Posted inReligions

God is too good to believe in Him/Her/It

One big reason I don't believe in God is that descriptions of the Supreme Being almost always are unbelievably perfect.  Show me a flawed, clueless, unknowing, emotionally infantile God and I'd be a lot more inclined to sign up as a true believer. But then I'd wonder "What's the point in being devoted to a supposedly divine being who actually is no better than us humans are?" It's deeply suspicious that virtually every religion posits a super-good God. Sure, the Old Testament God and similar gods exhibit some nasty character flaws -- jealousy, cruelty, egotism, to name a few --…
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Posted inReligions Science

Mlodinow beat Chopra in “War of the Worldviews”

I've only read four of the nineteen debates between New Age "guru" Deepak Chopra and top-notch physicist Leonard Mlodinow in their fascinating book, War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality.  But I'm ready to declare a clear winner: Mlodinow. Highlighter in hand, I'm filling the pages Chopra authored with marginal question marks. By contrast, so far I haven't found anything obviously questionable in what Mlodinow wrote. That's because science sticks with facts, by and large, while spirituality is prone to fluttering all over the place with ethereal unproven pronouncements. You should make up your own mind, though. That's the best thing…
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Posted inReligions

Oregon jury finds faith-healers guilty of manslaughter

Justice was served. It was good to read today that some fundamentalist Christians got what they deserved from an Oregon jury: a second degree manslaughter conviction for letting their newborn son die without seeking medical attention because they believed in faith-healing. Previously I wrote about how the church midwife in attendance at the birth considered that the baby's death was "God's will." Today's newspaper story told more about the parents' theological belief system. The church witnesses exhibited "a fatalistic attitude all the way," Fleming said. Prosecutors said David Hickman's fate was sealed when he took his first breath. The boy…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

If spirituality is a science, “saints” are irrelevant

Most people take it for granted that religious, mystical, or spiritual discussions usually center around Who Said What. For example... What did Jesus mean in such-and-such Bible passage?When Ramana talks about "I-I," how is this to be interpreted?Can we trust Deepak Chopra's view of the cosmos? This emphasis on personal sources of wisdom is more than a little strange, when you think about it. After all, what difference does it make if Joe rather than Jane claims that something is true? If it's true, it's true. If it isn't, it isn't. Spirituality often is considered to be a science of…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Religions

Church midwife in Oregon believes in letting babies die

I'm glad I don't have high blood pressure, because some days reading the newspaper makes me feel like my head (or my heart?) is going to explode. Today's outrage is nicely encapsulated by the Portland Oregonian headline that caught my eye at the top of the Metro section: "Midwife calls death God's will." The death was that of David Hickman, who was born two months early and lived a unduly short life of nine hours because his parents were wacko Oregon City Christians who believe in faith healing. (I've written about previous child sacrifice deaths committed by Followers of Christ…
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Posted inReligions

Atheism challenges personal spiritual experiences

Here's some good news about the newest form of the "new atheism." It isn't just content to challenge theological propositions and supernatural world views, but also says prove it when religious believers cite personal experience as their reason for having faith in whatever they believe. At least, this is one of the conclusions I got from an interesting New York Times essay by Gary Gutting, "Beyond 'New Atheism.'" For atheists like Dawkins, belief in God is an intellectual mistake, and honest thinkers need simply to recognize this and move on from the silliness and abuses associated with religion. Most believers,…
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Posted inReality Religions

Conspiracy theories — another form of blind faith

One person believes that Jesus was resurrected after dying on the cross. Another person believes that the Bush administration was behind the 9/11 attacks. Each belief lacks a foundation of demonstrable evidence. Each belief almost certainly is untrue. Each belief has many adherents who vehemently hold to it, despite how bizarre their blind faith is. I'm a religious skeptic. I'm also a conspiracy theory skeptic. What seems strange to me is how people who decry fundamentalist religion often cling to fundamentalist conspiracy theories. But after reading Michael Shermer's new book, "The Believing Brain," I'm better able to see the connections…
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Posted inGod Religions

Every believer in God also is an atheist

Do you believe in God? If so, you're an atheist. Because you believe in a God, a singular God, a particular God. If you believed in all possible Gods, then I guess you deserve to be called a genuine theist. But such is rarely, if ever, the case. Religious true believers cleave to one God while rejecting the Gods that other people believe in. So they're atheists in regard to all Gods but one. Given the thousands of different religions, this means that the difference between an atheist who rejects all Gods but one, and an atheist who rejects all…
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Posted inReligions Science

Null hypothesis makes God a nothing

It's been a while since "null hypothesis" passed through my brain. Probably a college statistics class was the last time those words were thought about. So I felt like I was saying hello to an old acquaintance when I came across references to the null hypothesis in the final chapter of Michael Shermer's latest book, The Believing Brain. Science begins with something called a null hypothesis, Although statisticians mean something very specific about this (having to do with comparing different sets of data), I am using this term null hypothesis in its more general sense: the hypothesis under investigation is…
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Posted inHumor Religions

