Religion and Relationships

Gavin was not sure what to think of all this, so he sat quietly and listened intently.  He was on the back row, and he could not see what was going on down front.  His long legs had room, but not enough room to stretch all the way out because the row in front of him was pretty close, not as close, mind you, as a movie seat or an airline seat, but close.  In movies and airlines his knees hit structures in front of him, but not in this seat.

And this seat was really more like a bench, not a seat.  It was made of wood with a straight back and a red cushion to sit on.  Gavin found that funny.  Butts were cushioned, backs were not.  He figured it was some kind of subtle cultural message.  “Get off your butts and put your back into it.”  No, my butt is the only thing comfortable in this furniture, he thought.  He wondered why this bench was called a peeyou.  That was the expression used when something really smelled badly but he had yet to detect any truly repulsive or pungent odors that would merit that rubric.  He assumed it was but another strange cultural artifact and began to long to leave so that he could return to the 21st Century. 

But Gavin was in love with Nancy and he had traveled to her home this weekend to meet her family.  If that was not frightening enough they insisted that he go to this auditorium with them where sacred rituals were performed, incantations were offered, songs were sung, and occasionally infants would scream as someone dropped cold water on them three times.  Gavin had no such experience with any of these matters and though he had seen similar structures in every town he had ever lived, he had not once set foot inside.  He was afraid to.  What kinds of people would spend millions of dollars on a structure they only occupied for a couple of hours one day a week?  But, he had promised her he would go at least once, so here he was in his best blue slacks, black shoes shined, starched white shirt and solid maroon tie tied in a Windsor knot as his dad had taught him, sitting on the butt-cushioned, back-torture-rack of the very last peeyou of the local church on a spring morning. 

Looking toward the stained glass windows he could see dust mites dancing in the sun and felt some jealousy.  They were free.  He was not.  He was stuck with Nancy to his left and her mother to his right.  Wedged.  Trapped.  He pushed his long black hair back and out of his eyes and Nancy reached over and gave his tie a little tug as though the knot needed attention.  The knot did not need attention.  It was purely a gesture to inform the folks sitting around them that she possessed him and they should leave him alone.  He only minded half that message.

All the benches were arranged facing the front of this auditorium that he guessed could seat about 500 humans comfortably.  It was similar in size to some lecture halls at the university, but those rooms had individual seats with better back support, little tables tops that could be rolled up in place to doodle on, and the hall was sloped so that those on the back row could see without obstruction.  This auditorium had no such slope and he had to shift to the left, then shift to the right to avoid staring at the back of the heads in front of him rather than what was happening on the little stage down front.  He had been sitting like this for 10 minutes and nothing had happened, though he could hear a musical instrument playing elevator music softly in the background.  Was that an organ?  Did they exist outside merry-go-rounds and ballparks?  He was not sure, but if it was an organ it was the most demur, depressing, somber sounds he had ever heard.  And then the music stopped.

A man, at least he appeared to be man, entered from stage right and walked to the center of the elevated space down front.  His costume was amazing.  He wore a long green robe and over that he wore a long flowing white robe, just short enough at hem and arm to reveal the underlying green robe.  He had gold jewelry around his neck that Gavin could not quite make out though it flashed in the sun like a gold spoon one might use to fish.  Around his neck was some kind of material.  It was not a scarf because it was too narrow, and it was not a tie because it was too wide.  He did not know what it was or why a grown man would stand in front of a bunch of people wearing what looked like dresses on a warm spring day.  The low murmur of many voices in the auditorium suddenly hushed and all eyes were on the man down front.  He did not say a word, but his control over this large group was astounding. He simply raised both his arms, the organ started to play and everybody stood up.  It was incredible.  But the show was just starting.

To Gavin’s right and left through the exit doors, a line of people marched in singing.  Gavin was sure they were all members of the KKK in their white robes and they sang a song he had never heard, all of them signing at the top of their voices to be heard over the now loud organ.  His true love and her mother and everyone else started singing too.  They grabbed little blue books from a rack in front of them, turned to a page where there were notes and lyrics.  Nancy held one side of the book and it was clear she wanted him to hold the other side.  He did.  Nancy pointed to a place on the page that matched the notes and lyrics that were being sung, but to read either the notes or the lyrics meant taking his eyes off the progressing Klansmen who were clearly headed to the front of the auditorium.  Gavin was worried that they meant to harm the cross-dressing man down front so he wanted to be ready to help if need be.  He had no tolerance for the KKK and knew they had no tolerance for cross-dressing people even though they too wore dresses.

As the two lines of singing Klansman arrived down front, they climbed the three steps up to the stage toward the man in green and white, and then they split again, each line of singers going to the far right or the far left.  They climbed steps Gavin could not see and turned to walk toward each other in the middle of the back of the stage.  Gavin realized these were not adversarial interlopers, they were part of the cast and he relaxed.  Somehow there was enough peeyous at the back of the stage to seat all the white-robed actors.  Gavin had been to many graduations in his life, and this was the most organized, smoothly executed procession he had ever seen.  The timing was almost perfect as the group sang the last verse, the organ stopped playing and everyone sat down except the man in the green and white gown down front.

That man proceeded to welcome everyone and praised the weather and thanked some god for the sunshine.  Gavin was confused because the sun was shining in all directions all the time and for right now it was gravity and physics that brought this town into the suns’ rays.  Further, they could only see it because a high-pressure front had moved through and pushed out the clouds.  Gavin was thinking about all this when Nancy elbowed him.  He had clearly missed something.  The man down front had asked if there were any visitors in the congregation, a term for an audience that meant they had congealed around something.  Nancy expected Gavin to raise his hand as he saw a few other mortified folks doing.  Gavin limply raised his arm and a suited man in the nearest aisle hustled toward him, gave him an index card to fill out with a little red ribbon to stick on his shirt.  He loathed to do either and just wanted to sit down and observe.  He surely did not want to participate in this play and Gavin would wager that most of the folks there were there to simply watch as well.  Nancy filled out the card for him and stuck the ribbon on his shirt.  The scarlet ribbon.   He felt branded.  How did they know he had consummated his relationship with Nancy?

