DangerousTalk

Ever wonder why missionaries travel to third world nations full of starving people in order to preach Jesus? Sure, maybe they go to feed the starving people out of the compassion in their hearts, but if that were true they would leave their Bibles at home. Instead, the feeding the hungry just acts as a cover for their real “mission.” Their orders are to convert people to Jesus. Starving people who are so hungry that it is hard for them to think straight are easier to convert than the well-fed people of modern American society.

Ever wonder why missionaries travel to prisons full of people who have fallen prey to hard times and are more often than not filled with anger and rage? Maybe they actually care about those who mainstream society have locked up and forgotten, but if that were the reason, they would leave their Bibles at home and just go and be compassionate. It seems that missionaries have another “mission” in mind.

In every instance, Christians Missionaries seem to go where they can find the people who are most emotionally, mentally, and/or physically vulnerable and then go to work on trying to convert them. Sometimes they go to foreign nations, prisons, funerals, soup kitchens, and any place where people might be vulnerable. Is their message so weak that they have to wait until someone is at a particularly weak and vulnerable moment in order to better convert them? Okay, yes.

Even when Ray Comfort and Mike Seaver go to spring break outings and ask college kids about the Ten Commandments, they are preying on those who are often drunk and/or ignorant at a time when they aren’t in the mindset to think critically about the tall tales being told to them. They are hoping to find people who have hit rock bottom due to excessive partying and alcoholism and prey on them at this weak moment in their lives.

It just seems to me that if the Christian message was so obvious and true, Christian Missionaries and Evangelists wouldn’t constantly be trying to trick people into believe at times and places in which they are most vulnerable.

Filed under: Preaching, Religion, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

I always found it interesting that Christians today seem to prefer the feudalistic dictatorship of Christianity where God is Lord and humans are serfs over the Democratic ideals of the American system. In grad school, I shared a class with a liberal evangelical who at least recognized this as a problem. His solution was to try to redefine Christianity by constructing a concept he called “The Democratic God” in which God’s will changes by the majority of Christian opinions. This of course has no grounding in the Bible, but his thesis was an attempt to solve the obvious problem.

Back when Christianity started, the people lived in the feudal system in which the Lord or King ruled with an iron fist over the land and the people. Today, modern society has rejected that political system in favor of the Democratic Republic. Society has ruled overwhelmingly that feudalism, monarchs, and dictatorships are flawed systems of government in comparison and yet Christianity still treats their God as Lord and Jesus as the King of Kings. God still rules with an iron fist and Christians are still expected to obey Him without question or go to Hell for ALL ETERNITY.

The obviousness of Christian bullshit is so clear that I am surprised that I even need to spell it out. How is it possible that the American system of Government (which is clearly flawed) is better to the system of Government of God? How come God is still a feudal Lord when the rest of the civilized world has grown far beyond that? How is it that God just so happens to rule the universe in the exact same political system as the people he first burned a bush in front of? Oddly enough, a feudal society believed in a feudal deity. But our society is no longer feudal. It seems kind of strange to me and so in true democratic style, I vote God out of existence.

Filed under: god, Religion | 9 Comments »

Often times when discussing religion with Christians the conversation turns to science. I am not an expert in the sciences. My field is Philosophy. Just to make sure that I have all my facts straight, I e-mailed this blog to The Science Pundit for peer review. However, having gone to a fairly decent public school program which taught science fairly well, I would say that I have a slightly above average knowledge of the subject. I am beginning to think though that I am a bit more than just slightly above average. It seems that I run into the same problems over and over again. Many of the Christians that I talk to have no idea how the scientific method works.

The thing is that most of these Christians claim to know how science works and they claim to have studied in detail the relevant scientific theories that we are discussing. But then their mouths open (or in case of internet conversations, they write stuff). And based on what they are saying, it becomes painfully obvious that they have not studied the relevant theories and have no idea whatsoever how science works.

There are a few particular misconceptions that keep popping up. The first is that a “scientific theory” is “just a theory.” Here there is as Wittgenstein put it, a “Family Resemblance” between the two uses, but make no mistake that the term “theory” is being used in two very different ways. In the general sense the term “theory” is used to describe an analytic structure designed to explain a set of observations. As used in the scientific sense, a theory is an explanation or model based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especially one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict natural phenomena. In other words, “just a theory” is very different than a “scientific theory” which has considerably more weight attached to it.

Another common misconception is that science is “faith based” just as faith based belief is faith based. These particular Christians don’t seem to understand the difference between the scientific process and the religious process. To them, all ideas are the same and deserve equal time. The problem is that all ideas are not the same.

Let’s start with religion. The way religious belief works, they start off with the belief in God and in the Bible. That belief supersedes everything else. Then they specifically look to find anything which might be considered supportive of their conclusion (This is called “confirmation bias.” The scientific method goes to extreme measures to minimize or eliminate this as all people—even scientists—are susceptible to confirmation bias). If evidence comes to light which disproves their belief, that evidence is attacked, ignored, and/or destroyed. Their view is that God exists and that the Bible is true and nothing “science” can say or show will convince them otherwise. Many times, they will even tell you that straight up.

Science doesn’t start with the conclusion. Science starts with observations. From the observations we make a hypothesis, which is an educated guess as to the explanation of an observable phenomenon or phenomena which makes predictions and is therefore testable. We then look for evidence and/or test the hypothesis through experimentation to see if our hypothesis holds up. One thing science tries to be very careful about is to make sure that when we run tests and look for evidence we do so in as non-biased manner as possible. We don’t want to fall prey to confirmation bias. We are not specifically looking to confirm or deny the hypothesis, just go where the evidence leads. If the evidence supports the hypothesis, then we keep looking for more evidence in the same unbiased manner. If the evidence does not support the hypothesis, then we revise the hypothesis and start the process over again. Science never draws a 100% certain conclusion. Science is always willing to change. But the more and more evidence which supports a given hypothesis the more and more certain we are that the hypothesis is correct. But we will never say that we are 100% certain. A theory is a more general model which includes facts, laws and hypotheses and explains a whole family of phenomena.

So as you can see, while science starts with observations and evidence and investigates as non-biased as it can, religion is the exact opposite. Religion starts with the conclusion and looks in a biased manner for anything which could be persuasive and rejects what does not fit with the already stated conclusion (i.e. God exists and the Bible is true).

Please keep in mind that this blog is only giving a basic and quick guide to science and the scientific method. I encourage anyone who lacks sufficiant scientific knowledge to go online or pick up a science text book and learn more.

Filed under: Religion, science | 8 Comments »

I sometimes wonder how people can believe in such a ridiculous religion like Christianity. The thing is that while Christianity as a very generalized nondenominational religion has plenty of ridiculous stories and everything, once particular Christian sects start to add on their own dogmas, the religion gets even more ridiculous. There are quite a few off-shoot or sects of the generalized Christianity like The Mormons, The Jehovah’s Witnesses, The Catholics, The Baptists, etc.

The Catholics are a particularly popular branch of Christianity and I have often wondered if the leadership of the Catholic Church actually believed all the ridiculous doctrine that they push on others. Well, in 2004 the answer was revealed. It seems that the Catholic leadership doesn’t really believe what they want other to believe. You see in 2004, the Catholic Church was tested… by an 8-year-old girl.

In 2004, 8 year old, Haley Waldman, asked her local church for a gluten-free communion wafer. Because Haley had a rare illness called Celiac Sprue Disease, she had to be placed on a special gluten-free diet. Eating a gluten communion wafer would damage the lining of Haley’s small intestine, block nutrient absorption and lead to vitamin deficiencies, bone-thinning and possibly gastrointestinal cancer.

The problem is that this put the Catholic Church in a difficult position. While most people think of the Eucharist as a ceremonial ritual, according to the Church it is much more than that. Church doctrine claims that through the power of prayer, the gluten communion wafer actually goes through a process of transubstantiation which metaphysically transforms the wafer into the literal body of Jesus.

Because of this doctrine, young Haley should be able to eat the gluten wafer without a problem since if she prayed over that wafer it would cease to be a gluten wafer and would become the literal body of Jesus. Surely Haley couldn’t be allergic to Jesus, right? Only Satan and his Demons are allergic to Jesus. So according to the Church doctrine there shouldn’t be a problem with Haley eating the Eucharist.

Of course if young Haley ate the Eucharist and had a medical reaction to it, that pretty much proves one of three things. 1. Haley is Demon Spawn. 2. She didn’t pray hard enough. 3. That there is no transubstantiation at all and that the Catholic Church made the whole thing up.

The Catholic Church however couldn’t just tell Haley that it would be fine for her to eat a non-gluten wafer, because that would be tantamount to saying that they know the whole thing is bullshit. It would be an admission that the communion wafer doesn’t really transubstantiate into the body of Jesus. So they are trapped by their own dogma and have to reject her request for a non-gluten wafer.

Filed under: Catholics, Religion | 11 Comments »

While American society today is in some ways overly sexual and sex obsessed, in other ways we are a very prudish and sexually repressed society. While the Porn industry is one of the few industries that is growing in this declining economy, it is still looked down upon and viewed in secret. Millions of Americans don’t talk about sex openly and sex education is America is in many cases very poor and insufficient and in other cases non-existent. Americans tend to be more offended by Janet Jackson’s two second nipple slip than they are about the violence on the average nightly news.

