More Precious Than Jewels

15 She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.16 Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour.17 Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.18 She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.

That's from Proverbs chapter 3. This wisdom chick, this Sophia, this infinitely desirable lady that had Solomon up in arms. Who was she? Do we have an ancient desert dude smoking his hookah and dreaming up a metaphor that caught on and made it into the Black Book itself? Is it a good way to take some of the edge off of the super bloody, aggressive, masculine attack dog that was the yahweh of the covenant? Did Solomon retaineth her?

This chapter on wisdom is as evocative as it ever was. I can see my scribbled notes in the margins, the little indicator that I read this in 2007. Gems. Rubies. Get those rubies. This wisdom as a woman thing, what is that? What is all of it? 

Sitting on the banks of the river, legs crossed, watching the sticks fly by, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. My heart has been aching ever since the last time, ever since that day when wisdom was close enough to touch, to taste. That smell, that intoxicating whiff of perfume from her hair, keeps me coming back. 

On occasion when I close my eyes and let it all fall away, let those thoughts, those capering satyrs and the rest of Oberon's retinue scamper away into the blackness, I get a whiff of that perfume once again. 

Those lips, forming the ancient words with unsure deliberateness, white teeth glinting in the sun that flickers on an off without warning. 

How can I find wisdom if the road keeps folding in on itself? How can I keep these walls from stretching? What am I supposed to do? Where is this instruction, Lord? How can I wrap my hands around this untouchable femme fatale, the very means through which heaven and earth were established? 

Plunge into the deeps. Fly to the heavens. Peer into the cracks, into the in-between, the underneath. What lies under the glossy surface, the gleaming billboards and the screens? Where is she? I saw her at the river this afternoon, and she was laughing. Where is she now? 

What even is a mountain, anyway?

The world I grew up in crashed down around me, and there was just so much space everywhere. I could see forever, and it was intoxicating, and more than a little scary. Petrarch probably would have gotten what I mean, standing up there on Ventoux, wondering if this sort of thing was even allowed. Where is God if you climb higher than you ever have and he's not there? How can you go on living the same way?  The thought that "nobody made these clouds" was a liberating one. Flying towards the brightly shining sun of scientific materialism on my dialectic wings, it took me years to notice that I was leaving my feathers behind one by one. At some point the light got so bright that I had to open my eyes and look around.

Everything looks really fucking weird from up here.

First of all, I was flying and my wings were gone. How was I still here? Where was the firmament? Where was the top of the goddamn mountain? I left my backpack down in the village, and even took my shoes off when I reached the top, but I never noticed my feet leave the ground.

My hand held a piece of paper with a picture on it, but I couldn't seem to make out what it depicted. "Pick a metaphor," wisdom whispered in my ear before disappearing between the pages of the book. I read and read, back to front, between the lines, and upside down. Do I even read this language? It sounds familiar but I have no idea what it means. So I sought her as silver, and tried my damndest to hold my tongue.

Even this fool was considered wise.

Well, I read The Symposium recently, and I don't think Plato means what I thought he meant.

I read Ecclesiastes recently, and I don't think The Teacher means what I thought he meant.

I woke up and my heart was looking back at me. All she asked was that I open up a little bit more. Light only needs a sliver, a chink, a crack.

Fortunately, this edifice has been crumbling for aeons, and Treebeard is about to give the order to release the river.

Stick around, because the intrepid explorer has found himself in Act II. The deck of the ship keeps disappearing below the surface of the TH Sea and there's a bearded guy hanging 10 on a quadruple overhead wave, and the bowl and lighter in my hands seem to have been replaced with a flickering ball of lightning.

"Proofs" that God doesn't exist

I found an interesting website last night, one that I encourage anybody reading this to look at, regardless of religious belief. The site is godisimaginary.com, and it's got a list of 50 "proofs" that God doesn't exist. These are not actual proofs that God isn't there, of course, since that's not actually provable, but they are very convincing. I've read through the first five, and if I had read these a couple of years ago I would have come out of the atheist closet a lot sooner. The first couple show that prayer doesn't work, just like I said a couple posts ago!

Anyway, I challenge all the Christians who happen to be reading this blog (all 2 or maybe 3 of you) to head to this site and read through a couple pages there. I know you probably won't, because you will usually refuse to even look at anything that contradicts your precious worldview. If this is the case with you, well enjoy living with your head in the sand I guess.

I will not be quiet. Just so y'all know.

So since I've been antagonizing religious folk on the internet quite a few Christians have told me something to the effect of "It's fine for you to be an atheist, but you shouldn't try to force your beliefs on other people." When people tell me this at first it makes me mad, then it makes me chuckle, and then I get mad again.

Since my intent is usually to offend religious nuts, I won't pull any punches or mince words here: people who tell me that are hypocrites.