The play moved on and another sung was sung.  Gavin got in on the ground floor of this one and followed the notes and lyrics without a flaw, due mainly to the fact that there were not robed actors walking up and down the aisle.  The lyrics started off OK but headed to bizarre land very quickly.  “I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses.”  That’s nice.  Gavin could picture such.  “And the voice I hear falling on my ear,” What?  I thought this person said they were alone?  “The Son of God discloses.”  Oh my.  The author is hallucinating or at least having some sort of delusion.  How could this group of nice people reinforce such a mental health tragedy?  It got worse.  “And he walks with me and He talks with me.”  Oh my goodness.  We have gone from an auditory hallucination to a full-blown delusionary event involving a make-believe man!  “And He tells me I am His own,” This is too much.  To suggest that some make-believe male claims ownership of a human being is outrageous.  Slavery was abolished years ago!  “And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.”  Holy cow.  Joy with a make-believe slave master?  Who is Joy and does she agree?  What kind of strange cult is this?  And if no one else has ever known this feeling shouldn’t that be a clue to the author that this entire episode is a delusion?  And yet, the folks in the auditorium were singing these words with heartfelt endorsement.  Gavin was scared to death.  If everyone here had similar delusions he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Should anyone ever talk to him when he was alone in a garden he would check himself into the nearest psych ward.  If they walked with him and talked to him it was probably too late and he would spend the rest of his life in a straitjacket.

Gavin’s hands were shaking.  How could Nancy look at him and smile?  How could she invite him into this madness with crossdressing dictators and KKK singers?  How could she set him up as a new target for the propaganda of their cult by sticking a scarlet ribbon on his shirt?  Did loving Nancy mean he had to subscribe to what was clearly fantasy?

It got much worse.  The group stood to repeat from memory the key elements of their belief system, none of which had any foundation in logic, or science, or mental health.  They believed in ghosts.  They believed ghosts could impregnate women.  They believed virgins could become pregnant via this insanity, they believed someone died and came alive again three days later.  On and on.  It was like a convention of the world’s most bizarre authors and he fully expected to see Stephen King and Dean Koontz in the audience. After the litany of the fantastic, the green/white crossdresser went to a podium to tell the people who had congealed what they should believe and what they should do.  Gavin could not take anymore. 

It broke his heart.  He peeled off the red ribbon and handed it to Nancy, kissed her hand and said, “I’m sorry.  This is all just too much.”

He walked out of the church, back to Nancy’s house, packed his bags, and hopped in his car to drive home.  He shuddered all the way when he thought about the fact that the woman he loved actually believed all that stuff and wanted him to believe it too.  Thank goodness he figured it out before there were legal entanglements.

And every church he passed on the way home, with parking lots full of cars, began to scare him even more.  How could so many people go along with this? 

Religion.  Religion takes its toll on one more human relationship.  Gavin would never speak to Nancy again despite her efforts.  Too scary.  He cared for her too much and she might suck him in.  He could not let that happen.

Religion and relationships.  Tough. 

What am I Missing?

From the believers' point of view, didn't God create everything?

So God created the coronvirus.  If it appeared on its own due to some science we are yet to understand then clearly God does not create everything or anything for that matter.

If God created the coronavirus then it must be in his plan for people to get sick and die.  Not the plan of a loving God, if you ask me.

If God created the coronavirus and in his plan someone you know and love is sick and dying, there would be no point in praying to God for succor as it is his plan.

If God created the coronavirus, people are going to die, God will not change his mind, God will not perform some miracle to stop the virus, so God is a mass murderer.

So God is either unable to stop the virus, or he created the virus, or the virus evolved, or it is God's plan.

In any case, why would anyone in their right mind worship such a being?

Sunday Morning

Ah, Sunday.  More Americans will demonstrate that they suffer from delusional thinking today than any other day of the week.  More Americans will demonstrate their hypocrisy today than any other day of the week.  More Americans will practice the brainwashing of their children today than any other day of the week.  Churchgoers abound and the mythology continues.

I am pretty much unaware of what happens during ceremonies at Mosques and Temples and Synagogues.  But I do know Christianity.

Some folks will go to a church that proclaims the Bible is a holy book, virtually dictated by God and that the words therein must be taken literally.  They are, of course, lying to themselves and others.  The Bible is full of flaws of historical and scientific nature.  Nope, the earth is not flat.  Nope, the sun does not orbit the earth.  Nope, not a good idea to stone adulterers to death.  Nope, the planet is not 10,000 years old, and on and on.  Worse, there is evidence of other great lies:  the Jews were never slaves in Egypt; Herod died 6 years before Jesus was born, the Romans did not conduct a census anytime around the supposed birth of Jesus, etc.  But, these same believers will say that abortion and homosexuality are bad because they interpret some scriptures to say so.  The hypocrisy of these folks is overwhelming to me.  It seems to me if they claim a literal interpretation of a flawless Bible they should not cherry-pick the verses they like and ignore others. 

Sadly, there was no flood and no ark.  There was no parting of the Red Sea.  There was no city where the inhabitants were turned to salt.  No one was ever swallowed by a whale and lived to tell the tale.  It is as though these believers go to church and turn off their brains so that they can believe the impossible.  One wonders why the Bible never mentions the pyramids as they were built before the Old Testament was written.  One wonders why if the Bible is God’s word he did not preserve the original scriptures and only left his followers with copies of copies of the text, each iteration different from the one before.  Shepherds do not tend sheep in December.  And no star can hover over a specific city.

Some folks will go to a church that supports celibacy in the clergy, does not approve of married clergy or homosexual clergy and yet those same churches have huge issues with clergy acting as sexual predators.  Some folks will go to a church that worships rich clergy who claim God wants everyone to be rich despite the clear injunctions against wealth in the Bible.  Some folks will go to church where infants are sprinkled and others will go to a church where young adults and older get dunked in the hot tub in the sanctuary.  Some folks will go to church where they are told how to think politically and the message is always “be conservative”, despite the fact that the message of the New Testament is about as liberal as one can get.  Some folks will go to a church where a bell is rung and crackers turn into human flesh and wine turns into blood and people eat and drink it anyway.  So bizarre.  Cannibalism is against the law but no one ever gets arrested.

And some folks will go to church where people believe they are vested with the presence of a spirit and they begin to talk in gibberish and dance and roll on the floor.  Some folks will go to church where they believe vaccinations are evil and harmful.  Some folks will go to church where handling rattlesnakes is a test of trust in the mythical being.  Some folks will go to church and believe that clergy can heal them from all sorts of ailments, but they never see those same clergy in a hospital.  

