio, I do not want you to leave me to my alone time.  I would much rather spend it with you than alone.  She smiles again.

I have many questions, she says.  As do I!  We both start talking at once and I laugh, she smiles.  That is such a remarkable sound, she says, when you open your mouth and make noises from your diaphragm that have no meaning but sound happy.  They are happy, I reply.  We call it laughter and all humans are capable of it when they are amused or happy.  We have no such sounds, she says.  We smile.  I say that in some ways that strikes me as sad.  Her head cocks as she ponders my response.

You appear to be a female, I say.  Yes, she says.  I am.  We have two genders as do you.  Then you ask your questions first as in our culture we allow women to go first.  Why? She asks.  Are they stronger or superior to males so they go first?  I laugh again.  No, it is an assumption from our past that women are to be coddled and cherished so males allow them to go first to demonstrate our own strength.  Males are chivalrous.  We will give up a seat on a life boat for a woman, or a child.  Amazing she said.  It sounds as though females have tricked you into this assumption that letting them win is somehow a victory for males.  My head cocks as I ponder her response.

She begins:  Why do humans war against each other?  Why do you fight?  Why do you compete?  It seems to result in such waste, so much death, so much hunger.  It results in some having very much and others having very little.  Are some humans more important than other humans?  Wow is all I can say.  I think for a moment, then respond.  We argue that as we evolved we had to compete to survive.  As we advanced it became clear that those who could win in wars and competition had more than those who did not.  So we developed heroes who won and others became losers.  We do that still today.  We have a very hard time imagining a society of collaboration and sharing.  We have always pictured life as a struggle, a competition.  We believe that such struggles and such competitions make us stronger and smarter.  It is in our best interest to compete.

She smiles again.  That of course, is nonsense, she says.  You claim to advance via competition and war when in fact that is what destroys you.  That is what wastes your resources.  If you collaborated and shared rather than vesting so much energy in competition both in your wealth accumulation and war machines then you would be so much better off.  All of you.  Your planet would be healthier.  Everyone would have food, shelter, clothing, medicine.  No human would have basic needs deprived as your resources are so great.  It makes no sense to us.  It appears that you think of yourselves as advanced because you now cook your meat even though you use the same principles to get your meat.

I am stumped.  The issue she has raised as her first question right off the bat is so profound to me my head spins.  What would a cooperative society look like?  How could we curtail our desire to have more and to demonstrate superiority to our neighbors if we did not compete, if we did not want to win?  Is it our nature to compete, or is that learned behavior?  What would it look like to have a culture where we each want for others what we want for ourselves? 

Your eyes are moving rapidly back and forth, she says.  Does that mean you are thinking?  Yes, I guess it does I reply.  Good, she says.

Now tell me about religion.  It appears a large number of humans believe in a deity, a being that they cannot see.  A being with total power and total knowledge.  A being that can punish them or reward them.  A being they pray to, worship, give money to, take pilgrimages in behalf of.  A being who moderates over a heaven of eternal bliss for the spirits of those who die and a being who controls a hell of eternal torture for others who die. A being that rules over all, is capable of doing anything, and created all.  Even more interesting is that humans do not worship the same deity.  There are many deities all of whom have many followers.  Is that accurate?

That is pretty much accurate, I think.  I tell her I come from a Christian heritage so I cannot speak with any knowledge of other belief systems.  I know that there are more Christians than any other faith, followed by Muslims.  Atheists make up the third largest group, more than Buddhists, Hindus and Jews combined.  But, other than atheists, your description sounds mostly Christian.

Sitio asks, are there not only 3 possibilities regarding such a deity?  One is that there is no such deity, two is that there is such a deity and that deity controls everything so that all that happens, good and bad, can be laid at the feet of the deity, or three that there is such a deity but that deity does not intervene in human affairs, perhaps because the deity has a secret plan for humans, or perhaps because such a deity just likes to observe.  None of the three options promotes beseeching and worshipping the deity as all three options eliminate the likelihood of divine intervention.  None of the three possibilities provide evidence of such a being.

Are you and your people atheists then? I ask.  She smiles.  We were never theists so to be atheist has no meaning.  Early in our history there were many things we did not know and did not understand but we simply perceived those things as unknown or challenges.  We did not make up answers, we sought answers.  That is one of the reasons why you are so interesting to us.  You made up answers and despite your knowledge still hold on to those beliefs.

Is there no God?  No heaven, no hell, no life after death? I ask.  We have found no evidence to support any of those beliefs, she says.  There is no life before birth and no life after death.  There are no such mythical places as heaven and hell housing post mortem spirits for all eternity.  In fact we see such beliefs as silly and child-like.  But I do not wish to offend.  Your life form tends to react irrationally if beliefs are challenged.

