People believe in God for different reasons. But I believe the most common reason is that they were raised that way. Religion has hung on so long despite having absolutely no empirical evidence to support it because it has become an ingrained tradition in families. Couple that with the lucrative church business, so that religious organizations are compelled to keep the believers coming in, and you have what we all see today: The majority of people in the world, even as adults who should know better, keep believing in an unproven father figure in the sky.
Since I was raised Christian, and most people who live in America call themselves Christians, I am focusing this entry on why people claim to be Christian, as opposed to, say, Muslim or Jew. But it probably works similarly for any of the other monotheistic religions, too. They all assume the existence of a single god in the sky.
1. So the first reason mentioned above, that people are Christian because they were raised Christian, most likely means that, as adults, they probably just haven’t given religious belief much thought. I’m fairly confident that if most people by the time they reach the age of 18 would sit down and make a pro and con list of why they should keep on believing the way they were raised to believe, they would discover there is no real reason to continue in the charade.
Of course, some people do just that. My son and my daughter both overcame the religious upbringing their mother gave them (and I went along with because I was one of those who had not paid serious attention to why I was a Christian). My son bolted first, when he was about 15 or so. My daughter’s rejection of Christianity came during college.
2. Having faith is a good thing. I’m often told, “You have to believe in something.” But why is it that religious faith gets a pass when it comes to critical thinking? We have freedom of religion in this country, so that means we have to respect other people’s beliefs, right? Well, no. It only means people have the legal right to practice whatever kind of silly superstition they want. It doesn’t mean I’m required by law to respect that belief. I respect their right to believe it, but not the belief itself. So there is no reason for me, or anyone else, to tiptoe around someone’s faith. Faith should be met head on with as much critical thinking as you would give a salesman hawking a vacuum cleaner for $1,200. And why do I have to believe in something, if that something has no evidence to back it up? I believe in what the evidence tells me, nothing more. Why should anyone else have a lower criterion for what they believe?
People often say that even non-believers have a certain faith, too: They have faith in their children to do the right thing; they have faith the sun will come up in the morning. Well, yes, I do believe those things. But I believe them because I have past evidence that it will happen. My children have always shown me that they are capable. The sun has always come up, every day. So why shouldn’t I believe it will come up tomorrow? It’s not really faith if you know it’s going to happen. And you don’t really have faith in your kids, you have trust in them. Trust is something that’s earned; faith is blind.
3. “I need a solid foundation on which to base my life.” Well, so do I. But why base it on a superstition? How is that solid? People tell me that God is always there, never changing, when everything else in the world, including science, changes. They say they need that sense of stability. I can respect that. But, again, the people who claim that having a solid foundation and stability is the reason they believe are misguided. It’s true that Christianity is pretty much the same now as it was 2,000 years ago in terms of its core doctrine. It’s also still just as bogus. People point to science and say that it changes too much, that they don’t know what is true. Discoveries made by science might, indeed, change as time goes by. But that’s the beauty of science; it corrects itself. Religion does not. Why bother correcting yourself it you’re perfect to begin with? But that perfection is only assumed. Christianity has not proven itself to be true; it relies on people’s gullibility to simply believe it is. So even if it is stable and unchanging, why would you build your life around a foundation that may be stable, but is still imaginary? Scientific theories may need tweaking occasionally, but the scientific method is stable. Base your life around the scientific method. Its only goal is to find the truth about nature. And the methods it uses to search for that truth are as stable as religion.
4. “Society needs a moral framework to keep from falling into chaos. The bible and our Judeo-Christian heritage provide that moral framework.” Would you really give your child a copy of the bible and tell him to use it as a guide for moral behavior? He would go around smiting every one of his friends who did not believe as he does, because that’s what God commands. He would grow up with the desire to own slaves. He would kill everyone he knows that is homosexual. He would disown his parents in the name of Jesus Christ because that’s what Jesus tells his followers to do (although that contradicts one of God’s commandments, so who’s to know).
