Why Atheists Don't Stone Homosexuals

Well-known Christian minister and apologist Ray Comfort has a blog devoted to attacking atheism and pointing people towards theism, of the Christian variety, of course. While I was well aware of Comfort's ministry, I had never seen his blog until now.

As I do when stumbling on new blogs of interest, I looked around in an attempt to get the general feel.

I certainly didn't like the way this one felt!

While I'm offended by the blatant fear-mongering and loopy thinking of such efforts, I can't deny being amused by them as well.

Take, for example, his post: Should Atheists be Stoning Homosexuals?

Comfort observes: "Atheists often ask why Christians aren't stoning homosexuals to death 'because the Bible tells you to do that!'"

Then he launches into a rant about Thomas Jefferson - who, as he points out, both theists and atheists acknowledge was a theist - having "penned a law that prescribed castration for those that were then called 'sodomites.'"

He writes:

Jefferson wanted mere castration, but the Virginia Legislature ignored him. They so saw sodomy as such a filthy practice, they continued to prescribe the death penalty. Before 1962, the crime of sodomy was a felony in every state in the U.S., punishable by a long term in prison often with hard labor.

Then he mind-bogglingly asks if it follows

that an atheist from Virginia should therefore push for the death penalty for homosexuals; and that if he's from any other State at least encourage long terms in prison with hard labor, simply because his forefathers did?

He follows with his imagined coup de grâce:

However, atheists go one further with their senselessness argument. They expect Christians to instigate the 3,000 year-old civil law of another nation.

The only senselessness I see here is Comfort's. Since we all agree that Thomas Jefferson was a theist, what bearing does his deeds have on what nontheists think? But as he admits, this was a suggested moderation of then current practice. A practice, by the way, that was based on biblical notions.

There is something Mr. Comfort is missing, and it is the bottom line. It is that nontheists believe morality is strictly a human construction, and that our conduct and our laws also should be based on humanist needs and goals, not divine precepts.

He can try to distance himself and modern Christians from the Mosaic laws all he wishes, but the fact remains: The Bible God condemns homosexuality as an abomination and at least at one point did prescribe the death penalty for it.

As for Thomas Jefferson, he was a great thinker and in many ways a man ahead of his times. But he was also a product of his times. He held views on women, slavery, government and other matters that would not be in step with modern thinking. So what? He was human, with all the limitations applying thereto.

But how do Christians deal with the Bible God being so out of step with modern times? Answer: They don't; they can't.

At the end Ray Comfort condescendingly adds:

Btw. I love homosexuals and pray that they find everlasting life that is alone offered through the new birth of John chapter 3.

In other words, if homosexuals don't "repent" his God of love will punish them in eternal flames, with a hearty "Amen!" from His followers.

It has taken centuries for a small segment of humanity to slowly emerge from the chains of traditional beliefs. Those still securely shackled are forever inviting us back. No, thanks.

How Do The Fish Bite In Heaven?

What would you do with your time if you had a limitless supply of it? Eternity is a long time, you know.

There is that verse from the old hymn Amazing Grace that tells us:

When we've been there 10,000 years,
bright shining as the sun,
we've no less days to sing God's praise,
than when we first begun

A church I attended as a teen used to alter that slightly and sing "when we've been there 10,000,000 years!"

Aaaaaaaaaaargh!!!

I tried to fathom that. An endless church service!

Looking at it now I am reminded of Fred Gwynne's character's observation in the movie Pet Sematary: "Sometimes dead is better."

But there is a new book that attempts to put it all into perspective. Baptist pastor and theologian Dr. Paul Enns has written Heaven Revealed: What Is It Like? What Will We Do? And 11 Other Things You've Wondered About."

Here is a little item about Enns' book and a quote therefrom:

People are interested in heaven, he adds. Thankfully, the Scriptures have a great deal to say about the subject. Among the many things the Bible reveals about Heaven and the new earth that is to come: We will be reunited with loved ones; We will have a real body and a familiar voice; We can even go fishing if we want to (Ezekiel 47:10).

"Undoubtedly, many men will look forward to this," Dr. Enns laughs. "If you never learned on earth to fish and were a poor angler, this may be a great opportunity to take up the sport."

In case you're interested and don't feel like grabbing your Bible, Ezekiel 47:10 reads:

And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon it from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many.

Incidentally, Ezekiel isn't speaking about Heaven there, but rather earth. Oh, well.

It is amazing that so many people do such a poor job ordering their affairs in this life, yet long for an eternity to waste.

I think we humans just naturally abhor the thought of passing out of existence. We are geared for life. And I, too, when I think about it, dislike the idea of no longer being around to experience the pleasures of life.

Perhaps the venerable Epicurus had the best thought about death:

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

Right. So carpe diem everyone! And don't concern yourselves about how the fish are biting in an afterlife.

The Faith Zone

Religious faith is - to put it bluntly - based on invisible proof. The authoritative Merriam-Webster dictionary tells us it is "firm belief in something for which there is no proof." In fact, even the Bible says it is "the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1).

No doubt that is a bit embarrassing to believers when stressed in such stark terms. James F. Haught, well-known Christian author and Catholic systematic theologian, evidently tries to address this problem in his book God And The New Atheism (page 13) with this flowery but vacuous definition of faith:

"...theology thinks of faith as a state of self-surrender in which one's whole being, and not just the intellect, is experienced as being carried away into a dimension of reality that is much deeper and more real than anything that could be grasped by science and religion."

I read that and immediately thought of Rod Serling's introduction to his popular Twilight Zone show:

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead — your next stop, the Twilight Zone.

An interesting place to visit, without doubt; just not a place where I can live on a daily basis.

It's Springtime!

"The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley in Ode to the West Wind.

As surely as I hunkered down and waited, not always patiently but with aching bones, for Spring's arrival, I am rejoicing that now it is here.

Oh, to be sure winter ended for my area quite abruptly at the end of February when the goddess of Spring began to wrest control of the elements from Old Man Winter. But there has been a few reprises from the latter. This weekend, in fact, was downright chilly, gray, and very wet. Not quite like the coming April showers that will bring May flowers. However, it is easy to bear knowing that these cold snaps will be short-lived.

As I celebrate this season of rebirth, I am reminded of my childhood. The wonder I felt playing outside on sunny spring days has not been lost to me in the passage of years. I still find a certain joy in "playing outside." The sky is just as blue, the sun just as bright, the smell of grass growing in the moist soil just as enticing, and the sound of birds exercising their vocal chords just as exhilirating as when I first discovered them so many years ago.

How this time of year, above all the other seasons, causes my spirit to soar and say with naturalist John Burroughs:

How much is in a name! When we call the power back of all God, it smells of creeds and systems, of superstition, intolerance, persecution; but when we call it Nature, it smells of spring and summer, of green fields and blooming groves, of birds and flowers and sky and stars. I admit that it smells of tornadoes and earthquakes, of jungles and wildernesses, of disease and death, too, but these things make it all the more real to us. (Accepting The Universe, page 270.)

Spring is here and I'm young again. I'm older, too. I am.

God In Japan

No, this isn't going to be yet another of my rants about how Japan's recent crisis fits in with theism. Actually, I was surprised to stumble on a very similar situation back in the late nineteenth century, when another freethinker, George William Foote, made some of the same observations I made (only he did it much better) concerning an earthquake in Japan. I found this quite by accident while looking through Foote's 1893 book Flowers Of Freethought and would like to pass it on here at my blog.

My post's title is also the title of Foote's essay. I edited this essay slightly for length and added a couple of bracketed explanatory notes. Also, I included some pictures of that earthquake's devastation as they appeared in the 1892 book The Great Earthquake in Japan, October 28th, 1891, by H. Tennant.

