God; Through The Looking-Glass - (Why I Am An Atheist - IV)

(Isis and Horus -- Mary and Jesus)

 



"The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind."

-- H.L. Mencken; American Author

"History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unkonwn without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it."

-- Robert A. Heinlein; American Author

"Man is a marvelous curiosity . . . he thinks he is the Creator's pet . . . he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea....I do not fear death. I was dead for billions of years before I was born, and did not suffer the slightest inconvenience for it."

-- Samuel Clemens ('Mark Twain'); American Author


Three authors; three quotes - same conclusion. There is no 'god'.

Why?

Most people who call themselves 'atheist' are really saying they're 'not Christian'. Of all religions, Christianity takes the prize for being the easiest to manipulate; the most-'feelgood' - and, as a result, the greatest danger.

As to 'god'-in-general, that's been rather fully-addressed -- (1) the simplest explanations for the existence of the universe do not include phantoms, as they cannot be proven to exist; (2) the universe is a random place; (3) earth itself is not a 'closed' system, existing in harmony - in fact, the opposite is true; (4) to believe in the existence of a 'god', one must accept many things entirely on faith - which is based on circular, unprovable statements.

This is enough evidence to prove to me that a 'god' cannot possibly exist. If it's not enough for those who may read this missive, that's fine -- I'm not attempting to change anyone's mind here - I'm explaining why 'god' doesn't work for me.

Now, I'm going to back up.

Actually, about 5,000 years - because to understand the Abrahamic religions, we have to understand their origins. I'm going to pick four major ones - you can make up your own mind as to the 'unerring authenticity' and 'divine authorship' of the Bible.


The Sun - Everyone's Original 'God':

From the beginning of any recorded history -- starting with petroglyphs on every continent - the sun has been the Original Fact. Without this, nothing happened. Early man knew that there was a direct correlation between the sun and the crops - the more sun during the spring and summer months, the more things grew. During the dark months, everything 'died' (went dormant), and came back ('resurrected'). It's no suprise - or shouldn't be - that every culture in the world has a 'resurrection mythology' - usually dealing with a god who died and came back to life, associated in some manner with the sun.

The historian, James Ballantyne Hannay, in his book "Christianity - The Sources of Its Teaching and Symbolism", was one of the first modern historians (in the 1920's) to make these comparisons between the Abrahamic religions and their ancient counterparts. While his book was controversial, and was banned by the Catholics, his revisionist observations created the groundwork for what is commonly known today -- none of the Abrahamic religions are unique.


Horus; Horus - Who's Got The 'Horus'?:

The greatest example of this comparative is the ancient Egyptian pantheon, which gave rise in turn to the Greek, then the Roman, pantheon. Although this piece of text is rather long, take a moment and review the comparatives between Horus and Jesus - there are over thirty:

Comparison of some life events of Horus and Jesus:

