Posted inGod Humor

I’m an atheist who is beloved by God

Bow down to me, religious believers, because I am the exalted one, God's most favored favorite, the beloved of whoever or whatever divinity -- assuming such exists -- lies at the heart of reality. How do I know this? In the same way the true name of God, Galobet, came to me in a French Roast-fueled revelation five years ago. So after sipping my way through some pre-meditation reading, my consciousness was marvelously attuned to Galobet’s divine message. I was flying high on the swiftly beating wings of caffeine. This proximity to Galobet’s heavenly realm allowed me to hear his…
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Posted inGod Spiritual practice/meditation

Worship should be of something real (which leaves out God)

Yesterday I finished listening to a Philosophy Talk podcast on "Worship." As always, I enjoyed the intelligent insights of the discussants, hosts John Taylor and Ken Perry of Stanford University, plus guest Daniel Speak of Loyola Marymount. This Philosophy Talk program had a different feel, though. Usually religion takes a backseat to secular humanism on the show, as befits the emphasis on philosophy (literally, from the Greek, "love of wisdom"). In this case, while Speak didn't broadcast his Christianity at full volume it was an obvious murmur that could be heard to some degree in just about every statement that…
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Posted inGod Religions Science

Religion is like a placebo with no active ingredient

So you don't believe in God, but you want the benefits that come with being religious: feeling special, not being afraid of dying, embraced by a loving divine power, and such. No problem. You can keep your atheism or agnosticism and have your Godly presence also. This is the message that I draw from a fascinating study about placebos, which found they can be medically effective even when people know they're getting a fake drug. Patients can benefit from being treated with sham drugs even if they are told they contain no active ingredient, scientists have found. The finding suggests…
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Posted inGod

How to lose God

Here's an indication of how iconoclastic my morning meditation has become since I evolved into my churchless phase. Today a powerful intuition suddenly popped into my mind. Lose God. It's the way to wisdom. For over thirty-five years I was dedicated -- maybe even obsessed -- with finding God. I dove deeply into mysticism and meditation, hoping to locate divinity at the core of my consciousness. No luck. So far as I can tell. Of course, since no one knows for sure if God exists, and, if so, how God would appear to humans like us, it's possible that divinity…
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Posted inGod Religions

Koran burners and murdering Muslim protesters: two of a kind

It's tough for me to decide which brand of fundamentalist religious craziness is most appalling: (1) Christian pastor Terry Jones holding a mock trial of the Koran, then burning it, or (2) Islamic Afghan protesters of the Koran incineration who have killed 24 people in the past few days. What I do know is that believing in some unseen supernatural being who supposedly commands devotees to fight affronts to its honor is just about the stupidest thing humans do. Scarily, billions of people subscribe to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism -- the main monotheistic religions. Each religion considers that God/Allah/Jehovah is…
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Posted inGod Religions

Leonard Pitts is wrong about atheism being “fundamentalist”

Glancing at the title of a Leonard Pitts column in our local newspaper yesterday, I had a feeling that my emotional blood pressure soon would be surging. My premonition was correct. Parts of "Belief in what cannot be proved requires humility" (originally called "Atheists, I believe in God because I do") irritated me mightily -- because Pitts failed to grasp some basic facts about religious belief and atheism that get harped on regularly here at the Church of the Churchless. Fact one: Not believing in God isn't a fundamentalist belief system, just as not believing in Santa Claus isn't. Atheism…
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Posted inGod

Looking for “God” in the smallest things

I don't believe in God. But I'm constantly looking for the Big Guy (actually, for spiritual-erotic reasons I'd prefer that God were a Big Gal, so I'm open to God appearing in any form -- curvaceous, feminine, and gorgeous being my dream divinity). Just because I've ranted about the evils of religiosity for six and a half years on this here blog doesnt' mean that I'm closed to the notion of a higher power transcending our everyday understanding of reality. After all, science is continually expanding humankind's knowledge of the cosmos. In less than a hundred years we've gone from…
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Posted inGod Religions

Since love is blind, so is love for God and gurus

Shakespeare may have been the first to say it: "love is blind." Everyone who has fallen in love knows what this means. When we're infatuated with someone, we focus on what we like about them, ignoring their faults. Speaking from experience (I've been married twice, once for 18 years and currently for almost 21 years, giving me 39 years of marital knowledge), this honeymoon period starts to fade not too long after the "I do's" are said. Then traits that previously seemed endearing -- he's so wonderfully casual and carefree! -- start to be annoying: why doesn't he put the…
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Posted inGod Science

Scary: 40% of Americans are strict creationists

How the hell is the United States going to compete with the rest of the world -- scientifically, economically, technologically -- when 4 in 10 of our citizens believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago? Read the Gallup poll. And weep for the future of our country if more Americans don't start embracing reality rather than superstition. Most Americans believe in God, and about 85% have a religious identity. It is not surprising as a result to find that about 8 in 10 Americans hold a view of human origins that involves actions by God…
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Posted inGod

Oregonians debate existence of God

The past two Mondays, our local newspaper -- the Salem Statesman Journal -- has run comments from readers about the existence, or lack thereof, of God. I've enjoyed this change of pace for the editorial page. Since Oregon is one of the least religious states, it isn't surprising that many opinions on this subject were pleasingly churchless. I've shared them below. I didn't include any comments from true believers, but you can see the entire slate of opinions here and here. (Or download these PDF files.) Download SJ1 existence of God Download SJ2 existence of God "Simple question that deserves…
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Posted inGod

