Pray Tell: Part Two

If there is anything the Big Three monotheistic religions agree on it’s the power of positive prayer. What I ‘pray’ for is an end to human stupidity; those who believe in the power of positive prayer in the first place. My prayer will of course go unanswered.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Prayer and Conflict

When it comes to all out conflict, that is to say war, even civil war, every country, every part of their defence force, every soldier, intones that ‘God’s on our side’. Whether it’s a local sports event between teams or individuals, or a global conflict between nations, there can be only one winner, and therefore, the Almighty can’t be on everyone’s side. To claim otherwise is to act in the logically equivalent way of pissing into the wind.

Prayer and the Laws of Physics

Given the relatively low electromagnetic energy output of your brain that’s required to pray, and the inverse square law of physics (doubling the distance results in just one quarter the strength), your message to God would quickly become indistinguishable from the ever-present background electromagnetic noise, both artificial like radio/TV waves o the natural background ‘hiss’ of the entire universe (known as the cosmic microwave background radiation). God can’t ‘hear’ you.  Further, prayer can only propagate outwards at the speed of light maximum, so if God is having some R&R out around the Centauri system, it will be four years plus before He gets your message, which doesn’t do you much good if you’re sinking in quicksand. As for vocal prayers, well they won’t get beyond Earth’s atmosphere. In space, no one can hear you pray. So by all means wish upon a star, but consign God to the rubbish bin. 

Prayer and God’s Comprehension Abilities

Another absurdity about prayer if you think about it, consider this analogy. Could you listen to and comprehend thousands upon thousands of individuals all yakking to you at once, all on differing subjects, and speaking in many different tongues? No? Then what makes you think even God could manage it, or any deity for that matter? 

Prayer and the Power of Positive Posture

Chances are, when you hear the words “let us pray” you go into prayer posture mode – palms held together, fingers pointing skyward, down on your knees, head bowed, etc. Of what possible relevance could adopting this that or another posture make? If your prayer is worthy of God’s attention, then it doesn’t make any difference if you’re standing on your head or hopping up and down on one leg or doing push-ups or chin-ups for that matter. It’s the thought that counts, not the posture you adopt while think those thoughts.

Taking note of positive posture, banging your head against or humping the Wailing Wall (I’m not quite sure what anatomical action is going on here, perhaps it’s a unique form of Jewish fitness exercises or perhaps the participants have been out in the noonday sun too long), looks plain ridiculous, though that’s not hardly unique – looking ridiculous that is. Take Islam for example…

Prayer and the Power of Proper Geographical Orientation

In certain religious cultures, like Islam, not only must you adopt a just-so posture (and doesn’t it look ridiculous too all that bowing and scraping to nobody in sight), but you’ve got to position that posture with respect to your geography. If you’re 179 degrees east of Mecca, and you have to face Mecca (that too is ridiculous for Allah doesn’t live there anymore), do you face towards the west, or look straight down, since Mecca is for all practical purposes under your feet down through and including the centre of the Earth? And if you’re 180 degrees opposite, does it matter if you look due east or due west (or again straight down)? Even if a devote Muslim were but 100 miles from Mecca and faced in that general direction, that is towards the horizon in that general direction presumably, that line of sight, because of the curvature of the Earth, would pass way over the top of that alleged Holy City.

If geography is important, I can only assume that praying in church (or on some other so-called sacred or holy site) is more effective than outside the boundary of such a zone. But such a concept strikes me as being irrational – but who said religion was rational?

What does a deity care about geography anyway? Presumably He’s somewhere up there. Again, it’s the thought that counts, not your position with respect to some manmade structure. But who says that logic has anything to do with religion – it doesn’t. Logic is not religion’s strongest point, rather it’s weakest.

Prayer and the Big Picture

As noted above, 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 “Jane took her dogs out for a walk in the park”. So praying for anything is quite an outdated concept. Just look at the state of the world around you. Prayer doesn’t work on any sort of statistically meaningful level. Further, as in the case of supposed miracles (see below), prayer validation is also a highly selective bookkeeping exercise by religious institutions in that a hit is documented and displayed for the entire world to see; a miss is never mentioned or discussed.

Prayer and Miracles

If you pray for X, and X happens, it matters of course about the probability of X happening anyway. So praying for the Sun to rise in the morning isn’t in the same league as praying for the Chicago Cubs to win all 162 regular season games. Now the question arises, has there ever been one absolutely ironclad documented case of someone(s) praying for something(s) that are so absolutely unlikely to come to pass that it has to be defined as a supernatural miracle when it in fact did come to pass. Has such an event ever happened such as to convince a panel of say Nobel Prize winning recipients, or a panel of Supreme Court judges that a miracle by prayer has happened and therefore both the supernatural and the power of positive prayer exists and has been established beyond all doubt? If so, I haven’t read about it. And it’s no use saying that this or that religious has voted in the affirmative for such events since they have a vested interest in being bias in the affirmative. Based on any judgment by any neutral panel of umpires, miracles by prayer have not, repeat not, had their bona fides ever verified. 

Prayer and the End Times

God’s coming! God’s coming!! God’s coming and boy is She ever pissed!!! You hear that every day in just about every possible way from those Right Wing televangelists, the Westboro Baptist Church, and those hellfire and brimstone Christian Fundamentalists who have convinced millions of sheep (their flock) to pray for the Second Coming and the End of Days, the End Times of the Book of Revelation and the sooner the better. Alas, the world has been hearing that message for 2000 years now without results. Talk about crying wolf – the sky is falling; the sky is falling! Okay, so where is the Almighty already – She who must be obeyed? With every passing day that goes by without a no-show, the raw egg on the mugs of the evangelists, etc. just keeps on getting smelly and smellier as it gets more and more rotten. Of course the reason for the no-show is that not only doesn’t prayer work, it has nothing to work with. God doesn’t exist and the sooner the sheep see through the bovine fertilizer, the flock can just get on with their real lives.

