Posted inGod

Egos gone wild: religious believers thinking God is on their side

First off, I've been there and done that: thinking God is on my side. So when I say that this is a crazy belief, I'm criticizing an earlier version of myself -- along with everybody else who has an ego massive enough to believe such a thing.Which includes the Green family, founders and owners of the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores. Yesterday I wrote a post on one of my other blogs, Salem Political Snark, "Here's 5 good reasons not to shop at Salem's Hobby Lobby." As part of my Google research for that post, I listened to an interview…
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Posted inGod

Ancient religious writings couldn’t predict modern science

My wife, Laurel, has had another faithless letter to the editor published in our local newspaper, the Salem Statesman Journal. The paper titled it, "Newspaper can't be faulted for decline in respect for God." Enjoy: A recent letter to the editor suggested the a decline in "respect for God," even by newspapers, is responsible for an increase in crime (as supposedly evidenced by the space given to sports versus religion). The newspaper is merely keeping up with the times and focusing on fact versus fiction. In this day and age, people are smarter than in the past, (especially younger people) and as…
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Posted inGod Reality

Believers, be clear about what sort of belief you want others to accept

Someone recently emailed me, asking if I read the many comments (223, currently) on a recent Church of the Churchless post. Here's part of my reply. I admit that I haven’t read the many comments on this post in much detail. In my current irreligious frame of mind it just strikes me as mostly meaningless to discuss/argue about subjective experiences as if they reflect some objective reality. There’s no way to tell whether someone’s supposed “mystical” experience is anything other than a projection of their own mind absent some sort of convincing demonstrable evidence.   Logical or reasonable arguments can…
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Posted inGod Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Gurinder Singh: the One is the goal, God without attributes

I no longer believe in God. Meaning, a God who is this or that, a God who can be described, who can be known, who can be experienced. But I'm very much open to the notion that One is at the heart of reality. Heck, I wrote a book called "Return to the One" about the teachings of Plotinus, a Neoplatonist Greek philosopher.  After all, something has to have always existed, or existence wouldn't exist. So why not call this the "One"? Just don't ascribe any attributes to the One, because the One couldn't have any attributes, being, obviously, One. …
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Posted inGod Personal/Stories

My missing checkbook taught me a lesson about God

After getting a haircut a few days ago I reached into the pocket of my jacket where I'd put my checkbook. Problem was, no checkbook.  "I'll have to give you cash," I told Kim, my haircutter. "Cash is good," she said. "I like cash."  "Me too. But I also like my checkbook, and I'm pretty sure I stuck it in my jacket pocket before I left home."  The next stop of the day in my retired life was my Tai Chi class in downtown Salem (Oregon). After I'd gotten in my car, post-haircut, I looked through my backpack and the…
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Posted inGod

Great video about why faith is an unreliable guide to truth

A Church of the Churchless reader just sent me this thought-provoking exchange between two hosts of The Atheist Experience Internet television show and a Christian caller. It's well worth watching. The first six minutes of the 12-minute video pretty much sums up the devastating arguments the hosts make about faith being an unreliable guide to truth. Basically, the Christian believer considers that his commitment to God is justifiably based on faith. But the hosts point out that there are thousands of Gods, each of which can be believed in on faith. So the chance of choosing the correct God (assuming…
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Posted inGod Reality

Shermer on why a supernatural God almost certainly doesn’t exist

This month's Scientific American has a great "Skeptic" column by Michael Shermer: At the Boundary of Knowledge: Is it possible to measure supernatural or paranormal phenomena? Shermer cites physicist Sean Carroll's book (The Big Picture, which I enjoyed) in this passage. Take our understanding of particles and forces, which Carroll says “seems indisputably accurate within a very wide domain of applicability,” such that “a thousand or a million years from now, whatever amazing discoveries science will have made, our descendants are not going to be saying ‘Haha, those silly twenty-first-century scientists, believing in ‘neutrons’ and ‘electromagnetism.’” Thus, Carroll concludes that…
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Posted inGod

No dragon in the garage. Also, no God in heaven.

I so love it when someone writes a book that says stuff I've been saying on this blog for a long time. Except he says it even better.  Which explains why I'm liking Paul Singh's "The Great Illusion: The Myth of Free Will, Consciousness, and the Self" so much. Singh is a scientifically-minded professor of obstetrics and gynecology who was raised in the Sikh religious tradition, and believed in Indian forms of spirituality/healing for a long time. Until, he saw the light of reality. Here's an excerpt from his book that speaks to an oft-spoken theme in my blog posts. It…
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Posted inGod

The answer to “Does God exist?” must be “No”

I'd expect better from a professor of philosophy than William Irwin's poorly reasoned essay in the New York Times, "God is a Question, Not an Answer."  I really have no idea how he can defend statements such as this: Dwelling in a state of doubt, uncertainty and openness about the existence of God marks an honest approach to the question. There is no easy answer. Indeed, the question may be fundamentally unanswerable. Huh, unanswerable?  Here's how the question of the existence of God is answered: with the best evidence available. This is how we humans answer all questions. There's no other…
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Posted inGod

Belief in God fades away gradually for many atheists

Do you believe in God?  This isn't an either-or question where the only possible answers are "yes" and "no." There are many shades of unbelieving and believing when it comes to God.  Many outwardly religious people aren't inwardly sure whether God exists. This includes a surprisingly large number of clergy.  Similarly, many atheists hold on to spiritual beliefs of one form or another, up to and including the possibility of a divine being or universal consciousness.  Personally, I've found that after 35 years of being a believer in an Eastern/Indian variety of religion, then becoming a spiritual sceptic, I've gone…
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Posted inGod

Absurd question: Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?