Event	Horus	Jesus
Conception:	By a virgin.	By a virgin. 8
Father:	Only begotten son of the God Osiris.	Only begotten son of Yehovah (in the form of the Holy Spirit).
Mother:	Meri. 9	Miriam (a.k.a. Mary).
Foster father:	Seb, (Jo-Seph). 9	Joseph.
Foster father's ancestry:	Of royal descent.	Of royal descent.
Birth location:	In a cave.	In a cave or stable.
Annunciation:	By an angel to Isis, his mother.	By an angel to Miriam, his mother. 8
Birth heralded by:	The star Sirius, the morning star.	An unidentified "star in the East."
Birth date:	Ancient Egyptians paraded a manger and child representing Horus through the streets at the time of the winter solstice (typically DEC-21).	Celebrated on DEC-25. The date was chosen to occur on the same date as the birth of Mithra, Dionysus and the Sol Invictus (unconquerable Sun), etc.
Birth announcement:	By angels.	By angels. 8
Birth witnesses:	Shepherds.	Shepherds. 8
Later witnesses to birth:	Three solar deities.	Three wise men. 8
Death threat during infancy:	Herut tried to have Horus murdered.	Herod tried to have Jesus murdered.
Handling the threat:	The God That tells Horus' mother "Come, thou goddess Isis, hide thyself with thy child."	An angel tells Jesus' father to: "Arise and take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt."
Rite of passage ritual:	Horus came of age with a special ritual, when his eye was restored.	Taken by parents to the temple for what is today called a bar mitzvah ritual.
Age at the ritual:	12	12
Break in life history:	No data between ages of 12 & 30.	No data between ages of 12 & 30.
Baptism location:	In the river Eridanus.	In the river Jordan.
Age at baptism:	30.	30.
Baptized by:	Anup the Baptiser.	John the Baptist.
Subsequent fate of the baptiser:	Beheaded.	Beheaded.
Temptation:	Taken from the desert of Amenta up a high mountain by his arch-rival Sut. Sut (a.k.a. Set) was a precursor for the Hebrew Satan.	Taken from the desert in Palestine up a high mountain by his arch-rival Satan.
Result of temptation:	Horus resists temptation.	Jesus resists temptation.
Close followers:	Twelve Disciples.	Twelve disciples.
Activities:	Walked on water, cast out demons, healed the sick, restored sight to the blind. He "stilled the sea by his power."	Walked on water, cast out demons, healed the sick, restored sight to the blind. He ordered the sea with a "Peace, be still" command.
Raising of the dead:	Horus raised Osirus, his dead father, from the grave. 10	Jesus raised Lazarus from the grave.
Location where the resurrection miracle occurred:	Anu, an Egyptian city where the rites of the death, burial and resurrection of Horus were enacted annually. 10	Hebrews added their prefix for house ('beth") to "Anu" to produce "Beth-Anu" or the "House of Anu." Since "u" and "y" were interchangeable in antiquity, "Bethanu" became "Bethany," the location mentioned in John 11.
Origin of Lazarus' name in the Gospel of John:		Asar was an alternative name for Osirus, Horus' father, who Horus raised from the dead. He was referred to as "the Asar," as a sign of respect. Translated into Hebrew, this is "El-Asar." The Romans added the prefix "us" to indicate a male name, producing "Elasarus." Over time, the "E" was dropped and "s" became "z," producing "Lazarus." 10
Transfigured:	On a mountain.	On a high mountain.
Key address(es):	Sermon on the Mount.	Sermon on the Mount; Sermon on the Plain.
Method of death	By crucifixion.	By crucifixion.
Accompanied by:	Two thieves.	Two thieves.
Burial	In a tomb.	In a tomb.
Fate after death:	Descended into Hell; resurrected after three days.	Descended into Hell; resurrected after about 30 to 38 hours (Friday PM to presumably some time in Sunday AM) covering parts of three days.
Resurrection announced by:	Women.	Women.
Future:	Reign for 1,000 years in the Millennium.	Reign for 1,000 years in the Millennium.

The coincidences are evident.

This, taken alone, would be enough evidence to question all four gospels as simple 'lifting' of prior religious mythology. Unfortunately for the Abrahamic religions, it gets worse - at least, for the practitioners of the Abrahamic faiths today.


Akhenaten, The Heretic King and the 104th Psalm:

This is the single-most controversial argument, because it predates the Christian world.

The 104th Psalm is a piece of religious literature attributed to King David, and which is found in the Old Testament. While it's a moving piece of literature, and a hymn to the 'god' of Abraham, there's one problem.

In 1883, the tomb of Aya, the mother of Amenhotep IV, was discovered. In it were four hymns, written by Amenhotep IV.

Amenhotep IV was an enigmatic character. There's no doubt his early personality was formed by the presence of Froelich's Syndrome, a deformity creating broad hips and other feminine features (the likely result of royal-inbreeding). Upon ascending the throne sometime around 1353BCE, Amenhotep IV put in place many of his personal philosophies, honed during his childhood. Chief among these was the worship of a single deity - a sun god he called "Aten".

Changing his name to "Akhenaten" ('Glory of Aten'), he set about re-creating Egyptian theology itself. Banning all the other gods, he built a city near Amarna called "Akhetaten" ('City of Aten'). In it, he created a massive temple to the Aten, and set about writing the theology which would support his new 'god'.

Needless to say, the established priesthood did not appreciate being turned out of their temples and being forced to find other employment. Akhenaten's reign would prove short - but not without consequence.

The four hymns he wrote survived, thanks to the fact that they were in his mother's tomb, which was not desecrated after Akhenaten's death, as she was considered more her husband's (Amenhotep III) wife than her son's mother. What the French archaeologists who translated the writings didn't know at the time was that they'd discovered the Smoking Gun of the Bible - proof that the Bible is not original, 'god'-authored, or 'inspired'.

The Bible - or quite likely good parts of it -- are little more than restated ancient text.

It turns out that the Hymn to the Aten has at least eight points of direct translation to the 104th Psalm, and the 'feel' of the entire piece is too similar to be dismissed as coincidence.

One or two direct correlations would be enough. Unfortunately, the 104th is a near-complete copy of the Hymn to the Aten.

There's a problem here, folks.

The Hymn to the Aten was written at least 300 years prior to the life of King David.


The Sinai Codex and the Evolution of the Bible:

Beginning in the Middle Ages, Western culture began a huge disservice to education - they began granting degrees to preachers through 'collegium' which were established not to teach objective fact, but religion.