Prayer and Psychology

Despite all of the above, maybe prayer gives you that warm inner glow and thus is maybe psychological beneficial to you; peace of mind and all. If so, that’s where the benefits begins and ends

Prayer and Concluding Statements

Belief in the power of prayer won’t go away because on average more good (or at least neutral) things happen than bad things. One can say that’s because of the billions who pay for good (or at least neutral) things and if those billions didn’t then there would be more bad things than good things happen in the world.

However, IMHO, if no one had uttered a single prayer over the past several millennia, would the world as you know it be ultimately any different? I’d bet the family farm the answer would be in the negative. Prayer or no prayer; it’s the same old world.

I contend that the proportion of good (or neutral) vs. bad is 100% independent of prayer. There’s no statistical evidence to the contrary. Therefore, the power of positive prayer, pray tell, is 100% absolutely and totally irrelevant.

Pray Tell: Part One

If there is anything the Big Three monotheistic religions agree on it’s the power of positive prayer. What I ‘pray’ for is an end to human stupidity; those who believe in the power of positive prayer in the first place. My prayer will of course go unanswered.

The Purpose of Prayer Before-the-Fact

What do I mean by prayer? Prayer is asking a before-the-fact favour from some sort of supernatural deity. That favour (not yet granted) may not of necessity be a selfish wish or even something for yourself, but perhaps praying for good things for someone else (like a miraculous recovery from their terminal cancer) or for humanity as a whole like a chicken in every pot. You pray for Him to change His mind for results which you want (and presumably you think He does too). Before-the-fact prayer shows up in the win or loss column, there is, or is not a miraculous recovery from someone’s terminal cancer; there is or is not a chicken in every pot. But it is all an exercise in futility, IMHO. For example, I’m sure nearly all passengers and crew prayed for deliverance that night to remember, the night the RMS Titanic sank. Prayer didn’t alter the score. Losers outnumbered winners, so did God play favourites? The all-powerful Almighty could have saved them all, so maybe God just didn’t give a damn, full stop. 

The Purpose of Prayer After-the-Fact

There’s also that prayer of thanks or gratitude that’s after-the-fact for a meal, services, good weather, a safe journey, finding your missing keys, surviving the Titanic disaster, etc. but these prayers don’t show up in the win or loss column.

Prayer and Your Time, Effort & Energy

Quite apart from your own time, effort and energy spent  in the act of praying, think of all those trillions of man-hours (sorry, person-hours) wasted over the millennia by those (the great washed and unwashed) in pursuit of an illusion – that praying brought results. Do you really think either your personal world, or collectively our world today is a better place for all that time, effort and energy? No? Then I say again – what a waste. Further, no scholarly studies ever done on the beneficial results of praying have ever shown that praying works. Any time-and-motion, cost-benefit analysis of prayer would have to give those who practice it, and any management (i.e. – religious institutions) who endorses it, the Big Thumbs Down.

Prayer and Your Dreamtime

If in your dreams, you pray, would that count towards extra brownie points with God, assuming of course that praying actually yields brownie points in the first place?

Prayer and Your Pain or Gain Personal Satisfaction

Prayer is an ultra cheap way of feeling all warm and fuzzy in that you’ve done your bit to make the world a better place. No blood, sweat and tears; no pain and all gain, no hard yards to tackle. On the other hand, you could get your praying palms dirty and do some real charity or other volunteer work if you really want that warm and fuzzy inner glow. 

Prayer and Statistical Results Personal

Does prayer work? If you pray, do you get proof-positive results? I doubt it. In fact I’d go so far as to say there’s not a snowball’s chance in Hell – not that there really is a Hell of course. The proof of the pudding is of course, if prayer really worked, there would be miracles in that we’d all be lotto winners or at least pretty rich and famous! We’d be total successes in our employment, and in our relationships, we’d all have perfect partners and perfect children (that’ll be the day). And our automobiles wouldn’t break down!  Further, the Sun would shine down on us every day of our lives; no clouds, no rain, no snow to shovel, not too hot, not too cold, just day after day in paradise. If prayer does seem to work at times on a personal level, it’s probably more a case of mind-over-matter, the power of positive thinking, and akin to the placebo pill in medicine. Every now and again, the improbable happens. Just because you prayed for an improbable event doesn’t mean the prayer worked, and therefore that there’s a God who answered it. If you pray for X, and X happens, might not X have happened anyway? Damn straight!

Prayer and Statistical Results Generic

Even if we all just prayed for good things in general, not selfish or personal things in particular, and if our benevolent prayers really worked, then you would expect that there would be no disease or suffering or criminals or warfare, etc. We’d all live in a utopian Shangri-La. But we don’t! I mean, come every Christmas and Easter, the religious elite, like the pope, publicly pray for peace on earth and goodwill towards men (and women too) among other good things. That’s noble of them. But, come next Christmas and Easter, the religious bigwigs have to do it all over again! God ignores the pope and associated kissing cousins! Now if the pope, and kin, can’t get positive results, what hope for the great unwashed? It all seems to be an exercise in total futility to me. Since a result such as universal peace in the world (as one of many possible examples), hasn’t happened; that’s obviously not the case – just read your daily newspaper headlines, then either God doesn’t exist, or He doesn’t answer prayers. If the latter, then God doesn’t give a right royal stuff about us, so why should we give a tinker’s damn about Him (being traditional and assuming the masculine)? If we don’t give a damn in return, then the Almighty’s existence, or lack of existence, is basically irrelevant.