Much of the American stigma concerning sex and nudity has to do with “traditional Christian values.” America has a lot of those old Puritan influences as well as the biblical view from Genesis 3 that people should be ashamed of their bodies. It is no surprise that the more fundamentally religious people are the more sexually repressed and uptight especially in relation to nudity and sexuality. As an atheist, I see nothing wrong with nudity or sexuality and it bothers me that America is so freaked out about these subjects.

“What if a child saw that nude photo?” I give up, what if? What would happen? Would their eyes pop out of their sockets? The fact is that if you took a 7 year old to see an R-rated film which had nudity, they would be bored. Of course if they knew that they weren’t supposed to see nudity because of some quaint religious stigma, they would want to see it just because it is forbidden. But if they weren’t raised to believe that sexuality and nudity were bad, they wouldn’t care less about either until they were old enough to take pleasure from it.

The reason America is so prudish is of course the Bible. Aside from Genesis 3, there are lots of examples where fornication or premarital sex is demonized. For example, the Bible throws unmarried sex in with murders and atheism and claims that these things are “worthy of death.”

Romans 1: 29-32 “Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”

The Bible also claims that if you have unmarried sex, you can’t get the magical Heavenly reward:

1 Corinthians 6: 9-10 “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”

There are many other “Biblical Correct” passages which deal with the evils of premarital sex. Some will argue that promiscuous sex is bad and that the Bible is correct in threatening Hell and Damnation for such a thing, but there are two issues with that. The first of course is the Bible didn’t say “promiscuous sex” it said pre-marital sex or fornication. Maybe you just had sex with one or two people. That is not promiscuous, but if you were not married at the time, that is a one way trip to eternal torture. Second, there really isn’t anything wrong with promiscuous sex as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult who knows what they are in for and everyone has taken the necessary precautions. Sex can be an emotional experience for most people, but it is not always that way. Some people just enjoy sex without a lot of emotional baggage. This is common today in a world of one-night-stands and internet hookups.

But even with the high emotions which sex often arouses, people can be mature and we can handle those emotions like adults. It is not uncommon for the average American to have between 6 to 20 sexual partners throughout their lives. But the Bible doesn’t just talk about the evils of unmarried sex, Paul didn’t think to highly of sex in general http://vardenafilotc.net/. Paul claimed that sex… any sex was bad but if you had to have sex, than married sex is better than unmarried sex.

1 Corinthians 7:8-9 “I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.”

The character of Jesus as portrayed in the Bible of course took things much further. Jesus didn’t even want people to be sexually aroused.

Matthew 5:27-29 “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast [it] from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not [that] thy whole body should be cast into hell.”

So that means no swimsuit issues, no pornography, and no Angelina Jolie movies. No wonder Christians get all bent out of shape with the slightest glimpse of nudity or sexuality. Just an accidental look or peek could land them in eternal torture. This is the reason why there are so many restrictions and censors concerning nudity and sexuality. This is why American society is as sexually repressed and frustrated as it is. I’m surprised that Christians haven’t adopted the Berka.

Filed under: Religion, sex | 32 Comments »

It is a small victory for science and reason, but at least it is a step in the right direction. A Federal Judge has overturned the Religious Right driven restriction on Emergency Contraceptives. Under the Bush Administration, the FDA (Federal Drug Administration) restricted the purchase of the “Morning After Pill” to women eighteen years or older. That has now changed slightly to seventeen years or older, but it has also paved the way for “Plan B” as it is called to be an over-the-counter item.

Christian groups are of course furious because their view is that sex equals baby and any steps a woman takes to prevent that are akin to murder. Please note that I said any steps that a “woman” takes. I say this because the majority of religious groups don’t seem to have a problem with condoms (although a good number do). Condoms are on sale at pharmacies, supermarkets, and even convenience stores (how convenient) without the need for a photo ID check.

Another problem that many Christian groups have with this pill is that they claim that it will make teens more promiscuous. I am still waiting to hear what the problem is. I guess this goes along with Original Sin and how sex is evil and bad. I really don’t see a problem with promiscuous, safe, and consensual sex. But that is a blog for another day.

Filed under: Religion, sex | 23 Comments »

The other day I was talking to a Christian friend of mine and she made a comment that I always find even more ridiculous than most Christian comments. I wish I could say that it was a unique comment by some random schizophrenic or something, but I can’t. The sad fact is that my friend wasn’t schizophrenic and that this wasn’t the first time I have heard this particular rhetoric. So here it is; my Christian friend told me that she hates religion. Just think about that one for a moment or two and let it bounce around in your head a bit. In fact, let me repeat it, because it bears repeating. My Christian friend told me that she hates religion.

So I had to point out the elephant in the room and inform her that Christianity is actually a religion and that she is actually very religious. Of course I did know where she was going with this and of course she did indeed go there. “Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship with God,” was her dogmatic reply as if reading a script for an audition. This is a line I have heard far too often and it really is pretty crazy. I wish there was a nicer way of phrasing it, but my friend actually thinks of Jesus as a personal friend… and not in a metaphorical way either. No, she and many other Christians at least think that they treat Jesus as an actual flesh and blood friend. I would have almost expected her to buy Jesus food when we went out for lunch. Seriously though, I think there is or at least ought to be a rule that say’s that your friends have to actually exist and stuff. Let’s fact reality, you can’t go paling around with Jesus. You can’t have an intellectual conversation with Jesus. You can’t hug Jesus. You can’t kiss Jesus. And you most certainly can’t have an intimate relationship with Jesus. Jesus isn’t real!

Christianity is a religion and this type of make-believe is even more ridiculous that the already obvious make-believe that makes up the rest of this ridiculous religion. It is like saying that the already make-believe story of Christianity is too real and so we need to add another layer of make-believe and then call that reality. I’m sorry, but that is not reality. That takes one further away from reality.

Filed under: god, Religion | 10 Comments »

Rush Limbaugh said it best when he claimed that the Republican Party is divided into three distinct power bases, the Fiscal Conservatives, the Military Industrial Complex, and the Religious Right. George W. Bush was able to convince the first two that they had a strong voice while most of the power during his administration went to the Religious Right.

Now that Bush’s Presidency is seen by almost everyone as the disaster that it was, the Religious Right have taken most of the blame. It was this blame, which enabled John McCain to win the Republican primary despite his long feud with the Religious Right. He need to pick a Religious Right VP though and Sarah Palin was their wet dream. But like Bush, everyone outside the Religious Right now sees Palin as a disaster.

But don’t count the Religious Right out of the Republican Party just yet. Palin and fellow fundamentalist wacko Bobby Jindal are both planning a run for the White House in 2012. Not only that, but the Religious Right are also planning on taking aim at some of the less Religious Right Republican Senators in 2010. For starters, John “Maverick” McCain is under fire and in a serious way. Chris Simcox who was the founder of the “Minutemen” Movement is taking his shot to remove the immigrant loving former Presidential candidate. It will actually be a pretty tough fight for the Comeback Kid.

And here in my state of Pennsylvania, the Religious Right is taking a second shot at Senator Arlen Specter. Last time, former Congressman Pat Toomey almost beat Specter in the Republican Primary. Now he is trying again. Specter’s fight with cancer may hurt him in the voting booth as will Specter’s more liberal voting record. But both Specter and McCain have seniority and in the Senate that mean a lot… of pork.

Filed under: Politics, Religion | 12 Comments »

While I often talk about conversations that I have with Christians of the various varieties, I don’t often talk much about other conversations I have. Since it is pretty well known that I am somewhat of an atheist activist, I often come across people who are not Christians who are not well-informed atheists. They may be simply atheists who aren’t really familiar with the arguments, Jews, or Muslims. Often times when in conversations with such people, they will try to discuss religion with me by commenting on how ridiculous Christianity is. However, it is pretty odd to me that these people don’t back up their statement with the obvious ridiculousness of a personified deity or even any of Jesus’s magic tricks. No, the first thing that comes to their minds is the Holy Trinity. “How can God be three different beings at once? That is ridiculous.”

While I agree that Christianity is a very ridiculous religion, I think the Holy Trinity isn’t as ridiculous as other Christian doctrines. On the other hand, it really is a pretty ridiculous concept, just not the most ridiculous. I mean really? God is three separate and distinct forms but at the same time and in the same way each form is fully integrated into the Godhead? If that isn’t an obvious contradiction, I don’t know what is.

In Bill Maher’s film “Religulous,” there is a scene in which Maher talks to the actor who places Jesus at “Holy Land Adventures.” When Maher brought up the Holy Trinity, the Jesus actor compared the Trinity to water being in three forms. But as Maher hinted at, H2O isn’t the same in each form in the same way. Ice isn’t liquid. The analogy is a great for people who don’t think much about it, but with the Trinity, the claim is that God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit at the same time and in the same way. Logically, that just doesn’t hold water so to speak.

Someone once told me that his father was also a son and a brother. This idea of family titles is an interesting one, but it too falls flat because we are not merely talking about titles. The character of Jesus is clearly talked about as a distinct character from that of the God the Father. In at least one instance, Jesus even seems distant from his father and inquires about his father’s divine plan. In another instance, Jesus asks God why God had forsaken him. This implies that Jesus was not aware of his own divine plan (assuming he and the father are one).