This practice continues today, and is in great measure responsible for muddying the waters between legitimate arts and sciences, and the study of religion.

Put another way - to the layman, all degrees look the same. A 'Doctorate of Divinity' conferred by a 'Bible' college looks the same as a legitimate degree in history from a real university.

This has allowed generations of 'professors of divinity' to vouch for the accuracy of the Bible - in the eyes of most laymen in the Western world, the Bible is the unerring, infallible word of 'god'.

There's only one problem with this. It's not true.

The smoking gun here is the Sinai Bible, or the Codex Sinaticus, discovered in 1761 by an Italian traveler and scholar in a monastery in Sinai. The book was incontrovertibly dated to between 325CE and 350CE, and is the earliest known complete copy of the Bible.

Upon examination, it is widely believed by serious historians that this Bible is one of 50 copies commissioned by the Emperor Constantine upon his conversion to Christianity.

There's a problem.

Several (twenty-five) missing verses; four missing passages, and four missing phrases, to be exact.

While none of these materially affect Christianity as it is known today, the missing bits attest to this: The Bible is not, and has never been, a 'complete' document.

The fact is, it's been changed over the centuries to fit cultural norms.


The Gospels - Not As Current As We Need Them To Be:

The earliest gospels only date to between 65-70CE. This would be like trying to write the history of the Panama Canal or the Spanish American War with only anecdotes from the people who'd built it or been there. Imagine trying to chronicle the failed efforts of DeLesseps, then the further efforts of the Americans in building the canal - at least, we'd have the date in the main lock as proof!

Now, imagine trying to write the history of the Spanish-American War with only the input of a few Cuban grandmothers and a handful of anecdotes from American participants, as handed down to their descendants.

You get my point. Lacking contemporaneous evidence, there's a high likelihood that Jesus himself is a fiction, created from several ancient texts and 'celebrated' on days coincidentally close to those of more-ancient religions.

A simple comparative of Christian holidays will give you what you really need to know - it turns out that Constantine co-opted pagan holidays as Christian in order to help keep the Empire together, which was busy coming apart at the seams because of religion.



Gilamesh; Gilgamesh:

The final nail in the Bible's coffin comes not from the Romans, Greeks, or Egyptians - but the Sumerians.

In 1844, a British archaeologist excavated some mounds near the present-day city of Mosul in Iraq. Several of these tablets, written in cuneiform around the year 2100BCE referenced a King Gilgamesh, who ruled the region some 600 years prior.

In what is now known as the Epic of Gilgamesh, there is the story of a Great Flood, which Gilgamesh helps alleviate by putting two of every creature in a huge boat to survive the deluge.

The thing is, this story predates the Biblical story of Noah's flood by at least a thousand years.


Summation:

The Bible, while a collection of sometimes-moving stories, is a work of fiction. That fiction has been handed down as truth for centuries, by people who had something to gain from the control over other people, to people who wanted a convenient answer to the workings of the universe.

Abrahamic religion - the belief in one god who created everything, and which is responsible for everything, is not new, nor 'revolutionary' in any regard. It's a compendium of several religions dating back nearly 5,000 years, and which has taken large amounts of its story from religions-past.

On trial, there is nothing to commend the Bible, Judaism, Christianity, or the offshoot of Judaism, Islam, as anything more than a compendium of other religions.


Observations:

"But doesn't this 'prove' that there's a common thread to history? Doesn't this 'prove' there's a 'god'? Can so many people through the ages be wrong?"

Yes, they can. History proves this, through the discovery of non-worship.

In observing these beliefs through the ages, we have to remember that the same people believed a lot of things -- first, by observation (the sun rises and sets; there is more light during the growing season, and less when things are dormant; blood makes the ground fertile - burying dead things in the earth makes it even more so; putting manure on the ground also makes for better crops), then by practice (sacrificing someone around the end of the year seems to make the sun come back).

The Egyptians learned that things went right on being the way they had been - and chalked it up to not letting Akhenaten get by with things for too long. However, when the Romans supplanted the Egyptians, their religion died out -- because no one wanted to worship a set of 'gods' which had let their people down.

The Greeks were in the same boat - and while the Romans left their 'gods' alone, the residents of Greece and the Hellenic region gradually gave up on Athena Parthenos and all the rest - for the same reasons.

It's pretty apparent that none of the religions of the world -past or present - have explained the mysteries of the universe adequately enough to have survived. In my own case, I've just gone one-'god'-further than most.