Prayer and the Godly vs. the Ungodly

Extreme Right Wing Christian Fundamentalists are extremely fond to be in-your-face with an ‘I told you so’ every time there is an Act of God (God’s wrath) that impacts life, limb and property. From oil spills to tornadoes to earthquakes to hurricanes, the bigger and more destructive the better, because they are all signs that point to the ‘fact’ that God’s coming and boy is He pissed! Though giving no supporting evidence, such communities on the receiving end obviously (like Sodom and Gomorrah) are ultra decadent, irreligious, practice witchcraft and other pagan rituals, have a high proportion of sinners in their midst, a high rate of abortions, allow same sex marriages, and all the sorts of things to inspire God’s wrath. Since such people are clearly lost causes, there’s no point in praying for them, or for them praying for themselves.

Atheists especially are a lost cause – they’d never be caught out praying for themselves or anything else for fairly obvious reasons. Now the question is, are atheists, gays, those who have had abortions, devil worshipers, and sinners in general plus other irreligious basket cases more likely than Christian Fundamentalists to go bankrupt, suffer tooth decay, have a shorter lifespan, have more automobile breakdowns, be more prone to lose their house keys, have horrendous golf outings, be hit by lightning, or have bad things happen to them in general? I very much doubt it. There’s not going to be much statistically different between the populations of the super ultra religious right and the super ultra irreligious left, excepting the former tend to have achieved on average significantly lower educational levels.

Prayer and Causality

In any event there is no cause and effect 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 instead. 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, but we’re not talking about God’s shit.

Bad “shit happens” too of course. Take the recent Hurricane Sandy, the perfect storm, the super-storm, the Frankenstorm, the mother of all storms, whatever. I’ve no doubt millions of people that were in harms way and were hard hit by Sandy prayed big time for that not to happen. Sorry, God had His headphones on and didn’t hear you, or He didn’t give a damn. But you really can’t win against the faithful who will always counter that argument that God doesn’t exist to hear your prayers or that God didn’t care by saying that if they hadn’t of prayed Hurricane Sandy would have been much worse. And those who prayed and survived will of course thank God instead of the luck of the draw. 

Prayer and Sports

Speaking of another common usage of prayer, you’ll get fans and players alike on both sides of a sporting contest praying to God for the Big Win (and the megabucks that often is associated with being king of the hill). What absolute nonsense. What sheer stupidity. The phrase “God’s on our side” is rubbish. Not even the Almighty (as a theoretical concept) can give victory to both sides simultaneously. God, assuming a 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 to you insignificant little contest.

Here’s a thought experiment. Take a city with two professional baseball teams, like say Chicago. If all the people in Chicago, even in the entire United States or the entire world for that matter, prayed for say the National League team, The Cubs, to win every game, and none prayed for, or actively prayed against the American League team, The White Sox, would the National League team have a perfect winning record and the American League team a perfect losing record at season’s end? Or, would raw talent, training, practice, expert coaching, a clued up manager, and pure luck (that’s the way the ball bounces) have something to say on the matter of final outcomes? What do you think?

Even without prayer, God’s missed a golden opportunity here. God could easily, assuming a God of course, do this scenario. He could ‘make it so’. There would be no serious moral or ethical consequences to life and limb and the national economy and social structure. It’s only a game. So if The Cubs have a seasonal outcome of 162 – 0; and The White Sox a seasonal outcome of 0 – 162, that would be so statistically improbable that it would just about prove the existence of the supernatural and therefore a supernatural figurehead – the Almighty.

To be continued…

Where Was God When…?

Humans can and do die prematurely through no apparent fault of their own. It’s a common feature on the news. It’s reasonable to ask who’s responsible. There are various agencies that can be held accountable: God, Mother Nature and Mankind. Since God is allegedly the Top Banana, the buck stops with Him when it comes to a ‘please explain’ those premature deaths. So, here’s an analysis of possible explanations with God taking centre stage.

Either God exists or God does not exist. If the latter, God cannot be held accountable for anything good, bad or ugly. But, if God exists, and has those positive attributes given to Him, even by His own words in the Bible, then God has a lot to answer for when it comes to explaining why humans are allowed to die prematurely through no fault of their own. The basic charge is premeditated murder at worst, almighty godly negligence allowing death at best.

Let’s review some positive Godly attributes:

God is Loving – Jeremiah 32:18.

God is Merciful - Exodus 34:6; Psalm 103:8; Joel 2:13.

God has Compassion – Psalm 86:15; Psalm 145:8.

God is Forgiving – Daniel 9:9; Ephesians 4:32.

God is Kind – Nehemiah 9:17; Joel 2:13.

God is Gracious – Exodus 34:6. Psalm 86:15; Psalm 116:5.

God is Righteous – Psalm 24:5; Psalm 116:5.

And there’s a lot more besides but you get the idea. God is the good guy. God is your friend. God looks after you. Pure bovine fertilizer! In fact the extreme Christian Right Wing, those televangelists, the Westboro Baptist Church, etc. all like to stress some other of God’s attributes, like being a jealous God, a vengeful God, a God quick to anger and a wrathful God – they like a God who hates and who kicks human butts, hard, and fatally. To them, any premature death to anyone by any cause is attributed to God, thank God, full stop. That also strikes me as pure bovine fertilizer. 

