Artwork credit: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Cartoon: Mythology and Science Just Don’t Mix
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The Bible Shows Why Prayer Doesn’t Work
I think I’ve figured it out! The Bible itself makes clear why prayer doesn’t work, and the clues are all from within the same gospel, Matthew.
I’ve heard stories of people in fast food restaurants who aren’t content to simply pray to themselves but stand and pray aloud for everyone’s benefit. Jesus isn’t keen on these pretentious people.
When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. (Matt. 6:5–6)
But later in the same book, Jesus says something different.
If two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them. (Matt. 18:19–20)
There’s the problem—prayer requires both a gathering and being by yourself.
No wonder it never works!
Photo credit: Wikipedia
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Tribulations of Leaving Religion
You can leave a company with two weeks’ notice. You can leave a club or association by giving notice. But leaving Christianity often brings consequences.
What does your departure say to your fellow parishioners, and how will they respond?
For example, Rich Lyons (from the Living After Faith podcast) left his 20-year career as a Pentecostal minister. His departure cost him everything: respect in the community, house, job, career, marriage. He needed five years to get over his PTSD. And his experience is not uncommon for those leaving some denominations.
Why should it be this way? When you leave a company, they give you a going-away party. You can still hang out with your old workmates. Why isn’t it the same when you leave a Christian community? Why instead are apostates often cut off from their friends within the church and even their families?
I got some insight into this from an anecdote by Stephen King. In his book On Writing, he talks about a different kind of outcast. In small-town Maine in the early sixties, life wasn’t easy for a socially-awkward girl he calls Dodie.
For the first year and a half of high school, Dodie wore a white blouse, long black skirt, and knee socks to school every day. The same blouse, skirt, and socks. Every day. The blouse gradually became thinner and yellowed, the skirt frayed and patched.
The other girls kept her in her social place, first with concealed taunts, then with overt teasing. If you can’t earn a spot above someone else, you can push that person beneath you, and the other girls made sure that Dodie stayed in her place at the bottom.
But something happened during Christmas break sophomore year. Whether because of money she’d saved up or a Christmas windfall, Dodie returned to school changed. She wore stockings over newly shaved legs, her hair was permed, and her clothes were new—a fashionably short skirt and a soft wool sweater. She even had a confident new attitude to match her appearance.
This change in the social order couldn’t stand. The other girls didn’t celebrate her accomplishment. They turned on her. Under the relentless teasing, her new smile and the light in her eyes faded.
By the end of that first day, she was the same mouse at the lowest rung, scurrying the halls between classes, her books pressed to her chest and her eyes downcast.
As the semester progressed, Dodie wore the same clothes. Every day. They faded as their predecessors had, she kept to her previous place, and the teasing returned to normal. Someone had made a break for it and tried to escape, but they’d been brought back in line. The social structure was intact once again.
Christian apostates are different because they successfully leave. But are there similarities in how the congregation reacts to the challenge? Seeing a congregation as a society, not completely dissimilar from high school, may explain why it sees a departure as a threat.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
Related links:
- The full text of Stephen King’s On Writing is available here. Search for “Dodie” to read his version (much better than my summary).
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Christianity Can Rot Your Brain
There’s a lot of killing in the Bible—the honest and wholesome kind. The God-commanded kind.
What are we to make of this violence? Apologist William Lane Craig takes a stab at justifying “The Slaughter of the Canaanites.”
Craig’s entire project is bizarre—trying to support the sagging claims of God’s goodness despite his passion for genocide—but he gamely has a go. Craig responds to the question, “But wasn’t it wrong to kill all the innocent children?”
… if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.
What’s this supposed to mean?? Does it mean that Andrea Yates was actually right that she was saving her five children from the possibility of going to hell by drowning them one by one in the bathtub? Does it mean that abortion is actually a good thing because those souls “are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy”? I hope none of Craig’s readers have followed up with this avenue to salvation.
It’s hard to believe that he’s actually justifying the killing of children, but there’s more. Let’s parse Craig’s next paragraph:
So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment.
I thought that genocide was wrong. Perhaps I was mistaken.
Not the children, for they inherit eternal life.
Yeah, right. Killing children is actually a good thing. (Are we living Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, where “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”?)
So who is wronged?
Wait for it …
Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.
Uh, yeah. That was the big concern in my mind, too.
Can you believe this guy? My guess is that he is a decent and responsible person, is a good husband and father, works hard, and pays his taxes. But he’s writing this? It’s like discovering that your next-door neighbor is a Klansman.
