GOD DOESN'T CARE ABOUT POLITICS OR FOOTBALL

For years, now, candidates in the U.S., especially Republican candidates, have  been making statements that God wants them to run for political office.  We have heard this in the past from the likes of Mike Huckabee and, more recently, several of the 2012 candidates for president.

And now we have a national hero in Tim Tebow, because of his open Christianity on the football field.  No wonder my husband often refers sarcastically to the "Church of Football" because in my neck of the woods, some churches hold Sunday services early, or not at all, to accommodate football fans.

Football fans and members of religious sects and political parties all share something in common. They are tribal.  They are tribal because they form group ties characterized not only by strong loyalty to the groups they support, but also vehement hatred of opposing groups.

Bill Press

Bill Press who is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show and author of Toxic Talk: How the Radical Right Has Poisoned America's Airwaves" wrote an great article:
GOD DOESN'T CARE ABOUT POLITICS OR FOOTBALL.

Here are a few excerpts from his 12/15/11 article:

Psssst! Don’t tell anybody, but I have a secret. I talk to God every day. And she told me herself: She doesn’t give a fig who wins the Republican primary. But you’d never know that, listening to today’s Christian political charlatans.

No less than four out of eight Republican candidates have said they’re only running for president because God told them to run. Michele Bachmann started it, insisting that God called her to run for president, just like he told her to run for Congress in 2006. Rick Perry told reporters: “God has put me in this place at this time to do his will...”

God was also speaking to Mrs. Rick Santorum, who told the Christian Broadcasting Network: “We have prayed a lot about this decision, and we believe with all our hearts that this is what God wants.” But nobody played the God card more shamefully than Herman Cain...

Now, obviously, if we are to take these candidates seriously, God is either confused, forgetful, senile, or just playing with their heads. If he really cares about who wins the Republican primary, he wouldn’t have told four different candidates to run. And, notice, he didn’t tell any of the four they’d actually win... 

Today, as quarterback of the Denver Broncos, [Tim] Tebow takes religion to a new public level, dramatically dropping to one knee in prayer after every touchdown – a pose now officially known as “tebowing” – and crediting Jesus for every success on the field....

Now, if you’re one of the silly millions who still see nothing wrong with Tebow’s in-your-face brand of religion, consider this: What if Tim Tebow were a devout Muslim who bowed to Mecca after every touchdown while shouting: “Allahu Akbar!” Somehow, I don’t think we’d be celebrating him as a national hero.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

 --------------
And while on the subject of religion and politics, you might also be interested in this:
Rick Santorum: Insane Christian

IT'S A MIRACLE!

WOULD A LOVING GOD SPEND HIS TIME CREATING IMAGES OF HIS SON ON FISH STICKS OR SAVE PEOPLE FROM NATURAL DISASTERS?

DOES GOD EXIST? "Snowbrush" answers the question

I've been following the SNOWBRUSH blog for quite a while. Snowbrush is the screen name of a man who grew up in Bible-belt Mississippi and now lives in Oregon. He has been blogging since 2003.

There are several posts on his blog explaining his religious and non-religious background, including his post of 5/12/10, "Does God exist? Why I think the answer is no" which is a well-thought-out explanation of his reasons for being a non-believer.

Check it out and while you are there, check out some of Snowbrush's other posts, too. Snowbrush is an interesting character and has many tales to tell.

ATHEIST HUMOR 2 - The Adventures of God

I just happened on a post at collegehumor.com and found it hilarious, just like the Bible stories it is mocking. Check it out.

The Adventures of God

CHRISTIANS BEHAVING BADLY #16 Pat Robertson Part 2

In my attempt to show that being religious

is not a guarantee of moral behavior,

this post is part of a series of reports featuring

the bad behavior of religious people, past or present....

Look for other posts showing the bad behavior

perpetrated by members of other religious groups.

"God told me......"

According to CBS News and Wikipedia, on many occasions, Pat Robertson has announced that god told him truths or informed him of events that would happen in the near future. "I have a relatively good track record," he said. "Sometimes I miss."
Wait a minute! If god tells Pat truths, how can he possibly miss? And, you will notice below, that if Robertson does get it wrong, he just claims that enough Christians prayed so god changed his mind.