And every single one of them will go to a church supposedly established by their omnipotent and all-powerful god and their god needs money.  More money.  Really?  Why doesn’t God just whisper insider trading secrets to the clergy?

So I think all those people putting on their Sunday best and heading out the door, checkbooks in hand, are delusional.  They cannot prove the existence of a god, of a heaven or a hell, of some sort of secret god plan for everyone, the ability of some being to personally hear the requests of 7 billion people, or of a resurrected human being.  How can they possibly believe all that?

But they do.  Worse, they teach their kids to think in every domain but the religious domain.  In that domain the kids are simply taught to believe hogwash and poppycock.

Even worse for me are the people who claim to believe but in no way act as though they have any understanding of what such a belief would mean.  They play golf every Sunday and do not even go to church.  If one is going to be a delusional, hypocritical believer in the supernatural then one should at least act in ways that demonstrate such a belief.

And no, I will be sitting at home today reading about the latest evidence that we are killing our planet and are likely to become extinct.  Wonder how the believers will justify such a plan by their god?

Into What is the Universe Expanding? (Religion version)

Bobby Jack Schlueter was 39 now.  He still wore his hair long, like a dark shawl hanging on his shoulders.  That was his trademark.  In high school Bobby Jack had been the best tight end his school had ever seen.  He was 6 foot 3 inches big and 220 pounds strong with great hands and surprising speed and most amazing, he was nimble of foot and graceful.  Slow-motion replays of his catch and runs were works of art.  Some defenders he bowled over, some he simply waltzed around, and some he changed direction on so smoothly they tripped on their own feet trying to keep apace.  He carried the team to state for 2 consecutive years.  Those whose horizons stretched beyond the city limits watching him play football knew he could probably go pro someday.  Or, become a celebrity leading man in Hollywood.  Or become a great ballet dancer like Nureyev or Baryshnikov.  He had the looks, the charisma, and the presence to do it all.

But Bobby Jack was 39 now.  He still had the rugged good looks and he still stood 6’3’.  But his frame now carried closer to 260 pounds.  He was sitting on the front porch swing, straining the chains that held it above ground and creaking with the metronome beat of the swing.  One day a link would give way and down would tumble Bobby Jack, swing and all.  But that would not happen today.  Today his hair floated gently behind him on the upswing and slowly embraced him on the downswing.  Back and forth.  Creaking and moaning.  Bobby Jack, a cold beer and a front porch swing.  He both liked and hated these moments alone on the front porch as the sun set, as Sue cooked supper and though his kids had been herded inside still ran around with energy from unknown sources. 

Bobby Jack liked these moments because he could reflect on how good his life was.  He inherited the land his great grandfather had staked out and 3 generations before him had cultivated.  He was on the same front porch his dad and grand and great granddads had all occupied.  He was swinging in the swing his grandfather had built by hand, shaving each of the slats in the swing so that they would be curved to best fit human butts, backs and thighs.  Bobby Jack thought how lucky he was to have married Sue even if he had not realized it at the time.  They had been sweethearts in high school.  She was beautiful and stirred his manhood every time he saw her.  Just after graduation Sue had come to him in tears.  She was pregnant, what would they do?  Bobby Jack was a man of principle if nothing else and he proposed to her on the spot.  He walked away from college coaches waving money, girls and cars, and settled in with Sue.  His father welcomed them back in the old homestead where they lived until this very day and raised their 3 kids, two boys and a girl. 

Bobby Jack hated these moments because he could reflect on all that he had missed in his life.  He was not the college or pro football start.  He was not a Hollywood celebrity.  Hell, he wasn’t even a ballet dancer.  He was still sitting on the same porch of the same house in the same swing as had his dad and grand and great-grand.  He was a fourth-generation Schlueter in a small town in Texas.  He knew he would never escape.  He knew his "all things possible" days were gone.  He knew that all he had left was the same routine his dad had, his grandfather had and his great-grandfather had.  He was a farmer in a small German town and that is what he would always be.  Knowing that, made Bobby Jack, now 39, feel very sad, very lost, and very worthless.  He saw no good future despite the fact that Sue still looked good and his kids were good and he loved them more than life itself.  But he was sad.  Sorry for himself.  So he got another beer, settled back to swinging on the swing and feeling his hair rise and fall.  He was stuck in stasis.

Or so he thought.  Even as he could smell the hay freshly cut and the corn just now crowning he was not in stasis.  Even as he had not moved from this spot for over an hour or for over 28 years since his dad died.  It seemed peaceful.  It seemed still.  It seemed safe.

But he was not still.  He was not safe.  The sun was roughly 93 million miles from earth.  That was a radius.  The circumference of the orbit was 584,336,233.56 miles.  For each of Bobby Jack’s years he had traveled over 584 million miles through space.  In his 39 years he had traveled almost 23 billion miles.  That is not the attribute of someone who has achieved stasis.  So while he was swinging on his safe little front porch he was actually moving on his home planet at about 1,000 miles per hour, looping 584 million miles around his star every year.

And that is just for earth.  His solar system is moving.  His galaxy is moving.  Galaxies are moving further and further away from each other leaving space we do not understand.  Is it dark matter held in place by dark energy, or is that as likely as trolls bowling every time it thunders?  We do not know.  We guess.  But Bobby Jack, now 39, is not sitting still.  And he will soon come to know that.

Sue stepped out on the porch.  “Bobby Jack, supper’s ready.”

“OK.  What are we having?”

Sue said, “Cutlets and brown gravy and mashed potatoes and fresh spinach.” 

“Sounds great, I’ll be right in.”

“OK,” Sue said.  Then she paused.  Then she looked up.  The early twilight was changing.  It was growing brighter.

“What’s that?” Sue asked, pointing at a very bright spot on the horizon.

Bobby Jack turned to look.  It looked like a fireball and it looked like it was heading right for them.  They both yelled at the same time and ran inside and grabbed the kids and headed for the cellar.  They made it.  They called out to God to save them.  But it didn’t matter.  There was no stasis.  Not anymore.

The comet was unknown to us.  It was as big as all of Texas and it had just circled our sun so we did not see it coming.  The sun accelerated the comet’s speed to almost 100,000 miles per hour.  It hit in the Gulf of Mexico and the fireball from the impact spread at supersonic speed around the planet, burning off our oceans and our atmosphere.  No one survived.  No living thing survived. 