Despite the obviously failed logic of the Holy Trinity, most Christians not only still believe in the Trinity but also are happy to defend such an absurd concept. The odd thing is that most Christians who try to defend and/or explain the Trinity don’t even know that the phrase “Holy Trinity” never appears in the Bible at all. Another fun fact that seems to have been left out of Sunday School is that prior to the First Council of Nicea in the year 325, there was no Holy Trinity. At the council, they had to debate the relationship between God and Jesus. One side of the debate insisted that Jesus was God’s literal son, while the other side insisted that “son” was a metaphor or a figurative son. In the end a compromise was reached to form what is now known as the Holy Trinity. Obviously, one group had the stronger hand at the bargaining table, but the point is that the Trinity was a political compromise and not a holy decree from God himself.

Filed under: Religion, Trinity | 12 Comments »

“The Lord, Liar, Lunatic Argument,” was first created by C.S. Lewis in his book, “Mere Christianity,” but has since been repeated and popularized by Christian hack, Josh McDowell in his book “More Than a Carpenter.” McDowell’s book is a favorite among college aged Evangelical Christians. While possibly one of the worst arguments for Christianity, it has nevertheless become a staple for evangelical Christians whether it is attributed to McDowell or Lewis. Personally, I think Lewis should have stuck with hiding in wardrobes because this argument is really that bad. Even most “Theologians” have called Lewis out on it. In any case, the argument goes a little something like this:

Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. Therefore we are left with only one of three options: 1. He was either exactly who he said he was (i.e. the Lord… i.e. God). 2. He was an evil immoral liar who just lies to trick people. 3. Or he was a stark raving lunatic who was completely out of his mind.

Most people (even many non-Christians) consider Jesus to be a moral man and perhaps even a great moral teacher. But great moral men and teachers don’t lie. Lying is the exact opposite of moral, right? So clearly Jesus was not a liar. No one would claim that a great moral man was just crazy, right? So clearly Jesus couldn’t have been a lunatic either. Therefore we are left with just one possible option, Jesus must be exactly who he claimed to be, i.e. the Lord, i.e. God.

That is the great argument. Some Christians have even referred to it as “the most important argument in Christian apologetics.” The most glaring problem that first came to my mind when a Christian friend first used it on me in college is that this argument attempts to limit our choices down to three. Why only three choices? C.S. Lewis certainly had a better imagination than that; he created Narnia. Now, Josh McDowell I can understand. That guy has no imagination at all. He couldn’t even come up with an original argument. Instead he just stole from C.S. Lewis. But Lewis surely could have thought of more than three options. Let’s think about this for a moment and see if we can’t help him out a bit. Are there any other possibilities we might be able to think of? Any other possibilities at all?

I know, maybe he didn’t actually claim to be the Son of God. That is one other possibility, right? The Bible has been copied many times prior to the Gutenberg Printing Press, so perhaps someone added the whole Son of God thing later on. Maybe he didn’t mean Son of God in the same way that modern Christians mean the phrase “Son of God.” He could have been misinterpreted. Perhaps that isn’t what Jesus meant to say throughout the Bible. It isn’t as if he actually said the words, “I am the Son of God, worship me!” Maybe he meant something totally different than “the only begotten Son of God.” That is certainly another possibility, right? Perhaps Jesus was simply mistranslated.

It may also be possible that maybe he wasn’t a complete lunatic, but still just a little touched in the head. Certainly we all sometimes have delusions of grandeur, right? One might consider that to be part of the “Lunatic” position, but I think this is a bit more nuanced. Besides, Joan of Ark was crazy and the Church made her a Saint. Maybe Jesus was Autistic? He could have had Aspergers. In fact, there are many mental disorders and illnesses that Jesus could have had which may have made him think that he was the offspring of a deity without tarnishing any of his moral lessons or judgments.

It is also entirely possible that Jesus was just being metaphoric with all the Son of God stuff. Christians tend to love the metaphorical defense whenever someone brings up the passages in the Bible, which they don’t particularly care for. Speaking of Christian stock defenses, the Gospel writers could have quoted Jesus out of context or edited what Jesus actually said.

Of course, the possibility that I think most likely is that Jesus probably didn’t exist at all. This possibility always gets Christians angry and they usually start talking about how there is more evidence for Jesus than there is for Barack Obama or some such nonsense. I am not going to debate that in this blog, but I am going to say that it is at least a possibility that C.S. Lewis failed to think about. This blog isn’t about which option is true, it is about the fact that there are more than three options.

It seems to me like there are a whole host of other options and possibilities that were just left out of C.S. Lewis’s seemingly limited imagination. But since we are told right from the start that there are ONLY three possibilities, most people wouldn’t question any deeper than that, especially if one were to already accept the first possibility.

Moving on, is it possible to be a moral man and still lie if one feels that by doing so lives would be saved? I think so at least and I am pretty sure Anne Frank thought so too. So even if some non-Christians did think he was a moral man, they could still think that he lied about being the Son of God. One has nothing to do with the other. Also along the same lines, I also think it is possible to be a moral man and a little touched in the head. In fact, you will find that a lot of delusional people and even a fair amount of completely crazy people are moral people too. Sometimes those are the most moral people. I don’t see how one discounts the other.

Clearly this argument has absolutely nothing going for it. First it attempts to limit people’s choices due to a lack of imagination or very skilled rhetoric and then it can’t even adequately deal with the choices it has left people. The only conclusion that we have left is that C.S. Lewis and any Christian who uses this argument must be a liar and a lunatic… but definitely not a god.

Filed under: Lord-Liar-Lunatic, Religion | 16 Comments »

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Well, that all depends on what we mean by “sound.” Sound as a physical vibration? Yes a fallen tree would make vibration. But if no one is around to feel those vibration, than it is irrelevant. But if we mean sound as in an auditable phenomenon picked up by the human ear, than without a human ear, there is nothing to receive the auditable phenomenon, so no.

We humans sometimes forget that everything we experience is experienced through our senses. Take colors for example. The spectrum of visible light that the human eye can see is very limited. We can’t see most of the light spectrum. However, we now have technology which can enable us to detect non-visible light and sounds which the human ear can’t normally hear. Through human reason, we can experience other aspects of reality which our five senses can’t detect. This certainly seems to indicate that an objective reality does exist and that the world was not created with us in mind (if it were, our would-be creator would have given us the senses to experience more than just a tiny sliver of the Universe). We need our reasoning skills in order to make the conclusion of an objective reality. We reason that we grow old and so therefore others like us must grow old as well. And since others are older than we, we conclude that they must have been in existence before we were born and therefore objective reality exists.

But what if our brains are wrong? What if there is something wrong with our hardware as it were? Can we really be sure of anything? No, but we don’t have to be sure or certain. We have a reasonable certainty based on our limited reasoning (limited to our hardware). It is entirely possible that I am the only one who is real and that I am strapped into some sort of machine somewhere in some other very different reality and that this objective reality is a computer simulation. There is no way to disprove that position.

So here is where things get interesting. Let’s assume that there is an objective reality (since the evidence seems to point in that direction anyway). How can we know anything about this objective reality? We don’t have an objective view of this objective reality and in fact, everything about this objective reality must first be filtered through our subjective and very limited senses and brains. Do we simply give up and say that we can’t know anything and curl up into a ball in the corner? I don’t think so. I think we can still use our five senses as well as our sense of reason and learn about this world we live in. While it is true that we are limited and therefore we can’t “know” with absolute certainty, we can be reasonably certain about things based on the amount and strength of evidence. Some things we are more certain about that others, but again, we could wake up tomorrow and discover that this was all some sort of dream or computer game in some other reality. We just don’t know and we can’t know.

Our knowledge of reality is based off of reasoned assumptions based on evidence and reason. We are more certain of something than other things. Will the sun rise above the horizon tomorrow? I am reasonably certain that it will. Does milk do a body good? I’m not as certain about that because new studies are constantly showing new things based on new data and new evidence. But for the moment, I think milk does do a body good. Both conclusions are open to change give new evidence, but it would take much stronger evidence to convince me that the sun will not rise tomorrow than would be needed to convince me that milk is bad for me.

I bring this up because some Christians believe that without God, there is no grounding for an objective world and that they have some sort of special absolute certain knowledge that no one else seems to have. But all our knowledge and experiences must first be filtered through our senses and our brain. We cannot have objective knowledge nor can we have absolute certainty.

Socrates dealt with this question in the Apology. The Oracle of Delphi told him that he was the wisest of all men. But Socrates didn’t believe it because he didn’t know everything. In fact, Socrates didn’t know anything with any certainty. What he learned was that he was the only one to know that he did not know. His uncertainty was what made him the wisest of all men.

While we don’t have absolute certainty, we will just have to get by without those it. We are just going to have to be honest with ourselves and realize that we cannot be certain of anything. We can’t even be certain that we can’t be certain. But I digress. Personally, I think we have done a pretty good job so far with our uncertainty and our continual questioning and reasoned certainty. As long as we don’t delude ourselves by claiming something that we cannot claim… like absolute certainty we could learn a lot about the universe we live in.

