Thank You, Christopher Hitchens

As I'm sure you know, Christopher Hitchens died yesterday and the world is a little dimmer.

There have been some great articles written about him, and I don't feel I can even come close to them, so I will just say a few thoughts.

Christopher Hitchens was ferociously intelligent, erudite, passionate, eloquent and outspoken. He was one of the Four Horsemen, a tour de force for critical thinking, not just an atheist but an anti-theist.

His shoes can never be filled, but it is our responsibility to take up the mantle he dropped, to stand on his broad shoulders and continue his work, each in our own way, together.

He lived his life fully and completely. He wrung every drop of essence out of the time he had. He never wavered, never backed down from a challenge, his scythe of reason ever ready to cut down bullshit.

Let us rally together, stand up, be counted, come out, speak out for what we believe in, for what matters to us; for justice, truth and reason.

I am a better person for what Hitch taught me, for how he enlightened me. If in any small way we can pass on the bright light of reason he shone on us, his legacy lives on and grows.

I'm Up For Adoption

Did you hear the Good News? I might be a closeted Christian, and if you are a godless heathen, you might be too! We just need to get adopted!

Catholic League president Bill Donohue has started a campaign called "Adopt an Atheist":

Approximately 80 percent of Americans are Christian, and 96 percent celebrate Christmas. Of the 20 percent who are not Christian, non-believers make up the largest segment, though the number of self-identified atheists is tiny. David Silverman, president of American Atheists, knows this to be true, which is why he is frantically trying to inflate his base. “We want people to realize that there may be atheists in their family,” he told the New York Times, “even if those atheists don’t even know they are atheists.”

We think there is some merit in David’s idea, even if he has things backwards, as usual. Today we are launching our “Adopt An Atheist” campaign, the predicate of which is, “We want atheists to realize that there may be Christians in their community, even if those Christians don’t even know they are Christian.”

Here’s what our campaign entails. We are asking everyone to contact the American Atheist affiliate in his area, letting them know of your interest in “adopting” one of them. All it takes is an e-mail. Let them know of your sincere interest in working with them to uncover their inner self. They may be resistant at first, but eventually they may come to understand that they were Christian all along.

If we hurry, these closeted Christians can celebrate Christmas like the rest of us. As an added bonus, they will no longer be looked upon as people who “believe in nothing, stand for nothing and are good for nothing.”

So, I believe in nothing, stand for nothing and am good for nothing? Could they be any more offensive or wrong? According to them, aren't I a child of God even if I've apparently turned my back on him? So how can I be good for nothing? That's just repellent.

It's a strawman to say we believe in nothing and stand for nothing. Of course this is a blatant lie. All you have to do is ask us. Many of us are Humanists, after all, and as a Humanist I believe and stand for the well-being of all people. I also stand for caring for all life (well, 99.9% of it). I believe as thinking humans we are how the Cosmos can know itself.

I believe in the pursuit of scientific understanding and discovery, in making the world a better place, in creating a world of justice as much as we can, of encouraging and nurturing love and happiness, and reducing suffering.

What do they believe in? That the best they can do in this one precious life is to bow and scrape to an angry god who demanded murder, has no problem with misogyny, and punishes people who actually think with Eternal Damnation?

My friend suggested we encourage these misguided, delusional True Believers to adopt us. Go ahead! Most of us became atheists because we challenged our worldviews, questioned, researched and reasoned. We broke free of indoctrination already.

So, go ahead, adopt me, or better yet adopt my local group, Morgantown Atheists, because we are members of American Atheists. Who is going to have their worldview shaken up? Us or them? (disclaimer: not that you can reason with a True Believer. Reason and Faith are like oil and water, they just don't mix)

By the way, I got the image above from the article I linked to. I think it's hilarious and ironic that it's of a man holding a little boy. We are all born atheists, after all!

Understanding the Godless

Last month I joined some of my fellow Morgantown Coalition of Reason members to sit at a table at our local university to talk to people about secularism. It went well, only one Christian wished our untimely deaths, and a fair number of people were eager to know they aren't alone.

The Secular Student Alliance sent the group we were supporting a bunch of materials to hand out. One was an information-filled brochure called "What is an Atheist? Understanding People Who Don't Believe in a God."

I thought it was a great thing to have and we handed out quite a few, so I wanted to share it with you.

