Life After Death For Microbes

When you kick-the-bucket in this terrestrial abode and head off into that great eternal afterlife located in an even greater heavenly abode somewhere beyond the Pillars of Hercules (or equivalent), no doubt you expect an everlasting existence interacting with deities and of course your fellow, albeit also deceased, humans. But what about all the other terrestrial life forms (animals and plants). Don’t they too deserve their slice of the afterlife pie? No fear. You’ll find them too out back of beyond, or wherever ‘heaven’ resides.  

According to most religions, after your demise, you enter into the afterlife phase of your ‘life’. And apparently you will be sharing that afterlife with some rather exclusive company, just your fellow human beings*. There will be no other life forms present in Heaven, Hell or Hades, be they companion animals (pets), butterflies or vermin**. But if you stop and think about it, that’s nonsense. If you have an afterlife, all living things have an afterlife. 

Okay boys and girls, run this bit of wisdom past your local clergy.

Let’s be clear from the outset, you are not an organism. You are a colony of organisms. You call these individual colony members or organisms, cells***. Your body’s cells are living things in their own right.

Now chances are, you believe in an afterlife when you die, an afterlife that’s still within the physical realm of matter and energy. A non-physical afterlife would be hell indeed, since you couldn’t see, hear, touch, taste or smell, and all your lifetime memories, your personality, your creativeness, all encoded in your neurochemistry, your neurons, your brain cells, would go poof. Thus: that physical you, that’s now in a physical afterlife, is still a colony of unicellular living things or organisms. If you head to the afterlife, so do all the individual living cells that made you up, including sperm cells, eggs cells, blood cells and those all essential neurons.

The logical upshot of that is that each and every single-celled micro-organism, microbe, bacteria, etc. when it dies, goes to ‘heaven’, or whatever realm(s) you think houses the afterlife. For lack of something more suitable to label this location, let’s just equate afterlife with ‘heaven’.

Thus, every multi-cellular organism, in reality also a colony of single-celled organisms, goes to an afterlife upon their demise. Jellyfish, sponges, clams and oysters, snails and slugs, ants, newts, frogs, mackerel and  minnows, ravens and robins, pussy cats and puppy dogs, whales and dolphins, apes and monkeys, even plants go to a ‘life’ after death. So presumably, when you mow the lawn, all those soon to be dead grass cells will go to ‘heaven’. But at least when you get to ‘heaven’ any lawns there won’t need mowing – you couldn’t kill off anything that was having an eternal afterlife now could you? So, how cows and goats and horses get nourishment in ‘heaven’ would be a mystery.

Of course maybe you don’t need nourishment in the afterlife (so much for beer and pizza nights). That would solve a lot of problems, like the need for lions in their afterlife to kill lambs in their afterlife, but why then drag all of your digestive systems including blood circulation, liver functions, kidney functions, etc. along for the afterlife ride?

But then you can’t discriminate. Digestive cells are just as deserving of an afterlife as your (required) brain cells and neurons and nerve cells and sensory organs like eyes and ears. So in your afterlife you carry a lot of now useless baggage along, like your lungs. You no longer need to breathe in order to provide oxygen to your now immortal cells.

Further, any cell that’s part of a multi-cellular organism that expires before the rest of the colony of cells goes to ‘heaven’ or whatever (or should that be wherever?). Anything defined as alive, when it dies (as all things must even if it’s a bacteria that reproduces asexually generation upon generation), has an afterlife. That’s the logical upshot of believing that you have an afterlife. It makes no sense that your brain cells should accompany you to a ‘life’ eternal, yet a chimpanzee’s brain cells don’t because a chimpanzee doesn’t.

The proof of that pudding is that some animal cells, in the form of organs and tissues, can get transplanted into humans. Some body parts from pigs I believe are compatible for human transplantation, like heart valves. Now when the human who received that animal transplant dies and goes to ‘heaven’, isn’t it logical that the donated animal body bits go along for the afterlife ride?

As another little titbit offered up, consider the fact that 90% of you is not you at all. There’s all those trillions of bacteria and worms and mites and other hangers-on that live in your mouth and nose and guts and blood stream; those that are in your hair and on your skin thriving as parasites or even as symbiotic organisms. Most of these critters will die with you and go with you to ‘heaven’.  

Besides, you wouldn’t want to go to your afterlife without having all of your previously departed companion animals present to greet you at the Pearly Gates, now would you? And of course ditto for all those pets you now have whose demise will follow yours. You’ll want to be reunited with them too.

On the other hand, if pets ‘survive’ into the afterlife, and ditto microbes, then so will black plague bacteria, sharks, scorpions, man-eating tigers, icky spiders, cockroaches, rats, cobras, and any and every other nasty you can conjure up. Your own afterlife might not be so heavenly after all!

Now I keep talking about ‘heaven’ and not ‘hell’. Why? Because it would be difficult to argue that any biological cell can be or is sinful or evil. Therefore, all cells go to ‘heaven’ and by implication you must go to ‘heaven’ since none of your body cells deserve to go to ‘hell’!

On the other hand, maybe there’s no such thing as an afterlife, a ‘heaven’ or a ‘hell’ to spend eternity in, for anything from humble bacteria to the decidedly un-humble human.

The absurdity of it all! Not that the concepts that microbes have an afterlife, rather the concept that there even is an afterlife.

*That’s good to be with your friends and loved ones forever. That’s bad if it’s your ex, your mother-in-law, and your old supervisors that would just as soon fire you as look at you.

**That’s good – no pesky flies, mosquitos, cockroaches and rats. That’s bad – no pretty flowers, no good fishing (catch and release only of course) and no songbirds.

***Thus, when you die (i.e. – declared medically dead), you don’t really die in absolute totality in the interval from one heartbeat/breath to the lack of what would have been your next heartbeat/breath; you aren’t completely dead, since not all of those cells that make up you die at the exact same time that medical science says you have kicked-the-bucket. Of course all those not quite yet dead cells will shortly follow suit, but all up, unless you were at ground zero at Hiroshima or Nagasaki (or equivalent), the snuffing of all of your cells is a drawn out process, not something that’s instantaneous.



Science vs. the Religious Right: Part Two

The religion vs. science debate should have been settled and confined to the dustbin of history multi-generations ago. The fact that it still rages today sits squarely on the shoulders of those diehard never-give-in right wing religious fundamentalists who just keep on keeping on about how the ‘goat-herders’ who penned the Bible deserve all the Nobel Prizes for getting the science really right. No doubt the non-existent validity of the debate will continue to rage for generations to come.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

IN ADDITION

The Earth is the centre of the Universe (or firmament) and the Sun goes around the Earth and that religious point of view got lots of people who suggested otherwise into lots of trouble.

Scientists can’t determine the age of the Earth, nor can they determine what the origin of life was, for the extremely simple reason that they weren’t Johnny-on-the-spot and therefore actually present at the exact time and place of the happening.

