My God!

... it's full of stars! (did I just date myself?)

Almost every culture on the planet has created gods, probably since the beginning of human consciousness. It seems like it's a natural process, to try to explain things they don't or can't understand, to have a parental figure to keep people in line, and to watch over them, etc.

There are common threads with many gods, such as immortality. But usually the individual traits of a god are made in the image of the humans imagining it. 

So here is my question to you. If you were to create a new god, what would it be like? Assume that the god you'd create would be one you'd like. 

Here is the god I'd make, at the moment. I'm sure this will change once I get some good ideas from all of you. 

A Plan and a Prayer

I saw this Philosoraptor picture on Facebook the other day and smiled because he's is spot on, as usual.

"If God has a plan for everybody, then why do people pray for change?"

I hear this bandied about often among my heathen friends, usually with a perplexed expression. We struggle to understand how people can muddle through life with so much cognitive dissonance.

But if you're one of the True Believers of the Abrahamic faiths, you probably believe that God has a hand in your life to some degree, and you probably still pray for assistance of some sort. Do you see the irony?

This verse is quoted often:

Matthew 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. (NIV)

But what is it saying? That God lets little sparrows die, and that he knows about it and still lets them get eaten, get sick, freeze to death, starve, get diseased, and does nothing? If he lets sparrows suffer and have hard lives, what do you think he does for his favored creation? (hint: read your bible and find out! It's not pretty!)

I told you of the little boy I babysat for, when I was in my teens. He was born with a terrible defect in his heart. Did God let that defect happen? Did God have that child be born into a life of years of pain and intense suffering? Why would he do that? (By the way, humans and modern medicine were what saved him and let him live at all.)

And religious people, stop right there. Save your apologetics for yourself. I am not interested in your twisting of reality, your logical fallacies, your cognitive dissonance. You worship a deity who lets innocent children be born and suffer their whole lives and you make excuses for that monster.

I've never ever heard an argument that can fully explain the god of the bible in terms that are completely loving and caring. If you do, then you are cherry-picking out only a tiny fraction of the content of your holy book. You are a cafeteria christian, and therefore I am not interested in arguing with you either.

So God has a plan for all of us, right? In fact, in Romans, it says we are predestined. Well, more specifically God predestines those who will follow him. This chapter also has a bit about prayer which is relevant to us today, so here is the whole section:

Religion is Brilliant

Modern religion is a very well designed system that is quite brilliant.
It's been around a very long time and has been carefully crafted into a nearly perfect system that is:

• hard to refute because there's nothing tangible or verifiable, it's all "in your heart"
• comforting to believe in
• self perpetuating
• effectively supported by confirmation bias and many other logical fallacies

It's grown over a long time, and one religion spawns another. Probably as long as people have been around, there has been some form of religion.

It was probably as simple as someone answering questions about thunder and the tribe listen to him, he becomes a holy man, and it spreads.
The first gods were responsible for answering all the tough mysteries.
The priests were the go betweens, and they probably quickly realized they had power over the common people and could manipulate them easily.

So each priesthood  picked the best ways to perpetuate the religion and keep the priests in power. Most religions follow the same basic rules, probably created through trial and error, basically the evolution of religion based on how our "believing brain" works.

The way religion is set up:

• you can't question whether there is a god or not
• you can't argue against faith/god
• it works great for parents to indoctrinate their children because it's like a free babysitter, the fear of punishment by someone who sees everything
• it answers man's greatest fear: what happens when you die
• you get to live forever, which is great if you follow the rules
• it's a great motivator to be good because of eternal punishment
• you don't have to think for yourself (in fact you're encouraged not to). You're told all the rules that you need to follow. 
• it's easy. Your religion gives you your morals and rules to live by. 

Why it's hard to refute

• people are indoctrinated from birth
• it's cultural/societal, the majority in a given area follows the same religion
• it's part of peoples' basic beliefs. it's often their foundation
• we are by nature easily deluded when we like something. we easily use confirmation bias and all the other logical fallacies to back up what we already want to believe
• people can rationalize almost anything when they believe it. 
• the belief comes first, the rationalizations follow
• cognitive dissonance allows us to hold opposing ideas and information in our minds at the same time
• every good event is attributed to god favorably, but every bad event is the person's fault for breaking the rules.
• Satan is also easy to blame 
• all questions are answered with "god works in mysterious ways" and "god did it"
• it's easy, you don't have to question anything
• the fear of death is the biggest motivator. so it really drives people to comfortable answers. you get to live forever.
• god takes care of you and watches out for you. You have a father figure taking care of you all the time
• the flip side is that god keeps you in line by watching you all the time
• you don't have to take responsibility for anything

Please feel free to add to this. I know it's not complete.