There are hundreds of millions of people in the world who do not believe in any god. The vast majority of them are not rapists, murderers, or thugs. Most of them live in civilized Western Europe. We do what’s right by each other because it is evolutionary beneficial for us to do so. It is how our society evolved. Of course there are those who go against society for personal gain. But there are no more atheists in that group than those who are Christian. In fact, a disproportionate number of locked-up criminals are believers.
5. “Jesus died on the Cross for my sins, so that I might have eternal life in heaven with him. How can I say no to that?” Well, first of all, there are almost no records outside the bible that Jesus ever existed. He probably did. And he might have been crucified; lots of criminals were at the time. But one would think that with all the miracles Jesus supposedly performed, with the earthquake that happened during his Crucifixion, with the sun being darkened at that time, too, and with all the hoopla that surrounded his Resurrection and subsequent appearance to thousands, that someone outside the framework of the biblical story would have at least made a footnote for the history books about the events. But no, during Jesus’ lifetime, he was a virtual nobody. He wrote nothing, not even a diary. He had some followers, but so did a bunch of other self-proclaimed messiah figures in those days. But, outside of one brief mention a century later by Josephus, no one wrote anything historical about this man who is supposed to be the savior of all mankind. Isn’t that strange?
But even supposing that he did die on the Cross for us, how does that make him so great as to deserve our worship two millennia later? We have, today, soldiers laying down their lives, some of them dying, for their country or for a way of life. Jesus was doing the same thing. So maybe he deserves our admiration and respect, but not our worship. Besides, what did Jesus really give up? He, according to the Gospel of John, is God. So God came down from heaven and manifested himself as a mere mortal for a few years just so he could be put to death and go back to heaven where he was to begin with? Where’s the sacrifice? He was God in heaven, then God on earth, then God in heaven once again. He’s still God! There was never any sacrifice. And what about the idea that God did it so that he would understand the suffering of mankind? He’s GOD! He’s supposedly omniscient. He knows EVERYTHING, including what it’s like to be human, especially since he supposedly made us.
I’m sorry but I can’t buy into any of it, and it amazes me how anyone who has actually given it some thought can fall for this hoax. The problem is, very few people have actually given it any serious thought. Some want to believe so badly that they are afraid to give it any deep thought because they fear they might actually lose their faith. That frightens them. But isn’t it better to live knowing the real truth than to go through life believing in superstitious nonsense? There are different ways to socialize than by going to church. There are many secular organizations that do wondrous things for people for you to donate your money to. These organizations don’t have the overhead of most churches, so more of your money goes to the actual charity. And your time spent praying and worshipping might be better spent in social activities with your family or your friends.
There are lots of other reasons people believe. It gives them comfort. They are afraid of going to hell. They believe the New Testament is historically correct. But there are alternative methods of seeking comfort. There really is no such place as hell; anyone who has graduated from a seminary knows that. And the bible was written by anonymous writers decades after the events described by people who were not eyewitnesses. The accounts are not even second-hand or third-hand. The earliest manuscripts we have were penned more than a century after Jesus’ death. It’s easy to make a claim that Jesus was the fulfillment of prophecy from a perspective of hindsight. Couple all that with the fact that the claims of Christianity are based on the supernatural and you’ll see how a modern adult human should be very skeptical.
That’s easy to imagine. You already believe that other religions are wrong, maybe even silly. You don’t for one minute believe that Mohammad was a great prophet sent by God. You most certainly don’t believe that a guy from New York named John Smith met up with an angel named Moroni who led him to gold tablets filled with the wisdom of Jesus Christ in America. Mohammad was a charlatan; Smith was a hustler. You might even believe these religions are just nonsense. And you would be right. But people who were raised in these faiths and who strongly believe them also believe that your religion is incorrect and that you are misguided. If you rely on only faith, and not evidence, then one person’s faith is a good as another’s. As author Christopher Hitchens wrote, “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” But there is evidence, and it all falls against religious belief.
Imagine no religion. What a great world this would be if it were so.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Feeling Sorry for Children of Fundamentalists
I was watching this documentary called Waiting for Armageddon and it really made me sad and afraid. No, I’m not afraid that I will witness the end of the world or that I won’t be among those who are “raptured.” I’m afraid because of how the children of today are being indoctrinated into what is little more than a cult, and they will pay the price.
