God is real! Because SCIENCE!

Posted: 03.11.12 | Author: | Filed under: Religion, Science, Thoughts | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Last night, I saw someone engage with a fellow atheist on Twitter, and for some reason, I felt the need to jump in. Oh, I remember–they had said, “Suppose God is real, just a hypothetical.” My digital acquaintance replied, “Which god?”; I felt, though, that this was an irrelevant question. The hypothetical made me itchy.  I sent a reply of my own:

And that got the ball rolling on a conversation that made me moan, groan, and wish I didn’t feel the need to interfere with such things.

First, he asked me what I would consider “evidence” of God’s existence. I said, the same evidence that lets us know anything else exists. The majority of people must have the capacity to experience the evidence; it can’t be something that can be explained away naturally (it can’t be a regular guy with no Godlike powers pretending to be God, it can’t be pointing to a perfectly natural phenomenon and saying “The sky is blue–because God!”, it has to be measurable, concrete evidence). I tried to cover the bases as well as I could, because really? Anybody who has to ask you what kind of evidence you need is someone who is looking for a loophole. Pro tip: IT IS ALWAYS THE KIND OF EVIDENCE THAT IS EVIDENCE. I need the same kind of evidence to convince me that God exists as I do to convince me that the couch I’m sitting on exists, or trees exist, or my car exists, or India exists, or anything exists.

That having been said, he makes his opening volley: “Have you ever heard of Anthony [sic] Flew?” Immediately, I am suspicious. Because I have not heard of this person, for one thing. So I go to look him up, browse Wikipedia and some of the source sites, and laugh.

“Are you mentioning him because he was an atheist who changed his mind?”‘

I guessed this first because I have seen a number of theists argue this as though they’ve just put one over on us. With Dawkins’ recent admission that he doesn’t “know” that there’s no god, I’ve actually seen it a lot lately. Another tip: one atheist shifting or revealing a hidden or new opinion about the origins of life means . . . nothing. It means nothing at all regarding the existence of god if Richard Dawkins explains that he doesn’t know for absolute certain if god exists or not. Pointing at these occurrences and saying “ha-HA! One of your own tribe changed his/her mind, so I must be correct!” is like me pointing at all of the people who grew up Christian and became atheist and saying the same. This argument is unconvincing because it’s based on nothing but someone’s opinion and not on actual evidence. Please stop using this stupid non-argument.

I was wrong, though–that wasn’t the reason. Dude shot back: “no that he found scientific data that there must be a creator”

I laughed. I can’t help it. I laughed so much. Not to be unkind, just at the absurdity of it. You’re asking me to swallow a lot of things when you say this:

  • You’re asking me to believe that someone found actual, undeniable scientific proof that God exists and it hasn’t been cross-verified by every scientist forever and put on the cover of every magazine, newspaper, news site, copy of the Left Behind series, and episode of the 700 club.
  • You’re asking me to believe that someone found actual, undeniable scientific proof that God exists and certain theists that frequently battle us on Twitter haven’t been rubbing our noses in it and screaming “IN YOUR FACE!”
  • More often than not (and this was the case here), you’re asking me to believe that a non-scientist found actual, undeniable scientific proof that God exists, and that scientists didn’t find it.
  • You’re asking me to believe that such proof even could exist.

I explained to the gentleman that Flew was not a scientist, so his theories about the complexity of DNA were about as helpful as a painter’s theories about neurosurgery. My new friend said, no, Flew was a scientist. I said, no, he studied philosophy, Japanese, and humanities, and was in the Royal Air Force; he did not have a degree in biology, nor could I find any information in various bios that stated that he did any kind of work at all in the field of biology–or any other scientific field, for that matter. I said, this is a classic “god of the gaps” argument and the logic is clearly flawed. My new friend went away rather suddenly.

I was sort of baffled that a person could throw out a name and a backstory as an “argument” and not bother doing a shred of research. It took me about 5 minutes of looking at various things Flew said and did in his life to break what he said about god and the “complexities of DNA” down into the garbage that it is. I’m baffled, but I know that religious belief–faith–is by its own nature irrational, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Still.

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For a heathen, I have an impossibly high moral standard.

