Prayer Changes Things

If you're as obsessed with me as I am, which is probably unlikely, you'll know that I made a post about prayer over a year ago. The message in this post will probably be somewhat different.

The way Christians think about prayer is ridiculous. They understand that God usually doesn't answer prayer. The way I used to rationalize this is that "God always answers prayers. No is an answer." After a few years of praying, I started to notice that the answer was "no" an awful lot of the time. The answer was "no" so often that it started to look like prayer wasn't changing much at all. Now that I look at it from the other side of the fence, the way God answers prayer looks a whole lot like coincidence to me.

Christians chalk up this whole phenomenon up to "God working in mysterious ways." So when God doesn't answer your prayers, he's got his own mysterious reasons for not doing so, and the Christian must be content. On the rare occasion that a prayer does get answered, it's never Jesus thundering down from the clouds on a fiery chariot to silence your annoying co-worker with his gigantic sword. Instead your co-worker gets disciplined by the boss for being an asshole, or whatever. Nice little things like this happen to atheists all the time, and we don't even spend time praying for them. What gives? Y'all have a direct line to the most powerful being in the universe, how come you're not more successful than us?

As for the psychological benefits of prayer, yes those are real. So if you're praying for something in your life that you need to do yourself, like lose 5 pounds or nail a job interview, then yeah, pray like crazy. Praying helps you focus on an issue and sort out your thoughts. I still kind of pray (not to God, of course), because it's how I calmed myself down and sorted out my thoughts for years. Meditation can do the same stuff.

So if you want to pray about your crippling internet porn addiction, go for it, it could help, but if you're praying for rain or your elected officials you're just wasting your time. Really.

Nature, man

Hey people. I know my massive reader base is probably disappointed that I haven't posted in over a week, but I was in the mountains with my brother for 5 of those days and I was feeling lazy for the others.

While I was in the mountains I was again and again awed by the incredible beauty of nature. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is mind blowingly epic and beautiful, hands down the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Nature is really some awesome stuff.

Lots of Christians claim that seeing all the splendor and grandeur of a mountain range is evidence that God exists. What? Does a person who's lived their whole life as an atheist and never thought much about God think that when they look on a mountain range? Do I, a recent convert to the infidel camp, think that? No. It's ridiculous. This is 2010, there are very good scientific explanations for the vast majority of natural phenomena. Resorting to "God did it" is intellectually lazy, and saying "God did it for us" (This seems to be the general Christian viewpoint) is unbelievably arrogant. Mountains being beautiful is in no way evidence for God's existence. You see something awesome, you think "man this is awesome", and because you already believe in God you mentally connect the dots.

Also, I find it interesting that Christians never cite a forest fire destroying literally millions of lives as evidence of God's awesome loving existence. You never hear a Christian say "Man, check out those coyotes devouring that newborn deer. God must exist," or "Hey, that thunderstorm blew these baby birds out of the nest, and now their tiny bodies are all mangled. Praise the Lord!"

Problem of Evil

I made a post a couple days ago dealing with the problem of evil, but I seem not to have made my point the way I wanted. I'll just post Epicurus' version of the problem of evil, since he was the first to formalize it and his millennia old argument still has not been satisfactorily discredited by religious apologists.

Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?

Why indeed?

These Books are Good

Hello people. I'm on too many different prescription drugs right now to come up with an intelligent thing to say about philosophy, so I'll recommend a couple of books. Most atheists who are like, into being atheists have probably read these, but I think Christians and any people of faith should read them too. They're very anti-religious, but they're very well written and they'll make you think.

The first is The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris. Sam Harris is a philosopher and neuroscientist who attended Stanford and UCLA and has written two New York Times bestsellers. In The End of Faith he sets out to prove that religious belief is not only stupid and irrational, but dangerous and detrimental to society as well. He doesn't only accuse fundamentalists who fly planes into skyscrapers and shoot abortion doctors either, but indicts religious moderates as well. Read this book, it's good.