The God Paradox -- Why I Am An Atheist (III)

"Fear believes—courage doubts. Fear falls up the earth and prays--- courage stands erect and thinks. Fear is barbarism---courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, devils and ghosts. Fear is religion, courage is science." -- Robert Ingersoll

"All thinking men are atheists. Not only do I not only not believe in God but I regard organized religion as a menace to human happiness." -- Ernest Hemingway

"Fear is the parent of cruelty, therefore it is no wonder god and cruelty have gone hand-in-hand." -- Bertrand Russell

The Paradox Of God:

Up to now, most of what I've written could more properly be said to deal with the dominant three religions in the world today - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - the three Abrahamic religions from the Middle East. They're the most militant - the most demanding of converts and assent; the most intractable about their doctrines. (It's because of this that they're the most 'successful' in spreading their influence, if you wish to consider number-of-conversions as a litmus-test; just go view the animated map in Part I if you want to see).

However, while the practitioners of the Big Three would take exception, there's an issue at play here far larger than this - and it really boils down to the existence of a 'god' at all - regardless of what you might want to call him.

In their turn, we've seen other religions at work in the world, each 'explaining' 'god' in their turn. Each were spread by force of arms, and each dried up in turn when their priests couldn't be backed up with the sword.

There's a pattern here - but more on that later.


The 'Razor' Cuts Deep....

God truly is a paradox.
 
Absent metaphor ('a baby's cry'; 'a sunset'; 'wind in the trees'), there is no means of proving the existence of a 'god'. "But isn't that cold-hearted? I mean, how can you look at everything and not 'believe' in something?"

The answer is rather simple. It's called Occam's* Razor.

William of Ockham was (ironically) a Franciscan friar and a logician/mathematician in the 14th century. 1300's England was a particularly vibrant time - while most people still believed the earth to be flat, and while the concept of 'science' was still iffy, there were many who practiced logic and reason in contrast to superstition (now, how this held with his Franciscan superiors is a matter of some question), William stated the now-famous dictum, "Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate" (plurality should never be posited without necessity) - or, in modern English, "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances."
 
Albert Einstein restated this dictum in later years as, "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

The value of this dictum in science precludes a lot of things - including most conspiracy-theories, gossip, and most explanations for the unknown.

This, by the way, includes 'god'.
 
It's why most leading scientists don't throw-in with the whole 'god'-concept. Since the National Academy of Sciences began tracking such things around the turn of the last century, the stats have remained relatively stable -- well over half of all scientists (people who are in a position to either prove or disprove scientific theory) do not believe in a 'god'.

When I encountered Occam's Razor in college, as well as the belief of most of the scientific community that there is no such thing as 'god', I was given some pause. I'd been exposed to no small amount of religious 'training', and while none of it had 'taken', I was still partial to my Mother, and didn't want to believe she was a nutbag out of hand.


A Cursory Examination of the Natural Order:

I began to look at nature. The more I did, the more I understood -- if there was a 'plan' to things, it wasn't orderly, nor scientific. The system was not 'closed', with a 'balance of nature'. In fact, there was serious evidence at the time (1970's) that the earth had been struck by a comet or meteor, which had in turn eliminated most life on the planet. 

Apart from a handful of species hunted-out by men, nature was responsible for far more extinction than we were - and extinction was the norm, not the exception.

It turned out that Thomas Hobbes was right - life was '...nasty, brutish and short....'; the modern era allowed us the luxury to examine such things as our treatment of nature and our fellow man - and how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

I then looked for a spokesman for 'god'. I talked to my mother's pastor.



A Long Talk with a Man of the Cloth:

Initially, he was warm and receptive. He referred often to his Bible (a reasonable thing to do, inasmuch as he advocated Christianity). I left out the questions regarding Cain's wife and other things - I wasn't there to quiz him on a book he clearly knew better than most - rather, I asked him about several anomalies - such as Joshua, 10:12-14, when 'god' made the earth stand still for a day.

I asked him if he knew that, had that really happened, the earth would have had to stop spinning on its axis, then start again - and that this was physically impossible; it would also have severely disrupted everything from ocean currents, tides, weather, photosynthesis - and would have in turn nearly destroyed life on the planet.

We discussed a couple of other disturbing tales in the book -- and at the end, somewhat exasperated, he told me that "....'god' can do whatever he wants....'
I then asked, "Then, why a 'book' at all, when there are clearly no rules by which 'god' is obligated to observe?"

I asked him several more questions - none of which he was able to answer ("Why is there no concrete evidence that Jesus lived?"; "Did you know that corpses can't bleed - so why does John narrate that 'out of his side poured blood [and water]?" "Did you know that the very earliest of the Gospels were written a full 65-70 years after the events they describe? It would be like trying to write the history of the Spanish American War, today, with only anecdote.")

He became very terse with me, telling me that I was in 'great danger of Hell', and that he would pray for me. He told me he had much to do, and that the conversation was over.