How the Other Side Thinks

I don't like the idea of 'taking sides', but the following five quotes from my cousin's Facebook status disturbed me to the point that I can't help but see that we are in different universes, never mind on a different page. When I talk to her I try to find the common ground, and I seek to understand where she's coming from and her worldview. And in person we really don't talk about religion. But her view of Christianity, God and Jesus is, well, tell me what you think.

Here are the five most recent quotes.

"God disciplines us because he loves us too much to let us continue down a destructive path." -- loving my God and Savior because he brought me back on a path that glorifies Him first.

"Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain." - Touche, 2 Corinthians 7.

"You will not find My peace by engaging in excessive planning; attempting to control what will happen to you in the future." ... (Proverbs 16:9)

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. -- Isaiah 26:3-4 ... taking comfort and rejoicing in knowing that God's plans for me are greater than any I have ever had for myself.

Praying constantly with the help of Galatians 5 today. 'It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.' - Galatians 5:1

I didn't leave any comments to these. My cousin is 18 and has shown a lot of respect to me regarding my atheism. So we are mutually courteous. It's hard to read such things from such a smart, wonderful person. What do you think of what she is saying?

My Pareidolia Has Produced a Miracle!

Recently, I shared my blessing with you of Jesus showing himself to me in a picture in my dining room of pond scum on a creek. I was amazed at your lack of Faith. No one else saw Jesus but me. But that did not deter me! I knew I had a Genuine Miracle in my presence. So I prayed and waited for the Blessings to start rolling in. (and by pray, I mean I sarcastically blogged about it and then promptly forgot about it)

Well here's a big one! My dear husband Butch got a job! He had one but he was offered a better one. Which means he was able to quit the old one that he hated. God always provides!

Of course, my confirmation bias sees the recent pareidolia from August 31 and Butch being offered a job a week later as being magically related. And of course, I have (conveniently) forgotten that Butch had just applied for the job (his mundane, human actions), that he had been looking for a job for quite a few months, and that he had the requisite skills gleaned over many years of hard work to attract the new employer.

In other words, Butch took all the boring, time consuming steps needed to get hired. But I don't have to think about his intelligence, technical skills, people skills and persistence. No, of course not. I just know that Jesus provided through my Faith and Devotion.

Ugh, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little. First, it's incredibly insulting to Butch to ignore all of  his efforts to pin all the accolades on Jesus, an invisible, evidence-free friend who gets all the glory when things go well, and never gets blamed when bad stuff happens.

That is really the evil genius of religion. Whoever first came up with that slick bit of mind-twisting psychology obviously skyrocketed to the top of the game. Heads Jesus wins; Tails you lose. But Jesus loves you and will give you rewards after you are dead. Of course, you'll be dead so you will never know if you wasted your life in servitude for a bucket of lies.  Oh, and don't forget, if you don't love Jesus, he will make you burn in hell forever and ever. How can you pass this deal up?

Oh, you need evidence. I see. That's against the rules. God says you have to have faith. See how I move the goalposts so it always goes my way? Pretty sneaky, aren't I? It's evil genius, playing off of our human weaknesses. Brilliant!

I've Been Blessed With a Miracle!

So I was sitting at my dining room table at 8:42 pm on Wednesday, August 31, 2011 when I looked up at a photograph I have had hanging there for about 5 years. And LO! Jesus appeared before me in all his Heavenly Glory! I took a picture to share this Blessing with you:

Can you see Him? It's much more obvious in person than it is in this humble picture. I was struck by His holy presence and stopped to pray to him in all his Glory. Ok, actually I didn't actually pray. But I sort of chuckled at the pareidolia.

Since He's being coy in this image, I have slightly enhanced the natural image just for the sake of helping you see this Divine Miracle:

Now, can you see him?! I thought so! What an amazing blessing! I mean, here I am, a blasphemous godless heathen, and I see Jesus in a picture that I've looked at for 5 years. By the way my husband's cousin gave us this photograph which is his original work. It's a picture of pond scum on a creek. How apropos!