I ask, what is your moral base?  What is your code of ethics?  Sitio smiles again.  Simple, she says.  If a behavior benefits others it is good.  If a behavior benefits the individual at the expense of others it is bad.  We do not deal with rights or wrongs, just consequences as either good or bad. 

I tell her I do not understand.  Yes you do, you just do not apply that code everywhere and to everyone.  A mother is exhausted caring for her sick child.  She wants to leave and go somewhere to have an alcoholic beverage.  If she does, she leaves the sick child unattended but she benefits.  If she leaves is that good or bad?  OK, I get that.  A “good” mom would stay with the child rather than seek selfish benefits.  But life is more complicated than that.  No, she says, it is not if I am mother to all and child to all.

My head hurts.

Sitio smiles her enigmatic smile again and tells me she has enjoyed our conversation very much.  She learned much and has much to ponder.  I tell her I feel the same.  Good, she says, we shall do this again.

She turns, walks into the woods and with a wind and a wush she is gone. 

Wow.  Not surprising that someone from the stars is over my head.

Things that are too hard for the Lord

I have a family member who is very dear, very precious and I love her very much.  But she is going totally ape shit over her Christian belief to the point that she is posting scripture on her Facebook page, quoting the scandalous 700 Club and completing sentences with “Praise Jesus”.  That would be scripture from the Bible, not the Koran, not the Book of Mormon, not the I Ching, etc.  And though I am deeply tempted to respond on her Facebook page I have told her I will not do so as long as she does not throw that tripe in my face via a personal email or text.  Well, what I really said was if she threw that BS in my face I would respond with reason and rational thinking and highlight the folly of her belief in the mystical, magical, invisible sky daddy myth.  So I’ll post my response here and send her a link.

Her post was, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”  Genesis 18:14.  Well yeah.  The list of things too hard for her lord is almost infinite in length: 

Clearly, her god cannot cure cancer, in fact, her god must have created cancer if she believes he is the creator of everything.  Has there ever been a Christian loved one who died of cancer without prayers for a cure?  The same must be true for any disease one can name.

Her god cannot stop wars.  With every outbreak of hostility there are any number of sincere fools who gather to pray for peace.  Doesn’t work.  Just look at the Mideast. 

Clearly her god cannot answer the earnest prayers of hundreds of people who know they are about to die in plane crashes, ship wrecks and falling bombs.  They all die anyway. 

Clearly it was too hard for her god to place human beings on a planet that allows only about 15% of the space to be habitable.  Is it too hard for her god to give us gills? 

Clearly it is too hard for her god to inspire holy books that imply he has the ability to see into the future.  The Bible is riddled with false knowledge.  No, he had to go and say the earth was flat, the moon is a source of light not a reflection of light, that the universe revolves around earth, and, by the way, our multibillion year history is really only about 10,000 years. 

If he could see into the future and was giving us advice on how to live why didn’t he simply have Jesus say slavery is bad, treating women poorly is bad, judging others by race, ethnicity, sexual preference is bad?  Oh yeah, he did do that, but Christians don’t listen. 

Why didn’t he develop a female component in his holy trinity?  Jesus is a male.  The Holy Spirit must be a male if one believes he impregnated Mary, and Jesus refers to god as the father.  Looks like that leaves 50% of the humans on the planet without divine symbolism.  Oh yeah, there is Mary mother of Jesus worshipped by some, but her claim to fame was to declare her pregnancy was due to god, not Joseph, and spend the rest of her life no doubt explaining how she was chosen because she was a virgin and Jesus had an older brother.  Go figure.

It is clearly too hard for god to protect his creation.  99% of all life that ever existed on this planet is now extinct.

It is clearly too hard for god to find a path to salvation that did not require the tortuous death of his only son.  Man, that is heartless.  If he would allow his only son to die such a death what is willing to allow followers to experience?  Oh yeah, there is Job.

It is clearly too hard for god to redirect human behavior without drowning everyone.

It is clearly too hard for god to simply show up, send a memo, make an appearance, burn a bush, part a sea or something.  There are rumors of such but they are not substantiated by any other observers other than the cult members.

It is clearly too hard for god to have left some evidence that Jesus actually existed.  There is no evidence that he did other than the reports of those who believe in him.  We have the same evidence for Zeus, Ra, etc.