1982: In late 1976, Robertson predicted that the end of the world was coming in November or October 1982. In a May 1980 broadcast of The 700 Club he stated, "I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world."

2006: In May 2006, Robertson said, "If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms." On May 17, 2006, he elaborated, "There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest." His declaration was generally received with mild amusement by the Pacific Northwest media. The History Channel's initial airing of its new series, Mega Disasters: West Coast Tsunami, was broadcast the first week of May. Robertson repeated his claim at least 4 times on the 700 Club.

2007: On the January 2, 2007, broadcast of The 700 Club, Robertson said that God spoke to him and told him that "mass killings" were to come during 2007, due to a terrorist attack on the United States. He added, "The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that." When a terrorist attack failed to happen in 2007, Robertson said, in January 2008, "All I can think is that somehow the people of God prayed and God in his mercy spared us."

2008: On the January 2, 2008, Pat Robertson predicted that 2008 would be a year of worldwide violence. He also predicted that a recession would occur in the United States that would be followed by a stock market crash by 2010.

2008: In October 2008 Robertson posted a press release on the Georgian Conflict speculating that the conflict is a Russian ploy to enter the Middle East, and that instability caused by a predicted pre-emptive strike by Israel on Iran would result in Syria's and Iran's launching nuclear strikes on other targets. He also said that if the United States were to oppose Russia's expansion, nuclear strikes on American soil are also pending. "We will suffer grave economic damage, but will not engage in military action to stop the conflict. However, we may not be spared nuclear strikes against coastal cities. In conclusion, it is my opinion that we have between 75 and 120 days before the Middle East starts spinning out of control."

2010: At the start of 2010, the Associated Baptist Press said Robertson shared God's predictions for the year and said he wouldn't bless America because of abortion, homosexuality and prayer. "Fifty million babies slaughtered," God allegedly complained to him. "You can't have legislation that is anti-God. You can't foster in your midst things that I call an abomination… If you do, sooner or later judgment's going to come."

You can bet that sometimes Pat misses, like maybe he is missing a few marbles.

GEORGE CARLIN on Religion

GEORGE CARLIN

1937-2008

I miss this man. He saw everything, including "taboo" subjects like religion and politics, from a unique point of view and made us laugh at ourselves.

According to Wikipedia (where you can read more about Carlin's life and work):
Although raised as a Roman Catholic, which Carlin describes on the albums FM & AM and Class Clown, he was an atheist and often denounced the idea of a God in interviews and performances, notably with his "Religion" and "There Is No God" routines as heard in You Are All Diseased.
Carlin also joked in his first book Brain Droppings that he worshiped the Sun, one reason being that he could actually see it. He said he prayed to his friend Joe Pesci because he "looks like a guy who can get things done!"
In his HBO special Complaints and Grievances, Carlin introduced the "Two Commandments," a revised "pocket-sized" list of the Ten Commandments ending with the additional commandment of "Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself."

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW on Religion

SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD

English dramatist, critic

(1856-1950)

• "All great truths begin as blasphemies."

• “Beware of the man whose god is in the skies.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “Bourgeois morality is largely a system of making cheap virtues a cloak for expensive vices.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery.”

• “Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.”

• “Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.”

• “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”

• “The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.”

• “Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid...There is no harm in a well-fed lion. It has no ideals, no sect, no party.”

• “Morality consists in suspecting other people of not being legally married.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.”

• "Old men are dangerous; it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world."

• “A pessimist thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “There are scores of thousands of human insects who are ready at a moment’s notice to reveal the Will of God on every possible subject.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.”

• “Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't.”

Today is George Bernard Shaw's Birthday.

He was born 153 years ago on July 26, 1856.

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 5

TWAIN, MARK

(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

American author,

journalist, humorist

(1835-1910)

Many quotations have been attributed to Twain that came from other sources. If you find I have wrongly attributed a quotation to Twain, please leave a comment or email me at mythoughtsarefree@gmail.com. Thank you.

