Posted inGod

Atheists crush Christians at “Does God Exist?” debate

Naturally, it was no contest. There's no way a couple of fundamentalist Christians were going to best the Rational Response Squad on an ABC Nightline face-off over scientific evidence for the existence of God. (These are the guys who talked me into condemning myself to hell for a free DVD.) I haven't watched all of the video of the debate, You Tube'd versions of which are available at BSAlert.com. But I've seen enough to agree with the proposition that "the match was a slaughter and Ray and…Kirk [the Christians]...were left bleeding and wounded." Ray and Kirk weren't supposed to use…
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Posted inGod

Is God real?

It warmed my agnostic heart to see that this week's issue of Newsweek had "Is God Real?" on the cover. Usually news magazines run religion-friendly puff pieces around Easter and Christmas. Kudos to Newsweek for asking the tough question. Which, of course, can't be answered. However, this won't stop hundreds of millions of Christians from going to church tomorrow and glorying in the resurrection of someone who may or may not have actually existed, and is considered to be the son of a God who may or may not be real. That's too many "may's" for me to take the…
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Posted inGod

God-shaped hole is as big as our beliefs

It's a poetic notion: there's a God-shaped hole at the heart of my being. That's why I'm always restless, continually looking for something more, ceaselessly trying to find the very thing that will fill my cup of happiness to the brim. Catholic theologian John F. Haught speaks about this supposed urge for the infinite in a What is Enlightenment? interview (January-March 2007 issue). Sometimes people ask, "What is the evidence that the infinite exists?" For Augustine and for many religious people throughout the ages, the best evidence is the utter restlessness of the human heart. You could extend that also…
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Posted inGod Radha Soami Satsang Beas Science

Does God exist? Science says no.

Proving (sort of) that no-god has a plan for my life, on Friday the mailman delivered two ungodly packages that I’d been anticipating for quite a while: Victor Stenger’s new book, “God: The Failed Hypothesis,” and the free DVD, “The God Who Wasn’t There,” I got for sending myself to hell via the blasphemy challenge. Back in August I wrote about an advance description of Stenger’s book that led me to pre-order it. Good decision. I’m several chapters into “God: The Failed Hypothesis” and am enjoying a physicist’s scientific demolishing of the God hypothesis. Stenger’s central thesis is that if…
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Posted inGod

Eliminate the middleman between you and God

It’s usually advisable to eliminate the middleman. He won’t like it. But if there’s no reason to keep him around, dump the guy. He adds extra overhead. Especially if he’s standing between you and God. Or more accurately, if you believe he is. For given that the evidence of God’s existence is extremely scanty, it figures that a belief in the need for a middleman or mediator between humanity and divinity rests on even shakier ground. Like, quicksand. I used to buy cars the old-fashioned way. And hated it. You know the routine. Find a car you like. Talk to…
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Posted inGod Radha Soami Satsang Beas Wu Project

When nothing is something: God

In my last post, I focused on a plagiarized passage that I found in a book published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas. What’s more interesting and significant than the plagiarism, though, is what this misquoted quotation from W.T. Stace points toward: Nothing. Which he, along with many other mystics and mystically inclined writers, equates with God. Even the plagiarist, J.R. Puri, seems to agree. For after he steals Stace’s words to speak of a state of pure consciousness that has no empirical content other than itself, consciousness aware of consciousness, Puri says: And this self-realization is often eventually spoken of…
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Posted inGod

Prayer can be criticized

For me prayer represents what is both wrong and right about religion. Wrong, because prayer is the epitome of blind faith, religion’s hallmark. Believers imagine they’re communicating with someone they’ve never seen and for whom there’s no evidence of his/her/its existence. Right, because prayer is a natural human response to feeling powerless, uncertain, afraid, alone, loveless, or some other emotion flowing from an unmet need demanding satisfaction. Spinoza said that God’s will is “the asylum of ignorance.” When we don’t understand why something happened in the past, or what the future will bring, the anxiety of not knowing or not…
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Posted inBooks God Science

God vs. Science: guess who wins?

Science kicked ass in TIME magazine’s “God vs. Science” cover story debate. Atheist biologist Richard Dawkins pretty much blew Christian geneticist Francis Collins out of the theological water. The article points out that Dawkins is riding the quest of an atheist/agnostic literary wave, each of which I’ve read, or am reading. And can heartily recommend. Cited are Sam Harris’ The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, Dawkin’s The God Delusion, and Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell. Some other titles mentioned, each of which provides support to the religious skeptic, are Marc Hauser’s Moral Minds, Lewis Wolpert’s Six…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus God

Struggling to comprehend the Christian mind

I’ve been enjoying the Christian/non-believer dialogue being carried on via comments to my “Morality comes from nature, not God” post. Pastor Phillip Ross has stimulated some interesting cyber-conversation between himself and Church of the Churchless regulars, me included. Today I’m in a pretty mellow mood. Last night’s election results filled me with hope that the divisions plaguing the United States can be bridged by moderates who realize that left and right can’t exist without a center. I was in that spirit when I perused the latest comments from Phillip and others today. Rather than reflexively thinking, “Geez, that’s ridiculous” after…
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Posted inGod