The beginning of the documentary focused on one Christian family who not only believed in the rapture but believed it was very near. The mom said that she didn’t think that her son would graduate before it happened. She said she didn’t believe she would see grandchildren, even though her daughter was in her late teens.
The daughter was lamenting the fact that she would not be able to have a family and raise kids. She was sorry that she would not be able to have stories to tell like her grandmother told her. “It’s not fair,” she said.
Not only are these kids being traumatized by their parents and their church, but what incentive do they have now to get on with their lives? What incentive does the son have to perform at a high level in school? What incentive does the daughter have to apply to colleges? They have simply given up on their future lives because they know for a fact that Jesus will be coming back any day now.
They point to things that are happening in the world that are fulfillments of prophecy. “There is nothing in the bible that has not bee fulfilled,” the mother said. The documentary shows conservative preachers and televangelists describe how the world is going to end and what will happen after the rapture, during the times of the tribulation.
It was funny to watch these grown men in suits that otherwise sound intelligent talk about this stuff with a straight face. It’s like they are playing the roll of an ultimate straight man for some comedian.
I am very sad for the children of conservative Christians today. Adults can believe what they want, of course. But there are no Christian children. There are only children of Christian parents. It’s a grave disservice to these kids to indoctrinate them at an early age into a cult that tells them they will not be around long enough to raise a family of their own.
Are these people not intelligent enough to have learned anything about history? There is nothing happening today that wasn’t happening in the days when Jesus walked the earth. There are wars, earthquakes, famines, and pestilence today. There were wars, earthquakes, famines, and pestilence back in the days of Jesus, too, and in every generation since. Jesus himself believed that the Kingdom of God (which everyone then assumed would be an earthly kingdom) would be within the lifetime of some of his own disciples. He says so in the Gospel of Matthew. He also said “This generation shall not pass….” He meant HIS generation.
Every single generation that has come and gone since Jesus walked the earth believed strongly that theirs would be the last. The Gospel of John, the last of the gospels, was John’s attempt to rectify the fact that all the original disciples had died off and the Kingdom of God had not yet arrived. John (although the real author is unknown) saved the church of the day by pushing the coming Kingdom of God into the future. The gospels had not been fulfilled according to Jesus’ own words, so John had to fix it.
If you read the bible from the point of view of a Jew who lived 2000 years ago, it will become clear that it was written by them, for them. It was never meant to be interpreted as applying to the period 2000 years hence. In the same way, the Old Testament was written for the ancient Jews. The prophecies were to be fulfilled within that time period, not hundreds of years in the future. The prophets were simply passing on messages from God to the Jews of the day, trying to rein them in. It was only in hindsight that the gospel writers applied the prophecies to Jesus, in much the same way that some people apply the prophecies of Nostradamus to World War II or to the 9-11 terrorist attack. It’s easy to make a vague prophecy fit a situation in retrospect. The problem is trying to use a prophecy to predict the future.
It is a shame that people waste so much energy waiting for an event that’s never going to happen, ruining their lives and the lives of their children in the process. Imagine if that much energy were to go to help improve society and the world we now have. It is the only world we will ever know and we live out our entire lives on this planet. How sad it is that so many people waste away their time on earth anticipating an event that will not happen.
The beginning of the documentary focused on one Christian family who not only believed in the rapture but believed it was very near. The mom said that she didn’t think that her son would graduate before it happened. She said she didn’t believe she would see grandchildren, even though her daughter was in her late teens.
The daughter was lamenting the fact that she would not be able to have a family and raise kids. She was sorry that she would not be able to have stories to tell like her grandmother told her. “It’s not fair,” she said.
Not only are these kids being traumatized by their parents and their church, but what incentive do they have now to get on with their lives? What incentive does the son have to perform at a high level in school? What incentive does the daughter have to apply to colleges? They have simply given up on their future lives because they know for a fact that Jesus will be coming back any day now.
They point to things that are happening in the world that are fulfillments of prophecy. “There is nothing in the bible that has not bee fulfilled,” the mother said. The documentary shows conservative preachers and televangelists describe how the world is going to end and what will happen after the rapture, during the times of the tribulation.
It was funny to watch these grown men in suits that otherwise sound intelligent talk about this stuff with a straight face. It’s like they are playing the roll of an ultimate straight man for some comedian.
I am very sad for the children of conservative Christians today. Adults can believe what they want, of course. But there are no Christian children. There are only children of Christian parents. It’s a grave disservice to these kids to indoctrinate them at an early age into a cult that tells them they will not be around long enough to raise a family of their own.
Are these people not intelligent enough to have learned anything about history? There is nothing happening today that wasn’t happening in the days when Jesus walked the earth. There are wars, earthquakes, famines, and pestilence today. There were wars, earthquakes, famines, and pestilence back in the days of Jesus, too, and in every generation since. Jesus himself believed that the Kingdom of God (which everyone then assumed would be an earthly kingdom) would be within the lifetime of some of his own disciples. He says so in the Gospel of Matthew. He also said “This generation shall not pass….” He meant HIS generation.
Every single generation that has come and gone since Jesus walked the earth believed strongly that theirs would be the last. The Gospel of John, the last of the gospels, was John’s attempt to rectify the fact that all the original disciples had died off and the Kingdom of God had not yet arrived. John (although the real author is unknown) saved the church of the day by pushing the coming Kingdom of God into the future. The gospels had not been fulfilled according to Jesus’ own words, so John had to fix it.
If you read the bible from the point of view of a Jew who lived 2000 years ago, it will become clear that it was written by them, for them. It was never meant to be interpreted as applying to the period 2000 years hence. In the same way, the Old Testament was written for the ancient Jews. The prophecies were to be fulfilled within that time period, not hundreds of years in the future. The prophets were simply passing on messages from God to the Jews of the day, trying to rein them in. It was only in hindsight that the gospel writers applied the prophecies to Jesus, in much the same way that some people apply the prophecies of Nostradamus to World War II or to the 9-11 terrorist attack. It’s easy to make a vague prophecy fit a situation in retrospect. The problem is trying to use a prophecy to predict the future.
It is a shame that people waste so much energy waiting for an event that’s never going to happen, ruining their lives and the lives of their children in the process. Imagine if that much energy were to go to help improve society and the world we now have. It is the only world we will ever know and we live out our entire lives on this planet. How sad it is that so many people waste away their time on earth anticipating an event that will not happen.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Those Butterflies are Screwing with the Weather Again
I want to write another one of my meaningless rants today, just because doing so makes me feel better somehow. This one concerns the weatherman. Yes, I know. The weatherman always gets blamed for bad weather. But that’s not really what I’m going to blame him for. (Oh, and by “weatherman” I’m actually referring to any of the television weather broadcasters, regardless of their gender.)
Like I said, I’m not trying to blame the weatherman for bad weather. That would be silly. He has no control over the weather. He doesn’t order up severe storms, tornadoes, or long droughts. The weatherman simply reports the weather. What are the current temperature, sky conditions, and wind speed?
The weatherman’s job is also to forecast future weather. Some of them, probably most of the primary broadcast meteorologists at major television stations, produce their own forecast. They don’t simply parrot what the National Weather Service meteorologists said in their latest four-times-a-day update.
And like the NWS meteorologists, the TV weathermen sometimes (often?) get the forecast wrong. But getting the forecast wrong isn’t really what has raised my ire either. Not really. I understand that weather forecasting is not an exact science and that sometimes weather forecasters are going to get it wrong. It has something to do with the chaos factor, otherwise known as the butterfly effect. Technically, it’s known as sensitive dependence to initial conditions. It means that, in order to produce a spot-on forecast more than just a few hours in advance, you would have to know much more about the current condition of the atmosphere, all over the world, than is possible to know. It’s not simply a matter of data, though. It’s a matter of knowing the precise conditions for every square foot of atmosphere and at every altitude worldwide. An unknown disturbance in just one square foot of atmosphere might be enough to throw off the forecast significantly at some point in the future, hence, the butterfly effect.