Posted: 07.18.11 | Author: | Filed under: Religion, Social Commentary, Thoughts | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments »

Atheists Have Morals Too!

I was flipping through the new Howard Schultz book the other day at the bookstore.  If you’ve known me for awhile, you know I’m a huge Starbucks fan after having worked there (and having been treated very well there) for two and a half years–over three years, counting the eight months I worked at a licensed store at the University of Kentucky.  (I count it, because even if it wasn’t run by Starbucks, it was still the same “culture.”)  I read Howard Schultz’s first book while I still worked at Starbucks, and I’m a huge fan of his; part of the reason why has to do with the passage I read in his latest book.  Schultz recounted his feelings upon learning that someone in his Starbucks inner circle had leaked a 2007 memo highlighting Schultz’s concerns about the “Commoditization of the Starbucks Experience.”  In the memo, he talks about things that I remember being greatly concerned about as a barista, such as the move away from old-fashioned machines to the more convenient push-button espresso machines.  He discussed the costs of efficiency, and how being more efficient may have damaged the whole of the experience.  The memo was apparently leaked to a blog, and Schultz was devastated upon learning that the memo had been leaked–not because he wanted to be secretive; the things he discussed were things that many Starbucks customers were already well aware of.  No, he was upset because it was a breach of trust; he said that a friend and coworker (I believe) who was talking to him after it happened knew what to say because she knows two things about him:  that he, even when writing memos, communicates directly from the heart, and that he always expects people to do the right thing (such as not leaking secure memos), even when life consistently proves that people will do otherwise, and is always surprised when they don’t.

He could have been describing me.

I honestly couldn’t tell you why I always expect people to do good.  I, myself, am prone, just like any other human, to make the selfish decision instead of the right decision; and yet, I get upset anew when I feel someone is being immoral.  (Even if that someone is me.)  I think it’s why I get so damned angry at religious people; after all, they claim repeatedly to be the harbingers of morality, yet have the same moral failings as any other human being.  I loathe hypocrisy.

It seems that I still have a fundamental belief that human beings are inherently good.  No–no, that’s not it at all.  I believe it is in the best interests of human beings to be good.  We thrive as a species because we’re able to work together and live in societies; I believe our economy thrives better when it’s more giving and less stingy (and not only is that my belief, but let’s be real–evidence supports it).  When big businesses don’t play by the rules, the economy goes to pot; when leaders are corrupt, the whole country suffers the consequences; when citizens don’t display mutual respect, everything is chaos.  When we make moral decisions, more people win, and society as a whole does better.

The real problem with living in a “Christian nation” is the lack of morality.  Many religions, and especially Christianity, teach morality not as a way of thinking but as a rulebook from which one must not deviate.  In the dark ages, that was all well and good, but our needs have far exceeded laws that caution against eating pork.  Now, I grant you–there are some good-ass parables in the Bible that attempt to teach morality as a way of thought rather than as straight commandments.  And if you read the Bible? You’ll notice that Jesus would tell the parables, and the disciples would clamor for him to interpret the parables for them.  It seemed like he got kind of annoyed at this, and I can see why–you’d think, after a time, they’d start to pick up on the gist of it, but no.  I think modern men have the same issue.  Most of them are a little to slow on the uptake to respond to parables.  That’s why you won’t find many followers of Jesus who actually live like Jesus, like they are supposed to.  No, instead you get defunct quotes from Leviticus, the Ten Commandments in courthouses, and people who clearly have no idea what their own religion is all about.

Which would all be fine . . . except for the fact that these people who don’t understand their own religion think it’s vital to force the rest of us to live by ancient laws that make no sense in our modern world and hinder, rather than help, morality.  Because they think the law is morality, they never bother about real morals.  This leaves me flabbergasted time and again–watching people, especially those with a supposedly moral background, fail at actual morality so badly.  Morality is not such a complex issue, when you get down to the crux of it.  (Was my use of “crux” there a pun of some sort?)  I think what it comes down to is respecting others–respecting human beings, and life, above material things and money, above laws that are no longer relevant to our society (and not even relevant to your religion, Christians–go back and read your damn Bibles), above the fears and prejudices of a shrinking minority, above the ignorance of an under-educated populace.  When we can do that, we’ll make great strides as a truly moral people.