Secondly I'd like to recommend The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, a genetic biologist at Oxford with a charming accent. He indicts religion for making people blind to scientific discoveries and uses his expertise in evolution to discredit Intelligent Design. Be warned though, Dawkins' tone is biting, and is not for the easily offended Bible thumper.

If you're a secularist, definitely read these. They'll make you jump around and fist pump like those weird Italian dudes on the Jersey Shore. If you're religious, definitely read these. They'll open your eyes to aspects of religion you never thought of before. If you make it through the book unscathed your faith will probably be stronger than it was.

I'll leave y'all with a quote from my favorite philosopher, the late great Mr. Robert Nozick. "Only the refusal to listen guarantees one against being ensnared by the truth."

Omnibenevolence

The problem of evil has been hotly debated for thousands of years. How does an omnibenevolent God allow evil in the world? Christian apologists have written volumes trying to reconcile the existence of evil with their all good and all loving God, but they were really wasting their time. If God is pure good, he wouldn't ever do a single evil deed. If he ever did anything evil, then he's not purely good, end of story.

God did a lot of obscene things in the Bible. For instance,

-he allowed a man to kill his own daughter in Judges 11:29-40
-he killed the first-born of every Egyptian family in Exodus 12 because Pharaoh wouldn't let the Israelites leave, after he himself hardened Pharaoh's heart against... letting the Israelites leave
-he said slavery was okay in Exodus 21 and Leviticus 25
-he said it was cool to sell your own daughter in Exodus 21
-he said witches should be killed in Exodus 22:18, a verse which led to the torture and execution of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children as young as two in medieval Europe
-he sanctioned numerous genocides throughout the Old Testament
-he killed every living thing on the planet except for a handful of people and two or seven of every animal with his flood.

Even if God is real, he doesn't seem very good at all, much less purely and only good. And lest you think I'm ignoring all the good and merciful things God did, I'm not. I know that God did some fine things in his day, but imagine this: Bob is a fine upstanding person. He's a member of the school board, the pta, the rotary club, and numerous other things like that. He donates 50% of his income to charity. He spends a month every summer helping poverty stricken children in Africa. He spends his weekends volunteering at soup kitchens. He does all sorts of good stuff. He also kidnaps, tortures, rapes and murders a little girl once or twice a month. It would be absolutely ludicrous to say that Bob is a good person. Why do people still insist on calling Jehovah a good God?

God Loves You

I haven't been an out of the closet atheist, as it were, for long, but already I've gotten several reconversion attempts. I've argued with quite a few Christians who try to see things from my point of view and offer intelligent responses to my obscene rantings, and it's a lot of fun debating with those people. I've also had more than a couple people tell me something to the effect of "God loves you. Just because you reject him doesn't mean he rejected you. Anytime you want to come back to him he'll be there waiting with open arms. You'll never be truly happy until you accept God again."

Come on, people. I'm insulted. I became an atheist because I value reason and logic more than blind faith. Are you naive enough to think that badly paraphrasing the Parable of the Prodigal Son is going to send me running for the nearest church? I believe what I believe because of science, logic, and critical thinking. If you want to try to convert me those are the tools you must use. Making unsubstantiated claims about God's desire to forgive me as soon as I get through my little atheist phase is just going to make me mad. Carl Sagan once wrote something like "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." If you expect me to believe that I can telepathically talk to a 2000 year old undead Jewish dude, you better have some pretty strong evidence to back it up.

Peace, Love and Misogyny

"9 Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments; 10 but rather by means of good works, as befits women making a claim to godliness. 11 Let a woman quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. 12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. 13 For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. 14 And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite deceived, fell into transgression. 15 But women shall be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint." - 1 Timothy 2:9-15

The Bible is just full of great moral absolutes, ain't it? Women: stop fixing your hair, don't wear nice clothes or jewelry and just try to be good and do what you're told, okay? Don't even think about ever telling me what to do, because I have a penis, and you don't. In fact, I'd prefer if you just stopped talking most of the time. After all, it was freakin' Eve who got tricked by a snake, not Adam. I mean, yeah, Adam took a bite too, but Eve took the first bite, that bitch. But hey, if you women can keep it together, restrain yourselves, and try not to lose your sanctity you get to have children! I mean, that's what all y'all are for, right? Having kids?