What Is a Nontheist?
A nontheist is an individual who does not believe in a higher power, supreme being or supernatural entities.

A nontheist might choose one or more of many labels. Common terms include atheist, agnostic, freethinker, skeptic, humanist, secularist, naturalist or bright.

This Makes It All Worth It - A Followup

Earlier today I wrote about an email I received from Abraham (not his real name) and how he is starting to look to atheism. He said that it was partly due to deep thinking and partly due to things I said here on HDC. We had a very nice exchange of emails and he agreed to let me share them, which I did earlier today in This Makes It All Worth It

Well! Abraham read the emails I sent to him, and my elaboration on here (see above link) and said the following a bit ago:

Saw the post on the blog, and I appreciated it, and the comments. In terms of reading, not much so far. I did go to Wikipedia and looked up "atheism", and with your comment, it helped me greatly. I am now ready to say that I am, in fact, an atheist, and hope to be able to defend my knowing that God does not exist more in time (I did read your post on Dawkins Spectrum of Theistic Probablilty). I hope to learn more in time. I really am not that much into podcasts, but am willing to look at essays.

I told him he is now on the A-Team and that he will soon get to learn our secret handshake. :P

I had offered to share the podcasts with him that I feel have been so helpful to me. I also asked him which books he's read on the subject.

So hey, I need your help! Let's compile a list for new atheists. I'd like to put books, essays and anything else on there that you've found helpful in your godless travels. Believe it or not, I have read very little of the classic stuff on atheism/religion/etc.

What would you recommend to Abraham? Which one or 2 sources did you find most informative and helpful once you were comfortable calling yourself an atheist (or the label of your choice)? Remember, he's come over to the Dark Side now, so we don't have to convince him. Now it's about information, insight, and being able to defend his lack of belief in gods. Please leave comments with the books, essays or resources you recommend and briefly how you felt they were helpful to you. Thanks very much! :)

It's Official! I'm a Pastafarian Minister!

As of September 17, 2011, I was officially ordained as a minister of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. If I fill out an application in my county, I will be able to perform Pastafarian weddings. Pretty cool, huh? Now I'm a Pastafarian! ARRRR!

May You Be Touched By His Noodly Appendage!

Here is where you go to get your official ordination.

I guess I should get my picture taken for my license with a pasta strainer on my head, next.

Wishful Thinking

As an atheist and a skeptic, I am often accused of being cynical, of denying everything. Of course, that's not true at all. I simply require evidence and think that faith is meaningless. If you need faith to believe something, then right there you know it's most likely nonsense.

Quite a few things are up in the air in my life. A lot of irons are in the fire right now. On top of that, I have been feeling under the weather (a cold or bad allergies, I can't tell).

Here's how I know I'm not a cynic or denier. I wish, truly wish, that prayer and magical thinking worked. I wish I had someone looking out for me, a supernatural benevolent being that has my best interests in mind. I wish karma were real. I wish the supernatural existed and that the world is as magical as people claim. I wish I had healing energy that I could tap into from a loving source that would heal me of my cold.

I wish the Secret were true so that I could just say positive affirmations and make everything work out in my favor. Wouldn't it be awesome, if justice existed outside of what we create for ourselves?

I wish I could just pray or meditate or do something to have some control in my life. How cool would it be if people who work harder, and did things for the common good actually fared better? I wish good and moral people were rewarded and bad or immoral people weren't. Imagine that!

Instead, I have to do my best, then just wait with everything out of my control, to see where it all lands. Just like everyone else. The difference is I have no delusions that I have control or someone watching out for me. So when everything settles, I won't be under a false belief that I had something to do with it. I don't have to create a story for why a supreme being treated me as it did.

I know we're on our own. Reality is cold. But at least it's real. I'd rather see things as they really are, not how I wish them to be.

Agnostic Atheist Skeptic

Recently, I wrote about Richard Dawkin's handy Spectrum of Theistic Probability. I found it useful to help me figure out what kind of atheist I am. (I rate myself as a 6.9 De Facto Atheist). I also find it helpful to understand where someone is coming from if they call themselves a 1 or a 7, because that means they "know" the unknowable and unprovable.

