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Category: religion (page 4 of 36)

Why does god allow evil? Sandy Hook edition

5 January 2013 / / 2 Comments

There’s no point in bringing up the gun massacre at Sandy Hook again, since any meaningful action on gun control was forgotten just in time for Christmas.

Mentions of “gun control” on Twitter. Click the graphic for source.

But it wouldn’t be a tragedy without theists trying to explain where their god was during the tragedy. Don’t know why they bother; the Christian god was responsible for plenty of tragedy on his own. But anyway, here’s John Hawkins from ClownHall.com to explain the mysterious ways of the Lord to us.

1) He gives us free will: God didn’t make robots who were designed to execute His will. Instead He gave us the freedom to make our own decisions.

Okay, so the shooter had free will. But what about the free will of those kids not to be killed? Doesn’t their free will count? Why is the shooter the only one whose free will is respected?

2) It’s a necessity for faith: If God wanted to remove all doubt about his existence, He could do so — but, He doesn’t because the cornerstone of Christianity is faith.

Translation: God could provide good evidence for his existence, but won’t. Instead, he expects us to believe in him based on bad evidence… and will judge the ones who sensibly refuse. Doesn’t sound quite just, does it?

And why is faith the one thing that this god wants? That’s simple. God requires everyone’s belief because without belief, gods die.

The next one isn’t very coherent, so I’ll just paste it all.

3) He has a different perspective: Our God gave “His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Imagine being in his place as Jesus was jeered, whipped and had to suffer and die in agony on the cross. What would run through your mind as your Son was crucified and uttered the words, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” when you had the power to free Him, heal His wounds and strike down His tormentors at will. Our God made that sacrifice for each and every one of us so that we could be saved.

So… human suffering doesn’t matter because Jesus had to suffer for a weekend, which made everything all right in the long run. Clear?

4) We often turn to God in times of tragedy: One of the sad truths of human nature is that when we’re happy, healthy, loved, secure and our pockets are full, most of us think we already have all the answers and don’t turn to God.

Translation: God just wants us to love him and turn to him. And if he doesn’t get the love, then things might start going wrong, see?

5) Ultimately it’s about Heaven, not earth

Right now, those murdered kids are having ice cream in heaven. (Unless they’re not.) It just puts the multiple bullet wounds and final fearful moments into perspective, doesn’t it?

This list is not so much an explanation of why God lets evil happen. It’s more like a list of unbelievably callous justifications for an omnipotent god’s seeming indifference to human suffering. It would be much kinder to this god to allow that he can’t act to prevent suffering because he doesn’t exist.

The problem of evil and the incompetence of supernaturalism

27 December 2012 / / 2 Comments

Two articles crossed my screen today, and they’re a great example of the divide between rational thought and superstition.

They’re both about the gun tragedy at Sandy Hook, and the first one is written by a Catholic priest.

Now, believers in the Christian god have a bit of explaining to do when horrible things happen. That’s because they claim there’s a god who’s good, loving, and all-powerful, but who somehow fails to prevent evil things from happening. So after a tragedy, a reasonable question is: where was he? Is he really all that good if he has the power to prevent grade-school massacres, yet chooses not to? Here’s the theologian’s answer:

The truest answer is: I don’t know. I have theological training to help me to offer some way to account for the unexplainable. But the questions linger.

Well, that’s a bit pathetic. He doesn’t know? All that theological training, and he can’t answer a question that belongs in his discipline?

Seriously, read it; it doesn’t give any more than a shrug. And it’s not just this writer. This is literally the best they’ve got. (Oh, there are other religion guys out there who do claim to know, but their answers are so morally callous as to be not worth repeating.)

I will never satisfactorily answer the question “Why?” because no matter what response I give, it will always fall short. What I do know is that an unconditionally loving presence soothes broken hearts, binds up wounds, and renews us in life. This is a gift that we can all give, particularly to the suffering. When this gift is given, God’s love is present and Christmas happens daily.

Great, so if you help others, it’s actually god’s love; not yours. (Hat tip to Stephanie for this thought.) And why would ‘soothing’ be a consolation? I’d exchange buckets of after-the-fact soothing in order to not have had that tragedy happen. Who wouldn’t? What’s wrong with this guy? But all we’re left with is: I don’t know.

It’s good to admit when you don’t know something, but if you have no way of finding out, and no way of telling whether your answers are good ones, you have a bit of a fucking methodological problem. And this is a sad sign of the inadequacy of supernatural thinking. See, I do science because science is good at scientific questions. People may say that science isn’t good at moral questions or spiritual questions, and we can argue that. (My answer is that it does just as well as anything else.) But by gum, science is good for doing science.