Humans die thanks to God before their time is due:

Why God’s rush to judgment? Since everyone is doomed to die anyway, there’s no apparent need for an immortal deity to rush their demise. To God, a billion years either way, either side of now, is of no consequence, so a human lifespan is just a piddle. If other words, since God will get His pound of flesh, or the devil his due in the fullness of time, there’s no need for any human not to be granted the right to live to die of natural causes – old age.

Innocents have been put in harms way through no fault of their own. Who’s responsible? Where does the buck stop? The buck ultimately stops with the chief cook and bottle washer – the Almighty. 

We have humans killed by deliberate Acts of God:

An Act of God usually implies wilful death and destruction, pain and suffering, inflicted on humanity by well, guess who, the Almighty Himself. That’s murder in the first degree. What else would you call Sodom and Gomorrah; the Egyptian tenth plague on the firstborn; the invasion of the Land of Canaan? Nor does it have to even be a mass murder scenario – even God smiting a single individual is premeditated murder. Fortunately, there have been no unnatural actual Acts of God (as opposed to natural Acts of Nature) in way, way over 2000 years plus, at least defined as a major destructive event that happened without benefit of a natural cause, or even a single death that can only be attributed to “God” and so listed on the death certificate. So in the Common Era, God is off the hook for premeditated murder, though God should still stand trial for atrocities committed in the Old Testament. 

We have humans killed by random Acts of Nature:

That’s wilful negligence since God, if there be a God, ultimately controls nature, God being all-powerful and all that. But first, if it appears to be a natural disaster (flood, drought, famine, hurricane/typhoon/cyclone, tornado, bushfire, volcano, earthquake, hail, epidemic, pandemic, asteroid/meteor impact, solar flares, blizzards, icebergs, lightning, tsunamis/tidal waves, etc.) then lets adopt the duck philosophy – if it looks, sounds, swims, flies, and otherwise behaves like a duck, it’s a duck, or in this case, it really is an Act of Nature and not something deliberately set in motion by Mother Nature’s boss, God, though that’s not set in any philosopher’s stone by any means.

Acts of Nature have an apparent natural cause, but of course that could mean that God is hiding behind an apparently natural causality curtain, but in reality forcing Mother Nature to do His bidding. But why would an all-powerful God hide behind Mother Nature’s skirts? - Back to the duck philosophy. So let’s just assume that God just sits on the sidelines (if He’s still in the neighbourhood, don’t forget He hasn’t been seen or heard from in over 2000 years) and lets Mother Nature strut her stuff – the nice balmy spring mornings; the multi terror-tornadoes that strike in that afternoon.  

Now what does He do from His heavenly sidelines? Well, He can do nothing and wash His hands of the unfolding events, whether it’s the twisters that form in Tornado Alley, a Hurricane Katrina moving towards New Orleans or an Asian tsunami about to strike. But God failing to take action is akin to the parents of a toddler who’s crawling across a road busy with traffic and failing to take action to prevent the inevitable tragedy. That’s wilful negligence. Or, God could manipulate apparently natural events to suit His purpose – create winners and losers.

In any natural disaster (Acts of Nature) there will tend to be ‘winners’ (survivors) and losers – the newly deceased. If God got down off His throne and intervened then presumably He wanted the ‘winners’ to live and the losers to die and made sure the natural dice were rigged to ensure that outcome. If so, then the ‘winners’ can “Thank God”, at least for the surviving part, though God should still get the Big Finger from true believers for allowing that Act of God under the guise of an Act of Nature to have transpired in the first place. Is the credit due God for saving some lives outweighed by the blame for the deaths and overall destruction God caused in the first place?

We have humans killed by Acts of Man at God’s direction.

That’s God being an accomplice to murder in the first degree, for example the Battle of Jericho. Of course today such a defence holds no legal water. If I murder someone, the jury is unlikely to be swayed as to my innocence if I suggest that God wanted and directed me to carry out that murder. So let’s let God off the hook for Acts of Man, even if humans were inspired by God setting a bad example, summed up by that old chestnut, “do as I say, not as I do”. God may say “Thou shalt not kill”, but God’s own track record matches anything Jack-the-Ripper accomplished by many, many orders of magnitude over and above Jack, the serial killer.

We have humans killed by Unintentional Acts of Man:

Friendly fire is one such term, ditto collateral damage. It’s quite apparent from reading the newspaper or watching the evening news on TV that human related accidents cause the death of other innocent humans. A driver has a heart attack, loses control of his vehicle which slams into another car killing the occupants. A hunter shoots at what he assumes is a deer only to discover it’s a fellow hunter he shot by accident. It’s not a difficult assignment to come up with dozens upon dozens of accidental death due to some human error or unintended scenario unfolding, like that cigarette butt tossed out the window which starts a bushfire which goes out of control and ultimately kills dozens. The issue arises; we know why Hercules or Superman can’t come to the rescue, but why doesn’t an all-powerful deity, believed by the multitudes to exist, come and save the day? Doesn’t the deity, say God, care for the innocents? Or perhaps the multitudes are mistaken and God has no more reality than Hercules or Superman. If the former, God doesn’t come out of the situation smelling like a rose, that’s for sure. If the latter, the multitudes need to engage their brain into forward gear and question their beliefs, rather than have it idling in neutral, ever unquestioning.