• “The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.” (Christian Science)

• “When I think of the number of disagreeable people that I know who have gone to a better world, I am sure hell won’t be so bad at all.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “When in doubt, tell the truth.” (Following the Equator, 1897)

• “When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “You can’t pray a lie.” (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885)

• “You want me to believe it is a judicious, a charitable God that runs this world. Why I could run it better myself.” (Clara Clemens, My Father Mark Twain)

• “Zeal and sincerity can carry a new religion further than any other missionary except fire and sword.” (Christian Science)

• "India has two million gods, and worships them all. In religion all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire." (Following the Equator)

• “Alas! those good old days are gone, when a murderer could wipe the stain from his name and soothe his trouble to sleep simply by getting out his blocks and mortar and building an addition to a church.”  (The Innocents Abroad)

• “A religion that comes of thought, and study, and deliberate conviction, sticks best. The revivalized convert who is scared in the direction of heaven because he sees hell yawn suddenly behind him, not only regains confidence when his scare is over, but is ashamed of himself for being scared, and often becomes more hopelessly and malignantly wicked than he was before.” (Letter San Francisco Alta California, November 15, 1868) 

• “The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it...”  (Mark Twain's Notebook)

Read more about Mark Twain & his religious skepticism at the end of:

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 1

Find more quotations at the above post and these:

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 2

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 3

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 4

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 2

TWAIN, MARK

(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

American author,

journalist, humorist

(1835-1910)

Many quotations have been attributed to Twain that came from other sources. If you find I have wrongly attributed a quotation to Twain, please leave a comment or email me at mythoughtsarefree@gmail.com. Thank you.

• “He had no principles and was delightful company.” 

• “Heaven for climate; Hell for society.” (Mark Twain's Speeches, 1910 edition)

• “Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.” (Mark Twain, a Biography)

• “Human beings seem to be a poor invention. If they are the noblest work of God where is the ignoblest?” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God’s fool, and all His works must be contemplated with respect.” (Letter to William Dean Howells, December 1977)

• “I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.” (Autobiographical dictation, November 1906)

• “I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.” (Is Shakespeare Dead?)

• “If Christ were here now, there is one thing he would not be ---a Christian.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “If I can’t swear in heaven I shall not stay there.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “If man had created man he would be ashamed of his performance.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “...I haven’t a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices.” (Answers to Correspondents)

• [To a Catholic convert, 1885] “I look back with the same shuddering horror upon the days when I believed I believed, as you do upon the days when you were afraid you did not believe.”

• “In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.” (Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894)

• “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”

• “It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either one of them.” (More Tramps Abroad)

• “It is curious ---curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage be so rare.” (Mark Twain in Eruption)

• “It is not best that we use our morals week days; it gets them out of repair for Sundays.“ (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• "The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes...The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession- and take the credit of the correction. During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. the Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.....There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain."  ("Bible Teaching and Religious Practice" Europe and Elsewhere)

Read more about Mark Twain & his religious skepticism at the end of:

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 1

Find more quotations at the above post and these:

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 3

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 4

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 5

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 1

TWAIN, MARK

(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

American author,

journalist, humorist

(1835-1910)

*Read more about Mark Twain and his religious skepticism at the bottom of this post.

Many quotations have been attributed to Twain that came from other sources. If you find I have wrongly attributed a quotation to Twain, please leave a comment or email me at mythoughtsarefree@gmail.com. Thank you.

• “Adam was but human ---this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake; he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.” (Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894)

• “Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before him.” (Notebook, 1867)

• “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.” (The Mysterious Stranger)

• “All I care to know is that a man is a human being ---that is enough for me; he can’t be much worse.” (Concerning the Jews)

• “All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer and to conceal valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, if, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries, it can profit him to know that the bottom half is rotten.” (note written November 11, 1908, Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” (Following the Equator, 1897)

• “Be good and you will be lonesome.” (Following the Equator, 1897)

• "The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. God's treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that, yet those best minds warmly justify these crimes, condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them. Your country and mine is an interesting one, but there is nothing there that is half so interesting as the human mind."

• [The Bible] “is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.” (Letters From the Earth)

• “A Christian mother’s first duty is to soil her child’s mind, and she does not neglect it.”