Homosexuality/lesbianism is a free-will choice and has nothing to do with genetics or biochemistry or neurochemistry. You aren’t born gay any more than you’re born an astronomer or a criminal. Homosexuality is encouraged by the powers-that-be as a ways and means of population control. Satan also inspires and encourages homosexuality to cause the participants to be in direct disobedience and in defiance to God and God’s laws. Further, there are clear connections between homosexuality and paedophilia and bestiality, etc.

Fossils are a deliberate deception by Satan; or a deliberate deception by God in order to test your faith; or proof of that universal flood – take your pick.

Non-avian dinosaurs and human beings coexisted, religious fundamentalists citing fossil dinosaur and human footprints check-by-jowl embedded into rocks (in Texas). Dinosaurs were therefore on Noah’s Ark (which means Noah’s Ark had to have been just a tad larger than the Bible says it was).

There was no evolution by natural selection, just intelligent design and creationism by a Creator God. God created all species as is. Humans did not evolve from apes. Teaching and accepting evolution is apparently an evil Jewish plot according to some! Further, evolutionists support abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research.

There are no ‘natural’ disasters only acts of God (as in displays of God’s wrath). It’s been claimed by those Right Wing religious fundamentalist types that whenever God is pissed off, He sends His wrath via a ‘natural’ disaster. So, any tornado or hurricane or blizzard or earthquake or wildfire, etc. isn’t really ‘natural’, rather its an Act of God’s punishment. However, it’s rather amazing that tornados tend to happen in roughly the same areas at roughly the same time of year; ditto hurricanes; ditto blizzards; ditto wildfires; ditto floods. You don’t tend to get massive earthquakes other than in well known fault zones and thus earthquake prone areas. You don’t get volcanoes erupting in areas not known to be tectonically active. Now if ‘natural’ disasters were really Acts of God, you might expect God to produce the occasional blizzard in Southern California in July; or how about 40 straight days and nights of rain in Death Valley; New York City becoming ground zero for a massive earthquake or volcanic eruption; a tornado outbreak in Alaska in January; or wildfires in areas of high rainfall and high humidity. If ‘natural’ disasters are Acts of God, why doesn’t God have an asteroid striking Chicago or a comet spanking Las Vegas or for that matter institute a massive solar flare or coronal mass ejection to blanket the entire US of A?  Even more central, why does God have to hide behind Mother Nature’s skirts in the first damn place? Why doesn’t God take a leaf out of His earlier wrath-filled up-yours and smite the first born?

Environmentalism (i.e. – the Green Dragon) is out to destroy Christianity, destroy America and replace it with fascist tyranny! In fact, the ultimate objective of environmentalists is to kill off 95% of humanity! After all, didn’t God say to humanity to “be fruitful and multiply” and subdue the earth and take dominion over the earth (and basically rape and pillage – Genesis 1:28) which has any greenie spitting chips!

Stem cell research is equivalent to Nazism.

We’re well aware that some fundamentalists reject vaccinations and blood transfusions and will allow their child to die rather than allow any medical procedures that they see as ungodly and against Biblical teachings. 

Anything fundamentalists don’t like, like say birth control, will be linked to anything and everything nasty, like AIDS, and by extension, all disease is caused by sinful activities. In a similar fashion, if you accept any ungodly tenants, like evolution, you are way more prone to be antisocial and of criminal intent. Mass murderers are all Darwinists.

In a variation of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, one finds fundamentalist Christians supporting Islamic fundamentalists (otherwise strange bedfellows) since the latter do not accept and undermine Darwinian evolution.

Any normal museum that exhibits anything on physical or cultural anthropology that doesn’t reflect and give credit to the Almighty and God’s holy word is just asking for trouble.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

There’s more that you probably didn’t know.

According to Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association:

* The laws of thermodynamics are detailed in the Bible although Fischer tends to muddy the waters by mixing up the first and second laws of thermodynamics.

* Jesus is the entity that holds together the nucleus of an atom. [What held the nucleus together before the birth of Christ isn’t related by Fischer, assuming there even ever was a supernatural Christ of course.]

* Only God can alter the climate. Humans have nothing to do with any global warming. Global warming is pure junk science. Further, God created fossil fuels for the benefit of mankind and so to refuse to use them (in favour of renewable sources like wind or solar energy) is an insult to God. Trying to prevent climate change is anti-Christian.

If you have a spare couple of weeks, tune into the Right Wing Watch (RWW) website, or his videos on YouTube for tons more Fischer idiocy.

Bryan Fischer isn’t the only rather fishy fundamentalist going.

Just touching a very few of the highlights (via the RRW) from the patriarch of the extreme religious fundamentalists, Pat Robertson, and so-called self-proclaimed prophet Cindy Jacobs, is more than enough to make any scientist turn in their lab coat and head for the hills. Again, you can few more of them (if you must) on YouTube – far better on an empty stomach however  

PAT ROBERTSON

“[Robertson’s] 700 Club: Climate change helps environment and civilization, SUV owners treated like witches.”

“Robertson: Expect natural disasters and divine wrath over Middle East peace talks.”

“Robertson: Environmentalists may cause the deaths of ‘a couple billion people’.”

“Robertson lashes out at ‘doctrinaire’ environmentalist ‘fanatics’.”

“Robertson dismisses ‘nutty,’ ‘true believer’ climate scientists.”

“Pat Robertson blames drought on Americans who ‘ignore the laws of God with impunity’.”

“Robertson: Scientists ‘can’t speculate about the origins of life’.”

“Pat Robertson says Satan is behind homosexuality and abortion rights.”

“Pat Robertson says people could have stopped deadly tornadoes through prayer.”

“Robertson calls Oklahoma earthquake a sign of the end times”

“Robertson suggests crack in the Washington Monument was a sign from God.”

“Robertson: Asteroid will destroy the Earth.”

CINDY JACOBS

“Cindy Jacobs heals broken cheek bones and her own tumours.”

“Cindy Jacobs’ prayers can cure insanity.”

“Cindy Jacobs’ five-year-old daughter can stop tornadoes.”

“God miraculously made a pair of Cindy Jacobs’ shoes last for years.”

“Jacobs warns Obama’s ‘anti-Biblical’ policies have led to ‘floods and fires and more’.”

“Cindy Jacobs: I have the power to revive dead children.”

“How Cindy Jacobs reversed a hysterectomy.”

“[Jacobs]: We are seeing natural disasters ‘because sin has reached Biblical proportions.”

“Jacobs: The DC earthquake is a sign from God to share the gospel.”

“Jacobs: God is using earthquake to break Japan’s pagan idolatry.” 

“Jacobs: Birds are dying because of DADT [Don’t Ask Don’t Tell] repeal.”

“Jacobs and Pierce issue warning that CA [California] will be destroyed by earthquake if Prop 8 is struck down.”

“When Cindy Jacobs caused Washington DC to flood.”