We have humans killed by Intentional Acts of Man:

Though God ultimately has control over the actions of humans; God could argue that because of man’s free will, He shouldn’t get involved or be held accountable, even though parents are morally accountable for the actions of their children, and aren’t we, allegedly, God’s children? That analogy aside, though God probably thought it was none of His business, should He have really turned a blind eye towards what was to unfold in August 1945 at Nagasaki and Hiroshima? And what about the innocents caught up in the events of 9/11? What about tens of thousands of similar, but less memorable happenings like intervening before Jack-the-Ripper ripped? Again, God probably said it’s none of my doing; I’m not going to get involved. But, would such an attitude jive with all of those loving, kindness, compassionate attributes so noted and logged in the Bible? 

We have humans killed by their own stupidity: The Darwin Award:

Many a human has ended his or her own life prematurely through sheer stupidity, forgetfulness, negligence, and similar concepts. There are a whole series of books on what’s titled the “Darwin Awards” – those who benefit humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool and thus not passing on their stupidity genes to the next generation. Some people are their own worst enemy, accidents waiting to happen. While we’ve probably all experienced an ‘oops’ moment, some ‘oops’ are fatal ‘oops’. Now the question is should God save you from your own stupidity? Whatever your answer, God’s clearly answered that philosophical issue in the negative since people do die prematurely because of their own stupidity. Humans have a far better track record saving or rescuing people from their own stupidity – in the nick of time – than any deity.

Conclusion:

By way of final explanations, either 1) God does not exist or has left the building for parts unknown; 2) God doesn’t give a damn which suggests He isn’t compassionate or merciful, etc.; 3) God plays favourites which also implies He’s not merciful, etc. to all equally. It’s also statistically improbable that only those who were the losers in every natural or human related disaster deserved, in God’s eyes, to burn, baby, burn, and every ‘winner’ was a saint in human skin. When it comes to allowing even dictating the premature deaths of God’s children, well, God’s a god-awful parent! And this is the God you want to snuggle up to in heaven? If God really doesn’t have these positive attributes (mercy, compassion, etc.) then it illustrates that the Bible is full of it, and I don’t have to elaborate or spell out what “it” is.

Monotheistic Religion: Why Adopt One?

Given that the Bible is the most contradictory and illogical text that’s alleged to be non-fiction, it’s a wonder anyone puts any stock in the Christian religion, the Bible, God and associated entities. But, billions have and do. Why? Well religion puts you in the driver’s seat. You adopt religion because you’re a selfish bastard! “Why believe” is a no-brainer since there’s a lot to be said for the “what’s in this for me” question and religion markets itself by offering you a theological banquet.

When you cast your vote, when you apply for a job, when you choose to live here rather than there, when you shop at this store rather than this other store, you are probably making decisions based around the concept of “what’s in this for me?’. This candidate promises to give me stuff, I’ll vote for her. This job has a lot of lurks and perks so I’ll apply for it. This location has a lower rate of muggings so I’ll move there. This store has cheaper prices so that’s where I’ll shop. Do I marry this very lovely woman of a fairly low socioeconomic status or a slightly plainer gal who has a very, very rich father? What’s in it for me indeed! Why should it be any different when choosing religion vs. no religion? Okay, here are a few of those ‘what’s in it for me’ reasons for religious belief over atheism.  

Religion answers my every question: Why is this so? That’s the way God wanted it and no correspondence will be entered into over the matter. Why is that so? God works in mysterious ways and doesn’t owe you any further explanations and that’s all you really need to know about that. Easy! You don’t have to think. You don’t have to study. You don’t have to experiment. No matter what the question is, the answer is God.

Religion’s my readymade easily handy scapegoat: When it comes to your misfortunes, someone else is always to blame. Why did it rain on my parade? God rained on my parade! It was an Act of God. Why did I sin? The Devil made me do it! No matter what happens to you, the good, the bad and the ugly, your can pin it all on your version of theology.

Religion offers me up my afterlife: You don’t want to die, but you will. Well, the next best offering on offer is to return from the dead as it were. Only religion offers up the option of a resurrection. You get an afterlife, and not just any afterlife, but one that just keeps on keeping on. Wow! But you need runs on the board to get selected. So, you gather up lots of brownie points towards your life everlasting; everlasting life; eternal life; life eternal; or just plain old immortality, whatever you wish to call it, when you go to church and read your Bible and pray and put $$$ in the collection plate, etc. So, when the time comes and you’re called to account, well you can always answer that you did your bit, not so much for queen and country but for God and Heaven - now let me into and past those pearly gates Saint Peter! Eternity, here I come!

Religion gives me carte blanche universal justification: You can justify just about anything with the Bible, and therefore God, as your authority. You want to stone to death a disobedient child? God says that’s okay. You want to keep slaves. That’s okay too. Or, you could commit a terrorist act on a wicked city – ditto. I doubt the Bible says anything about littering or jaywalking or failure to pay child support, but if it did, I’m sure God would OK that too. There’s the unwritten eleventh commandment: “Thou shall do it if the means justify the ends” – the Egyptians learned that the hard way; ditto the Canaanites and a lot more in addition. There’s the unwritten twelfth commandment – “Do as I say not as I do”, so with God’s ringing endorsement, you can take that philosophy and apply it to your own set of circumstances as often as necessary. 

Religion vs. my self-preservation: If you read your Old Testament, you’re well aware that God has a huge temper and a short fuse. You are told to fear the Lord. God is a jealous god. God is a vengeful god. God is a right royal SOB! God would strike you dead without a moment’s hesitation or without the slightest qualm or afterthought. So, to ensure you get the full measure of your threescore-and-ten, you decide it’s in your best interests to follow the straight-and-narrow path of righteous and especially not venture outside into the path of a thunderstorm, just in case. God is also a useful concept used by parents everywhere to keep their darling little brats in check. God will get you for that my son! It boils down to a sort of cost-benefit analysis. If I believe in God and God doesn’t exist, I lose nothing. If I don’t believe in God, and God exists, I lose everything; I’m screwed. Therefore, it’s better to believe than not to believe, if you’re really worried about that ‘what’s in it for me’ option.

