The sermon opens rather poorly for me–with a condescending story about a 23 year-old questioning some tenets of his religion, only to be told “There are lots of things that you don’t know at twenty-three.” Though the statement is absolutely true, there are also lots of things that you don’t know at 43 or 63 or 93. To decline to discuss the issues head on with an adult clearly interested in discussing them is to miss an incredible opportunity. Instead, the priest (not the author of the sermon) chooses to be condescending toward the student. Imagine if I were teaching a class at work on technical topics where I’m an expert, and someone said “I don’t understand, why should I do that step?” If I were to simply respond “You’re too young to understand, just do what I tell you to do” I would be considered a bit on the pompous side.

The sermon touches on a church member, Hoff, who refused to say certain parts of the Apostles creed because he didn’t believe in them. I find I agree with Hoff, and that’s where I started having difficulties in my own church-going. I couldn’t stand in the pews and say words that I didn’t believe to be true. I find the pastor’s argument–” It’s the church’s creed, not ours.”–rings hollow. What is the church if not the members? Can members not choose to change the church as their understanding of the world evolves?

The pastor then makes a serious mistake. He mentions the “new atheist” movement and two prominent authors, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. He then quotes an anonymous reviewer of The God Delusion:

One reviewer of Dawkins’ book gently asks if the author has forgotten that the Soviet Union was an intentionally godless state and culture? Have Dawkins and others forgotten the atrocities Josef Stalin afflicted in the name of secularism? Hitler, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot presided over mass murder of millions of people in the name of a new godless, religionless secularism.

It is clear that neither the pastor, nor the reviewer actually read the God Delusion. Nor did they look in the index under Hitler or Stalin. In fact, pages 272 through 278 are dedicated to addressing exactly these concerns. By asking the question rhetorically, the reviewer (and the pastor by using the quote) implies that Dawkins thinks all atheists are wonderful and therefore cannot do evil. This is not the truth. Dawkins fully admits that Hitler and Stalin committed horrible acts. Many people commit horrible acts. The real question is does atheism actually lead people to commit the horrible acts? The correct answer is that there is not currently any evidence that it does.

The pastor moves on to a tone of reconciliation between all the worlds religions which is admirable. The world would definitely be a lot better place if there were less killing of people. If that means convincing them that God doesn’t want them to kill others, fabulous. He then quotes Isaiah 19:23-24 which predicts an alliance between Israel, Egypt, and Assyria. I’m not sure how that is supposed to inspire hope that God can bring us together–its been a few thousand years since that prediction, and Assyria hasn’t existed for over 2600 years.

The pastor then makes what I think is an absolutely absurd assertion: “The Bible nowhere argues for the existence of God.” That’s like saying that my Camry manual never argues for the existence of my car. Of course it doesn’t–that’s one of the founding assumptions in the whole book. The bible doesn’t argue for God’s existence but it sure does claim that all who don’t believe in God will burn in hell.

He then brings up an interesting point that I’ve seen mentioned in atheist blogs: “In the Bible, faith in God means trusting God more than believing ideas about God to be true”. Frequently when a believer says “I believe in God” they really mean “I trust God will do what he says he’ll do or what I think he’ll do” in the same sense as if I were to say to my daughter “I believe in you” as she attempts to ride a bike for the first time. The core of my problem with believing in God is precisely this interpretation. For me to believe in God, I have to see some reason to trust that God will do anything. I believe in gravity even though we have a very poor understanding of the core mechanics because it does something. I believe in electricity even though it feels a lot like magic because I know how to trust it to do work (or provide warmth, or inspiration, or joy).