On that note, I might just head for the hills myself!



Science vs. the Religious Right: Part One

The religion vs. science debate should have been settled and confined to the dustbin of history multi-generations ago. The fact that it still rages today sits squarely on the shoulders of those diehard never-give-in right wing religious fundamentalists who just keep on keeping on about how the ‘goat-herders’ who penned the Bible deserve all the Nobel Prizes for getting the science really right. No doubt the non-existent validity of the debate will continue to rage for generations to come.

There are those religious fundamentalists who claim that all you need to know about science is contained within the Old and the New Testaments of the Bible. Not only is the Bible a religious text, an historical document, but it’s a science textbook too chock full of astronomy, geology, meteorology, biology, medicine, etc. And should there ever be a disagreement between nerdy white-coated scientists in jeans and God Almighty’s holy word, well it’s a no-brainer; no contest – God always wins – in God we trust not nerdy Einstein-types. Any science that undermines your faith in God, etc. is a false science. Real science proves the bona-fides of the Bible.

The fact that such Right Wing Christian fundamentalists say this with a straight face and sincerely (apparently) believe this claptrap is actually a tad frightening. In any other context they appear to be intelligent, articulate, sane and rational beings! But then again, how many people have been taken aback to find out that their wonderful and lovely next door neighbour was a serial killer, kidnapper, paedophile, or a closet white supremacist pseudo-Nazi.     

Fundamentalists though in general, when pressed, admit they aren’t scientists, but that doesn’t stop them from bucketing any science that rubs their personal worldview the wrong way. One common argument is that science is fundamentally limited since it can only explain the natural, whereby supernatural philosophy (i.e. – Right Wing Christianity) explains all. The natural in their opinion or belief is just a minor subset of all things supernatural.

SCIENCE vs. RELIGION

There has been quite a number of various religious vs. scientific issues hotly debated over time.

The Earth is (religion) or is not (science) the centre of the Universe. Science won that issue.

The age of the Earth is less than 10,000 years old (religion); way, way, way more than 10,000 years old (science). Science won that debate too though diehard religious fundamentalists haven’t conceded any ground.

Most recently, starting with Charles Darwin in 1859 (“The Origin of Species”) down to the Scope’s (Monkey) Trial in 1925 and ongoing today is that Homo sapiens were made in God’s image (religion) vs. Homo sapiens were the product of natural (Darwinian) selection and evolution from primate ancestors (science). Creationism is pure science; evolution is junk or false science according to the religious right. The names that fundamentalists call evolutionists would make many a blue-water sailor blush!

It’s that most recent issue, evolution (science) vs. creationism/intelligent design (religion) that mainly dominates the debate today. You could make a journalistic career just following, covering and reporting on the ever ongoing battles between creationists, educational institutions and authorities, politicians, and scientists over whether science curricula and textbooks should be giving equal space to God and intelligent design vis-à-vis Darwinian evolution.

But intelligent design is absolute nonsense upon reflection. God, the so-called intelligent designer, places the female sex organ sandwiched right between the two waste elimination orifices. That’s intelligent? And the male sex organ does double duty sharing a common tube as a liquid waste elimination apparatus. That’s intelligent? Speaking of tubes, how often has the food/drink you inputted ended up doing down the wrong tube – the windpipe instead of the oesophageus? Painful, isn’t it? It’s also potentially lethal – people have choked to death. So, is that intelligent designing in operation? 

And if humans are God’s personal favourite intelligently designed creatures, why create other creatures and natural scenarios than render that intelligently designed human into a prematurely dead intelligently designed human? I mean if the Godly created bacteria and viruses don’t get you, the puffer-fish, scorpion and snake venom might instead, assuming the sharks, lions and tigers don’t have you for a midmorning snack first. And if life doesn’t end your life, there are tornadoes, earthquakes, lightning bolts, tsunamis, and a whole host of other meteorological, geological and even astronomical phenomena just waiting to put you six feet under. Conclusion: so much for a loving God looking after His favourite intelligently designed flock.

BIBLICAL ‘SCIENCE’

But let’s go back to the Biblical truth about all things scientific. We all know the standards:

The Bible is literally true; scientifically accurate. Science according to the Bible requires that:

* Life, the universe and everything was created in just six days somewhere roughly around 4004 BCE and any evidence to the contrary of an earth billions of years old (i.e. – radioactive dating; geochronology) is the work of that great deceiver, Satan.

* Adam was created from the dry dust of the earth despite that fact that a human is roughly 70% water.

* Eve was created from Adam’s rib which means Eve should have been, genetically speaking, a male.

* There was a universal flood which requires the creation (and later destruction) of an additional and massive inventory of water out of nothing in defiance of conservation laws.

* Noah’s Ark carried two (or sometimes more) individuals (male and female) of every (presumably bisexual) species. Okay, that’s fine, but that must include the New Zealand flightless kiwi bird; every species of Antarctic penguin; the Australian koala; and the dodo bird of Madagascar. Am I the only one who sees a problem here?

* Some Biblical characters lived in excess of 900 years, but such longevity hasn’t been observed in recent post-Biblical times so don’t get your expectations up, no matter how religious and God-fearing you happen to be.

* A bush refused to be consumed by fire, an obvious case of the application of high-tech fire retardant in use thousands of years ago.

* The Red Sea parted over a rather lengthy time period in order to allow hundreds of thousands of pedestrians to ‘cross with the green’ and then un-parted so that another set of pedestrians got run down by trying to cross against the sudden red traffic light. Such a phenomenon has never been witnessed since so a one-off report doesn’t have much credibility.

* The sun and moon stood still in the sky and thus for the duration the Earth ceased rotating on its axis.

* Unicorns exist (and no doubt so do Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy).

* Life actually begins before conception according to Jeremiah 1:5!

* Jonah lived undigested for three days in the belly of a large fish. Jonah must have had on hand an extraordinary supply of antacids in order to prevent being dissolved and turned into or assimilated as fish food.

* Mary reproduced asexually – the virgin birth – which means Jesus should have been born a woman, again, genetically speaking.

* Jesus walked on water in defiance of gravity. Newton and Einstein are not amused at this parlour trick!

* Loaves and (dead) fishes multiplied – the creation of something from nothing yet again.

* Presumably the lion will lie down with the lamb (and also presumably if the lion isn’t hungry).

* There were resurrections (life after death). That’s no big deal any longer in this modern age of medical ‘miracles’.

To be continued…



An Abstract Idealized Deity

There are those philosophers who are religiously inclined who have tried to conjure up their idealized version of a deity – God for all practical purposes and have been doing so ever since Methuselah was in diapers.   However, versions of God as represented by them aren’t really the Biblical God. Rather, their God is the ideal abstraction of God or the philosophical concept of God. So any similarity between their abstractions and the attributes given God of the Old Testament is purely a matter of coincidence. No matter – either way it’s all nonsense. 

