Prang! You’re Healed!

Ever wonder why God doesn’t heal amputees? I thought about it the other day for at least thirty seconds and came up with the answer.

Obviously, if you believe that your body is going to be resurrected and then you’ll live for eternity, replacing a limb is actually a mistake. I mean, think about it. Here you are, working away when some mindless machine rips off your leg. A moment of carelessness and a lifetime of misery. But then you pray, O please, God, make my leg grow back. And it does.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, er, in heaven, your dead leg has arrived at the Pearly Gates. Now, there isn’t much it can do but wait for you to die and be rejoined with you. But horreurs! When you die, you already have a leg! How is your other leg going to feel about that? Worse, where are you going to put it?

So there you are, walking around on three legs, hitting on the houris and blushing at the laughter.

Alternatively, you’re stomping around in the desert and boom! Your arms and legs are blown to Kingdom Come. Prang! You grow new ones and hop around all happy. But then that final day comes and you’re reunited with your other limbs. Reunited and it feels so good. But no, it’s a bit awkward. Now you have to crab around like a spider on eight limbs. This is definitely a case of be careful what you ask for.

Now I know what you’re thinking. There must be some system in place to take care of the extras. Really? Where does it say that? Reanimating a corpse? No problem. Curing leprosy? No problem. Too many limbs? Problem. 

Do you suppose there could be a Heaven just for extra arms and legs? Maybe bits of brain tissue and an occasional ear or nose? Hard to play a harp, nu? Maybe you could combine the extra parts into more people but we all know that God sticks a soul in at birth. If you whittle a boy out of wood, does it have a soul? So it’s Golem Heaven then. Soulless Frankenstein monsters in their own little come-to-Glory habitat. 

For those believers out there who keep getting asked about why God doesn’t heal amputees, feel free to use these arguments. My gift. 

On a related note, suppose you get a dead person’s heart. Do they have to use your old one in Heaven until you finally kick the bucket and you can trade back? Are there missing books of the Bible that might explain this? Inquiring minds would really like to know.

Welcome to Oceania

I’ve often said that I consider apologists liars and apologetics lies because you have to start with a lie and then tell more lies to support it. I doubt that the apologists themselves think that they’re lying, but I also doubt that they consider their own dishonesty, being buttressed by the false overlay of their religious belief. 

So we’ve seen the cherry-picking that goes on, from the Bible or from science and scientists. We’ve seen the twisting, where no matter what an opponent says, its meaning becomes something entirely different when repeated by the masters of deception. Sometimes, they have to go back decades or even centuries to find some factoid that they can twist to their satisfaction, while ignoring entire bodies of work. From William Lane Craig to Dinesh D’Sousa to Matt Slick, these purveyors of smoke concoct elaborate presentations based in a bastardation of their own mythology combined with the misapplied and misread bits of wrongness that they equate with factual knowledge.

And over the past few years, a new pretender to the throne of misinformation has appeared and has far too much influence to be ignored. David Barton may not be the first out of the clown car, but his misinformation is taken by many as just too good to pass up in the war against reality. 

His chief enterprise is the tearing down of the wall of separation, which he claims is a one-way wall that keeps government interference from religion while allowing religious influence in the government. This idea is so nefarious because it is entirely contrary to Jefferson’s ideas of separation and is completely at odds with the many pronouncements of the Founding Fathers and its purpose is to allow what those founders feared most regarding the co-option of government by the forces of religion. It ignores the entire purpose of Jefferson’s battle to end the supremacy of the Church of England over the taxpayers of Connecticut. 

To achieve his ends, Barton lies, misquotes, and simply invents what he cannot find. When confronted with his use of invented quotes, he claims that the quotes are in keeping with the attitudes and positions of those he’s quoting. He doesn’t just cherry-pick quotes, he invents them or uses quotes that have been invented.

Barton has claimed that Jefferson is presented as an atheist, an obvious strawman, although some have said that were Thomas Jefferson living today he would have been an atheist. We all know that he was, or at least presented himself as, a deist. In Barton’s imaginary world Christianity is persecuted and misrepresented.

Barton cites a case where a child was yanked out of school for praying over his lunch. It’s an outright lie, of course, the child in question was suspended for fighting, not praying. As an argument about how Christians are being persecuted this is specious since it’s actually over twenty years old. Is it possible that Barton has never been confronted with this lie? It doesn’t matter because his world is not our world. 