Finally, the pastor gets to the reason for the name of the sermon–Pascal’s Wager. He doesn’t describe the wager explicitly, but it goes like this: the risk of belief in God is low (religious life), and the risk of unbelief is high (hell); the benefit of belief is high (heaven) and the benefit of unbelief is low (atheist life). Therefore based on a risk-benefit analysis, we should just believe because it makes sense. The pastor seems genuinely unaware (or more likely, unconvinced) of the criticisms of the wager. He ultimately claims to wager on God for two reasons:

• the highway builder, making a way where there is no way, bringing together antagonists and mortal enemies, his precious children, Egyptians, Assyrians, Jews
• and that shepherd, with a lost sheep on his shoulders, coming home

So, he chooses to believe in God because of a failed (so far) prediction to bring three nations together in harmony, and because of the lost sheep parable. Its a wonderful parable, and volumes have been written on it. But there are lots of parables around. Sorry pastor, that’s not reason enough for me to believe.

On the flier that advertised the event was the following message: “PARENTS AND LEADERS: PLEASE NOTE THAT COFFEE, TEA, ALCOHOL, AND TOBACCO ARE NOT PERMITTED ON THE PREMISES.” (caps, italics, and underlines were on the flier). I was familiar that LDS generally has a prohibition against believers consuming caffeine and nicotine. Their logic for the prohibition isn’t even bad: don’t consume anything that might be unhealthy or cause an addiction. But it seemed odd to me that they would attempt to actively prevent me from taking a cup of coffee into the building. And yes, I’m aware that my own beliefs make the fact that I was even in the building a bit of a contradiction (agnostic atheist Cub Scout leader and parent). I did respect their request (well, mostly–there was coffee inside me!) since they were kind enough to allow the event with probably no cost to the Scout district.

But, what a silly prohibition that is. OK, I understand not wanting people to consume alcohol in the church–but come on, it was at 9AM in the morning. Was the explicit prohibition of alcohol necessary? And smoking is prohibited in nearly all public buildings in Ohio (not sure if that includes churches, but I would think so) so its not like a smoker is going to expect to light up in the multipurpose room. But they didn’t say that smoking was prohibited–tobacco was. Would they have been offended had a pack of cigarettes entered their building through the hands of a non-believer, and left in those same hands, unopened? And they got bent out of shape about non-believers consuming coffee or tea? Could I have brought Mountain Dew?

Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely support their right to put restrictions on the use of their facilities. And clearly the Scout organization accepted the restrictions. I’ve even put odd-ball restrictions on people on my property too. I’m not even going to write to them to complain. But I likewise have a right to criticize them. I just think the restrictions were silly.

In week 9, the skeptic informs the members of the group:

I know of one particular verse where Moses’ conquering army are commanded to kill every man among the enemy captives, but are ordered to save the virgin females for themselves as spoil

They are incredulous and demand to know the offending verse. In week 10, he tells them there’s not just one, but two passages: Numbers 31:17-18 and Judges 21:10-12. They are shocked and have difficulty reconciling these verses with their notion of a loving god.

Inspired by this interaction, I’ve created a series of bumper stickers to demonstrate just what a loving god the Christian god seems to be in the bible. The bumper stickers are all pretty simple: “A Loving God” followed by a verse citation. Those who don’t bother to look up the verse would have no idea that it is an indictment. Those who are familiar with atheism might recognize that the “A” is the somewhat widely adopted symbol for Atheist.

The bumper stickers can be purchased here: http://www.zazzle.com/alovinggod/gifts

“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” –Ben Franklin

I can’t believe I’ve missed it all this time. The best part? I’m going to “church” tomorrow night to have more beer! And I’ll be happy about it! Boom! There’s the proof. Beer! There must be beer volcanoes in Heaven!

Incidentally, the Weizenbock pictured above is amazing. It is the 2007 Best In Show for the Chicago Regionals in the American Homebrew Contest.

In my continuing efforts to explore my own spirituality and understand who this God person is anyway, I’ve attempted to distill these essays down to their primary theses for a hard-core comparison.

Steven Pinker PDF

Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to explain the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come from? What is the basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why should anyone be moral? Yet over the millennia, there has been an inexorable trend: the deeper we probe these questions, and the more we learn about the world in which we live, the less reason there is to believe in God.