Spiritual reasoning, on the other hand, isn’t good at answering scientific questions, but it’s also terrible at answering spiritual questions. It’s incompetent within its own domain. It is a shitty way of reasoning. Pardon my language, but spirituality/religion/supernaturalism has one job, and it sucks at it, and this incompetence makes me angry, especially when we have people telling us that it has the answers to life’s great questions, and then when it comes down to it, all that its professionals can tell us is “We don’t know.”

On the other hand, here’s the same issue handled by someone who’s intellectually honest: the scientist, Laurence Krauss. He doesn’t have the same problem as the priest because he doesn’t have to tap-dance around demonstrably untrue theological claims. That means he can deal with things more directly, including the superfluity of gods in times of tragedy.

Why must it be a natural expectation that any such national tragedy will be accompanied by prayers, including from the president, to at least one version of the very God, who apparently in his infinite wisdom, decided to call 20 children between the age of 6 and 7 home by having them slaughtered by a deranged gunman in a school that one hopes should have been a place or nourishment, warmth and growth?

We are told the Lord works in mysterious ways but, for many people, to suggest there might be an intelligent deity who could rationally act in such a fashion and that that deity is worth praying to and thanking for “calling them home” seems beyond the pale.
…
We don’t need faith to empathize with the grieving in Newtown. We can feel real connections, whether we are parents, or neighbors of families, or simply caring men and women. And we can want to help simply because of our common humanity.

Note that he identifies ‘common humanity’ at its origin: with humans. The difference in approach is striking. So is the relative capability of the authors. It helps if you’re not burdened by outmoded dogma and superstition.

Mormon women plan ‘Wear Pants to Church Day’

12 December 2012 / / 3 Comments

We are in the latter days, people. The LDS Church is under attack. I’m referring, of course, to this:

Mormon women plan ‘Wear Pants to Church Day’

A group of Mormon feminists has declared Sunday, Dec. 16, as “Wear Pants to Church Day” and is calling on sister Saints across the globe to join the effort.
Female Mormon missionaries are not allowed to wear pants, except on their days off. Some LDS women do wear dressy pants to church, but social convention dictates that most Mormon women don dresses or skirts to their weekly services.

You realise that this is open rebellion against the unwritten order of things. If women wear pants to church, where will it end? Men not wearing ties? Bishopric members wearing blue oxford shirts instead of white? The mind reels.

Actually, I do have a story. Back in the Utah days, Erstwhile Wife and I were walking to church. On this particular Sunday, she had decided to wear pants. And who should we run into but Cecilia Konchar Farr. She was a BYU faculty member who had been in the crosshairs (and was ultimately fired) for her feminist and pro-choice views. Think of it — she’d taken on the system in a battle she couldn’t win. Tough person.

When she saw us, she remarked, “Wow, I’m not brave enough to try that.”

She might have been joking, but lest you think that this is a timid sort of protest, it’s worth pointing out that these customs of dress and behaviour are deeply ingrained, not consciously taught, and subtly but strongly reinforced. Women wearing pants to church would be viewed on a par with men wearing skirts. Still, I like to think that, even in my believing days, I would have been that guy.

EDIT: It didn’t seem like pushing the envelope to me, but some people’s envelopes are more fragile than others. A public Facebook discussion has some sensible people, and some people freaking out.

Do we need forgiveness?

16 November 2012 / / 7 Comments

Here’s some audio from a forum I was invited to be a part of at Wesley Church a little while ago. It’s between me and pastor Nigel Gordon, with Paul Whitfield doing a fine job as moderator.

It was called “Do we need forgiveness?“

My take: We don’t need forgiveness from a god. We need to get forgiveness from each other, and try to become more aware of the consequences of our actions. And if the god of the Bible is real, he needs to beg forgiveness from all of us.

One thing about this discussion has stayed with me: Nigel keeps comparing the debt of sin to the debt of money. But I don’t think sin is the same as money. When I sin, does a little pile of stuff appear somewhere, and it has to be taken away? Or is it something else? What is the form of this ‘sin’, and why does it need to be dealt with? And why would god killing himself accomplish this?

Why wouldn’t god just forgive everyone? Why would he need to (in Matt Dillahunty’s words) need to sacrifice himself to himself as a loophole for a rule that he created?

It’s all very arcane, and when I try and clarify this beyond the vague details, Christians talk in circles. It’s a metaphor that you could probably accept if you don’t think about it too deeply, but when you start to unpack it, it makes no sense. Yet this pile of mush is the very heart of Christianity.

Romney’s relationship with the truth

7 November 2012 / / 1 Comment

A few months ago, during the Republican nomination process, my boys asked me about Romney. What was he like? Good or bad?