Ok, I was just playing with the second image, but I did see him in the photograph. I've talked about pareidolia on HDC in the past, so you should be familiar with the phenomena, which is extremely common: it is the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist.

What I found very interesting was that when I first looked up the other day and saw the face, I immediately thought it looked like Jesus. But that made me think, how the hell does anyone today think they know what Jesus looked like? Why do we all see him as looking like a surfer dude out of the Renaissance, with sandy blond, long hair, a full beard, etc?

Wouldn't Jesus actually look Arabic, with dark features and black hair? And why do we always see the same basic vague head and shoulders shape as Mary? How many countless millions or billions of Middle Eastern women, or nuns, have worn the same type of cloak? Only every woman in a burka. And every nun in a habit. But for some reason we all have this idealized idea of what this woman looked like and that affects how we perceive patterns in random noise.

But, now that I've seen him, I can't unsee him. The recognition of a human face in the random pattern of pond scum in the picture is stuck in my head as the classically accepted face of Jesus Christ, Son of God.

And this brings up the most important issue. That of miracles. We all know when images of Jesus or Mary appear, the Miracles start to happen around them. So I figure I had better keep an eye out for them. I think that they start once the image is recognized by one special person (who has their patternicity turned up). That makes sense, right? I mean, maybe the image of Jesus wasn't even in the picture all these years, and now that he has imbued the pond scum with his presence, I think I can expect some good changes in my life.

Do I get three wishes? Do I have to create a shrine? I really don't have the space for a shrine and I hate incense. I will be sure to let you know when the miracles start.

I suppose the first one would be that I should turn into a True Believer. But I'd prefer cash, if I get to put in for my three wishes.

Reasons Given For Believing in God

I was reading The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer the other evening and came across a study that Shermer did that pretty much sums up belief in God. But it's really even more telling than that. I'll let him explain in his own words:

Page 264, kindle location ~5280)

My colleague Frank Sulloway and I discovered another form of attribution bias ¹ in a research project that we conducted several years ago. Frank and I wanted to know why people believe in God, so we polled ten thousand random Americans. In addition to exploring various demographic and sociological variables, we also directly asked subjects in an essay question why they believed in God.

The top two reasons that people gave for why they believed in God were "the good design of the universe" and "the experience of God in everyday life." Interestingly and tellingly, when subjects were asked why they thought other people believed in God, these two answers dropped to sixth and third place, respectively, and the two most common reasons given were that belief is "comforting" and "fear of death".

These answers revealed a sharp distinction between an intellectual attribution bias, in which people consider their own beliefs as being rationally motivated, and an emotional attribution bias, in which people see the beliefs of others as being emotionally driven.

... The attribution bias of perceiving intellectual reasons for belief as superior to emotional reasons appears to be a manifestation of a broader form of self-serving bias through which people slant their perceptions of the world, especially the social world, in their favor.

That is very telling, isn't it? What does it mean? Do people overestimate their own reasons, by making them out to be rational? Or do they accurately portray their reasons and view others less favorably as having beliefs for less practical reasons?

How would you even tease that out? I can't think of how you would, since you can only find out why people believe anything by asking them. So we just have to go on their word.

In my experience talking with religious people, I've heard quite a few say they just can't imagine or bear to think that we just end when we die. That's the one I've heard the most, personally. I've also heard the one along the lines of that they can't believe everything just evolved and came from nothing, etc.

But now I want to ask people why they think others believe in God.

1. attribution bias: the tendency to attribute different causes for our own beliefs and actions than that of others.

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!

An Evening With Heathens

Sunday evening my group, Morgantown Atheists, had an evening at the local UU church to talk about heaven and hell around the world throughout time. We had a good turnout, including a Christian and a WVU professor of history, both of whom had never been there before. We all thought it was rather funny that the heater had been turned on in the church sometime before, so it was 99°. At least it was a dry heat. So we were sort of practicing in case we were wrong.

One of our regular members, Jason, brought his wife, Alise, who is a Christian. I actually met Alise in the blogosphere when she wrote that excellent article awhile ago called Surviving a Conversation With An Atheist, about what stereotypical assumptions not to make when you talk to one of us. So it was really neat to meet her in person then go out to dinner afterward with everyone and talk a bit more.