Why do women put up with this? Why do men still think this is an acceptable way to treat their mothers, sisters, daughters and wives? It's 2010, why do billions of people still think this is okay?

Foolish

It's been like, a year or something since I've posted. I doubt many will read this, but I'm up at three in the morning unable to sleep so here I am.

I thought I'd post about my favorite Bible verse, Psalm 14:1. For those of y'all who don't have a Bible handy I'll go ahead and lay down the New American Standard version of the verse right here.

The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; There is no one who does good.

I love this verse. It's just dripping with all the sorts of stuff Christians like to hear. Fools say, "There is no God." Of course they do. Back in the day, they called people who didn't believe in God "fools." Today we call them atheists. If we replace the "they" in the second part of the verse with "atheists," we get something like this: "Atheists are corrupt, atheists have committed abominable deeds; there is no one who does good."

Well that's interesting. According to the Bible, atheists are all corrupt individuals who can't do a single good deed because abominable ones take up all their time. This puts me in somewhat of a difficult position, because I am an atheist. Or, if you're Biblically inclined, a fool.

Remember about a year ago when I made a post about my determination to keep my faith strong when I got to school? That didn't happen. You see, I read the Bible cover to cover twice the summer before I headed off to Tulane, and I discovered there's a lot of crap in there.* All the terrible junk in the Bible, such as dudes letting their concubines get gang raped to death** , had me kind of turned off of the whole Christianity thing by the time I got to college. I still believed in God, but I was sufficiently distanced from Him to not feel a bit of guilt when I got hammered my first night in New Orleans. It was all downhill from there. I got into philosophy, and I read books written by non-Christian philosophers. (Gasp!) I won't go into all the details right now, because that's not the purpose of this post, but for now I'll say this: I'm an atheist, and I like it. I've loved being an atheist more in 6 months than I loved being a Christian in 6 years.***

So, back to Psalm 14:1. The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." I say that, in my heart, I guess, many times a day. That must make me a fool. I don't like that. I think I'm a pretty swell guy. I think I'm pretty smart too. Chances are good, about 96% actually, that I scored higher on my SAT than you did (or will). I'm in the honors program at the 50th best university in the nation, according to U.S. News. I don't know how many universities there are in the country, but I bet there's at least 1000. So, am I an arrogant d-bag? Kind of. Am I a fool? The jury's still out on that one.

They (atheists) are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds, There is no one who does good. Hmm. I don't really think I'm that corrupt. I haven't ever taken a bribe or embezzled, or any of the other things you hear about when you read newspaper headlines about corruption. I don't think I've committed any abominable deeds, but I suppose that depends on your definition of abominable. If underage drinking is abominable, or if you think gratuitous use of the "f word" in everyday conversations between 18-20 year olds is abominable, then I'm the abominable snowman. If you think of as abominable thinks like rape, murder, and bigotry, then I'm squeaky clean. I also like to think of myself as a person who does a good deed on occasion. I hold the door for people, I spent months helping 4th graders in the ghetto learn long division, and I told a couple redneck dudes today (yesterday, technically) that racism was "not cool, man."

I'm 19, so I guess I'm probably pretty retarded by normal person standards, but am I really abominable? Come on now, people.

* If you don't believe me about the crap, check out this extremely irreverent but also very accurate representation of Genesis 19.
** Judges 19; my version says "ravish," not "gang rape."
*** I say 6 years and not 18 because I was about 13 when I really started to be a Christian for myself, instead of just because my parents told me to. Calling a 7 year old a Christian is like calling a 7 year old a Kantian. They don't understand the Bible any more that they do Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals.