The Norwegian bomber was a white Christian, so…

Ness Fraser does an excellent job of highlighting the inherent bias of our approach to terror.

The Norwegian bomber was a white Christian, so I guess that means we should have increased security checks at airports for anyone wearing a crucifix, should treat any Christian-looking person like a potential terrorist, and we should probably try to stop any Churches from being built around where the attacks took place ‘cuz like, it would be as if they were celebrating. OH WAIT…

Original screen capture from Facebook:
Ness Fraser Quote

It’s gonna be, OK

It's gonna be O.K.I live in a neighborhood (just South of Nashville, TN) with a lot of evangelical Christians. This seemingly majority belief in my community is usually not a big deal. The only time it gets annoying is when leaders force a truly evangelical prayer onto the festivities – something that was done a few weeks ago at our neighborhood Fourth of July celebration. It’s completely inappropriate and insensitive to those who believe differently, but in the grand scheme of things it’s still not a big deal to me. For me it’s no different from having a leader thanking a Sun god or asking a blessing from ancestral spirits. It’s all just modern day mythology, and I’m just happy nobody is sacrificing a goat, or worse, a virgin.

While I tolerate the evangelical god-speak at community events and in neighborhood email newsletters, there is one thing that has me continually irritated, and that’s IGBOK. It irritates me, because it’s a patronizing statement based on a false hope.

It’s gonna be

The first part of IGBOK I agree with. At least they recognize what I would call the ineffectiveness of prayer.

God’s “o.k.” doesn’t mean that the cancer will be healed, the relationship fully restored, the physical pain or emotional ache will go away in this life.

However, the second part – the O.K. part – is based on delusional false hope. The hope that even if life is giant ball of shit, you will still spend a blissful eternity with God.

It means that because He has entered and overcome our brokenness…we can live this life with real hope — a hope that knows one day everything will be set right forever in the life to come.

Hope is the drug of choice for Christianity and many other religions. Similar to antidepressants, the false hope of life after death is meant to mask reality so you can better cope with your problems. All you have to do is believe.

Is religious hope a bad thing? I don’t have a good answer for that. If hope for a better afterlife helped keep my daughter from killing herself, or my son from living in despair now, then I would be more accepting of it, regardless of my own philosophical differences. That’s simply based on wanting my children to be happy and to thrive.

However, like most drugs, there are side effects. In order to sustain hope powered by religion, a person must fully immerse themselves into its religious dogma. That means a denial of what is rational and logical (from a scientific perspective), and buying into a worldview that perpetuates exclusion and hate onto other people in the name of love.

Philosophically, I think the only true statement that can be made is, “It’s gonna be.”

As I’ve written before, the idea that anyone can explain the existence of life, let alone what happens after we die, is greater than or equal to bullshit. For me, clinging to a mistruth during a time of grief is both living on false hope, and dishonest to your being.

If you take away all of the things that cannot be observed – the superstitious beliefs that have been passed down from generation to generation, and whose origins can only be attributed to human imagination and creativity – we are left with existentialism. There was a time when we didn’t exist, and now a time when we do exist. And like all living things, we will return to the same state as before we existed. There is absolutely no reason to believe otherwise, even though our survivalism mixed with higher reasoning would have us believe otherwise.

“It’s gonna be.” There’s nothing that comes after that, and that’s O.K.

Believing what you want versus believing what is true

The LIE in Believe

Image by spike55151 via Flickr

It’s important to know why you believe. As a Christian, I believed what I thought to be true. As I came to the realization that what I believed may not be true, my desire for it to remain true kicked in. I wanted there to be a loving God – a savior named Jesus – to care and watch over me. I wanted to believe that as a human being, I was somehow special and would live forever. All of the things that had no proof, I still wanted to be true.

I think many religious people are stuck between what they want to be true, and what they know to be true. It’s a strange place that’s full of functional denial and fortified by the groupthink of socializing with only those of like mind.

It takes great mental fortitude to deny what you want for that which is true. To accept that your desire to live forever is the survivalism of higher reasoning. That your relationship with Jesus is an imaginary friendship. That the supernatural is superstition, revealed through your fears and imagination.

Intelligent, logical and rational Christians believe in spite of what is real, because they want it to be true. It’s only when they remove what they want, and settle for what is true, that they can live free of mental tyranny.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

May 21st, 2011 has now come and gone, leaving everyone predictably un-raptured. The response from the Harold Camping was almost exactly what Richard Dawkins predicted in the Washington Post.

I don’t know where he gets the money, but it would be no surprise to discover that it is contributed by gullible followers – gullible enough, we may guess, to go along with him when he will inevitably explain, on May 22nd, that there must have been some error in the calculation, the rapture is postponed too . . . and please send more money to pay for updated billboards.

That’s close enough to Camping’s response after his none event. However, what intrigued me most about Dawkins’ comments was this.

In our case, as the distinguished astronomer and former president of the Royal Society Martin Rees has conjectured, extinction is likely to be self-inflicted. Destructive technology becomes more powerful by the decade, and there is an ever-increasing danger that it will fall into the hands of some holy fool (Ian McEwan’s memorable phrase) whose ‘tradition’ glorifies death and longs for the hereafter: a ‘tradition’ which, not content with forecasting the end of the world, actively seeks to bring it about.

There’s a term for that – it’s called self-fulfilling prophecy. There’s nothing mystical about self-fulfilling prophecy, because it requires 100% human intervention. If a person or group of people talk about and believe in a prophecy long enough, they will build a false reality around it. For example, if the existence of Israel is key to the continued validity of scriptures and prophecy, the powers that be will do whatever they can to fulfill its pre-ordained destiny.

Self-fulfilling prophecy is intriguing, because it perpetuates irrational and illogical world views. It also, ever so subtlety, preserves sacred beliefs and enables global events and decisions that otherwise wouldn’t occur. And in the worst case scenario, as Dawkins’ expressed, it may be the thing that instigates our own extinction event.

The Christian Fairy Tale

This is a good, albeit snarky, synopsis of the Christian mythology. It was originally posted on ExChristian.net.

Once upon a time there was nothing. But in that nothing was an omnipotent god. This god wasn’t made by anything – he was just always there — hanging out in nothingness for eternity ( Don’t spend a lot of time wondering how this could be, just believe it). You might think he was bored, lazy, or unimaginative because he didn’t do anything, but he was thinking of what he was going to do. It just took him a really long time to come up with a good plan. He thought of talking snakes, talking donkeys, superhuman men who lost their power when their hair was cut, killing people for picking up sticks on his day, making a lot of stupid rules that would be really hard to follow so he could punish them for not following them, wiping out whole communities of men, women, and children, and –oooh!! the best part!! – he would make an evil, powerful angel who would tempt people and cause people to turn away from god so he could put those people in a place of torment for all eternity.

After god decided on a plan of action he got right to work. He made the earth and planets and stars. He added plants and animals and made a man out of dirt. Then he made the man fall asleep and he made a woman out of the man’s rib. They lived happily in a garden where everything was perfect. But one day a talking snake tricked the woman into eating fruit off of a magic tree that god had told them not to eat. This made god mad even though he knew ahead of time they would do that. That was the whole point of god making the magic tree and the talking snake. Duh! So he kicked them out of the garden and labeled every descendant of theirs a big piece of worthless shit, which god called “sinners.” But god was nice enough to let them live for hundreds of years and have tons and tons of worthless shit babies. God knew they were all going to be worthless and he had already preplanned a giant flood to drown them all, except for one family. He had to save one family to start all over again, even though he knew they were going to have tons of worthless shit babies, too.

Deep down god really liked to kill and torment people. He told them how he was a loving god and they had to follow hundreds of stupid rules he made up or he would be well within his power as god to kill them. He made up rules about what they could eat, how to cut their penises, how to wear their sideburns, killing their kids if they talked back, having feasts, washing, working, having sex, and lots, lots more. He knew they couldn’t remember all the rules, much less follow them, so he would have lots of opportunities to kill and torment. Fun!!

Along the way he had a little fun with some of the worthless people. He messed with their minds by allowing the evil angel to kill all the kids of one guy who followed god’s rules really good , he told an old man to kill his son and burn him, told another guy to lay on his side for months and make a fire using human shit, and he told another guy to marry a prostitute even though he had told people before that was a bad thing.

God had an ingenious plan to help all the worthless shit people in the world and make them think he was really a nice, loving god. He was going to make a virgin 12-year-old girl pregnant with himself!! Then god would split into two different entities and be a man and a god. He would go around praying to himself, and tell people how worthless they were and they could either worship him or be eternally tormented. Then he would let himself be tortured and nailed to a cross and his body would die (but he wouldn’t really die because he is god) and then he would come back to the worthless people in two days (though it is supposed to be three days by his prophets, but never mind the technicalities), and tell more people how worthless they were. He would tell them that he was going to split into yet another form (a magic ghost!!) and if they actually believed this bull shit and telepathically communicated with him all the time, they could spend eternity worshipping at his feet. What could be more fun?? Well, the alternative was eternal torment in a fiery hell, so worship it is! Finally he would rise up and disappear never to be seen or heard from again.

And everyone who believes this will live happily ever after.

Train up a child

“Get them while they’re young.” This is the unspoken (and not so unspoken) mission of churches everywhere.

