Category: Reality/the natural world
Ben Franklin’s noble lie
Here’s the link to this article.
by ADAM LEE DEC 11, 2023
Overview:
In his published works, Benjamin Franklin expressed the misanthropic view that most people can’t behave without religion to keep them in line. What does the evidence say about this noble lie?
Reading Time: 5 MINUTES
When do we need to deceive people for their own good?
Philosophers have debated this question for ages. The optimistic viewpoint holds that there’s never a conflict between truth and goodness. It’s only ignorance that gives rise to evil actions. The smarter and more informed people are, the better they’ll behave.
If this is true, that would be convenient, because it would spare us from having to make unsavory choices. However, some famous historical figures have argued that some truths are too dangerous to spread around. For people’s own good and the good of society, they say, the masses need to be taught falsehoods that keep them in line and make them behave.
The most famous expression of this idea is in Plato’s Republic, where he discusses the noble lie: a mythology taught by elites to make the common people virtuous. What’s shocking is that it was also the view of an American founding father renowned for his wisdom.
“Unchaining the tiger”
Benjamin Franklin wrote a famous letter, responding to an unknown freethinker who sent him a manuscript criticizing religion. We don’t know the identity of Franklin’s correspondent, although some historians argue it was Thomas Paine.
Whoever he was writing to, he expresses a cynical and pessimistic view of human nature:
“I have read your Manuscript with some Attention. By the Arguments it contains against the Doctrine of a particular Providence, tho’ you allow a general Providence, you strike at the Foundation of all Religion: For without the Belief of a Providence that takes Cognizance of, guards and guides and may favour particular Persons, there is no Motive to Worship a Deity, to fear its Displeasure, or to pray for its Protection.
…You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous Life without the Assistance afforded by Religion; you having a clear Perception of the Advantages of Virtue and the Disadvantages of Vice, and possessing a Strength of Resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common Temptations. But think how great a Proportion of Mankind consists of weak and ignorant Men and Women, and of inexperienc’d and inconsiderate Youth of both Sexes, who have need of the Motives of Religion to restrain them from Vice, to support their Virtue, and retain them in the Practice of it till it becomes habitual… …I would advise you therefore not to attempt unchaining the Tyger… If Men are so wicked as we now see them with Religion what would they be if without it?“
In Poor Richard’s Almanac, Franklin offered a pithier version of the same idea:
“Talking against Religion is unchaining a Tyger; The Beast let loose may worry his Deliverer.”
Notably, this was printed in a book for public consumption. That shows that this wasn’t just his private opinion which he spoke in confidence among friends, but something he was comfortable saying in the open.
The founders’ anti-democratic prejudices
With due respect to Benjamin Franklin, I wonder if he was aware of how misanthropic these words are.
He goes beyond saying that humans are often weak-willed, selfish, or corruptible—something I might be persuaded to agree with. Instead, he compares humanity to a bloodthirsty predator, a dangerous wild animal that’s only kept at bay by a chain. There might be a few wise elites, like Franklin’s correspondent and presumably Franklin himself, who can behave themselves without religious restraints, but most people can’t.
The massive irony of this is that it’s a fundamentally anti-democratic argument. Democracy rests on the basis that the people are the best guardians of their own interests. They can be trusted to decide for themselves. If they’re given the power, they’ll make better choices than distant and uncaring elites.
Franklin’s logic, on the other hand, argues that most people can’t be trusted. It’s too dangerous to let them ask questions, use their own judgment or make up their own minds. Taken to its logical conclusion, this leads straight back to the theory of government that he and America’s other founders rebelled against: that the people should be ruled by aristocrats who know better than the commoners do what’s best for them.
It’s safe to assume that Benjamin Franklin wasn’t the only American founding father who thought this way. When you know that the founders had this deep distrust of the common people, it makes sense that they designed such a creaky, stagnant electoral system, with so many roadblocks against the voters’ will.
By the standards of what existed in the world at the time, the American system was revolutionary. But as the decades pass and our politics become increasingly gridlocked or regressive, it’s showing its age. More truly democratic, more representative systems have proven their worth in creating better results for the people who live under them.
A moral epiphenomenon
There’s an obvious question that, for all Franklin’s wisdom, he never asked: What made him so sure that religion was making people better than they would otherwise have been? How did he know it wasn’t a moral epiphenomenon, sanctifying the beliefs they held already without actually changing their behavior? In fact, how did he know it wasn’t actively making the world worse?
At the time Franklin wrote those words, the United States was overwhelmingly Christian. In fact, most of the colonies had state churches and blasphemy laws which outlawed all dissenting opinions. While there were deists, freethinkers and nonbelievers, most of them kept their opinions quiet or else suffered persecution and punishment.
When it was literally illegal to be an atheist, there was no basis for deciding whether Christianity or atheism was better for instilling morality in the average person. The law was forcing an answer without even permitting the question to be asked.
In fact, in another letter, Franklin contradicted himself by expressing doubt about whether religion was really producing any beneficial effects in the world:
“The Faith you mention has doubtless its use in the World. I do not desire to see it diminished, nor would I endeavour to lessen it in any Man. But I wish it were more productive of good Works, than I have generally seen it: I mean real good Works, Works of Kindness, Charity, Mercy, and Publick Spirit; not Holiday-keeping, Sermon-Reading or Hearing; performing Church Ceremonies, or making long Prayers, filled with Flatteries and Compliments, despis’d even by wise Men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity. The worship of God is a Duty; the hearing and reading of Sermons may be useful; but, if Men rest in Hearing and Praying, as too many do, it is as if a Tree should Value itself on being water’d and putting forth Leaves, tho’ it never produc’d any Fruit.”
However, in the centuries since then, we’ve obtained enough data to answer this question empirically. Blasphemy laws and other theocratic conceits have been repealed almost everywhere. Especially in the last few decades, religion is in rapid decline.
Has the rise of nonbelief made us worse? Has the country spiraled into chaos without churches holding the whip over us? Have people run wild, killing and pillaging, without the fear of God to keep them in check?
Just the opposite has happened. We’ve become less violent and less warlike. We’ve abolished slavery and other cruel customs. Poverty has declined and literacy has increased. We’ve made great strides toward achieving equal rights under the law for everyone. We’ve become less prejudiced and more tolerant: of immigrants, of all races and cultures, of other religions, of LGBTQ people. The U.S. has become more democratic than it was in the founders’ day, thanks to voting-rights reforms.
To the extent that humanity still believes in cruelty, oppression and prejudice, it’s clearer than ever that religion is to blame for that. Religion sows the seeds of prejudice, inspiring xenophobia and bigotry. It promotes closed-mindedness and hostility to science, to progress, and to new and different ideas. It justifies war and violence in the name of God.