But last night I was reading over my notes of the first half  of The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer, before going to the second half. I wanted to share one bit with you from page 176:

Of course, no one is agnostic behaviorally. When we act in the world, we act as if there is a God or as if there is no God, so by default we must make a choice, if not intellectually then at least behaviorally. To this extent, I assume that there is no God and I live my life accordingly, which makes me an atheist. In other words, agnosticism is an intellectual position, a statement about the existence or nonexistence of the deity and our ability to know it with certainty, whereas atheism is a behavioral position, a statement about what assumptions we make  about the world in which we behave.

... I prefer [Skeptic] as my label. A skeptic simply does not believe a knowledge claim until sufficient evidence is presented to reject the null hypothesis (that a knowledge claim is not true until proven otherwise). I do not know that there is no God, but I do not believe in God, and have good reasons to think that the concept of God is socially and psychologically constructed.

That makes perfect sense to me. The thing about calling yourself an atheist is you're just saying one very specific thing; that you don't believe in god/gods. It's a negative statement that doesn't say much at all, really. It's helpful, but only to a point. And what other concept is defined by what you don't believe? I don't believe in leprechauns, so does that make me Aleprechaunistic?

I think that I have been slowly getting away from labeling myself as atheist first,  more to calling myself a skeptic first. I prefer it for the same reasons that Shermer does. It says that I highly value critical thinking, science and reason. It says what matters to me and how I approach the world.

Of course, people abuse the term all the time, mainly through ignorance. But if simply defined as Michael does above, then it's accurately saying a lot.

I know some of you don't like labels at all. But labels are how we understand things. For example, I labeled the drink I had this morning as coffee. It conveys information that can be useful. And for beliefs it says something about where I'm coming from. I label myself a humanist, which says a lot to someone, as does labeling myself a Formula One fan, etc. It can be very positive and shouldn't be shunned completely. It's just helpful information.

So, how do you identify yourself? Is there an order (as I find I have now) of how you want to be known, or how you see yourself?

EDIT: After the first several comments, I just want to add that I am happy to call myself an atheist. And I think atheists need to own the word just like people who are homosexual now proudly own "gay". Atheist Pride! Hey, most of us became atheists through tough critical thinking, reasoning and logic. We worked hard to get where we are. Of course, you could say the same for skeptics, which I'm also proud to call myself.

So don't think I'm encouraging you to walk on eggshells and use skeptic over atheist. Use them both! I like how MJ in the comments below said they use atheist out in the world and skeptic in the atheist movement. I have been doing something similar. I use the term that is most appropriate to the situation. Sometimes I feel they are all necessary and I call myself (deep breath) an atheist/skeptic/freethinker/humanist.

Also, I wanted this post to be short and sweet and focus mainly on the terms. But in the comments you've been right to point out that it really matters on the definition of God(s) being referred to. Are we talking about Yahweh/Allah/Jehovah? If you look just to the bible, he's been refuted. Are you talking about a deist sort of god? No, he can't be refuted because evidence of that god would be indistinguishable from natural events. Of course, when you talk to religious people, most are so wishy-washy, and move the goalposts as if they were seaweed at the edge of the sea at high tide, that I'm exhausted just thinking about it. But awesome atheists like Christopher Hitchens have thoughtfully torn down such fallacious arguments time and again.

So own the word atheist and skeptic, too!

A Vivid Reminder

As you may remember, my parents visited recently.  My mom brought me a piece of my childhood that I wanted to share with you. Here it is:

My bible from childhood. I guess I doodled on it. This is from 30 years ago, when I was 12.

~

Jesus Saves! Love is GOD!
(interesting that I said it that way. Don't people normally say "God is love?")

Do We Choose To Not Believe?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote Spot On!, which was about Alise Wright's list of assumptions for Christians not to make about Atheists. I thought they were excellent.

There was one little thing that she said though, that has spurred a follow up post on her own blog, about Free Will and Faith. She said,

Most atheists who have “deconverted” from a religious background have studied it and other religions thoroughly before choosing not to believe.

Mikespeir, in the comments, called attention to this:

If I have any reservations at all about this, it’s that “choosing not to believe” hung off the end there. I never chose not to believe. Once I realized I didn’t believe anymore I chose not to keep practicing the Christian religion. That was the choice involved.

I agree with Mike. I never chose not to believe.

Of course, I agree with Alise that we seem to have some say in our actions. We choose to read certain books/information (the bible¹ and/or Dawkins), attend different events (either church or TAM²), and we choose the people we associate with.