First, a little history about what is now known as the Mino-Owari Earthquake, which struck the Nobi plane area of Japan with reportedly little or no warning on the morning of October 28, 1891. According to this Wikipedia article it registered 8.0 on the Richter Scale, compared to a 9.0 for the most recent. That article also gives the following statistics: 7,272 estimated dead; 17,175 casualties, compared to the over 10,000 confirmed dead so far in this recent incident. A New York Times article from December 11, 1891, which can be read online, reported it as "[o]ne of the severest and most destructive earthquakes that Japan has ever experienced." So this was indeed a very significant catastrophe of that day.

Now Mr. Foote's comments:

Japan has just been visited by a terrible earthquake. Without a moment's warning it swept along, wrecking towns, killing people, and altering the very shape of mountains. A vast tidal wave also rushed against the coast and deluged whole tracts of low-lying country. It is estimated that 50,000 houses have been destroyed, and at least 5,000 men, women, and children. The first reports gave a total of 25,000 slain, but this is said to be an exaggeration. Nevertheless, as a hundred miles or so of railway is torn to pieces, and it is difficult to convey relief to the suffering survivors, the butcher's bill of this catastrophe may be doubled before the finish.

If earthquakes are the work of blind, unconscious Nature, it is idle to spend our breath in discussion or recrimination. Even regret is foolish. We have to take the world as we find it, with all its disadvantages, and make the best of a not too brilliant bargain. Instead of screaming we must study; instead of wailing we must reflect; and eventually, as we gain a deeper knowledge of the secrets of Nature, and a greater mastery over her forces, we shall be better able to foresee the approach of evil and to take precautionary measures against it.

But the standard teaching of England [Foote was a British secular leader] , to say nothing of less civilised nations, is not Naturalism but Theism. We are told that there is a God over all, and that he doeth all things well. On the practical side this deity is called Providence. It is Providence that sends fine weather, and Providence that sends bad weather; Providence that sends floods, and Providence that sends drought; Providence that favors us with a fine harvest, and Providence that blights the crops, reducing millions of people, as in Russia at this moment, to the most desperate shifts of self-preservation. It is Providence that saves Smith's precious life in a railway accident, and of course it is Providence that smashes poor Jones, Brown and Robinson.


Some people, of course, and especially parsons, will contend that Providence does discriminate. They have already been heard to hint that the Russian famine is on account of the persecution of the Jews. But this act of brutality is the crime of the Government, and the famine falls upon multitudes of peasants who never saw a Jew in their lives. They have to suffer the pangs of hunger, but the Czar will not go without a single meal or a single bottle of champagne.

No doubt a pious idiot or two will go to the length of asserting or insinuating that the earthquake in Japan is a divine warning to the people, from the Mikado down to his meanest subject, that they are too slow in accepting Christianity. In fact there is a large collection of such pious idiots, only they are deterred by a wholesome fear of ridicule.

Let the pious idiots, however numerous, be swept aside, and let the Christian with a fair supply of brains in his skull consider Providence in the light of this earthquake. It is folly to pretend that the Japanese are particularly wicked at this moment. It is greater folly to pretend that the earthquake killed the most flagitious sinners. It slew like Jehovah's bandits in the land of Canaan, without regard to age, sex, or character. The terrible fact must be faced, that in a country not specially wicked, and in a portion of it not inhabited by select sinners, the Lord sent an earthquake to slay man, woman, and child, and if possible to "leave alive nothing that breatheth."

Lay your hand upon your heart, Christian, and honestly answer this question. Would you have done this deed? Of course not. Your cheek flames at the thought. You would rush to save the victims. You would soothe the dying and reverently bury the dead. Why then do you worship a Moloch [from a Semitic root meaning "king," but used in ancient history to refer to a deity that required sacrifices] who laughs at the writhings of his victims and drinks their tears like wine? See, they are working and playing; they are at business and pleasure; one is toiling to support the loved ones at home; another is sitting with them in peace and joy; another is wooing the maiden who is dearer to him than life itself; another is pondering some benevolent project; another is planning a law or a poem that shall be a blessing and a delight to posterity. And lo the mandate of Moloch goes forth, and "his word shall not return unto him void." Swifter than thought calamity falls upon the gay and busy scene. Hearts that throbbed with joy now quiver with agony....

Is it not better, Christian friend, to defy Moloch instead of worshipping him? Is it not still better to regard this deity as the creation of fanciful ignorance? Is not existence a terror if Providence may swoop upon us with inevitable talons and irresistible beak? And does not life become sweeter when we see no cruel intelligence behind the catastrophes of nature?

The End.

A couple of additional thoughts. Unfortunately there are more than one or two pious idiots in our day who think the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan were warnings. I saw a recent poll that found that only about 4 out of 10 American think that way, but over half of Evangelical Christians still do. That's sad, but understandable given their faith in the Bible.

Finally, Foote's last sentence gives my view in a nutshell. I can take and face, however sadly, the trials and misfortunes of life knowing full well that it isn't personal. But the thought that there is a God toying around and playing games with his creatures is abhorrent to me.

That Liberating Spirit Of Doubt

Samuel P. Putnam in his old classic 400 Years of Freethought wrote the following in his introduction:

Freethought is a spirit, a method, and a result.

The eternal spirit of Freethought is the spirit of doubt. Freethought never ceases to inquire, to question, and to deny. It utterly abhors faith. It makes no terms with a submissive mind.

Doubt, says Aristotle, is the beginning of wisdom. It is, indeed. Doubt is the first step to knowledge. It is only through Doubt that we can analyze, judge, and select. Unless we deny, we cannot search. Belief is ignorance. Unbelief is attainment. Doubt is sanity—faith is insanity. The supreme virtue of orthodoxy is credulity. The supreme virtue of Freethought is skepticism.

This has been the eternal battle—Faith on one side, Doubt against it, and Doubt has won and gemmed the earth with civilization.

Freethought doubts; but Freethought builds. Truth is its object; but there is only one way to reach truth— through facts.

The scientific method is the one universal method. There is no a priori royal road to truth. There is only the common road, the toilsome common-sense path of observation and induction. In experience alone are the beginnings of knowledge. He who starts with ideas, and labors to accommodate facts to ideas, is no Freethinker, for he is bound to come to a certain conclusion, not by the force of truth, but the fiat of an assumption.

The truth for authority, and not authority for truth, is the axiom of Freethought; and by truth is meant not an image of the mind, but a fact of the universe.

The early part of my life was ruled by faith - enslaving, oppressive faith in God's alleged revealed will for humans. This I was taught from my earliest days.

Doubt was the biggest sin of all. It was the sin that would seal our doom for all eternity. Instilled in me was the Apostle Paul's fiery declaration: "Let God be true, but every man a liar."

That meant the Bible is true and the scientists are Satan-deluded liars. Secular historians also are pawns in Satan master deception, distorters of biblical truth. All the worldly philosophers were dead wrong (in the spiritual sense) because they started out wrong - that is, without faith. These things being so, to listen to any of their profane babblings would undermine the faith that means eternal life.

I wasn't one of those church-school children - we couldn't afford it. My education came via public schools. I was just a very poor student, especially in the sciences. Too many things I took with an eyeroll because they didn't square with my faith. The Big Bang, Dinosaurs and cavemen, for instance.

There was something else, too. I didn't believe I would live to adulthood, and didn't see the importance of a good education, because the world was coming to an end very soon. Armageddon theology cast a black pall over my formative years. I didn't want the world to end. I wanted to grow up, to live, to enjoy the pleasures I had had such a short time to enjoy. This led me even from my youth to the living of a double life. Of doing "naughty" things I wasn't supposed to do and then fearfully repenting later. I remember the prayer I formed as a child and spoke incessantly and every night before going to sleep: "God, forgive me of all my sins and keep me ready to go with you."

I worried about that, and every time my parents were late getting home from work I began to get that cold-water-in-the-veins feeling that maybe the Rapture had taken place and I had been left behind.