Studying Beyond:

Later, I learned that I was on the right track - no one else had answers to these questions, and no one else was capable of proving the existence of a 'god', either. I learned of many actions of the three main religions from the odd (like Pope Gregory sanctioning the killing of cats because they were 'diabolical' - which, in turn, allowed the rodent population to increase along with the incidence of plague) to the sinister (like the Inquisition).

It didn't take long for another fact to jump out at me -- the three main religions in the world were far more interested in spreading their influence and power than they were about explaining the mysteries of the universe.

I learned that if my quest for explanation was to have any fruit, I'd have to look in other places than religion.

I fell back to science. I found that the same answers awaited me there. In that, things began to make a Lot More Sense.

In fact, things made more sense without a 'god' than they did with one.


Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics:

The final nail in the coffin of 'god's' existence is the effectuality of prayer.
Statistically, there's no proof that things like prayer or other 'communication' with 'god' work. 

Try this -- the next ten times you feel the need to 'pray' about something - flip a coin. Keep records. Compare your answers to the coin-flips. Give 'yes' to 'heads', and 'no' to 'tails'. 

You'll find that no more than fifty percent of the time - and perhaps even less -- your 'prayer' was answered. While there will be no correlation to the coin-flips, you'll find that the coin-flips will be in more-or-less even distribution.

Most of the 'answers' can, if you're honest with yourself, be attributed to your own actions, or to random coincidence.

As it turns out, 'god' does not heal amputees.

(Next -- A Short History of Religion In The Western World)

Freethought, Religion, and Skepticism - Why I Am An Atheist (II)

"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." - Gene Roddenberry

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins



"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen Roberts



My Dad once told me that "if 'god' were put on trial, he'd be hanged for a thoroughly disreputable fellow." It took me a while to understand that one, also, but I digress.

The 'god' of the Abrahamic religions - the three (Judaism; Islam; Christianity) which are the most-prevalent religions in the world today - all worship the 'god' whose characteristics are listed by Richard Dawkins in the quote, above.
It's not my intent to 'put 'god' on trial' here in this series, but rather to point out the things that made me become an atheist. To do that, we have to examine the alternatives, and discuss the logic.


Several Misconceptions About Atheism

It's also important to understand a very pivotal fact: Atheism is not a belief.
The "a" in atheist means 'absent'; not 'anti' or 'against'. I'm not 'against' 'god', any more than I can be 'against' the Man in the Moon, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, or anything else that doesn't exist. While I'm personally appalled that people teach their children about the last three as if they do exist, and while it's not healthy to promote such things (especially when in all three cases, the child in question is going to learn the truth one day), it's not possible to be 'against' them - they don't exist.

Atheism is the absence of a belief in a 'god'. Period. It's really nothing more or less than that; it doesn't have any of the defining points of a religion - there's no mythology; no codification; no outcome.

As Richard Dawkins says in the clip, below - there's really nothing different about atheists and non-atheists, save this: We've just gone one-'god'-further than most of the rest of humanity:






Freethought and Skepticism:

Freethought, as I've explained earlier, is the core of my philosophy. In its essence, Freethought holds that nothing proposed as truth should be accepted or rejected without first resorting to logic and reason. When we apply this litmus-test to religion, given what can be proven now, there is no basis for the acceptance of religious dogma, supernatural phenomena, or other related ideas save for the application of faith, which requires a belief in something which cannot be proven.

Skepticism is another major, but not core, part of my personal philosophy, and taken together, Skepticism and Freethought are the basis for any reasoned approach which would result in an atheist conclusion.
Skepticism is a philosophy which holds that it is difficult, if not impossible, to make claims of absolute truth without the application of science. (For example - 2 + 2 will always equal 4 - not 3, or 5, but always 4).

When applied to religion, Skepticism provides a further litmus-test requiring proof to the skeptic - but that proof may be subjective. It follows that while Freethinkers are almost always atheist, a religious Skeptic is not necessarily so.


Is Atheism Really Just Another Religion?

If the person claiming to be an 'atheist' applies the litmus-tests above, he or she cannot possibly consider atheism a religion. Atheism holds that there is no 'god', because the absence of any concrete proof renders that existence impossible.


But How Can You Prove a Negative?

Science holds -and I accept this as fact - that you cannot 'prove' a negative. In other words, you cannot prove that something doesn't exist. That's not the point of atheism - atheism has nothing to prove.

On the other hand, the world's major religions ask that we humans accept - on faith alone - the existence of their 'god'. Acceptance usually comes with a certain exclusivity - 'club membership', if you will - and while that scratches a few 'itches' in the human psyche - indeed, a lot of us are wired to 'belong', as much as we're wired to 'believe' - again; about 7-10% of us aren't.
 
In our case, we require proof.