Filed under: Religion | 14 Comments »

One of the biggest issues that I have with Christianity is the anti-intellectualism that it perpetuates. It isn’t hard to miss. For starters, the majority of Christians in America are ignorant and proud. The fact that the most idiotic President in our nation’s history was elected mainly because of the support of the Christian Right, speaks volumes. A quick look back at history also shows that the Church and various organized religions have done everything they could to restrict science and knowledge. At every stage of scientific achievement, Christians were always their persecuting those who wish to expand human knowledge and human progress. One of the Humanities biggest loses came pretty early on too. In 415 CE a Christian mob brutally murdered Hypatia of Alexandria (I would go into more details about the brutality of that murder, but it is a bit graphic) who was one the bright lights of Science in her time. Even today, almost half of Christianity stands against the science of evolution and medical stem cell research.

The fact is that the more religious someone is, the less value they tend to place on science and education. According to the National Academy of Sciences, 93% of scientists express disbelief or doubt in the existence of a personal deity. 72% outright disbelieve in a personified deity. These are among the brightest minds on Earth. Both Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking (widely considered the two smartest men who every lived) had issue with the personified deity of Christianity. These men joined the company of many of the most intellectual founding fathers such as Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and other.

The concept of “faith” is a slap in the face to science and intellectual curiosity. Faith stops questions while science encourages questions. Faith provides dishonest, unsupportable, and unquestioned certainty while science leaves every conclusion open to change with additional evidence and discoveries. With faith, no education is necessary because education is often a determent to faith. This is one of the biggest reasons why Christian fundamentalists are so keen on censorship and control. Even in the Bible, the character of Jesus elevates blind faith above intellectual rigor, reason, and evidence.

“Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed [are] they that have not seen, and [yet] have believed.” – John 20: 29

This is not the only instance in which the Bible attacks the intellect. Corinthians is full of such examples. “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise” – 1 Corinthians 1:27 and 5 “That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” – 1 Corinthians 2:5, etc.

Science, reason, and intellectualism support the concepts of continued questioning, education, and human curiosity. Through the scientific method, the rules of logic, and the thirst to understand, people of reason are continually pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and helping to make life better and longer for us all. Yet, example after example, the Bible and Christianity stand against the intellect and continue to propagate ignorance, fear, and unreason. Between the Creation Museum and the absolute unquestioning certainty of a divine deity, Christianity remains one of the biggest oppositions to human progress and the greatest threat to intellectualism.

Filed under: anti-intellectualism, Religion | 14 Comments »

Why many Christians are not aware of this, there is actually a god named Syllogism who created the laws of logic. Because there are laws of logic, Syllogism must be a real God. Of course that would be a circular argument, which is a fallacy of logic. Besides, I am obviously joking about the existence of such a deity.

I bring it this up because some Christians have tried to claim that their God, Yahweh, presupposed the laws of logic as well as the laws of physics and even morality. The idea is that these laws exist outside of humanity. The problem is that in a way they do exist outside of humanity, but the leap of logic to claim that because we call them laws must mean that there is a lawgiver is fallacious. There I go again, using that logic stuff.

So if Yahweh or Syllogism didn’t create the laws of logic, who did? We did, of course. People looked at the world and noticed how things seem to work. We noticed that if someone makes two or more statements about the state of affairs (premises) with a positive truth-value, that the concluding statement (conclusion) must also have the same truth-value. This is a logical syllogism (not a god). After years of argument and debate, people began to recognize patterns of reasoning and patterns of fallacy. We then organized those fallacies and called them names such as “The Straw Man Fallacy” and others.

The world exists with or without us, but we have to make sense of the world in order to function in it. As a result, we use our senses and reasoning power to examine the world. While our senses can be fooled and our reasoning can be faulty, it is all we have. Christians claim to have God, but yet how do they “know” God? Only by some sort of unjustified transcendental presupposition can they claim such knowledge and yet such a presupposition can be used to justify anything and so it becomes meaningless. The attempt to sneak behind logic and reason is an admission of the weakness of their argument. Logic isn’t a presupposition; it is a human observation about the world around us. Logic is a tool (much like science) for learning about the world and exploring ideas and thought.

Logic and science are the headlights, which enable us to see the dark street in front of us. If we cannot see beyond the light we simply admit that it is currently out of view until we build a better headlight. We don’t make up stories about how outside the light lie evil monsters waiting to steal out living essence or some such nonsense. And we don’t ask those who refuse to believe in the evil monsters to explain their lack of belief. What does lie beyond the headlight? If you don’t have the answer, than the answer must be evil monsters.

Filed under: Ontological Argument, Religion | 38 Comments »

I am one of many atheists who have gotten quite a number of death treats over the years because I just so happen to be skeptical about ridiculous claims of deities which come from a books thousands of years old and read like a bad fantasy novels complete with magic. I have never really taken any of those threats seriously. The one that I was most concerned about was an anonymous postcard I received in the mail following a story which appeared in the local newspaper about my trip to DC as an atheist during the “God in the Pledge” Supreme Court Case. My address was unlisted so I took that threat just a little more seriously than others which I had received. I showed it to a police officer friend of mine, but he informed me that there really wasn’t anything they could do any way.

Often times I would get threatening phone calls when one of my letters to the editor dealing with atheism made it into the paper. One guy even left the threat on my answering machine. That took some balls. But I never actually thought anyone was watching me or was actually going to do anything. It was all just talk; bark and no bite.

Over the years, I have debated and discussed religion with fundamentalists in person and on e-mail and message boards and continue to blog about religion every day. I have had fundamentalists walk over to my car window at gas stations to tell me about Jesus (I have atheist bumper stickers) and even had a Christian dent my car because of those bumper stickers. There have been many heated encounters with Christians in my life and even one who later ended up in prison. I have even met a Christian who told me that if he didn’t believe in God, he would have no problem raping women. Fundamentalists can be quite scary, but I really never felt like I was in danger. Like I said, these people are mostly all talk.

However, how can we tell who is all talk and who is really dangerous? YouTube Christian Anthony Powell, AKA “Tony48219” was one of those fundamentalists who people just wrote off as harmlessly nuts. Most people discussed religion with him thought he was all talk and no one took his anger, hate, threats, and plain old nastiness seriously… until Friday when he shoot and killed someone and then killed himself.

I am not saying that fundamentalist Christianity made him kill people. I am saying that fundamentalist Christianity attracts crazy people and hides their craziness under a cloak of acceptable craziness. When a fundamentalist Christian goes off on a rant about the evil gays and atheists and tells people that they will be tortured for all eternity in Hell, no one takes that seriously. When a fundamentalist Christian says that they hope someone will be tortured in Hell for all eternity, no one takes that seriously. When a fundamentalist Christian says that he or she is part of the Army of God and will bring God’s justice upon the agents of Satan, no one takes that seriously either. But maybe we as a society should take those things seriously. Maybe if we did, Asia McGowan might still be alive along with so many other people.

Filed under: Religion | 132 Comments »

Last year when the whole Proposition 8 campaign was in full swing, all the fundamentalist religious groups raised record amounts of money. Just to give you an idea of what record amounts of money looks like, here are the top two fundamentalist groups:

Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) – $278.7 MILLION Dollars
Focus On The Family – $160 MILLION Dollars

After they won the Proposition 8 Campaign, both groups celebrated with lay offs:

Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) – Cut 60 Jobs
Focus On The Family – Cut 202 Jobs

In other words, these groups raised and spent large amounts of money and won a small victory, which ended up costing them in the long run. Not only that, but last week, while these groups were out spending money fighting Vermont’s legalization of Same-Gender-Marriage (which they lost) they dropped the ball on Iowa. They actually lost a state, which isn’t all that liberal.

The funny thing is that they vastly outspend progressive groups on this issue and they are losing group. Now that Iowa has legalized Same-Gender Marriage, more progressive states will start stepping up out of sheer embarrassment. Within the next few months we will no doubt see an avalanche of states legalizing Same-Gender-Marriage.

As the economy continues to slow up, fewer donations will be made to these Religious Right organizations and yet they will have to step up their spending if they wish to continue their fight on this issue. The Culture War is coming to an end in a similar fashion as the Cold War with the Soviet Union came to an end. The Religious Right has over extended their hand and now they are struggling to keep up the fight. The more we box them in on this issue and similar issues the more money they will have to drain to keep up the fight. Soon they will have to admit defeat on this issue and play the persecuted card. But they can only play that card so often before they completely drain their base of resources.

How does this affect Christianity as a whole? Quite frankly, the Religious Right are the face of Christianity and the more they look silly the more people will distance themselves from Christianity as a whole. Multiple polls are showing the same trends. Christianity as a whole is on the decline, yet fundamentalism is on the rise. More mainstream Christians are becoming fundamentalists and fundamentalists are losing ground financially. Because at the end of the day, fundamentalists still hold the Biblical High Ground when it comes to Christian belief and yet they hold the Moral Low Ground when it comes to the issues.

Filed under: Decline of Religion, Gay Issues, Politics, Religion, sex | 18 Comments »

I love Easter. While my wife loves Easter for the chocolate, I love this holiday because I get to take advantage of Christian laziness. You see, while it is common knowledge that Christmas was stolen from the Pagan holiday of Yule or the Winter Solstice, at least the Church had the good sense to change the name. During this time of year all I really have to do is ask Christians about the meaning of the Easter. They of course start telling me about how it is the most important holiday to Christians and how Jesus died and was reborn for them. I usually have to stop them and restate the question.

“No, no,” I say, “what does the name ‘Easter’ mean?”