Pinker essentially refutes the God of the Gaps as the one being made obsolete by science. Its a fairly straightforward argument–we used to believe in God to fill in for our ignorance, but since we aren’t quite as ignorant as we used to be, there isn’t as much need to believe in God. The more we learn, the less we need God.

Christoph Cardinal Schönborn PDF

…the Nature we know from modern science embodies and reflects immaterial properties and a depth of intelligibility far beyond the wildest imaginings of the Greek philosophers. To view all these extremely complex, elegant, and intelligible laws, entities, properties, and relations in the evolution of the universe as “brute facts” in need of no further explanation is, in the words of the great John Paul II, “an abdication of human intelligence.”

Schönborn argues for an Intelligent Creator God. Unfortunately I think he mischaracterizes science as being willing to accept brute facts, and then stopping. That is far from the truth–scientists weren’t satisfied with the “brute facts” of Newtons Laws of motion. They continued to push beyond those facts (ok, 200 years later) into General Relativity and Relativistic Quantum Mechanics. The more complex, elegant, and intelligble the system, the more deeply and fervently scientists dig into it.

William D. Phillips PDF

…religious statements are not necessarily falsifiable. I might say, “God loves us and wants us to love one another.” I cannot think of anything that could prove that statement false. Some might argue that if I were more explicit about what I mean by God and the other concepts in my statement, it would become falsifiable. But such an argument misses the point. It is an attempt to turn a religious statement into a scientific one. There is no requirement that every statement be a scientific statement. Nor are non-scientific statements worthless or irrational simply because they are not scientific. “She sings beautifully.” “He is a good man.” “I love you.” These are all non-scientific statements that can be of great value. Science is not the only useful way of looking at life.

Phillips is proposing that religion and science should maintain separate areas of expertise. However, I don’t think his analogy works. The statement “She sings beautifully” can discussed and debated by all those who have heard her sing. There may be disagreement or consensus, and falsification isn’t really the issue. But at least there can be discussion among those who’ve experienced her singing, and the method for experiencing her singing is clear. The statement “God…wants us to love one another” can’t really be discussed because there is no clear path to determining what God wants. It can’t be falsified in the same way that “Santa Claus is checking his list” can’t be falsified. We don’t know what God wants and we don’t know if  Santa has a list.

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy PDF

Let’s face it: the day of the Sky God is long gone. In the Age of Science, religion has been downsized, and the medieval God of classical religions has lost repute and territory. Today people pay lip service to trusting that God but they still swallow antibiotics when sick.

But people today don’t believe in a Sky God. They believe in a God of personal inspiration, and mysterious ways. They trust that God has guided them to the doctor, and that God had guided the doctor to prescribe the correct medication, and that God has directed the germs to fall victim to the antibodies, strengthened by the drugs.

Mary Midgley PDF

Belief—or disbelief—in God is not a scientific opinion, a judgment about physical facts in the world. It is an element in something larger and more puzzling—our wider worldview, the set of background assumptions by which we make sense of our world as a whole.

I must admit that Midgley’s essay flummoxed me greatly. I read it through three times and still had difficulty grasping it. I think she’s attempting to say that belief in God is a kind of life-fabric, something that pervades everything we do. Since our entire perspective on everything is formed by that God-based-background, we can’t assess it scientifically. I think that’s what she’s saying. I still don’t get it, probably because I don’t have a God-life-fabric.

Robert Sapolsky PDF

Science is the best explanatory system that we have, and religiosity as an alternative has a spectacular potential for harm that permeates and distorts every domain of decision-making and attribution in our world. But just because science can explain so many unknowns doesn’t mean that it can explain everything, or that it can vanquish the unknowable. That is why religious belief is not obsolete.

I don’t think science ever attempts to vanquish the unknowable, but why should religious belief seek to provide an answer? To assert that something is “unknowable” means either that a) there is a logical conundrum that prevents knowledge, or b) that attaining the knowledge is beyond the value (to anyone) of that knowledge. “What year will I die?” is the first type, and “Why did lightning strike my house?” is the second. I don’t think religious belief helps answer the unknowable.

