Faith Vs. Evidence

The hallmark of Christianity is faith and only faith. Christians must believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead with faith and faith alone. The apologists who try to assert that there is evidence for this event are only fooling themselves. According to many scriptures, god wouldn’t want to give us substantial evidence of the event because our ability to use faith exclusively would be compromised—maybe this is why there are four different stories of the events surrounding Jesus’ death. This may be why there is no contemporaneous or archaeological evidence of the numerous major events that happened in the Bible. The lack of archaeological evidence for the Exodus event comes to mind; This is not mentioning the 400 years of slavery that preceded the escape. The fact that there are no records, or secular eye witness testimony of events like the dead resurrecting after Jesus’ resurrection comes to mind. A parade of zombies wandering about Jerusalem would have been an event worth noting. Faith is SO important that you will end up in Hell if you fail to exercise it and trust in the object of that faith as your god. Evidence gives everything away; things are no longer blurry but focused and clear. We can wholeheartedly trust in whatever we are studying and don’t have to constantly wonder if it’s true or not. Conversely, faith is just the excuse we have to believe in something when there is no evidence to support it. Faith seems to be much more admirable and praiseworthy to god than evidence. He’s not like an earthly parent who wants you to know that they’re always there. He’s like the boogey man in the closet who only exists in your imagination but isn’t there when you turn on the closet light.

Do Not Judge God

These are the words I hear quite often when I point out the atrocities of the Old Testament. Why can't I judge his actions? We judge each other by what we do even more than by what we say, if we're smart. How are we supposed to understand god or decide if he is someone we want to have a relationship with if we can't even judge his character by his actions? He doesn't make any personal appearances these days but he does make quite a splash in the O.T.. I know that some Christians would say that the reasoning for his actions are so far above our understanding, and we are like mere ants compared to him. But, were the stories in the Bible not god's way of communicating his nature to us? When he orders the annihilation of all that breaths, he is revealing a part of his personality and character. It's a part that I can't understand or admire. The answer to my concern usually consists of someone telling me to "not judge god." I can't help but to have an automatic emotional response of disgust regardless of conscious judgment. Humans have an innate desire to protect the young and the helpless. We all hate to hear stories of people abusing children because they are such helpless, innocent creatures. So, why would god order the destruction of these helpless creatures? Furthermore, why do so many Christians find no problem with those actions?

If We All Came from Apes...

than why are there still apes? Checkmate atheists! Or, is it?

Watch the Nova special Becoming Human to stop making such ignorant arguments.

A Few of My Favorite Things

At risk of sounding like Oprah, I wanted to list a few of my favorite things that I go to for more head knowledge as an atheist, and student of science.
1) The A-Unicornist site- This guy has to be the greatest kept secret on the net. Why he isn't more recognized for his blogs is beyond me because they are probably better than just about any blog I've read, and I read a lot of blogs. He is also the one who played a major part in my own de-conversion, and I've known him since 6th grade; We've only recently got reacquainted through Facebook.

2) Atheist Experience Podcast- If you own an iphone or anything similar, you have got to download the podcast. I usually listen to the sunday afternoon show on mondays. They have several different hosts and all of them have great insight and knowledge. Matt Dillahunty is the founder.

3) The Universe series brought to us by the History Channel via Netflix-I've been watching the four year series on The Universe via Netflix and, besides noticing just how ignorant I am, have learned a great deal more about this awesome universe we live in.

4) Skeptic Magazine and The Skeptical Inquirer- I have a subscription to The Skeptical Inquirer and just swing by my local bookstore to purchase the Skeptic magazine that comes out quarterly. The publisher of Skeptic is Michael Shermer.

5) The Local Library- It's great to be able to request a book online and have it transferred to the nearest library for free, nuff said.

6) Dead-Logic.com, John Loftus' blog and any other blogs that I follow are also great resources.