And the crowd goes silent and I have to explain to them that it actually comes from the Pagan Goddess Eostre. Of course many Christians don’t believe me so I have to ask them about the Easter Bunny. I don’t recall anything in the Bible talking about Jesus owning a hare. And what is the deal the Easter Eggs? Where does the Bible talk about that? Of course, the Bible doesn’t talk about Easter at all nor did Jesus have a pet Easter Bunny. In fact, the modern holiday of Easter is actually a combination of various Pagan beliefs.

For starters, the idea of death and resurrection was a common theme during this time of year. Winter is ending and Spring is the rebirth of the world. This was the idea of the half God Attis who like Jesus was born of a virgin, died on March 22nd and resurrected on March 25th. Count that one out for me. How many days was he dead for again? Three day? Just like Jesus. What a coincidence.

Then of course there is the story of the Goddess Eostre herself who the holiday is STILL named after. The story claims that the Goddess came upon a little girl who had found a dying bird. The girl asked Eostre for help because the bird was not use to the cold weather. Eostre then melted the snow and brought about the Spring. She then turned the bird into a hare that laid rainbow eggs and told the young girl to watch every year for the hare as a sign of the Spring Season. Traditionally, the Eostre Festival has always been a holiday focusing on change to mirror the changing of the seasons and fertility to mirror the new life of Spring from Winter.

While Christians have put their own story in place of the older stories their lack of imagination clearly shows that the Jesus story, like that of Attis and Eostre is fictional. Perhaps we should remember the old stories and what they symbolized. I think the idea of fertility and change are still very value to today’s society.

Filed under: Easter, Religion | 28 Comments »

Every so often when I am discussing or debating religion with someone, he or she will tell me that at one time they were once an atheist too. I even had one person call himself an “ex-atheist.” I always found this kind of odd considering that all Christians (and even all theists for that matter) are by definition “ex-atheists.”

What most Christians don’t realize is that we are born without beliefs… any beliefs (not just religious ones). Babies can’t believe in things because they are babies. Their minds have not yet developed and they can’t even recognize themselves in a mirror. They don’t believe in ghosts or tarot, nor do they believe in UFOs, the boogieman, Santa Claus, or Gods. They are a blank slate as far as beliefs go. All babies have are instincts and the nurture of the womb. In other words, people are born without the belief in deities. We are all born atheists.

However, religious indoctrination starts very early on in most families and so by the time a baby can express any kind of thoughts they have probably already been brainwashed to believe in a deity and/or in some sort of religion. This is a sad fact about religious institutions that they can’t even wait until someone has reached the age of reason to start warping young and fragile minds with indoctrination.

So why do some Christians pull out the “ex-atheist” card? Well, one technique in the art of persuasion is to identify with your subject. In this case, a Christian claims to identify with his or her mark by claiming that they once didn’t believe in God and the Bible. The problem with this is that a simple lack of belief is all that qualifies one as an atheist. In other words, a person who has never thought about religion is just as much of an atheist as someone who has studied the claims of Christianity, researched the Bible, and found that the Christian belief system is ridiculous.

Kirk Cameron of Growing Pains fame is one such person who frequently uses the “ex-atheist” card. But I doubt very much that Kirk Cameron cared about religion at all before becoming religious. He almost certainly didn’t study the claims of religion with any seriousness or rigor nor did he look at the history of Christianity and the Bible. He probably never argued with religious believers and probably never thought about any of the philosophical arguments. Yet he still can claim honestly that he was once an atheist.

On the other hand, many atheist activists (i.e. atheists who have actually studied religion and still don’t believe) were once religious. Many were even very religious and some were even fundamentalists. These particular atheists ware often very knowledgeable about their particular religious sect and so when they de-convert it really means something. In other words, the claim of ex-Christian actually carries philosophical weight while the claim of ex-atheist is pretty much meaningless. I know many Christians will claim this is a double standard. But the reason for this double standard is a valid one and so the ex-atheist Christians really have no persuasive ground to stand one.

Filed under: ex-athest, Religion | 31 Comments »

I was talking to a friend the other day and some how we started talking about Star Wars. My friend told me that he didn’t like the Prequel Trilogy. I couldn’t believe it. Who does he think he is? Has he studied the Prequel Trilogy? Does he have a degree in it? What scholarship has he read about it? He couldn’t even name one Star Wars scholar and yet he has already formed an opinion about the Prequels.

While I do take my Star Wars very seriously and I do love the entire Star Wars Saga (episodes I-VI) that is not what today’s blog is actually about. Because as much as I love the Star Wars Saga (sometimes even dogmatically) I am aware that it is fiction. Even though I can’t really prove that Darth Vader never really lived a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I am still reasonably certain that it is fiction. I don’t need to study the latest Star Wars scholarship to know that. Nor do I need to have a degree in Star Wars-ology.

However, many Christians seem to think that just because they can create universities, seminaries, and even museums devoted to the study of their fictional book that this some how makes their fictional book less fictional. Someone can study the Bible intensely for an entire lifetime and that still wouldn’t make it any less fictional. Sure, an intense study of the Bible may yield some interesting insights and perhaps even a little wisdom here and there as well, just like an intense study of the Star Wars Saga would. I will say that there is probably much more insight and wisdom in the “Holy Saga” than there is in the “Holy Bible,” but that is another debate for another day.

Filed under: Religion | 17 Comments »

Many times when I am discussing the dangerousness of Christianity with Christians, the Christians will ask me why I am not discussing Islam, which they claim, is more dangerous. This of course doesn’t absolve or defend against the charge that I am making about the dangerousness of Christianity. In fact, Islam could be the most dangerous religion on Earth and that still wouldn’t excuse Christians from the dangers they pose to freedom, happiness, human progress, and even the very survival of the human race. This argument basically amounts to, “Don’t worry about the crimes I am committing, look over there.”

Even many of my fellow freethinkers such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens seem to think that Islam is more dangerous than Christianity. And while I greatly respect both of these great thinkers, I will have to disagree with them on this point. The fact is that it is Christianity, which is the most dangerous religion on Earth, not Islam.

I will grant you that Islam is probably more violent that Christianity as far as sensationalism, but being violent and being dangerous are not always the same thing. A serial killer could kill 5 or 6 people and while I wouldn’t want to sit next to him or her at dinner, the serial killer would still be less dangerous than the greedy CEO whose company dumps toxic chemicals into a near by river killing dozens and making hundreds sick. You could probably even sit next to the guy at dinner and never know how dangerous he really is.

With religion I see it in a similar way. Muslims flew planes into our buildings and killed 3000 people on September the 11th. This of course rocked the world. No one is claiming that such an act wasn’t violent or that the people responsible weren’t motivated by their religion. The blood of those 3000 people is on the hands of the Islamic religion. While it is true that not all Muslims agree with actions such as this, it cannot be denied that those who committed this attack did so because their religion was open to such an interpretation. Other attacks motivated by this type of interpretation of the Islamic religion were the attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 people and the attack on the American Embassy in 1998, which killed 225 people. And then of course there are the 40 or so beheadings that were captured on video and plastered all over the news.

What about Christianity? It might surprise people to know that according to the FBI hate crime statistics, almost 1500 gays and lesbians were reported to have been attacked in 2007, right here in America. Many such hate crimes go unreported. And like with the Muslim religion, not all Christians think of homosexuality as a sin and not even all of those who do would resort to violence, but it cannot be denied that those attacks were motivated by Christians who have no hard time interpreting the Bible to support such attacks. One may argue with that interpretation, but the Bible isn’t a very clear book and it is obvious that there are verses, which lend themselves to such an interpretation. Stem Cell Research is yet another one of those positions in which many Christians believe that their holy book and their deity of choice are very much against. Such research could help to save the lives of 1.4 million Americans who have Lupus, 1 million Americans with Parkinson’s, and over 220,000 Americans who have spinal injuries. These people could live if the Christian motivated Americans (34%) weren’t spending tons of tax-exempt funds to insure that these people die.

But I am not done yet with Christianity. It is pretty well known that the Pope not only claims that condoms don’t protect people from HIV, but instead increase the risk of HIV/AIDS, Many of the same Christian motivated Americans who believe Stem Cell Research is evil also agree with the Pope. These Americans were able to restrict government aid going to AIDS infested Africa to insure that no condoms or sex education was to be included in such aid. In 2007, there were 22 million reported cases of HIV/AIDS in Africa. 1.5 million Africans died in 2007 alone. That is over 4000 people a day would could possibly be alive had the Religious Right not stopped the flow of condoms and proper sex-education in that continent.

Already, the death toll and danger that Christianity has caused dwarfs that of Islam and we haven’t even gotten to the worst of it. The threat of Christianity is a threat to our very survival. America is a nation on the cutting edge of science and also one of the nations who is among the worst contributors to the probable causes of global climate change. It is American, which will be called upon to not only help to reduce our carbon emissions but also help to reverse the damage. Of course one third of the American people don’t believe that mere humans can damage what God has created and so we have the so called “Moral Majority” telling their followers that global climate change is a myth created by evil scientists to get grant money. This religiously motivated belief is a danger to every man, woman, and child on the face of this planet.

Don’t get me wrong, on many of these issues the large numbers of Muslim agree with 43% of Christians on these issues. The difference is that those Muslims aren’t in the position of power to influence these types of dangers. The serial killer might want to dump the toxic chemicals into near by rivers and lakes, but he or she isn’t in the position to do it. The greedy CEO is in such a position and that is by he or she is more dangerous than the serial killer.

