Friday, June 19, 2015


Why does life exist?


Why does the universe exist?


Why do bad things happen to good people?


Why does evil exist?


Why can't your answers be more detailed and informative?


Do answers like that satisfy your curiosity? Do answers like that provide you with useful and productive information? Is your life improved, does humanity benefit, with answers like that?


And yet millions of people accept an equally uninformative and pointless answer to many of life's biggest questions, an answer that is grounded in ignorance, an answer that discourages (indeed, prevents) further understanding. We are told to accept this answer without doubt;


The universe, Earth and even ourselves exist because God. There is life because God. Good things, bad things, in fact everything happens because God. 

We have to accept this answer on faith. We cannot probe further, we cannot hope to gain more detailed knowledge than what has been written down in books regarded by believers as founts of wisdom, books that obviously lack any awareness of technology, biology, geography, physics, astronomy or hundreds of other fields of science beyond those familiar to those living in the Middle East two thousand years ago.

To be fair, there are many mysteries in the universe. Even scientists occasionally have to admit that something exists because, we just don't understand yet.

And that's the key difference between belief and the quest for knowledge, between religion and science.

Religious believers are commanded to be satisfied with because God. To question further is heresy.

The scientific quest for knowledge, on the other hand, recognizes our lack of knowledge and continues to seek understanding. No answer is absolute, our knowledge will never be perfect. Yet we continue to push on to learn more.

Don't be satisfied with because.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Religion and Civil Rights

Martin Luther King Day is January 19th this year and February is Black History Month (now rebranded African-American History Month). That makes this a good time to reflect on why racial equality has been hampered in America and how the equality movement has been corrupted from within.

MLK certainly had admirable goals. Black citizens should, without question, have every opportunity and advantage their fellow citizens enjoy. They should not be subject to exclusionary practices that deny them the chance to vote, they should not be excluded from schools or jobs based solely on their race nor should they have to fear for their lives during interactions with police. 

Yet it's ironic that the most admired and well-known figure in the history of of the Civil Rights movement was a Christian minister. 

Christianity has a very checkered history with minorities in this country. Those of us who lived through the 50's remember vividly the fights to end segregation and Jim Crow laws. The KKK identified itself as a White Christian organization. 

The writers of the Bible made no effort to condemn or discourage slavery. It's true that the slaves mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments were of Middle-Eastern origin and not the African slaves that are the shame of early American history. But slavery is slavery regardless of the color or national origin of those enslaved, and the Jewish writers of the Bible had no problem with it. 

The god of the Old Testament made slaves a reward for wars conducted in his name. In the New Testament, often referred to as the New Covenant between god and man, includes:

Colossians 3:22
1 Timothy 6:1
All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God's name and our teaching may not be slandered.
Titus 2:9

1 Peter 2:18

The Civil Rights movement owes nothing to the Christian religion. 

Nor is it supported by the teachings of Islam. The Nation of Islam, under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan, has done more to increase distrust and enmity between Blacks and Whites than it has to help Blacks to reach parity with Whites. 

Religion is no friend to the struggle for Civil Rights. 

It could even be argued that the teachings of Christianity, the most popular religion in America, are to blame for the slow adoption of Civil Rights and the resistance to real equality in our society. 