This brings up the Christopher Hitchens’ Challenge (video). Hitchens challenges anyone to state a moral action taken or a moral sentiment uttered by a believer that couldn’t be taken or uttered by an unbeliever—something that a believer could do but an atheist couldn’t. In the many public appearances in which Hitchens has made this challenge, he has never heard a valid reply.
But think of the reverse: something terrible that only a believer would do or say. Now, there are lots of possibilities. Obviously, anything containing variations on “because God says” or “because the Bible says” could be an example.
- “The Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’”
- “Despite the potential benefits to public health, we should avoid embryonic stem cell research because it’s against the Bible.”
- “God hates fags.”
Or, as in this case, “God supports genocide.”
This reminds me what physicist Steven Weinberg said: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”
In other words: Christianity can rot your brain.
Photo credit: Wikimedia
Related links:
- Greta Christina, “One More Reason Religion Is So Messed Up: Respected Theologian Defends Genocide and Infanticide,” AlterNet, 4/25/11.
- Adam Lee, “Defending Genocide, Redux,” Daylight Atheism, 4/11/11.
- Richard Dawkins, “Why I refuse to debate with William Lane Craig,” The Guardian, 10/20/11.
- Tim Stanley, “Richard Dawkins is either a fool or a coward for refusing to debate William Lane Craig,” The Telegraph, 10/21/11.
- “Concern over William Lane Craig’s justification of biblical genocide,” Open Parachute blog, 10/30/11.
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Word of the Day: Hoare’s Dictum
Sir Charles Hoare was a pioneer in computer science. He observed:
There are two methods in software design. One is to make the program so simple, there are obviously no errors. The other is to make it so complicated, there are no obvious errors.
This applies to logical arguments as well: you can make the argument so simple that there are obviously no errors. Or you can make it so complicated that there are no obvious errors.
A simple, straightforward argument for God’s existence might be, “Of course God exists. He’s sitting right over there!” Many arguments claim to be simple and straightforward—“the Bible is obviously correct” or “God obviously exists” for example—but are mere assertions rather than arguments backed with evidence.
Lots of apologetic arguments fall on the wrong side of this Hoare’s Dictum. The Transcendental Argument, for example, is often a five-minute dissertation about what grounds logic and whether a mind must exist to hold it.
The Ontological Argument goes like this. First we define “God” as the greatest possible being that we can imagine. Two: consider existence only in someone’s mind versus existence in reality—the latter is obviously greater. Three: since “God” must be the greatest possible being, he must exist in reality. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t meet his definition as the greatest possible being.
When hit with an argument like this for the first time, you’re left scratching your head, unsure what to conclude. These arguments are effective not because they’re correct (in fact, they fall apart under examination) but because they’re confusing.
The colloquial version of the argument is:
If you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance, then baffle ’em with bullshit.
Photo credit: Microsoft
Related posts:
- See all the definitions in the Galileo Unchained Glossary.
Related links:
- “Hoare’s Dictum” has been defined in computer science as, “Premature optimization is the root of all evil,” so perhaps this use should be Hoare’s Second Dictum.
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End of the World (Again)
Hey gang! This has been great fun, but today is the last day for this blog. Of course, that’s because this is the last day for everything. God ends the world today.
I hope you took advantage of my “Only 21 More Shopping Days Till the End of the World” post and got those nagging last-minute items off your to-do list. (If you need background on why today is the grand finale, check out that post.)
The parchment above is a relic showing some of many, many failed attempts at predicting the end of the world, going all the way back to the gospel story itself, in which Jesus says,
Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.
It’s been close to 2000 years since those “standing here” reportedly heard those words. Oops!
So, there won’t be a tomorrow tomorrow … unless, of course, this is just the latest in a long list of pathetic, groundless predictions for the end of the world.
In which case, c’mon back for more polite but pointed critiques of Christianity!
Artwork credit: Kyle Hepworth
Related posts and links:
- “Check out Ask an Atheist” has a photo of Seattle Atheists’ end-of-the-world sandwich board.
- The Skeptics Annotated Bible has long list of gospel predictions of the imminent end.
- “Lest we forget” is a video with clips of Camping’s claims.
- Jessica Fostvedt, “Doomsday, Apocalypse, and Rapture, Oh my!” Scientific American, 10/7/11.
- Stephanie Pappas, “Preacher still says Oct. 21 for end of world,” MSNBC, 10/14/11.
- Benjamin Radford, “10 Failed Doomsday Predictions,” LiveScience, 11/04/09.
Galileo Unchained 