Earth would eventually have several rings formed from the debris thrown into space by the impact.  The moon would jostle around in these debris rings and grow larger.  The sun and other planets were barely affected at all.

But, Bobby Jack would only ever be 39.  The universe is expanding from some sense of stasis to total chaos.  Humans in a flash learned that we are not so smart and that there is no such place as safe and sound, no such place as the same old swing on the porch.  We learned that yearning for some mythical good ole days was pure fantasy.  We learned that somehow we were the chosen creation of some mythical deity was false.  The universe was going to expand or contract based on physical laws not all of which we understand, but not because there is some god in some magical heaven keeping watch over us.  

We learned that differences regarding gender identity and sexual preferences did not matter.  We learned that differences regarding wealth did not matter.  We learned that differences regarding skin pigment did not matter.  We learned that any belief that had separated one of us from another of us was inherently wrong when none of us would survive.  We learned all that and knew there was no ark for this flood.  We learned all that, and then we were extinct.

The universe continued to expand.  Earth’s fate was not even noticed by other sentient beings as galaxies collided and black holes ate light and the night sky shown less bright as all the stars retreated from view.  There is no stasis.  There is no status quo.  There is only progression from where we are and what we perceive to the eventual ripping of the fabric of time and space by an ever-expanding universe.  There is no why.  There is no how.  There is only expansion from where we are to chaos.

Had Bobby Jack survived he likely would have reached the following conclusions.  Make the most of each minute.  Bond with other humans as best you can.  Build bridges, not walls.  Solve the problems we can solve and accept that there are quantum forces at work over which we have no control and no understanding. 

All that would be good to do in honor of Bobby Jack and Sue and their kids and every other human on the planet as we expand into chaos. 

Of Faith and Reason

Humans appear to be hard-wired to seek truth through reason and to seek truth through faith.  We have a dilemma.  We have a dichotomy.  We are at risk of a short circuit.  I am now the product of such a short circuit.  Not before 2015, but since March of 2015 two wires in my brain that should never have touched did so.  A short circuit.  I applied reason to faith and fried my brain. 

My Dad was a preacher and I grew up in the church, that is, the Presbyterian version of Christianity.  I was “born again” in 7^th grade at a Billy Graham promo in the Houston Astrodome.  I attended church camp.  I actually became the director of a church camp.  I have been a church trustee, taught Sunday school, sang in the choir, assisted in communion and never missed a Sunday.  I prayed.  I believed.  I had faith.  Unquestioned, unchallenged faith.  The Trinity, the virgin birth, the resurrection, yadda, yadda, yadda.  I was seen as a man of faith.

On March 24, 2015, Germanwings flight 9525 took off from Barcelona at 10:00 p.m. bound for Germany.  150 people, passengers and crew, were aboard.  Men, women, children, infants, students, and teachers.  At 10:27 p.m. the Airbus reached cruising altitude of 38,000 feet and the pilot left the cockpit to go to the bathroom.  The co-pilot sealed the cockpit.  After 9/11 that meant it would be virtually impossible to breach the door.  The co-pilot altered the autopilot so that the plane sought sea level at full speed.  It would take 10 minutes for the plane heading straight down to crash in the French Alps.  Despite pleading with the co-pilot and efforts to breach the door, everyone on board knew what was happening and what the result would be.  They would all die.  In 10 minutes.  The plane disintegrated on impact, the largest piece of wreckage was the size of a small car.  Everyone died.  And I had a short circuit.

I can only imagine what happened during those 10 minutes on that plane.  I am confident, however, that there were fervent, impassioned prayers beseeching God to save the passengers and crew.  God did nothing.  The plane crashed.  All died.  What the hell?

So, from a deity who could create the universe, part seas, flood the entire planet, raise folks from the dead, turn water into wine, heal the sick, walk on water, etc., etc. it was simply too much to ask that this God unlock the cockpit door?  My mind reeled.  My stock answer in such situations had always been it was God’s plan, we are not to question, and there was a purpose we did not know.  It occurred to me that this belief was likely totally BS and was imply a strategy to forgive God.  How could the death of these 150 people advance a love in God or other humans?  It made no sense.  Reason had no answer.  How could I attribute such horror to a plan I had not seen, not read, was not available to me, but a plan I must believe to let a god off the hook for tragedy?  If God had the ability to save those people and did not then God was clearly guilty of negligent homicide.

My short circuit got worse.  I read the Bible.  Not the chapter and verses selected for me in sermons and Sunday school, but I read it as a book much as I had read Locke, Descartes, Plato, etc.  And my faith faltered even more.  Most of what I read was either Bronze Age philosophy or simply not true.  The book is riddled with inconsistencies and falsehoods.  This was no divinely inspired holy book, this was more human bull.  Totally discouraged I turned to Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins.  Wow.  These folks made great sense.  They applied reason to faith and reason won.  Every time.  They had survived the short circuit.

As I continued to apply reason to faith several truths became more and more clear.  Faith exists prior to a real factual answer.  People of faith, faith in whatever, do not want to discuss their faith in the light of reason.  People want to enjoy the fruits of reason and science while simultaneously having faith that denies reason and science.  In other words, most people are afraid of the short circuit when the power of reason touches the tenets of belief.

I could no longer attend church.  I could not repeat the Apostles Creed.  I could not participate in the sacraments, especially communion which now seemed like a cannibalistic exercise.  (This is my body, this is my blood?  Yuck.)  I could no longer believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Either Jesus committed suicide or God killed his son.  And was anyone ever in heaven before Jesus?  If so, why let Jesus die?

More troubling is there is no evidence Jesus ever existed.  There was no Roman Census the year he was supposedly born.  Herod died 6 years before Jesus was born.  And on and on.  The Bible was not codified until 400 years after Jesus' death and we do not have any of the original scrolls.  They are all copies of copies, each iteration slightly different. 

There is more, much more.  I now know I do not believe.  My faith vanished, slowly and painfully, in the full light of reason.  I am a recovering Christian.  A survivor of the deep burn that comes with the short circuit when reason touches faith.  For many, that deep burn is too risky.  I see it now in politics and religion.  I do believe that our survival, our future on this planet will only happen via reason.  Faith won’t get us there, beliefs won’t get us there.  What happens to religious beliefs when we become extinct?

And the short circuit still burns.  Hot.  Especially this time of year. 

Happy Holidays.