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Belief versus Knowledge

All across the world wide web are comments from theists of every stripe denouncing modern science as an attempt by the ungodly to disprove their god or gods. In their never-quenched thirst to be seen as persecuted victims of a world-gone-wild (without taking any responsibility for it, even though they brag about the universality of their beliefs while ignoring the fact that universality undermines their claims of persecution), they try to convince the uncritical and uncertain that science is determined to prove gods do not exist. They make it sound like a holy quest, though we know only believers can enjoy those. 
Religious believers refuse to acknowledge that the best evidence against the possible existence of any particular god is the gross lack of any evidence for one. We have yet to discover any credible, physical evidence that can only be explained by the existence of a certain god and that god’s intervention in our natural world. Science isn’t trying to disprove god, science simply hasn’t found any evidence that irrefutably proves there is one or requires a god to explain natural phenomena.
Even if we could somehow learn to a 99% certainty that the universe began this way or that, that knowledge will not kill off the idea of god.
Science will never make an absolute declaration that it knows how the universe came into being. Definitive, absolute proof doesn’t exist. Science is not religion. It can only draw tentative conclusions from what evidence we can collect. Scientific conclusions are only as valid as the data. As we come across more information, science has to adjust its conclusions. Religions pretend to know absolute truths, yet they require us to accept these truths on faith. Knowledge will never be absolute, religious belief always portrays itself as such. 
If science were to state that all the evidence leads us to believe that the universe started in this or that manner, there will always be room to squeeze in religious belief. We see historically how religions adapt to current reality in an effort to stay relevant and retain their power over people. In all probability science can’t and won’t put an end to superstitious belief. With our complex brains otherwise intelligent people believe in luck and fate. Beliefs can exist beside knowledge without being eradicated by that knowledge. No matter how smart we become about reality, superstition will survive. There are many theories as to why humans develop and believe in superstitions, but history leads me to accept that every human has them. Religious belief will no doubt change subtlety, as it has before, to accommodate secular knowledge, but it will unfortunately be with us for a long time yet. It is, after all, just another superstitious belief.
Already there are Christian groups that have managed to incorporate scientific conclusions into their dogma. They accept the Big Bang as the best explanation for the beginning of the universe that can currently be drawn from available evidence and still credit their god with having set it all in motion. They give reverence to the Bible, but as an allegorical work rather than literal truth. Scientology is another example of a religion that has incorporated some science into their otherwise wildly fantastical belief system.

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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Jesus and Paul were Commies

No doubt most of us know what communism is. In its ideal state, it's a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed.

Communism has, to the best of my knowledge, never been practiced on a national scale in its ideal form. When it has been employed it's been by men who used its structure to impose their will on citizens and persecute their enemies. 

Even on a more modest scale, like communes in the 60s, communism failed because it didn't take into account human nature, especially our penchant for selfishness and greed.

English: Christian Communist symbolYet we know that there was a time when humans lived in small tribes that practiced basic communism. Some modern tribes still do. I suspect the practice is more workable in groups where the members are related by blood or marriage, where the desire to ensure the survival of each member outweighs, for practical reasons, our inborn selfishness. 

According to the Bible, the disciples formed a group with a common cause that should have been of more importance to them than there own needs and desires. Jesus encouraged his followers to adopt an essentially communal lifestyle. As recorded in Luke 3:1`0-11 (ESV), 
Likewise Paul, in describing the early Christian communities, wrote in Acts 2:44-47,
The early  followers of Jesus lived in communities, a word and concept that shares its origin with communes, communism and common

Quite often theists will criticize atheism by contending that historically communistic countries were anti-theistic in both law and practice, that atheism was central to that form of governing. They point to Stalin and Pol Pot as examples of atheists employing communism to further their anti-theistic agendas. 

This ignores the obvious truth that any belief about gods, that they exist or don't, can be used by the corrupt to gain power and authority over others. Hitler used his bastardized Catholic beliefs and the support of the Catholic church when it served his political purposes and he held no love for atheists. In a speech delivered in Berlin, October 24, 1933, he said: 
"We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out."
He failed, just as he failed to eradicate Judaism and homosexuality, though not for lack of trying. 

Atheism is not a necessary ingredient of communism. When it is employed by megalomaniacs and corrupt leaders to subjugate and abuse their citizens it is no more akin to the basic meaning of atheism than, when employed by those same sorts of leaders to those same ends, their corrupt concept of communism resembles the essentially empathetic and compassionate nature of that practice in its ideal implementation. 

It's commendable when small groups of people ignore their instinct to hoard for themselves and instead share what they have with each other. It exposes the best of humanity when we care for those who lack among us. That's the basic motivation of charity. 

The failure of communism on the large scale lies not with its unreasonable association with a lack of belief in gods but rather for its inability to eradicate a very human urge. Human greed and selfishness cannot be eliminated by laws or persecution. Those less-than-noble aspects of our humanity can only be controlled when each person understands that we cannot survive on our own, that we all need each other. We need to accept that our own needs will be met if we ensure that everyone's needs are met. We all need to care for one another. 

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Tuesday, December 25, 2012

What happened to the Christianity of Jesus?

What attracted me to Christianity as a teenager were the liberal and pacifist words of Jesus in the New Testament. I, like many Christians today, largely ignored the Old Testament, even though I read the Bible cover to cover. The Old Testament was the Bible of Judaism. I believed then, and still do, that one can be a complete and devout Christian by basing your belief solely on the New Testament.  