(Next, I'll review the abysmal 'proof' offered by the Abrahamic religions -- and the resemblance to beliefs even-more-ancient than they are.)

The Enemies of Reason - Why I Am An Atheist.

"Will, why don't you explain why you're an atheist?"
 
I'd stated my practice of Freethought twice - and when I stated that I really didn't want to reprint it a third time, my friend and longtime-reader said, "No. You stated a group of philosophies, and that's all fine and good. I want to know why you, Will, don't believe there's a 'god'."
 
"Oh, great", I thought. "Now, if I say 'no', I'm a coward - and if I say 'yes', I'm peeing in the collective Cheerios of at least 80% of the people who might read this blog, and I'll be calling 'crazy' at least 40% of them. This is not what I want to do."
 
"Will? I'm serious. I want to know. You seem to be perfectly willing to defend everyone's right to believe whatever they want. Why is that different for you?"
 
I began to see the point.

So, for the next five days, I'm going to Go Where I Haven't. I'm going to explain, as best I can, the basis for Why There Is No God.

First, I want you to follow this video. It explains a lot of things, and each day I'll be posting a different chapter. The 'feel' of Dawkins' writing and production is something you'll need to approach the same way as you'll approach what I'm about to write.

Done? Good. Now, let's start at the beginning.

Belief - It's Not For Everyone
Some of us are 'wired' to believe. Some of us aren't. In his groundbreaking book, "Why We Believe What We Believe," Dr. Andrew Newberg reached a startling conclusion after the exhaustive study of several thousand test-subjects -- right down to the brain-scan activity of each person, the areas utilized by the brains of "believers" are different than non-believers.

In sum, while most people are 'wired' to believe in a 'god', around 7-10% aren't.
He also concluded that 'believers' aren't better people inherently - in sum, they're not as 'moral' as they think they are - in fact, 'believer' types are just as likely to commit a broad range of crime, including violent crime, when faced with the same circumstances.

Put another way - 'believing' in a 'god' and practicing that ritual (study of a 'holy' book; church attendance, etc.) will not instill a 'code' which cannot be overridden or violated by the 'believer'.

'Believers' are just as likely as 'nonbelievers' to shoplift; steal from work; cheat on their spouses; run traffic lights. They're also just as likely to commit violent crimes like murder - and do so in more-or-less equal numbers to their nonbelieving counterparts.

In fact, religion has been used to justify sometimes-violent control over others, disproportionately to the same behavior in 'nonbelievers'.

War and Religion - -They're Inextricably Linked:
I've often said that if you draw a line from the beginning of recorded time to today, and erase a part of that line corresponding to every war which has either been started by religion or directly sanctioned by it, you'd have little more than dots left. This animated map tells the whole story, and a lot better than you'd perhaps like to think - because every time there's a 'movement' in the religion that's listed, there's been conflict - oftentimes bloody - which both preceded and followed it:





When I was ten, I was puzzled - my Dad didn't believe in a 'god', but he'd been involved in a 'profession' (he was an Air Force pilot) where being killed was a high likelihood. 

My mother, on the other hand, went to church every Sunday morning - and of those times when she'd drag me to listen, I'd come home even more puzzled -- 'Why was this man yelling at everyone? Why was this - practice - so drenched in long faces and thou-shalt-nots? Why was everyone so unhappy here-and-now, but so willing to go someplace they'd never been?'
 
Then, I asked my Dad - "Why don't you believe in 'god'?"

He smiled at me and said, "Because I've seen Hiroshima."

 
It took me a long time - about ten years - to fully get my mind around that statement.Dad was among the first Americans into Japan after WWII. One of the first places he wanted to see was Hiroshima, because he wasn't far from the city.

He managed to wangle a pass which would allow him access. The first thing which struck him was the enormity of what had happened -- one weapon had destroyed the larger part of the city outright; the fires which swept the area afterward had done with the rest.

One of the things he could never get out of his head was the body of a person - male or female could not be told -- which was literally baked into the asphalt of one of the streets.

He told me of this later in life, and said that then and there he came to the conclusion that there couldn't possibly be a 'god'.

Well And Good - But What Does This Prove?

Right now, nothing.

What I've done has been to give you some bearings and a couple of anecdotes.

Tomorrow and for the days after, I'll define why 'god' doesn't exist.
The rest is up to you.

A Minority Report on This Most Gluttonous of Days....

 

One of the greatest, if controversial, authors and poets of the 20th century here in America was William S. Burroughs.

Burroughs was, as I, an atheist. He was one of the seminal members of the 'beat poets', including Neal Casady and Jack Kerouac. 

This piece is actually entitled, "Thanksgiving Day, November 28th, 1986", from the collection "Tornado Alley".

Enjoy your turkey. I'm working in the garden:

The Great Sarah Palin Turkey Snuff-Film....