Anyway, getting back to what is really bugging me, it’s not that I’m miffed at the fact the forecast is so often wrong. It’s more about the arrogance with which the forecasters deliver their drivel. Ok, in all fairness, they are right more often than they are wrong, at least with short-term forecasts. But the way they deliver the message sounds like a sure thing. We all know that it isn’t a sure thing, but at the same time, given that the weatherman is right much of the time, it’s hard not to trust him when he sounds so convincing.
My thoughts go back several years when I was planning a short vacation. Do I want to go to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, or do I want to go to Tennessee. It’s June, so if I go north (from Indiana) I take a chance that the weather will turn cold. If I got south, it might get sultry. So, naturally, I consulted the weatherman.
According to his long-range forecast, he seemed fairly certain that it was going to rain in Tennessee but it would be fair and pleasant in Upper Michigan. I chose Michigan.
We got to Mackinac Island and disembarked on our first day of sightseeing and fudge buying. But by late in the afternoon, clouds were starting to roll in. A couple of hours later, it was drizzling. It had also gotten colder.
I thought, “This isn’t supposed to happen.” So back at the hotel, I turned on the tube and found a weatherman. The forecast had changed. In fact, it was 180-degrees out of whack with the former forecast. It was now supposed to rain for several days with temperatures in the 40s. It was a miserable vacation. Oh, and Tennessee was warm and sunny.
A week ago, on Monday, the weatherman came on with his five-day forecast, which showed that it would rain through Wednesday, but Thursday was supposed to be warm and sunny. The guy didn’t hedge his bets. He normally puts a percentage chance for rain on each day of the extended forecast if, indeed, he thinks there is any chance of rain at all. There was no percentage on Thursday. There was just a big smiling sun.
Thursday morning arrived; I was getting ready for work and turned on the set to hear the morning report. The same guy was now claiming that there was a really good chance of showers and even thunderstorms beginning around three o’clock. He didn’t apologize for his earlier error. It was just a matter-of-fact forecast that now included rain after work. I was pissed.
If he had given a disclaimer on his Monday’s forecast that it might, indeed, rain on Thursday afternoon even if he didn’t at the moment think it would, I would have felt a little better about it. Well, not about the rain, but I would have had more respect for the weatherman. But no, he arrogantly told me on Monday that there would be no rain on Thursday, and then on Thursday is said, “rain this afternoon folks.”
If he had been just a little contrite; if he had said something like, “Sorry folks, I realize I told you earlier in the week that it would not rain today. And I apologize for my error. Shit happens.” But he didn’t. He just arrogantly went on and gave his new forecast with the same degree of assurance. No looking back on old mistakes for this guy, or for any of the broadcast meteorologists, really.
The Thursday forecast called for rain on Thursday night and Friday, but fair on Saturday. Should I trust him this time? Turns out, he was right. But I still can’t forgive him for his method of delivery, as though no mistakes are possible. Yes, we all know the nature of forecasts. And we should all take the long-range predictions with a grain of salt. But when they are delivered professionally and with great assurance, at the very least the weatherman should acknowledge his error when he gets it wrong.
There’s an old weather saying that goes like this:
And in the dying embers these are my main regrets:
When I’m right no one remembers; when I’m wrong no one forgets.
How true. But maybe if they would forecast with less certainty and a little more humility, perhaps we would forgive them when they screw it up.
Like I said, I’m not trying to blame the weatherman for bad weather. That would be silly. He has no control over the weather. He doesn’t order up severe storms, tornadoes, or long droughts. The weatherman simply reports the weather. What are the current temperature, sky conditions, and wind speed?
The weatherman’s job is also to forecast future weather. Some of them, probably most of the primary broadcast meteorologists at major television stations, produce their own forecast. They don’t simply parrot what the National Weather Service meteorologists said in their latest four-times-a-day update.