I have to throw in here, that this assumes that we have free will. I have learned in the past year that we most likely don't. We are determined by a myriad of previous factors. But I won't get into that here. 

Yet Another Experiment

Last December if you had asked me about my friends, I would have told you they were all nonbelievers of some persuasion or another. But back then I ran into a fellow blogger who is a devout Catholic. Roxane wrote about me and I felt obliged to write back. Instead of getting into a "blog war" we decided to take our conversation privately to email and have been writing each other back and forth ever since.

Now I would call her a friend. Do I understand her worldview? Does it make sense to me? No, it really doesn't. But she seems like a good person, kind and compassionate. With Roxane, I've been learning to see that there are religious people who aren't like the media stereotypes that make me apoplectic with impotent indignation.

Interestingly, in this same time period I've also come to see several family members that are also moderately religious to seriously devout in a new light. I've engaged them as well, and it has really expanded my perspective of people who are so diametrically opposed to how I view the world. It's been eye-0pening to say the least.

Last week Roxane got a crazy idea that she and I should co-write a blog. Nothing intense, just a weekly joint post. She thought I'd say no, but I surprised her and said yes immediately. So we started AtheistCatholic.com and today was our first post.

In the past couple of days I've told a few of my friends about what I'm doing. I've gotten mixed responses. Some people said I'm wasting my time. Others thought it was a good idea. First I should probably explain the goal of this new experiment. Because that is most definitely what it is. It might not work out, but I'm willing to give it a good ol' college try.

We want to share some of our discussion publicly, and have people join our conversation, mainly about our worldviews. It's not a place for debate or attacking the opposing team. It's more about coming to hopefully understand each other, and maybe even learn more about ourselves in the process. I've done that with Roxane already so I want to share that insight and hopefully get even more from the interactions we have over there.

One more thing. I am not being an accommodationist here. This isn't about compromising and bending over backward to the religious worldview. As you know, I have very strong opinions about naturalism/atheism and religion. But, this is about people getting along, being friends despite opposite viewpoints, and learning about others and ourselves.

If you're interested in joining the conversation, head over there and say hi. Just please be courteous. This is about building bridges, not isolating ourselves.

The Great Prayer Experiment

I was told by a religious friend of mine recently that I had nothing to lose by reaching out to God and praying. If there's no God (which is my position, as you know), then saying a prayer does nothing but take up a minute or two of my time. But if God exists (and of course, she means her Abrahamic god), then I have everything to gain, because her god is a god of Love.

After thinking about it for awhile, I had to agree with her. There really is nothing to lose by praying. As a skeptic, sometimes you have to do research. So I thought I'd do an experiment with God.

Here is how I did it. First, she supplied me with a prayer by a former atheist who, once he said this, found God reaching out to him. So it (anecdotally) worked once already. Unfortunately his prayer would have been untrue for me.

Here it is as he said it originally:

Dear God,

I know (because I can prove it with the certainty that a geometer can prove opposite angles are equal) that you do not exist. Nevertheless, as a scholar I am forced to entertain the hypothetical possibility that I am mistaken. So just in case I am mistaken, please reveal yourself to me in some fashion that will prove your case.

If you do not answer, I can safely assume that either you do not care whether I believe in you or you have no power to produce evidence to persuade me. The former argues you are not beneficent, the latter not omnipotent - in either case, unworthy of worship. If you do not exist, this prayer is merely words in the air, and I lose nothing but a bit of my dignity. Thanking you in advance for your kind cooperation in this matter,

John Wright

First, in my view, John is wrong. As we just discussed in the comments of a previous article, there are atheists who feel we can "know" God doesn't exist. I'm not one of them. I come from the standpoint that you can't prove a negative (and the burden of proof lies on the person making the positive claim, so you don't have to)  Anyway, I can't say the first line. And I think he is weak in his request. He sets it up so that God can be any kind of confirmation bias (a pet peeve of mine). So I rewrote it a bit differently.

Some of his second paragraph is pretty good so I used it. Here is the prayer I came up with:

Spectrum of Theistic Probability

Recently on my FB page, I mentioned that I guess I'm an agnostic atheist. I really don't like the term though, but out of that short scale, it's the best fit for me. I was then told about Richard Dawkin's Spectrum of Theistic Probability which I had never heard of, since I haven't read The God Delusion yet.