Barton is in league with Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition. They simply love this stuff. The usual suspects support him: Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, Doctor James Dobson, et al. If you wonder why religion is dangerous or evil, this sort of historical revisionism is a strong example. Although Barton claims to be an expert on things historical and Constitutional, he has no degrees in these subjects, His only degree comes from Oral Roberts University in Christian studies. (Bachelor of arts in religious studies.) When it comes to prayers in school, Barton jumps in it. Too many people are on board with Barton, and the influence on Texas textbooks and the adoption of pseudohistory is obvious. Barton’s Ministry of Information does not yet hold complete control, but it competes in the marketplace of ideas. Barton’s recent appearance on The Daily Show illustrates how he is able to spew his nonsense with little challenge. Stewart was lacking in not only the basic understanding of secularism, apparently, but weak in American history. 

The Founders were products of their times. Presented with the exegesis and historicity of the Bible in modern times I have no doubt that most would have immediately abandoned their deistic leanings. Adams and Jefferson discussed the possibility, as expressed by one of Adams’ teachers, that we would be better off with no religion at all. The discounted the idea then, but if they lived today it is my considered opinion that they would not. 

And as to Barton and his ilk, I’d curse them if I could. I would wish that whatever punishment they deserved would be given to them, and that would be enough. 

Religion-colored Glasses

We’re all familiar with the argument that religion is a source of morals and conveys a moral compass on adherents. I’ve often taken umbrage with that, since the sort of distorted morals that religion conveys are specious at best.

The main thrust of this argument will be the infamous Sermon on the Mount, which is the largest collection of moral teachings of Jesus. Even Dawkins points to this as a good thing. I beg to differ.

The SoM sounds good on its face. It’s like “free.” Who doesn’t like free? So anything with the word free in it appeals to everyone. But there’s no free beer, and that’s a point that should be kept in mind with every statement that Jesus supposedly made.

When you take off the religion-colored glasses and read the sermon, you see that it’s really nothing but feel-good homilies that have no meaning at all. Let’s take a look:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.”

Warm fuzzies, right? What, exactly are the poor in spirit? I’m interpreting this as people who are having daily problems that are becoming overwhelming. So, when you’re overwhelmed, you can hope for pie in the sky. How wonderful is that? This is an obvious empty promise. Fear being a main component of religion, and whether you’re poor in spirit or not, you are always kept in the dark as to whether you actually qualify for the kingdom of Heaven or the Lake of Fire. Somehow, this beatitude becomes a bit less of an encouragement if you think about it in that framework.

“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

This one’s really empty. It doesn’t say that the person for whom they mourn will be returned to them. It just says that someone (another follower?) will pat them on the shoulder to help them get through their loss. Since that’s normal hominid behavior, there’s no explicit promise here except that other humans will have empathy and they already do have empathy.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

Well, when the non-meek finish with the earth, the meek may not want it. This is another empty promise since there is no sign that in Jesus’ day or in modern times any meek will inherit anything and may actually be left out of their parents’ wills because nobody likes a mouse. Show some character, people!

“Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be fulfilled.”

Not happening. Sorry, but there are a great many people who hunger for such things, and occasionally they organize and actually receive righteousness to some small degree, only to have it snatched away again later.

I wonder if in this passage the righteousness in question is the coming of the kingdom of God on earth, in which the Romans will be overthrown and the Jews will be ascendant? Because yes, the Romans eventually perished at the hands of Christianity, but the Jews are still not doing very well. Remember, the Holocaust came after Jesus’ pronouncement.  It’s difficult to find a time in history when the benighted tribe of Moses wasn’t under someone’s thumb. I can see why the Jewish Jesus might think that things were about to be changed for the better, but that was the expectation for centuries.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”

How does this work, exactly? Someone owes you money, for example, and you tell them, “Look, I know you’re having a hard time, so I’ll just forgive the debt.” So then you lose your home because you couldn’t pay your mortgage. The only way that this makes sense is to assume that the brutal Yahweh will notice your small contribution to the general welfare of the world and somehow reward you for it. Maybe move your heavenly chair a few inches closer to him, though you’re still out in the wings somewhere.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Nice promise. But I can make an equally valid promise. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see Daffy Duck. There. Mine’s just as worthy. Trade one mythical character for another and it’s just as good. You can get a pretty feeling in your bosom if you’re a believer, but from the outside looking in, this statement is just vapid.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

This one is particularly odd because it seems to me that those who would be sons of God are the warmongers. Jesus seems to have forgotten that the penalties for breaking the ten and the 603 commandments is death. What peace, in a brutal world where the slightest infraction leads to torture or death? Jesus may have meant well, but the actions of God’s earthly princes have been deplorable.