I said, “If he gets to be president, it’ll be bad, but it won’t be a disaster. Unlike the other nominees, he isn’t stupid. He isn’t crazy. And he isn’t evil.”

That’s still what I think about Romney. During the third debate, I was struck with the impression that Mr Romney was, at heart, a Good Man. Not crazy, stupid, or evil.

But there is one thing that was very disappointing: He lied. He conducted a campaign that was described as ‘breathtakingly dishonest‘. He was called on his lies, and he doubled down on them. (The lie that Obama hadn’t reached out to Republicans was particularly galling.)

But were they really lies? What does Romney consider to be the truth?

Mormons believe in a revelatory method for finding truth, involving prayer and reflection. I’ve written about this at length before, but here’s the short version: If you pray about something, and then feel positive spiritual feelings as though a supernatural spirit (or a ‘Holy Ghost’) is confirming the truth of that thing to you, then that thing is considered to be truth. For Mormons, that kind of ‘spiritual witness’ is considered to be the highest sort of evidence one could have. A thing is true if you feel that it’s true, and you deeply believe it.

During this campaign, we heard snarky comments about Romney’s magic underwear and the planet/star Kolob, but this is the aspect of his faith that I never really saw discussed. It is a deeply delusional way to think, and should be a disqualifier for the highest office in the land. It is stupid. It is crazy. And if Romney had become president, he might have been successful, but only insofar as he disregarded his epistemological method.

Romney shift and Mormon shift

28 October 2012 / / Comments Off on Romney shift and Mormon shift

It hasn’t gone unnoticed that Mitt “Etch-a-Sketch” Romney has a tendency to say whatever will get him elected. What doesn’t get a lot of mention is why. But I think Susan Jack at Liberals Unite gets it:

This might see strange to see so much flip flopping in a Presidential candidate, yet there is a pattern that makes utter sense in the larger Romney narrative; specifically that historically, Mormons as a whole have deemed it a holy rite to radically change their minds in the course of this very American Religion.

In other words, Romney thinks it’s acceptable to change his story in mid-stream because he comes from a culture where it’s acceptable to change your story in mid-stream. It’s typical of the way that Mormons handle doctrinal shift.

It follows this pattern:

Stage 1: Profession of faith
We believe Belief X.

Stage 2: Societal shift
Belief X becomes unpopular.

Stage 3: Stonewalling
We continue to believe Belief X even when it’s unpopular.

Stage 4: The tide turns
Belief X is becoming so unpopular that it’s hurting the bottom line.

Stage 5: Under the bus
We do not believe Belief X.
Pick all that apply.
    5a: We have received a revelation that changes Belief X.
    5b: X is not doctrinal.

Stage 6: Rewriting history
We never really believed Belief X.
Pick all that apply.
    6a: Leaders were imperfect humans.
    6b: Line upon line.
    6c: That was folk doctrine.
    6d: Belief X was not widespread.
    6e: Belief X was peripheral, not core.

I don’t even mean to say that this process is motivated by outright dishonesty. To some extent, every member of the church participates in this process (especially in Stages 5 and 6) as they struggle to understand the bits of Mormon doctrine that don’t make sense, or as they try to integrate them with reality. This is how Mormons explain their doctrine to themselves, to each other, and ultimately to non-members. After a long while, this kind of amateur apologetics becomes habitual, and someone who’s served in the Church as long as Romney has would be very good at it. But it’s a slippery way of reasoning.

This method of reasoning carries over into Romney’s slippery explanations about his positions. His policies seem to change depending on who he’s talking to. He has been very light on details because, as LDS leaders must know, saying less gives you less to walk back later.

The similarities are obvious. For a Latter-day Saint, the one non-negotiable doctrine of the Church is that the Church is true. For Romney, the one non-negotiable doctrine is that he should be president.

Or as the Washington Post described Romney:

Every politician changes his mind sometimes; you’d worry if not. But rarely has a politician gotten so far with only one evident immutable belief: his conviction in his own fitness for higher office.

Profiles in Faith: Charlie Fuqua

9 October 2012 / / 2 Comments

In Profiles in Faith, we celebrate those who really believe their scriptures. And today we feature Charlie Fuqua, Republican candidate for the Arkansas House of Representatives, and Bible believer. He’s attracted some attention for his stand on executing rebellious children.

Fuqua, who is anti-abortion, points out that the course of action involved in sentencing a child to death is described in the Bible and would involve judicial approval.

By golly, he’s right!

Exodus 21:17 And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death.

Leviticus 20:9 For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.