Even doing things that I just couldn't convince myself were really wrong, just against my "raising," was a source of mental anguish. God was always watching, and his Recording Angel was always there, taking down every misdeed in order to add to my book of works for review on Judgment Day.

Oddly enough, the first real crack in that cosmic egg occurred when I purchased from my local Bible bookshop a reprint of a very old book about "alleged discrepancies" of the Bible. Reading through it, I actually found myself more troubled by the weak defenses of "Bible truth" than by the embarrassing contradictions and illogic being defended against.

That crack grew wider the more I dug into the matter. Eventually I was forced to admit to myself that at best the Bible had quite a bit of good old-fashioned human error mixed in.

By my late teens my testicles finally reached a size that allowed me to check out from our city's public library that evil book I had heard about all my life. That old infidel manual The Age Of Reason, by filthy little atheist "Tom Paine."

It was like opening the windows on the first warm day of spring. The fresh air of reason blew into my mind and has not stilled since. Thomas Paine was not an atheist. He believed in God. He didn't, however, believe in any Bible other than nature. Hey, that resolved several of my problems right there.

I took my Bible off its pedestal for the last time when the truth of Paine's words sank in:

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication — after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

I was finally free. Free to examine the universe around me and search it alone for the truth. Free to ignore the rantings of the faithful who "know" and who don't walk by sight.

And my life is many times better now. If I have given up hope for eternal life, it is because I accept my fate as being the same as that of every other living thing in the universe. For this universe is my home, now and forever.

Free Will Explains Nothing

There was recently a letter in the Abilene Reporter-News from a woman whose son was murdered. Making the best of horrible tragedy, this lady finds solace in her son's organs being donated to six different recipients. Also she finds solace in religious faith.

She writes that in conversations with people about this tragedy she is faced with a common theme: anger towards God - anger directed at a God who is able but apparently unwilling to prevent "atrocities."

But she explains this with the ever-popular free will theodicy. She writes that God isn't responsible, but rather the killer who exercised his free will in the commission of the murder. She calls free will "the most special and most difficult gift of all."

She praises God and "his grace" for bringing six miracles out of that horror. That was, she says, "God's reaction." Then she invites us to think about that.

So I will.

I will never, never, never, never, be able to understand the popularity of the free will defense for the existence of evil. Although it was spoon-fed to me from the time it first occurred to me to question my parents about how this good God we spent so much of our time and tithe money supporting (and we were a very poor family - we could have used that money to buy important things like food!) is consistent with this world of suffering.

That argument is usually presented in the form of:

Well, God could have made us robots, preprogrammed and lacking emotion; but he wanted creatures who could love him back; and he wanted that love to be offered freely.

To which my mind can't help rejoining:

And to that end he placed us in this vale of suffering and hides from us so that the only love that is practical for us to muster is an irrational love. A love based on fear. Fear that God might give Satan permission to put even more misfortune and hardship on us (read the book of Job). Fear that he will torture us for eternity if we don't "love" and obey him (read the New Testament). And rather than appearing to us directly and cultivating a personal relationship with us - which is, after all, how love affairs are actually formed - he hides in silence in that "Beautiful Isle of Somewhere."

Oh, yeah. He does have a bounty of public relations people; unfortunately they are hopelessly divided as to exactly where God stands on every important issue except, perhaps, for these: He exists and wants your complete devotion and it will be hell to pay for you if he doesn't get it.

Now I don't know the details about this dear woman's murdered son. But I have to wonder why God couldn't prevent such tragedies and do it without curtailing the murderer's free will. The brush of a Guardian Angel's wing might alert potential victims of approaching danger. A sudden fainting spell or muscle cramp of a would-be murderer could short-circuit a very foul deed. A jammed gun or dropped knife, any number of interventions could prevent the actual carrying out of evil deeds without interfering with the free will of a darkened soul.

And I always I wonder why, if this concept of free will is deemed so religiously important, it doesn't pose a problem about Heaven. Shall the redeemed lose their free will upon arrival there? Or will they be shown the door as our first parents were in Eden when their free will brings them to disobedience? Or if people can be both free and holy in Heaven, why could God not have worked out that situation here on earth?

I think it becomes apparent, if we are to be honest, that we are dealing with a rationalization, and a very poor one at that. Free will does not in any way, shape or form explain why a supposedly all-good and all-powerful God allows atrocities to occur.

Okay, in closing, and for lack of space ignoring interesting questions such as "what exactly is meant by free will" and "does free will exist or is it merely an illusion," I have to say that if free will is the supposed explanation for human evil, it still points the finger of blame directly at this Creator who gave humans free will.

I honestly don't see how anyone can take comfort in that. Rather than a gift, it would appear to be a curse.

Misotheists Anonymous?

Well, everyone seems to have a support group. Perhaps folks like me need one.

But first a word about misotheism, which the dictionaries define as a hatred of God or the gods. As I've explained before, after years of thinking about the matter of God and religion, in the which I slowly managed to de-indoctrinate myself of the beliefs instilled in me by my upbringing, I arrived at a position that recognizes God as a metaphor. I'm not literally a misotheist if that entails belief in a personal God. However, I do hate a popular and widespread conception of God. That is the fellow I so often take issue with on my blog. So perhaps it's more accurate to say I hate bad ideas about God.

I hate the idea that the universe may be something of a hoax because instead of being a self-explanatory and consistent system, it is and has been tinkered with from time to time by God's supernatural interventions (miracles) which skews the evidence. Creationists are the chief villains in this joke, but there are also those who think "natural" disasters either have or sometimes have a supernatural origin.

I hate the idea that good and evil are defined by God's fiat; that good and evil can be reduced to a set of commands or ideals based on God's will, and unbelievers are, therefore, bad people.

I hate the idea that God is supposedly omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, and somehow - to all appearances - totally indifferent to the abundance of evil in this vale of suffering.

I hate the idea that God has favorites. i. e., chosen or elect people. I much prefer the humanist ideal of equality.

I hate the idea that God punishes and tortures his creatures; that we are "worms" or so far beneath Him as to be comparatively insignificant.

I hate the idea that submission to God's will is human fulfillment, that slavery is really freedom.

These are all ideas that tear down the effort to come together as people and make this life all we can make it.

These ideas had a very negative impact on my own life in lots of ways, and I see that same effect in the lives of others. What I find extremely troubling are the people I interact with who feel the way I do but out of fear find themselves trapped in the mindset of that concept of God. I understand that more than most of you could ever know unless you have experienced it. Fear of an "angry God" and/or fear of disapproval and abandonment of angry-God-believing friends and family members are emotionally distressing.

I just strongly feel that silence isn't an appropriate response. And I feel we should stick together and hold out for the death of that type of God.

Another Christian Voice Weighs In On The Apocalyptic Relevance Of Japan's Earthquake And Tsunami

The Christian magazine Charisma is featuring an interview with Christian author Steve Wohlberg which discusses how Japan's recent tragedies fit into God's overall plans. Wohlberg expects things are going "to worse before it gets better" and says:

In Revelation 16, we have the seven last plagues described. Those are going to devastate the planet. That’s right before the Second Coming of Christ. Those plagues haven’t started yet but they are coming at some point. And in Revelation Chapter 16, verses 18 and 19, it describes a “great earthquake such as was not since men where upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake and so great.” And as a result of that quake, it says that the cities of the nations fell. That’s the final spasm right before the Second Coming.

The Haiti quake, the Japan quake, the Pakistan quake, and other things like this, are indicators of a much larger catastrophe that is coming. I wish it wasn’t the case but that’s what I see. All of this is the tragic outworking of sin. When Adam and Eve chose to follow Satan that brought sin into the world. The sin is here. The planet is suffering. People are suffering. And a loving God is allowing these catastrophes and the demonstration of the consequences of human sin so that when He finally intervenes and ends it that He can end it permanently and it will be over forever. That’s why He’s allowing this.