The decline of religion, rather than making us worse, has made us better. We’ve scrapped many of the mystical dogmas that never had any reason behind them. The rules with a genuine connection to human well-being have survived. We’ve also crafted some new ones as social reformers brought to light injustices that had previously been overlooked.
Benjamin Franklin got it wrong. There was never any tiger, no growling, slavering beast ready to pounce on its liberators. Human beings aren’t so vicious as that. It turns out, without that choking chain of religion, we’re more like peaceful lap cats.
A Pop-Quiz for Christians, Number 9
Here’s the link to this article.
By David Madison at 12/08/2023
Tis the season to carefully study the Jesus birth stories
A few years ago I attended the special Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall. It ended with the famous tableau depicting the night Jesus was born: the baby resting on straw in a stable, shepherds and Wise Men adoring the infant, surrounded by farm animals—and a star hovering above the humble shelter. Radio City did it splendidly, of course, but the scene is reenacted at countless churches during the Christmas season. The devout are in awe—well, those who haven’t carefully read the birth stories in Matthew and Luke. This adored tableau is actually a daft attempt to reconcile the two gospel accounts—which cannot, in fact, be done.
If churchgoers actually studied these accounts, they would legitimately ask: How has the church been able to get away with this?
So here are essential questions in this Pop-Quiz:
1. What is the evidence that Jesus was born on December 25?
Read Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2: is the evidence there?
2. Where did Mary and Joseph live when they found out she was pregnant?
Matthew and Luke didn’t agree on this.
3. Is it a good idea to add astrology—the ancient superstition of imagining omens in the sky—to Christian theology?
The Wise Men (magi/astrologers) saw the “Jesus star” and set out on a journey to find him. This is mentioned only in Matthew: is there any way at all to make this story credible?
4. What are the problems with that star?
Its behavior changes as the story unfolds.
5. Name two Old Testament verses that Matthew applies to Jesus, but which had nothing whatever to do with Jesus.
Matthew’s use of scripture is eccentric—to put it mildly.
Answers and Comments
Question One: What is the evidence that Jesus was born on December 25?
Events relating to the birth of Jesus are described in only two places in the New Testament: Matthew 1 & 2, and Luke 1 & 2. Mark begins his story with the baptism of Jesus, and John positions Jesus as having been a factor in the creation of the world; he seems not to have cared how Jesus was born as a human. But it was important to Matthew and Luke, yet neither of them bothers to mention the date when Jesus was born. December 25th was chosen later. This article, Why Is Christmas in December? offers details:
“In the 3rd century, the Roman Empire, which at the time had not adopted Christianity, celebrated the rebirth of the Unconquered Sun (Sol Invictus) on December 25th. This holiday not only marked the return of longer days after the winter solstice but also followed the popular Roman festival called the Saturnalia (during which people feasted and exchanged gifts). It was also the birthday of the Indo-European deity Mithra, a god of light and loyalty whose cult was at the time growing popular among Roman soldiers.”
Thus it seems that the Jesus-birthdate is a borrowing, i.e., the church capitalized on the popularity of December 25. But this is a red flag, a warning that there was too much borrowing. It doesn’t take much study of ancient religions to see that virgin birth for gods and heroes was a welcome credential. Matthew and Luke—alone among New Testament authors—attached this credential to Jesus. And while we’re studying ancient religions, we can wonder if December 25 was fiction on a whole different level: was Jesus born at all?
Richard Carrier makes this point:
“Right from the start Jesus simply looks a lot more like a mythical man than a historical one. And were he not the figure of a major world religion—if we were studying the Attis or Zalmoxis or Romulus cult instead—we would have treated Jesus that way from the start, knowing full well we need more than normal evidence to take him back out of the class of mythical persons and back into that of historical ones.” (On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, p. 602)
Hysteria may be the response of some folks to any suggestion that Jesus was a fictional character. My suggestion: calm down and read Carrier’s book. Find out why, after 600 pages of evidence and reasoning, this is his conclusion. Make the effort to study the gospels carefully, critically: find out why historians don’t trust them to deliver authentic accounts of Jesus. And realize that devout New Testament scholars have been agonizing over this problem for decades.
Question 2: Where did Mary and Joseph live when they found out she was pregnant?
In Matthew’s story, there is no mention whatever of a census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. This was simply where they lived, and they fled from there to Egypt—here again, this tall tale is found only in Matthew—to protect Jesus. When they decided to return to their home, it was deemed too dangerous. “And after being warned in a dream, [Joseph] went away to the district of Galilee.There he made his home in a town called Nazareth…” (Matthew 2:22-23) There is not the slightest hint that Mary and Joseph had lived there originally.
Moreover, Luke knew nothing about the escape to Egypt mentioned in Matthew’s account. He offered an extended description of Jesus being taken to the Temple in Jerusalem for circumcision, and the words of adoration spoken about Jesus by two holy people, Simon and Anna. Then it was time to head for home: “When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.” (Luke 2:39)
It’s puzzling that two gospel authors did not agree on something so basic: where the parents of Jesus lived. And it’s even more puzzling that those who assembled the New Testament would include gospels that didn’t agree. Actually, scholars have been alarmed that the gospel authors fail to agree on so much.
Question Three: Is it a good idea to add astrology—the ancient superstition of imagining omens in the sky—to Christian theology?
The authors of the New Testament had a hard time separating fact from fiction, credible beliefs from superstition. But at least they were inventive. Matthew imagined that astrologers (in the East, presumably Babylon, 900 miles away) figured out that a star represented a new king of the Jews. Why would they care? Why would they embark on a long journey “to pay him homage”? This seems to be a reflection of Matthew’s arrogance that his breakaway Jesus sect was the one true religion. So bring on the “wise men” from other religions!
But astrology was (and remains) an ancient superstition. How does this not drag Christian theology down? Alas, of course, quite a few ancient superstitions in the gospels damage Christianity, e.g., mental illness is caused by demons, people with god-like powers can raise the dead and heal people (Jesus cured a man’s blindness by smearing mud on his eyes), a resurrected human sacrifice guarantees salvation for those who believe. Using astrology to enhance theology is part of a much bigger credibility problem.
Question Four: What are the problems with that star?