Religion vs. my social life: As a generality, man is a social animal and yet doesn’t usually wish to associate with the ‘other’, so there tends to be formed groupings of like-with-like, like those sharing common religious beliefs. Religious affiliations provides an easy avenue into a social setting without the need for special skills or gear or high annual fees or other requirements as long as you go along with the crowd and the status quo and obey the rules and regulations of the sect. I’m sure there’s many a boy-meets-girl tale to be told in a religious setting.

Religion vs. my employment: Religious institutions around the world employ millions of people, from the pope right on down the line. In many sects, employment isn’t a bad deal, and you’re usually right up there as a much respected member of society (current sex abuse scandals aside), unlike politicians, real estate agents and used car salesmen. 

Now the question, in conclusion, arises, what percentage of the faithful is ‘faithful’ for reasons other than the ‘what’s in it for me’ scenarios? I don’t know, but I’d bet the family farm it’s a way less than 100%. Is that a bad thing? I’ll let others be the judge.

Ultimate Purpose, Meaning and Destiny: Part Two

If there is a common theme within religions and associated philosophies, it’s one of trying to position oneself in the broad context of life, the universe and everything as something special. You have somehow been tapped on the shoulder with a special and unique mission or destiny, or a special purpose or meaning that you have to carry during the time of your existence, something that places you uniquely above the rest of life, the universe and everything. Hogwash!

Author’s note: for the sake of brevity, I intend to use the acronym for self-awareness or consciousness as SAC; for the overlapping concepts of destiny, fate, function, meaning, purpose or reason as DFMPR. That should save a bit of space!

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

If something is created, and that something has a DFMPR for being created in the first place, that implies an act of intelligence, though that level of intelligence doesn’t have to be very high. Ants create an anthill out of dirt or sand for a purpose (shelter); some birds will gather up pretty baubles and lay them out to be admired by a prospective mate, an artistic work that has a purpose (sex and reproduction); some primates fashion sticks out of leafy twigs to probe for termites, again for a purpose (food).

Back to you: were you created for a DFMPR – are you a tool as it were, designed with an ultimate DFMPR in mind, and if so who or what created that DFMPR? There are two possibilities, not mutually exclusive.

* You are your own tool. You create your own DFMPR.

* You are someone else’s tool. Parents, teachers, other authority figures help give your life DFMPR, like do the dishes; mow the lawn; do your homework; voting is compulsory (this being written in the rather undemocratic country of Australia); pay your taxes; don’t drink and drive; don’t be late for work; spend, spend, spend; be fruitful and multiply; thou shall have no other gods before me, etc. Of course it doesn’t have to be an authority figure. Maybe a close friend suggests your DFMPR lies in being a musician. Decades later, you’re a rock & roll superstar!

Your mind is perfectly free to accept or reject the demands or your externally imposed DFMPR, like wash the dishes or practice, practice, practice your music, as long as you are willing to accept the consequences if you exert your free will in the negative. Ultimately, you, or your mind is in control and that’s where the buck stops.

In the case of the anthill, the artistic pattern of the baubles, the termite gathering stick, these are someone else’s tools (ants, birds, primates), obviously, since they didn’t create themselves. They are creations from within the mind of their ant, bird, primate creators, but via a hardwired form of intelligence – instinct.

What humans tend to create is more a soft-wired flexible sort of intelligence; true intelligence as it was – creating outside of the instinct box. You don’t fashion atomic bombs, or financial markets, or shoes, or a theory of evolution by hardwired instinct.

But the line between animal hardwired and human soft-wired ‘intelligence/instinct’ isn’t all that neat and tidy. Apart from housing/shelter, many an animal ‘society’ has by definition a social structure, a political system (leaders), a division of labour, and has ‘invented’ agriculture and harvesting and animal husbandry, even slavery, warfare and genocide. I’m thinking primarily, but not exclusively, of the ant or bee/wasp kingdoms.

However, there is a bottom line here. Things with DFMPR, by instinct or by pure intelligent design, stem ultimately from the brain, mind, or wetware, whatever you wish to call it. There is no nebulous other factor behind an anthill or wasps nest; creating a new dance step or meal recipe.

The human mind does differ I suspect in at least one highly significant way – humans, via their minds, envelop themselves in a wider worldview, both in time and in space, vis-à-vis the animals, and ponder the meaning of ‘why’.

Animals, my cats for example, have a sense of who (friend or foe; prey or predator); what (I know what that is, it’s my chair); where (I know where my food dish or litter box or the door is); even when (their biological clocks are damn accurate, but their sense of when doesn’t extend much past ‘right now’), but lack the intellectual ability to ponder why or how. Animals live day-to-day, even moment-to-moment, without a sense of mystery (they have no concept of whodunits), which isn’t to say they don’t have a concept of the unknown – they do have curiosity and like to explore (is there food just over that hill), but DFMPR are foreign ideas to them. Things just are and don’t need to be explained. There is no need to frame questions, far less seek answers.

Humans however have evolved the concepts of how or why. And the human mind can come to terms with concepts like DFMPR; good and evil; mystery and awe; yin and yang; a sense of yesterday and tomorrow; of death and immortality which are all foreign in the animal kingdoms.

Unfortunately, though how and why questions come easily to the human mind, answers do not and being an rather impatient sort of life form, well, what do we want, answers; when do we want them, now!