So there it is! This loving God of Wohlberg's is trying to make a point about sin and so has been allowing centuries of human and animal suffering in order to do it. Nice guy!

He elaborates on his thesis:

Using biblical terminology, we could say these kinds of events are judgments. But that doesn’t necessarily mean God has directly caused them. Many times, God allows things to happen. He certainly has His hand on the planet. Sometimes He just withdraws His protection.

Some judgments are direct from God such as Sodom and Gomorrah. God sent fire from heaven and destroyed those cities. There are other times when God’s judgments occur because He allows things to happen that He had previously held back. Humanity’s sin just keeps on going so He finally stops protecting people.

Enough of this parsing of words! God is directly responsible. If God truly is omniscient, that is, all-knowing, then he knew before he laid the foundation of the world (as the Bible puts it) that humans would fall and plunge the world into suffering. Actually, it seems to me he should have learned a little something about this from the previous fall of Lucifer and certain of his angels, but I digress. God knew in advance what a failure this enterprise was going to be. Yet he allowed it. According to the Christian theory, God knowingly, willingly allowed sin into the universe and has been sitting on his throne for centuries watching it play out in all its ugliness. But he loves us!

And one day, someday he finally plans on getting around to doing something about it.

What a diabolical concept of God.

And can someone explain to me how humanity is better served by adherence to this type of mythology?

Wouldn't It Be Great To Have Leaders Who Believe All Are Equal?

Of course it would. Of course. But one of the Republican front-runners in the 2012 presidential campaign is Mike Huckabee, and in this report of his recent talk at Statesville Christian School he spewed some true idiocy:

In something of a tongue-twister, Huckabee said the U.S. “was created to be an exceptional exception to that notion of exceptionalism” that existed at the time.

He said that the kind of “biblical worldview” taught at SCS was in the direction of unmitigated equality. “I’d love the world to be lead by people who have a biblical worldview,” he said.

“Wouldn’t it be an exciting thing to have leaders who believe all of us are equal?” he later asked.

Huckabee said part of such a worldview as is taught at Statesville Christian is the idea of absolutism that rejects moral objectivism and stipulates that some things “are always right” and others “are always wrong.”

Yes, it would be great to have our leaders fully espouse human equality, but don't expect it from folks like Huckabee, Palin, Gingrich, Jindal, Romney, Santorum or other potential Republican presidential candidates who have a biblical worldview and are moral absolutists. People they "know" are wrong always were wrong and always will be wrong until such time as they are badgered into accepting the Bible as THE moral guide and "clean up" their lives.

We can look back into our nation's history and see just how that biblical worldview equality thing played out in former days, when those "savage" Native Americans were slaughtered and abused, slavery was considered a divine institution, and women were treated under the law as subservient to men.

Nah, Huck, I'd sooner pass on that.

But Seriously, If We Were Discussing Leprechauns Instead (Or: Lack Of Faith Isn't Faith)

I was reading an article about Rep. Randy Forbes' efforts to reinforce the nation's motto, "In God We Trust." I posted on this before and suggested that it seems that folks who think there is some special value in having this motto on our money and posted prominently in our public buildings (and this thought would apply to the Ten Commandments as well) have left the realm of religion and have reached the point of superstition.

That's just my opinion, for whatever it's worth.

You can't even have a serious discussion with most folks about the existence of a personal God because they are so prone to get their underwear all bunched up.

Follow the link above and look at the discussion that followed in the comment section.

Wow. It heats up and gets nasty real quick-like.

And the discussion always come round to something like what one reader wrote to another:

I never did believe that Thor made thunder, but ya know......atheist books are also "man made", and since they (as well as yourself) have no proof of the claim "there is no God", then they're just stories too.

BTW, don't ask me for proof......I don't have any. That's why it's called faith......just like your unverified faith that He doesn't exist.

Exactly. That is why it is called (religious) faith. It's not about evidence. It's about what one believes or feels in his heart is so. And that belief supplies the supposed warrant for making any number of claims and for attacking others who follow a more empirical approach.

But that commenter's latter point is one that gets my drawers all wadded up. If we were discussing leprechauns - and I would assume that most adults would agree that those are mythological beings - you wouldn't characterize my lack of belief in them as faith they don't exist. Would you?

It isn't faith to just take the approach that things are what they to all appearances seem to be. It does take faith to bring in any number of magical or supernatural "hidden" causes and backstage goings on into the picture. But not seeing any need to do so is not an exercise of faith! As the popular saying goes, give me a break!

Yes, We Believe In Heaven (and ghosts, visitors from other planets, vampires, etc.)

The United States is a very religious people (so long as you listen to our rhetoric rather than check our deeds).

NBC's Today Show has been covering young Colton Burpo and his alleged visit to the celestial realms. They are taking a poll which asks: Do you believe in heaven?

As I'm writing this the results thus far are:

Yes: 66.3%
No: 23:4%
I'm not sure, but I hope so!: 10.3%

But check out the first two comments on the page:

No. Because there is no scientific evidence of it.

And then, of course, there is this:

Yes. I know there is a heaven because God's word speaks of one.

And round and around the mulberry bush we go!

The Reverend Franklin Graham: It Sorta Kinda Feels Like The End

Okay, I'm paraphrasing Graham slightly. What he actually said (and this is in regard to Japan's recent earthquake and tsunami):

What are the signs of his second coming? War and famine and earthquakes … escalating like labor pains. Maybe this is it, I don’t know. We should pray and be vigilant. The Bible teaches us Jesus is going to return someday. Many of us we believe that day is sooner rather than later.

Whether the end is in five years, 10 years, 100 years or 1,000 years, we need to be ready to stand before God.

That's clear as swamp water, huh?

Graham is just following a time-honored tradition of some Christian leaders - using vague language in an attempt to sound relevant. His daddy, the Rev. Billy Graham, wrote a book a number of years ago about Jesus' second coming, Approaching Hoofbeats. I read it just for fun, to see what indicators he thought might be taking place. It, too, said nothing any more than that it might near or far, but be ready. How profound!

Actually, Franklin Graham is referencing Jesus' Olivet Discourse, found in Matthew's gospel, chapter 24 (actually it's in all three of the synoptic gospels), wherein he answers his disciples questions in verse 3:

And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be (the siege and destruction of the city of Jerusalem)? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

Why the disciples in the least would be interested in earthquakes, wars and famines many centuries in the future is worth pondering but never addressed by preachers. Such an idea takes all the steam out of Jesus' response to their question, and leaves his warning for them to watch hanging in the air as just so much wordiness.

Or we can read the entire chapter and notice that Jesus was speaking about an even he expected to happen in that first century! He was speaking of the Jerusalem of their day and of the temple then standing, that was to be desecrated and then decimated.

Then Jesus said this very interesting thing:

Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled (verse 34).

Well, what could be clearer?

When I recently pointed out to a Christian friend how that Jesus repeatedly predicted he would return two thousand years ago, she replied: "How do you know he didn't return and people just didn't realize it?" "Or maybe Jesus was like a lot of apocalyptic ranters, just out-and-out wrong," I helpfully offered.

Jesus and his message are greatly misunderstood today, after centuries of manipulative priestcraft. Which point leaves me a good place to invite you to take part in yesterday's Groper Poll about Jesus, if you haven't already.

Remember The Sabbath Day: Buy A Beer

For some time we have been debating here in my home state of Georgia about allowing alcohol sales on Sunday. Only Connecticut and Indiana join us in banning package alcohol sales on Sunday.

But finally the state Senate has passed a bill in favor of ending the ban. So there. Let's see what happens now. Former governor Sonny Purdue was adamantly opposed to such a thing, but new governor Nathan Deal may be more flexible.