It is clearly too hard for god to actually provide for every human like he claims to do for sparrows.  (See Matthew 6:26)

It is clearly too hard for god to open every door when someone knocks or give them whatever they ask.  (See Matthew 7:7)

It is clearly too hard for god to even answer all the prayers of the faithful.  (See John 15:7.)

But believers ignore all these facts.  They perform a mental gymnastic that is truly beyond belief.  They answer all those questions by saying that either the so-called faithful are not faithful enough, or that their god has a plan that is beyond what we understand.  In other words, it is all our fault, not god’s.  People die due to a plan.  People starve due to a plan.  People kill each other due to a plan.  What a wonderful god this must be to not only kill his only son but to allow such horror as part of a plan no one ever gets to see but we must somehow believe exists.  Worse, he claims to be able to do all things and answer all prayers when he clearly does not.  So, one of the things her god cannot do is tell the truth.

And I am just getting started.  Belief in such a deity is so fool-hardy after just a few moments of reflection I wonder how anyone of sound mind can do so.  Oh yeah, I used to believe because I was brought up to believe.  But once I started asking questions and seeking knowledge my belief evaporated.  And by the way, the behavior that got Adam and Eve banished from the Garden of Eden was the act of seeking knowledge.  Is it god’s intent to punish anyone seeking knowledge?  Are all scientists by definition damned?  Those fools would have bitten the apple too just to learn.

Yes, there are many, many things god cannot do.  Or if he chooses not to do those things he must be evil.  But the major thing god cannot do is be real.

Sky Cops

One of the things that drives me bonkers about religious people is the sense they have that there is a cop in the sky, watching their every move, and who stands in judgment of their behaviors.  What a total load of crap.  So some invisible man is taking notes and taking names on over 7 billion people, and when you die he is going to read off the list and make a call.  You go to heaven and have bliss for eternity, or you go to hell and burn and scream and are tortured for eternity, and by the why, he loves you all.  (Apologies to George Carlin.)

How in the world did anyone ever convince rational people to buy that crap?  The amount of guilt the church and religion has laid on human beings is in itself sinful.  And that’s the catch.  Sky daddy gets to announce what his wants and wishes are, he simultaneously supposedly has given us the appetites and instincts to do the opposite of his wishes, so therefore we are all always sinful and in need of forgiveness.  If you want to raise a sociopathic child try that as a climate.  You can do nothing right.  Everything you want to do is wrong.  An invisible man is going to judge you some day and he watches you all the time.  That is just bullshit.

We do not know what or where or why there is a god, so by definition there must not be one.  A God serves no positive purpose, provides no insight or answers, does not deliver on promises, nor is he willing to intervene in our behalf.  Do I have to have a god to live?  Nope.  I know why we have an atmosphere and lakes and vegetation and cold beer, but I have no clue why we have a god.  Worse, we do not have a clue where heaven might be and/or where hell might be.  It is hysterical to think that billions of people have gone to one of these two eternal spots and no one knows where they are.  Even the most provincial among us can find Vega in the night sky and even the most worldly can find Lukenback, Texas.  So why is it we do not know where heaven and hell are?  What are the coordinates?  The GPS?  Which dimension?  We are capable of searching all of that and understanding all of that but it remains unknown.  And no one who has ever gone to either place has come back with a map. 

Equally funny is to believe it is something inside each of us that is eternal, that cannot be seen or measured, that goes to one of these two spots when we know full well eternity has no beginning and no end and things that cannot be measured or observed are likely to be fictional.  Each of us has a beginning.  I can remember nothing prior to about age 3 or 4.  Why would we, unlike every other life form, expect to have some sort of after death prescience?  By definition, there is no sense of self before birth and no sense of self after death.  I get it that longing for an eternal family reunion and an eternity of peace and pleasure and that somehow I will go on after death are fun concepts.  They just are not true.  And, it is incumbent on those who belief in such magical and mystical things to demonstrate that they are true and not just myths.  Show me a unicorn or evidence of unicorns or do not claim to believe there are such things.

Are you a good person only because someone is watching you?  Does surveillance keep you honest?  Then I am oh so sorry.  Christianity taught you that.  For those of us who resent constant surveillance and have a clear understanding of what good behavior is and chose to be good because it is intrinsically good not because we fear punishment or seek reward we reject the idea of sky cops who are watching our every move.  We don’t need them.  Atheists are good people without the fear and guilt Christians apparently need.  Atheists recognize that by caring for our fellow humans we improve the quality of life for all.  And we do so without the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of punishment.  We do so because it is the logical and right thing to do.