God is many different things to many different people. God is everywhere (omnipresent); God is Mother Nature; God is love; God is the creator; God is dead; God doesn’t exist; God was an ancient astronaut; God is all-knowing (omniscient); God is all-powerful (omnipotent); God works in mysterious ways; etc. Whole books have explored the issue going back, well ever since humans could think and express their ideas on paper, or carve them in stone, or whatever. However, many of these abstract and idealised and philosophical versions of God (often contradictory) usually bear no relationship to the God of the Bible, or specifically God of the Old Testament.

I’m not exactly sure what an abstract idealized concept of God is supposed to achieve, apart from being an intellectual exercise like trying to put a numerical value on angels’ chinwagging on a pinhead, but it has nothing to do with putting bums on church pews.

God is an immaterial being who doesn’t exist in space or in time. That is a common Godly attribute, but one which is absolutely nonsense*. If God creates something that’s energetic and physical (possessing energy and matter) then God has to be something that’s energetic and physical in order to do that; that being creating that which is made of matter and is running on or off energy. You can’t create something from nothing that is immaterial or create something by nothing that’s immaterial. If God is therefore a physical and energetic something, then God must exist in space and in time since all material things (matter and energy), including a material creator and a material creation, exist in space and time. If God speaks, for example, God must be physical and possess energy. 

But the Bible provides ample examples of God existing in space and time starting with the creation itself (Genesis 1 and Genesis 2). Wasn’t the creation once dated in fact to 4004 BCE? A date is a location in time! If God talked to Moses via a burning bush, then God existed in space and in time – at a specific point in space and at a specific point in time. The goes ditto for events in the Garden of Eden and ditto anywhere and at anytime the Bible recounts some event where God did something; where God strutted His stuff, like in ancient Egypt and all those events related in Exodus.

Another variation on that theme is that God is everywhere. Well, God was somewhere, not everywhere when He was having a go at Adam and Eve! If you are physical, you cannot be everywhere at the same time.

God also has to be physical since He has a physical home turf (Heaven) and sits on a physical object, a throne – so God exists in space and occupies space.

If God is physical, and possesses energy, and expends energy, and there’s no real wriggle room there, then God is subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics – entropy. God may be eternal, God may be immortal, but God still has to refuel (i.e. – eat presumably) and by implication, God has to go to the bathroom! God also needs His sleep, or at least rest, as per that seventh day of creation.

God is unchanging is another Godly attribute some religious philosophers associate with Him. Well, if God is composed of matter and energy, if God exists in space and time, and if God is subject to entropy, then God can not be unchanging. If God rested on the seventh day, well, that’s change. In fact God didn’t do or perform the exact same operations each and every day in Genesis 1 and 2. So that too is change. In fact God changed His mind, creating animals before man in Genesis 1; man before the animals in Genesis 2. God was also willing to change His mind when it came to Sodom and Gomorrah – that’s obviously contemplating change even if S&G still got zapped. .

God is eternal is yet another philosophical given. That God is eternal is consistent with the Bible giving promise to life everlasting or life eternal. However, the concept of eternal, forever, or infinity is fraught with paradoxical dangers. Since the Universe is a finite 13.7 billion years old, that would imply that God pre-existed the Universe, which is alleged to have created all of space, time, matter and energy. Okay, that’s consistent too since if God created the Universe, God must have predated the Universe (which negates the claim that the Big Bang was the first cause that created time, space, matter and energy; there must have been a before the Big Bang). But the issue arises, if you are eternal, and thus have already existed for an infinite amount of time, then what changed in God’s circumstances to have brought about the creation of the Universe, or rather why the ‘all of a sudden’ “I think I’ll do this” when for an infinite period prior to your creation you had no plans to do this, yet you are apparently all-knowing, so presumably an eternity before you created the Universe you knew you would do so, yet bided your time and twiddled your thumbs for really no apparent logical reason. Maybe God was of that common human frame of mind: It should be done; it shall be done; it will be done - tomorrow.

Another variation on that theme is that God is timeless. If time is God’s way of preventing everything happening at once, then if you’re God, everything does happen simultaneously since by being timeless, or in a state of timelessness, there’s nothing to stop all things happening simultaneously.

God apparently is pure perfection. God doesn’t screw things up. Ha! His creation of the human species was the biggest screw-up of all time! God Himself acknowledged His screw-up with the 40 day and 40 night rain hence flood event). Even if you put the initial blame on Adam and Eve and not on (an apparently all-knowing the future) God (who knew what Adam and Eve would do before-the-fact) He still enacts miracles in order to correct His mistakes. If God had ensured an adequate supply of loaves-and-fishes in the first damn place, there wouldn’t have been any need for waving the magic miracle loaves-and-fishes wand. 

A common attribute is that God is all-knowing (omniscient) and that He knows the future. But if God knows the future, what was the point of sending Moses and Aaron to Egypt to get the (unnamed) pharaoh to “Let My People Go” when God knew perfectly well He would ultimately have to do the hard yakka Himself and kick ass. It was all wasted breath. By the by, that’s an excellent example (along with the flood of Noah and Sodom and Gomorrah) that God is anything but all-loving. Speaking of the flood, what was the point in creating all of humanity in the first place when the all-knowing God knew He was going to have to drown nearly the whole bloody lot of them a few generations on down the track! Creating humanity was just wasted effort. 

Another common trait given to God is that He is all-powerful (omnipotent). That too is nonsense. He maybe more powerful than a speeding locomotive; faster than a speeding bullet; able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, and He’s certainly up in the sky. However, there’s this paradox: can God create a rock so heavy not even He could lift it? If not, He’s not all powerful; if so He’s not all powerful. It’s a no-win situation. More relevant might be an observation, since God is physical, and presumably subject to the laws of the Universe, could God ever escape from inside a cosmic Black Hole? 

Speaking of those universal laws, one Godly attribute is that God is the creator of all physical laws, principles and relationships, but God is also a miracle worker and can override those laws, principles and relationships (God’s get out of His Black Hole jail card). In other words, God is also a miracle worker. That at least conforms to some Biblical events (like loaves-and-fishes) but it is also nonsense, or at least illogical. Miracles (if they exist) are God’s correction fluid (whiteout) – assuming God exists. If existence is affirmed on both counts that actually makes a mockery of an all-knowing, all-powerful supernatural deity since it would have been logical and preferable to have set in train the necessary conditions that would have negated the need for a later miracle. For example, don’t bother to raise the dead; rather ensure they don’t snuff it in the first place

Lastly, and this is my philosophical contribution to Godly attributes, God is naked as a newborn babe. Despite many references in the Bible of God talking to someone, Adam and Eve, Cain, Jacob, Jonah, Moses, etc. we never get an actual description of what God looks like. He speaks in a cloud or as a burning bush. All images of God, artworks, are of the human imagination. So, what did God really look like and why was He ashamed to actually show His face (something true unto this very day). Perhaps God doesn’t want to be seen because He was starkers – absolutely naked – and perhaps, assuming some mortal actually saw God, well no one dares mention the ‘emperor’ who has no clothes. If humans were made in God’s image, and God was ashamed of His nudity (as Adam and Eve were ashamed of their lack of clothing post their nibbling on a forbidden snack), then perhaps that accounts for our reluctance in most public environments to show off our birthday suits.