• “Christianity does not convert the Hindus, because our Bible miracles are not so large as theirs.”

• “Christians are all insane.”

• “Church ain’t a circumstance to a circus.” (Tom Sawyer, A Play)

• “The Church here rests under the usual charge ---an obstructor and fighter of progress; until progress arrives, then she takes the credit.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “Dreamed all bad foreigners went to German heaven, couldn’t speak the language, and wished they'd gone to the other place.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “The English are mentioned in the Bible: ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’” (Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar)

• “The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.” (What Is Man? 1906)

• “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” (Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar)

• “Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.” (Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894)

• “Get your facts first...then you can distort ’em as much as you please.” (Quoted by Rudyard Kipling in From Sea to Shining Sea)

• “Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook)

• “Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.” (Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar)

• “Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?” (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885)

Find more quotations here:

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 2

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 3

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 4

WISDOM OF MARK TWAIN - Part 5

Mark Twain grew up in a religious society, but he was a life-long religious skeptic. His wife agreed to marry him with his promise that he would attend church and become a good Christian, but as their marriage progressed, Livy became more skeptical while Twain was unable to accept the hypocrisy of religion. Twain attended church and was a good friend of several ministers including Twichell who became his best friend, despite Twain's skepticism. He wrote often about religion and made many religious references in his works. Many of these are tongue in cheek. Many of his writings mirror previous writings on religion by Robert G Ingersoll. Twain was writing for the masses and most of his readers were Christian. His writing was his livelihood, so he (fueled by Livy's censorship) was reluctant to offend.

In his later life, he directed that some of his religious writings be published 100 years after his death. He said that only dead men can tell the absolute truth. His only surviving child Clara (1874-1962) opposed publication of these works in the 1930's. Later, she decided to publish Letters From the Earth and other writings 50 years after her father's death. She explained her change of heart by saying, "Mark Twain belonged to the world." By 1960 she believed that public opinion had become more tolerant.

Clara died a few years later at age 88. Clara's only child Nina (1910-1966) had no children. Thus there were no direct descendants of Twain's after her death.

After I wrote the above, I found the following comments on Twain's religious skepticism by writer and Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin (April 1997):

"Clemens tells us that his first schoolteacher told him that if he prayed sincerely, his prayers would be answered. When young Sam Clemens prayed and his prayers didn't get answered, doubt began to set in. Indeed, later in life he would atribute to that early experience his conviction that Christianity and all religions are 'lies and swindles.' His mother and other members of his family sampled a variety of religious denominations during his youth, perhaps giving him further reason to doubt any one sect's assertions of its superiority over another. His first trip to Europe helped hone his skepticism about the contributions the Catholic church had made to civilization (imposing cathedrals did not, in Twain's view, justify the suffering imposed in the name of religion in European history). And when he married into the Langdon family, and learned the story of his father-in-law's founding of a new church in Elmira when his old congregation refused to condemn slavery, Twain must have recalled with some confusion the sermons he had heard in church throughout his childhood asserting that slavery was a system ordained by God. "Twain was not particularly unconventional during his youth. Indeed it was not until he was in his 30s that he began writing pieces that challenged norms widely accepted by those around him."

More of Fishkin's comments on Mark Twain can be found HERE.

WISDOM OF LAZARUS LONG - Part 1

HEINLEIN, ROBERT 

American author 

(1907-1988)

All of the following are taken from the sayings of Lazarus Long, a fictional character created by Heinlein. 

Sources: Time Enough for Love (1973) and/or The Notebooks of Lazarus Long (1978)

See also: 

WISDOM OF LAZARUS LONG - Part 2 

and MORE FROM ROBERT HEINLEIN

     

• “Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.”

• “The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship.”

• “Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.”

• “Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.”

• “A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.”

• “God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent ---it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.”

• “’God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends.' This may not be true, but it sounds good ---and is no sillier than any other theology.”

• “History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.”

• “History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — i.e., none to speak of.”

• “If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.”

• “It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.”

• “Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.”

• “The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is the Lord God of Creation. Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.”

• “Natural laws have no pity.”