It doesn’t seem so hard to me, but from the progress we’re making as a society, I suppose I’ve set the bar impossibly high.  I still expect people to do good, though–and I’ll still be disappointed every time they don’t.

One Week: I hated this fucking movie. A greengeekgirl rant®.

Posted: 07.05.11 | Author: | Filed under: Rants | Tags: , , , | 4 Comments »

Don't let the door hit you in the ass.

Every now and then, I see a movie that fills me with so much rage that my rage just keeps increasing after the end of the movie.  Movies that enrage me are generally well-meaning indie flicks where the writer tried to insert some deeper message for humanity, but, as I watch more, I find out that the writer is completely full of shit and doesn’t understand how humanity works, making the message awkward, pointless, and potentially dangerous to mankind–and as if that weren’t enough, he started freaking out about halfway through the script and incorporated every indie cliche known to man to make sure to beat us over the head with his poorly-interpreted message from the universe.  The only redeeming thing about this particular movie, when the tally is added up, is that it ended.

Fuck you, Joshua Jackson, for being in this movie–and for not being on Twitter so that I could angry tweet you.

Yep, that's how I felt about this movie, too.

The sneaky and insidious part about this film is that it actually seemed promising when it started.  The premise is the age-old question, what would you do if you only had a short time to live and you knew it?  What if you only had a week to live?  Ben, Joshua Jackson’s character, is diagnosed with late-stage cancer.  After a bit of cancer humor (“You have stage four cancer.” “Well, how many stages are there?” “…….. four.”), Ben is given a prognosis of about two years if the treatment doesn’t cure him.

Wait, I thought this movie was about what if you only had a week–well, whatever, maybe he dies at the end of the week.

There’s some blather about how Ben has basically failed at everything in his life because he didn’t try.  He failed at singing because he didn’t try.  He failed at getting published because, even though he sent his crappy book out to a zillion publishers, he didn’t send it to the ONE publisher who would have published it because he thought they were too big.  He failed at baseball because of… something, I don’t really remember or care.  He ends up being a teacher trying to read poetry to a bunch of really young kids and getting frustrated when they don’t get it.  Here’s a pro tip, Ben: the kids you’re teaching looked more Hardy Boys than Thomas Hardy, if you catch my drift.

"Can't we read some fucking Twilight or something? Poetry sucks."

Ben does the cliche thing and impulsively buys a motorcycle from a creepy old guy when he just happens to walk by and see it for sale.  He then stops and gets some coffee to prepare him for a long night of fucking lovemaking, and the cup tells him, “Go West Young Man.”  (The cup doesn’t talk, it’s a hidden message rolled up in the rim of the cup.)  So, instead of listening to his doctor, who recommended immediate cancer treatment, he listens to a coffee cup and decides to go on a little trip.

Meet the only person in this movie who looks happy.

Ben is engaged to marry this girl who turns out to be kind of a bitch.  He paints her at first as being the sweetest girl ever–she even becomes a golf fan just because he likes golf, which takes more love and dedication than agreeing to play along with your partner’s golden shower fetish.  She leaves him quirky little notes in his lunch box.  She’s thin and pretty, just like Hollywood says women should be, even in fucking indie movies where stereotypes are supposed to be turned onto their heads.  But apparently, her understanding and sweetness has its limits–a guy finds out he’s dying and wants to go away for a couple of days and that’s just totally fucking unacceptable.  Never mind that he might want just a little time to himself to get his head straight, or to go do that motorcycle-across-the-country thing before he’s losing all of his hair to chemo, because, miraculously, right now he has almost no symptoms for a stage four cancer patient.  This is the perfect time for him to take a little trip, and she throws a bitch fit about it even though he promises to be home in two days.  Honey, if he’s going to keel over in two days, that treatment you’re whining for him to start isn’t going to do a damn thing.

From zero to bitch in one cancer diagnosis.