More Questions

If Christians did not believe in an after-life would they be Christians?  If Christians did not believe in heaven and hell would they be Christians?  Is it the reward or the fear of punishment that drives them?  It does not appear that many Christians value the instructions Jesus left in terms of caring for one another, feeding one another, clothing one another, healing one another, treating all as brothers and sisters, etc.  It seems that Christians spend a lot of time condemning others.  Gay people.  Liberal people.  (Which I find funny as Jesus reads as a radical liberal.  Some Christian needs to tell Trump that it is the meek who shall inherit the earth.)  Non-believers.  Sinners as they see sinners.  People who might take some material goods from them even though Jesus said sell all that you own and follow me.  So, if Christians do not follow the moral code set out in their Bible, why do they claim to be Christian?  It must be to avoid hell and achieve heaven.  So, if there was no heaven and hell would there be Christians?  If there was no after-life like there is no pre-life would anyone be a Christian?

Does it bother Christians that their God comes across as a cop or a spy in the sky, always watching, all knowing, seeing all their behaviors, hearing all their thoughts?  Such a God eliminates any sense of self or sense of privacy.  Who am I really if I am monitored 24/7?  Seems to me that Christians must be experts at putting on an act for their God and for their fellows.  So, are Christians real?

Were there people in heaven before Jesus came?  If so, why not continue to allow people to achieve heaven in whatever manner was available pre-Jesus and not sacrifice a third of the trinity?  If not, why did God send everyone to hell before the escape from hell was provided?

Why is the trinity all male?  50% of the people on the planet are female.  But they worship “Our father who art in heaven,” Jesus as God’s son, and the Holy Spirit as the carrier of holy sperm for Mary.  How offensive.  We worry that women are underrepresented in Congress, as CEO’s, etc. but it’s OK for God to be all male?  Christians want women to worship God, but they are not allowed to be preachers, priests, etc. in some churches?  What an affront.

Why did this all powerful God forget to make a female in the first place?  Believers claim he made all life, male and female, but forgot to make a woman?  And he had to do it by taking a piece of a male?  Women weren’t good enough to be made from scratch like everything else including mosquitos and snakes?  Once again, what an affront.  If there is a God he is clearly a misogynist.

What is really going on in people who claim to have heard the voice of God?  Or claim to have been touched by the Holy Spirit?  Are they in the same camp as those who believe in ghosts, believe in the supernatural, believe in Big Foot, etc.?  We would say that people are delusional if they are hearing voices and feeling touches when there is no evidence of anyone or anything else in the room.  Is that why a logical conversation about faith is impossible with a believer? 

Please reply with answers.  Thanks.

Abortion

To get a quick and entertaining summary of what I think about abortion you may want to watch this 1996 video:  https://www.amazon.com/George-Carlin-Back-Town/dp/B00M0DBWE8

Meanwhile, I went looking for scripture that condemns abortion and could find absolutely nothing in the New Testament regarding this topic except that Paul bragged in Galatians 1:15 that God had plans for him even when he was in the womb.  That hardly applies to the question of ending pregnancies.  It only applies to Paul’s ego.  All the other biblical stretches regarding abortion come from the Old Testament.  So funny.  It is the Old Testament that argues that adulterers should be stoned to death, divorce is forbidden, rebellious children should be stoned to death, animals should be sacrificed to God, we should wage war on non-believers, and a host of other rules and laws that Christians have conveniently chosen to ignore.  From my point of view, if one can cherry pick the scripture in the Old Testament that merits following, why choose scriptures that do not address abortion directly to insist that it is evil?  Hypocrisy, that is why.

Carlin is right.  The pro-life movement is not really pro-life.  It is anti-women.  Any group that claims they are pro-life and wants to argue that life begins at conception is facing a whole lot of scientific evidence to the contrary.  A zygote is not a human.  A blastocyst is not a human.  An embryo is not a human.  A fetus is not a human until about 24 weeks of pregnancy when it is possible that the fetus could exist without the life support of the mother.  Further, since about 80% of all fertilized eggs tend not to take root in the uterus and are flushed out monthly then that would be serial killing on the part of God or the mother depending on your perspectives or beliefs.

If pro-life people were really pro-life they would oppose the death penalty.  They would favor stronger gun control.  They would favor drastic action to save our climate.  They would support early childhood education, food stamps, child welfare, CPS, etc.  They do not.  It is a bogus claim to fight for a zygote but not for breathing human beings.

A puzzle I heard from another source that I cannot recall:  You are in the waiting room of your doctor’s office when the fire alarm goes off and smoke starts to fill the room.  You are on the 4^th floor.  You run to the stairway and begin to descend.  At the 2^nd floor landing you hear an infants crying, you open the door and check the hallway.  There is a door labeled “fertility clinic” behind which you hear the crying.  You open the door and there on the floor are identical twins crying as smoke fills the room.  Next to them is a refrigerator labeled “fertilized eggs”, and inside is a tray of 1,000 fertilized human eggs.  You have a choice.  You can grab the tray and exit the building, or you can pick up the twins and exit the building.  You cannot do both.  Who do you save?  Do you let the twins die to save 1,000 possible humans, or do you save the twins and let those possible humans die?  In your answer lies your true understanding of the abortion issue. 

It is the living, breathing humans that merit our protection.  It is the mother and her doctor who should make the decision regarding a pregnancy.  Any other argument is either purely political or purely religious and should have no place in our law.  Old white men, priests and preachers, and confused women have no right to intervene, much less regulate such a decision. 

If you oppose abortion, do not have one.  I am amazed that the very people who are most fearful of Muslims attempting to implement Shia law in the US are the very ones who advocate implanting their own religious views into law.  Imposing your religious beliefs on others is un-American. 

Faith is a Delusion

Faith is a delusion held by those who do not really want to know the truth.

A cult is a faith group wherein members are strongly discouraged or are not allowed to seek the truth.  A group that will not tolerate challenges to their faith is a cult.  Cult members will ignore reality and people they love to avoid facing facts in conflict with their beliefs.  

Propaganda is the tool used to recruit cult members and convince existing cult members that their beliefs are true.

How would one know if they are in a cult or are the product of propaganda?  Question everything, seek outside views, challenge your own beliefs, trust science, and verify the veracity of cult statements.  If you are not able or are not willing to do so you are a cult member and/or are the product of propaganda.  If you would end friendships, if you would separate from family members because they do not believe as you believe then you are likely a cult member.  If your mind is made up and facts just get in the way, you are likely a cult member.  If you welcome new views, new insights, new thoughts and seek truth then you are healthy.