• “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”

• “Of all the strange ‘crimes’ that human beings have legislated out of nothing, ‘blasphemy’ is the most amazing ---with ‘obscenity’ and ‘indecent exposure’ fighting it out for second and third place.”

• “One man’s magic is another man’s engineering. ‘Supernatural’ is a null word.”

Learn more about Robert Heinlein HERE

Find more quotations from Robert Heinlein HERE

Read about his character Lazarus Long HERE

IMAGINARY FRIEND

SAM HARRIS

on

HURRICANE KATRINA

and

PRAYER

        “It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Hurricane Katrina struck shared...belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while Katrina laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Do you have the courage to admit the obvious? These people died talking to an imaginary friend.” 

(Letter to a Christian Nation, p. 53)

WHY I AM AN ATHEIST - PART 3

IN GOD'S NAME

There are many reasons why I have rejected

religion. When I started to read about the atrocities religious people condoned ---all in God's name ---throughout history, I wanted no part of religion.

In my early teens, I loved history. But as I read and learned more about the history of the world, I became more and more astounded at how many people had been killed and/or tortured in the name of God.

Thousands had been accused of witchcraft and killed (the Bible says witches should be stoned) mostly from the Middle Ages up to the Salem witch trials.
As an adult, I became more interested in recent history. It seemed that nearly every world conflict was based, at least in part, on religion. Religious intolerance of other religions is found nearly everywhere. Despite our religious freedoms, religions seem to tear people apart more than they join them together.

As Mark Twain said: “Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion ---several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight.”

Yes, I know religious people are capable of good deeds but religion has been, throughout history, the source of atrocities, too -----Nazi exterminations of Jews, conflicts in Northern Ireland, conflicts between India and Pakistan, the Spanish Inquisition, Middle Eastern conflicts, religious terrorism.

In ancient Greece, people were executed because they didn't believe in Zeus.
In Peru, when Pizarro captured the Inca ruler Atahualpa, he promised to free him if the Incan people would fill a room with gold. Once the task was completed, Pizarro killed Atahualpa anyway. His reason? The Inca was not a Christian, thus he decided he had no obligation to fulfill a promise to him.

The tragedy of 9/11 is a perfect example of Muslim zealotry gone bad. But then most Christians conveniently forget that Christians killed every man, woman, and child in Maarat and Jerusalem ---at least 50,000 people--- during the First Crusade (1098 and 1099.) They killed everyone: Muslim, Jew, Christian, man, woman, and child ---and even ate the bodies of those they had slain, all in the name of Christ.

There were nine Crusades in the Middle East and numerous others elsewhere. Although the main targets were Muslims, Crusaders also targeted pagan Slavs, Jews, Russian and Greek Orthodox Christians, and political enemies of the popes, among others.

Most of us have no idea if our own ancestors were involved in The Crusades, but the Muslims know. They meet in coffee houses where the entertainment consists of relating family histories for generations back to the Crusades as if it all happened yesterday. This is why Muslims were so horrified when George W. Bush used the word “Crusade” in remarks about his War on Terrorism.

In the 1950s, Sir Steven Runciman wrote a resounding condemnation of the Crusades: "High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed... the Holy War was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God".

Eric Hoffer: “ . . Faith organizes and equips man’s soul for action. To be in possession of the one and only truth and never doubt one’s righteousness; to feel that one is backed by a mysterious power whether it be God, destiny or the law of history; to be convinced that one’s opponents are the incarnation of evil and must be crushed; to exult in self-denial and devotion to duty —these are admirable qualifications for resolute and ruthless action in any field.” (The True Believer, 1951, p. 126)

It always amazed me that no matter what religion someone was, s/he thought God was on his/her side.
In my youth, I was horrified by bigotry among religious people. In the early 1960's, the Presbyterian church my family attended in an all-white suburb sponsored a Cuban refugee family. The first time the family entered the church and people realized the family was black, several members of the congregation left the service.
It has been said the most segregated time each week in America is when Christians are in church. Churches, by far, have been more segregated than schools, government offices, businesses, or even neighborhoods.