Talking trash with Almighty God

Ah, another enjoyable blasphemous Mark Morford column, "How to talk trash with Almighty God." I like the ending, after Morford blasts God for all the crap life continues to be filled with after many millenia of worship, reverence, bowing and scraping, and all that. But you know what? It doesn't seem to matter. Mock or no mock, praise or no praise, we get nailed, over and over again, no matter what. Sickened, crushed, bloodied, heartbroken, ruined, revived and rejuvenated, only to be ruined once again. We drop that damn ball, over and over again, every single day. So much for…
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Posted inBooks God

More bad arguments for the existence of God

Earlier this year I wrote a post about Rebecca Goldstein's book, "36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction," citing several arguments that religiously-minded visitors to this blog often like to use. Each has flaws, which Goldstein points out clearly and entertainingly in an appendix to her book. They can be read here in their entirety. (Scroll down past the book excerpt.) I'd been slowly making my way through "36 Arguments," not finding the story all that engrossing. I liked the philosophical discussions, though, so decided to jump to the climactic debate between a religious skeptic and…
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Posted inGod Reality Wu Project

“God” is the absence of “me”

I don't believe in God, not as this word is commonly understood. I don't see any sign of a personal divinity who created and oversees the universe, nor any indication of an omniscient and omnipresent universal consciousness. Here's the newest news about proof of God's existence: there isn't any. Isn't it more than a little strange that precisely zero progress has been made in the thousands of years of recorded human history toward conclusively resolving The Big Question: "Is there a God?" Yet I'm akin to Mike, a regular Church of the Churchless visitor, who has commented, "I'm a diehard…
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Posted inGod Morality

Take the Battleground God test (I aced it!)

TPM (The Philosopher's Magazine) has an interesting online test called Battleground God. It shows how rationally consistent your beliefs about God are. Can your beliefs about religion make it across our intellectual battleground?In this activity you’ll be asked a series of 17 questions about God and religion. In each case, apart from Question 1, you need to answer True or False. The aim of the activity is not to judge whether these answers are correct or not. Our battleground is that of rational consistency. This means to get across without taking any hits, you’ll need to answer in a way…
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Posted inGod

God’s curious ultimate subjectivity

For almost six years I've been asking true believers of various faiths if they can provide any demonstrable evidence that God exists. (Any "God," personal or impersonal, monistic or dualistic, I'm not particular.)Not surprisingly -- given the still ongoing vigorous debate concerning this subject after some 10,000 years of recorded human history -- I've never gotten a convincing answer.But this doesn't stop the religious from believing in God. Often I hear, "I just know that God exists. Don't ask me for proof. I just know." OK, I'll respond, good for you. But your subjective experience is only true for you,…
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Posted inGod Spiritual practice/meditation

Why God can’t be found

The shortest, simplest, and likely most accurate answer to the question, "Why can't God be found?," is: because God doesn't exist. We also can't find unicorns, leprechauns, or the Tooth Fairy (hope my granddaughter isn't reading this post) for what almost certainly is the same reason.They don't exist.But for the sake of argument let's assume that some entity which reasonably could be called "God" does exist. Don't ask me to define that term, "God," because it isn't possible. An understanding of God comes at the end of the search for him/her/it, not before.And that brings us to the biggest problem…
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Posted inBooks God

“God is Not One” shows how different religions are

A few days ago I was drawn to buy "God is Not One" by Stephen Prothero after seeing Stephen Colbert interview him in Colbert's always entertaining fashion. Prothero gives his take on the interview here, and you can watch it below.The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cStephen Protherowww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorFox NewsI liked how Prothero emphasized how different are the problems religions attempt to solve. Christianity is all about being saved from sin; Buddhism aims to eliminate suffering; Hinduism seeks freedom from reincarnation's rounds of birth and death; Daoism teaches how to live life naturally and freely.(If you're…
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Posted inGod Science

100% proof isn’t possible, plausibility is

Nice offering on the Atheist Meme front from Greta Christina today.Very few claims can be proven or disproven with 100% certainty. But we can still assess whether those claims are more or less likely to be true. And that includes religion. Atheism doesn't mean 100% certainty that there is no God: it's the conclusion that the God hypothesis is not plausible. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.We can only hope.
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Posted inGod Reality

My best guess about God

Nobody knows what ultimate reality is, which religious believers call "God." All we have are guesses, some more defensible than others. Here's mine -- after some forty years of delving into mysticism, spirituality, religiosity, and philosophy. Subject to change, of course. If I've learned anything, it's that there's always more to learn. Or guess about.I'll be as pithy as possible, a shift from my usual wordiness.(1) God doesn't exist. Not in the sense of an all-knowing, all-powerful personal or individual consciousness. Or even a universal consciousness, though this is more likely than an anthropomorphic God.(2) The cosmos is, always has…
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Posted inGod Reality

Truth is greater than God

What should we choose, reality or belief? This was the theme of one of my first Church of the Churchless posts almost six years ago, "Just have faith."Here's how to tell the difference between true faith and false faith: Imagine that you are standing in the middle of a bare windowless room. Two doors lead out of the room. Both are closed, but can be opened with a turn of the doorknob. The doors are marked with signs that describe what awaits on the other side: (A) Reality, (B) BeliefAfter you open a door, you have to walk through it.…
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