It's hard for me to get my atheist head around the furor over the assertion of a Wheaton College professor that Christians and Muslims "worship the same God." Wheaton College, an evangelical college in Illinois, had placed associate professor of political science Larycia Hawkins on administrative leave after she made a controversial theological statement on Facebook that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. The school has now begun the process to fire her due to an “impasse,” it said in a statement released on Tuesday. Hawkins said on Wednesday that she is “flummoxed and flabbergasted” by the college’s decision. Well, I'm flummoxed…
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Posted inGod Politics

No, Ammon Bundy, that voice in your head isn’t God

Religious craziness is a form of socially-acceptable insanity. Case in point: Ammon Bundy is one of the militants who have taken over buildings at the federal Malheur Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon.  Here's a short 90-second excerpt from a longer video Bundy made where he talks about what led him to try to help Dwight and Steven Hammond, ranchers in Harney County who were convicted on arson charges when they burned rangeland illegally -- endangering hunters and firefighters.   Somehow Bundy believes that when he needed to clear his mind about what to do, it was the Lord who did…
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Posted inGod

Sure, an atheist can believe in God. Here’s how.

I'm an atheist who believes in God. This isn't illogical. Or a contradiction. I just define "God" differently than religious believers do. Which is pretty much how Paul Harrison does in his book, "Elements of Pantheism: A Spirituality of Nature and the Universe." The word Pantheism derives from the Greek words pan (="all") and theos (="God"). Literally, Pantheism means: All is God. In essence Pantheism holds that the universe as a whole is worthy of the deepest reverence, and that only the Universe and Nature are worthy of that degree of reverence.  The statement "Nature is my god" is perhaps…
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Posted inGod Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

“Faithless Feminist” speaks to irreligious women and men alike

My wife, Laurel, is an increasingly ardent scientifically-minded religious skeptic. After starting a Meet Up discussion group here in Salem -- Science Minded Skeptics --  she's gotten to know Karen Darst, a Portland woman who runs the Faithless Feminist web site.  Check it out. It isn't just for women, or feminists. I liked Garst's "The Devil Made Me Do It" post. The whole idea of the devil is ridiculous, but the notion of an supernatural power in opposition to God (who is another absurd idea) can be found in Eastern as well as Western religions.  For a long time I…
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Posted inGod

“Pascal’s Wager 2.0” — an interesting read

Most people are familiar with Pascals' Wager. (If you aren't, I've written about it here and here.) Pascal's basic idea was that it makes sense to believe in God, because if you're right the benefits are eternal and unlimited, while if you're wrong you lose nothing. (Or very little. Such as listening to a bunch of boring sermons and not eating meat on Fridays.) Over on the New York Times web site, there's an interesting piece by a philosophy professor, Gary Gutting. In "Pascal's Wager 2.0" he argues that doubting God is a better bet than denying God. The wager…
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Posted inGod Religions

A must read for the churchless: “Faith No More”

Short. Sweet. Persuasive. There's a lot to like about a piece in the Milwaukee Magazine, "Faith No More," by Mario Quadracci. Download Faith No More PDF (in case the piece ever disappears from the magazine's web site) Quadracci nails a theme that I like to harp on also. It isn't up to atheists to prove that god and supernaturalism don't exist; it is up to theists to prove that god and supernaturalism do exist. He writes: I could try to convince you that we reside in a purely naturalistic universe. I could attempt to demonstrate the human authorship of all of…
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Posted inGod Reality

Aliens test the faith of Earth’s religious believers

So here's a thought experiment to ponder, religious believers... Aliens have come to Earth. They're from an advanced civilization in a galaxy far far away. Their spaceship is way beyond anything our scientists have even imagined.  Technologically, it's immediately apparent that we are as sophisticated in their eyes as a chimpanzee with a termite-removing twig is to us.  Fortunately, the aliens haven't come to destroy humanity. Well, let's rephrase that: they're fine with destroying us Homo sapiens one at a time. It's part of a game they like to play with denizens of the planets they visit. The rules are…
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Posted inBooks God

Five criteria for a “God theory” that religions fail

Science rocks. Religion sucks.  I'm only a few chapters into a new book by evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, "Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible." But it's pretty darn clear that those four words are a good summary of his thesis. Which I totally agree with.  Coyne has no patience for accommodationists who believe that science and religion are somehow complementary, offering up different ways of understanding the cosmos that, when combined, produce more knowledge than either science can alone. In a summary of what the book is about, Coyne writes: I also take up the notion of…
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Posted inBooks God

“A God That Could Be Real” doesn’t seem very real

After spending half an hour or so perusing articles about, and reviews of, a book called "A God That Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet," I've pretty much concluded that... This God doesn't strike me as potentially real enough to buy what Nancy Abrams wrote. But I'll give her credit for this: creativity, thought-provoking'ness, poetic prose, and a semi-gallant attempt to explain a God that is compatible with modern science. Since I don't understand how her God is any different from the collective imagination of humanity, I don't feel like I can explain Abrams' conception…
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Posted inGod Religions Science

A question about “God’s creation” for religious believers

I have a question for religious people: most religions believe that God or some other divine being created the universe. Which, naturally, includes Earth. I read a lot of science books. I'm not expert in the details of cosmology and evolution, but I'm familiar with the broad outlines of these fields. I know how much solid evidence supports certain basic facts. Such as... The universe started off in a big bang some 13.8 billion years ago. Stars and galaxies eventually came into being, along with our sun and the solar system.  Chance, in the form of countless unpredictable chaotic deterministic…
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