7) As far as Youtube goes, I like to listen to everybody's favorite transexual Zinnia Jones, the always insightful AronRa, the hilarious nonstamp collector, Thunderfoot and the incomparable Edward Current.

Joe Rogan and Noah's Ark

I've always been a bit of a Joe Rogan fan, and we both share a passion for MMA. The story of Noah's Ark is asinine to say the least and easy comedic fodder. For instance, how did Noah get all of the millions of animals on one boat, both male and female gender? How did he also gather all the food supplies and have the capacity to store that on the boat as well? Male lions alone can eat 75 pounds of meat at one sitting!

After the comedy routine, Joe and a documentarian discuss the "evidence" as they take the fight back stage. The documentarian states that they found a 550 foot boat on top of Mount Arafat! Joe remains unconvinced of the findings and points out the absurdity of the whole story.

That Ear Grating Christianese Language

Now that I’m a wicked person, I tend to get rather irritated when one of these really silly sayings comes out of a Christian's mouth. I used to take comfort in many of them myself, but they’re more of a nuisance to me these days. Let’s take the way that many Christians try to comfort each other when someone dies: “It was just his time to go.” We hear this one quite often, and it’s usually followed with a statement like, “god needed his angel up there with him more than down here.” I thought god didn’t need anything since he is the definition of perfection and since when did people turn into angels upon death? Here’s another one that the late, great George Carlin joked about in his last live performance called It's Bad for Ya: “I just know your grandpa is smiling down upon you right now from heaven and watches over you.” My concern is how often does grandpa watch me? I loved my grandpa, who died of stomach cancer back in 1996, more than just about anything, but I really don’t care to know that he has constant surveillance on me like god himself supposedly does. Is he watching me during bowel movements and smiling? How about intercourse? I’d prefer that he just go about his business and do what people in heaven tend to do, sit on a cloud and play harps. Furthermore, what does he turn his attention to when I die?

Christians also tend to rely on god to give them guidance when their stuck in a rut. One annoying thing they say is, “I’m just waiting on god to show me what to do.” More often than not, they end up going with some emotional cue that just stems off an experience of confirmation bias. They ask for a sign and something occurs that seems a bit odd, even though it probably happens hundreds of thousands of times a day to people, and they go along with it. They excuse all the times god led them into another dead end as some sort of lesson that god is only privy of. God never really helped me accomplish anything. It was the hard work that I put fourth myself, and it would be pointless to keep waiting for signs that will undoubtedly lead you in the wrong direction. This reminds me of the autobiographical novel by Dan Barker called Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist where Dan drives around for hours till he gets to a wheat field, if I remember correctly, and it was all provoked because he thought god was telling him to do so. He was looking for direction in his life, and god led him to a field. Many Christians do this all the time and end up making things worse for themselves. They connect some sort of meaning to an event and make false conclusions about what they should do next. In the aforementioned case, Dan thought god was speaking to him so he followed through despite any previous important engagements he needed to attend to.

For instance, I don’t think that I would have taken a $16,000 hit in the stock market if I didn’t think god was going to reward me for my hard work. So, I stuck with it and continued to be the best Christian I knew how to be. I tried to witness to atheists and certainly saw this as a sign that I was being led in the right direction and I would surely be blessed, but it only ended up making things worse.

Then they’re Christians who are stuck on making sure they only speak positive things into their lives. It’s this whole “name it and claim it” philosophy influenced by Word of Faith teachers and books like The Secret. My mom is one of the worst when it comes to this. I’ll be having a bad day, and I’ll say something like, “things are never going to work out” and my mom will come back with “well, of course not, if you keep speaking like that. Don’t you know that the words you speak have power?” I agree that the words we say can shift one’s emotional state, but they don’t have any sort of mystical power that I’m aware of. I know that cussing sure helps me when I’m frustrated at times, perhaps that is one of gods greatest gifts.