The peacemakers of history are poorly remembered and they are usually trying to make peace after a war!

“Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.”

Selfish, isn’t it? Go ahead and put yourself in danger and you’ll be better off for it. If only you’ll be a steadfast follower of mine, it will make you a better person. Sounds like the rantings of Charles Manson.

The remaining statements are just mystical blatherings about how nifty we followers of me are. Salt that lost its savor? Where can I find some of that? Any group’s leaders will insist that they stand out and be counted, so the light on a stand rather than a bushel or the city on the hill are tactical in nature. And Jesus’ final statement that he comes not to destroy the law seems to have been completely ignored by the Pauline tradition. The Jewish law and its consequences were stricken from the Christian lexicon. This is particularly odd because Matthew, where the Beatitudes are found, was of the Petrine school of thought that Jewish traditions should be preserved, unlike Mark, who followed the Pauline line of thought.

If the Beatitudes are the best Jesus has to offer, he isn’t giving much. There is nothing here that can’t be found among the first-century Jewish thinkers or other philosophers or the Kingdom Movements of the day. My opinion is that the Jesus movements were mere extensions of these movements anyway – a sort of offshoot of them who believed that the time was not only at hand but that it had already come.

The religion-colored glasses work equally well on any part of the Bible. Ancient biblical heroes were those to whom genocide and murder were the order of the day, but to the believer they are placed upon pedestals because they were furthering the cause of God. Abraham was a hero because he was willing to kill his son if God so commanded. Contrast this with modern-day men and women who kill their family members because God told them to. We think they’re insane. But for those heroes of old, well, take off the glasses and see them for the mythical avatars they are: scriptural decrees that break the rules of morality in favor of obedience and submission.

Down the Rabbit Hole

It’s spring. The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and all’s right with the world. OK, maybe that’s a bit overstated. We’ve had more snow in the last couple of days than we had all winter. Still, there’s warmer weather on the horizon and maybe winter’s back is broken.

So, on with it.

The phrase, through the rabbit hole, is one I’ve used a lot of late because it means, to me at least, to examine things in depth, to deconstruct them and see how well the parts look closeup. It comes from Alice in Wonderland, of course, which I’ve always loved, and I highly recommend Martin Gardner’s annotated version of it, which puts it into the context of the times in which it was written and explains the less obvious.

And I’ve been going down a lot of rabbit holes: origins of Mormonism origins of the universe, origins of the Jesus myth. The deeper that you travel down any of these holes, the more wonders that you find. Curioser and curioser, as Alice so wonderfully put it.

In Mormonism, I like the Spalding-Rigdon theory, where much of the Book of Mormon was already written, or perhaps stolen, even before the small group of men found Joseph Smith to use as their expounder and spokesperson, with others adding small bits to it. I used to blame Joseph for the incredibly bad writing, since it was said that he was functionally illiterate, but as it turns out, the original fictional tale, “Manuscript Lost,” contained all the bad writing before its content was lifted and published in the Book of Mormon. The level of known, or suspected, detail is amazing.

In the Jesus myth, there is little of the story of Jesus, if anything at all, that can be considered historical. Mark’s gospel was, apparent to me, written entirely as a fictional story, and whoever “Mark” was, it’s clear that he would have known and expected his readers to know that it was fictional, or at the very least based in the works of others. The other gospel writers copied Mark, adjusting the story to fit their own positions and politics.

And finally, on the universe origins, I find a rabbit hole that never ends. A lifetime of study can only touch on the vagaries of theory and speculation about the whichness of what and why are the wherefores.

Now, when asked, “So, do you believe that everything just came from nothing?” I can answer with aplomb: Your question is meaningless. You do not know what everything is, and you do not know what nothing is, and therefore the question, as posed, is null.

I expect my questioner to reply that they know exactly what nothing is, and it’s obvious what they mean by everything. Then I will take them down the rabbit hole. “Everything” seems composed of molecules, made up of atoms, and finally of particles. What’s a particle made of? If you cannot answer that, and I certainly cannot, then you obviously do not know what everything is. 

And nothing is worse. Suppose I hand you, dear reader, a shoebox. I tell you, “There’s nothing in here.” You know exactly what I mean: there are no shoes, no wrapping paper, no bank records, no marble collection. In other words – nothing. But there is something, isn’t there? There’s air. Perhaps there’s an old dried-up spider’s leg that’s too small for you to see. Dust mites, maybe. Dust. There are particles passing through the box, unobserved and unfelt. There is quantum flux, whatever that may be. So it doesn’t really contain nothing, does it?