Unfortunately we didn't do much more than scratch the surface of what Alise believes, but my main goal was to make sure she was welcome and that she had an opportunity to at least share what her church teaches. (I should also note, Alise is extremely well spoken and seemed perfectly capable of handling her own!) But sometime over coffee I'd love to know more about what Alise believes herself, which she says is "complicated".

Anyway, she sent me a message this morning saying that she had blogged about her evening out with us heathens and it was so well-written I wanted to share it with you. Here it is, in its entirety:

Heaven and Hell with Atheists
by Alise Write

I've been meaning to attend a meeting of the local atheist group with Jason for a while now, but I've been unable to make it work due to conflicting schedules. When he told me that the group was going to be discussing heaven and hell this week and in light of some of the reading I've been doing recently, I thought it would be interesting to go and see what these folks had to say (the 99 degree temperature in the church where we met was cause for much mirth throughout the evening!).

Defining the Nature of God

As you know, I’m an atheist. Actually you could also call me a polyatheist because there are tens of thousands of gods I don’t believe in. But there is one god in particular that most of us allude to when we use the big “A” word. We mean Jehovah, Yahweh, THE LORD, the god of Abraham, Jesus’ dad, the god of the bible.

This god does triple duty for the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims. But who is he? How can we define him?

I’ve found that if you ask 10 people about God, you will get 14 different answers. Even believers will contradict themselves when they define the god they worship.

But if we distill it down, what do we get? What is the essence of this supposedly supreme deity?

First let’s look and see what God calls himself in his book. In Exodus you can find the following:

• God is cryptic: God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:14) – Isn’t that what Popeye used to say?


• The second of the 10 commandments: You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. (Exodus 20:5) – to the fourth generation! How spiteful!


• God’s name is Jealous: Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. (Exodus 34:14) -

God is often defined by his attributes:

• Unchanging – if God is unchanging then you can look at the old testament to get a good picture of his heinous character. It’s not very flattering. He’s barbaric, cruel and murderous.


• Perfect – and yet there is nothing perfect about anything that is attributed to him. Isn’t that telling?


• Omnipotent – If he’s all powerful why doesn’t he just fix some of his millions and trillions of mistakes by humane means? Why does he let such suffering continue? Why won’t he heal innocent children of birth defects, at least? Why won’t he do anything at all to help his creation?


• Omniscient – Even in the bible he doesn’t really know everything. There are several instances where he is surprised by what is going on. And knowing everything but not doing anything about it is not really very good, is it?


• Omnipresent – Again, there’s no evidence of this. If God is here with me now, it certainly isn’t tangible in any meaningful way.


• Loving – this is the one I get the most from Christians. What is the evidence? Certainly not from “the good book”. Just read it in its entirety and count up how many people God murdered, not to mention the innocent animals that he insisted be slaughtered and roasted in his name to purge people so they could be acceptable to this hateful deity. If you look at God today, again, there is no evidence that he is loving. I can’t think of anything. What you do find is people being good to each other. Why not use Occam’s Razor and look at the most logical reason for human altruism. As an evolutionary advantage? As a cultural adaptation? Do we really need to add a supernatural element? I find it dehumanizing to thank God when a human does something heroic. Thank the person, not the invisible sky daddy.


• Jealous – see below. He calls himself jealous. If he were perfect, he really wouldn’t need to be jealous.


• Angry – see below. He is the epitome of angry. If he were perfect he wouldn’t be angry.


• Murderous – So if you count up all the people in the bible that God murders, you get approximately 24,634,205. If you count up all the people in the bible that Satan kills you get 60. 

How Do People "Reason" Their Way Into Religion?

Recently I've talked to a number of Christians who say they are "thinking Christians" and that they have reasoned and researched their way into their religion. This is how I think it might happen. Let me be clear first, though. This isn't something that only people who buy into religion do. We all do something similar to this in our lives, unless we've really trained and become good at critical thinking.

1. Start with a need that isn’t being fulfilled. Often this is some variation of, “I can’t believe we just die and that’s it. I want to live forever.” It could also be seen as a general fear of the unknown, major life questions, a belief that religion is needed to be moral, or perhaps someone is leading a shallow life where they look for something deeper.