Matthew is guilty of a major plot flaw. The astrologers headed to Jerusalem to get information on where to find this new king of the Jews. Their inquiry alarmed King Herod, who made inquiries of the religious experts. They told him that Bethlehem was the place to look, based on a text in Micah 5:2. So the astrologers headed for Bethlehem: “…they set out, and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen in the east, until it stopped over the place where the child was.” (Matthew 2:9) Scholar Robert Price has said that the star had suddenly turned into Tinkerbell! Why didn’t it do this earlier, bypassing Jerusalem altogether, thereby keeping King Herod in the dark, and avoiding the Massacre of the Innocents? (Matthew 2:16)
The Tinkerbell Star stopped over the house where Jesus was living—no stable in this story—and Jesus is described as a child or little-boy. When Herod went on his furious rampage later, killing children in the Bethlehem area, the order was to execute those two years old and younger, “according to the time that he had learned from the astrologers.” (Matthew 2:16) After all, 900 miles was a long trek. It is abundantly clear that Matthew depicts an event that did not take place on the night Jesus was born. Placing the Wise Men in Luke’s stable is totally misleading. It makes for good theatre—that’s what appeals to the clergy and Sunday School teachers, I suppose—but it’s not what the Bible says.
Question Five: Name two Old Testament verses that Matthew applied to Jesus, but which had nothing whatever to do with Jesus.
New Testament authors specialized in taking old bits of scripture out of context. They were on the hunt for verses that they could apply to Jesus, no matter the intent of the original authors. Since they were sure that the old documents were filled with secret codes that about their lord, the game was on. Here are two examples:
· In Matthew’s birth story, he quotes Isaiah 7:14 as a prophecy about Jesus. Please read Isaiah 7: how can anything in this text be about a holy hero who would be born centuries later? It is about how Israel’s god will help resolve a crisis at the time.
· As mentioned earlier, it is only Matthew that tells the farfetched story of Mary and Joseph taking Jesus to Egypt to protect him. It would seem this was even too absurd for Luke to believe: he reports that Mary and Joseph—after the circumcision of Jesus—headed back to Nazareth. But Matthew had landed on Hosea 11:1, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” The reference is clearly to Israel as a people, and moreover, the chapter is a lament that this people had been too ungrateful and rebellious.
Contemporary Bible readers should be able to figure out that Matthew’s use of old texts doesn’t help at all to make the case for Jesus.
The five questions in this Pop-Quiz serve as an introduction to the problems presented by these two birth narratives. Historians don’t take them seriously at all, since they clearly belong to the genre we call religious fantasy literature. Joseph is told by an angel in a dream that Mary is pregnant by the hold spirit; an angel in a dream tells him when to head home from Egypt. These are bits of fantasy, unless we could be sure that Matthew had access to a diary that Joseph kept, in which he wrote down his dreams (that’s the kind of documentation historians rely on). But at most, the diary would show that Joseph was out of touch with reality, believing that his god spoke to him via angels in dreams. Luke also was stoked at the thought of angels playing speaking roles, e.g., to the father of John the Baptist, to Mary, and to the shepherds on the night Jesus was born.
The gospels of Mark and John are deeply flawed, but at least those two authors showed no interest in spinning tales about how Jesus was born. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on your perspective—the Matthew and Luke birth narratives are a good place to start in undermining the credibility of the gospels, and in the falsification of Christian theology.
But that requires curiosity, critical thinking, and a willingness to engage in serious study—wherever that may lead.
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available.
His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.
Believers Specialize in the Denial of Grim Reality
Here’s the link to this article.
By David Madison at 12/15/2023
Especially the reality of horrendous suffering
What does it take for a person to say No to belief in a god? No matter the depth of indoctrination, it might happen when one is faced with suffering on an unprecedented scale. This happened to Martin Selling, born in Germany in 1918. He was Jewish, thus was caught up in the Nazi frenzy of hate. He ended up in Dachau.
“…there were those who found they could no longer believe in God—any God—because of what was taking place. Martin identified with this group. He would, he decided, observe and participate in the traditions and ceremonies he had grown up with, out of a desire to acknowledge his Jewish heritage. But for the rest of his life, he knew, he would just be going through the motions. The horrors of Dachau had destroyed his belief in God.” (Bruce Henderson, Son and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler, p. 10)
Changing our minds and our behavior is a matter of letting evidence, facts, the realities of our everyday world influence our thinking. If your doctor tells you that your cholesterol is too high, you’ll adjust your diet. If you’re on the hunt for a product or service—to make your life better—it’s common to check consumer reviews: what has been the experience of others? We don’t like to make big mistakes.
But what if our brains have been locked by something? What if our personalities are anchored to beliefs that we learned at a very young age? This is commonly what happens with religion—a wide variety of religions that do not agree at all. Yet those who were raised Catholic, or evangelical, Muslim, Jewish, Mormon—taught the “truths” of these faiths by trusted authority figures, i.e., parents and clergy—can feel super threatened when the fallacies of these belief systems are brought to their attention:
“No thank you, I will not look at the facts! No thank you, evidence plays no role in enabling my faith! I have been taught what is true, case closed!”
One’s personal fate in the cosmos is commonly at stake in clinging to embedded beliefs. That is, the promise of escape from death, the promise of getting to see mother again in heaven, the promise of being loved personally by Jesus. It’s hard to think of more powerful motivations. Thus evidence and hard facts that undermine faith are shunned, ignored, pushed beyond the horizon of awareness.
As Darrell Ray has pointed out in The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture:
“From church schools and church groups, to home schooling and frequent church activities, the goal is to keep children immersed in the god virus until the infection has taken hold. It is difficult to learn and practice critical thinking while immersed and isolated by the god virus. That is the purpose of immersion. When an individual is able to compare and examine the various religious claims, she soon realizes that religions are full of mythologies dressed as fact.” (p. 200)
Religions have developed ways to shun and deflect evidence that handily falsifies belief in god. Devout Christians, for example, have been assured by their clergy that “God works in mysterious ways,” or “God has plans we are not privileged to know”—to account for horrible events that sabotage the claim that god is loving, caring, powerful, competent. Or they have been assured that god has been paying attention when their fervent prayers have rescued a cancer patient from death. What a relief: god has been paying attention! But there’s a major flaw with this boast: thousands of cancer sufferers die every day. If god is truly paying attention, why aren’t all these other people rescued from painful death? Does it take fervent prayers to get him to notice this suffering? Something is seriously wrong with this theology.
Moreover, the laity commonly do not notice what is wrong with the claim that “God works in mysterious ways” and “has plans that we are not privileged to know.” It would be appropriate for the devout to ask their clergy: How do you know this? “Mysterious ways” and “undisclosed plans” are theological guesses, wishful thinking—fishing desperately for answers—to exonerate god. Horrendous suffering is, in fact, stunning evidence that a good, caring, powerful, competent god plays no role whatever in the management of this planet. It makes no sense whatever to believe that “he’s got the whole world in his hands.”
Church folks are trained from a very early age to look the other way when episodes of massive suffering are so very obvious. Elsewhere I have called this easy acceptance of the very terrible—in order to preserve faith. “Oh yes, that really is horrible, but we can be sure god has his reasons.” Usually zero thought is given to coming up with plausible explanations, because curiosity and thinking are dangerous. Facing the reality of horrendous suffering is dangerous.
How did belief in the Christian god survive the crises and ordeals of the 20th century? Two world wars brought suffering at unprecedented levels. Nicholas Best, in his book, Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II, noted:
“By the end of the war almost six million Jews had perished, approximately two-thirds of the entire Jewish population of Europe. Romani Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled people as well as other religious and political opponents were also sent to the death camps increasing the total to an estimated eleven to sixteen million.” (Kindle, p. 288)
These deaths were the result of planned murders by the Nazis, but far more people were the casualties of the devastating warfare. This above all has contributed to the secularization of western Europe, because massive prayers to god 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, did not work, as Darrell Ray points out:
“It took two world wars for Europeans to realize that the prayers of millions of people were not answered. It doesn’t take too much intelligence to see that god isn’t working too well when 92 million people die in two world wars.” (p. 75)
The clergy earn their pay by promoting idealized versions of god and Jesus, to keep the faithful loyal and devoted. To put it bluntly, they are paid propagandists. Hence there are two things they won’t do:
(1) Encourage their parishioners to intensively study the four gospels: compare them carefully, critically, and probe to find out where the gospel authors got their ideas. Their accounts of Jesus, and Christian origins, are indeed a tangled mess.
(2) Encourage a thorough study of horrendous suffering, and try to figure out how a good god plays any role whatever in the terrible events that humans have had to endure. Rather, the preferred approach of the clergy is to deflect attention from these realities.
Recent studies have shown that, among the young especially, the Holocaust is seen as exaggerated, or denied entirely. Yet the Holocaust in one of the most thoroughly documented crimes in history. The Nazis themselves kept records of their deeds—-they thought they were doing the world a great service—and many of their leaders kept diaries. Moreover, survivors of the Holocaust have written of their experiences, the horrors and terrors they suffered.
The memoir of Magda Hellinger was preserved with the help of her daughter, Maya Lee. This is one glimpse of life at Birkenau concentration camp:
“There were no toilets or running water at the new camp. Our ‘toilet’ was a large hole in the ground with a plank over the top. It was bad enough coping with the stench of this open pit, but falling in became our greatest fear. Only a few days after we arrived, one girl lost her balance and found herself covered in excrement. She stumbled through the camp in search of somewhere to wash, but her effort was fruitless due to a lack of water. A guard chose the solution that was to become commonplace: he shot her dead.” (p. 68, The Nazis Knew My Name: A Remarkable Story of Survival and Courage in Auschwitz-Birkenau)
“Death was always close. It should never be forgotten that the period over the summer and autumn of 1944 was the deadliest of the Holocaust. The Nazis murdered close to 400,000 people, mostly Hungarian Jews, in just a few months. Most were gassed immediately after their arrival, but many others died in the weeks and months afterward. Some just lost hope and fell to the ground, or threw themselves against the electric fence to end it all. For many others, injury during work, disease, malnutrition—any reason for not being able to work—was enough reason for an SS guard to send a prisoner up the chimney. Not that they needed a reason at all. There were no consequences for an SS guard who chose to simply shoot a prisoner dead for being in the wrong place or for looking at him the wrong way. After all, the aim was genocide, sooner or later. The life of a Jewish prisoner had no value.” (p. 150, The Nazis Knew My Name)
Two other Holocaust memoirs are especially worthy of note.
Edith Hahn-Beer “donated her personal papers to the US Holocaust Museum in Washington; at 800 documents, it was one of the largest archives pertaining to a single person.” Hahn-Beer’s experience of the war is told in her book, The Nazi Officer’s Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust. This quote about her donation to the museum is found on page 4 of the addendum. How to survive the maelstrom of hate? This was a possibility:
“Perhaps I could pretend to be a Christian too. Surely God would understand. And it might help. Why not try it? I took myself into the town of Osterburg and stared at the statue of Jesus in front of the local church, trying to will myself to love Jesus. It was wartime. Men were at the front. And yet I saw no candles in the church, no kneeling worshippers praying for the safe return of sons and husbands and fathers. The Nazis had done a wonderful job of discouraging faith in anything but the Führer.” (p. 98)
Noach Zelechower’s experiences are described in I Survived to Tell: A Holocaust Memoir about Survival in the Warsaw Ghetto and 7 Camps.
“In order to inflict such physical and mental torment, the Germans had to breed a special caste of humans, fed on raw meat and Vodka. It is not possible that out of the blue such evil people could be created suddenly–in the heart of Europe…It wore us down trying to solve this mystery of the origin of the existence of such human beasts.” (Kindle, pp. 132-133)
“I sat now in a building that was soaked with the stench of dripping pus from open wounds that were bandaged in all sorts of manner and was full of damned, suffering, and dying people. In this place they cursed, with all the derogatory words, the God that had forgotten them and accused Him for being the main culprit responsible for all their daily maladies and hardships. This denial of God was repeated about a hundred times a day.” (Kindle, pp. 157-158)
The denial of god based on reality. The Bible is used to support a naive view of a good, caring, loving god, e.g., Psalm 23:4: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
What happens in reality? Hitler sent 285,000 soldiers to conquer Stalingrad; only about 6,000 made it back to Germany. During the firebombing of Dresden by the Allies in February 1945, 25,000 people died. The atomic blast over Hiroshima incinerated some 80,000 people in an instant.
Horrendous suffering at this level—or at the level of people dying from cancer, or from thousands of genetic diseases—make a mockery of the claim that “this is my Father’s world.” It’s no surprise that the clergy don’t want their devout followers asking all the tough questions that these events in the real world raise. A good place to start such study is a careful reading of John Loftus’ anthology, God and Horrendous Suffering.
Come on, churchgoers, it’s time to snap out of it!
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten ToughProblems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available.
His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.
Morning Mental Meanderings–12/03/23
"Morning Mental Meanderings" is a daily practice of intellectual curiosity, self-examination, and open dialogue, all through the lens of my unique perspective and life experiences. It's an invitation to readers to start their day with a moment of thoughtful consideration and to embrace a lifestyle of creativity, imagination, continuous learning, and questioning.
Pausing to Find Purpose
In the early solitude of the Pencil Pit, my barn converted into a sanctuary for thought, I sit engulfed by a profound existential questioning. The morning light seems to cast longer shadows today, as I grapple with doubts that feel heavier than usual. “Why am I doing this?” The question resonates in the stillness, each word heavy with uncertainty.
Here I am, pencil poised, yet today the motivation to post on my blog eludes me. “Who cares if I post anything?” The thought lingers, unsettling the comfortable rhythm of my daily routine. “What am I achieving except perhaps wasting time?” This query, challenging the very essence of my actions, casts a shadow of doubt over my checklists, the very symbols of my lifelong pursuit of goals and purpose.