By the by, this is not meant to be an endorsement that a supernatural and Biblical God actually exists (IMHO He doesn’t), only that the logic of some so-called professional religious philosophers is sadly lacking by not taking into consideration texts that billions of people have and had defined as the absolute and definitive description of Godly attributes. Maybe those religious pie-in-the-sky philosophers couldn’t get a real job in the real world and had to rely on tossing around abstract concepts of godliness as well as juggling those angels and pinheads.

* For an example, here’s an incredible statement by academic philosopher Gerard J. Hughes: “Plainly, God cannot do things which are impossible for an immaterial being, such as walking, speaking, or exerting physical force on things.” [Varghese, Roy Abraham (Editor); Great Thinkers On Great Questions; Oneworld, Oxford; 1998; p.223.]

More Random Irreligious Thoughts

* Imagine the following: Destroy every religious text of any persuasion in existence; eliminate every religious institution; sack anyone involved in organised religion (or even disorganised religion); purge the name of any and every deity ever proposed, and then for good measure wipe clean the memories of every person with respect to anything and everything to do with religion in any shape, manner or form. Let’s turn the entirety of humanity into a flock of another kind, just like real sheep who presumably have no concept of all the sorts of things religions go on, and on, and on about.

Firstly, that would make for a much more peaceful planet, but that’s not my real point here. If the human race all of a sudden had no inkling of religion and associated rituals like prayer, deities, and thou shall nots, and miracles, and associated baggage - the slate wiped clean – would we invent it all over again and if so would it all be in the same old form as we know it now?

All of our religions cannot possibly be correct, but all of them could be wrong. Assuming that’s the case, could there be out there a really bona-fide god or gods – supernatural deities – with some sort of associated baggage that we have no comprehension of? Say these hypothetical supernatural entities have never made contact with Planet Earth.

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* Why is religion (and history too for that matter) so popular vis-à-vis say science or economics. Religion (and history) is told in story form and we’re natural born story tellers and recipients of say bedtime stories. Whole bookstores and libraries are filled with variations of “once upon a time” “they lived happy ever after”. There are multi-tens of thousands of movies and TV shows that play upon our need for stories. So that’s one reason. Another reason that religion is so popular is that it comes as a package deal. All the Big Questions (is there a God, your purpose, the meaning of life, free will, your soul, an afterlife, etc.) are wrapped up together in a nice box with a lovely pink ribbon. Reject religion, reject the pretty box of answers to your Big Questions, and you have to actually do some hard intellectual yakka to find out your own answers to those questions, individually, one at a time. So most take the easy road, the package deal, instead of striking out on their own, seeking their own intellectual answers come what may.

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* In May of 2013, the current Pope (as noted on the “Huffington Post”) said that atheists were okay for salvation and a place in heaven providing they had lived the sort of life that God intended. Alas, the very next day a spokesperson for the Vatican refuted that – no way can an atheist get on the good side. Well, so much for papal infallibility! It really is all so phoney – an absolute joke. 

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* Miracles (if they exist) are God’s correction fluid (whiteout) – assuming God exists. If existence is affirmed on both counts that actually makes a mockery of an all-knowing, all-powerful supernatural deity since it would have been logical and preferable to have set in train the necessary conditions that would have negated the need for a later miracle. For example, don’t bother to raise the dead; rather ensure they don’t snuff it in the first place!

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* Despite many references in the Bible of God talking to someone, Adam and Eve, Cain, Jacob, Jonah, Moses, etc. we never get an actual description of what God looks like. He speaks in a cloud or as a burning bush. All images of God, artworks, are of the human imagination. So, what did God really look like and why was He ashamed to actually show His face (something true unto this very day). Perhaps God doesn’t want to be seen because He was starkers – absolutely naked – and perhaps, assuming some mortal actually saw God, well no one dares mention the ‘emperor’ who has no clothes. If humans were made in God’s image, and God was ashamed of His nudity (as Adam and Eve were ashamed of there lack of clothing post their nibbling on a forbidden snack), then perhaps that accounts for our reluctance in most public environments to show off our birthday suits.

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* If you’re really honest about things, what’s THE most important wish list part or objective or goal or aspect of your life? Is it money? Is it power? Is it reputation? Is it winning the Nobel Prize? Is it success? Is it having the most perfect family? Is it pitching a perfect major league ballgame? Is it becoming POTUS, or perhaps Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Is it (fill in the blank)? No! More likely as not, your number one priority it is NOT DIEING! Well good luck with that ‘cause it ain’t gonna happen.

So, what’s the next best objective? An afterlife! Why? What’s really annoying about snuffing it is lose of consciousness. The idea that your consciousness that you spent a lifetime building up from scratch will just dissolve into grey goo to be consumed by bacteria is pretty abhorrent. If you have an afterlife, the minimum you must retain is consciousness or self-awareness. You may still be old and grey and can’t get it up; you may not have access to alcohol and tobacco and other similar addictions; you may only get TV reruns and old magazine issues to read; you favourite pizza may not be on the menu; you may even have to share your afterlife with your ex-boss, or your ex or your in-laws, others you’d rather not share anything with or be within ten miles (or kilometres) of; in short not everything will be just hunky-dory, but at least you’ll retain your consciousness for all eternity (and be bored witless even before the first several thousand years or so passes by). Is that a price you are willing to pay?

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* There are many, probably a majority of the population, who will claim to have had some sort of up close and personal experience with God, or Jesus, or angels, or some sort of supernatural entity. They will of course use that very personal experience as not only evidence, but proof that God, etc. exists. And it is extremely difficult to counter argue their conviction based on their experience. However, I too have had an intense up close and personal experience too, but one which I’m sure shows that these sort of profound spiritual experiences are some combination of wishful thinking (a desire to believe) and mental hallucinations. 

Now like many hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, I like to put out food for wild birds, especially in environmentally stressful times like winter or during a drought. Over the course of many years, I’ve had thousands of visitations – what bird is going to turn down an easy free feed? At the end of the day, there’s usually some cleanup to be done like sweeping up all the leftover birdseed husks, etc. And so it came to pass one early evening, I was waiting for two birds to finish up before I did the daily cleanup. And in due course they flew off, up over my roof. And so I went outside to start the cleanup, but there sitting on the apex of the roof were the two birds. As I looked up at them, they looked back at me, and for some inexplicable reason, I received a telepathic message from the two birds: “thanks for all the food; we’ll be back tomorrow”. And then they flew off. It was so real an experience that I just stood there stunned, in fact so moving was that experience, so bonding was that human-animal encounter that tears immediately started welling up in me.   