Two Portlanders go to church so you don’t have to

I like "Year of Sundays." Especially the tag line under the blog's name: we go to church so you don't have to Thanks, Joel Gunz and Amanda Westmont, who are fellow Oregonians. I've taken you up on your offer. You're both terrific writers (after each visit to a church or other spiritual gathering, Joel and Amanda compose separate descriptions of their experience). Portland, Oregon's alternative newspaper, Willamette Week, gave them a 2011 "Best Divine Dilettantes" award. If you’re in the market for a religious experience, Amanda Westmont and Joel Gunz might be able to lend you some wisdom. The pair…
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Posted inReality Religions

For me, “getting real” means getting rid of religion

What are you doing when you feel the most real? What makes you exclaim, "Wow, that was real!" What circumstances lead you to feel, If I were to die now, I'd die content? Obviously only you can answer those questions. All I want to do is raise them,  because I think they're well worth pondering. If life isn't filled with really real moments, are we truly living? For me, reality seems most vibrant, clear, energetic, and alluring when I'm engaged in a physical activity that has an edgy aspect to it. "Edgy" is a term that's hard to pin down.…
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Posted inMorality Religions

Atheism promotes human dignity and truth-seeking

While exercising today I listened to a podcast of the Philosophy Talk program, "Atheism and the Well-Lived Life." The guest philosopher was Louise Antony, who edited Philosophers Without Gods -- one of whom is Ken Taylor, a regular host of the program. For me the most interesting comment of the program came from Antony. She was asked a question by a woman in the audience that went something like this: As an atheist, what would you say to someone who is suffering, who has serious problems? Excellent question. Religion offers consolations for people who aren't having a pleasant life. Most…
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Posted inReligions Science

Religion, like fast food, makes you unnaturally large

Since I've given up religion, I've become a lot more content with my smallness. As noted before, I'm no longer obsessed with expanding my consciousness, enlarging my connection with God, or growing my spiritual understanding. Small things please me now much more than they did before. I guess you could say I've lost a lot of ego-weight after discarding a religious belief system that had grandiose goals and taught that human beings could attain perfection. This morning I forgot to put the canned dog food back in the refrigerator. There goes my claim to perfection. To which I say, good…
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Posted inReligions

My response to religion: “So what?”

The way I feel about religion now is similar to how I feel about my ex-wife. Not much. Meaning, most of the time I don't think about religion, or her. I've got some pleasant memories of each, along with some unpleasant memories. But neither occupies much space in my brain these days. This wasn't the case soon after my marital and spiritual divorces. Splitting up after a lengthy attachment, it takes some time to get the other party out of your mind. For twenty-one years I've been married to another woman. However, I've had no inclination to get married to…
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Posted inReligions Science

Religious believers are acting in accord with evolution

Having arrived at a churchless view of reality, I'm amused when true believers accuse me of taking the easy way out by being a skeptic about God and other things divine'ish. They see religious belief as a courageous stand against rampant secularism -- a bold independent search for ultimate reality that transcends materialistic boundaries. Actually, the truth is far different. Religious belief is the default human condition. What takes courage, effort, and determination is going against the religious current that sweeps the vast majority of people into a faith-based ocean. Interestingly, the evidence for this is scientific. Evolutionary psychology has…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Religions

Humans are naturally optimistic. Which helps explain religion.

Most people's brains are hard-wired to generate an optimistic outlook on life. Evolution, it seems, has favored an ability to look into the future and see good things happening. Such is the message of TIME magazine's cover story this week, "The Optimism Bias." It's a highly interesting article. Tali Sharot, the author, says that "optimism starts with what may be the most extraordinary of human talents: mental time travel, the ability to move back and forth through time and space in one's mind." This ability was naturally selected for in the course of Homo sapiens' evolution because it had so…
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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 inReligions

Saints are imperfect

Here's something for believers in sainthood and heroic human perfection to reflect upon: Hampton Sides' "Shattered Faith" in Newsweek. On some level, we still subscribe to the myth of the man in the white hat. We yearn to believe not only in his good deeds but in his inherent goodness as a person. Perhaps it’s something rooted in our Puritan past, but we seem to have a monochromatic view of heroism. We have a hard time believing that the doer of a heroic deed could have serious defects or even be rotten to the core. Heroes are supposed to be…
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Posted inReligions

Texas governor calls for prayer to end drought

Well, good luck Texas. Your governor, Rick Perry, has decided that the way to solve the state's exceptional drought is with three days of prayer for rain. Suggestion: it would have made a lot more sense for Governor Perry to call for three days (or better, three weeks) of study by Texas citizens into the nature of global climate change, which is causing climate extremes to become more common. Climate is defined not simply as average temperature and precipitation but also by the type, frequency and intensity of weather events. Human-induced climate change has the potential to alter the prevalence…
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Posted inHumor Religions

Religion is a joke which some take seriously

If you've followed my musings on this blog since I started it in November 2004 -- and shame on you, you churchless sinner, if you haven't! -- I can see why you might think that I've mellowed out, anti-religion wise. Indeed, it's true that my most rabid rants against religiosity were written in the early Church of the Churchless years. Now I'm more inclined to ignore dogmas than to foam at the mouth about how ridiculous they are. In short, I don't take religions as seriously as I used to. What irritates me the most are the effects of fundamentalism…
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