The thought of shutting down my website, of stepping away from my usual endeavors, suddenly doesn’t seem so far-fetched. It feels almost liberating – a release from the self-imposed shackles of constant productivity. “Why, why, why?” The question echoes, not seeking immediate answers but inviting a deeper introspection.
In this moment of doubt, I realize that perhaps it’s time for a pause. Creativity isn’t always about producing; sometimes it’s about stepping back, reevaluating, and finding new inspiration. The questions looming over me – “Am I helping anyone? Am I helping myself?” – demand more than a cursory consideration.
So, today, I make a decision that feels both difficult and necessary: to stop posting, at least for today, maybe for a few days, or perhaps forever. This pause is not an admission of defeat but an act of self-reflection, a necessary interlude to reassess my motivations and goals.
Who’s right and who’s wrong in this internal debate is no longer the focus. What matters now is giving myself the space to contemplate, away from the routine of posting and the relentless pursuit of goals. It’s in this space that I hope to find clarity, to rediscover the joy and purpose in my creative endeavors.
As I sit here in the Pencil Pit, I am reminded that creativity is not just a constant outpouring but also an ebb and flow. It requires moments of quiet, of stillness, where one can listen to the whispers of one’s own heart.
Today, and perhaps for some days to come, I will embrace this pause, this moment of stillness. It’s a time to reflect, to question, and to seek the true essence of my creative spirit – a spirit that yearns not just to create, but to understand, to grow, and to find meaning in life’s journey.
Morning Mental Meanderings–12/02/23
"Morning Mental Meanderings" is a daily practice of intellectual curiosity, self-examination, and open dialogue, all through the lens of my unique perspective and life experiences. It's an invitation to readers to start their day with a moment of thoughtful consideration and to embrace a lifestyle of creativity, imagination, continuous learning, and questioning.
Navigating the Labyrinth of Belief and Meaning
As the soft light of dawn filters through the Pencil Pit, my rustic haven of contemplation, my thoughts are still cycling through yesterday’s experiences, both physical and intellectual. The tranquility here contrasts sharply with the whirlwind of ideas and beliefs that I navigated while biking and listening to a thought-provoking podcast.
The debate that captured my attention was a classic one: does human life have intrinsic value, and where does meaning and purpose originate? The Christian guest’s insistence on an ultimate cosmic meaning as a prerequisite for individual purpose stood in stark contrast to the atheist philosopher’s view of a universe devoid of predetermined meaning. This dichotomy echoes my own journey of belief. For 60 years, I embraced the Christian narrative, firmly believing in a divine plan and purpose. Yet, the realization that I had never truly encountered this being led me to a profound shift in perspective.
This morning, I find myself wrestling with the Christian podcast guest’s question. How do we, as individuals, derive meaning and purpose in a universe that an atheist might see as ultimately purposeless? This conundrum is at the heart of my current struggle – reconciling the beliefs that shaped much of my life with my newfound understanding.
The frustration I feel when hearing Christians make unsupported claims is more than just a reaction to differing opinions; it is a reflection of my own journey from certainty to skepticism. It highlights the challenge of navigating a world where beliefs are often deeply entrenched and rarely questioned.
Yet, as I ponder these deep questions, I realize that my quest for truth is not about finding definitive right or wrong answers. It’s about the journey itself – the exploration of ideas, the questioning of long-held beliefs, and the openness to new perspectives. It’s about building a personal framework of meaning, one that doesn’t necessarily rely on an external, ultimate purpose but is rich and fulfilling in its own right.
In this way, my biking journey mirrors my intellectual one – both are about navigating complex paths, exploring new routes, and sometimes, facing challenging terrains. The podcast debate is not just a clash of viewpoints; it’s a reminder of the diverse ways humans grapple with the concept of meaning in life. It underscores the idea that meaning and purpose can be as varied and individual as the paths we choose to bike on.
So, who’s right and who’s wrong? Perhaps that’s not the question to ask. Instead, it might be more fruitful to embrace the diversity of thought, to acknowledge that the search for meaning is a deeply personal endeavor, and to respect the myriad ways people find purpose in their lives.
As I sit here in the Pencil Pit, surrounded by the serenity of my barn, I am reminded that life, much like a long bike ride, is about exploration, endurance, and the discovery of personal landscapes of belief and meaning. It’s about navigating the labyrinth of thought with an open mind and a willing heart.
Cognitive Clarity–Abortion travel bans: Coming soon to a red state near you?
"Cognitive Clarity" blog posts are about cultivating a culture of thoughtful and informed discourse. They encourage readers to think deeply, question boldly, and approach the world with an open yet discerning mind.
Here’s the link to this article.
by ADAM LEE NOV 27, 2023
Overview:
Despite one stinging defeat after another, religious conservatives keep trying to outlaw abortion—now, by making it illegal to travel out of red states to places where it’s legal.
Reading Time: 6 MINUTES
Abortion is a losing issue for Republicans.
The evidence is beyond a reasonable doubt. In election after election, they’ve been slapped down.
Kansas voted down an abortion ban. Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s support for a “reasonable” 15-week ban cost him the Virginia legislature. Gov. Andy Beshear won reelection in Kentucky with a devastating ad about how his opponent would have forced a pre-teen girl raped by her stepfather to give birth. The people of Ohio passed a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights, infuriating the state’s Republican legislators (who’ve already announced they intend to try to nullify the will of their own voters—more on this soon, no doubt).
Are they giving up? No.
Despite these blistering rebukes from voters, Republican politicians refuse to relent. They’re preparing an even more draconian set of laws to strip reproductive freedom away from the American people.
The right to travel
So far, America’s federalist structure has kept the full weight of abortion bans from crashing down on women. While red states seized on their chance to outlaw or heavily restrict abortion, most blue states have protected and expanded abortion rights. People in red states who need an abortion can travel to the nearest safe haven (assuming, of course, that they have the money, the resources and the time). In fact, U.S. abortion rates have increased since the Dobbs decision.
Religious conservatives in red states are disgruntled by this, and they’re trying to stop it. They can’t control what blue states do—but they want to make it illegal to travel out of state to get an abortion, and prosecute those who help women do this.
For example, in Alabama:
Alabama’s Republican attorney general said in a court filing that he has the right to prosecute people who make travel arrangements for pregnant women to have out-of-state abortions.
In a court filing Monday, attorneys for Attorney General Steve Marshall wrote that providing transportation for women in Alabama to leave the state to get an abortion could amount to a “criminal conspiracy.”“Alabama attorney general says he has right to prosecute people who facilitate travel for out-of-state abortions.” Andy Rose, CNN, 31 August 2023.