Current delusions and propaganda:  God chose Trump, Trump is persecuted by the left-leaning media, vaccinations cause autism, global warming is a myth, tariffs are helping American producers, Trump is a self-made billionaire, Trump is a stable genius, immigrant asylum seekers are bad people (rapists, murderers, etc.), the government is out to take guns away from citizens, socialism is a bad thing, liberalism is a bad thing, separation of church and state is a bad thing, white nationalism and racism are not bad things, the more guns the safer we all are, making the rich richer will help the middle and working class, America has more international respect under Trump, the wall is being built, Trump supports veterans, Trump supports Social Security and Medicare, abortion is murder, Putin is our friend, Trump has been exonerated by Mueller, etc., etc.

But increasingly if you seek the truth behind these issues you are alone.  The cult appears to be growing.  The delusions are more and more bizarre and less and less tied to reality.  I fear for the future of humanity if we cannot break free of the current cultism and tribalism.  We are capable of so much more.  The dinosaurs ruled earth for over 150 million years prior to extinction.  Humans have just made it 150 thousand years and are fading fast.  The answers to our longevity do not lie in faith.  The answers will be found by seeking truth.

I Must Be Stupid

These are some of the things I just do not understand.  I must be stupid.

Does God really care who wins football games or elections or is he the one who deserves the credit for home runs and touchdowns?  If so, let’s just form prayer leagues and wait for God to tell someone who should win the election.  If not, let’s stop praying and pointing the heavens.

If God answers prayers why doesn’t some Christian pray that God end childhood cancer, birth defects and child abuse?

If it is God’s plan that children die of cancer, birth defects and abuse what the hell kind of plan is that if you want to call this deity a god of love?

If God is a loving being who encourages us to forgive each other why is he still punishing us for the behaviors of Adam and Eve?  Why does he threaten us with eternal torture if we do not behave?

Why do Believers pray to ask God to do what the pray-er wants him to do but ends the prayer by telling God to do whatever God wants to do?

If believers believe all things are possible with God, then why is God so stingy in granting prayers?

Does the believer’s God need the government support for his policies?  What kind of powerful God is that?

If believers believe God answers prayers then why do all the prayer studies show that there is no difference in outcomes for sick people whether they believe or not, pray or not?

Did God write the Bible?  Did God dictate the Bible?  Or was it written by men and changed many, many times before the final edition? 

Do believers believe the Bible is the literal word of God?  If so, why don’t they support the stoning death of anyone with a divorce, or adulterers?  If not, why not pick other verses that would be easier to ignore?  If believers can choose to ignore whatever verses they choose to ignore, why would we call this a holy book and follow it at all?

If God is in control do we have free will?  If he is not in control, why pray to him or worship him at all? 

Why do believers believe God has a plan, a plan that cannot be seen, cannot be understood, cannot be known by humans, but still believe there is such a thing?

Why when terrible things happen do believers simply say that is part of God’s plan?  Why not simply say God’s plan sucks?  Why does God’s plan include so much suffering?

Why did God choose to reveal himself to a small, illiterate, nomadic group instead of to the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Sumarians and other cultures that had a written language at the time of his revelation?  As a result the Old Testament evolved from an oral history and was changed multiple times before it was ever codified.

If it was OK for Thomas to doubt the resurrected Jesus why isn’t OK for the rest of us to do the same without some proof?  Why doesn’t God offer some kind of proof, perform some kind of miracle, post a selfie on Facebook, send us a text, etc., so we all know he is real? 

If the answer to all the above is “one must have faith” is that not the same answer that was given when believers opposed the notion that the earth was spherical, that we orbited the sun, that the planet was billions of years old, that evolution is a fact, that slavery is bad and that a woman has the right to vote and own property?  All of that stuff is in the Bible too.  Why doesn’t truth veto faith?

How can a person of science be a believer in such non-verified mythology? 

Given the teachings of Jesus, how can a believer be politically conservative?

Why do believers make so many excuses for their God’s lack of presence or impact?  Might as well believe in Zeus.

If our souls are eternal, how can we have a beginning?

Why is it so hard to understand that there will be a time when we die and we will have no self-awareness, no consciousness just as it was before we were born?

Where is heaven?  Where is hell?  They are clearly not up and down.  How can we measure so much and not have the GPS coordinates for a place that houses billions of eternal life forms?

Were there souls in heaven prior to Jesus?  If so, why did Jesus have to die?  Why not keep the same method?  Why couldn’t God figure out a way to save humans without killing his only son?

If Jesus had the power to come down from the cross, then wasn’t his crucifixion really suicide?

If God had the power to save Jesus from the cross and didn’t then wasn’t God guilty of negligent homicide?

Why is there no external, non-believer accounts of the New Testament events?  Or even the life of Jesus?

Why are there no original copies of the Gospels or other New Testament scrolls?  Wouldn’t God want to protect those?

Why did it take 400 years for the “church” to decide what was really “gospel” and what was not? 

Why does each iteration of the scrolls have changes from the previous iteration?  If this is God’s word how did men gain the power to edit it?

Knowing what we know, isn’t it truly more likely that we made God in our image and not vice versa?

There are more, so many more questions.  Guess I am just stupid. 

Or is it folly to ask rational questions when it comes to belief in mythology?  Just can’t convince 6 year olds there is no Santa.

Transfiguration and Ascension

Made it through Easter, especially challenging as I attended a Baptist church service in a small Texas town.  Preacher had no college and no seminary but he clearly had his own theology, quasi Christian, mostly red-neck.  I squirmed.

But I spent my time ignoring his sermon by reading Biblical passages about the Transfiguration and Ascension.  I have read all that before, but it was somehow even more enlightening while sitting among the cult members who were intent on the message and nodding their heads with an occasional "amen.."  No evidence of though processes, no hands raised with questions, just blank stares.

The transfiguration occurred somewhere in the middle of Jesus so-called ministry.  He is visited by Elijah and Moses who descend from heaven and Jesus starts to glow.  Really scary stuff.  But it points out several things.  Folks at that time still believed heaven was up and hell was down.  Had to be that way because the earth was flat and the center of the universe.  Of course we cannot find such places as heaven and hell, but that does not matter to these 1^st century Bronze Age theologians who still do up and down. 