~I actually fell for the first one. After I realized gods were man-made, I still believed in reincarnation and a hodge-podge of other spiritual New Age claims. For me, it was harder to get rid of those beliefs than God himself. The realization that dead is dead just seems to really freak people out. Since the dawn of  humankind, people have buried their dead in hopes of eternal life, and they have created myths and religions that openly address the afterlife, often as a destination and a threat or reward.

~A lot of people incorrectly believe that morals come from religion. Humanists and nonbelievers everywhere are living proof that it isn’t true.

2. Look for easy answers down specific paths. Pick up a popular book that is written to sell you on a particular religion and read it, or start listening to someone who has strong views and arguments for what they are peddling. Usually you’ll pick something you already have an affinity for in some way.

I have to say that there are people out there who talk a good talk. Their arguments are slick and easy to digest. The logical fallacies are well crafted and very hard to point out if you have the unfulfilled need from step 1, and no training in how to think critically. If you don't know the material from other sides you will be easily duped. The twisted logic is extremely hard to notice. And the information is designed to answer tough questions and to be comforting in some way.

3. Once you’ve found the leader that you resonate with, start absorbing as much as possible from that source and anything they might recommend. This is your guru, your leader. He or she will probably also tell you who to avoid. This is important. He’s setting you up on a narrow path that isolates you from different views. Of course, he’s also given you very comforting answers in step 2 so this is easy. It seems reasonable.

Once you read or listen to something that you agree with, you'll seek out more of the same and keep confirming the bias you have already unconsciously formed. Your guru’s answers ring true to you, they feel good, they satisfy you in a way that you haven't felt before. This is emotional, not logical. Plus, almost all of us have never been trained to think logically and critically.

So when the person you like says that so and so is wrong, you believe him or her without even questioning it. Even if you go and read some of “the enemy”, you've already been carefully primed by your respected guru to discredit the new information.

Before you know it, you're a believer and you think you got there rationally. But instead you got there by rationalizing. There's a big difference.

Rational: consistent with or based on reason; logical.

Rationalizing: To devise self-satisfying but incorrect reasons for one's behavior. To justify (one's actions, especially discreditable actions, or beliefs) with plausible reasons, especially after the event.

The Results Are In

Hello! Remember 2 weeks ago I did Another Prayer Experiment?

If you recall:

• I prayed to the Abrahamic god for Butch to have his job situation improve (a promotion that was promised over a year ago to come through but didn't)¹


• I prayed to my computer, Einstein for my friend Jeff to sell an item for exactly $850 that he had purchased in a box lot for $5.  ²


• I also "prayed" (or had a talk with) myself to encourage myself to get off the weight loss plateau I had been on for about a week, to lose another pound.

The time frame was 13 days from when I prayed till May 1st. I didn't want it to be open ended because then there's no control in the experiment and it's too easy to post hoc rationalize some kind of false result, which I think is very common with prayers.

Drum roll, please!

• Butch didn't get his promotion. There was absolutely nothing that improved at his work, in fact his job satisfaction is still really low.


• Jeff didn't sell anything for $850. He didn't sell anything even marginally close to this amount.


• I lost a pound! In fact I lost 1.5 pounds!³

So, prayer to the Abrahamic god is just as effective as prayer to my computer at ZERO percent. Meaning completely INeffective. Although I would say in future studies both would be as good as chance.

But having a heart to heart with yourself and then taking action is, according to these results, quite effective! In fact, with this preliminary study, it was 100% effective. Of course, this was really a pilot study, so if you want to run the experiment yourself we can pool the data and come to better conclusions.

1. The chances of this promotion happening without something drastically changing were basically nil. I didn't tell Butch what I was doing in advance.


2. The chances of Jeff selling an item for exactly $850 that he had bought in a box lot were extremely slim, but not impossible. I didn't tell him the prayer in advance.


3. The chances of me increasing my exercise, reducing my caloric intake, and getting off the plateau I was on were fair, but not guaranteed by any means. I had a really hard time losing the pound! Full Disclosure: Unfortunately, I went to a potluck on Sunday, May 1st. I woke up Monday morning, after the experiment was over, 2 lbs heavier. Sigh!

Is God Love?