So, if you are driven by fear fueled by guilt that you are a sinful being and punishment is forthcoming, relax.  You do not need to go to a building, sit in a booth and request forgiveness from another human being as flawed as you are.  You do not need to go down front in some worship service and admit you are human.  You do not need to fall on your knees and plead with an invisible man in the sky to forgive you.  All you need to do is forgive yourself, make amends with any you have hurt, and keep moving forward with your own clear sense of right and wrong.  Leave guilt behind.  It is not real, it is based on false assumptions, and is in no way helpful.  The sky cops will never pull you over, arrest you and throw you in jail.  They are a figment of your childhood imagination.

Questions I Can't Answer

If I were a believer, I could not answer these questions:

Does God love me?  How would I know?  Doesn’t John 3:16 really say God is willing to kill his son?  If so, what is he willing to let me endure?  Aren’t I a child of God?

If God is so omnipotent why doesn’t he just defeat the devil?  If he allows the devil to exist as a source of temptation to us how does that help us?  If we suffer for succumbing to temptation why did God give us the appetites to be tempted?  How is this not torture?

Does God have a secret plan for everyone?  If so, do we have free will?  Why would he keep the plan a secret?  Why would we use God’s secret plan as an excuse for God not acting when we pray?

Why pray?  If God has a plan and we do not know what it is then isn’t prayer a waste of time?  Is he going to let stuff happen one way or another based on his secret plan?

Does God monitor everything I think, do, or say?  If so, how can I be free?  How can it be that he is benevolent when he is keeping a list of all my sins and acts as the worst kind of thought police?

Where is heaven?  Is it in another dimension?  Is it in another galaxy?  Does heaven have a GPS location?  How about hell?  The same must be true.  If there is a place for eternity how have we not found it yet?  These places would be full of the billions of folks who have died.  If souls or spirits have no shape or form or substance how can they exist? 

Why did God set up the Garden of Eden so that everything was good to do except pursue knowledge?  What is the message?  Are we not to pursue knowledge and apply that knowledge?  How could we have dominion over the life forms on the planet and the natural world if we did not use science?  Why is God still punishing us for decisions made by Adam and Eve?  That is the grudge that will not go away.  How does that exemplify God’s love for us?

Does God intervene to alter the physical laws of the universe?  The Bible says he does.  Bushes burn but not, seas part, water becomes wine, blindness is healed, stars hover over cities, millions of life forms are enclosed in an ark, etc.  So, why doesn’t he intervene when we ask him to?  Can we continue to say that is part of his secret plan for us?  A plan that hurts us or hurts our loved ones?  Why doesn’t God intervene when a plane load of innocent people all pray fervently prior to the crash? Or a boatload before it sinks?  What kind of plan is that?

If God is so smart, why couldn’t he figure out another way to save us from our sins other than kill his own son?  I can think of a few.  Why is our remembrance of this event so ghastly?  A cross?  Might as well be a hangman’s noose, a guillotine, an AK-47, an electric chair.  Why do we symbolize cannibalism when we remember this sacrifice?  This is my body, this is my blood.  Yuck!

Why didn’t Jesus while he was here preaching take the opportunity to make statements about the equality of women and races and sexual preference and abortion and slavery and all the other issues we face.  Did he not know these issues were coming?  In fact, Jesus seems more willing to support the status quo of the day.  How can that be if we are to be changed, love our neighbors as ourselves, be a Good Samaritan, etc.?

If have a soul that is eternal, then why can’t I remember anything prior to my birth, or prior to about age 3?  How can something eternal have a start date?  Why would we expect to continue to have awareness after we die?  Do other living things have such awareness, or is this just our egotistical folly?

If I read the Bible and just discount the passages I know are false, (the earth is not flat, the earth is not the center of our solar system or the universe, the earth is much more than 10,000 years old, we should not stone people to death for adultery or pre-marital sex, etc.) then what is to keep me from simply saying other passages are as discounted as these?  Rising from the dead?  Ascending into heaven?  Water into wine? Etc.  But if we take the entire Bible literally we know it to be false in so many ways. 

How can I be a Christian and support bigotry, fear, discrimination of any sort, promotion of wealth, and fear of other humans?  How can I be a Christian and explain the horrible deeds done to others in the name of the Christian God?  Lynchings, slavery, the Inquisition, the Crusades, ban on Muslim immigration or Mexican immigration?  How is that aligned with the commandments of Jesus?

