Florida Freethinkers » belief

Freethought Musing: “God’s Will” Gets in the Way

Andrew Bernardin — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:15:11 +0000

To the news of a peer’s death in an automobile accident, one interviewed teenager said, “It’s fate. When your time comes, it comes.” Another tearily added, “God called him home.” Apparently, as far as you know, your time could be up at any moment. Nothing you can do about it.

This is sloppy and dangerous thinking. Perhaps it could contribute to such things as reckless driving. Hey, nothing you can do about it; it’s fate. If it’s not in the divine plans for you to be “called home” just yet, you can avoid questioning your own behavior. Or feeling distressed by the often unpredictable, impersonal, “non-caring” nature of calamity.

If all incidents of extreme bad fortune, and good, are in a god’s hands, you can additionally maintain the delusion that nothing happens without a reason. A significant reason. A personal reason.

What is the true cost of this superficial, sloppy thinking? I don’t know. I’m sure it depends upon the situation. In terms of athletes making a sign of the cross before competing or pointing to the sky after success, little cost. (Little obvious cost? There may be a diffuse cost in the modeling of superstitious behavior to young fans.)

In terms of a parent who believes that their child is sick because of sin or the devil or simply an un-elaborated “god’s will” (a form of partially rectifiable fate, via acts of repentance?) rather than due to, say, bacterial infection, and that prayer, rather than antibiotics, is the answer — well, this is very costly sloppy thinking.

The believer’s slip-shod “just because” (i.e. it is beyond my understanding and in the hands of divine forces) is a cul-de-sac on the road to knowledge and effective action. Not a god, but knowledge provides real power in terms of the ability to exercise control over our lives.

Few educated people believe the voodoo of ‘evil spirits cause disease.’ In those regions of the world where it persists, you will find both bottom-drawer education and inadequate health care systems. In our country, with its good health care and fairly decent education, gods have been pushed out of the physician’s black bag. Pretty much. And our society is better for it.

I am convinced that we should keep pushing talk of gods out of our explanations of how the universe operates. They’re in the way. Gods limit our vision. Sure, some people may want to prop gods in front of those annoying uncertainties for which we have no clear answers, but I’d rather not. I am one who prefers the leaden “I don’t know” answer to the believer’s airy “just because.”

[first posted earlier today here]

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Why We Believe in Gods

The Baloney Detection Kit – Michael Shermer

Lori Blough — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:09:27 +0000

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Which God?

Joe Levy — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:53:35 +0000

If God is all powerful and knowledgeable, why aren’t we all born with the belief in the same God, instead of being indoctrinated into our parent’s religion and belief in their God?

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Sweet Blindness

Bill Davis — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:00:15 +0000

I attended church for years in multiple places. I asked many questions which were never answered. Indeed, it seemed that no one that I knew had ever asked themselves the questions that plagued me.

One day I was in Sunday School in a Methodist church which I had been attending for several months. The teacher was an optometrist in the area. The class members were all college graduates. So, it was a well educated group. The discussion on that Sunday was about God being in control of everything. I brought up the fact that it bothered me that there are millions of people in Africa, Asia, South America, and elsewhere in the world who are dying or barely surviving because of hunger and disease.

The teacher said in a concerned manner that it seemed like I was saying that God is unfair. (How could I do such a thing?) I told him that I was bringing up this problem in the hopes that there is a sensible reason that such an enormous amount of hunger and poverty exists even though God is in control. He asked me what my basis was for thinking these conditions actually existed. This question was as shocking to me as if he had asked me what made me think that cancer existed. After a pause I said, “From multiple sources: magazines, newspapers, televisions, even through church mission drives.”

Then, this worthy man of God turned to the other members of the class and said, “Have any of you folks seen proof that such conditions exist?” There was another long pause. Finally after what seemed like an hour, a lady said, “Yes, there are such conditions. I am a nurse and I have seen a lot of evidence of these conditions in my studies and my work.” No one else said anything. The class ended then without further comment and everybody left. I never heard anything more about it, neither from the teacher nor from the members of the class.

Even a massive disaster does not seem to tickle the brain cells of many Christians. When horrible tragedies happen which make rational people at least question whether there is a personal God protecting us, many true believers respond with neither pity nor doubt. I think some people simply don’t want to discuss the topic, either because of shyness or insecurity. Many, however, see no inconsistency between the tragic loss of thousands of innocent lives and their belief that God is in complete control.

When the AIDS epidemic was at its peak, one of the members of the same Sunday School class remarked to me that AIDS was God’s punishment for the victims’ sins. The horrible pain that victims of AIDS suffer aroused no sympathy in him. Neither did the fact there were many babies who were victims of this dreadful disease.

On another Sunday a woman announced in class that she could not understand why people felt so sorry for the Jews. She said, “After all, they killed Christ.” Except for me, no one responded to her idiotic comment.

This extreme callousness, if we think about it, is exactly what one would expect of true believers in a religion in which the culmination of all of history is Armaggeden, which will, in the minds of the faithful, result in the brutal murder of everyone on earth, except for the relatively few “chosen.” Afterword, those murdered, though dead, will be thrown into the pit of fire to suffer forever. Far from being saddened by their belief in such a bleak future for mankind, this stellar event in their eyes is looked forward to with joyous anticipation.

This brings to mind the title of the old Fifth Dimension song, “Sweet Blindness.” Many Christians will use any number of rationalizations to justify their false sense of security. Believers either deny the existence of unfairness in this world or rationalize it in a variety of different ways. “It is the wages of sin.” “It’s God’s will.” “God will make all things right in the end.” “She will be a better person because of it.” The believer can then go blithely on with his or her life undisturbed by the most horrific events. The faithful are also relieved, at least in their minds, from any responsibility to do anything to prevent otherwise preventable mass suffering. The belief that God is in control of all things at all times and that those who are chosen will enjoy eternal bliss in heaven compels the faithful to focus on the hereafter rather than on real life suffering that is occurring today and urgently needs attention.

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Being “Saved” By The Baptists

Lori Blough — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 15:39:13 +0000

Early in my Junior year of high school, my mom decided to move back “home” to West Virginia. Well, it was still home for her, at least, but after a decade in Florida it was no longer home for me; I felt terribly out of place. I was a strange and lonely kid who read too much and thought too much, and was stuck in the most awkward time of my life. So, when an older cousin asked me to join her church youth group, I did, hoping to find a place to fit in.

I guess I did fit in, for a while. I developed a crush on one of the boys at church and everyone was just so nice. The other kids had all been saved and baptized and the whole congregation seemed so excited about it when a newly saved soul headed up the aisle to pledge their heart to Jeebus. I wanted everyone to like me, so I decided to do it too. That was a very pleasant time for a shy gal in need of approval. Everyone hugged me, smiled at me, told me what a wonderful child I was. A dream come true for one sorely lacking in self esteem!

A few weeks later I had my baptismal ceremony and it was actually quite an uplifting experience. I had that mystical ‘god’ feeling that you read about; I honestly thought I felt surrounded by god’s presence! (As it turns out, a short time later I found I got that same feeling at large rock concerts where the crowd is intensely emotional and focused on the performer.) Everyone continued to heap attention upon me for about the next week, until the next big thing came along – Revival!

If you’ve never been to a Baptist revival, it is truly something to behold. Guest preachers come from far away, having prepared their best, loudest, most intense fire-and-brimstone sermons. It can go on for several weeks, with different speeches throughout the week. (If you have a morbid curiosity and a high BS tolerance, you should try one sometime, if only for reference.) Our regular pastor was not an intense man, normally. He much preferred the “god is love” kind of sermon, and I suppose, so did his flock. When I attended, the morning service was fairly normal, and I suspected nothing. The evening service though, was horrifying… it was entirely too much for a sixteen year old, and I thought I would be sick before the night was over.

Revival was everything you’ve ever seen on TV, and perhaps more. Lakes of fire, eternal suffering and pain, demons, and so on. I hated every second of it. I had been to church before, and I knew that bad people went to hell, but this…this was way beyond some mild-mannered concept of detention or maybe jail. The fear and hate I felt in the room was so diametrically different from the happy glow I had felt in that very same room just one week before that I couldn’t begin to understand it. How could this be the same god? How could a loving god hold you in his hand and protect you in one moment and then decide to torture you forever in the next moment? And for what? As far as I could tell, nearly everything was sinful, and you had to live in fear all of the time in order to keep right with this monster.

That was the last time I ever went to that church or willingly went to any church. Fortunately my mom didn’t seem to mind. She was mostly a Christmas and Easter kind of Christian anyway. A few months later we wound up back in Florida – which turned out to be more “home” for both of us than mom had realized – so I didn’t have to deal very long with the guilt my cousin or my former friends tried to heap upon me.

It took me a long time to figure out what I was going to do with all of those contradictions about the Baptist god. I continued to read too much and think too much, of course. In time I realized that there was so much more that I couldn’t reconcile, and that it just didn’t seem realistic to believe that Christians had the answers. It took me even longer to figure out that nobody else had the answers either. Today I still can’t be positive of what the answer is, but I finally feel that I have a pretty good idea what it is not.

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Eleven Things I’ve Learned in My Life

Marcus Burke — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:42:22 +0000

For those that send out those sappy Regina Brett style, life-affirming, Jesus-loving, emails which are full of the “wisest things they’ve learned in life,” most of which aren’t very accurate but sound warm and gooey, like: “It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it,” here are some of the things I’ve learned in my life:

The reason God doesn’t “mind” you getting angry with him is because he’s not really there,
(nor is Piglet, the Tooth Fairy – or the Loch Ness Monster.)
Humans are so selfish, they will never do what’s right, so long as they can benefit individually by doing what’s not right.
Nearly all the problems on our planet could be mitigated by a reduction in the human population.
Half the people who read that have no idea what “mitigated” means. (But they sure know how to have more babies – fuck yeah!) — Props to China.
Gay people are actually doing the planet a significant favor by not breeding. Heterosexuality is the true threat to the future of mankind.
Trying to prevent the recognition of gay relationships is an ideological battle, rooted in religion, that has already been lost (as was the battle against slavery and granting women the vote).
All religious battles are eventually lost.
When humans finally stop living fear-based lives based on medieval beliefs about what they think their gods are trying to tell them, everyone’s lives will improve.
Our planet will be destroyed when the sun eventually explodes. There is no Jesus in that equation.
Meanwhile we are doing our best to beat the sun to it – and we will probably succeed.

Send this to anyone with a brain – or your God will be very, very upset. And we can’t have that.

Courtesy of: Stop The World, I Wanna Get Off!

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Why We Believe in Gods

Andrew Bernardin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:44:05 +0000

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