Any gaps in our minds ability to figure things out, the natural order of things (like life, the universe and everything), could be instantaneously filled in by one very simple invention – storytelling. If you have trouble explaining the natural via the natural, then invent explanatory stories of the supernatural, or mythology, or its synonym religion, since every mythology has both supernatural elements and deities. Easy! Every culture has done it. As author Karen Armstrong says “We created religions because we are meaning-seeking creatures”. A local pastor of a friend of mine wrote that “religion is for making a disparate and confusing world coherent”. Substitute the word ‘science’ for ‘religion’ and I’d agree. That’s what science tries to do – make sense of life, the universe and everything. Later on down the track, people decided the best way to explain the natural was to investigate, experiment and get their hands dirty, and slowly but surely,  supernatural or religious philosophies morphed into natural philosophy, or what we call today science, and science has indeed filled in many gaps where previously only deities feared to tread.

Not all mythology need be 100% tall tales invented from scratch out of whole cloth to explain life, the universe and everything. There could be, and probably are, natural events influencing the authors of these tall tales. One can easily substitute a natural, albeit extraterrestrial Captain Yahweh of the Starship Heaven for the supernatural Almighty for example. 

Religion may have once covered that role but since the Age of Enlightenment religion has become irrelevant in that role. We created science to ultimately explain that who, what, where, when, why and how. Science answers the question ‘what is my DFMPR in life’ by pointing out there isn’t any DFMPR (given to us by a nebulous other or religious deity), any more than what is the DFMPR of a rock’s existence. It just is. There is nothing ultimately different between you and a rock, just the arrangement of the fundamental bits and pieces that make up both you and the rock.

But science hasn’t yet come to terms with everything life, the universe and everything has thrown up. An obvious example is explaining that eternal question of what is my DFMPR in existing and being present and accounted for in the first place, apart from my asking “how high” when someone says “jump”! “How high” might be your DFMPR for being present and accounted for in the here and now. 

But then you too could jump all on your own accord because you have decided that your DFMPR in life is to jump, or at least one of your DFMPR (there’s probably no such thing as just a singular DFMPR to your life). Now that’s not all that frivolous since there are athletes whose profession is the high jump or the broad jump or race track hurdles, or who ride and jump horses over obstacles – the steeplechase I think that’s called.

So again we see that your DFMPR can be both influenced by others (say your drill sergeant) and by yourself – you volunteered to enlist in the army and serve your country thus giving you DFMPR to your otherwise miserable existence.

The Concept of the Nebulous Other:

Now a question arises, does any DFMPR stem also from a third party, from a sort of nebulous supernatural sort of other drill sergeant type? Only if you believe in the existence of such a deity or the various mythological texts that supposedly endorse such a being. However, I’ve already pointed out that these religious mythologies were the products of the human mind to give instant satisfaction to un-answered and unanswerable (at the time) questions. Therefore there is no competing nebulous supernatural other directing your life, even if you believe otherwise. Any nebulous supernatural other stems from your own mind.

There is one other last option. People who feel that they are being directed or otherwise have a sense of higher calling or DFMPR in their life might be virtual beings in a simulated universe. Software is the string; you (in fact all simulated life, the simulated universe and the simulated everything) is the puppet of some unknown nebulous, but not a supernatural nebulous other, is the puppeteer. In such a simulated universe you’d have a DFMPR, but no free will. In this case the puppeteer wouldn’t be just a mental creation.

Conclusion: All DFMPR; good and evil; mystery and awe; yin and yang; a sense of yesterday and tomorrow; of death and immortality stems 100% from within your own mind, albeit influenced at times by others – like your drill sergeant – natural others, not nebulous supernatural others. If you feel you have an ultimate DFMPR to your existence then that ultimately stems from or is consolidated from within your own mind (brain chemistry rules the roost) even if influenced by the input of others. I have various self-assigned DFMPR, but they all stem from within my own mind – an example of free will? When my mind eventually goes, so too will go the DFMPR. Once you’re brain dead any DFMPR you had can’t be continued or added too, though that doesn’t mean you can’t still serve a DFMPR, like being an inspiration after-the-fact. Still, the bottom line is that all DFMPR ultimately comes from within, probably after much internal mulling things over, and ever evolving as you get older (and wiser). Apart from the simulated universe scenario, your mind is your own. You have, apparently, free will to pick and choose your own DFMPR.

Ultimate Purpose, Meaning and Destiny: Part One

If there is a common theme within religions and associated philosophies, it’s one of trying to position oneself in the broad context of life, the universe and everything as something special. You have somehow been tapped on the shoulder with a special and unique mission or destiny, or a special purpose or meaning that you have to carry during the time of your existence, something that places you uniquely above the rest of life, the universe and everything. Hogwash!

Author’s note: for the sake of brevity, I intend to use the acronym for self-awareness or consciousness as SAC; for the overlapping concepts of destiny, fate, function, meaning, purpose or reason as DFMPR. That should save a bit of space!

A Few Ultimate Questions:

Is there a DFMPR to life, the universe and everything?

What is the DFMPR to life, the universe and everything?

What is my DFMPR within life, the universe and everything?

Does the universe have a SAC?

A SAC universe, well that’s the only way it could assign you a, or influence your, DFMPR. But, looking up at the night sky, do you really think the universe gives a damn about your alleged DFMPR in life? That would indeed imply that the universe has some sort of SAC. But, IMHO, the universe did not assign you a DFMP at birth and does not acknowledge any DFMPR to your existence. You can contemplate the universe; the universe can not contemplate you. Alas, that’s because the universe is not alive, it doesn’t have a mind; it does not have any SAC. To argue otherwise is to invite trouble.