It's impossible to ignore these days how far mainstream Christianity has diverged from the words of Jesus and example of his life. And by mainstream Christianity I mean the televangelists and representatives of the faith that appear on TV and in print espousing the standards of modern American Christianity.

When I listen to the words of Pat Robertson or Fred Phelps I can only conclude that the Jesus they follow is a vengeful and hate-filled deity. When I hear politicians proclaim their religious beliefs one minute then hear them recommend cutting social programs and taxing the working class the next, I can only conclude that they are either hypocrites or that they are reading a different version of the story of Jesus than the one I encountered in the New Testament.

If there is an attack being waged on American Christians, it's being conducted by the leaders of the faith.

Two of my literary heroes as a Christian were Thomas Merton and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Both men not only understood and wrote inspiringly about what being a Christian meant, but they lived a life in full accordance with their beliefs. Merton didn't just write about the value of contemplation and asceticism to the modern believer, he lived his entire adult life as a Trappist monk devoting himself to those values. Bonhoeffer didn't just write about what has labeled as "religionless Christianity" but acted on his pacifist religious beliefs by openly proclaiming his opposition to the Nazi regime, a stance which lead to his death by hanging at the hands of the Gestapo.

This is what the Jesus of my believing years would have endorsed, a faith that was concerned with the plight of all humanity, a truly humble and serving belief.

Modern Christian "heroes", men of wealth and fame like Robertson, Joel Osteen, James Dobson and Tony Perkins, preach a message of intolerance and eschew empathy in any form. They are more concerned with telling others, even those who don't share their beliefs, how they should live their lives than they are with feeding and clothing the poor or helping those in need. Theirs is a gospel of greed and exclusion as opposed to Jesus' example of selflessness and inclusion. Modern Christian leaders and those who claim to speak for the body of believers are in fact the antithesis of Jesus; anti-Christs, if you will.

And while the Pope still proclaims a message of peace and concern for the poor, American Catholics cannot ignore the glaring disparity between his words and the way he lives. Indeed, his lifestyle is exactly the sort that Jesus was well known to preach against. 

I'm not at all surprised by the many polls that indicate that those who don't identify with any religious belief is the fastest growing group in America. Many of us who were raised on the Biblical message of Jesus can't help but see that modern Christianity has abandoned the very essence of Jesus' life and words. The concepts of serving the poor, debasing yourself and your own desires, turning the other cheek, living a life of humility, have been discarded by Christianity. Modern Christianity is now a faith that can best be summed up with the attitude, "I've got mine, screw you". Screw you if you're poor, it's either your own fault or a result of God's displeasure with you. Screw you if you're hungry or homeless, don't expect me to bail you out.

Those who preach this sort of gospel are the true enemies of Christianity and the reason that American Christianity is becoming both irrelevant and unpopular. This hypocrisy is what finally lead me to conclude that Christianity, living a life in accordance with the teachings of Jesus and living a life that emulated his, is a farce. 

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Existence versus belief

The debate over the existence of a god is a question about the factual existence in reality of a specific entity. Since no objective, verifiable evidence has been presented by religious believers that establishes beyond a shadow of doubt that their particular god, or gods in generic form, exists in reality, we are left with inferences from and interpretations of natural events that suggest to some that their god exists. That no conclusive evidence can be presented assures us that the debate over those interpretations and inferences will continue forever, or until such evidence can be produced. The standards for evidence that would establish the existence of a god are quite high, for as Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 

The debate over the belief that gods exist addresses a reality we can all accept, whether through personal experience or the testimonies of others. The standard for evidence that people believe gods exist is much lower than the standard for the actual existence of a god. We can easily determine that people genuinely and sincerely believe their particular version of god exists. We shouldn't even question that people do in fact believe their god exists. 

The debate over religious beliefs challenges the particulars and specifics of those beliefs. The belief that god exists is a philosophical argument, not a scientific claim, and we know that philosophy is not a scientific field. Science asks, "Can you show that..." while philosophy asks, "Do you think that...". Even believers in a particular god question and challenge the beliefs of those who have faith in another god. That's the basis for the observation that we are all atheists, we all disbelieve in some gods even if we believe that our particular god is real. At least I have never heard of anyone who believes that all the gods ever worshiped by humans throughout history all exist in reality, a sort of ultimate pantheism. 

It's worthwhile to challenge and debate the belief in gods. That process is what led me beyond my own belief in god. If someone's beliefs cannot withstand scrutiny and skepticism then they are shallow beliefs that may not be the most firm types with which to guide a person's life. 

On the other hand it's generally pointless to debate the actual existence of gods. Not only does the hypothesis lack quantifiable evidence but no framework has been suggested by which the question could be objectively confirmed or discounted.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

A Muslim perspective on the "Innocence of Muslims"

Followed by my response.

While the goal of this video is commendable it ignores a few factors that complicate the situation beyond what it discusses.

As to part 1, Muslims being portrayed as violently reactionary. I agree it’s both unfair and unreasonable to characterize an entire group by the actions of a minority of its members. No one I’m aware of attempts to paint all Christians as hateful and bigoted based solely on the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church members or the Ku Klux Klan. Neither should we characterize all Muslims as violent based solely on the killings and protests committed by a minority within the Islamic community. And lest we overlook the broader implications of this attitude, we should also refrain from judging all non-believers just because a few atheists such as Pol Pot and Stalin were inhumane and committed atrocities the vast majority of atheists condemn. I agree with the video on this point.

As to part 2, the freedom of speech. This issue is more complex and nuanced than the video acknowledges. It’s true that the freedom of speech is not an entirely unrestricted freedom. Societies and governments have established contexts within which the right to speak freely is curtailed either by convention or law. The right to freely speak our minds does not acquit us of responsibility for what we say. On this point I again agree with the video.

What the video inaccurately addresses is the freedom of speech when it involves insult and blasphemy. “Hate speech” is socially unacceptable but is punished, when it is, reactively and not proactively. In other words, anyone is free to insult another but has to accept responsibility for their insult when it results in violence. While it’s socially and, for many of us, personally repugnant to call a Black person “nigger”, there is no legal prohibition against doing so. Nor is it always unacceptable to use the word in every possible context. Both the video and I have used the word and neither of us has done so in an effort to demean or insult Black people. To the broader point, insult is not a prohibited or even restricted form of speech. While most civil people refrain from insulting individuals pointlessly, we generally don’t object to insults directed at groups of people or institutions who have offended us in one way or another. Android users insult Apple users, Democrats insult Republicans, we accept the use of insults and satire to make a distinction between our opinions and those of others with whom we disagree. And while those insults still incur responsibility, we cannot possibly be responsible for every extreme and irrational reaction to them. If I call the God of the Old Testament a jerk and someone stabs me for saying that, can you honestly say that I’m fully responsible for that reaction?

More to the point, Western societies and governments are primarily concerned with insults based on what a person is; their race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, hair color or age, aspects of their person they are born with and cannot easily change. We are not so concerned over insults directed toward what a person has chosen to be. A person chooses to be a Republican, fully aware that there are non-Republicans who may insult them for that decision. When a person chooses to be affiliated with a certain religion they ought to be aware that those who disagree with this choice may express their disagreement through insult, satire or philosophical challenges. There is no freedom from offense. Those offended by the insults and disparagements voiced by those of other faiths or no faith are just as responsible for their reactions are are those who issued the insult or disparagement. There is a real difference between insults directed toward individual believers and the beliefs they hold. The majority of negative comments directed toward Islam, Christianity, Scientology, the Church of Latter Day Saints and other religious groups are directed toward the beliefs of these groups, not necessarily the individuals who hold those beliefs. Religious belief is not exempt from criticism or insult any more than is political belief under the concept of freedom of speech.

What I find disingenuous is Eastern countries attempting to make blasphemy, the vocal opposition to a religious belief, a criminal act under international law while giving lip service to freedom of speech. Blasphemy is not an abuse of the freedom of speech, it’s perhaps the most important aspect of that freedom alongside the freedom to speak out against our own government. It’s a test of that freedom, and the efforts to curtail blasphemy are a failure of that test. 

When you choose to join a religion, political party or other social group, it’s both unreasonable and unrealistic to expect everyone else to automatically respect that choice. It’s a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the freedom of speech to establish legal barriers to disagreements of any passive, nonviolent disagreement with those choices. That’s tyranny, and those of us who champion the freedom of speech will not allow any religion, political party or other social group to become a tyrant. 

(A related commentary from AC Grayling...