How can it be that there is no record other than the records of Christians that Jesus actually existed?  How can it be that Herod actually died 6 years before Jesus birth?  How can it be that the Romans did not order a census in the year of Jesus birth?  How can it be that Horus, an Egyptian god, was born of a virgin, performed miracles, died and rose from the dead 3 days later and his followers preceded Jesus?  How can Mary be a virgin and Jesus have an older brother?  How can it be that it took 400 years after Jesus for humans to canonize the Bible?  Did God dictate the Bible to men, or did men write what they wanted?

Did God create us in his image, or did we create God in ours?

God and Free Will

I see and hear religious people constantly making excuses for their god.  I simply laugh at the posters that show two sets of footprints that become one set because the theory is god is carrying the faithful.  I read apologies like When Bad Things Happen to Good People and The Shack that make the argument that god made us and gave us free will and now he/she will watch over us, care about us, hear our prayers, yada yada yada, but he/she is reluctant to intervene in the exercise of our free will.  BS.

The first question that comes to my mind is, does god have free will?  Does the almighty have the ability to make decisions on his/her own and act on those decisions?  Or, is god bound by some law that he or she created that forces god into the role of spectator on the sidelines of human activity?  I would argue that it is reasonable to assume that god would not be able to give humans free will if he or she did not have free will.  It was a decision on god’s part to give humans this gift.  Therefore, by definition, god must have free will.

The Bible is full of stories of god choosing to act when he or she was not forced to act.  The flood, the parting of the Red Sea, turning water into wine, calming the waves, healing the blind, forgiving the sinners, raising Lazarus, etc., etc.  In each of those stories the message is clear.  God decided to act, decided to intervene and change the natural laws he or she theoretically established.  In other words, god cannot make a rock he or she cannot move.  He/she made the laws and he/she can choose to alter those laws.  Talking through a burning bush that does not burn clearly violates the laws of physics, and yet he/she supposedly did so.  Not to mention rising from the dead.

So, if god has free will, how does he or she decide how to exercise that will?  It is in answer to that question that all Christians begin to apologize for god.  They would say god has a plan that we are not privy to and that whatever happens is part of god’s plan.  If that is true, god has a terrible, mean plan.  In The Shack god assured the dad of the murdered daughter that he/she was with her to the very end.  Great.  Why not stop the kidnapping in the first place?  In Why Bad Things Happen to Good People the argument is much the same:  god set laws in motion and will not intervene.  But that is not true.  God does intervene if you believe the Bible.  God does intervene if you believe in miracles.  So the question is, why doesn’t god choose to intervene every time a faithful believer beseeches god to act?  Can god’s plan include the death of thousands due to cancer, death of thousands due to airline crashes, death of thousands due to homicides and suicides?  It is totally unreasonable for a so-called loving deity to allow such tragedy.

Yes, god must have free will.  And if you choose to worship a god who may drown you in a flood or let your child die because of some unknown plan when believers know full well that god could intervene, then you are at least a sucker and at worst a gullible person suffering from delusions.  Or, your god is either impotent, deaf or mean.

God Chat

One of the reasons I have abandoned my faith is that the following cannot happen.

Had a little chat with God yesterday and it was enlightening.  In the context of the Muslim immigration ban, the separation of children from their asylum-seeking parents, the permission granted to bakers to discriminate against LGBTQ couples, the permission granted to florists to discriminate against LGBTQ couples, and the fervent support of Trump by the religious right I figured I must have stuff all messed up.  The world seems backwards.  Seems to me Christians and Muslims should be calling for Trump’s impeachment, not defending him, much less operating in his shadow of bigotry, adultery, lies, collusion, misogyny, and emoluments.  So, I thought I would ask the boss.

OEB:    God, did you choose Trump to be our President?

GOD:  No.  I do not intervene in such things as elections, sporting events, gambling outcomes, etc.  All my children have free will and daily choose to do what is right or what is wrong.

OEB:    So, how do we know what is right?

GOD:   Follow my commandments.

OEB:    OK.  Please remind me of those.

GOD:   It would be a great start if my children followed the commandment to love me with all their heart and mind and spirit, and love their neighbors as they love themselves.

OEB:    I get the first part of that.  It is the second part I have trouble understanding.  Just who is my neighbor?

GOD:  All my children.

OEB:    So I am to love immigrants, Hispanics, Blacks, homosexuals, transgenders, Muslims, poor people, sick people, etc. as much as I love myself?

GOD:  Yep.

OEB:    Loving my neighbor as I love myself means I want the best for them, I want to help them, I want to clothe them and feed them and heal them and protect them and make their lives better.  Right?

GOD:  Right.  Serving yourself while harming others is not my work nor my commandment.  That is the work of someone else.