But parents wouldn’t be allowed to kill their children willy-nilly. That would be crazy! You’d have to go through the legal system and observe due process. It’s just that knowing your parents had the authority to kill you would instill a healthy respect.

Even though this procedure would rarely be used, if it were the law of land, it would give parents authority. Children would know that their parents had authority and it would be a tremendous incentive for children to give proper respect to their parents.

Tough but fair.

Lest we be too hard on Mr Fuqua, let’s remind ourselves that he is only following the example of his god, who drowned almost all of his own disobedient children in the most thorough act of genocide in recorded history.

It follows, doesn’t it? For Mr Fuqua, love is what you have for someone who can harm you. The love that a child has for a parent (who can only kill you for a limited period of time) is just a foretaste of that far more infinite love for one’s creator, who can torture you for eternity.

Happy International Blasphemy Day!

30 September 2012 / / 1 Comment

Since it’s International Blasphemy Day, I’m going off on every religion I can think of. It’s all happening on the Facebook side of this operation.

Here

This is an extremely necessary event. Governments and religions are trying to pass laws to prevent you from saying anything that would offend someone’s religious sensibilities. Such laws prevent the free and open exchange of ideas, and are often used against religious minorities. That’s why it’s important to take up your right to express even disrespectful views on important topics.

Also, check out the Blasphemy page on Facebook.

Talk the Talk: Blasphemy!

22 September 2012 / / Comments Off on Talk the Talk: Blasphemy!

If you like Good Reason for the atheism, but not so much for the linguistics, then this episode of Talk the Talk might be for you. It’s about blasphemy, the recent Muslim film riots, and the need for Blasphemy Day (which is September 30 — get your costumes early!).

It’s a little soap-boxy, but I said what I wanted to say: The right to question — and even ridicule — religious ideas is important. There needs to be a way of saying, “This is a bad idea.” It’s wrong to give up that right just because it will hurt someone’s feelings. If someone is willing to resort to violence and murder when their ideas aren’t treated with kid gloves, then this is an admission that their ideas aren’t defensible using regular means, and are invalid. Muslims, I’m looking at you.

On the other hand not all religious people lose their shit when they get sent up. Even though I have no love for the Mormon Church, I do cite them as an example of how to respond to criticism and mockery.

It was fun to be a bit blasphemous on the radio, and it was fun to watch Jess Allen squirm more and more throughout the interview. The look on her face when she heard “Hasa Diga Eebowai” for the first time was truly priceless — I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

One-off show: Here
Subscribe via iTunes: Here
Show notes: Here

Religion and drugs

7 September 2012 / / 7 Comments

PZ Myers once said that things would be better if people treated religion as an enjoyable hobby, sort of like knitting.


(This clip was part of a hit piece, so ignore the desperate music.)

Miss Perfect (my girlfriend-partner-fiancée) says that a more apt comparison would be quilting, because quilters are a bit more intense about it, it’s more socially involved, and they’ve evolved rules and customs about their quilting, sort of like a religion.

Crafty metaphors are okay, but after some reflection, I realised that I feel the same way about people who do religion as I do about people who do drugs.

I don’t choose to do drugs (substitute ‘religion’ if you wish) — it’s not my thing — but I have some friends who do. I don’t really mind that they do. I don’t like it, but I guess it’s their choice. Actually, I bet I have some friends who do it, but I don’t even know who they are because they’re not hardcore into it, and it doesn’t interfere with their lives. On the other hand, I do have some friends whose abuse is kind of messing them up, and I feel bad about that.

Is it a healthy habit? Not at all, but I guess it normally won’t harm someone who goes easy on it. I absolutely think it should be kept away from kids, when they’re just learning to use their brains.

I really don’t mind if there are a few people in society who indulge, but society just won’t work if everyone’s into it all the time. And there’s no way that people who use it should be making the rest of us subsidise their habit, or make us to start using it ourselves, no matter how great they think it is. And I’m certainly not going to pay it any undue respect.

If someone realises that they have a problem, and it’s taking over their life, we should have ways for them to get help. Otherwise, as long as they’re cool about it, I can treat it like a private, mildly undesirable pursuit that some people enjoy.

EDIT: A reader is taking me to task for lumping all drugs in together. So fine, it just extends my metaphor.

Just like some drugs are more or less addicting, and some are more or less harmful, we could say the same thing about religions. Maybe casual cannabis use is like default Catholicism — mostly harmless with light use. Don’t get too deep into it though.

Scientology could be like cocaine, or perhaps crack. I hear that stuff’s addictive.

Evangelical mega-churches? Meth.

What about Mormons? Unitarians? Put your pharmaceutical comparisons in comments.

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