And in Texas:
Commissioners in Lubbock County, Texas, on Monday voted to outlaw the act of transporting another person along their roads for an abortion, part of a strategy by conservative activists to further restrict abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The move makes Lubbock the biggest jurisdiction yet to pass such a restriction on abortion-related transportation since the June 2022 end of Roe, which had granted a nationwide right to abortion. Six cities and counties in Texas have passed the bans, out of nine that have considered them.
A few hours north, the Amarillo City Council on Tuesday will weigh its own law, which could lead to a future council or city-wide vote.
Lubbock and Amarillo are both traversed by major highways that connect Texas, which has one of the country’s most stringent abortion laws, to neighboring New Mexico, where abortion is legal.“Fight over Texas anti-abortion transport bans reaches biggest battlegrounds yet.” Julia Harte, Reuters, 24 October 2023.
In Missouri, too, an anti-abortion travel ban has been proposed by state lawmakers. Idaho has made it a crime—”abortion trafficking”—to take a minor out of state for an abortion.
The logic, such as it is, of these religious conservatives is that abortion is illegal in their states, and even if the act itself occurs where it’s legal, traveling out of state constitutes the crime of “conspiracy to obtain an abortion”. Thus, they believe they can criminally prosecute both women who get an abortion and anyone who helps them travel to do so.
States’ rights
If these anti-abortion travel bans are allowed to stand by the courts, the result will be national chaos. It would be a backdoor for each state to enforce its policy preferences on all the others.
What if a red state decided to outlaw gambling, and sought to arrest people who go on a weekend trip to Las Vegas? Could Utah, a famously dry state, ban alcohol and prosecute people who crossed state lines to go to a bar, for “conspiring” to obtain booze? Could enthusiastic book-banning states like Texas make it illegal to read books on their blacklists, even in a library in another state?
It works the other way, too. What about anti-gun blue states? Could California, New York or Illinois outlaw firearms and make it illegal to travel on state roads to go to an out-of-state shooting range?
Historically informed readers will notice a parallel. Southern apologists claim the U.S. Civil War was fought to protect “states’ rights”, but in fact, the opposite is true. The slaveholding states wanted to enforce their beliefs on all states, whatever the people in those other states thought about it.
They tried to achieve this with laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which decreed that an enslaved person who escaped and made it to a free state didn’t become free. On the contrary, it (attempted to) require people in free states to help capture the runaways and return them to slavery.
These laws stirred up massive outrage from people in the North, who resented being told that they had to enforce an oppressive legal regime they didn’t vote for or agree with. It was one of the major sources of enmity that led into the Civil War.
How would you enforce a travel ban?
For all the yelling they do about freedom, anti-abortion conservatives are eagerly starting down a short path to dictatorship. To prevent women from traveling out of state for an abortion would require a truly dystopian apparatus of surveillance and control.
Every red state would have to become a mini-Gilead, with checkpoints at every airport, harbor and interstate road. They’d have to hire an army of brownshirts to detain and interrogate women about where they were going and why (or, in the most nightmarish scenario, forcibly administer pregnancy tests), and force them to go home if their answers weren’t convincing enough.
Anyone who could get pregnant would be under perpetual house arrest. They’d be unable to set foot on any public sidewalk or road without a pass from a husband or an employer. No airline or taxi or bus company would be willing to transport them, for fear of prosecution. It would be a theocratic prison state like Saudi Arabia or the Taliban.
The good news—such as it is—is that it doesn’t seem Republicans have any plans to do this. At least for the time being, that would be too intrusive and extreme even for them to swallow.
Instead, it’s more likely that travel bans will be used as a tool of fear and arbitrary enforcement. They’ll make examples of a few cases that come to their attention, mostly poor and minority women turned in by jealous ex-partners or controlling relatives, while the rich and the well-connected get off lightly.
There’s historical precedent for that. It’s exactly how the nineteenth-century Comstock Act was enforced:
The Comstock Act had sweeping potential when it passed in 1873, able to be interpreted to cover information, drugs, and devices related to abortion or contraception, as well as anything else deemed obscene. But in the 19th and early 20th centuries, law-enforcement officers and postal inspectors didn’t have access to the reams of digital data available today. Catching those who published newsletters or put information on the outside of an envelope was easy; most people sending abortion or contraception materials quickly learned to use sealed envelopes. And to open an envelope, investigators needed a warrant.
But anti-vice crusaders found two ways around this problem. First, they tapped into a network of tipsters and detectives—people who deceived potential abortion providers, pretending to be patients or their loved ones to gather evidence for potential prosecutions. Anthony Comstock, a former dry-goods salesman and anti-vice activist who lobbied for the law named after him (and who became a special agent for the U.S. Postal Service in enforcing the act), perfected the art of decoy letters and disguises, looking for evidence that could be turned over to postal inspectors or police.
Second, they relied on personal vendettas and animosities: angry ex-lovers, controlling husbands, business rivals, and others who used the law for their own ends. Countless people weaponized the law in their own personal conflicts. Victorians who sent “vinegar valentines,” cards that insulted or humiliated their targets, were turned in for Comstock violations. So were men who harassed women, a flirting couple who arranged potential rendezvous, and wives who wrote angry letters to their husbands’ mistresses.“Harsh Anti-abortion Laws Are Not Empty Threats.” Mary Ziegler, The Atlantic, 10 November 2023.
Of course, this is bad enough. And if Republicans were able to achieve that much, we can be sure it wouldn’t stop there. Contrary to the soothing lies of politicians like Glenn Youngkin about compromise, every victory only emboldens them to demand more. The once-unthinkable has already become routine in America, and their fanaticism for more and harsher restrictions on women has only grown.
Morning Mental Meanderings–12/01/23
Cultivating the Mind’s Garden
As the first light of dawn gently spills into the Pencil Pit, my barn-cum-sanctuary, my thoughts meander through the activities of yesterday, finding parallels in the garden of the mind. Jon and I, in our continued effort in garden #2, undertook the task of laying cardboard at the bottom of our newly built wooden garden bed. This simple act, meant to suppress weeds and grass, has sown seeds of reflection in my mind about learning and mental growth.
The act of ‘cardboarding’ our garden bed is, in essence, an exercise in creating a controlled environment for growth. It mirrors the way we prepare our minds when embarking on the journey of learning something new. For instance, when I decide to deepen my understanding of evolution, I am setting a boundary, a frame that says, “Here, within these confines, I shall cultivate my knowledge.”