The atrocities, the bigotry, the violence that I have barely touched on here ---all in the name of religion ---are just some of the many reasons I am am atheist.

copyright 2009 C. Woods

GOD IN THE WHITE HOUSE

In less than a week a new president will be inaugurated, so I thought this would be a good time to contemplate how presidents' religions have defined their policies.

I recently read an excellent book:
GOD IN THE WHITE HOUSE
How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush
by Randall Balmer

        In God in the White House Randall Balmer relates the dramatic change from President Kennedy’s obligation to assure his detractors that, as a Catholic, he would uphold the wall of separation between church and state, to recent candidates who apparently need to embrace religion in order to be elected.
        Yet among recent presidents, declarations of religious belief during campaigns have had little to do with how a president has acted in office.

        Balmer is an ordained Episcopal priest and a professor of American religions at Barnard College. Yet he is not sympathetic to the entanglement of religion and politics in this country.

        "The radical disjunction between George W. Bush's claims of moral rectitude and his indifference to the moral ramifications of his policies is striking, even breathtaking," says Balmer. Bush "trumpets his morality", yet his administration deceived the nation, discredited those who exposed the deception, and authorized the use of torture.

        Balmer asks: What would have happened, for example, if there had been a series of thoughtful follow-up questions to George W. Bush's declaration... that Jesus was his favorite philosopher? "Mr. Bush, Jesus demands in the Sermon on the Mount that his followers 'turn the other cheek.' How will that teaching guide your conduct of American foreign policy, especially in the event of, say, an attack on the United States?" Or: "Jesus, your favorite philosopher, says that we should care for 'the least of these.' How does that inform your understanding of welfare or Social Security or civil rights or the graduated income tax?" "Can you provide a specific example of how your fidelity to the Christian faith affected your policies as governor of Texas?"

        Then, once in office, a few questions like this: "Mr. President, Jesus expressed concern for the well-being of the tiniest sparrow. Do you see any relationship between that sentiment and your administration's environmental policies? " Or: "Mr. President, Jesus, the man you invoked on the campaign trail as your favorite philosopher, invited his followers to love their enemies. How does that teaching square with the invasion of Iraq or with your administration's policies on torture?"

        This book is easy to read and informative. I lived through all the presidents he covers, but I learned things from this book that I hadn't known before and was reminded of those I did but had forgotten. It is well worth reading, especially for those concerned about keeping church and state separate in this country.

------------
For an excerpt from GOD IN THE WHITE HOUSE and a podcast of an interview with Randall Balmer that aired on NPR's Fresh Air 8/20/08, click HERE. 

Update Feb 2009: For a video interview with the author and Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, click HERE.

Editorial reviews and reviews by readers can be found at the amazon.com link below:

EVERETT DEAN MARTIN

MARTIN, EVERETT DEAN, American writer, (1880-1941)*

    • “In the Twentieth Century, every person who achieves self-criticism or discrimination in matters of thought, intellectual honesty, and skepticism of popular slogans, is really a friend of liberty.” (Liberty, 1930)
    • “Christian liberty is a contradiction in terms. It means nothing more than the liberty to be a Christian ... And even this could scarcely be called liberty, for it has never been left to choice when the church has had power enough to coerce men into conformity.”
    • “Christianity... has brought about stagnation wherever it has been supreme.” (Liberty, 1930)
    • “Has not official Christianity been almost uniformly on the reactionary side in the struggle for freedom and progress? Has it not time and again instigated bloodshed and persecution? Has it not sought to give the authority of God to precisely the most oppressive governments in Europe, and divine blessing to armies marching out to kill and oppress? Why, there is not a single freedom modern man enjoys that he has not won in defiance of the churches!” (Liberty, 1930)
    • “Morality cannot exist one minute without freedom... Only a free man can possibly be moral. Unless a good deed is voluntary, it has no moral significance.” (Liberty, 1930)
    • "Our people have little of the philosophy of freedom. . . . The things which we take for granted are the things for which we no longer fight. But when a populace becomes indifferent to its freedom, it begins to lose it." (as quoted in Time, “On Keeping Free”, 06/09/1930)
    • “Since October, 1917, revolutionary movements, whether Communist, Fascist or Nazi, are arrayed against precisely those objectives which have inspired revolutions since 1642. Present-day revolution is therefore a crowd movement against liberal democracy. It openly avows itself as such and in this respect both the Communist and the Fascist are the same. (Farewell to Revolution, 1935)
    • "Tolerance is a better guarantee of freedom than brotherly love; for a man may love his brother so much that he feels himself thereby appointed his brother’s keeper." (Liberty, 1930)