Ben sets out on his trip anyway–because, hey, he’s fucking dying, he’s gonna do what he wants to do.  There’s a shitload of gratuitous “I’m riding across Canada on my motorcycle” footage; however long this movie is, they could have cut it in half with even a student editor.  Ben encounters a few people who suddenly have some incredible luck after meeting him–finding their dream mates, stuff like that.  This is never really explained in the movie, especially since Ben’s life turns out to be so unlucky.  This is typical indie-flick finding yourself bullshit; my first moment of being truly perturbed was the flashback that Ben has regarding the planning of their wedding.  The fiancee is apparently religious, and they’re meeting with the priest; the priest asks Ben, who is presumably not Catholic, if Ben objects to a religious wedding.  Ben shrugs good-naturedly–”Nope!”  The priest asks if Ben wants to incorporate anything into the wedding.  ”Nope!”  So, then the priest asks if Ben has any religious beliefs.

Whaaaat.

How is that any part of a normal wedding-planning conversation?  I guess if the priest was trying to convert him to Catholicism, which I guess could be common, it would be normal–but is that really the time?  (Note: I don’t really know if they’re Catholic, I just assume they’re Catholic because it was a priest.)  That gave me pause, but the thing that really irked me was the scene afterward–Ben and his woman, walking side by side, talking about his lack of belief.  She started the conversation with, “How can you not believe in anything?”  She went on to express her disbelief that they’d had every conversation but the religious conversation, but her question is telling–it isn’t, “How did we not have this conversation?” but “How can you not believe in anything?”  That wasn’t what really bugged me though.  When he said to her, in a very reasonable tone, “You can’t honestly be that upset about this, can you?” she replied to him, tersely for maximum indie dramaz, “I’m marrying a nihilist.”  I guess in order to make her happy, Ben then set off on a brief search for God, but came up empty despite looking at a Bible AND seeing a Chinese Buddha on some cabby’s dashboard.  How much more spiritual can you fucking get?  Jesus.

So, okay–Mr. Writer and Director Michael McGowan? There’s a term for someone who doesn’t have any religious beliefs–that person is called an atheist.  A nihilist is someone who doesn’t see any intrinsic and objective value or purpose in life.  These words are not interchangeable, fucktard.  Yeah, I don’t usually stoop to name-calling, but I’m calling you a fucktard, Michael McGowan.  I’m calling you a fucktard because you set up this film for this “nihilist” to go on this adventure and have some fucking revelation, and he’s not even a nihilist.  And now, anybody who actually thinks that this movie is good will think that atheists are all nihilists.  Way to fucking go.

The one good thing that came out of the whole religious scene was the moment that Ben, in the church talking to the priest, looks up after the priest asks about his religious beliefs and sees this:

Win.

I’m not actually sure what the point of the religious stuff is supposed to be.  McGowan is clearly not super conservative religious, or the picture of Jesus flipping Ben off would never have been conceived, much less put into the movie. (By the way, I’m kind of stoked that someone got paid to desecrate that Jesus by giving it a new arm.  You can see that the arm was hacked off and a new arm was attached.)  Yet, Ben is the one who stands to grow most in this film, and by grow, I mean change–during his trip, he abandons rationality in order to go in search of, and I’m not kidding here, some imaginary creature that he knows is imaginary that his dad used to tell him was real.  Ben even asks himself, via the narrative voice-over (someone is a fan of Arrested Development), when rationality took over.  Uh, I dunno, asshole, maybe when you grew up and stopped believing in Santa?  So if he’s abandoning rationality and is moving away from his “no beliefs” status, what is McGowan trying to say about not having beliefs, besides the fact that you’ll get flipped off by Jesus and accused of being a nihilist by your fiancee?  Oh, and that you’ll get cancer.

The whole thing that bugs me about the relationship with the girlfriend is that it swings between two totally opposite realities.  She loves him very much, she has a nice family, she takes an interest in his stupid interests, and his first instinct when he finds out he has cancer is to go home and have a lot of sex with her.  She even forgives him when the son of a bitch cheats on her later in the film.  On the other hand, he apparently can’t stand her and she does get a little bitchy when her fiancee is dying.  It’s a tough situation.