In fact, I would challenge my questioner to point to a place in the universe where there is nothing. Even in the vacuum of space we find light everywhere, particles flying on their way to somewhere, perhaps popping in and out of existence or travelling forward or backward in time, because particles, whatever they may be,  do no seem to be limited to a particular time direction. At the quantum level, everything you think you know breaks down and you have to begin to understand things in ways that the human mind did not seem to evolve to understand. Nothing is intuitive and anthropomorphic thinking is useless. For those of us deaf to the scientific formulae, it just doesn’t make sense anymore, and the closest we can come to finding “nothing” is the empty space in the quantum flux of a proton, which, as I recall, contains about 80% of the mass in the universe. So even that isn’t really nothing, is it?

If everything were to come from nothing, we’d first have to find some nothing. Otherwise, it’s just another hypothesis in the dustbin.

Then there’s the difference between infinity and eternal. It appears that infinity is a mathematical construct, and not much use in practical terms. If you count the moments between one thousand years ago and today, no matter how big a number you come up with, you can always come up with a bigger one, depending on your idea of a moment. 

But eternal, now there’s a horse of a different color. Is the universe eternal? Are matter and energy really indestructible? Is the universe a product of quantum tunneling or was there a big crunch before that big bang? I don’t know. And not only do I think that no one knows the answers to these questions, I don’t think that there’s enough data that anyone could know the answer, and I’m not certain that any human being could comprehend, ever, the exact nature of the universe. 

I’m fine with that, as long as somebody keeps trying. And then I’ll go a little further down the rabbit hole again.

“I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!”  – Alice

The Mitt We Never Knew

The NY Magazine article by Frank Rich reads like a mystery story. The mystery is why it’s a mystery: who is this plastic Mitt Romney?

The answer isn’t so difficult to understand. He’s nobody.

At least, that’s my opinion. He’s the consummate Mormon, a family man, wealthy,  glib, but guarded. This isn’t something odd or new. It’s Mormon tradition. Mormons have always had something to hide.

When I think of Mormons in high places, I think of the idea of placing people where they can influence politics. You don’t need to fill all the seats, only a small percentage is necessary to exert control, and Mormons do like control.

In 1861, Sir Richard Francis Burton visited the Mormons, and was disappointed at how little they would reveal to him. The church was naturally persecuted for their odd views of plural marriage and strange practices – secret practices much derived from Masonry.

In modern times, there are secret handshakes and life-threatening vows as well as group chants such as “Pe Le Ale!” and who wouldn’t be a little nervous that the general population might find these things out? Much of this has been watered down a bit from the earlier practices because it was shocking even to the members. No longer are the members touched on their bodies through the slits of their tunics.

“Milk before meat,” they say, and the missionaries give you a pre-recorded session of teachings that are suitably whitewashed for non-Mormons. You will never get the meat, and from the apparent ignorance of the missionaries, they never got it, either. In fact, the deciding factor of many Mormons who left their faith was knowledge of their own church and practices and history.

Catholic priests wear the collar and nuns wear the habit. The Pope dresses in Medieval clothing. Orthodox priests wear funny hats. Orthodox Jews have dreadlocks. The Mormons have no paid clergy, so they say, and the missionaries wear business suits. But even the Mormons’ clothing represents their reticence to show themselves to the world. The magic underwear. What other religion wears  specifically religious clothing where it cannot be seen?

How much money does the Mormon church take in? How much money is involved in the Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? We’ll never know. It’s a secret. The inside of the SLC temple is a secret – only Mormons are allowed there. There is a distinct discomfort in revealing any of these secrets to the general public because the Mormons know, somewhere in their heart of hearts, that they would be embarrassed by the revelations.

So it’s no surprise that Mitt has a practiced penchant for secrecy. He doesn’t want you to know how insanely wealthy he is, doesn’t want you to know where he keeps his money, doesn’t want you to know if he wears magic underwear or if his real loyalties are to the church rather than to the country.

Further, it is my opinion that a lifetime of such secrecy leads one to shun social connections and that self-disclosure is seen as a character flaw rather than a way to involve people with you. Mormons are told many things about the rest of the world and how pathetically immoral it all is. Many of them have little cultural literacy outside their “allowed” practices. So if it seems that Mr. Romney doesn’t actually have a personality, that isn’t far from the truth. His is a cultured and shaped caricature of a human that must be built to replace the personality he is not allowed to have. He’s not hiding his real self; he simply doesn’t have one.