OEB:    Can the people who claim to love you with all their hearts but refuse to love their neighbors still call themselves your followers?

GOD:  Nope.

OEB:    Thanks, God.  You have helped me see the right things to do.

Thirst for the Transcendental

Wednesday morning, 3 a.m.  I am awake, and with apologies to Paul Simon, I get it.  Once the dream ends reality begins and sleep retreats.  I carry burdens, I carry recurring wounds that should by now be mere memories of scars.  In my dreams I repeat the episodes when my essence was lacerated.  I bleed.  I ache.  I hunger.  I wish to re-write my life.  I wish to lay my burden down.  I wish there was someone who somehow could relieve me of the weight and wounds.  How wonderful it would be if there was a supernatural being who knew all things and to whom I could turn in my darkest hours.  A being that offered unconditional love.  A being that was always on my side.  A being to whom once I confessed and obsessed would relieve me of the stress.  Yes, I thirst for the transcendental. 

And I remained rapacious, unquenchable.  When I believed in such a supernatural being my thirst was not abated and I made excuses for a god that would not respond, would not offer me even a sip of the juice of peace.  It must be me, not him.  I must deserve this somehow.  It must be part of a plan to which I am not privy.  It must be for my own good.  There must be a lesson herein I have failed to grasp.  I forgave god, and the pain remained.

What happened to let go and let god?  What happened to come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest?  Really?  I called on such a being.  And yet it is Wednesday morning 3 am and I can find no rest, the burden continues to press.

Like lightning it hit me.  I was talking to a mythical being, a being that does not exist.  I was seeking answers from a childhood fairy tale.  No wonder the answers did not come.  No wonder the answers did not make sense.  No wonder I had to make excuses for the supernatural.  I was talking to an imaginary friend, an entity that man created and that does not exist and cannot answer questions.  By definition ethereal beings have no weight, much less would they be able to relieve me of my burdens.

And as I think more and more about this false entity I realize that if it existed it would be incredibly mean-spirited, unforgiving, and unresponsive.  An entity that would allow his own son to die is not likely to help me with my petty issues.  An entity that condemns us all because his first creations sought knowledge.  Really?  An entity that allows countless deaths without intervention.  An entity that refuses to reveal himself.  He is false.  He does not exist.  And sadly it occurs to me that those who rely on this entity are delusional.

Becoming an atheist has helped me grow up.  My issues are my issues and I can work them out.  I may need help and support from other humans, but I no longer languish in waiting for a mythical being to solve my problems or highlight my path.

It is hard to be an adult.  It is hard to let go of thirsting for the transcendental.  But my thirst is now quenched by reality.  And I am at peace.

I Didn’t Want to be an Atheist

I spent the first 65 years of my life professing to be a Christian.  That’s a long time.  I believed there was a god and that he sacrificed his only son so that we would be saved by grace and go to heaven.  I believed if I sinned I would go to hell.  I believed there was an after-life.  I believed my god was a personal god, someone I could talk with and turn to in good times and bad.  My Dad was a preacher so I never missed church, never missed Sunday school.  I read the Bible cover-to-cover in college.  I was active in my local church, served as a Trustee, and various other organizational committees.  I sang in the choir and sang in a small sextet that specialized in a cappella gospel type and contemporary Christian music.  Life was good.

My problems arose in March of 2015 when a mentally disturbed co-pilot gained control of a Germanwings airliner at 39,000 feet and sent that plane and all 150 people aboard straight down to crash in the French Alps.  It took almost 10 minutes for the plane to crash killing all aboard.  Ten minutes.  Everyone on board knew they were going to crash.  They saw the pilot, locked out of the cockpit, begging to re-enter.  They saw him take a fire ax to the door.  They knew they were going to die.  Men, women, children, infants, flight attendants, everyone.  I made an assumption.  That if a plane of 150 people knew they were going to die fervent prayers must have been unleashed to a variety of deities, but mostly to the god I worshipped as most of the passengers were European and most likely Christians.  I had to know why a god who could part the Red Sea, raise the dead, heal the sick, cast out demons, etc., could not alter the flight plan of a passenger jet.  Several things became obvious.  Either god wasn’t listening.  God had a plan that required the death of 150 random people including innocent children and infants.  God was unable to intervene.  Or there was no god.  If god was not listening then my entire belief structure shook.  How could he not hear those prayers?  If god had a plan that required all those people to die then what kind of god was this god?  How could he allow such a thing?  How can we make a single excuse for him that is anything other than negligent homicide for 150 people?  If god wanted to intervene and could not, how can we call this impotent deity a god?  Or, perhaps there is no god.