Before I slip off tomorrow and work in the garden (it's going to be great weather), I thought I'd treat you to The Great Sarah Palin Turkey Snuff- Film.

Turns out that Ms. Palin thought it would be a great idea to go to a local poultry-prep yard and 'pardon' a turkey (just like the President does every year at the White House):

After the (non) event, she stayed to speak with the pre-invited reporters.

I guess the cameraman didn't get the cue to step 3/4-right and frame Palin against the woods - because after Palin pardoned the turkey, the crew went right back to work - (1) grab turkey by feet; (2) place turkey upside-down in abbatoir; (3) press release-lever with knee; (4) 'snick' goes the head; (5) stand with turkey while said-critter thrashes a bit and drains into the trough; (6) walk out of camera-shot, and (7) get another turkey. Repeat 1-7.....

Holiday Stress....

I had a neighbor once.

She was in her late fifties, and I was a bit of a curiosity, because I was in my early forties, and had no 'woman' - something she thought was Just Unnatural.

Also, I had the habit then, as now, of leaving for Places Warmer toward the end of the year, when the rain started to drive me nuts here in Oregon.

This, also, was Just Not Right - to her.

In her case, she had a husband (who was a satchel-assed fellow who expected dinner on the table by six; you could set your watch by his coming and going from work, and he did one thing in the summer -- get away from Momma and go fishing -- in the fall; he went hunting.

She seemed oblivious to the fact that he took his vacations away from her. She was equally-oblivious to the fact that everyone around her viewed her as a bit of a busybody, who saw everyone's business as hers, and who didn't mind sharing the most intimate details of life with whomever happened to be mowing their lawn at the time.

One such afternoon, it was my turn.

"I've got so much to do!", she said, in a tizzy. "I have twenty relatives coming over! It's THANKSGIVING!"

"Is it?", I replied. I was more concerned with the fact that (1) I'd just gotten the leaves blown, and (2) I wanted the lawn mowed and fed for the winter before it rained again.

"Yes! What? You don't do THANKSGIVING??!?"

"No, Nancy. I don't do holidays. Remember?"

"Oh. Well, I do - and I've got twenty people coming over!"

"You said that."

"Well! You'd know this if you had any family!"

And so it went. One fall, she was emoting about her 'family' and how they 'expected' her to make dinner for all of them over Thanksgiving and Christmas, and how stressful the holidays were.

I observed, "Nancy, this time of year is as stressful as you make it."

Now, I might as well have told her about the second head I'd grown overnight. She stared at me. Honest.

"Yes, Nancy. You don't HAVE to do any of this. None of it."

"My family would never forgive me!!"

"Well, I'd be asking some questions about them, if I were you -- but that's me."

"You NEVER have anyone over!"

"No, I don't. I also don't damn-near-vaporlock in someone else's driveway, either, Nancy. You should try it sometime."

Needless to say, she never got it. So, without any adieu, here is Astra's Foolproof Recipe for a Stress Free Holiday:

1. Spin the globe. Close your eyes. Put your finger down. [Hint: Practice this often, so you know by feel that your finger is, every time, going to come down somewhere between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn].

2. Once you've picked your location, find a good hotel or resort - preferably near the water, where you can swim.

3. Book travel arrangements.

4. Go there. Swim. Lie in the sun. Explore the local liquor, preferably with orange juice and a huge-assed cigar. Leer at members of the opposite gender. Swim some more. Sample tropical cuisine.

5. Buy postcards; especially with exotic-looking stamps. People like those.

6. When you address them to all of your relatives, ensure that they understand (1) you miss them; (2) wish they were with you [whether you do or don't hate their dark and bloody guts in truth], and (3) wish them a great holiday.

7. Upon your return, take careful notes about which ones of them behave like two-year-olds regarding your trip.

8. Write these off. They're not worth your further time.

Trust me - it works.

Have a super Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Whatever Else Floats Your Boat this time of year.....

JFK....

So, let us not be blind to our differences -- but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved.

And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.


--Commencement speech; American University - June; 1963

Dick Cavett and the Great Sarah Palin Language Controversy....

I've always been a fan of Dick Cavett.

He's Two Years Older Than Moses, but manages to stay current. He's been in several movies (who can forget him calling the female protagonist in "Beetlejuice" a 'flake'?); ran his own variety show not once, but twice -- and managed to get Jefferson Airplane to do a stint the day before Woodstock.

Cavett is a thinking-man's host; the guy who uses impeccable English and who manages to do more by way of skewering his opponent with a calm, well-stated phrase than any legions of Maury Povichs or Dr. Phils.

So, when he decided to take on Sarah Palin in the New York Times the other day, it was a treat.