This scale is really interesting so I thought I'd share it with you in case you live under a rock like I do. Dawkins says that the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis. Is it? I thought a hypothesis was an idea that could be tested. How can we test for a god? Anyway, here is a spectrum of probabilities between two extremes of certainty which are represented by seven milestones along the way.

Here are the seven milestones.

1. Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C.G. Jung: "I do not believe, I know."


2. De facto theist. Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. "I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there."


3. Agnostic leaning towards theism. Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. "I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God."


4. Completely impartial agnostic. Exactly 50 per cent.  "God's existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable."


5. Agnostic leaning towards atheism. Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. "I do not know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be skeptical."


6. De facto atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero.  "I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."


7. Strong atheist. "I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung 'knows' there is one."

I think, like Dawkins, if you are an atheist who values evidence, you would avoid labeling yourself a 7. Dawkins considers himself to be a 6 and I am comfortable with calling myself a De facto atheist as well.

Because, after all, I am an atheist based on lack of evidence of gods. If there were verifiable, repeatable evidence from a god (and I could prove it wasn't hallucinations, delusions, insanity, etc), and everyone saw God, well, it would have to be pretty substantial, but if there were extraordinary evidence that was repeatable and verifiable, then I guess I'd have to change my mind.

Where do you fall on the scale? Why? And what would it take for you to change your mind?

Spot On!

I found this article the other day that I want to share with you. As an atheist I often get religious people making some pretty big assumptions about me. I'm sure you do too. They are boringly common, tediously repetitive and astoundingly stereotypical. (I freely admit though, I am just as guilty of making assumptions about religious people and people in general. It's a common thing to do)

So this woman, Alise Wright, is married to a man who deconverted. She said she made some pretty big assumptions when he told her he didn't believe in God anymore. So this is her advice to other Christians on dealing with us godless heathens. I think they are really great!

Surviving a Conversation with an Atheist

1. Please don’t assume that they’re evil. ...The idea that because someone doesn’t believe in God means that they will become a murderer is very frustrating, particularly as the wife of one of “those people.” C.S. Lewis suggested that one of the proofs for God is our common morality. To assume that because someone lacks belief in God means that they no longer possess a sense of right and wrong strikes me as a strange way to prove God’s existence.

Her thoughts here, the last sentence especially, are really excellent. I would add that people get their morality from society and their role models. Atheists, humanists and freethinkers discuss and try to improve their ethics as society evolves and matures.

2. Please don’t assume that it’s just a phase. Most atheists who have “deconverted” from a religious background have studied it and other religions thoroughly before choosing not to believe. Painting it as a “phase” denies the seriousness of both their study and their decision. I would certainly not want to have any encounter with God resulting in a closer devotion to my faith called a phase and neither should we use that terminology for those who have left the faith.

Right! Most atheists deconvert after much study of the religion they are leaving, as well as other religions of the world. It's a tough decision to make, and most do not take it lightly.

Support Nontheistic Festival For Our Troops

An awesome secular event was planned at Fort Bragg, North Carolina on April 2, but now it's been canceled. You can write letters and emails to try to get it going again (see below). Justin Griffith has tirelessly put this event together, so let's help our secular troops out.

Secular Coalition for America sent me this information a bit ago:

Demand Fort Bragg Support Nontheistic Festival
Army Garrison Commander Refused to Provide Event Support

“Rock Beyond Belief,” a festival of nontheistic speakers and musicians that was going to be held at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on April 2, has been canceled after Fort Bragg’s garrison commander refused to provide adequate support for the event – even though Fort Bragg officials had made similar arrangements for a religious event just months ago.

Among those scheduled to appear at the festival were author Richard Dawkins; Dan Barker, copresident of the Freedom From Religion Foundation; “Friendly Atheist” blogger Hemant Mehta; Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation; and musicians Spoonboy and Roy Zimmerman.

Rock Beyond Belief’s organizers had asked for lesser or equal amounts of support for their event than the Army and Fort Bragg officials provided for the Billy Graham Evangelical Association’s “Rock the Fort” celebration in 2010. You can see a complete comparison of the more than $100,000 in government funds provided to the Rock the Fort event to the funds asked for by the Rock Beyond Belief organizers here.