I was rattled.  Deeply upset.  It was very hard to consider any of those possibilities.  It would have been much easier to simply say this was god’s will and I did not have the right to question it.  God’s plan was beyond me, I just had to accept it.  I made excuses for a mean or impotent god, and suddenly I saw that is in fact what I had always done.  If it appeared that god was mean or impotent it must be my fault because I could not comprehend his plan.  But I knew that was bullshit.  If this was part of a plan I could not fathom what I could see was that this plan was cruel, it was murderous, and it was evil.  If I had god’s power I simply would have unlocked the cockpit door and allowed the pilot access so that the plane and all aboard were saved.  A simple trick for an omnipotent god.  A trick that would not even have revealed his intervention.  Am I a better person than the god I have been worshipping?  God took no action.  He waited in the wings while the wings crashed.

As I struggled I was loaned the book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.”  I read it.  The bottom line was god set up a perfect universe governed by perfect laws and he was loath to intervene.  Really?  I make up the rules so I can’t change them?  That is not what the Bible says.  If that were true then the bush would have been consumed by fire, the Red Sea would not have parted, Mary would not get pregnant, and Jesus would still be dead.  The argument that god is subject to his own rules is an argument for the incompetency and limited power of god.

I read Lee Strobel’s books on the case for Christ and the case for faith.  There was no case for either.  The thesis was Strobel was an atheist and as journalist he sought proof of Christ.  But what he did was interview “experts” who knew “experts” who believed there was a Christ.  It was all hearsay evidence.  He wrote books that no newspaper would ever have published without some kind of corroboration.  Strobel is BS.

Then and only then did I turn to Richard Dawkins, to Christopher Hitchens, to Sam Harris, to Daniel Dennett, to Neil Degrasse Tyson, to Bill Nye, to Stephen Hawking, and to Carl Sagan.  My goodness.  The case for no god as put forward by these men was profound.  It was reasonable.  It was logical.  I did not want to agree with them.  I did not want to abandon my beliefs.  But I could find no flaw in their reasoning, in their evidence or in their assumptions.  Scales fell from my eyes and I ever so sadly had to admit that I had been wrong my entire life.

There is no life after death any more than there is life before birth.  We live, we die.  There is absolutely no evidence that we maintain some sort of post-death sentience.  There is no evidence of a heaven or a hell.  Those are Christian constructs and are not shared by all religions.  There is no evidence that Jesus really existed.  Other than two Roman historians who make reference to those who follow Jesus, there is no evidence outside his followers that there was such a person.  Amazing considering the detailed history of the Roman Empire as compiled by Roman scholars.  There is no evidence the Jews were ever slaves in Egypt.  There is no evidence of a mandatory census at the alleged time of Jesus birth.  There is no evidence of any of the miracles as they were all reported by followers who had an interest in perpetrating the myth.  If heaven is a real place and a perfect place then why oppose suicide?  If Mary really was impregnated by the Holy Spirit why aren’t we seeking God’s DNA? 

And on a broader scale, why after 200,000 years of human presence on this planet did the Christian god make himself known just 4,000 years ago?  Many other cultures already had gods.  Gods they believed in, gods they worshipped, gods that told them there were no other gods.  Why reveal himself to a poor, nomadic, illiterate people rather than to Egyptians or Chinese who had written language and communication systems?  He choose absolutely the least likely group on the planet to reveal universal truths, then marched them off to the only place in the Mid-East that does not have oil.  Some caring god.

And though there are a host of other non-sequiturs regarding god, the bottom line is if there is a god then those who believe such must offer evidence of his existence.  It is not the job of the non-believer to prove he does not exist, it is the job of the believers to prove he does.  They cannot do that.  It is all about belief, not knowledge.  If one says they believe that Santa Claus is real, then it is up to them to prove it, not up to the rest of the adults to disprove it.

And what of this Bible, this “holy” book?  It was not written by god.  It was written by humans.  Flawed humans.  Humans who edited and amended the content for years after the supposed Jesus died and supposedly was resurrected.  The Bible was not adopted in final form until a group of humans did that 400 years later.  Plenty of time to get their story straight, but they did not.  The Bible is full of contradictions and falsehoods.  Followers have a choice:  they can claim this book is holy and that every passage is true and must be believed and followed, or the book was written for another time and place and they can cherry pick the verses they choose to believe and choose to follow.  The problem with believing the Bible is a holy book is that it is just flat wrong in many cases, it calls for the stoning to death of adulterers, disrespectful children and those who participate in pre-marital sex, and it avoids the issues of slavery and the second class citizenship of women.  It is totally inaccurate regarding the evolution of our planet and life on our planet as well as our place in the universe.  God did not dictate this book.  Humans wrote it.  On the other hand, if they can choose to ignore all the fallacies of the Bible and cherry pick the verses they like what is to keep the rest of us from saying the gospels are simply mythology like stories of Zeus?  Either way, there is no way to consider this book holy.