More difficult to understand is the presence of Elijah and Moses, two Old Testament heroes.  They glowed too.  They descended from heaven.  Unlike Trump they were transparent.  Other than believing anything like this could ever actually happen, it raises a serious theological question for me.  So, how did Moses and Elijah earn their spots in heaven?  What process allowed them to die and go to heaven?  Clearly, there were souls in heaven before the death and resurrection of Jesus.  If that is true, why did Jesus come, die and rise?  Why not stay with whatever system was in place pre-Jesus?  Sure could have saved a lot of heart ache while God killed his son and Jesus committed suicide.  In other words, even if I buy the Biblical story the whole Jesus story seems pointless.  People were getting saved pre-Jesus.

The Ascension seems like so much more smoke and mirrors.  Again, Jesus glows, goes transparent and floats up.  Up is heaven.  Ha.  A modern human witnessing such events would likely need therapy until they died, or would end up in the same group as the UFO abductees.  Quasi-Quacks.  Rising from the dead is a ridiculous stretch.  Rising from earth to heaven is beyond belief.  The belief works because no disciple had a telescope to track where Jesus went, there was no radar, no Hubble, and there were no jets to scramble.  It was magic.  Miracles are magic until they can be explained, unless the event never happened.  Believing something to be true does not make it true.

This adds additional fodder for thought about why the Jesus story was told when it was told.  I imagine a 2019 birth.  Verifying the virginity of Mary.  Taking DNA samples of god.  Checking to see if angels show up on radar while singing and talking to shepherds, how a star hovered over a city without boiling the entire planet to a crisp, etc., etc.  If Jesus began his ministry today we would have cell phone videos of every miracle he supposedly worked and they could be debunked.  Same with the resurrection, transfiguration, and ascension.  If there is an all knowing god he would have to stage this story before there were any tools of science to analyze the events. Fortunately, those who blessed the New Testament 400 years after Jesus could make the story read however they wanted because we had no way to challenge.   Now, it seems as real to me as the Greek and Roman gods working miracles.  Poppycock and Balderdash.

Probably not a good thing for me to go to church anymore.

Happy Easter. Turn Off Your Brain

So much of what I read on social media is promoting religious belief, especially Christian belief.  It would be funny if it were not so sad.  Read a bit this morning that was fiction but was not labeled as such.  A mother prayed over her sick little boy who died of cancer anyway in the hospital.  Mom goes home, cries herself to sleep, then awakes to find a note from her deceased son that says he is in heaven, met Jesus, et al, his grandparents met him there, and God gave him a magic pen so he could write her.  He said God let him die because God loved him and did not want him to suffer.  Really?  Holy Shit.  Then why didn’t God cure his cancer?  And if there ever was a letter received from a recently departed it would be earthshaking.  No such thing has ever happened except in séances and they are bogus.

To celebrate Holy Week the brain cannot be engaged.  A human cannot ask questions and seek rational answers, mainly because this story was invented and cemented 400 years after Jesus died, if there ever was such a person as Jesus.  The big question for me is why did an omnipotent god design a forgiveness path that required his only son to die?  It makes no sense.  Unless one wants to promote a mythology that includes god walking among us, born of a virgin, walking on water, healing the sick, turning water into wine, and rising from the dead.  That kind of malarkey may have carried weight with the superstitious and illiterate of 2,000 years ago, but surely sounds like a story tale to any modern human.  Even if it was all true, it does not make sense.  No parent would allow, much less promote the death of their child.  Is that the model we should follow?  Don’t tell me god loves me more than he loved his own child.  That is irrational and I could not worship a god who was so uncaring for his own son.

And as I have said before, if Jesus had the power to climb off the cross and did not, he in effect committed suicide.  If God had the power to save him from such a torturous death and did not he is guilty of negligent homicide.  Neither action, nor lack thereof, merits respect, much less worship.  Jesus can dispel the crowd that was ready to stone the town whore but cannot dispel the crowd that wants him crucified?  Come on.  Jesus can stump the rabbis at the temple when he is 11, but he cannot outsmart the same crew at the end of his ministry?  Come on.  Jesus can get mad and drive money changers out of the temple but cannot get mad when they drive nails through his hands?  Come on.  And Jesus starts a cannibalistic ritual, this is my body, eat, this is my blood, drink.  Come on.  Reason must be totally suspended to assume holy week went as scripted and amended over 400 years post Jesus supposed death. 

Did anyone go to heaven prior to the resurrection?  If so, how did they get there and why couldn’t god let that process continue?

The real horror of the holy week story is the fear it implants in humans.  Now we are told Jesus watches our every move, he hears our every thought.  He is the ultimate cop in the sky and we never have privacy.  He keeps score.  If you do not do as he says you will die then spend eternity burning in hell.  What a wonderful, loving, caring god.  He will kill his only son and torture you forever if you do not appreciate it.  And while he is capable of all that, he cannot cure childhood cancer.

Maybe I am going to hell for thinking.  But I think not.  First, there is no hell into which souls float and are burned.  There are no souls.  If there is a hell, where is it?  It must exist somewhere and we surely do not have the GPS coordinates.  I think I shall just be a good person because that is the right and reasonable thing to do, not because I fear death.  Death is death.  I will die and my existence and my consciousness will end, just as my existence and consciousness began sometime after I was born.  I cannot have an immortal soul by definition if I had a beginning.

But reaching those conclusions is the result of thinking.  Even believers must admit that their god gave us the power to think, even though he punished Adam and Eve for seeking knowledge.  I am able to think as a result of evolution and a great education.  I know.  Blasphemy.  But I will not turn off my brain.

Church Month

April will be church month for Christians this year.  Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter and any other day of that week that needs an excuse to celebrate the most bizarre belief system on the planet.  There should be a “Mayday Monday”, a “Testing Tuesday”, a “Wallowing Wednesday” and a “Seriously? Saturday” to make the week complete.

Christians will give homage to a loving, all-wise, all-knowing god who could not figure out a way to save humans from sin other than sacrificing his own son.  Clearly this is one of the worst cases of child abuse and negligent homicide on record.  Christians will cry real tears as they recall Jesus committed suicide for their sins and we wonder why he just didn’t climb off the cross and end childhood cancer.  I am oh so grateful that since he and his dad chose for him to die it was on a cross elsewise Christians and their churches would be adorned with guillotines, firing squads, hangman nooses, large axes, etc., instead of the more subtle reminder that the cross was an instrument of torture and death.  None of those other death methods would look good hanging around the necks of the faithful.