This was the first and only time I ever had such a vivid even spiritual feeling that remains as vivid and as spiritual now as it did seconds after the fact. But clearly I was imagining the whole thing. Birds cannot speak the human language. Telepathy doesn’t exist far less exist between birds and humans. Birds probably have no concept of being given a gift and thus no mental concept of giving thanks.

So yes, when someone says they had an up close and personal encounter with God (or equivalent), I’m sure that they are 100% sincere and a believer. But I’m equally convinced it’s a case, as was mine with the two birds, of self-deception.

Philosophies of the Religious Right: Part Two

The majority of churches, religious institutions and prominent religious individuals, though deluded IMHO, are for the most part, most of the time, middle-of-the-road and live-and-let-live. But as any probability statistician can relate to, there will be minorities on either side of that road. One side of that religious road, the Right side, are not only in your face but hold opinions (usually stated as facts) and philosophies that are anything but the normal mainstream. In fact they are extreme.

The Religious Right aren’t going to pay any attention to this, but no matter, here goes.

What are some more issues the extreme Religious Right are frothing at the mouth about and is it cosmically significant?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

A Woman’s Place

Their Point of View: In the Bible, men and women are not created equal. Therefore, marriage between a man and a woman is not an equal partnership. Women just gotta know their place, which is in the home, barefoot and pregnant, cooking and sewing and providing sex on demand! That’s obvious since in some churches or religious institutions equal opportunity/affirmative action is denied the female of the species. Last I heard the position of Pope was open to men only!

My Point of View: I have no trouble with the concept of the ‘house husband’ or the wife being the ‘breadwinner’. Hubby can cook and wash the dishes; the wife can instigate or demand sex on even days of the month; vice versa on odd days. Further, a woman should be given every opportunity to prove that she’s as dumb as the male of the species. Let’s hear it for Pope Mavis the First.

Church and State

Their Point of View: Church and State should be one and the same, with of course Christianity being the sum total of both and the be-all-and-end-all of all things.

My Point of View: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and IMHO, the current American separation of Church and State ain’t broke.

War on Christmas

Their Point of View: Christ is the spirit, meaning and embodiment of Christmas and therefore the two cannot be separated.

My Point of View: The Religious Right object here since in their POV the War on Christmas is the removing of Christ from Christmas. Well, so it should be too, for two reasons – there’s in all probability no connection between the birth of Jesus and the 25^th of December; there is no reason to believe that Christ actually ever existed. You cannot have a Christ in Christmas if Christ does not exist and nobody has ever proved that Christ ever existed, in the same way as say Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc or Henry the Eighth have been proved to have existed. Further, there are many with worldviews that exclude Christ (real or otherwise) from their belief systems and who resent having a Christ in Christmas shoved down their throats. And besides, anybody who is anybody and who lives in the real world is fully aware (thanks to January bills) that the spirit, meaning and embodiment of all things Christmas is consumerism and the more of that the better.

Cause and Effect

Their Point of View: The Religious Right Wing tends to make a lot of cause-and-effect assertions which they could never ever in a month-of-Sundays (and then some) prove in any court of law, yet they go on and on and on making these assertions as if these statements were absolute fact. For example:

* Disasters like Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, a massive killer tornado outbreak, or any other ‘natural’ act causing death and/or destruction are the direct result of God’s wrath because America (or any other Christian nation) is wicked and has turned her back on the Almighty.

* American soldiers and police officers killed in the line of duty died because God hates fags and America is a fag-loving society, or at least accepts them into society, into the police force and into the military.

* Mass shootings in schools are the direct result of prayer that has been banned from these public institutions.  

My Point of View: As I said above, none of this can be proved and ultimately has as much substance and significance to the population as any other fantasy statement presented as fact.

Some Other Looney Points of View

I picked up most of these one-off Religious Right Wing bits throughout 2012.

Their Point of View:

* Church attendance should be as close to compulsory as makes no odds and an atheist tax imposed on those not attending church.

* Belief in manmade global warming/climate change is an insult to God because He provided us with the gifts of fossil fuels which He intended for us to use.

* Gays, atheists, Muslims, and other undesirables shouldn’t be allowed to hold any positions of authority.

* All undesirables should be deported.

* Gays should be put to death; in fact any punishments for any Biblical sins should be carried out in the ways the Bible dictates, like executions that require stoning to death.

* Religious instruction and prayer should be made mandatory in all public schools, as well as the Ten Commandments displayed prominently.

* All elected officials must take an oath affirming their belief in God and the literal Bible.

My Point of View: Very loud raspberries for each and every dot point. Actually I think the extreme Religious Right Wing should be deported as undesirables, starting with the membership of the Westboro Baptist Church. 

Conclusions

Their Point of View: The extreme Religious Right Wing are not happy campers and they keep threatening all and sundry that we’re a collective Sodom, Gomorrah and Babylon all rolled into one wicked society; God is pissed; God’s wrath is upon us; God’s gonna kick our ass sooner rather than later; and in fact it’s just gloom and doom times ahead. The end is nigh. Hell is gonna become very crowded very quickly unless we repent, Repent and REPENT!

My Point of View: We’ve been hearing that sad and sorry tale for generations, and then some. It is high time for the Religious Right Wing to put up or shut up. Prove God exists and has all those wrathful traits you assign Him. A Sherlock Holmes story reads as being perfectly plausible, but you cannot use that story and therefore conclude that Sherlock Holmes exists or existed. And so by the way, you cannot use the Bible to prove the Bible, anymore than you can use a textbook that says it is true as proof that it is true. You need independent verification, for the existence of Sherlock Holmes or the truth of the Bible. And that’s where the Religious Right collapses in a heap of rubble. There is no independent source. Maybe the Religious Right can make God show His face for the first time in way over 2000 years, but if they can’t back up all their huffing and puffing then they should just exit, stage left, from society, for good. Never have so few spouted off so much hellfire and brimstone hot air over so long a time frame and have so little to show for it. And here you probably thought just politicians were the real huff-and-puffers. Not even close, unless of course they are associated with the Right Wing of the GOP/Tea Party!

Philosophies of the Religious Right: Part One

The majority of churches, religious institutions and prominent religious individuals, though deluded IMHO, are for the most part, most of the time, middle-of-the-road and live-and-let-live. But as any probability statistician can relate to, there will be minorities on either side of that road. One side of that religious road, the Right side, are not only in your face but hold opinions (usually stated as facts) and philosophies that are anything but the normal mainstream. In fact they are extreme.