*READ MORE:
Archived Time article about Everett Dean Martin, 06/09/1930

The article describes Martin in 1930:
Everett Dean Martin, 50, tall, loose-jointed, has poppy, kindly eyes, a mouth like Irvin Cobb's. He became associated with the People's Institute in 1916, was made Director in 1922. Other books: The Behavior of Crowds, Psychology, The Meaning of a Liberal Education, The Mystery of Religion.

In 1930, Martin’s book Liberty was selling new for $3. It is still available at amazon.com for about the same price (used) plus shipping. This is a great book. A friend of mine loaned it to me about 30 years ago. I had never heard of Martin before that. I am surprised he is not better known because what he wrote in 1930 is still relevant today.

WHY I AM AN ATHEIST: The Bible - Part 2

In WHY I AM AN ATHEIST: The Bible - Part 1, I told how my ultra-religious family read the entire Bible, a chapter every day, and how some Biblical stories triggered doubts about it being the word of God. If the Bible were the word of God, I found it so appalling that I didn’t want to worship that God.

Robert Ingersoll: “If a man really believes that God once upheld slavery; that he commanded soldiers to kill women and babes; that he believed in polygamy; that he persecuted for opinion’s sake; that he will punish forever, and that he hates an unbeliever, the effect in my judgment will be bad. It always has been bad. This belief built the dungeons of the Inquisition. This belief made the Puritan murder the Quaker.”

In the Bible, I discovered that Solomon had 1000 sexual partners. I learned that God created evil, that God lives in darkness, that David paid for his first wife with the foreskins of 200 Philistines, that God destroyed Job simply because Satan dared him to do it, that handicapped people are not allowed in church.
I found the character of God rather alarming. People worship and praise God and say he is compassionate, benevolent and loving. Yet, as a nonbeliever, I am doomed to spend all eternity suffering in hell, no matter how good I am. I couldn’t accept such a mean-spirited being.

Mark Twain: “Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.”

Then of course, when my family read the New Testament, I learned that Jesus didn’t come to send peace on earth, but came with a sword to set men against their fathers and daughters against their mothers.... and of course this contradicted the Commandments.
My family read the Christmas and Easter stories in one Gospel. A few weeks later, we read accounts in other Gospels which were somewhat different. In a home where I was expected to believe the Bible, these accounts were different enough to seem more like the stories coming from different eyewitnesses on Perry Mason than God’s truth.

I just didn’t buy into the resurrection. I thought that Jesus hadn’t really died or else the stories of the resurrection were lies. Today, with life-saving techniques, we know people can be brought back to life, but not after 3 days and not 2000 years ago.

And the immaculate conception ----well, I could imagine if I turned up pregnant and unmarried some day, trying to pull that excuse on my parents. Soon I learned that Greek gods were always sleeping with mortals and that Christians probably stole their stories from the Greeks or earlier pagan civilizations. (See comment & my response regarding the immaculate conception.)