And before he left, Jesus instituted a cannibalistic ritual via the Last Supper.  This is my body.  Eat it.  This is my blood.  Drink it.  So gross.

Riding an ass into Jerusalem cheered by a crowd who does not have a clue what is going on seems oh so similar to Trump rallies where they chant, “Lock her up” or “AOC sucks” or any other ignorant expression.  The same brilliant people will be chanting “Give us Barabbas” soon enough.  So the tradition of blindly following the crowd without engaging their brains may easily have begun with those folks 2,000 years ago, carried on today by the faithful who think Trump is a god-send.  Of course, Trump will be playing golf at his own facility during all these morbid celebrations, gaining personal wealth at tax payer expense while self-serving preachers rake in even more money.

All of this belief system hoorah occurs without one shred of evidence that any of it really happened.  I am so amazed.  I guess the only good news is that this cult is shrinking world-wide and is only growing in areas with the lowest levels of education.  Perhaps there is some hope that humans will be able someday to think their way out of preposterous belief systems.  Until then, I buckle down for Church Month.  Let the mythological depression begin and the hallucinatory rejoicing commence.

Hard Hearts. Closed Minds. Locked Doors

The Methodist Church needs a motto Change.  Open Hearts.  Open Minds.  Open Doors.  Bullshit.  The Methodist Church just voted to ban LGBT marriages and clergy. 

Time for a new motto:  Hard Hearts.  Closed Minds.  Locked Doors.

I’m done.  I am officially pulling out of the local Methodist Church.  I will no longer give money to such a shallow, hateful place.  This vote reflects all that is wrong with the conservative movement in the US.  It is mean, hateful, and divisive.  Unless one is lucky enough to choose Methodist approval for one’s source of sexual arousal one may not be a full participant in the church.  That is just wrong for a group who claims Christianity and illustrates the growing threat of religious fundamentalism in the US and the world. 

Not that Jesus even speaks to the issue of LGBTQ.  Only Paul addresses the issue and at best Paul is thinking like other Bronze Age thinkers ignorant of psychology, biology and science in general.  This is the same Paul who condones slavery.  The very thought that something written 2,000 years ago should be literally followed today is total nonsense.  The Bible was written by men, not God.  The Bible was not meant to be a scientific book, a sociological book, a psychological book, or even a history book.  To take it as such is pure ignorance and a rejection of all that we have learned through science.  Methodists who support this position should be required to surrender their cell phones, computers, microwaves and all modern medicine.

So sad in a world that so desperately needs inclusion and love that a major church rejected the opportunity to model such.  I’m done.

The Problem of Discussing God with Christians

I feel no need to convert Christians to atheists, though I do believe if they could really take out their faith and look at it they would abandon the notion of a god, and I am willing to provide prompts for Christians to engage in that sort of self-examination.  What I have learned, however, is that Christians really do not want to talk about whether there is a god or not.  They so desperately want to believe in such a supernatural being that even the first tentative step toward logic can end the discussion.  I have wondered why.

Belief is such a powerful state of mind that even confronted again and again with evidence to the contrary believers will hold on to their beliefs.  We have seen this phenomenon historically as Copernicus declared that the earth orbited the sun and had the evidence to prove it.  Did not matter.  He was tortured.  We have seen it when archaeologists declared the earth to be about 4.5 billion years old and believers opened a museum depicting dinosaurs and men sharing the planet at the same time.  Believers will go to great lengths to hold on to their beliefs.

I suspect there is great fear and possible great pain that accompanies actually accepting something that is contrary to a previous belief.  As a preacher’s son I grew up in the church and when in my 60’s I began to question the existence of a god I found it very painful and very scary.  I also found it shaming.  Have I really been talking to an imaginary friend all this time?  Have I really given that much money to a group that makes stuff up?  Am I really willing to lose friends because I now know what I did not know before?  How about the alienation of family members?  Wouldn’t it be easier to just keep my mouth shut and pretend?

But I also suspect there is something deeper going on here.  Christians talk about never being alone, god is on their side, he is always with them, he wants the best for them, all things are possible with him, etc., etc.  Even though I know all that is poppycock and balderdash it must be incredibly comforting to humans who fear actually living a life alone within the boundaries of their brains and accepting events as natural phenomenon rather than a grand plan.  And for some it must be terrifying to know that death is death, you die and you are done.  I am no longer afraid of being alone or of dying and feel kind of silly that I thought there was some being who was in here with me and that I would somehow have consciousness beyond life.  Yes, we made god in our own image and fashioned him to meet our needs.

This fear, this need for security, is so great that pondering an alternative is impossible for many.  Accepting that death is final must be equally scary.  I have no desire for heaven because it appears to me that if there was such a place all the things I’d want to do would violate the rules, and I have no fear of hell because I know there is no such place, no GPS coordinates, no parallel dimension that houses billions of specters without form or substance.  How does one punish a being with no corporeal body?  At any rate, I quit.  I have given up offering my prompts for discussion or even hinting that there is no god.  Should someone ever ask I will be delighted to explain a host of reasons why I know there is no god.  Until then, I will seek to tolerate those who believe they have spoken with this being and that he has told them they are right. 

There are few things worse than a human who believes he or she has a god’s blessing.  With that belief people feel empowered to commit the most heinous acts against each other.  It would not be so bad if Christians really made an effort to follow the guidelines for living established in the New Testament, but they do not.  I hear no Christians in this neck of the woods arguing for open borders because we are to welcome the stranger, or arguing that there are better ways to spend billions of dollars when people are hungry, homeless and without medical insurance.  Not happening, so the hypocrisy of Christianity continues.

But if you want to know that Christians will banish you to their hell just point out any of the above.  It seems to be impossible to discuss god with Christians so I should just quit trying.

And yet, sharing truth in the face of false beliefs is a human imperative or we will never advance.  If the best we can be lies in the past and in false beliefs then when we kill ourselves by destroying the environment of the only planet where we can live, or an asteroid hits us, or the Yellowstone volcano erupts, I wonder if believers will have a quick insight that if human extinction is part of their god’s plan what is the point of worship and belief?

But it is pointless to point that out to believers.  And that is the problem.