One of our local newspapers ran an article about the debate, referring to opponents of sales of alcohol on the Sabbath. One of the locals replied with a blistering letter-to-the-editor and said:

I assure you that Georgia already allows alcohol to be sold on the Sabbath, as the Sabbath is Saturday, the last day of the week — the day on which God rested, according to the Bible. The Georgia debate concerns alcohol sales on Sunday, the first day of the week.

The article reported that some opponents of the measure cite “respect for the Sabbath” as a reason.

Again, few Christians other than Adventists, etc., show any respect for the Sabbath, and that includes the fundamentalists and political rabble-rousers who want to post the Ten Commandants in every nook and cranny. Probably few, if any, of them observe the Sabbath, but then also few of them observe the other nine commandments about lying, stealing, adultery and the like either. None of the Ten Commandments mentions anything about alcohol use or sales at any time, nor did Jesus have anything to say on the subject. Where do people come up with these ideas?

Hear, hear! Symbolism and empty pious talk are the stock-in-trade of religious political conservatives.

Groper Poll: Jesus We Hardly Knew Ye

Not so long ago I asked my readers what they thought about Jesus and received some interesting answers. I'm fascinated by this first century prophet, but even more so by the hold he has on our country as a whole. Even non-Christians are quick to acknowledge his impact. But it is obvious that opinions about the man and his teachings are wide and varied. The large number of religious traditions supposedly based on his teachings - all perhaps unfairly lumped together under the banner of Christianity - gives testimony to the fact that Jesus is widely misunderstood.

My Groper Poll question for this week:

What was the biggest influence in forming your mental image of Jesus?

a) reading/studying the canonical gospels

b) Hollywood movies about Jesus

c) reading a book(s) about his life

d) hearing about him from Bible preachers and teachers

e) from information your parents passed to you

f) other


I will go first and state that I first heard about Jesus from my parents and the leaders of my church, and I watched the popular Jesus movies that crop up on television every Easter season. But I have to say that when I got old enough to want to clear up the confusion in my own mind, I went straight to the Biblical gospels. Those studies built the framework of what I now hold to be true about Jesus.

Faith Amid Japan's Disaster

Jessica Ravitz at the CNN Belief Blog has a very interesting article, Finding faith amid disaster, that assembles the thoughts of several religious representatives and one representative from the movement known as the New Atheists concerning God's relationship to the tragedies that swept over the nation of Japan last week. I really enjoyed reading it.

In the short amount of space that was evidently allotted to these thinkers, there unfortunately wasn't a lot of room to go into detail. Some of the answers brought to my mind more questions.

I was most in sympathy with Sam Harris' thought about religious faith:

The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion.

Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion. Thoughts like, “this might be all part of God’s plan,” or “there are no accidents in life,” or “everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves” - these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous. They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings. It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this.

But that variety of religious faith was the one thing lacking in the responses from the other religious representatives, even from that of the Christian fundamentalist Rev. Franklin Graham, who opined:

I don’t believe God does want this to happen. I don’t think it was ever God’s intention.

Okay, that's the man's personal opinion. But does it square with the Bible from which he preaches? Graham doesn't elaborate.

Rabbi Harold Kushner introduces a non sequitur when he writes:

Where is God in Japan today? In the courage of people to carry on their lives after the tragedy. In the resilience of those whose lives have been destroyed, families swept away, homes lost, but they resolve to rebuild their lives. In the goodness and generosity of people all over the world to reach out and help strangers who live far from them, to contribute aid, to pray for them.

How can people do such things if God were not at work in them to lend a counterweight to a natural disaster?

Well, I think that is a non sequitur unless the Rabbi uses God in a metaphorical sense, the way I use the word here at my blog when discussing my own spiritual views.

But if he means that only those who believe in a theistic god can do good things, it is an insult to non-theists like myself and

Rev. Tesshu Shaku, a Buddhist priest who wrote:

Buddhism is called a religion with no god. So we don’t think God caused this, according to the Buddhist way of thinking. We think of the law of cause and effect, searching for a cause. It is the same approach as science. The cause of this earthquake is the friction between the North American plate and the Pacific plate.

The Japanese are more focused on relationships as opposed to faith, feeling the pain of others....

The Muslim faith was represented by Dr. Sayyid Syeed, who gave this:

We are trained by our faith that every suffering, whether big or small, brings us closer to God’s mercy and forgiveness, to the extent that the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) said, if you are walking and feel a thorn pierce your foot, you should know that even this little bit of pain brings you divine blessing and God’s forgiveness. These times of suffering give us an opportunity to demonstrate patience and faith, and therefore, become closer to God.

Indeed, I suppose it might be said that those who were obliterated became the closest to God!

Jesuit priest Rev. James Martin frankly admitted that

For the believer, there is no satisfactory answer for why we suffer.

But then he goes on to make this telling remark:

Oftentimes people become more religious in times of sorrow. They find that they are able to meet God in new ways. Why? Because when our defenses are down and we’re more vulnerable, God can break into our lives more easily. It’s not that God is closer, it’s that we’re more open.

Read: During tragedies most humans feel helpless and are therefore desperate for divine assistance.

All this is very interesting, but not very conclusive. But by all means, follow the link and check out the article for yourself. I only skimmed it here.

Those of us who do not believe in a supernatural person popularly called God find no reason to explain the purpose of evil in the world. It's just, to use the popular phrase, the nature of the beast.

But when you hold the idea that God is a person with human-like emotional qualities (because, it is suggested, we are made in God's image), it becomes something of an embarrassment to explain natural disasters. Kushner jettisons God's omnipotence in order to keep his benevolence. Martin keeps both and admits humans can't give an answer, but that shouldn't affect religious faith (this is consistent with biblical message of the book of Job). Dr. Syeed doesn't have a problem reconciling suffering and God's love and actually sees "these kinds of tragedies as a test from God." Words I suppose can be very elastic in the vocabularies of the theologians.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to note is that for the majority of the Japanese people, this isn't even a question at all. They don't accept the traditional Western conception of God.

Cuddly God

Popular Christian preacher Rob Bell, who of late has received much press because of his book Love Wins, was interviewed the other day by George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America.

One of the questions George asked Bell concerned the situation in Japan, which he characterized as "something that looks like hell on earth."

The preacher responded with:

When there is human suffering, we shed tears, and I believe God shed tears, too.

To which I thought: okay, then what?

That kind of sentiment makes you feel kind of warm and fuzzy and ... WAIT A MINUTE! ... this is God we are talking about.

God is creator of the heavens and earth and all therein, yet the best he can do in time of tragedy is cry along with us?

Personally, I would really like to know why we should think, based on a long study of human history - and for this I highly recommend the Flexner's book The Pessimist's Guide To History as a brief and handy guide - that there is any benevolent deity watching over us.

"God is love" we are repeatedly told. But in human terms, this means God should protect his children. After all, what would we think of a human parent who knowingly allowed tragedy they could prevent to befall their children?

Would tears shed in court by such a parent impress a judge and jury?

In yesterday's post I wrote about Job and mentioned God's long reply to his questioning, which stretched over three chapters of the book (chapters 38-40). I would just point out now that not once in that long discourse did God mention anything about being saddened or in tears over the trials that he had allowed to come upon his servant. God puts himself above and beyond human questioning. That is the position of faith.

I wonder whence Rob Bell is getting his ideas about God? If love isn't winning now, I fail to see why it follows that love will win in the end.

The Bible God is anything but cuddly and easily moved to tears.

Are You Wearing Biblical Eyeglasses?

You know what? I don't very often agree with ardent fundamentalist and Biblical Creation apologist Ken Ham, but I do like the way he laid the matter out recently on his blog. In a post titled Wearing Biblical Glasses, Ham wrote:

We all wear glasses! In fact, there are only two kinds of glasses in an ultimate sense. We either wear God’s glasses or man’s glasses. As explained in the “Starting Points” room at the Creation Museum, there are only two starting points for our worldviews: one either starts with God’s Word or man’s word. Ultimately, there are only two religions in the world: one is based on God’s Word (the Bible), and the other is based on man’s word.