Filed under: Evils of Christianity, Most Dangerous Religion, Religion | 14 Comments »

Almost every time I get into a prolonged conversation with a fundamentalist Christian the issue of morality come up. The claim of the Christians is almost always the same, “without God there can be no moral grounding.” Personally, I find that to be a pretty arrogant and inaccurate statement. The way I see it, with God there is no moral grounding. The shear number of differing sects of Jews, Christians, and Muslims who have completely opposite opinions on so many moral issues certainly suggests that God hasn’t grounded morality at all. If he had, all believers in the Bible who have the same set of morals and quite obviously they don’t.

It seems that God was so clear about his moral grounding after all since so many Christians disagree about God’s moral grounding. We really need to ask, how do we know what God commands? That is the real problem with believing is deities, you never really know what they want. From what I can tell by talking to so many Christians, God seems to communicate by one of two ways, either by divine revelations or through divine texts.

When it comes to divine revelation things get pretty problematic pretty quickly. This was a big problem early on for the Mormons when Joseph Smith declared that any Mormon could have a divine revelation. Very quickly people were getting some pretty opposite commands from God. It seemed to be impossible to know what a real divine revelation was and what thoughts were just people’s imagination, desires, or random thoughts or beliefs. And then of course mental illness is an issue with divine revelations too. You will find that there are often stories in the news of someone murdering their child because they had a divine revelation. How can you tell if someone had a divine revelation or is just crazy?

Divine texts like the Bible have a whole new set of problems. The Bible was written a long time ago and we don’t even have the original verses of the text. Over the years, the texts have been recopied complete with people’s deliberate and accidental changes. People seem to have revised the texts to fit their own personal philosophies, beliefs, or situations as well as miscopies words or mistranslated words as the text moved from language to language. People’s religious framework has become entirely dependent on their interpretation of inaccurate “Holy Scriptures.” With so many changes and translations and interpretations of the divine holy book, it is impossible to really know what God truly desire.

Even if we could deal with those issues, the problem doesn’t get any better. According to Christianity, God defines morality and this causes a host of other problems. What if God changed his mind? Some Christians will argue that God wouldn’t change his mind because God is perfect or God is his character or something. But the Bible claims in numerous places that God does change his mind and the real issue isn’t whether he will change his mind, but rather whether he could change his mind if he so desired? If God did change his mind, then morality would change with God. This doesn’t seem like moral grounding to me. If God declared tomorrow that rape was now morally good, I really don’t think it would be so.

Many Christians will then typically argue that, “either all morality is absolute or all morality is subjective.” This line of thinking is a very problematic one which deals with a limiting of options and an absolutism all its own. When we look at the philosophy of ethics and morality, we see that some of the greatest minds in human history have been working on this problem and have come up with some very complicated solutions which still don’t fully make morality clear to us. Some of the greatest of moral thinkers include, Plato, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, John Stewart Mill, and John Rawls. There are of course many more, but these thinkers in particular have helped to shape modern concepts of morality.
Morality just isn’t as simply as a rulebook of do’s and don’ts. Morality isn’t all absolute nor is it all subjective. Morality is part principle based and part situational based. Personally, I think Kant and Aristotle have helped me better understand morality in that morality is more about the means than the ends as Kant viewed it and it is more about following moral role models or “men of practical wisdom” as Aristotle had suggested.

Currently, work is being done in the field of neuroscience to explain mirroring synapses and how that relates to compassion and empathy, which may help to teach us more about human morality from a biological level. But until more study is done, we are left in the philosophical realm. And from what we can gather, morality is in no small part linked those two aspects of human life, empathy and compassion.

So what is our moral grounding? Right now, there isn’t any. Not for Christians and not for atheists or anyone else. Morality is not completely absolute nor is it completely subjective. There is a delicate balance and we are all trying our best to navigate these often-difficult moral paths. As human society has progressed, we have learned more and more about how best to treat each other in a moral way but our moral journey is far from over.

Filed under: morality, Religion | 51 Comments »

I recently received the following argument, “In Deuteronomy 23:9–14, we learn that human wastes were to be buried, away from human dwellings. Today we call this sanitary waste disposal, and its benefits are widely understood but not always practiced—especially in poverty-stricken areas — and God put this principle in the Bible thousands of years before mankind’s science understood its benefit!”

This argument illustrates just how stupid some Christians think humans are. Not only is this argument ridiculous, it also suggests that people are so stupid that we couldn’t possibly have figured out on our own without divine guidance that our waste products might not be good for us to keep around. Maybe people noticed that shit smells… well, shitty. Maybe we have evolved to the point where our noses can help us to protect ourselves from possible illnesses. Maybe people noticed that those who slept next to shit all the time or who ate shit ended up getting sick. No, we needed God to tell us these things.

Democritus came up with Atomic Theory 2500 years ago and yet modern science didn’t accept the Atomic Theory until the 19th century. Is this proof that the Oracle of Delphi is real and that Zeus is the one true God? I don’t really think so. I think it proves that people are smart and cleaver and sometimes can formulate good ideas that go largely ignored until hundreds and even thousands of years later.

The Bible has many ideas, which certainly were very good. The Hebrews valued scholarship and in some cases critical thinking. They made many observations and realized many scientific facts about the world. Claiming that those facts came from a personified deity was not one of their good ideas. But I guess it probably helped in getting people to follow those ideas and in that sense they were useful. Today, we don’t need the fear of an all powerful, angry, and vengeful deity to tell us that it may not be healthy to eat shit, because if you eat shit you may die. Plus, it probably doesn’t taste very good.

Filed under: Religion | 9 Comments »

A recent medical study conducted by the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that the more religiously devout a person is the more likely they are to demand to be kept alive using extraordinary measures even if such measures decreased their quality of life or put undue emotional and financial strain on others. In fact, people of faith are significantly more likely to use intensive life prolonging measures. This at first seemed a little strange to me because I would think that a person who really and truly believed that after they die, they will still be alive (in a perfect paradise of all places), they would be looking forward to an “Earthly” death and not trying to run away from death through the use of Science (of all things).

I think this study may show something deeper. I think it suggests that maybe the religious aren’t as devout believers in a Heavenly afterlife (with or without the virgins) as they may claim. Perhaps this study shows that after a lifetime of self-deception, the real truth is that no one really believes in a magical Heaven after all. I guess that if someone believes that they will live forever, they might get a little freaked out when the thought occurs to them that they are actually going to die. Death is a part of life and to quote Captain Kirk, “How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life.” It seems to me that people of faith tend to be afraid to live and so it really isn’t all that surprising that they should also be afraid to die.

While non-believers live our lives more fully with reasonable certainty that this life is all there is; we tend to be more content with the knowledge that we will one day die. And so when that day draws near, we seem to be more willing to accept it and live that last moment. Aristotle put it best when he said that it is only at the end of one’s life when we can truly judge the happiness of our lives.

Filed under: death, Religion | 16 Comments »

Well, it is April 1st, which means only one thing. I must really be a fundamentalist Christian and I have been tricking everyone all these years, right. Haha, April Fools! I bet I really got you with that one, right? Now that we got the obligatory prank out of the way, let me share with you a story. What if I had suddenly been saved? That is how salvation works right? One minute someone is a rational and well-adjusted individual and the next minute, the Holy Spirit has turned you into a mindless tape recorder of self-righteousness. That’s how “Born Again” Christianity works. Someone has an “experience” which is almost always emotionally charged and devoid of rationality and like a light-switch, instant fundy.

Meanwhile, fundamentalist/Born Again Christians don’t reject their religion overnight. That isn’t how atheism works. Atheism is a slow and usually painful process of realizing that one’s beliefs are quite simply ridiculous and full of holes. People don’t become atheists overnight. No light-switch of the unholy ghost will transform you while you are on an emotional roller coaster.  No, atheism takes thought. It takes calm, rational, thought in the privacy of one’s own mind usually hidden from friends and family for a while. De-conversion back to atheism starts with doubts and silent questioning of dogmatic doctrine.

Now my conversion to Jedi is sort of a mixture of the two. But that is another story for another day. I will end today’s blog with some words of wisdom from Jedi Master Yoda who once said, “You will know [the good side from the bad] when you are calm and at peace.”

Filed under: de-conversion, Decline of Religion, Religion | 11 Comments »

I find that most Christians get so wrapped up in their bronze aged mythology that they seem to have a really hard time taking an objective look from a non-Christian perspective. There is an old saying about walking a mile (or some such distance) in someone else’s shoes or something. The fact is that the Abrahamic religions have so much influence in the world today that most atheists were at one point or another in their lives a believer in some type of deity. Many atheists were even hardcore believers who studied to be in the profession of religion. So we know what it is like to walk in the shoes of belief.

Some Christians will claim that there was a time when they didn’t believe in the Bible and Jesus and I don’t want to take away from their claims of atheism. But at the same time, those Christians also live in a society in which the Bible is taken somewhat seriously. There was never a time in which we came upon the Bible without knowledge of the vast numbers of people who believe in it. Billions of people can’t be wrong right? If over a billion people believe in something, we tend to think that maybe there is something to it. In other words, most Christians have never really stepped back from the Bible and viewed it as alien.

I think it might be helpful for a Christian to take off their Christian hat for a little while and pretend that they are reading some other religion’s holy book. Maybe they should pretend that it is an alien being’s holy book or a tribe from an obscure African country’s holy book. Perhaps we can even forget that it is a holy book at all. Imagine if you will, that you found this book in the fiction section of your local Boarders Bookstore and you never heard of it before.