During the recent (2012) American election campaign, several Republican (GOP)/Tea Party candidates got some (probably) unwanted publicity by making out-of-the-box and extreme comments with Religious Right Wing overtones on topics such as church and state; legitimate rape; rape and God’s plan; same-sex marriage; the literal creation-in-six-days Bible, and so on. Not that extreme out-of-the-box worldviews were confined to politicians and wannabe politicians. There are a whole potful of organisations and individuals from shock-jock media personalities, news commentators, televangelists, and lots more who routinely come out with outrageous foot-in-mouth and extreme Right Wing points of view, nearly always with a Christian religious slant. I learned a lot about the extreme Right Wing by following the US election campaign unfolding. Here’s my summation based on what exposure I had over those many, many, many endless months while the campaign coverage was in full swing.

The Religious Right aren’t going to pay any attention to this, but no matter, here goes.

What are the issues the extreme Religious Right are frothing at the mouth about and is it cosmically significant?

The Literal Bible:

Their Point of View: Since the Bible is the infallible God’s Holy Word, all Biblical Books, Chapters and Verses; all versions of the Bible; all translations of the Bible; were under His Almighty editorship, and therefore, how can you not take the Bible literally. If God says that life, the universe and everything were created in six days, then that’s absolute fact. If God says that the first man was made from dust and the first woman from that man’s rib, you’d better believe it. If Genesis relates that Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, it was so (and if the Bible says it was so, it was so and you could sprinkle her onto your fish-and-chips). If the Bible acknowledges the existence of unicorns, then unicorns exist (or existed). And so on and so forth from Genesis to Revelation.

My Point of View: All you need to do is find one logical contradiction, one fallacy, one bit that goes so against the grain; that being the case, the entire Biblical house of cards has to come tumbling down. Let’s just say that entire books have been written pointing out in exquisite detail Biblical contradictions, fallacies, and untruths that only Blind Freddy with an absolutely closed mind (my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with facts) can fail to acknowledge what to everyone else is the bleeding obvious. If, and that’s a big if, God exists, He is not infallible, His memory is faulty, or He didn’t bother to oversee the master editing of His Holy Word. If He couldn’t or wouldn’t ensure Biblical accuracy, well what does that tell you about the bona fides of the Almighty?

Evolution

Their Point of View: Since God created life, the universe and everything in roughly the year 4004 BCE, and since God created all life forms in the form to which we see them today, then the entire concept of natural selection and biological evolution is nonsense. There’s not enough time for evolution to have happened. There is no need to evolve a giraffe since God created the giraffe. Since God created Homo sapiens there is no need to postulate that human beings evolved from apes. Evolution is all absolute rubbish.

My Point of View: I fail to see what is so hard for anyone to comprehend here. Evolutionary theory should be obvious to even blind Freddy (a synonym for the Religious Right). The logic is ironclad. Parents (of any species) give rise to offspring that are NOT identical to themselves. That in itself is evolution – a change. Some of those offspring may be better adapted to survive long enough to reproduce more offspring in turn vis-à-vis some of their brothers and sisters. Those ever so slightly better able to reproduce will pass on more likely as not some of those positive features to more offspring than their less adapted siblings. Over time, those better adapted leave behind more descendants than those less well adapted who leave behind fewer offspring. That sort of feedback mechanism ensures evolution, which is just change over time. Evolutionary theory is however backed up by physical evidence; fossil evidence for starters, not to mention firsthand eyeball observations of evolutionary change happening in the here and now.

Intelligent Design

Their Point of View: Life, the universe and everything is so perfectly constructed and interrelated like some fitted together zillion piece jigsaw puzzle that only a Supreme Deity could have pulled it off and put it together. A clock requires a clockmaker; or as Fred Hoyle put it, a tornado doesn’t rip through a junkyard and assembles a Boeing 747. 

My Point of View: The fallacy here is the assumption that there was total chaos (an unassembled jigsaw puzzle; clock parts lying on a bench; a junkyard that had all the bits and pieces necessary for a Boeing 747) and then a snap of the intelligent design fingers and low and behold a zillion piece jigsaw puzzle is assembled; a clock starts ticking away; a Boeing 747 is all fuelled up and ready for takeoff. Forgotten in this equation is is time, and lots of it and probability theory. If you sit down at the poker table, you’re not likely to be dealt a Royal Flush, but by manipulation of what you throw away and what you gain, you increase the odds of ending up with one. That’s evolution, from chaos to finished product. Then too, over the course of a lifetime and thousands of games and hundreds of thousands of hands, the odds of you getting dealt a Royal Flush right off the bat increase. It will probably happen, if not to you then to someone else, like your opponent. Time and probability help turn chaos into complexity. There’s a long, long, long chain of events twixt chaos and a Boeing 747, and a lot of time required, like 13.7 billion years worth. That’s hardly a quick snap of the intelligent design fingers. In any case, any scientist can easily point out that that zillion piece jigsaw puzzle not only has a few pieces missing but some pieces haven’t been assembled intelligently at all. If a perfect God created a perfect human being (intelligent design), how come many of us acquire back troubles? 

Homosexuality

Their Point of View: Same-sex relations of a sexual nature are unnatural and God doesn’t like it (probably because you can’t do your ‘be fruitful and multiple’ thingy bit).

My Point of View: My position is that what two (or more) consenting adults do behind closed doors is none of my business. It has no bearing on my life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What two married adults, same sex or opposite sexes, do behind closed doors is none of my business. Ditto that life, liberty and happiness bit. The only issue I haven’t quite come to terms with is whether same-sex couples should raise children. In theory it shouldn’t matter; in actual practice, given the realities of human culture and society and worldviews, all else being equal, it might be better if children weren’t raised in a same-sex atmosphere, but I’m still fence-sitting on that.

Equality in Marriage

Their Point of View: Marriage is between one man and one woman – full stop. All else is an abomination in the eyes of God.

My Point of View: If two men, or two women, wish to marry, it’s no skin off my back. Different strokes for different folks, that’s my motto.

Contraception

Their Point of View: Contraception/Birth Control is an attempt to thwart God’s ‘be fruitful and multiply’ commandment and therefore it is a no-no.

My Point of View: Some couples don’t want kids (shock, horror, blasphemy). Some couples cannot afford kids. Some couples have jobs and lifestyles not suited to parenthood or raising a family. Which is the better option, no conception in the first place and an unwanted child in poverty that’s ignored, or conception in the first place with no grief on down the line? Besides, if you’re not bringing a new life into the world, at least you’re not condemning that non-life to an eventual death.

Abortion

Their Point of View: A human life starts at the moment of conception. Therefore, abortion, a post-conception act, must be murder, which God forbids (though God kills Himself, but that’s another topic).

My Point of View: Until such time as a foetus has a reasonable chance of surviving outside of the womb, the foetus is part of the anatomy of the mother. The mother has the right to decide about what happens to her own anatomy. Abortion is okay. Once that foetus crosses the threshold, then, unless the life of the women is endangered, no abortion. If the pregnancy isn’t by consent, say via rape, inside or outside of marriage; same distinction. But since the rape induced pregnancy will be known about quite some time before the foetus can survive outside of the womb, the mother can make an informed decision to abort or not abort as she sees fit. 