Some readers might recall the controversy of James Lovelock’s Gaia theory which seemed to imply that Earth (Gaia) had a SAC and the planet could somehow intellectually manipulate the various geo-chemical cycles (feedback mechanisms) to optimise the environmental balance between extremes that could otherwise result without those mechanisms. Gaia’s DFMPR was to produce and ensure an optimum Earth; a Goldilocks Earth, an Earth that’s just right for life. Of course those feedback mechanisms were just the result of natural unconscious physical laws, and too many New Agers read too much into Lovelock’s ideas. Planet Earth exhibits no SAC and neither does the universe.

By extension, there is no nebulous supernatural other within the universe that serves as a substitute for a SAC universe. As a jumping off premise, there is no such thing as either a SAC universe, or a supernatural realm that contains any deity or family of deities within that universe.

Speaking of the universe, I should mention here the Anthropic Cosmological Principle which comes in two basic formats, weak and strong. The weak version basically states the bleeding obvious, and that is the universe is bio-friendly. If the universe wasn’t bio-friendly, we wouldn’t be here to make note of that fact. The strong version however implies a DFMPR to the universe. The universe has a DFMPR to be bio-friendly and to produce life forms, like us, that can appreciate the DFMPR of the universe. Of course for the universe to have a DFMPR, it either has to be SAC of have a supernatural creator that is, unless of course the universe and its DFMPR is a simulated universe. See below.  

I guess I should also mention astrology here if for no other reason than readers would expect to find it mentioned. OK, I’ve mentioned it, now it’s time to move forward. Astrology is a 100% human invention and has no cosmic or personal significance in any shape, manner or form. Of course you are perfectly free to adopt astrology as your answer to your DFMPR, but that suggests you are happy to negate any free will others might think you have.

Let’s start at the most elementary basics and work the way upwards, starting with the four forces and associated particles plus the elementary particles (electron and quarks).

There are four fundamental forces in the universe, with associated particles that form the entire bedrock for all of life, the universe and everything. They are gravity, the weak nuclear and strong nuclear forces, and electromagnetism. You know all about gravity; electromagnetism is also a pretty familiar concept from the light that you read by, to the compass that guides you from Point A to Point B. Now do you associate any intelligence or SAC with these four forces? - Probably not.

There are also a few fundamental particles that you have probably heard about, namely electrons and quarks. Quark combinations make up protons and neutrons, and they in turn, in association with electrons make up atoms. Are electrons and quarks SAC? Do they have intellect? Do they have free will? – Probably not.

Atoms combine to form molecules, and molecules can combine to form really complex molecules, and combinations of really complex molecules can form life within all those other non-life bits that comprise the rest of the universe and everything. But if the fundamental building blocks have no SAC, how can combinations of them have SAC? It’s like building a house of red bricks only to have the finished house appear blue!

Still, somewhere along the line, un-SAC bricks can form a SAC house – you, for example. Therefore, the eternal question – the bits and pieces what makes me up has no SAC, yet I have, a SAC that is. Therefore, I’m more than the sum of my parts and I am somehow special (relative to the universe) and no doubt endowed therefore with some special DFMPR, if I can only figure out what.

Conversely, one could take the point of view and argue that gravity has a DFMPR to its existence, ditto a quark and therefore they have a SAC in order to carry out their DFMPR (like keeping Earth in its orbit, or making those neutrons) and therefore a rock has SAC (being made up of bits and pieces of SAC bits and pieces) and therefore you aren’t unique in your SAC vis-à-vis the inanimate world. But you still have to figure it out – either way you have to figure it out what your special DFMPR is. However, I have a hard time thinking that most living things would accept that all non-living things have a SAC, so let’s scratch that option.

Okay, the universe isn’t SAC and has no DFMPR, it just is; you on the other hand are SAC and therefore assume you have a unique DFMPR, whatever. But is that by your choice and alterable (free will) or by the design of the universe and unalterable?

From the moment of the Big Bang, all the laws, principles and relationships of physics became hardwired into the fabric of the universe, fixed and forever unalterable. That implies total causality and that outcomes are fixed. Plug in the numbers into the equation, crunch the numbers, and out will come the answer, fixed and immovable. Everything that happens in the universe is predetermined even unto billions of years into the future, including you and your DFMPR. Your life may have DFMPR except you have no choice, no free will, in what that DFMPR is. Absolute cause-and-effect rules out free will. Let’s move on from there.

Let’s forge ahead instead with the standard model and see where that leads us. The standard model, scientific model, being that the universe has no SAC or DFMPR, causality is iffy (due to quantum physics); you have SAC so there’s a transition between no SAC and SAC as complexity increases. There is no nebulous other (something supernatural) pulling your strings; you have free will.

You exist. You have not always existed and you will not always exist.

You did not create yourself.  Is there a reason you exist apart from the sex act that created you and perhaps the wishes of your parents to have a child (you) – though that may be a good enough reason in itself.

A more interesting question though is, is there really a DFMPR to your existence, and by extension to all that came before you, leading up to you, since if you have a DFMPR your parents had at least one DFMPR – creating you – and so on back on down the line.

Working backwards, if there was a reason for you, therefore there was a reason for your parent’s existence, your parent’s parents, back to the rise of Homo sapiens, the primates, the mammals, life itself, stuff (planets, stars, and galaxies), the creation of matter/energy and the time and space to ultimately produce you. If you exist for a reason, then everything that went before had a reason to exist as well.

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?