When I was a child, I was raised to believe that God and Jesus loved me, but that I was a terrible sinner. I was told over and over that Jesus had to die for me, and that I had to accept him into my heart and then be baptized if I wanted to avoid eternal hellfire and damnation. I was baptized three times in three different churches because I was so terrified of eternal torment.

In the past year I have talked to Christians and Catholics who have a very different experience of God than I did. If I mention the hellfire and brimstone preaching of my childhood they tell me how different it really is. They all say the same thing. God Is Love.

Last year my local atheist group (Morgantown Atheists) went to a megachurch together to experience it. While the preacher didn't say God Is Love, the message was very clear. In fact the first emcee guy even said he was there to make our experience as pleasant and comfortable as possible. There was mention of Jesus dying for our sins, and that we needed him, but no mention of hell, no mention of anything negative. It was all very wishy-washy and watered down, all very pleasant and positive.

I would guess that both kinds of churches still exist today. I'm sure southern baptist and maybe pentecostal are more about hellfire and brimstone, putting the Fear of God into people to keep them on the straight and narrow. Maybe the fundamentalist churches too, but that's a guess.

I wonder which kind of message is more prevalent today? (I know some of you Google-mad geeks can help me come up with the perfect terms to search here!) I have a feeling it's the feel-good God Is Love message. It's certainly very pleasant and seems to embrace more people and accept them. But I am definitely an outsider on this so I am not sure.

Please feel free to share your church experiences: Which churches have you been to? What was the fundamental message? God is Love? or Fear God? Or some weird twisted combo package? Or something else entirely?

But is God Love? I've read the bible more than once. The god of the old testament is most definitely an angry, jealous god. He says so himself. In fact even his name is Jealous. (Exodus 34:14)

Another Prayer Experiment!

I was thinking about a follow-up study to The Great Prayer Experiment. By the way, that prayer was April 7. It is now the 19th, 12 days later. Results: Null. Nothing. Nada. Nil. Nein.

So here's my new study.

1. Pray to God for something specific.


2. Pray to something else for something completely different and equally specific.


3. Ask myself for something specific.

See which, if any, produces results.

So what should I pray for? It needs to be tangible, not like the last prayer which was too open-ended (but it was a pilot study), and it needs to be within a set time frame. God should be able to handle this easily if he's omnipotent.

Here's my prayer to God (the Abrahamic God, to be specific):

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. 

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:

'Scientific Rigor' Regarding Exorcisms

The Telegraph wrote a couple of credulous, one-sided articles regarding exorcism recently. Apparently the interwebs makes it easy for people to find information on satanism, which is leading, of course, to more exorcisms. OMFSM, I just said the word satanism! I'm probably already possessed now! Get me a priest!

So is there a rise in satanism? Let's see what Google Trends can find:

First I looked up satanism by itself. There is no increase in searches for that term since 2004. It's really not that popular, I don't think. Then I did "satanism, exorcism". Exorcism has spikes, either from movies like Last Exorcism or "scary" vatican rumblings about the exorcism "crisis".



So, I guess they lied? Or they have no idea what they're talking about.

Anyway, a few things in this article stood out. First, they were written because the vatican hosted a 6 day conference in Rome regarding the "crisis". It was to give support to families and priests. Apparently "there is a particular risk for young people who are in difficulties or who are emotionally fragile."

Also, the objective of the seminars was to look at the "phenomenon" of satanism with "seriousness and scientific rigour". Uh, really? That's laughable!

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?

The God Meme

The internet is full of memes. One of my favorites are the God Meme. Basically it' s a picture of The Almighty with a little bit about how he operates.

Instead of listing them in all their bad graphic glory, I am just going to write  them out for you. (I'm sure this breaks some uber-nerd interwebs code of ethics)

Create AIDs - Forbid condoms.

Help actresses win awards - Do nothing about world hunger.

Wrath is a sin - Blow up cities to show who's boss.

Bow before me.  - I need the attention.

Create homosexuals - Ban homosexuality.

No worshiping idols  - Hang a cross in your home.

Omnipotent, perfect - Jealous.

Create world for humans - 70% salt water.

Japanese wave at me - I wave back.

Jews are my chosen people - LOL Holocaust.

Day 1: create light - Day 4: create light source.

Humanity descended from one man and one woman - Who only had sons.

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.