Christopher Hitchens PDF

Religion, remember, is theism not deism. Faith cannot rest itself on the argument that there might or might not be a prime mover. Faith must believe in answered prayers, divinely ordained morality, heavenly warrant for circumcision, the occurrence of miracles or what you will. Physics and chemistry and biology and paleontology and archeology have, at a minimum, given us explanations for what used to be mysterious, and furnished us with hypotheses that are at least as good as, or very much better than, the ones offered by any believers in other and inexplicable dimensions.

I’m perfectly content to believe that there might be a diety–its the interactive God that seems most difficult to me. An interactive God feels like an explanation for the unknowable. Unfortunately, I think Hitchens reads too much into the question. I can believe in God (a diety) but not rely on God. Science, then, is the method for discovering all that we can about God’s creation while we still can. Hitchens assumes that belief is the same as reliance.

Keith Ward PDF

It is not science that renders belief in God obsolete. It is a strictly materialist interpretation of the world that renders belief in God obsolete, and which science is taken by some people to support. But science is more ambiguous than that, and modern scientific belief in the intelligibility and mathematical beauty of nature, and in the ultimately “veiled” nature of objective reality, can reasonably be taken as suggestive of an underlying cosmic intelligence.

I agree that science doesn’t make God obsolete. But since the God of the Gaps is immeasurably small, and we can pretty much define God in any way we please, I think science has made worship of God obsolete. There may be a great cosmic intelligence, but it has been pretty consistent in completely ignoring our pleas, so there really isn’t any point in worshiping it.

Victor J. Stenger PDF

The universe we see with our most powerful telescopes is but a grain of sand in the Sahara. Yet we are supposed to think that a supreme being exists who follows the path of every particle, while listening to every human thought and guiding his favorite football teams to victory. Science has not only made belief in God obsolete. It has made it incoherent.

Those who believe would argue that God is not for us to comprehend. Just because we can’t fathom paying attention to every particle, thought, and football team, doesn’t mean God can’t. But I think Stenger’s point is sound: we’re either infantile to believe Daddy is watching out for us, or incredibly arrogant to assert that we matter that much.

Jerome Groopman PDF

The truths of mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics are different from the truths we seek in human behavior and human choices. The truths of science can be measured and experimentally verified; the truths of a moral life are matters of belief—whether you are an atheist or a religious person. Religion should view science as a way to improve the world; science should see religion not as a threat but as a deeply felt path taken by some.

The truths of a moral life can most certainly be measured and evaluated scientifically. There is no doubt that religion is a “deeply felt path” taken by many. However, that doesn’t make it correct.

Michael Shermer PDF

What would we call an intelligent being capable of engineering a universe, stars, planets, and life? If we knew the underlying science and technology used to do the engineering, we would call it Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence; if we did not know the underlying science and technology, we would call it God.

Shermer has expanded on one of Arthur C. Clarke’s laws: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. It may seem crazy to imagine mistaking ET for God. But Cargo Cults demonstrate that Shermer’s assertion has already proven true.

Kenneth R. Miller PDF

Science places us in an extraordinary universe, a place where stars and even galaxies continue to be born, where matter itself comes alive, evolves, and rises to each new challenge of its richly changing environment. We live in a world literally bursting with creative evolutionary potential, and it is quite reasonable to ask why that is so. To a person of faith, the answer to that question is God.

To a person of science, that answer continues to be explored in cosmology. The atheist would ask the person of faith “If God made us and the universe, what made God?” Why, after creating the world, does God seem content to leave it well enough alone?