To simplify things I'll address the rest of this post to those people.

First off, you are followers of a religion of which evangelism is a core tenet. You are supposed to force your beliefs on other people. The Bible tells you to. You don't have a problem with the act of forcing one's beliefs on others, you have a problem with my beliefs. Christians talk about God all the time, and hardly ever are they called on it. As long as Christians are talking about how much they love God I will continue to talk about how much I hate him.

Second, I am an American, and so are virtually all of you. As an American, I have the right to bash your religion, whether or not you agree with me. So either admit that you don't really support the First Amendment or be quiet. You can bash atheism all you want, too, but don't tell me that I'm wrong for talking about it.

You might ask, "Well why can't you just leave us alone?" If you were a bunch of peaceful Buddhists meditating in the woods then I probably would. But you're not, you're a member of a religion whose history is drenched in the blood of dissenters. Christianity has been a dangerous and detrimental plague on society for thousands of years, and until you collectively stop killing and oppressing your fellow humans, I will continue to speak out against you.

I will not be silent and I will not leave you alone.

Christianity confuses me

So I'm fairly well versed in Christian lore, but I just don't get it. Here's my understanding of the premise of Christianity.

A long time ago God created hell so he could send some rebellious angels there. Later he created earth and people. The people disobeyed him by eating some fruit, and "sin" came into the world. Now, because Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating fruit*, they were doomed to hell, where God sent all those bad angels eons before. I'm not really sure why this is, but it just is. Two to four thousand years later, depending on who you ask, God decided he'd give the people a break and sent his son Jesus to earth to die for everybody's sins. Why it took God a few thousand years to get his act together enough to do this is not clear. Anyway, Jesus, who was born of a virgin (apparently abstinence isn't 100% effective after all) was God's son, but was also God. He had to die, because that was the only way God, an omniscient and omnipotent being, could figure out to resolve the whole people are sinful because the first people ate some forbidden fruit and now they're all going to hell thing. So, because of some rules that God made up (I'm assuming, I mean, he created everything, right?) he had to kill his son so that he didn't have to just damn everybody to hell anymore. Once Jesus was killed after living a completely sinless life he rose from the grave and now all you have to do to get to heaven is telepathically tell him that you accept him into your heart.

Are you confused? Me too.

If any biblical scholars can explain to my why any of this stuff had to happen I'd be grateful. I really don't understand why God had to go through this big multi-millennia long drama in order to get people into heaven. Why couldn't he have just done it from the start? Does anybody understand this stuff, or do Christians just never stop to think about how the premise behind their religion doesn't make any sense? Lots of questions.

*I'll address how the story of the Fall is an illogical and unfair mess in a future post.

Imagine

I don't really feel like writing anything today, so here's a picture I've seen floating around the internet. Richard Dawkins mentioned in in The God Delusion as an ad for some kind of documentary.

Imagine. Likely the secularists will imagine a better world and the religious people will imagine a bleak wasteland of vicious hedonists humping everything in sight. Personally, I think it'd be pretty rad to not have to deal with suicide bombers anymore, because I doubt many would exist without the 72 virgins incentive.

Why do I see a bunch of wealthy Christians?

I've been to a lot of church services in my day, and one of the things I remember a preacher saying is if Jesus says something twice, it's way important, and if he said "he who has ears to hear, let him hear" or something to that effect then it's also very important. Today I'm writing about something that Jesus not only said twice, but said "he who has ears to hear, let him hear" about.

Open up yer Bibles and read Luke 14:26-35. Verse 33 is my favorite: "So therefore, no one of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions." (NASB) Verse 35 is the "he who has ears." Now read Luke 18:18-25. This is the story of the Rich Young Ruler, which most people who grew up going to Sunday School know, but almost nobody seems to actually care about. Notice verse 22: "And when Jesus heard this, He said to him, "One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess, and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." The Rich Young Ruler didn't like this, and became very sad.

Jesus' words seem very clear cut to me here. He says twice, in fairly plain language, that in order to be a follower of Christ one needs to sell all off their possessions. He doesn't say "Thou shalt give a little bit to charity when thy budget allows it" or "thou shalt volunteer at a soup kitchen no less than twice a year." He says you must give up all of your possessions and serve God. Now I know a lot of Christians who are by no means rich, but they're certainly not the widow giving all she had. (Luke 21:1-4)

So what gives? Why do Christians still have stuff? Before anyone angrily points out Luke 18:26-27, saying I pulled my verses out of context and ignored these ones, sure, things impossible with men are possible with God. But I don't think that this is just a get out of jail free card, allowing you to keep all your possessions because anything is possible with God. Jesus said in plain language that you were supposed to sell all your stuff and give your money to the poor. He said it twice. I don't think this one verse negates the numerous times poverty is extolled as a virtue in the Bible.

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?