Where he and I part company is that he wears Biblical glasses and I wear human glasses, subscribing to critical, logical thinking combined with the scientific method as the best way to understand the universe.

Back in my fundamentalist Christian days, when I thought the way Ken Ham does, I would not have tried to reason about the universe as so many theologians (and would-be theologians) attempt to do. There would have been no reason to do that. Biblical glasses, or the position of religious faith, would have been antithetical to that.

I believe that is the point of Ham's Creation Museum and its "Starting Points." Unless you are wearing Biblical Glasses, much of what follows will make little sense. And if you indeed are wearing those glasses, anything "ungodly" science might have to say on the subject is totally irrelevant. If God said it, it must be true. The scientists are going only as far as human reason can take them, and the Bible believer will tell them that isn't very far.

God created the universe ex nihilo, fashioning the heavens and the earth, creating life on earth, including animals and humans, in six days and then resting on the seventh. That's what the Book says: accept it by faith.

I know, I know. Modern Christian theologians are assuring us that science and theology do not really conflict. But that is a position that is arrived at by introducing human reason into the picture. I call liberal theology a halfway house, and I think it is. It isn't fully faith and it isn't fully reason. It is a mixture of both, and for that reason is like oil and water: stop shaking the flask and the two will then separate quite nicely into the separate ingredients that they are.

Leaving that subject now, I have argued here at my blog that the problem of evil is an insurmountable obstacle to a reasonable view of an omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent Theistic God. A good God would not knowingly allow evil, and an all-powerful God would be able to prevent such evil. That is the reasonable human way of looking at the matter.

Again, some aren't content to stick with their Biblical glasses - showing, I believe, a distinct lack of faith - but instead have attempted to install a human reason bifocal into their glasses. And the vision those glasses produce is quite distorted and nonsensical.

As for the Biblical answer to why God permits evil, it is simple and straightforward: Just because. Accept it by faith and don't question it.

If you read the book of Job you see that the book's protagonist attempts with help from family and friends to reason their way through the problem of evil. Basically it's the same things we hear from today's rationalizers. I guess, to quote Qoheleth, "there is nothing new under son."

God goes into some long detail explaining his credentials and explaining just how inappropriate it is for humans to question him: "Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him?" (Job 40:2). For three chapters (Job 38-40) God drones on about how great he is and sums it up with: "He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride" (Job 41:34.) Okay, there it is: The king can do as he damn well pleases with his subjects.

When you get into the New Testament you find the same answer. The Apostle Paul gave one of the most mind-blowing theological essays imaginable in his missive to the Romans.

When he gets around to addressing God dealings with his creatures, he bluntly tells us:

What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Romans 9:14,15).

Okay. Blessed be the faith that allows so many to accept what makes no sense at all from a purely human standpoint!

But Paul isn't finished. He goes on:

One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? (Romans 9:19-22.)

Well, there you go. According to Biblical theology, God does what he wants for his own purpose, just as the Calvinists tell us, and we have no right to question it. Accept it by faith.

Or you can try on my human glasses if you'd like.

Do You Like Your Birth Name?

It seems like I might have mentioned this before, but when I was born my mother selected for me a name straight from the Bible. The story she has told me is that during her pregnancy she felt the Lord was speaking to her, assuring her that he would have his hand on me in a special way during my life. Well, I don't know about that ... but I do know that of her three children, I'm the only one whose name was biblically inspired. I'm named Douglas after my father's brother who died in infancy. But she also wanted me to have a special, godly name, and for that she went to the Bible and selected Nathan for my middle name, after the Old Testament prophet. I hated that name as a child, and no one except Mom has ever called me that (which she used almost exclusively when addressing me when I was a child). Now I find I rather like that name, but I'm too old and too well known as Doug to make the change.

Anyway, in the spirit of taking a break from the usual weighty matters I discuss on my blog, I'm going to post this little item I ran across the other day while reading an old used book I picked up somewhere. This, I think, is good for a chuckle and comes from Webb Garrison's Strange Facts About The Bible:

English Puritans of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were so obsessed with Scripture that many of them chose words and phrases from Holy Writ as names for their children. Lower's English Sur-names reports that a jury list from Sussex County included these specimens:

Faint-not Hewitt
Redeemed Compton
God-reward Smart
Meek Brewer
Peace-of-God Knight
Kill-sin Pimple
Be-faithful Juniper
Seek-wisdom Wood
Make-peace Heaton
Stand-fast-on-high Stringer
Search-the-Scripture Moreton
Weep-not Billing
Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith White

It just goes to show that if you dislike the name your parents selected for you, it could always be worse! (And doesn't that Kill-sin Pimple character sound intimidating?)

No Sacred Cows Here

American Revolutionary War hero and author of Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man wrote:

Though "none by searching can find out God, or the Almighty to perfection," yet I am persuaded, that if mankind would dare to exercise their reason as freely on those divine topics as they do in the common concerns of life, they would, in a great measure, rid themselves of their blindness and superstition, gain more exalted ideas of God and their obligations to him and one another, and be proportionally delighted and blessed with the views of his moral government, make better members of society, and acquire, manly powerful incentives to the practice of morality, which is the last and greatest perfection that human nature is capable of.

Analyzing my blog stats, I've noticed a significant decrease in "visits" and, sadly to me, the loss of a follower in recent days. I believe this is probably due to my recent focus and negative takes on the popular conception of a personal God.

Some of my readers and most dependable commenters - without which this blog would be one long, boring monologue - are believers in God (in one form or another, including theists). It is to their credit that they stay and participate. As my blog title suggests, the exercise of Groping The Elephant is an ongoing process, hampered by the fact that we just are unable from our finite perspective to view the entire elephant.

I applaud those who are with me in this effort, and bemoan the fact that some folks just aren't able for one reason or another to put everything on the table and face the challenge. I regret that some don't see what I'm trying to accomplish here.

There is a lot of posting about God and spiritual issues here. That is a part of my personal background, as my "about me" section suggests. I have no problem with the definition of God as "the ground of all being." Some wonder why I bother with that, but I believe it is foundational. This blog reflects on my journey in examining and rejecting the worldview of my youth, and then my ongoing effort to construct a viewpoint to replace it. My Groper Poll questions concern issues that I have pondered deeply in my journey. And I truly enjoy reading of your grapplings with these same ideas, or introducing them to you if you haven't grappled with them.

Most religious people, it seems to from my personal experience, are much more critical about what Allen called "the common concerns of life," which seems to me to be quite ass-backwards if their religion is a major component of their lives. Reason seems to me to be of such greater value than mere faith, it amazes me that so many people are suspicious of it when it comes to religious/spiritual topics. Guess I'll never figure that one out. For me it was a matter of maturing intellectually, of tracing out my own path rather than blindly following the directions of others.

Anyway, at my blog everything is on the table at all times.

The God Of The Calvinists Might Have Sent Japan's Earthquake/Tsunami/Nuclear Crisis

I've spent quite a bit of time here on my blog discussing God and the Japanese tragedies of the past few days. And I've been discussing it with my Christian friends. Friends, who like me, were brought up singing that ditty He's Got The Whole World In His Hands.

I have heard from a few sources something like what Pastor Cho Young-gi, head of the largest Christian Church in the entire world, said:

I fear that this disaster may be warnings from God against the Japanese people’s atheism and materialism.

I hope that these series of events will drive the Japanese to turn their eyes towards God.

Most of the thinking Christians I've consulted, however, are more sympathetic and honestly state their inability to reconcile such evils with the concept of a loving God. Faith allows one to hold such contradictions.