This is about the point in the movie that it starts to degrade into nothing but cliches.  He splurges on a nice hotel room, because hey, he doesn’t have to save for retirement, right? Har har har.  He keeps checking his voice mail and hearing tearful pleas from his family to come home and start treatment.  At one point, he chucks his phone into a field.  He has a motorcycle accident, but walks away totally unhurt.  He meets some random chick in the woods and they have sex by a campfire.  He figures out he never really loved the bitch girlfriend and ends his little journey sitting on a surfboard in the ocean while a whale majestically rises out of the water like ten feet away.  Then he goes home and goes into treatment and finally gets published when he writes a book called One Week [dawwww working the movie title into the film].  And I sat and watched, getting more and more infuriated as I realized two things: this movie wasn’t going to get any better, and the movie wasn’t ever going to develop a goddamn point.  It was a waste of money, time, and my life.

I may or may not have flown into a Twitter rage for the last quarter of the movie:

This movie seemed to have one message, and it was ham-handedly delivered in a sloppy, confused way.  The movie meant to convey that you’ll never have happiness if you don’t believe in stuff.  Ben didn’t believe in himself, he didn’t believe in God, and look what happened–ended up in a nice teaching job with a fiancee who loved him very much (despite being kind of an overreacting bitch) and whose family liked him, with a nice family himself, and he had no idea how miserable he was until he got cancer and was almost going to die–and even then, he apparently had enough extra cash to take off for a week without any trouble.  Man, what a shitty life.  The movie never really said if he started to believe in anything, though.  He didn’t find God, unless that random whale was a metaphor for God.  There was no real reason at all to bring religion into it, really, since you can do awesome things and have an awesome life without believing in some imaginary sky-friend.  I guess he started believing in himself, since he got published and left that bitch he kept having flashbacks and crying over.  Honestly, the guy ended up being a pretty big douche at the end–he hurt everyone in his family and hurt a woman who genuinely loves him, even if she’s not perfect (and kind of a bitch), so he can go look at the World’s Largest Roadside Penis and have sex with a granola freak.  To tell you the truth, I was too pissed off to really pay attention to the end of the movie, so I should probably just go ahead and end this review.  Who needs a drink?

The importance of being positive.

Posted: 03.14.11 | Author: | Filed under: Politics, Religion, Social Commentary, Thoughts | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

I’m reading the book Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg.  If you haven’t read it, and you’re a writer, it’s a fantastic book; if you’re not a writer, I find it hard to summarize the book, but one of her recurring themes is finding the Buddha nature in everything.  It sometimes becomes a little–flowery, I suppose, for me.  Mostly, I think it’s right on.

The book has me thinking about more than just writing, though.  She recounts a conversation between Allen Ginsberg and a coworker (I don’t have his name in front of me, he’s a literary critic).  Allen asked his coworker why he didn’t write more criticism.  His coworker replied, Why should I spend time writing about something I don’t like?

Why do we spend time railing about things that we don’t like?  Frustration, sure.  But my recent conversations with camelshammers has had me thinking about this.  Is it helpful, and more importantly, is it even detrimental for us to be so negative?  By “us,” I am talking about atheists, liberals, Americans, people in general.  Is it helpful or detrimental when we talk about why we don’t like religion?  Is it helpful or detrimental to strike back against the opposing political party when they say hateful things?

In 2008, Americans had decided that they’d had enough with the hatefulness that was radiating out of the Republican party.  The only problem was that Democrats didn’t step up to the task after we put them in office.  It’s not only that they didn’t get anything done, although that is a big chunk of it–obviously, things were done, although I still feel that the priority should have been the economy.  I believe, however, that a big part of how they lost power so quickly is that they didn’t do anything to help change the tone–they didn’t set a positive example.  They either did exactly what their brethren across the aisle did, or they kept reaching out hands only to be bitten.  The spine we needed in our leaders wasn’t there; nobody wants to follow people who continuously put themselves out to fail, who reach out and are slapped back.  We want leaders who will block the opposition, gallant knights with sword and shield who can stand up to that which is considered harmful, dangerous.  It is not enough to denounce the other side; we can see that this truly doesn’t work.  We have to be warriors for the cause of good.  We have to be a positive force to attract people to us.