I want Christians to read their Bible again… for the first time. Does it sound like a plausible story? Is it entertaining? Would you pick it up off the bookshelf and after reading it think that perhaps it doesn’t belong in the fiction section, but seems to instead fit in with non-fictions books? Christians should remember to keep their Christian caps off. From an objective standpoint doesn’t the Bible really seem pretty silly? Be honest.

Filed under: de-conversion, Religion, the bible | 18 Comments »

Last week, ABC’s Nightline (a division of ABC News) aired a debate on the existence of the Devil. First, I should mention that last year they had a debate on the existence of God. And while both debates are absolutely ridiculous for a prestigious news organization to dignify with airtime, at least the God debate had an opposition. In that debate, the Rational Response Squad had the role of the opposition and as the voice of reason to say that the God of the Bible is a fictional character. In this more recent Nightline debate, everyone was Christian or at least theist. The debate was between hardcore fundamentalist Pastor Mark Driscoll and former hooker turn fundamentalist and totally incoherent Jesus freak Annie Lobert against former evangelical (still Christian) Bishop Carlton Pearson and self-help guru and expert on all things vague and undefined, Deepak Chopra.

Right off the bat, I think ABC News should really be ashamed of themselves for behaving like the Jerry Springer show and calling that journalism. What are they going to debate next, Leprechauns? How about the Boogieman? Maybe we can sit down and have a serious and scholarly debate about the existence of the Tooth Fairy. But that point aside, I think that if ABC News really wanted a debate, they would at least have some real opposition. I will give some props to Bishop Pearson and Deepak Chopra though because at times they actually made some good points… which they promptly backed away from before spouting out bat-shit bullshit.

Pearson actually talked about some of the ideas and facts made popular by Bart Ehrman in his book “Misquoting Jesus” and aside from his view that evil and God exist, he actually talked a bit about evolution that the Bible is a book of myths. Deepak also had a few choice moments in which he talked about evolution and the laws of physics. At one point he even schooled fundy Pastor Driscoll on Aramaic and on the translations Driscoll had. Deepak also got grilled by a fundy audience member which was pretty funny because he really let her have it… and then told her that her view of the world was just as valid as his own.

Pastor Mark Driscoll basically gave the standard Biblical BS and didn’t really have much to back it up. He seemed to think that just stating the story made it so and no one seemed to challenge him on it. Ex-hooker Annie Lobert pretty much used her ex-hooker status as a sympathy card and didn’t really have much of an argument… except with her sincere tears when her story was told of being gang-raped by people and actual demons alike. While it truly is sad that she had so many horrible experiences, those experiences aren’t an argument for a literal Satan. Not even her demon tale of sleep-paralysis.

I will give the wackier Christian side a point from the audience though. One audience member got Deepak with a trick question that he didn’t seem to understand even after everyone laughed at him. Deepak in his wish-washy way claimed that any belief is a false belief and an insecure belief. Because if someone thinks something is true, they don’t need to say that it is true. An audience member asked quoted him and asked if he “believed” that statement. Deepak took the bait and said yes. Everyone laughed but him.

No one seemed to think this was a ridiculous debate and no one claimed that good and evil are human constructs. No one was a voice of real opposition. It was really an argument of semantics. The moderator was clearly biased on the wackier side and the audience seemed to be equally biased. At least with the God-debate of last year, moderator Martin Bashir did a decent job and the audience was mixed. This debate was a farce. I am not even sure I would call it a debate. It was more like a Jesus love fest with some disagreements on the details.

Filed under: Religion | 23 Comments »

One frequent argument I hear from Christians is what I call the “Judge God Argument.” Here, Christians tell me a story about a teen that is speeding, driving drunk, or some other illegal act that teenagers might commit. In this story, we are the teen and after being caught by the police we are brought before the Judge. The Judge, bound by the law and by his need for Justice (The Judge always seems to be a man because… well Christianity is a very male chauvinistic religion) delivers the verdict of “guilty.” As such, he sentences the boy to a fine. Here is the catch. The Judge is the boy’s father and so after he has pronounced the sentence, he stands up and reaches into his wallet and pays the boy’s fine as a loving parent.

So here we have it. The Judge plays both roles and is able to wear both hats separately. As Judge, he tries the case according to the law and sentences the offender. As a loving parent he pays the price for his son’s crime. This is the analogy Christians sometimes use concerning the role of God. As a perfect being with perfect morality Judge God must be strict with the law and pronounce that all human beings are evil sinners and sentence us all to eternal torture in Hell. But as our loving father, God then sent his only begotten son to die for our sins (the equivalent to paying our fine).

It makes perfect sense, right? I mean God wouldn’t be much of a Judge if he let us off the hook just because we are his loved creations, right? God must be perfect in his judgment and that mean that he must sentence us for our sins. That is why he created Hell. But God doesn’t want us to go to Hell that is why he paid our fine in the form of Jesus.

The thing is that God’s Justice system is a little arbitrary. Have you read your Ten Commandments lately? Thou shall keep the Sabbath Holy? Is it really a crime to work on Saturday? Really? And then there are all the other laws that God as made up (according to the Bible) most of which seem completely arbitrary and equally ridiculous to the Commandment about the Sabbath Day. And even if we were able to keep all of those ridiculous laws dealing with everything from beard trimming to dietary habits, we would still be evil sinners in the eyes of Judge God because of “Original Sin.” That is God’s trump card to insure that we are all guilty no matter what.

But aside from God’s Kangaroo Court of ridiculous laws, we also have the “Holy Penal System.” There is only one punishment for every crime, eternal torture! Did you bare false witness when a lady asked you if she looked fat in that dress she was trying on? Eternal Torture! No, you actually told her she looked fat? Well, Eternal Torture anyway, because Adam at an apple. And once you are found guilty and sentenced to eternal Hell, how long before you are up for parole? Never! There is no parole or reprieve? Eternal Torture!

How could it be possible that our very flawed American Justice System is actually fairer and more just than God’s perfect Justice System? It seems to me that God isn’t a very good Judge at all. And as a Juror and Executor, he isn’t doing so hot either. Clearly an analysis of Divine Justice wasn’t what the Christian had in mind when he or she attempted to use the “Judge God Argument.” It seems that it is rather easy to turn this argument around and instead of God being the Judge it has become us judging God and he looks plenty guilty to me.

Filed under: god, Judge God, Religion | 22 Comments »

“When asked about Free Will, I always give the same response, “Of course we do; I had no choice.” Christopher Hitchens gave this response at a Christian Book Expo Panel and while I think it was a funny response and that Hitchens had a great point within that context, I don’t think we actually have “Free Will.”

After saying that, Christians often tell me that if I don’t believe in Free Will, than I must believe that we have no choices. This of course is a false dichotomy. My claim isn’t that we don’t have choices, but rather that our choices are not “freely determined.” Instead, our choices are determined by a complex set of variables which play out in our nature and our nurture. Nature represents all our genetic variables and Nurture represents all the environmental factors (most of which we are not even aware of).

Even in infancy, where one might think that actions are determined on Nature alone I still think that there is plenty of Nurture going on in the womb and in the infant’s environment. Nature only refers to genetics. The nutrients are considered Nurture.

The complex interplay between these two factors is the determining characteristics of all of our actions and choices. The thing is that we don’t know how that interplay will play out so we have the appearance of Free Will. Now here is the catch, we can still make choices. We can still weigh the option and choose what path to take in life. Regardless of which path we choose, it was a choice that was determined by our Nature and our Nurture. In this model, “determined” isn’t a predictor of action because of the complexity of the interplay of our two determining forces. Here “determined” is more of a justification for our choices.

Here is an example: I am walking down a hall that I am familiar with. I know that there is an intersection ahead and that both paths will lead me to my destination. Which path do I choose? My mind works very quickly. Quicker that I even realize and calculates things that I am not even consciously aware of. I choose right. To a Christian who believes in Free Will, that choice is a free choice. But to a rational, thinking, person who is aware of modern psychology, that choice was a determined choice. Why did I go right is the question?

A Christian believing in Free Will would claim that such a choice is a random decision made by the choice maker. They might claim that it is a free choice with no baggage or attachment to it. But the fact is that even if we don’t know what determined that choice, it was still a determined choice. If I would have gone left, that too would have been the determined choice. I might have been as simple as the fact that I am genetically right handed and that is why I went right. It could have been because a saw a cute girl down the right path a few weeks ago and subconsciously I hope she might be there again. Maybe subconsciously I am trying to avoid someone I saw down the left path weeks earlier. It could even be a subconscious complex calculation based on multiple factors. Or perhaps it isn’t subconscious at all.

The point here is that “Free Will” is a myth just like the God who is alleged to have given it to us. Only people who choose not to educate themselves and to focus on a short-sighted view on behavior are believers in Free Will. And even though their choice to remain ignorant was a determined choice, they still have a choice to weigh the Nurture of education against the Nurture or their indoctrination. They can still choose to be educated.