As a preteen and a teenager, I was smart and inquisitive. I asked questions of my parents, ministers, and Sunday School teachers.
• Why are there no dinosaurs in the Bible?
• Why would a loving God order women and children to be slaughtered? How was that following the Commandment ‘The shalt not kill’?
• How could Noah fit 2 of every species on his ark ---and wouldn’t he have to take more than 2 gazelles to feed the 2 lions? And why wouldn’t Noah have left a few creatures behind, like mosquitos or cobras? And why does a different part of the Bible say he took 7 of some animals?
• Why would God order us to circumcise babies? Wouldn’t that be terribly painful, let alone unnatural? Why would God create foreskin, then want us to cut it off?
• Why can’t God prevent an earthquake, hurricane, or airplane accident from hurting/killing people?
• Why do bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people?
• Why, despite hundreds of people praying for a sick parishioner at the church, did the person die anyway?
• If God can do anything, why can’t he stop suffering? And if he can’t why is he worthy of worship?
• Why do we have to wait to die to reach heaven? Doesn’t God have the power to make heaven on earth?
• Why would God order a man to sacrifice his own son or daughter?
• Why are some things that the Bible says are abominations (eating lobster , pork, or rabbit for example) no longer considered to be forbidden, but being gay is still thought, by many, to be an abomination? Lots of these rules are clearly set forth in Exodus, Deuteronomy and Leviticus, yet we ignore some and accept others. (According to the Bible, it’s OK eat locusts.)
• Why did God allow his only son to die to forgive our sins? If God can do anything, why not just forgive our sins and be done with it?
• What about Bible passages that contradict each other? How can those be the word of God?
• If only Christians could go to Heaven and everyone else went to Hell, that wasn’t exactly fair to someone who was indoctrinated into Islam from a young age, or someone who had never even heard of Christianity, was it?

Although some of these questions were from a naive youth, I would ask most of these same questions today. I still don’t have the answers.
I don’t remember even one answer any more enlightening than “God works in mysterious ways.” My father told me to pray and God would answer my questions, but He didn’t.

After several years of doubt, I couldn’t take the Bible seriously. Soon everything else about religion sounded absurd to me. By the time I graduated from high school I was an atheist, but I didn’t quite know it yet.

Now, I believe that the Bible is a book of fiction. I happen to love fiction and I think fiction can teach truths about life. However, I could learn most of what I need to know about life from many other books of fiction ---and without the guilt.
Most of the Bible was recorded years or even centuries after the supposed events, so I do not believe it is the word of God, but the words of men either trying to interpret what they thought was the word of God, or attempting to convince readers that they knew what God wanted.

Susan B. Anthony: “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”

Writing the Bible, decades after the events (if they actually happened) would be like my attempting to write an account of the Kennedy presidency with no written records, no TV, no audio or video tape. I lived through those years, but little of what I remember is from actual memory. Most of it is from books or film that I have read or seen many times in the years since 1963. Taking everything I can remember, I might be able to write two or three pages. Of course, like men who wrote the Bible, I might misremember or, without written, audio, or video proof, I could make up the rest.
The men who wrote the Bible had no special powers. They were humans like you and me. God didn’t guide their hands when they wrote the Bible any more than he guided my hand in writing this blog post.
Why do people believe that 2000 years ago, magical things happened that don’t happen today? But then I remind myself that many people believe in astrology, ghosts, and miracles. They think they see images of the Virgin Mary in their toast and are sure their dead parents are watching over them. I call it wishful thinking.
People think God talks to them or to religious leaders. If God talked directly to anyone, then everyone in the world who prayed for guidance would receive the exact same message and there would not be multiple religions and denominations.

Despite my having read the Bible through my teen years, I haven’t read it much since, although I do use internet Bibles to find passages on occasion. Most of the atheists I know, know the Bible much better than I do, and I know it better than most Christians.
Many Christians are taught a few nice Bible stories in Sunday school and they might listen to Biblical verses at church services, but most know little about what the Bible really says.
In a recent survey by the Pew Forum, 45% of U.S. adults seldom or never read the Bible. Surprisingly only 39% believe it is the literal word of God. A full 18% believe it was written by men and is not the word of God at all. Only 1% said living life in accordance with the Bible was necessary to be admitted to heaven.
A Gallup survey found that less than half of Americans can name the first book of the Bible (Genesis), only a third know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount (Billy Graham is a popular answer) and a quarter do not know what is celebrated at Easter (the resurrection, the foundational event of Christianity.) Sixty percent cannot name half the ten commandments; 12% think Noah was married to Joan of Arc. George Gallup, a leading Evangelical as well as a premier pollster, describes America as “a nation of biblical illiterates”.

Mark Twain: [The Bible] “is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.” (Letters From the Earth)

copyright 2009 by C. Woods

Why I Am an Atheist - Part 3 In God's Name

Look for future posts in my ongoing series of Why I am An Atheist.