I suddenly knew how the skeptics felt when Copernicus offered evidence that the earth orbited the sun and not vice versa; the earth was not the center of our solar system, the sun was.  It must have been totally disorienting to those who believed otherwise because they were led to believe so by the Bible.  Their response was to persecute Galileo for believing Copernicus.  (They did not persecute Copernicus because he died right after he published his theory of heliocentrism.  Galileo, on the other hand, was tried by the Inquisition, found to be guilty of heresy by the church and kept under house arrest for the rest of his life.  Interesting that the Bible makes it very clear that the sun orbits the earth.  It took 300 years for the church to admit its mistake with Galileo.)  Though some with intellectual integrity had to say to themselves that it is impossible to argue with the evidence that the earth orbits the sun and those people were willing to alter their beliefs based on new science.

Among many, one of the saddest results of discovering there is no god is the hostility I feel from those who still believe there is a god.  Of the 7+ billion people on the planet, 2.1 billion claim Christianity (a number that is shrinking), 1.3 billion claim to be Muslim (a number that is growing somewhat), and the third largest group is non-believers at 1.1 billion.  This last group is the fastest growing group on the planet.  There are multiple reasons for that.  Christians do not like to be challenged regarding their beliefs.  They are much more accustomed to proselytizing than to be proselytized.  They feel authorized to go to people who have a religion and tell them that the god they worship is not the real god and they should convert to Christianity.  Such arrogance is amazing.  When Christians experience rational arguments regarding their faith they can become irrational and threaten the non-believer with bullshit that is non-believed.  I am not going to hell.  There is no hell.  I am not going to heaven.  There is no heaven.  There is no life after life. When I die I will be dead, just like every other life form on the planet.  To believe otherwise may be hopeful, but it is silly.  To believe in an after-life allows a mythical supernatural being to control your free will with threats of eternal punishment or eternal reward, and allows for the concept of a being watching every move we make, every thought we have in a scenario that puts 1984 to shame.  This is all poppycock and balderdash.  It is up to the believer to prove the existence of a god, an after-life, a heaven and/or a hell.  They cannot do so.  We can measure the waves from the big bang.  We can demonstrate the efficacy of evolution.  We can see and measure billions and billions of stars, billions and billions of galaxies.  We can chart the depths of the sea.  And yet no one can offer coordinates for heaven and hell.  Simply because they do not exist.  If they did, we would have found them.

It would be wonderful if there was a benevolent god who watched over us, intervened in times of crisis, who did not threaten us with eternal punishment if we do not do what he wants, and who is willing to reveal himself and his plan.  But there is no such being.  Even the mystical being that is worshipped is not that benevolent, is not that loving, and in many cases is a grudge-holder and down-right cruel.  But, since he does not exist, I know the results credited to a god are based on science, on reason, and/or on either random events or inexplicable serendipity.  As a child I felt sad and betrayed when I came to understand that Santa was not real.  I feel the same way now about god.  I wish Santa was real.  I wish the tooth fairy was real.  I wish god was real.  I did not want to be an atheist, but I cannot ignore what I know to be true despite what I wish I could believe to be true.

If you worship a god whether it is Yahweh, Jehovah, father of Jesus, Zeus, Allah, Ra, or hundreds of other gods it is up to you to present the proof of their existence.  There is no such proof.  There is belief and belief alone.  Sadly the same is true of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, but we do not seem to argue about those beings as much (which is really funny considering from a child’s point of view there is more evidence of the existence of Santa and the Tooth Fairy than there is of god.)

And yet, once everyone understands that the earth orbits the sun and that there is no god we will have no more religious wars, no more crusades, no more suicide bombings against infidels, no more persecution of people who are judged by Bronze Age values, no more slavery, no more women as second class citizens, no more fights over erecting the 10 commandments and prayer in school, etc.  The world will be a much better place without religion.  And in that I find hope.  More hope than I find looking at our current state of war, poverty, crime, hatred, fear, hunger, famine, disease in the context of some supernatural being overseeing everything.  If god has a plan and it is unfolding then believers are living in a hell ordained by a so-called loving god.  And that in and of itself is ludicrous.

I did not want to be an atheist.  But I am.