God will provide

many of the posts here will serve as a relief valve. there are many moments that, as a rational being, one of my theist friends or colleagues smiles and says something which apparently brings them great peace, perhaps not realizing that their casual dropping of the g word or their pat pious phrase causes me excruciating intellectual pain. Or, perhaps they are well aware of this pain but seek to torment me, or, knowing of my atheism, drop little breadcrumbs which they hope will lead me to their moldy, petrified loaf of bronze-age wisdom. "god will provide" is one such phrase I was forced to countenance recently, in response to my concern that a friend was putting themselves out with their generosity. God will provide. Indeed. If god had provided, you would not be writing a check for $100.00 to help out. God will provide. Indeed, to European Americans like you and I, your god apparently delights in providing. Take your beatific smile and fine phrase over to sub-Saharan Africa and tell it to the mother whose baby has just died of malnutrition. God will provide! Except when he doesn't, which is a lot of the time. the usual theist response is that god does provide-in fact, there is enough food to go around- but it is up to us to be godly and loving enough to share it, and we fail in that, and our human corruption is why so many suffer. There is truth in those allegations, but this does not let god off the hook. How is it that a compassionate god allows innocent children to suffer because adults are ungodly? That in his bestowing of blessings-you know, have a blessed day, I am blessed, god bless America, god is so capricious in distributing his blessings? Africa is less blessed or divinely neglected at best in comparison to the USA, despite being a very religious continent. Just like Rick perry, they love god but it apparently isn't mutual, at least not in terms of the blessings that would make most of feel lucky- er, I mean, blessed. It's really the same thing when you think about it. Hordes of mexicans pray to the virgin of Guadalupe, who is especially pure on account of not having sex, which is a sexist old testament obsession for another post. But think about it. If every Mexican who prayed to the virgin got what they prayed for, they wouldn't call them miracles anymore. It is only because lots of people pray and only a select few get what they ask for that such things are called blessings or miracles. And why are some prayers answered and others ignored? Some people born with plenty and others into disease and starvation? This is a mystery that the best theologians tell us we will only be privileged to understand, if we are lucky, after we die. I once met a woman who said that she is the sort of person who always needs to know "why" things are happening...as if every event in her life has a cosmic micromanager. How sad. The only way she found peace was through a book that reassured her she might get to know god's reasons when she died. So, in other words, god may seem so capricious that events in the world appear to be random. And, lacking any rational narrative for them, your experience of them will in fact be just that-random and lacking any reason. And the best comfort you can hope for, the thing that allows you to sleep at night, is to trust that there is a reason you might learn of later...and until then you have to accept not knowing. How those clumsy intellectual gymnastics bring anyone peace is beyond me. allow me to apply occam's razor: there is no why. Accept that and stop asking. Saves a step and eliminates the uncertainty of maybe not finding out when you die! Life is random, god does not bless people or care who will win the football game- so stop thanking him. And when you rescue some miners from miles under the rock, don't forget to give credit to the human engineers who designed the capsule that got you out- unless you prefer to sit and wait while people pray for you to miraculously emerge. All of the miracles of modern medicine, including cures to diseases supposedly created by god, were made by men. And that is the true blessing; we bless ourselves, while gods flit about in the imagination and lay entombed in stone monuments to whichever mythology is currently fashionable. Zeus bless you.

"God will provide."

Haven't posted for a while; but that just means I have a backlog of rants. So here they come!

On good days, when I am feeling the love of being alive and the joy of human fellowship, I wax brief in Facebook posts about it. But then there are the other moments; no, not the ones where people are rude, or drive aggressively, or walk past dying people without batting an eye. Those things disappoint me, but they don't get my goat. The world is a cold, tough place and manifesting love seems surprisingly hard to cultivate in our species in public settings or outside one's in-group. No, the other moments that stimulate my writing are the passing encounters with well-meaning Christians (and a few who know I am an athiest and take some pleasure, or imagine some future salvation, in sort of poking me with their faith). They say things that are common enough but which truly get my goat by confounding any attempt at reason. There are four I will focus on, and they are interconnected: "God will provide", "Everything happens for a reason," various characterizations of people as "blessed", and "God has a plan for you." All these phrases make my brain convulse. If I could claim that such language was against my religion, I would- because I feel my intelligence insulted whenever I hear them. Your religion offends me.

First thing is first: quite often, God will NOT provide. Over 10 million children die each year from hunger: which is precisely why the UN and countless charities, many of them Christian, have to step in and fill the gap. So, who provides? People. Certainly these people are well-intentioned; and I have not seen any Atheist food banks in town (Dear fellow Atheists, put up or shut up as far as 'we are also ethical people'. We should be emulating the Christians on this front, just minus the ridiculous notion that a god is needed to feel love or teach us to share.) But it doesn't matter if god told you to share, or krishna, or you just thought it would be nice. God allowed lots people to be born without a pot to shit in, and as added insult, without any food to digest into shit. So how about this: God will provide, except when he doesn't, in which case people can help out. That is what churches do when they organize, do fund raisers, and then donate the proceeds. People do all that, yet they sell themselves short and give all the glory to god. God did not cure Polio; he created it, and we beat it with science. God is bringing beautiful babies into being in regions infested with the beautiful mosquitoes that carry the beautiful malaria he created; and man is busy trying to fix it. But who did they thank when they pulled the Chilean miners to safety? You guessed it. How about thanking the engineers who rigged the capsule? Same damn thing whenever they interview a quarterback after a football game; as if god was up there picking teams and calling plays. People are lucky, and unlucky; shit happens, some good, some bad, some predictable, and some highly unlikely. None of this indicates divine intervention. News flash: roughly 50 percent of football teams will lose; the others will win; and a few will tie. There will be some amazing plays from time to time, but god isn't "blessing" any of those criminals, unless you count their salary. And that brings us to blessings.

Have a blessed day. I am blessed. Sure you are! God will provide, especially if you are born in a developed country, even more likely if you are white. The notion that there is a conscious being up there passing out the good luck and bad luck is patently offensive, because of his inequitable distribution. I mean, you have this all-powerful, all-intelligent being, capable of miracles, who supposedly loves each one of us, possibly from the moment of conception (though that makes all the miscarriages hard to explain), and yet he can't even manage to have us all born where there is enough food to go around, or for the food to grow decently where the people are. But wait, you say, there is enough food produced to feed the world; the PEOPLE are to blame for not sharing it. That is an interesting proposition, one that is paraphrased on the cover of the weekly newsletter my wife brought home from her church: "God give us all, then calls on us to Share (superfluous capitalization theirs)." Omniscient, omnipotent, but doesn't do distribution. Leaves that to us. That is a sick little game, isn't it? Almost as sick as what he did to Abraham. But not the sickest! No, to truly appreciate how god blesses people- or more accurately, how people use that notion and the others listed above to handle psychological adversity- let's look at another category of misfortune: combat veterans.

Imagine running is your favorite activity in the world. But god loves you, and he has a plan for you, which goes like this: blow his legs off! Now, maybe god is just testing you. Trying to teach you a lesson. Using you to help others. Sure. Whatever works to stay positive, believe it. That is the power of faith- you can ignore the statistics and use the irrational part of your brain to believe that you can beat the odds, which, like a placebo pill reducing pain, actually increases the chance that you will succeed. The power or prayer and such are real- as real as a placebo; and I wonder if even I can access that power despite knowing it is rooted in hooey. I'm slightly jealous of those who have 'freed' themselves from rationality and accessed this power (along with a raft of steaming camel crap like creationism, faith healing frauds, and so on). This god sure has a funny way of blessing people- I mean, sure, the lucky veteran is the one who made it home- they are certainly more blessed than the dead- or those who made it home and then died. What a blessing! What a plan! But that's ok, they are in heaven. See, you can't lose with this god, no matter what he dishes out! There is a great benefit to looking on the bright side, and no one is better at this than the Jesus people. But more on "everything happens for a reason" and looking on the bright side and counting "blessings" and luck vs. miracles later. It is time to baptize the porcelain with a wave of my staff.

The world is random, yet beautiful

The ideas that life evolved by events of chance, and the idea that events in our life happen randomly (without a divine reason) seem to threaten a lot of people. I will expound on that more later- it requires the mathematics of probability and some psychology to unravel. For the moment, I just want to explain my choice of banner- a fern, generated from a not terribly complex equation, plus lots of randomness- fractals.

http://bioquest.org/esteem/esteem_details.php?product_id=249

The biological world certainly does have the appearance of design- complex parts functioning in complex wholes. And it is difficult to imagine such structures appearing by chance- mainly because it is hard to conceptualize the time scale involved in evolution. But this fern, along with snowflakes and other crystals, proves that random inputs, given a few natural constraints, will form an apparent order organically, through a reiterative process, with beautiful results. Randomness is the opposite of design. But it does not occur in a vacuum; there are laws of physics and chemistry and such. How structures began to reproduce themselves, thus becoming "life", remains a mystery; but one thing is clear- given time and energy, randomness can "create" something beautiful.

Acting for a more reasonable world

This blog is not an attack on religion; but it is a positive effort in support of reason. Unfortunately, there is persistent and pernicious propaganda which continues to equate atheism with an assumed lack of values ("moral compass", and an unending flow of shoddy logic and uncritical thinking which seeks to prop up old mythologies, most pervasive among them Christianity, and most annoying of that cult the literalist and evangelical brands.

I am not hostile to Christianity per se; I have many Christian friends who are very positive people and whose faith seems to ground them personally. In fact, I am married to a practicing Catholic. Oddly enough, we both believe in love, in helping our fellow humans, and in our daily affairs give our life on this earth a higher priority than whatever afterlife may or may not await. Most Christians make great neighbors- as do most atheists, especially those of us who identify as secular humanists. Religions, like belly buttons, would be irrelevant were they not constantly thrust in our faces and inserted into politics by an apocalyptic, fear-driven band of theocrats. The sky is falling, and they have the only shelter. As always.

This blog is a release valve and a place to think out loud and work through ideas. It will explore issues of faith and the lack thereof; psychology, science, reason, skepticism, evolution and ethics. Some of the posts will inevitably be reactions to the media, to time spent sitting in Mass, etc. but there will also be random ponderings, rants (sadly, I suffer from Jesus Fatigue) and philosophical detours. I hope it provides as much pleasure to any reader who happens upon it as it does for me, the writer.

Comments and discourse are welcome, but this is a space in support of reason. Declarations of faith, readily available elsewhere, are as common as a cold rhinovirus, and just as annoying. The mental acrobatics of apologetics around ancient books can be fun, but preaching will be ridiculed or deleted here depending on my mood. Feel free to start your own blog if you want to share your Good News. My News is this: we are all on the planet together and thus interconnected; this knowledge gives us the power, and arguably responsibility, to improve our collective lot, regardless of our views on the metaphysical. I don't have faith, but I do have hope- and I don't need a mythical dead-resurrected dude or an invisible watcher in the sky to tell me to love my fellow man; we evolved to live harmoniously in small groups, and we are smart enough to extend that to the larger tribe of our species and indeed all of life. The great struggles may be painted as good vs. evil; but within that Disney narrative you will find our compassion pitted against our greed, our intelligence failing to restrain our animal biology and tribalism. Satan is not the enemy- we are. Good and evil are not external spirits, to be absorbed through sprinklings of holy water or purged through the exorcism of demons-  they are behavioral potentials to be nurtured or starved within each of us.

So let's get on with the good work of living together- rationally, please.