But what, then, is the cardboard at the bottom of this mental garden bed? In my view, it represents the foundational beliefs and principles that underpin my understanding of a subject. It’s a barrier of sorts, yes, but not one that restricts; rather, it protects. This mental cardboard ensures that the seeds of knowledge I plant are not choked by the weeds of misinformation or the invasive grass of irrelevant facts. It’s a selective filter, allowing only that which nourishes and supports my growth in understanding.
This analogy extends further. Just as in a physical garden, where the quality of soil, sunlight, and water dictates the health of the plants, in the garden of the mind, the quality of information, sources, and context determines the robustness of our knowledge. In both scenarios, regular maintenance is key – weeding out falsehoods, pruning outdated information, and fertilizing with new, enriching insights.
However, there’s a notable dissimilarity. While a garden has physical boundaries, the mind’s garden is boundless. Its cardboard base is permeable, allowing new ideas and perspectives to percolate through, challenging and enriching the existing bed of knowledge. This fluidity is what makes mental cultivation both challenging and exhilarating.
As I sit here, pencil in hand, pondering these connections, I realize the immense power and responsibility we hold as learners and thinkers. Our minds, like gardens, are ours to tend. We must be vigilant gardeners, discerning in what we allow to take root, yet open to the natural evolution that comes with new learning and experiences.
Today, as I continue both in the garden and in my intellectual pursuits, I carry with me this analogy – a reminder of the careful, yet open-minded approach required in cultivating not just plants, but ideas, beliefs, and knowledge. It’s a reaffirmation that the mind, much like a garden, flourishes best with both structure and openness, discipline and curiosity.
Cognitive Clarity–Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?
"Cognitive Clarity" blog posts are about cultivating a culture of thoughtful and informed discourse. They encourage readers to think deeply, question boldly, and approach the world with an open yet discerning mind.
Here’s the link to this article.
By John W. Loftus at 11/27/2023
In 2011 I did a series of posts called “Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?” I put some of them in the third chapter in The End of Christianity, and the first chapter in God and Horrendous Suffering.
Below I’ve put together thirty of them that most Christians agree on and why they are all improbable:
1) There must be a God who is a simple being yet made up of three inexplicable persons existing forever outside of time without a beginning, who therefore never learned anything new, never took a risk, never made a decision, never disagreed within the Godhead, and never had a prior moment to freely choose his own nature.
2) There must be a personal non-embodied omnipresent God who created the physical universe ex-nihilo in the first moment of time who will subsequently forever experience a sequence of events in time.3) There must exist a perfectly good, omnipotent God, who created a perfectly good universe out of a desire/need to glorify himself by rewarding in heaven the few human beings who just got lucky to believe by being born at the right time and place, and who will condemn to hell those who do not believe.
4) That the highest created being, known as Satan or the Devil, led an angelic rebellion against an omnipotent omniscient omnibenelovent omnipresent God, and expected to win–which makes Satan out to be pure evil and dumber than a box of rocks.
5) That there was a first human pair (Adam & Eve) who so grievously sinned against God when tested that all of the rest of us are being punished for it (including animals), even though no one but the first human pair deserved to be punished. If it’s argued that all of us deserve to be punished because we all would have sinned, then the test was a sham. For only if some of us would not have sinned can the test be considered a fair one. But if some of us would not have sinned under the same initial conditions then there are people who are being punished for something they never would have done.
6) That although there are many other similar mythological stories told in Ancient Near Eastern Literature that pre-date what we read in the Bible, the stories in the Bible are about real events and real people.
7) That although we see completely different perspectives and evolving theologies in the Bible, including many things that are barbaric and superstitious to the core, it was authored by one divine mind.
8) That when it comes to verifiable matters of historical fact (like the Exodus, the extent of the reign of David, Luke’s reported world-wide census, etc) the Biblical stories are disconfirmed by evidence to the contrary as fairy tales, but when it comes to supernatural claims of miracles that cannot be verified like a virgin birth and resurrection from the grave, the Bible reports true historical facts.
9) That although a great number of miracles were claimed to have happened in the different superstitious cultures of the ancient world, only the ones in the Bible actually happened as claimed.
10) That an omniscient God could not foresee that his revealed will in the Bible would lead believers to commit such atrocities against others that reasonable people would conclude there is no divine mind behind the Bible. I call this The Problem of Miscommunication.
11) That God created human beings with rational minds that require evidence before they accept something, and yet this same God does not provide enough evidence but asks them to have faith instead.
12) That although people around the world are raised in different cultures to believe in their particular god(s) there is only one God and he will judge all people based upon whether or not they believe Jesus is Lord.
13) That Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecy even though there is not one passage in the Old Testament that is specifically fulfilled in his life, death, and resurrection that can legitimately be understood as a prophecy and singularly points to Jesus as the Messiah using today’s historical-grammatical hermeneutical method.
14) That although there were many false virgin birth claims about famous people (like Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Plato) mythical heroes (like Mithra, Hercules) and savior gods (like Krishna, Osiris, Dionysus) in the ancient world, Jesus was really born of a virgin.
15) That while there is no rational explanation for how a person can be 100% man and 100% God, and although ancient pagan superstitious people believed this can take place (Acts 14:11-12; 28:6), Jesus was incarnate God in the flesh.
16) That while the results of science are assured when it comes to chemistry, physics, meteorology, mechanics, forensic science, medical science, rocket science, computer science, and so forth, when it comes to evolutionary science that shows all present life forms have common ancestors, or when science tells us that dead bodies do not arise from the grave because total cell necrosis is irreversible, the results of science are wrong because the Bible says otherwise.
17) That although there is no rational explanation for why Jesus had to die on the cross to atone for our sins, his death atoned for our sins.
18) That although historical reconstructions of the past are are notoriously difficult because they depend on the poor evidence of history, and even though historians must assess that evidence by assuming a natural explanation for it, and even though historical evidence can never establish how to view that evidence, the Christian faith can be established historically anyway. My argument is that when it comes to miraculous claims, yesterday’s evidence no longer can hold water for me, for in order to see it as evidence, I must already believe in the framework that allows me to see it as evidence. In other words, in order to see yesterday’s evidence as evidence for me, I must already believe the Christian framework that allows me to see yesterday’s evidence as evidence for Christianity.
19) That although there is no cogent theodicy that can explain why there is such ubiquitous and massive human and animal suffering if a perfectly good omnipotent God exists, God is perfectly good and omnipotent anyway.
20) That while scientific tests on petitionary prayers have produced at best negligible results and at worst completely falsified them, God answers these kinds of prayers anyway.
21) That even though Christianity shows evidence that it is nothing but a cultural by-product of human invention there is a divine mind behind it anyway.
22) That Jesus is the Son of God even though the textual evidence in the New Testament conclusively shows that the founder of the Jesus cult was a failed apocalyptic prophet who prophesied that the eschaton would take place in his generation, which would involve a total cosmic catastrophe after which God inaugurates a literal kingdom on earth with the “Son of Man” reigning from Jerusalem over the nations.