I’m accused of being God

Today I got an email from Michael in response to my “Morality comes from nature, not God” post. I was intrigued by what he had to say. Particularly the part where he suggests that I am God. I like that hypothesis. A lot. I just wish there was more evidence for it than I’ve been able to dredge up. Michael wrote me a thoughtful message. I don’t agree with most of what he said, but I appreciate the sharing. Here’s my paragraph by paragraph response to his email. (Michael’s words are in italics, mine in regular type). An interesting though…
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Posted inBooks God Taoism/Tai Chi

When the gods stopped speaking to us

About three thousand years ago the divine voices shut up. Until then, says Julian Jaynes, humans habitually heard messages from the gods. However, those communications merely were being transmitted from one side of the brain to the other and were mistakenly construed as coming from an outside source. Religion as we know it arose as a reaction to the silence. After the breakdown of the bicameral mind, people became consciously aware of the interior mental space that previously was the province of the gods. A replacement was needed. Jaynes says: This breakdown resulted in many practices we would now call…
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Posted inGod Religions

Letting go of God. And Uncle Fred.

Julia Sweeney, former Saturday Night Live actress, has let go of God. She’s content, though she says that for her God was like a friendly uncle who lived in your head and always was willing to hear what you had to say. “Now there’s nobody to listen to my thoughts but myself,” I heard her tell Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air show last night. Since I tuned in on the car radio shortly before arriving home, I found the NPR archive and listened to the entire interview today. Sweeney is entertaining (not surprising, given her background). Also, fair and…
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Posted inGod Humor

Proofs that God exists

Well, it’s hard to argue with over three hundred proofs of God’s existence. Guess I’m going to have to become a believer. Oh, darn. By mistake I clicked the next link down on the Atheists of Silicon Valley “Humor” page. Now I know there are about an equal number of disproofs of God’s existence. Now I’m confused. Got to get my faith back. I went down the proofs list and found a bunch that made beautiful sense to me. Especially after drinking a bottle of wine and watching Fox News for an hour. Once my incredulity neurons were stupefied, it…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus God Wu Project

God wants to be forsaken

My churchlessness and agnosticism is adored by God. Yes, God looks upon me with more favor than all those worshipful Christians, Muslims, Jews and other religious types. For God wants to be forsaken. Happy to oblige, my friend. It’s a pleasure to comply with the divine will. I learned about what God wants from Meister Eckhart, the German theologian and mystic. He’s got some excellent doctrinal credentials, chief among them being accused of heresy by Pope John XXII. You know that a Catholic is pointing toward the truth when he’s branded a heretic. So we need to take seriously the…
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Posted inGod Wu Project

Hey, God, shut up! No more conversations

Like a good lapsed Catholic, I will begin by confessing that I’ve never read “Conversations with God.” Nor any other of Neale Donald Walsch’s follow-up books (whatever or whoever God is, “wordy” certainly defines the supreme being). I have, however, perused brief articles such as I found in a New Connexion issue that I’d picked up at a natural food store, needing some reading material to accompany my lunch of whole wheat pizza. In a “What Does God Really Want?” interview, Walsch clues us in to the meaning of life as revealed by the Big Man Upstairs. Who, to encapsulate…
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Posted inGod

We are all atheists

"I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." “We are all atheists, some of us just believe in fewer gods than others." These are two well known quotes from Stephen F. Roberts. On his Without Gods blog, Mitchell Stephens cites a quotation from skeptic par excellence Michael Shermer along the same lines: Christians today might say, I don't believe in Zeus, that was a silly superstition. Yet for many people that was a real…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus God

What’s up with worship?

Yesterday my wife had a epiphany. Laurel was driving by a church and saw a sign about Sunday Worship. “Suddenly,” she told me, “the whole idea of worshipping God seemed so ridiculous. How do we know that God wants to be worshipped?” Excellent question. Which presupposes that there is a God at all. So the notion of “worship” is doubly dubious. The good Christians who attend that church believe in a God for whom there is no demonstrable evidence, and they also believe that this God whom they are clueless about loves to be worshipped. Why? Because the Bible tells…
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Posted inGod Religions

Possible and impossible gods

I’m a firm believer in melding science and spirituality. Any religion or metaphysical system that is clearly at odds with evident scientific facts has no appeal for me. So the book by Victor Stenger that I wrote about in my previous post, “God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist,” is right up my alley. It hasn’t been published yet, but today I took a look at a sample chapter via Stenger’s web site. “Possible and Impossible Gods” is thought-provoking. And Judeo - Christian - Islamic religion-demolishing. Stenger argues persuasively that it isn’t possible for the…
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Posted inGod Science Wu Project

Science shows God does not exist

Ah, excellent! More support for my Wu Project. Physicist Victor Stenger has concluded that “beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God.” This quote is from the Amazon description of his forthcoming book, “God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.” Provocative title. I’m stoked. Amazon has gotten my pre-order. Just need to wait for January 2007 to have my faithless faith invigorated. Stenger came to my attention recently when I read a review of his “The Comprehensible Cosmos” in New Scientist. Since I found…
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Posted inGod Religions

Are you religious or spiritual? Take the test.

Often people say, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” Understandable. Religion, after all, has some notorious drawbacks. Intolerance, divisiveness, sanctimoniousness, irrationality—to name a few. But what does it mean to be non-religious? I’ve just started reading Daniel Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon” and came across his intriguing definition: Tentatively, I propose to define religions as social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought. Interesting. And persuasive to me. Not least because this definition by a professional philosopher meshes nicely with my “turn on or tune in?” distinction.…
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