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Preparing For The Rapture on May 21

According to some crackpot, May 21, 2011 is when the Rapture is going to happen. I am scheduling a party for my local group of heathens on May 22 to celebrate. Either way the heathens win. If the Rapture happens, May 22 will be the first day of living in a christian-free world. If it doesn't, well then we were right. Again.

My awesome husband Butch found this online and I have to share it with you. What every atheist can say to God if the Rapture happens and we end up standing before him in judgment:

“But what if you’re wrong?” So goes the common questions posed to atheists by Christians. Putting aside for a moment the obvious retort (what if they are wrong and another religion is right?) I decided to really organize my thoughts a bit. What would I say if I was wrong, the Christians were right, and a moment after dying I found myself before the blinding majesty of Yahweh with Christ at his right hand?


Oh. Oh dear. I see. Well, I guess this is about as close to incontrovertible evidence for your existence as I could have ever demanded. Actually, as a good skeptic I pray you won’t get offended if I entertain the possibility that I’m experiencing a hypoxia-induced hallucination. But, I’ll just go along with this for now.

I’m not going to kneel or anything if you don’t mind. That would kind of be shutting the barn door after the cows have run out, don’t you think? Besides: by your will, I was thrust into life in a very undignified manner and state, so the least you could do would be to let me leave it in better circumstances. And really, that would be the very, very least you could do. You know, now that the initial shock of being dead is starting to wear off, I find myself getting angry. I’m trying to restrain it, but this whole situation is… absurd. According to most accounts, this is the part where you judge me. Who the hell are you to be a moral judge? You’re a sadistic, genocidal sex-obsessed tyrant. All my life, I laughed off those Christians who accused me of “hating God”. Like I told them, it wasn’t that I hated you; I just genuinely didn’t think you existed. But I did hate the idea of you. I didn’t see evidence to believe in any gods, but you in particular seemed like a logical contradiction. I was glad that the Bible was a work of-seeming-fiction because the belief that all of the most terrible things in the world were, at the worst, designed by or, at the best, permitted by an all-powerful conscious being was too horrible to not hate. It’s oddly refreshing to find that all this time I was outraged at something more tangible.

Vote For Your Favorite Atheist and Agnostic Resources

I just learned about About.com's Reader's Choice Awards. For the Agnostic/Atheist Awards, you can nominate your favorites. You simply write in your choice for each subject. If there's a resource you use and like, send them a little love.

For podcasts, I've recommended both of these to you in the past:

• The Skeptic's Testament


• Reasonable Doubts

Here are the subjects, each regarding Atheist/Agnostic resources:

• Best Book of 2010


• Best Blog


• Best Podcast


• Best Website


• Best Atheist/Agnostic to follow on Twitter


• Best Facebook Page


• Best Social Networking Website


• Best Forum


• Best Ad

So go vote then come back here and tell us who you like best in each category so we can expand our horizons.

Seek and You Will Find

Matthew 7:7-8 Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. (NASB)

Ok. Awesome. The bible says all I have to do is ask. All I have to do is seek.

Oh, will you look at that, it's in the following passages as well! (Bear with me. Feel free to skip down a bit.)

Luke 11:9-13 "ditto"
and
Matthew 18:19 Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven.
and
Matthew 21:22 And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.
and again...
Mark 11:24 Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.
and again...
John 14:13 Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
wait there's more...
John 15:7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
and again...
John 15:16 You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.
and again...
John 16:23 In that day you will not question Me about anything Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you.
Ho Hum, even more...
James 1:5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
This is really getting repetitive...
1 John 3:22 and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.
Finally, the last one!
1 John 5:14 This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.

Whew! Sorry for going biblical on you. But obviously if the "good book" repeats the same message twelve times, it must be important and it must be relevant. I should be able to believe in it as a Christian. Right?

I guess this is why people rely on prayer so heavily, even in this day and age when it's pretty obvious that prayers aren't answered any better than chance. But I digress. I have a point to make.

Doing Good, Spreading Inspiration

As those of you who follow my Facebook page know, I recently started an organization with my friend Eric called Viral Volunteer. In a nutshell, ViVo is about doing good deeds then going to the website and social media to tell others what you did and encourage them to do good things too.

Next Sunday, January 23rd, Eric and I, and a few of our friends, are going to the Ronald McDonald House here in Morgantown to make them lunch. We buy and prepare the meal, and then it gets served buffet style for parents and their children who are in treatment. It helps the parents and children have more time to spend together.

I know most of you don't live near me, but why not do your own local volunteering event? You can go to Viral Volunteer and fill out the form to let us know you'll be doing something and we'll post it to the site to encourage others to help their own community. Even if it's just you going out to your local park to pick up trash, let us know so we can inspire others to do something good too.

Also, we have a new form for those of you who have been inspired and helped by someone. Is there a person or group who has helped you? Have you been motivated by someone who helps others? Let us know. This is a wonderful way to encourage others and let people know you've been positively affected by someone.

You can also email me at Viral Volunteer if that would be an easier way for you to send pictures and/or tell your story.

Did you know that volunteering and helping others actually helps improve your health and increase your happiness and well-being? Find out how you can benefit from doing good deeds.

Don't know where to start? Here are some links and suggestions. If you have an organization that you think people should know about, leave a comment on that page, or here if you like.

As you know, I'm a godless heathen. Most, if not all, of the people helping out the Ronald McDonald House this Sunday are also atheists. A side benefit to doing good deeds as an atheist is that you help people realize that nonbelievers do good deeds too. That we care just as deeply and want to help our communities and our planet just as much as religious people. So when you fill out the form, feel free to let us know if you're volunteering in the name of your local atheist group (or any organization!). Also encourage your local group to start doing good deeds, and then have everyone fill out the form to start spreading the word. Atheists are good people too.

God Is Either Evil Or Incompetent... Or Nonexistent

I was trying to explain to someone recently about the "Why Won't God Heal Amputees" argument. For privacy's sake, I won't talk about what she said, but I did end up with the following questions and arguments of my own.

This is one of those topics where atheists and believers are never going to be in the same book, never mind on the same page. Here is what I think about it.

God answers prayers every day for football players catching touchdown passes, for people finding their keys, for people being miraculously healed of cancer, for people spontaneously being cured of diseases who go to Lourdes. Mary and Jesus show themselves in toast, stains on walls, in bird poop, in window glass streaks. Every day, miracles happen.

But they are only ever events that could happen statistically. They never break the laws of physics, they never break the natural laws of the universe. Sure, it's very rare for someone to have a spontaneous remission in their cancer. But it does happen. It's improbable, not impossible. So it will happen in time.

But God never performs a miracle that is impossible. It's impossible for a limb to regrow on a human. But lizards do it all the time. Why would God let lizards regrow a tail and not some poor girl who had her leg cut off in a tribal war? Or because she was called a witch in Ghana? Or why can't a war hero, if he and his whole family pray hard enough, let him grow his arm back that he lost defending his country?

God is omnipotent, omniscient and all loving. But I've heard from christians many times that God follows his own rules. But why? He's God. Why doesn't he ever answer any really tough prayers? Why only the easy ones and the ones that are statistically improbable but not impossible? Why doesn't he ever cure someone who has prayed fervently to be cured of something like AIDs or cerebral palsy? Because that's impossible.

Atheists Expressing Sympathy

I found a site called Sympathy 101 for Atheists and I thought I'd share it with you. Dealing with death can be extremely painful and sad, but it happens to all of us eventually. As atheists, most of the people we know are probably religious. How can we be genuine and honest and still be sympathetic to our religious loved ones when someone dies?

Atheists are often seen as cold because we don't have faith. We see death as an end to our lives, end of story. Religious people see death as a transition to something greater.  But we feel pain and emotion and loss just as much as anyone else. I think it might even be harder for atheists to lose a loved one than a religious person because they have hope (albeit false) that they will see their beloved in the afterlife while the godless know that death is final and there will not be any reunions.

So, how can we express our sympathies to someone who has lost a loved one while still maintaining our integrity and honesty? Here are some examples from the site:

Recognize the loss and express sorrow. If you knew the deceased, express your shared loss.

• "I'm so sorry for your loss."


• "I was sad to hear of his death."


• "It seems so unfair."

Express your appreciation of the deceased by relating positive ways the person affected your life or the life of the grieving friend or loved one.

• "She made the world a better place with all she did."


• "Every time your dad called, your face lit up."

Talk about how your friend or loved one made the deceased person's life better.