23) That although there can be no moral justification for the sufferings of animals in this created world, a perfectly good God created this world anyway. We don’t even see God’s care for the lower animals in his supposed revealed word, which is described in Psalm 119 as his “perfect will.” Think otherwise? Then read what I wrote here.
24) That although the only method we have for determining the truth in factual matters is methodological naturalism, which assumes a natural explanation for any phenomena, and although this method is the hallmark of the sciences, the phenomena of the Bible can be exempted from this method as applied through Biblical Criticism, and believed anyway.
25) That although God’s supposed revelation in the canonical Bible is indistinguishable from the musings of an ancient, barbaric, superstitious people, the Bible is the word of God. As SilverBullet recently said: “…the lord doesn’t work in mysterious ways, but in ways that are indistinguishable from his non-existence. It seems to me that there is nothing in the Christian scriptures, no sentence, paragraph, or idea, that couldn’t be anything more than the product of the humans alive at the time that the apparently divinely inspired scriptures and ideas were “revealed”. Sure, its possible for a god to reveal himself in an inspired book, and throughout history, in ways that are indistinguishable from the work of human minds and human minds alone. But how probable does that seem to you?”
26) That although it’s claimed God got the attention of Abraham, Moses, the Pharaoh, Gideon, Mary, Joseph, and Saul (who became Paul) and that he knows how to get the attention of anyone and everyone, there is no objective evidence he’s trying to get the attention of the billions of people who don’t believe. In fact, Christians are much more concerned than God is that non-believers are converted. Just compare the lengths to which Christians will go in order to convert non-believers, with a God who has the means to convert everyone and yet does nothing to help them do this. If you say God is helping to convert non-believers then tell us how to objectively know God is actually doing this.
27) Christianity is a faith that must dismiss the tragedy of death. It does not matter who dies, or how many, or what the circumstances are when people die. It could be the death of a mother whose baby depends upon her for milk. It could be a pandemic like cholera that decimated parts of the world in 1918, or the more than 23,000 children who die every single day from starvation. These deaths could be by suffocation, drowning, a drive-by shooting, or being burned to death. It doesn’t matter. God is good. Death doesn’t matter. People die all of the time. In order to justify God’s goodness Christianity minimizes the value of human life. It is a pro-death faith, plain and simple.
28) That God’s punishments are good, right, and just, even though it means sinners are thrust into a surprisingly dangerous world, and in death will be blindsided by an eternal punishment in hell, which is “Christianity’s most damnable doctrine.” In this world how do you think human beings first learned that venomous creatures like certain kinds of spiders, snakes, ants or scorpions could kill us? People/children had to die, lots of them. How do you think human beings first learned that polluted water or lead poisoning could kill us? Again, people/children had to die, lots of them. It was inevitable since God never told us what to avoid in order to stay alive. We had to learn these kinds of things firsthand. The same thing can be said for hell. People do not know their choices will send them to an eternal punishment in hell. For if we knew this, and if it was possible not to sin at all, we wouldn’t sin. Do you doubt this? Then consider that if you knew with certainty that by crossing a line drawn in the sand you would get beaten to a pulp by a biker gang, you would not do it!
29) When believers like Christians or Muslims contend their faiths are based on reason, one may simply object that this can’t be so because their god in fact doesn’t allow it. Using reason to arrive at any other belief than the correct one will earn you an eternity in hell. Thus, reason is an evil to be avoided….Blind, unquestioning, and unexamined belief is what the theist’s retributive god truly desires, not a belief grounded in reason. And yet they maintain Christianity is reasonable.
30) The Christian thinks there is an objective absolute morality that stems from their perfectly good God, which is both eternal and unchangeable. But the morality we find in the Bible is something quite different than what they claim. Morality has evolved. What we find in the Bible is not something we would expect from a perfectly good God, but Christians believe there is a perfectly good God anyway. So Christians must choose, either 1) hold to a philosopher’s god divorced from the historical realities of the Bible, or 2) continue to worship a moral monster.
Morning Mental Meanderings–11/30/23
The Fabric of Endurance
As I sit in the Pencil Pit, the early light filtering through the barn, my mind weaves through the events of yesterday, each a thread in the complex fabric of endurance and perseverance.
In my morning pages, Project 55 took me on an imagined walk across the ‘back 40’, a journey interspersed with thoughts of my great-grandparents’ arduous trek to these very lands in the late 1900s. I visualized them, all six, journeying in a wagon to 80 acres of untamed wilderness, no house, no barn, just the wild embrace of nature. As I walked, pencil in hand, tracing the echoes of their footsteps, I tried to fathom their hardships, the enormity of starting from nothing but sheer will and hope.
Later, the theme of endurance continued as I accompanied my eldest son to Fort Payne for a new chapter in his truck-driving career. Watching him begin anew, with the unexpected delight of a new Peterbilt, filled me with a mix of pride and contemplation. Driving his pickup truck back, I pondered the challenges he faces – the long hours, the constant vigilance on the road, the solitude of the cab, the disjointed rest at noisy truck stops. His world, so different from mine, yet bound by a common thread of endurance and resilience.
Returning home, Jon and I resumed our work on the wooden garden bed in garden #2. The methodical process of cutting boards, driving stakes, and assembling the frame was a dance of patience and effort. Finishing it, ready to start the filling process, was a testament to our combined persistence. Yet, even this accomplishment seemed to pale in comparison to the pioneering hardships of my great-grandparents or the daily trials my son faces on the road.
This morning, as I ponder these three disparate yet interconnected experiences, I see a pattern emerging – the enduring human spirit. Each story, from my ancestors’ struggle to carve out a life, to my son’s journey in his trucking career, and our efforts in building the garden bed, speaks of the resilience required to face life’s challenges.
What do they share? A relentless pushing against life’s resistances, a determination to overcome, to build, to move forward. What’s dissimilar? The context and the scale, yet, fundamentally, the essence of struggle and triumph remains constant.
These reflections offer a lesson in appreciation and perspective. They remind me of the relative ease of my current endeavors compared to the trials of past generations or the challenges my son faces. They teach me gratitude for the progress made, for the paths paved by those who came before, and for the opportunities available to us today.
As I continue my day, these thoughts linger, shaping my approach to life’s challenges. They remind me to approach each task, no matter how mundane or arduous, with a sense of purpose and a recognition of the larger continuum of effort and resilience that defines not just my family’s history, but the human experience. It’s a reminder that our struggles, past and present, are not just obstacles but opportunities to forge strength, character, and a legacy of perseverance.
Richard L. Fricks 