Stuart Kauffman PDF

…we are in a co-constructing, ceaselessly creative universe whose detailed unfolding cannot be predicted. Therefore, we truly cannot know all that will happen. In that case, reason, the highest virtue of our beloved Enlightenment, is an insufficient guide to living our lives. We must reunite reason with our entire humanity. And in the face of what can only be called Mystery, we need a means to orient our lives. That we do, in reality, live in the face of an unknown is one root of humanity’s age old need for a supernatural God.

When Kauffman refers to “co-constructing” he’s referring to a universe created by both us and God. However, he mistakes that reason and science attempt to predict everything that will happen. Nothing could be further from the truth. Quantum mechanics and probability theory fully recognize that nothing can be predicted with certainty. Science does not attempt to predict the future. It attempts to predict isolated events with specific initial conditions. How does God supply us with an answer to the unknown? How does God help us in the face of Mystery? It seems we’ve been left to our own devices.

In conclusion, I’m not terribly convinced that God is relevant. God may yet still exist, but there seems little to recommend that we pay it homage. Science doesn’t disprove Gods existence, and doesn’t really attempt to. Science is content to assume that the world works as if God doesn’t exist until such time as the evidence proves otherwise.

I’m not sure if this guy wrote it, but he posted it in a comment on a blog I read, so I’ll give him some credit. He very well might have since he’s got quite a bit of other original poetry on his blog.

Updated: See comment below. Digital Cuttlefish wrote this. Thanks for sharing!

“This I believe: I believe there is no God.”

Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I’m not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it’s everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I’m raising now is enough that I don’t need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

There are many who argue that the truly Christian Heaven is a metaphor for the lives we lead, not some after-life recreational park. With those people, I agree. The only Heaven we can be sure of is the one we make, to the best of our abilities, right here, right now.

Believing there’s no God means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That’s good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

Forgiveness (much like punishment) is much more powerful in the here and now. If I pray to god for forgiveness, I’ll never really know the answer. If I ask my wife, or friend, or child to forgive me a transgression, I get a meaningful answer now. So I do the right things as often as I can so as to not have to ask the people I love for forgiveness.

“I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.” That’s just a long-winded religious way to say, “shut up,”

Some very religious  people like to say that “science is faith just like religion” and that is true to some extent. The difference is that all scientific beliefs are held provisionally. They are always subject to change based on new information. Religious beliefs cannot, by their nature, be falsified, so are held for as long as the believer wants.

Well put Mr. Jillette.

At the bottom of the page was a link to William F. Buckley’s  How is it possible to Believe in God? I have not generally been a fan of Mr. Buckley’s ultraconservative view points, but I thought it was worth a read as I know him to be very articulate. He starts with an apocryphal story:

I’ve always liked the exchange featuring the excited young Darwinian at the end of the 19th century. He said grandly to the elderly scholar, “How is it possible to believe in God?” The imperishable answer was, “I find it easier to believe in God than to believe that Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop.” That rhetorical bullet has everything — wit and profundity.

Unfortunately, all the retort has is an admission that believing in God is easier than scientific investigation. Duh. I find it easier to believe in god than to believe that we can split atoms. Well, I don’t, but many people do. The ease of belief doesn’t make it correct.

What is the greater miracle: the raising of the dead man in Lazarus, or the mere existence of the man who died and of the witnesses who swore to his revival?

There’s a third possibility: that one person wrote a falsehood. I’m no bible scholar, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have sworn affidavits from the witnesses at Lazarus’ revival.  So, of the three potential scenarios (resurrection, witnesses to a resurrection, or fiction) I’m gonna have to believe (provisionally) there was no miracle.

This I believe: that it is intellectually easier to credit a divine intelligence than to submit dumbly to felicitous congeries about nature.

felicitous:  very well suited or expressed; congeries: aggregation, collection

Again with the “intellectually easier”. The whole point of scientific inquiry is not to submit dumbly, but to evaluate, refine, investigate, and provisionally form “felicitous congeries about nature” to be held only until they are replaced by other congeries about nature, no matter how felicitous. “Submit dumbly” indeed.

So, for this round, I think I’ll have to call it comedian 1, conservative commentator 0.

I recently finished Irreligion, and decided to do some searching on the opposite side. If I ask, what do the religious say about believing? So, I asked the seemingly omniscient Google, why believe in god? The first result was less than inspiring. It has six reasons:

1. The complexity of our planet and universe prove God exists. Sorry. Just because I was once dealt a perfect “lay down loaner” in euchre doesn’t mean that god gave me that hand. Our planet is special and unique, and the universe is amazing, but that doesn’t mean there’s a god.
2. The complexity of the human brain proves God exists. Sorry, there are perfectly natural processes that have lead to the human brain. No need for god.
3.  Random chance can’t explain it all, so God must exist.”… life cannot arise from non-life. Where did human, animal, plant life come from?” Certainly believing in god will prevent you from taking a job as a scientist, looking at a very interesting question. Claiming “God did it” is to ignore the possibility that there ARE natural causes.
4. Lots and lots of other people believe in God, so God must exist because they can’t all be wrong. Yes. They. Can. I’m sorry, but I’m simply not impressed by the “everyone else believes it” argument. We human beings have been known to be wrong on very large scales.
5. “We know God exists because he pursues us.” I’ve got to admit, this is the first I’ve heard this argument.  “I have come to find out that God wants to be known. He created us with the intention that we would know him. He has surrounded us with evidence of himself and he keeps the question of his existence squarely before us.” If he wants to be known, why doesn’t he make it more obvious so that he could rest a bit and not pursue us? How do you know that God wants to be known?
6. Jesus said he was divine, so therefore he is. I’m not making this up. I’m amazed.

Look throughout the major world religions and you’ll find that Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius and Moses all identified themselves as teachers or prophets. None of them ever claimed to be equal to God. Surprisingly, Jesus did. That is what sets Jesus apart from all the others. He said God exists and you’re looking at him.

Well that settles it. I’m God. Therefore Jesus is no longer anything special. Two people have claimed to be God. Therefore god doesn’t exist.

One final quote from the page: “God does not force us to believe in him, though he could. Instead, he has provided sufficient proof of his existence for us to willingly respond to him.” Then why didn’t god influence Google to give me more convincing arguments? If god is pursuing me, why aren’t the answers a bit more clear?

Maybe I’ll find something more convincing on another page. Maybe not. I once read someone’s logic for disbelief this way:

If there is a God, he made me with an analytical mind. For me to not use that mind would be a sin against God. Therefore it is a sin for me to believe in God.

Today, I don’t believe. If there is a god pursuing me, your evidence will have to be more compelling. But after you’re done convincing me you exist, it will be much tougher to convince me to worship you.

Along the way, we passed by the Calvary Bible Church. Members of the church (I assume) were handing out bottles of water for the small price of accepting their pamphlet.

I glanced at the pamphlet momentarily as I accepted what I would later call my
“Jesus Water”.

At this point, my beliefs are somewhere between agnosticism and weak atheism, and I’ve been somewhat critical of religion in general recently. But I hate to argue against “strawmen” or examples that I make up in my head only to be easily beaten down. There are plenty of examples of idiots on the Internet, but that doesn’t necessarily represent official church doctrine. Here I have an “official” church outreach document which they are clearly hoping will a) increase their membership, and b) will save souls.

What if there really is a creator-god?

That would be absolutely fascinating. If I had an opportunity to meet this being, I’d be really curious as to how it came about all sorts of decisions: why are there vast reaches of total emptiness? have you tried this whole creation thing before? what have you been up to since you created this universe? are there other creations like this one? do you know what created you?

What implications does this have for me, His creation?

Um, why is the creator gender specific? Anyway, I’m not sure there are any implications. Just because the creator created me (and billions of other people, and planets and suns, and moons, and rocks, and viruses, and Hitler, and Polpot), I’m not sure what the implications are.

What if that creator will hold man, his creation, accountable in a day of judgment?

What if it won’t? What if the creator doesn’t really care? And accountable for what? What if we are accountable to hold all squirrels sacred, providing them shelter, food, and loving care? Crap. I see one in my back yard right now. I better go help him out.

What if the creator-god really loves man, his creation?

Love is an action. Dead-beat dads may claim they love their children, but it is the actions that speak louder than words. The claim that this creator loves us is like saying I love squirrels. If I don’t demonstrate that love, and there is no evidence of that love, then I have not loved that squirrel. Time for me to go make a squirrel chapel.

What if the creator-god has a son named Jesus?

I dunno. Father-son duos aren’t always the best thing. Sometimes the nut does fall far from the tree. Maybe Jesus is a little pissed–his dad gets to create entire universes, and he just gets to visit one itty-bitty planet for 30ish years. What if Jesus had a son, the creator’s grandson? Wow, procreation really works.

What if Jesus is who the bible claims he is? Eternal God, Virgin-born, Sinless, Savior, Resurrected lord.

So, let me get this straight. What if the creator has a son, who is the creator, who killed himself so that he could be brought back to life? If Jesus was born to a virgin, then his mother must not be human, because humans procreate through sexual intercourse. That’s how the creator created us, right? So the creator sets up all these rules for how things are done, but when he wants a son, he can’t just “poof” him into existence, he has to “poof” his sperm into some poor woman in order to create the boy? I’m afraid the sinless and savior pieces don’t really mean much to me…

What if he really is the only way to god, as he claimed to be?

Wait, Jesus is god and the only way to god? I don’t understand. Is he the finger pointing at the moon, or is he the moon? Perhaps this is some sort of cruel treasure hunt: follow the map to the treasure only to find another map, which leads to another map.

What if I arrive at heaven’s door with misplaced hope of entering in?

What if there is no heaven? Indeed, what if you were supposed to have been building squirrel chapels all along? What evidence of heaven do we have? What do the doors look like? Is it really someplace we want to be?

What if I haven’t met god’s requirement for entering in (to heaven)?

From the pamphlet, the requirement is “He that hath the son hath life; and he that hath not the son of god hath not life.” Um, could you make that requirement a bit clearer, please? Even translated to modern English, I still don’t get it “He that has the son has life.” How would I have the son? Like a cupie doll? Like an action figure? Oh! I’ve seen those in toy/novelty stores. I get it now. I must have a Jesus action figure. Maybe the squirrels would like it in their chapel!

So, I’m completely tired of this, and don’t feel like answering any more of these questions. What they gave me is essentially a pamphlet of Pascals Wager: believe because the risk of non-belief is too great. The pamphlet moves from deism in the first question (where we simply postulate that something might have created the universe) to a judgmental, demanding, multiple personality being. And the only source of information to support their presumed answers to the “What if” questions are a bunch of ancient stories.

I don’t think its likely, but it just might be possible that the universe was created by some being. However, it is a HUGE step to suggest that we should worship that being.

“Lord, come down in a mighty way and strengthen us so that we can bring down these high gas prices,” Twyman said to a chorus of “amens”.

“Prayer is the answer to every problem in life… We call on God to intervene in the lives of the selfish, greedy people who are keeping these prices high,” Twyman said on the gas station forecourt in a neighborhood of Washington that, like many of its residents, has seen better days.

If “prayer is the answer to every problem in life”, then why is the answer to every prayer to restore a severed limb always, ALWAYS, NO?

Its unfortunate that people still believe in the god of the gaps. They don’t understand the complex economics that goes into controlling gas prices, so they pray to god (of the gaps) to fill in the details for them. Pathetic. They would have spent their time better if they’d checked out a basic economics book at the library. They might have learned that high gas prices are caused by high (relative) demand (Good Morning China!) and low (relative) supply (can you say “oil cartel”?) Do they want god to reduce demand, or increase supply? Maybe god could send another natural disaster to some miscreant country, reducing demand, so these residents could spend less on gas and more on chili cheese Fritos.