To be continued…

God Has Passed His ‘Use By’ Date: Part Two

What does the phrase “past its use by date” mean? It means the product is no longer relevant or serves the purpose for which it was once intended; it’s superseded; irrelevant; it’s outdated; if organic it stinks, leaves a bad taste in your mouth, can be harmful to your health and wellbeing, and all-round is a product better discarded into the rubbish bin, buried, incinerated and forgotten about. That seems to sum up the product we call God of the Old Testament.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The official motto of the United States, passed by Congress as of 1956, is “In God We Trust” and the phrase features prominently on legal paper currency and coinage. Oh boy! If God is the most trustworthy figurehead they can look up to, the U.S. is in deep shit! How many people in the Old Testament put their trust in God only to get the Almighty shaft! In any event, the phrase “In God We Trust” should actually be declared illegal since it violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (item one of the Bill of Rights) and starts right off the bat stating that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”. Official use of the word “God” by Congress implies that Congress respects the establishment of monotheism as their preferred religion, and there the preferred religion therefore of the United States. Of course other cultures, including some American citizens, have adopted other non-monotheistic religions. So, despite all the hype about separation of church and state, in America, it remains just that – hype, not reality. However, even in America, in spite of God’s stamp of approval, humankind as a broad generality (exceptions are pretty obvious), have risen slightly above God’s standards. That alone means it’s time to give God the flick.

Of what possible relevance is God in your personal life other than to serve as a bad example of what not to aspire to? If God has no relevance, expunge the entire concept from your mind and free up some mental space for more relevant stuff.

What have you done for God lately? Read the Bible – tick. Send your kids to Sunday School – tick. Attend church – tick. Put money into the collection plate – tick. Pray to God – tick. Keep His Commandments – tick. Get all hot and bothered and outraged over the issue of same-sex marriage – tick. Now what has God done for you lately? I thought so, so perhaps it’s time to kiss God goodbye. He’s not doing you any favours at all.

Speaking of prayer, you’ll get fans and players alike on both sides of a sporting contest praying to God for the Big Win. What absolute nonsense. What sheer stupidity. The phrase “God’s on our side” is rubbish. Not even God (as a theoretical concept) can give victory to both sides simultaneously. God doesn’t give a damn about your insignificant event – He’s neutral, so why bother praying? Leave God out of it. God is irrelevant. And in any event, if prayer actually worked we’d have no poverty, world peace would be the norm, and all would be perfectly fit and well and live happy ever after. The Big News headline of the day would be something like “Mary took her dogs out for walkies”. So praying for anything is quite an outdated concept.

In any event there is no causality link between prayer and results. If I pray tonight that the Sun will rise in the morning and it does so, shall I therefore conclude my prayer was answered and therefore if I hadn’t of prayed the Sun would not have risen? Well maybe someone else prayed for sunrise and God answered them. But if you pray to win lotto and you do so, can you therefore conclude that God wanted you to be rich and famous since it’s unlikely that anyone else prayed for your good fortune? Any link between prayer and results can be summed up with the phrase “shit happens”, even good shit happens, and we’re not talking about God’s shit.

Further, given the relatively low electromagnetic energy output of the brain required to pray, and the inverse square law (double the distance; quarter the strength), your message to God would quickly become indistinguishable from the ever-present background noise. God can’t ‘hear’ you.  So by all means wish upon a star, but consign God to the rubbish bin. 

Another absurdity about prayer – could you listen to and comprehend thousands upon thousands of people all talking to you at once, on different subjects, and differing languages? No? Then what makes you think even a god could manage it, any god? 

Now I know you want to hedge your bets, just in case God is your ticket to an afterlife, life everlasting, whatever. I mean if God doesn’t really exist but you believe the contrary, you’ve lost nothing, but if God does exist and you give God the Big Thumbs Down, you’ve screwed yourself, so it’s better to err on the side of self-interest. It’s pretty hard to counter any argument that promotes self-interest, so you have to ask yourself, regardless of God’s reality, do I really want everlasting life? Think very carefully, or in other words, be careful about what you wish for, least you get it. Eternal life might look good on paper, but, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true.

I’ll assume that if you’re a God-fearing type of individual you are least have eliminated Hell from the afterlife equation. That leaves an eternity for you to spend in Heaven, though I rather suspect minus the common but non-Biblical image garb of harp and halo (the latter never even getting a Biblical mention). Now I can’t recall reading in the Bible anywhere where it’s stated what you actually do in Heaven to keep mind and body fully occupied, but whatever it is, it has to be for an eternity, an everlasting occupation, or in other words, for you are going to have to be gainfully occupied for infinity, and that’s a long, long, long time, time enough to read and re-read and re-re-read every issue of every Reader’s Digest and National Geographic and in fact the sum total of the Library of Congress many times over. And how many re-runs of a TV show, any TV show, can you stomach – you’ll have time enough on your hands to find out. Now you probably have a hard time filling in the 24/7/52 for your allotted threescore and ten. I predict that within the first several million years of so into your life everlasting you are going to become very, very bored. And you still have an eternity to go! In a manner of speaking, life eternal is hell!

So what’s in it for you, that self-interest bit, if you show God the exit sign? Well what’s in it for you anytime you divorce something be it your despised spouse, your hated job, your harmful smoking habit, your alcoholism? Freedom, that’s what. You’re no longer a religious slave or a slave to religious ritual – you’ve kicked the God Almighty habit and you’re free to be yourself without having to look back over your shoulder to see if hell, fire and brimstone are bearing down on you. And judging from the rhetoric of many a religious fanatic, they are indeed as addicted to God as some are to tobacco or booze or cocaine or heroin.

In summary, you should give God the boot, the flick, the Big Finger, whatever, because…

There’s not the slightest shred of evidence that any such supernatural deity exists, making it a pretty big ask to put your faith, not to mention your time and money in support of something that could easily be logically equated to the holy trinity of the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Therefore, move your own personal ‘no confidence’ motion in the alleged Almighty.

The God of the Old Testament is a pretty unsavoury character (as noted above), in fact a downright nasty piece of work with a personality and a philosophy more akin to the Taliban, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot. Idi Amin, Attila the Hun, Al Capone, (and hundreds more besides) all rolled into one. There’s no logical reason to support such a deity, unless of course you’re a closet tyrant wannabe. God’s positive attribution or contribution is to serve as a bad example. So give God the boot.

What’s God ever done for you that can only be attributed to a supernatural deity? Well you might answer that you get Christmas and Easter holidays, but then again they tend to be Jesus-related. Some people ‘celebrate’ Passover, but that’s really a celebration of God-the-mass-murderer and perhaps therefore not something to be credited in the plus column. So if the answer is zip, zilch, a big zero, goose-eggs, bugger-all, not a damn thing, or variations thereof, why vote for Him? Why not just kiss God a not so fond farewell and free yourself from an unwanted and unneeded addiction?