Consider the case of Jesus.  Whether or not you believe He is real, or if He is, that He is the son of God–all of these things are irrelevant.  Whether or not many Christians follow what he preached, this is irrelevant in this case, as well.  After ages of turmoil, ages of separation of God and man due to original sin, Jesus came as the great reconciler.  The gospels recount that he called for a great change; that we should live in love, not judge each other, be kind, be helpful toward our fellow man–especially those who need the most help.  Yes, there are lots of other things said in the New Testament, but as someone who came up in and out of a Southern Baptist church, I can say with some authority that these are the main stories that are taught about Jesus.  Despite being his followers, many Christians don’t live like Jesus–yet, they follow Him, they look to him as the most positive example in their lives.  He draws them.  Whether you believe that He is the genuine article, or you believe that He was created by men, Jesus is a concrete example of the difference between how men live and how they want to live.  Buddha is another example–a holy figure, a goal to strive for over the courses of our lives.  Both lived largely by example; although they both taught with words, lessons, parables, they are remembered mainly for what they did.  People who follow Jesus and Buddha are drawn to them by the strength of their examples.

We can’t convince them with words, but we can reach them by doing.  They won’t believe that we aren’t evil by us telling, but they will believe what they see.  We don’t have to lie down and accept their condemnations–we can refute them, sure, even verbally.  I think it is a mistake, though, to spend vast amounts of energy concentrated on argumentation when we could be out doing, and making a positive difference that gives people something to hold onto.  We are reviled not for who we are, but because we are feared–we are The Other.  To Republicans, progressives and liberals are The Other.  To theists, atheists are The Other.  Overcoming Otherness involves building trust.  It involves standing strong, but not failing to show our humanity.  We have to show them the best parts of ourselves–and, the best parts of themselves, as well.  The best parts of humanity.  They will respond to that.

It may take time, but they will warm to us if we create warmth.

I don’t think your God is real, but I understand.

Posted: 02.22.11 | Author: | Filed under: Politics, Thoughts | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Supermassive Black Hole from Jevon Studios

We have been watching The Universe series on Netflix, and we were on the episode “Alien Galaxies,” watching information about supermassive black holes.  If you’re not familiar with supermassive black holes–well, if you’re not even familiar with black holes, a black hole is a region in space where gravity is so significant that even light cannot escape.  Generally, if a star explodes and the core of the star collapses (and I’m not a physicist so, my terminology may not be totally exact here), that’s when you’ll get your black holes–the gravity pressing in on the nearly-dead star is so great that it forces the star to collapse in on itself, which creates that well of extreme gravity that we know as a black hole.  Supermassive black holes are like, black holes to the extreme–scientists posit that they are formed when a very large star collapses, or by a black hole that continually eats up other stars and grows in size and gravitational force, or even that they are primordial black holes that were formed at the beginning of the Big Bang.  Scientists are relatively certain, due to the observation of star S2 orbiting very near to it, that there is a supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy, and probably many other galaxies.

As we were watching the rendered video of the supermassive black hole, my husband turned to me and said something really beautiful, although I’m not sure of the scientific veracity of his statement:  he said, someday, billions of years from now, Earth will be pulled into that supermassive black hole, and we’ll be a part of it.  It’s impossible to wrap my brain around billions of years; the sheer enormity of the universe is enough to dazzle any atheist so much that they could flinch, just slightly.  And, as an atheist, the thing that we really miss out on the most is that sense of–not awe, but . . . continuity, perhaps.  To me, the idea of particles of my being–dust from my bones, carbon atoms from my flesh, at least a molecule of my body will still exist in some form even then–being drawn into this black hole is as beautiful as the idea of heaven.  My consciousness will be long gone, but I will still exist, in some form, even if it’s only a few molecules that aren’t consumed for energy, for millennia.  It’s the atheist afterlife:  being destined for the supermassive black hole, or, barring that, the big rip–or perhaps I’ll be vaporized when our sun goes nova [Author's note: Okay, so, our sun isn't going to go nova.  It's going out with a whimper instead of a bang.  Told you, I'm not a physicist ^_^].  Whatever happens, I’ll be around.