Calvinistic Christianity, named after its great systemizer, the infamous John Calvin, a hard man who would not hesitate to execute a heretic, and whose Institutes of the Christian Religion gives classical statement of the type of God who for no reason but his own divine whim elects and saves from eternal damnation certain of his creatures; and that is the type of a God who might create a world knowing full well that it would be plunged into sin and suffering, yet do it anyway.

Calvin's God didn't have much regard for his creatures. Calvinism has, as one of its five pillars, the teaching of the Total Depravity of Man, eloquently stated by one of its divines, Ralph Venning thusly:

Sin has degraded man and made him a beast. It is true, he has the shape of a man, but alas! he is degenerated into a bestial and beastly nature. It is would be better to be a beast than to be like a beast, living and dying like one. It would be better to be Balaam's ass than such an ass as Balaam himself was...But to set this degeneration and degradation of man by sin before you more clearly and fully, I shall deal with it under three headings: a) Sin has made man like a beast, b) like the worst of beasts, c) worse than the beasts.

Lovely!

So it is no wonder that one of the better-known Calvinistic divines of yesteryear, Jonathan Edwards, was able to say of God's creatures:

Confess your nothingness and ill-desert before God.

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a fallen rock.

Now a God who felt this way about his creatures (excepting those whom he chose to give grace to and redeem) would have not the slightest qualm about sending such tragedies man's way.

For my part, I would much prefer the impotent God of Rabbi Kushner or even no God at all to the God of John Calvin and his followers.

Weekly Groper Poll: The Value Of God

The tragedies that Japan has experienced the past few days have really weighed on me, especially in the way I view believers in a personal God. Watching the discussions that have been taking place on the internet, I see just how sharply the line is drawn between those of us believe that humans must work to solve human problems and those who believe God is in control of all.

Yesterday I was over at the Huffington Post reading their religious section, looking at more responses from theists. One of the reader's comments caught my eye and I knew I had my poll question for today. It was from someone who goes under the name "Kaltu" and asks:

These events continue to remind us of the contradict­ions of religious truth claims. When such disasters destroy so much of our world, killing both religious and non religious, pious and impious, IF THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FAITH AND FATE WHERE IS THE VALUE OF GOD?

Good point.

My Groper Poll question for this week is:

If there is no difference between faith and fate, where is the value of God?

A Pope Prays To The God Who Allows Evil

Amid reports that the death toll from the disasters in Japan may reach as high as 10,000 and, on top of that, reports that nuclear meltdowns are looming on the horizon, we are being implored to pray to God on behalf of those who are affected by these tragedies.

Pope Benedict XVI is praying for the victims and is said by the Vatican to be "deeply saddened."

Well, yes, we all are. At least all who are compassionate humans.

But some of us are more than merely saddened. We are confused by those like the Pope who believe in a loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God who allowed all this to happen. And that despite that apparent contradiction, we should pray to this God to help those whose lives have been devastated and are being devastated by events He either allowed or caused to happen.

The God of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims knows these things, plans for these things, permits these things to come to pass, and we humans should praise and worship him. We should pray to him to help those he has heaped sorrow and pain upon.

What a fantastic tale!

I'm still waiting with Epicurus for an answer to his riddle:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?

"Thou Rulest The Raging Of The Sea"

Psalms 89: 8, 9:

O LORD God of hosts, who is a strong LORD like unto thee? or to thy faithfulness round about thee? Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them.

Like everyone I am deeply disturbed by the massive earthquake in Japan and the resulting tsunami which have destroyed and devastated so many lives. As those of you who read my blog regularly know, it is instances of human suffering like this that makes me the bitterest at those who go around with "God is great, God is good" ever on their lips and ever ready to condemn those of us who feel that helping hands accomplish more than praying lips every time.

The best thing we can do humanistically speaking - unless we are near enough to physically get involved in the relief effort to help the victims - is to make a donation to support relief efforts for those affected by these tragedies. Those who believe in the efficacy of prayer may go on with their blabbering, but in the end it will be human hands that apply the much needed balm to soothe those in distress. And it will be human hearts that feel and share their suffering and pain.

We all know that Mother Nature can be a bitch. She nurtures us but at the same time can bring us low (or to nonexistence) in a heart's beat. To embrace nature is to embrace the fact that life isn't always the way we think it should be. It is what it is and we have to face it for what it is. That is the price of admission to the show. Mother Nature is a symbol, a personification of a very impersonal and blunt reality. She is not good or bad, but rather good and bad.

I will leave it to the defenders of a personal God to explain how events such as these fit into His/Her character and personality.

I. O. U.s To God

My Eye In The Sky post from day before yesterday expressed just a little of the angst I grew up in, courtesy of the distorted idea of responsibility that my childhood religion instilled in me. I could write hundreds of such posts explaining the many ways that had a negative impact on my life -- and I probably will if I continue to blog.

Over my years of spiritual explorations I became a humanist. I cannot think of religion or spirituality without considering my relationship to my fellow creatures. I'm not one of those like Christopher Hitchens who believes that religion "poisons everything," but I do believe that a lack of the humanist ethic combined with the preoccupation of what we supposedly owe God goes a long way towards explaining how theistically religious folks can sometimes do such wicked things.

Well over a century ago the freethinking orator Robert Ingersoll said:

Now, I admit -- so we need never have a contradiction about it -- I admit that every human being is responsible to the person he injures. If he injures any man, woman, or child, or any dog, or the lowest animal that crawls, he is responsible to that animal, to that being -- in other words, he is responsible to any being that he has injured.

But you cannot injure an infinite Being, if there be one. I will tell you why. You cannot help him, and you cannot hurt him. If there be an infinite Being, he is conditionless -- he does not want anything -- he has it. You cannot help anybody that does not want something -- you cannot help him. You cannot hurt anybody unless he is a conditioned being and you change his condition so as to inflict a harm. But if God be conditionless, you cannot hurt him, and you cannot help him. So do not trouble yourselves about the Infinite. All our duties lie within reach -- all our duties are right here; and my religion is simply this:

First. Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.

Second. If you tell your thought at all, tell your honest thought. Do not be a parrot -- do not be an instrumentality for an organization. Tell your own thought, honor bright, what you think.

My next idea is, that the only possible good in the universe is happiness. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to try and make somebody else so.

That pretty much sums up my view of the matter. I know I can neither help nor hurt the God of theism. But my behavior towards my fellow creatures can inflict pain or ease suffering. My spiritual goal is to avoid the former and seek to do the latter.

Defense Of Marriage

I think conservatives need to rethink their approach to preserving marriage. Take Newt Gingrich's insight.

According to this story, Mr. Gingrich explains his marital immoralities:

There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.

Inasmuch as conservatives, well, especially the Christian variety, have made patriotism such an issue, virtually wrapping the Bible in our nation's flag, perhaps it's time they toned it down a bit. Maybe the would-be theocrats and would-be governors-according-to-God's-law should leave the state houses and get back to God's houses (their churches).

Huckabee, Romney, Palin, Jindal, and a host of other politico-religious leaders should think long and hard about their marriages before it's too late. Passion for country evidently leads to passions of the flesh. The list of political sex scandals would take too long to compose. Many of us have suspected it for a long time. The more you love your country, the less you love your partner. Right?

Or perhaps Newt Gingrich is just full of sh*t! We've suspected that for a long time, too.

Why his wife Callista - whose relationship to Newt is the product of his prior passions - would support placing him in the same temptation again is beyond me.

But not to worry. Newt "felt compelled to seek God's forgiveness." He converted to Catholicism and now the Church - which historically has regarded marriage as a sacrament - has now blessed his and Callista's union, which started in adultery. Well, whatever.

Did I mention that while Newt and Callista were committing adultery, Gingrich was attacking former President Clinton for his marital immorality scandal, committed while he working too hard during his passion for the country?

What is it with these hypocrites?

Well, that's the great thing about God's forgiveness. No matter who you've wronged and abused, not matter how low you have sunk into depravity, all you have to do is just ask God to forgive you - even mass murderers like Jeffrey Dahmer, who also sought God's forgiveness and became a Christian while in prison can get a "clean" slate.

Now how could God forgive anyone for the wrongs they have committed against others? Only the offended party can offer forgiveness.

Enough of that rant. Newt Gingrich is now reaching out to the Religious Right. Why would anyone in his/her right mind entertain supporting this wretch?

The Eye In The Sky

Of the four church services my family attended when I was a child, one of them was a young people's church service. That meant that the "choir" was made up of the children of the church members. You really had no choice about it. It was very bad form to attempt to evade choir service. It brought shame and reproach on your parents and just wasn't worth the hassle you would face once you got back home.

After the song service there might be some little skit involving those same kids, always with a message geared towards using Christian principles in our daily lives. Sometimes there might be a contest. Little prizes would awarded in a Bible Answer Bee. We would line up and answer Bible questions until only one child was left standing. I won a fancy pencil on one occasion, I think I was 5 or 6 at the time, when I "answered" the question "Who climbed up in a tree in order to see Jesus?" I shouted out the answer "Sycamore," bringing sustained laughter from the congregation. They awarded me the prize pencil anyway, because obviously I knew the story.

Finally, as with the adults, there would be a sermon. This was usually something scaled-down but every bit as ridiculous (sometimes even more so because you can get by with much more when you are dealing with young minds) from a reasonable standpoint as a regular church sermon.

But let me go back to that choir. Ugh, the song service! How I hated it. How it embarrassed me to sing these simplistic ditties as the adults looked on with a mixture of smug satisfaction and unrestrained joviality. And we would have to perform the hand gestures as we sang.

One song in particular has stuck with me all these years and is emblematic of the Fundamentalist Christian view of God. The song was sung to the tune of If You're Happy And You Know It. I'm sure just about everyone know that song and the tune. The song we sang at every single young people's meeting went like this:

Oh, be careful little eyes what you see,
oh, be careful little eyes what you see,
there's a Father up above looking down with tender love,
so be careful little eyes what you see

Now this continued along to the various body parts. Be careful little ears what you hear; be careful little tongue what you say; be careful little hands what you do; be careful little feet where you go. You get the idea. And the reason for all this careful attention is because God is watching you and every thing you do. (In my opinion, our parents had just as great a need for this song, but they never sang it!)

I've never forgotten that song, even after all these years.

When I got older, say my teenage years, and began to go through puberty and discovered sexuality in a whole new way, I was tempted in the same way most young boys are. And I always felt guilty after my quality alone time. It was sinful! I had lusted after other women (usually just pictures of women I had snuck into the house, provided by my fellow friends who had raided their father's stashes of girlie magazines - my Dad never bought or kept them).

I would pray long and anguished prayers asking for forgiveness, and promising God I would never "do it" again. Well, that was a lost cause, and brought me much vexation.

Not that I didn't fail the song in other ways. Obviously I wasn't always careful about what my hands were doing! My tongue failed me, too, especially when I was in the company of my unbelieving friends. My ears found enjoyable some the devil's music which blared from the radio - when I was out of my mom's and dad's ear range. And my feet also often snuck around to places I wasn't supposed to be.

More guilt, more sin, more repentance, more failings.

I look back on this now with humor. If I were still a member of the religion of my youth, I have to confess, I would still be going through all that. In fact, that is why we all know so many hypocrites. There are just more "thou shalt nots" than human nature will allow!

For most people it seems religion is like dieting. It seems that just about everything that is delicious to eat is either unhealthy or just bad for you diet-wise. And just about everything that brings us ease or pleasure is somehow either sinful or at least unvirtuous from a religious standpoint.

Now, as I've written about before, I finally boiled down my religious commandments to just one: treat everyone else with the same consideration I expect from them.

I no longer entertain the idea that there is a sky-god concerned or angry about what else I might do in my shower besides shower, or cares if I tell an occasional white-lie - "Hi Doug, how are you today?" "Fine" (when in fact my back is killing me so much I had trouble dressing that morning - or that gets bent out of shape if I watch a move or TV program that has a little nudity or cursing, or that cares that I let an occasional four-letter-word slip out, etc.

But in case there is such a God as my youthful religion depicted, let it be known that I'm watching him/her, too. And I'm not impressed with the cesspool that this world is. Children raped and abused, the elderly raped and abused, the rest of us raped and abused - or at least in constant danger of it, killings galore, corruption and hypocrisy to the hilt, etc.

I guess this sounds arrogant, but if God is indeed governing this world, as the major religions tell us is so, I submit that I'm doing a much better job tending to my affairs than he/she is his/hers.

So, yes, I will keep myself and my body members in check. I will do it for my own sake and for the sake of my fellow humans. I don't do it because I see a reason to please a deity who doesn't seem to be very pleasing, all things considered.

A Rabbi Reasons About God

Rabbi Adam Jacobs of late has been engaging unbelievers over at the Huffington Post. His latest effort is a response to "[t]he contention ... that most, if not all, religious systems rely solely on wholly unsubstantiated faith to support their beliefs."

Let me stop right here and say, yes, I believe that is the case. When one employs reason and the scientific method as far as they can take you, you wind up short of plausible evidence that a supernatural God exists, or that anything like the so-called supernatural exists.

Having said that, let me go on to say that I believe as true the old saw "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" - or in other words, this inability to prove that a supernatural God exists is not proof he/she does not exist.

In order to get to God one must employ a leap of faith, or a willingness to go beyond the evidence. Most people do this by accepting (or by having been reared in) a particular religious tradition. That first leap of faith allowing you to accept the existence of God is usually followed by further leaps, such as belief that this God has communicated a message to humans in the form of a holy book, that an immortal soul exists, as well as other supernatural creatures such angels and demons, that sin is disobeying and falling short of keeping this God's commands, etc.

All this and more seems quite logical to the religious believer once that first step of believing that God exists is made.

Now as to the reasonableness of belief in God, the good Rabbi does absolutely nothing to make that case other than point out that we humans don't have complete knowledge of every fact in the universe, or specifically exactly how it all came to be in the first place.

Please take the time to read Jacob's piece and see for yourself whether he comes up with even one positive shred of evidence for God's existence.

His case is, and I quote him:

From a theistic perspective the reality seems quite inverted in that it would appear to require an unreasonable commitment to naturalism to maintain a denial of the transcendent.

Throughout his piece Rabbi Jacobs points out gaps in human knowledge, but nowhere gives us anything to fill in those gaps other than the implication that God is the answer. It is the old God of the Gaps argument all over again. This is his "reasonable" argument for God.

His audacious summation is:

I posit to you that all the evidence points, in an obvious and inextricable way, to a supernatural explanation for the origin of life. If there are no known naturalistic explanations and the likelihood that "chance" played any role is wildly minute, then it is a perfectly reasonable position to take that a conscious super-intelligence (that some of us call God) was the architect of life on this planet. Everyone agrees to the appearance of design. It is illogical to assume its non-design in the absence of evidence to the contrary.

At this point the door to the Elevator of Reason opens and Rabbi Jacobs steps off, leaving the next logical inquiry - where did this "conscious super-intelligence" come from? - unanswered.

It doesn't bother me in the least to say "I don't know," nor to admit that we humans may never know things completely. But I start from what I do know. I am a citizen of the Cosmos. If there is something supernatural beyond this, no one knows - despite the fact that the faithful claim they "know" by virtue of their faith.

Now none of what I have just written should be construed as an argument against God's existence. That is where Jacobs and other believers get it wrong about a-theism, which is, literally, no belief in a theistic God. It doesn't take faith to not take a leap of faith.

Perhaps the Cosmos IS the answer.

But if I were compelled by what Blaise Pascal called "reasons of the heart" to believe in a supernatural God, I would just state that as a fact. I wouldn't try to "prove it" or justify it by using reason. That wouldn't be true faith.