Tail Wags Dog

I was recently reading a piece by Edwin Kagin in which he intimated that religion began when the first con man met the first fool. Respectfully, I must disagree.

It appears to me that the dynamic of leader/follower is, in some respects, an agreement by both parties and perhaps a fault for both of them.

But I picture the event of religion’s beginnings a bit differently – a crowd begging to be fooled. I think that people want someone to tell them that everything will be all right. And I think that if no one rose up to take the mantle, the crowd would appoint somebody. (If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve.)

There’s a reason that they’re referred to as sheep. They feel lost and want a shepherd to take them by the hands and lead them somewhere, anywhere, better than where they are. When the night winds howl and the lightning lights up the treetops, people want reassurance that it won’t hurt them. They want to know that the storm will end. They want a leader who shows them that the dark is nothing to fear.

One might say that their religious leaders are taking advantage of people – that they magnify and play on the fears of their followers, and certainly such exist and they are legion. To a beggar, charity is a marvellous thing.  Authority over others is a temptation that some cannot resist. Simple trust in the invisible overlord is certainly more attractive than the drudgery of problem-solving and the hard work of learning how the universe actually works, especially at a time in history, or before history, when there simply was no knowledge to draw conclusions from.

And therein we see the downfall of religions: we now live in a time where knowledge is available in plenty and when compared with the all form no substance nature of religion, knowledge reigns supreme. Religion cannot compete with an ever-growing body of understanding about the physical universe. The sheep will learn to follow the shepherds who can give them  results.

Or the best days of the human race are behind us.

Ignore the Obvious

Credulity.

There, that was easy. Those purveyors of religiosity would have you accept belief, faith, as a virtue. Become as a little child if you want pie and cookies.

But that’s not right, is it? It’s certainly beneficial to the smoke salesmen to have bevys of susceptible folks waiting with bated breath for someone to fill their heads with nonsense. But what’s the benefit for the individual, the group, the world?

If believing is accepting propositions as true without sufficient evidence to do so, and knowledge is a collection of facts, I certainly know which set I’d take seriously. But others don’t seem to have my particular bent. Jesus died, came back to life, and flew up into the sky. Yes, and Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse.

Seen any winged horses lately? A rare breed, no doubt.

How is it that people can be so irrational? I can understand the heathens and the pagans – those folks from the country who rubberneck at the big buildings – buying into fantastical stories, but why do the city folks do it, too? (These are metaphorical groups – not to be taken literally!)

We think of the ancients as superstitious and ignorant. Yet we seem to be as ignorant and superstitious as they were. Belief is a component of the human experience and for some reason we don’t seem to be able to outgrow it.

Whenever a believer begins a sentence with “I believe . . . ” I ask him to please not tell me what he believes, but to tell me what he knows. I don’t care if he believes that the moon is covered with pigeon feathers, and someone probably does believe that, because people can and will believe anything that they can imagine. And when they say to me, “I know . . . ” I am sure that they do not know because it requires knowledge to know anything, and the next thing that follows that phrase will certainly be something egregiously foolish.

Worse, the phrase, “Jesus said . . .” is one of the worst starting bits for a rational statement, because, if there was one, there is absolutely no way that we can possibly know whether or not he said a particular thing. Or when. Or why. What we can know is that gospel writers were not afraid to put words into his mythical mouth.

I try to avoid the use of belief in reference to myself. I do not believe in evolution. I do not believe in the Big Bang. I do not believe in black holes or singularities or particles or atoms or molecules. These things are all a part of a body of science and together they make up an unfathomable and wonderful body of knowledge – and this knowledge is always shifting,  changing, and that’s a good thing.

It’s a good thing because science cannot remain static, and that’s why I don’t believe it. Tomorrow, a better theory may replace the Big Bang. Another set of laws may replace quantum physics, which superseded Newton’s laws and gave them more depth. My world is ever-changing and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth the effort.

I’ve been reading the letters of non-believers who wrote to the freethought paper, The Blue Grass Blade, in 1903. Some of them are so written that they could have as easily have been written today as over a hundred years ago. The grasp of science and its importance is amazingly clear. Others are caught in the perception of science of the day, where planets come out of stars and will go back into them and so on – ideas that were perhaps never really accepted but these people were reading them, at least, and trying to understand the world around them rather than joining the head-nodding sheep at the local brainwashing factory.

And so I think that we, today, may also be thinking that some of the claims we hear are the truth when they are as likely to be supplanted with something else in the future. When they change, I’ll change with them because it gets better all the time.

Don’t tell me what you believe. Tell me what you know.