Filed under: free will, Uncategorized | 19 Comments »

Quite a few Christians on the more liberal side of the spectrum (I’m talking to you Tony Campolo) claim that the Old Testament is no longer valid and that Jesus abolished the Old Testament in favor of the New Testament. They think that this strategy will allow them to get out of stoning people to death for the various “sins” that were talked about in the Old Testament. It is a way of saying, “Hey, we know that the Old Testament is really fucked up and definitely NOT a good guide for moral life, but we will just pretend that God never said, ordered, advocated, or did those things and still call ourselves Christians.” On the surface it is actually a pretty good strategy. I mean who would or even could really defend the morality of that God and the things ordered by Him? All I really have to say to prove how immoral the God of the Old Testament is is quote Numbers 31: 17-18 in which God orders Moses to murder and rape an entire village. The fundies often yell context until I tell them what the context is (that the people of that village worshiped… another God).

Anyhow, who wants to defend that? So the strategy of just crossing out the Old Testament is a good one. However, there is little basis for such a massive deletion, except of course that the Old Testament is seriously retarded. All wisecracks aside, Biblically speaking there is little basis for the “breaking from the old covenant in favor of a new covenant.” In fact, Matthew 5: 17-18 refutes such a break or deletion from and of the Old Testament. Here the red letters that some Christians are so keen on worshipping specifically forbid ignoring the rest of the Bible. Luke 16: 17 also makes such a break unbiblical. But then there are a few passages that contradict these passages because the inerrant Bible is so consistent. Ephesians 2: 14-15, Hebrews 8: 13, and Galatians 3: 24-25 all support the deletion of the Old Testament. So what should a Christian do? Delete the Old Testament or not delete the Old Testament? I guess we should do as Tony Campolo suggests and go with the red letters in which case, the Old Testament stays and God is still a tyrant.

But don’t get me wrong, I am delighted that so many Christians today feel that the character of their God is so flawed, that they can pick and choose the parts of the Bible they like and reject the parts that are just plain old ridiculous and/or immoral. I do that with lots of books all the time. But then again the books that I read never claim to have been written by the Creator of the Universe. The authors that I read are human and from planet Earth just like me and so I take into account when they were written, what their biases are, and what their point of view is. I agree with some of these authors on some things and disagree with them on other things. But the Creator of the Universe wrote the Bible to be timeless; he has no biases, and has the ultimate point of view. So shouldn’t he be inerrant? Shouldn’t the Old Testament be just as valid today as it was two thousand years ago? Why would God change his mind about so many important issues like slavery, rape, or whether women are the property of men or not?

The character of Jesus certainly said some cool things in the New Testament so I can understand why some Christians only want to accept those things as divine. For instance, there is that great story in John about those without sin throwing the first stone. That’s a good story… however, most textual analysis scholars are pretty sure that it never happened and that the story was added to the Bible hundreds of years later. And what about that part of the New Testament where the character of Jesus specifically states that he has not come to bring peace by has come to bring a sword? Or when he says that in order to follow him one must hate their entire family? Maybe we should write a New, New Testament that breaks that covenant in favor of a more tolerant and moral covenant.

Filed under: Religion, the bible | 3 Comments »

Many people think that because I believe that the Bible is fiction that it automatically means that I haven’t read it or that I do not like it. The fact is that I love the Bible… as a book of bronze aged fiction. As a book claiming to be divine and historical truth I think it is a pretty weak book. To demonstrate just how weak a book the Bible is on those grounds, I will take a page from one of America’s greatest patriots, Thomas Paine. In Paine’s work, “The Age of Reason part II” I discovered my favorite Bible verse. It seems that Paine found it amusing too:

“Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.” – Numbers 31:17-18

Out of all the verses in the Bible this one is my absolute favorite. The reason? It is the most indefensible verse in the entire Bible. Here God has ordered Moses to murder then entire Midianites village except the virgins and then to rape the virgins. I try to bring this verse to the attention of many Christians that I talk to and over the years I have gotten a variety of attempts to explain away this most indefensible verse.

One Christian response that I have gotten a few times was, “it was war and shit happened.” But if Barack Obama or George W. Bush had orders our US Generals to take the troops into Baghdad and kill ALL the men and ALL the women except the virgin women and then to have sex with the virgin women (i.e. rape), we would surely think that our leaders were horrible people. There is no way our soldiers would even follow those orders because those orders would seem so immoral and would be completely illegal. The President would be impeached in a second and on trial for war crimes. But if God gave those orders (and he did according to the Bible) no one seems to have a problem with that? In fact, people would still worship a perfect being that gave such a completely morally reprehensible order?

Then I get the “Context” argument from many Christians who seem to think this is the argument for anything an atheist like me has to say about the Bible. The Bible clearly gives the context for why God gave the order of genocide and rape. The Midianites didn’t “hate” the Jews. They didn’t care about the Jews at all. They worshiped Ba’al Zebul a fertility God. Yahweh (aka Yam) was a jealous God (by his own admission) and decided to order his people (the Hebrews) to wage war. The raping of the virgins was like an extra fuck you to Ba’al Zebul. Yahweh is your God. While the Bible makes mention of sexual atrocities that Midianites committed in the name of their deity that was very clearly not the reason Yahweh gave for his command. Besides, what possible injustice could anyone do in which mass murder and rape would be considered Just by anyone? I can think of no possible context, which would bring me to the conclusion that, “Oh mass murder and rape was a well deserved divine punishment for those people.” Rape is one of the few things in which there is no justifiable context.

Next we have yet another attempted defense of this indefensible verse. This horrific verse is old. It was in the Old Testament and not the New Testament and for some reason we should ignore some of the verses, which we really don’t like, that are in the Old Testament despite the obvious fact that God is supposed to be perfect and some Bible verses even say that he can’t change, these Christians are claiming that even though he ordered this horrific act (and many similarly horrific acts in the Old Testament) now he is different. If Hitler were alive today and didn’t bother to say that he was sorry for the Holocaust, but just went around and told people to “turn the other cheek” should we forgive him for the Holocaust? Let me ask, how many times in the Bible did Jesus say Rape and Genocide were bad? The answer is zero, zip, zilch, none, not a one. Instead, Jesus defends the actions of Yahweh (God) many times. He even stated:

“For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” Matthew 5:18

The Christian claim that the Old Testament doesn’t count, but Jesus seems to think it does count. He seems to be saying that every “jot” of it still counts. Besides, it is quite a big leap for God to claim that rape is cool and then to for him not to say anything against rape later and for Christians to somehow interpret that to mean that rape is sinful. Plus, Jesus always talks about doing his father’s work. If Yahweh were my father, I certainly wouldn’t be doing his work if he ordered genocide and rape to a bunch of people who worshiped Cupid.

And what about the big Ten Commandments? They are in the Old Testament and not a one of them states that, “Thou shall not rape.” Besides most Christians still think that the Ten Commandments are pretty worthy of following despite the fact that they are in the Old Testament.

Finally, some Christians claim that atheists take the Bible too literally. The whole claim to fame of the Bible was that it was written/inspired (through the holy ghost) by God, the most perfect being to ever exist. Clearly, when the Bible talks about Jesus not coming to send peace but instead coming with a sword (Matthew 10:34) that is not to mean that Jesus is literally holding a sword. It is a metaphor. But what is it a metaphor for? If he had said that he came with a rose, I would assume that he meant love. But one does not love with a sword. A sword is a weapon of violence. Plus Jesus specifically stated that he didn’t come to bring peace. So that makes his metaphor pretty clear to me. And with my favorite verse, I think that story is supposed to be some sort of literal history and if that wasn’t the purpose, than I am at a loss for what such a metaphor would be saying. Moses is clearly the good guy in the story. We are supposed to be routing for him.

Fortunately, there has never been any evidence that suggests that the story of Numbers actually is a true account. Like the Mormon accounts of religious wars in the Americas, not one shred of archeological evidence has turned up to confirm these atrocities. But still, Numbers 31: 17-18 remains my favorite verse even though I am reasonably certain that it is a fictional account and that the Bible as a whole is fiction.

Filed under: morality, Religion, the bible | 19 Comments »

Guest Blog from The A-Team

(Reprinted Letter to the Editor from The Bergen Record)

In “The coming evangelical collapse” (Other Views, March 12), Michael Spencer fails to grasp the root problem: the movement itself.

Spencer calls the movement’s identification with the culture war and political conservatism “a costly mistake,” as if another option exists for those believing the literal truth of the Bible. But how can biblical literalists reconcile the clear anti-gay message of the Bible with gay marriage legislation and remain intellectually honest?

It’s not merely that the evangelical movement will be perceived as a threat to cultural progress, bad for America, bad for education, bad for children and bad for society. Progress in science, medicine, education, as well as human and civil rights comes out of looking forward, while evangelicals look only to the past, both to primitive Bronze Age philosophy and to a romanticized Pleasantville-like version of America.

Spencer concludes that the movement’s error was in not having enough faith. The reality is the opposite. Faith motivated its adherents every step of the way. And now that Spencer appeals to reason, he’ll find a movement unwilling to listen because faith cannot be tempered by reason.

Spencer melodramatically paints a future full of anti-evangelical bigotry but isn’t troubled by the bigotry perpetrated by the movement itself. But if the movement does collapse, we won’t see anti-evangelical bigotry but rather what author Sam Harris, a researcher in the neural basis of belief, calls a “conversational intolerance” of failed ideology, an intolerance of the intolerant. When analyzing what went wrong, Spencer never stopped to ask himself why the evangelical movement is worth saving.

Filed under: Decline of Religion, Religion | 4 Comments »