They understand how critical it is to gain converts before they become adults…before they’re exposed to science, history, other religions and other points of view. They aggressively target children and youth with marketing campaigns that rival many advertising companies. They sponsor events, activities, games and lots of free food for the opportunity to influence impressionable minds.

Chris, Andrea, Matt and Dell share their own experiences as children and adults from inside these programs.

An Easter free of religion

This Easter was especially enjoyable, because it was spent without either of our parents (don’t get me wrong, we both love and enjoy our parents). There was no pressure to go to church, have our children confused by the absurdity of Christian theology (including the belief that a half human, half god came back to life, and if you don’t believe in him, you’ll go to hell for eternity). Instead, we did an Easter egg hunt at our city zoo, and on Sunday we decided to go to a local park to enjoy and celebrate the real life around us.

The freethinking blogs I follow had some interesting thoughts for this Easter that I connected with. Jody Milholland posted thoughts about past Easter morning services.

Now, with Christianity a mere reflection in the mirror of my past, I am sure it was the serenity of being with the earth at that early morning hour, and with my mom that made it so special. Because now, I can say with true freedom and gladness that my religion-inspired guilt, shame and fear are buried. When I rolled away the rock of spiritual oppression and bondage, I emerged a new person. I was raised from the dead, resurrected in new life. The old is gone the new has come. I have welcomed the change, the metamorphosis of leaving behind superstitions and fears and welcoming the experience of living fully in the present. No longer with remorse for my past sins or fear of an impending dooms day, I embrace my life with enthusiasm.

Marlene Winell exclaims it is we who are alive.

We emerge from the coma of conformity and stand blinking as we get our bearings. And then we realize “We’re alive!” Here and now, in this world. We pat our own bodies and notice they are real. We pinch ourselves. We look around and see the natural world and we allow ourselves to be moved, perhaps weeping with amazement.

Not to be outdone, Atheist Revolution posted an entry called Happy Zombie Jesus Weekend. While it’s a little over the top–and by over the top, most definitely offensive to many Christians–the point made is very good. Like zombies, Jesus came back to life to claim our minds, err hearts.

Zombie Jesus

Steve Martin and the first (and only) Atheist Song

Lyrics for “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs”

Chris­tians have their hymns and pages,
Hava Nag­i­la’s for the Jews,
Bap­tists have the rock of ages,
Athe­ists just sing the blues.

Ro­man­tics play Claire de Lune,
Born agains sing “He is risen,”
But no one ever wrote a tune,
For god­less ex­is­ten­tial­ism.

For Athe­ists there’s no good news. They’ll never sing a song of faith.
In their songs they have a rule: the “he” is al­ways low­er­case.
The “he” is al­ways low­er­case.

Some folks sing a Bach can­ta­ta,
Luther­ans get Christ­mas trees,
Athe­ist songs add up to nada,
But they do have Sun­days free.

Pentecostals sing to heav­en,
Cop­tics have the books of scrolls,
Nu­merol­o­gists can count to seven,
Athe­ists have rock and roll.

For Athe­ists there’s no good news. They’ll never sing a song of faith.
In their songs they have a rule: the “he” is al­ways low­er­case.
The “he” is al­ways low­er­case.

Atheists don’t have no songs.
Chris­tians have their hymns and pages,
Hava Nag­i­la’s for the Jews,
Bap­tists have the rock of ages,
Athe­ists just sing the blues.

Catholics dress up for Mass,
And lis­ten to, Gre­go­ri­an chants.
Athe­ists just take a pass, Watch foot­ball in their un­der­pants.
Watch foot­ball in their un­der­pants.

Atheists don’t have no songs.

Debate: Does Good Come From God?

Sam Harris, author of The Moral Landscape, debates William Lane Craig on the topic “Is Good from God?”

The second annual God Debate features atheist neuroscientist Sam Harris and Evangelical Christian apologist William Lane Craig as they debate the topic: “Is Good From God?” The debate was sponsored in large part by the Notre Dame College of Arts and Letters: The Henkels Lecturer Series, The Center for Philosophy of Religion and the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts.

The truth behind Christian sayings

Over at ExChristian.net they compiled a funny–and by funny I mean sad–list of Christian sayings. They distilled them into what they really are. Here’s a couple samples:

“God’s ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts.”

Translation: “We know this looks like he is a bad god, but we just have to believe he is doing this for a good reason otherwise…”

Child abuse, starving people, suffering, etc, can all be explained by god being so smart as to have a perfectly good reason for it all. Yeah, right.

“God is testing you.”

Translation: “You must have pissed god off and now you are going to pay.”

Full article: Christian Euphemisms