And like the NWS meteorologists, the TV weathermen sometimes (often?) get the forecast wrong. But getting the forecast wrong isn’t really what has raised my ire either. Not really. I understand that weather forecasting is not an exact science and that sometimes weather forecasters are going to get it wrong. It has something to do with the chaos factor, otherwise known as the butterfly effect. Technically, it’s known as sensitive dependence to initial conditions. It means that, in order to produce a spot-on forecast more than just a few hours in advance, you would have to know much more about the current condition of the atmosphere, all over the world, than is possible to know. It’s not simply a matter of data, though. It’s a matter of knowing the precise conditions for every square foot of atmosphere and at every altitude worldwide. An unknown disturbance in just one square foot of atmosphere might be enough to throw off the forecast significantly at some point in the future, hence, the butterfly effect.
Anyway, getting back to what is really bugging me, it’s not that I’m miffed at the fact the forecast is so often wrong. It’s more about the arrogance with which the forecasters deliver their drivel. Ok, in all fairness, they are right more often than they are wrong, at least with short-term forecasts. But the way they deliver the message sounds like a sure thing. We all know that it isn’t a sure thing, but at the same time, given that the weatherman is right much of the time, it’s hard not to trust him when he sounds so convincing.
My thoughts go back several years when I was planning a short vacation. Do I want to go to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, or do I want to go to Tennessee. It’s June, so if I go north (from Indiana) I take a chance that the weather will turn cold. If I got south, it might get sultry. So, naturally, I consulted the weatherman.
According to his long-range forecast, he seemed fairly certain that it was going to rain in Tennessee but it would be fair and pleasant in Upper Michigan. I chose Michigan.
We got to Mackinac Island and disembarked on our first day of sightseeing and fudge buying. But by late in the afternoon, clouds were starting to roll in. A couple of hours later, it was drizzling. It had also gotten colder.
I thought, “This isn’t supposed to happen.” So back at the hotel, I turned on the tube and found a weatherman. The forecast had changed. In fact, it was 180-degrees out of whack with the former forecast. It was now supposed to rain for several days with temperatures in the 40s. It was a miserable vacation. Oh, and Tennessee was warm and sunny.
A week ago, on Monday, the weatherman came on with his five-day forecast, which showed that it would rain through Wednesday, but Thursday was supposed to be warm and sunny. The guy didn’t hedge his bets. He normally puts a percentage chance for rain on each day of the extended forecast if, indeed, he thinks there is any chance of rain at all. There was no percentage on Thursday. There was just a big smiling sun.
Thursday morning arrived; I was getting ready for work and turned on the set to hear the morning report. The same guy was now claiming that there was a really good chance of showers and even thunderstorms beginning around three o’clock. He didn’t apologize for his earlier error. It was just a matter-of-fact forecast that now included rain after work. I was pissed.
If he had given a disclaimer on his Monday’s forecast that it might, indeed, rain on Thursday afternoon even if he didn’t at the moment think it would, I would have felt a little better about it. Well, not about the rain, but I would have had more respect for the weatherman. But no, he arrogantly told me on Monday that there would be no rain on Thursday, and then on Thursday is said, “rain this afternoon folks.”
If he had been just a little contrite; if he had said something like, “Sorry folks, I realize I told you earlier in the week that it would not rain today. And I apologize for my error. Shit happens.” But he didn’t. He just arrogantly went on and gave his new forecast with the same degree of assurance. No looking back on old mistakes for this guy, or for any of the broadcast meteorologists, really.
The Thursday forecast called for rain on Thursday night and Friday, but fair on Saturday. Should I trust him this time? Turns out, he was right. But I still can’t forgive him for his method of delivery, as though no mistakes are possible. Yes, we all know the nature of forecasts. And we should all take the long-range predictions with a grain of salt. But when they are delivered professionally and with great assurance, at the very least the weatherman should acknowledge his error when he gets it wrong.
There’s an old weather saying that goes like this:
And in the dying embers these are my main regrets:
When I’m right no one remembers; when I’m wrong no one forgets.
How true. But maybe if they would forecast with less certainty and a little more humility, perhaps we would forgive them when they screw it up.
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