Don't worry if you don't understand words like "lagniappe". You can always look 'em up. That's the the thing about Dick - he doesn't talk down to people; he just states his case, and if you don't understand, it's an opportunity for education.

As to Palin -- well; I'll let the man speak for himself.

He does it better than I.

_____________________________________________________
November 14, 2008, 10:00 pm

The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla

Electronic devices dislike me. There is never a day when something isn’t ailing. Three out of these five implements — answering machine, fax machine, printer, phone and electric can-opener — all dropped dead on me in the past few days.

Now something has gone wrong with all three television sets. They will get only Sarah Palin.

I can play a kind of Alaskan roulette. Any random channel clicked on by the remote brings up that eager face, with its continuing assaults on the English Lang.

There she is with Larry and Matt and just about everyone else but Dr. Phil (so far). If she is not yet on “Judge Judy,” I suspect it can’t be for lack of trying.

What have we done to deserve this, this media blitz that the astute Andrea Mitchell has labeled “The Victory Tour”?

I suppose it will be recorded as among political history’s ironies that Palin was brought in to help John McCain. I can’t blame feminists who might draw amusement from the fact that a woman managed to both cripple the male she was supposed to help while gleaning an almost Elvis-sized following for herself. Mac loses, Sarah wins big-time was the gist of headlines.

I feel a little sorry for John. He aimed low and missed.

What will ambitious politicos learn from this? That frayed syntax, bungled grammar and run-on sentences that ramble on long after thought has given out completely are a candidate’s valuable traits?

And how much more of all that lies in our future if God points her to those open-a-crack doors she refers to? The ones she resolves to splinter and bulldoze her way through upon glimpsing the opportunities, revealed from on high.

What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, “How was it she talked?”

My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.

And, she concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any.

(A cynic might wonder if Wasilla High School’s English and geography departments are draped in black.)

(How many contradictory and lying answers about The Empress’s New Clothes have you collected? I’ve got, so far, only four. Your additional ones welcome.)

Matt Lauer asked her about her daughter’s pregnancy and what went into the decision about how to handle it. Her “answer” did not contain the words “daughter,” “pregnancy,” “what to do about it” or, in fact, any two consecutive words related to Lauer’s query.

I saw this as a brief clip, so I don’t know whether Lauer recovered sufficiently to follow up, or could only sit there, covered in disbelief. If it happens again, Matt, I bequeath you what I heard myself say once to an elusive guest who stiffed me that way: “Were you able to hear any part of my question?”

At the risk of offending, well, you, for example, I worry about just what it is her hollering fans see in her that makes her the ideal choice to deal with the world’s problems: collapsed economies, global warming, hostile enemies and our current and far-flung twin battlefronts, either of which may prove to be the world’s second “30 Years’ War.”

Has there been a poll to see if the Sarah-ites are numbered among that baffling 26 percent of our population who, despite everything, still maintain that President George has done a heckuva job?

A woman in one of Palin’s crowds praised her for being “a mom like me … who thinks the way I do” and added, for ill measure, “That’s what I want in the White House.” Fine, but in what capacity?

Do this lady’s like-minded folk wonder how, say, Jefferson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, et al (add your own favorites) managed so well without being soccer moms? Without being whizzes in the kitchen, whipping up moose soufflés? Without executing and wounding wolves from the air and without promoting that sad, threadbare hoax — sexual abstinence — as the answer to the sizzling loins of the young?

(In passing, has anyone observed that hunting animals with high-powered guns could only be defined as sport if both sides were equally armed?)

I’d love to hear what you think has caused such an alarming number of our fellow Americans to fall into the Sarah Swoon.

Could the willingness to crown one who seems to have no first language have anything to do with the oft-lamented fact that we seem to be alone among nations in having made the word “intellectual” an insult? (And yet…and yet…we did elect Obama. Surely not despite his brains.)

Sorry about all of the foregoing, as if you didn’t get enough of the lady every day in every medium but smoke signals.

I do not wish her ill. But I also don’t wish us ill. I hope she continues to find happiness in Alaska.

May I confess that upon first seeing her, I liked her looks? With the sound off, she presents a not uncomely frontal appearance.

But now, as the Brits say, “I’ll be glad to see the back of her.”

**********

PS: Lagniappe for English mavens: A friend of mine has made you laugh greatly over the years. David Lloyd is a comic genius (I can hear you wince, David) who wrote for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Cheers,” “Taxi,” “Frasier,” Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and me, not necessarily in that order. As a language fan, he has preserved many gems for posterity in his prodigious memory bank. Here comes my favorite:

A Navy lecturer was talking about some directives on the blackboard that he said to do something about, “except for these here ones with the asteroids in back of.”

Even David couldn’t make that up.