Now, even as a science-minded non-believer, I don’t sit and contemplate the universe on a daily basis, much like many people don’t think about God unless they have to go to church.  So, when I am faced with a significant amount of information about the universe, I find it mind-boggling.  The gargantuan scale of the universe–there aren’t large enough adjectives to describe it.  I find incredible the fact that, while we think about the Earth orbiting the sun and having a nice, neat little track that it runs on–the sun is also orbiting, everything is orbiting the center of the galaxy, so even after we’ve completed a full revolution and we’re back where we began, we’re in an entirely different place than the previous year, or the year before that, or any recorded year in history.  The fact that our planet is continuously moving is another thing that, while I know it, it’s amazing to contemplate.  Our whole planet, this big ol’ rock we live on, is hurtling through space right now.  It’s moving extremely fast–67,062 miles per hour.  We know that the universe had a beginning–what was it?  While I think it’s unlikely that it was a deity of some sort–especially not the ones that we have created–I can understand why some would attribute something this profound to an all-powerful being.  My brain is unable to wrap itself around it; the only difference between me and a person of faith is that I am more comfortable with not having an explanation, with not understanding, than attributing the creation of the universe to some kind of higher power that I find dubious at best.  I’m secure in going about my life without knowing where the universe began, where we came from, or what it all means.  But I share the same inability to fathom it.

So, I understand.  You may be wondering, if I’m so understanding, why I am always railing against Christianity and religion?  I do believe that, even if I’m wrong and there is a supernatural deity that instigated the Big Bang, it’s still very unlikely that it’s the god of Christianity, or of Judaism, or Buddhism, or Hinduism, or Islam.  All human religions have evidence of humans as the architects all through them; taking time to study them from an objective standpoint, it’s clear that people created these gods, not the other way around.    In fact, that people created religion is one of the very reasons that religion resonates so deeply with us–like art, film, literature, history, it’s a mirror through which we face our own humanity.  Approached from that perspective, religion has beauty.  In practice, though, religion is often used to oppress others, because of their gender, their sexuality, their race, their beliefs, and this ugliness outweighs a lot of the beautiful, or even innocuous, parts of religion.  While I can appreciate the desire to believe, and the draw, I still can’t condone the things that are carried out in the name of religion.

But I understand why you believe.

On sin and punishment.

Posted: 12.27.10 | Author: | Filed under: Religion, Thoughts | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »


God Hates Sin

Sin.  The idea of sin rules most of the Judeo-Christian world.  (Well, okay, most of America.  I just hate it when America comes off like the backwoods cousins of more sophisticated upper-class people who don’t eat squirrel gravy.)  Not so much, perhaps, the sins we are committing ourselves, but very much the notion of squelching the sins of our neighbors, friends, public officials, and entertainment–are there gay Boy Scout leaders, atheist biology teachers, premarital sex on television or in books, drugs and swearing in rap lyrics: who’s sinning and how can we keep it from tainting us?  Can we make gay marriage permanently illegal?  Can we strike evolution from the curriculum?  Despite the clear words in the New Testament that we should withhold judgment and love our neighbors, that God is the only being who is fit to judge others, people in America seem bound and determined to force others to live by their standards, which aren’t even the standards of the Bible but bits and pieces of religion that they have cobbled together selectively to fit their biases.

I’ve written about my contempt for the idea of original sin. I think it’s bollocks, in a nutshell.  But what about the idea of sin as a whole?  And how does God deal with sinners?  (Spoiler alert:  God doesn’t, because He doesn’t exist.)

Let’s tackle a biggie right out of the gate:  homosexuality.  Because of some verse in the Old Testament that was probably written by a guy who couldn’t catch the fancy of a cute farmhand, homosexuality is a sin forever.  And ever.  Even though scholars have found evidence aplenty that the oft-quoted Leviticus verse may not mean what you think it means.  So why is homosexuality a sin?

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Why are people hooked on God?

Posted: 12.06.10 | Author: | Filed under: Religion, Thoughts | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments »
Adam and Eve. Oil on panel. Galleria degli Uff...

Image via Wikipedia

If you live in a Judeo-Christian area, you’re familiar with the story of the creation of man and woman, and also of original sin.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”  (Genesis 1:27 KJV) “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.  And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.  And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”  (Genesis 2:7-9 KJV) “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And the LORD God said, [It is] not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought [them] unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that [was] the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This [is] now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:15-25 KJV)

“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which [is] in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree [was] good for food, and that it [was] pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make [one] wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they [were] naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.” (Genesis 3:1-8 KJV)

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