She might say something along the lines of, “don’t you know that you’re a child of the king and you have a seat at his banquet?” Yes, I’m glad that I can be so fortunate while children in the present day Sudanese province of Darfur are being killed by Christians who are convinced that they are witches. If only these children would speak positive words and accept Jesus as savior, they could avoid being murdered by Christians as well.

Another line that really explains nothing is “God’s ways are above our ways.” This is just the Christian’s way of saying that they have no way of explaining the apparent inconsistency of god and his word. This is an indefensible stance because they can’t make a coherent statement about who god is, and it also comes at a time when they are seeking rational answers but can’t find any. It all goes back to the whole, “it was just his time to go.” God spares the murderer but allows a popular local preacher to die prematurely. Or, God allows one person to live in the act of a shooting, such as in the case of the Arizona Senator who recently was shot in the head, and Christians call that a miracle but just call it “mysterious” or "tragic" when others die in the process. They can’t make heads or tails of it so they just conclude that "gods ways are above our ways."

Belief in the Belief in God

I’ve iterated this point in the past , but it seems all the more salient when Daniel Dennett recently reiterated the same sentiment. Most people go along with the ‘gag’ of believing in god; That is to say, most people go through all the motions that a Christian is supposed to go through to show that they think believing in the belief in god is important. At the very least, they agree that trying to believe in god is an important venture.

A person that actually believes in god is a vastly different kind of person than a person who believes in the belief in god. To illustrate, there’s probably no one that I know of who would become a martyr for Jesus. Some Christians settle down and go to church while the Jesus of the Bible demanded that we preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. (Mark 16:15) Heck, most people can’t even get out of bed for Jesus and attend church on Sunday. Those people that do make it through the door generally act like everybody else the rest of the week and you wouldn’t be able to tell that they were Christian aside from the "Honk for Jesus" bumpersticker on their car. There’s just no urgency or “get out of that burning building” mentality exhibited by Christians of this age. If you really believe in god, your actions would follow suit.

Furthermore, shouldn’t a person conduct themselves in such a way that they actually believe god is surveying their every move? I’ve made the analogy before that people tend to give their boss infinitely more respect than they do god, at least while the boss is watching them. God is a twenty four hour a day, seven day a week boss that actually has the ability to go one step further than their boss does and read their thoughts. People act a whole lot different once their earthly boss leaves the room, and there’s probably even more of a discrepancy with their heavenly boss. Aside from being in church, most Christians act as if god isn’t around at all for the rest of the week, and I suspect that their behaviors in church are more indicative of how they want other church members to see them than how they want god to see them.

Many people resume their cussing, slacking off on the job and generally just fall off the godwagon altogether. The very best of them pick our pockets and condone the practice of pedophilia. A Christianity Today survey in 2000 stated that 37% of pastors struggle with pornography and that's just the ones who are actually willing to admit their struggle. How many people would open up a porn site if they knew their boss was watching them? I suspect zero unless they wanted some dire consequences. Is this the behavior you would expect from someone who thinks Jesus is actually in the room watching their every move? I think not.

Dennett makes a comparison to Casper the Friendly Ghost. Casper would walk through walls, but he could also catch a baseball. Why doesn’t the baseball go right through his hand? People seem to notice the discrepancy but don’t mind it that much. They just go along with the ‘gag’. This is what I think Christians do today. They know it’s a bunch of BS but they go along with it. They are culturally assimilated into it from an early age and fall in love with the belief in the belief in god. They think it’s un-American to do otherwise. They love the hymns, the socializing, and group adherence but they don’t really believe in god. Their actions tell on them; they don’t act like the surveillance tapes are running.

I was the same way when I was a Christian. I often pondered why I didn’t act like Jesus was watching me if I really believed in him. I guess it’s because I never really did, and I don’t think anyone else does either, unless they’re delusional. They’ve just been so deeply indoctrinated that they have convinced themselves that they do even when they don’t. Their too scared of hell to say otherwise.

Here is a video of Dennett discussing how Christians really act and how it points to a lack of belief in God: