Convincing evidence for a god?

Tarradiddle made me aware of Ray Comfort's blog and I couldn't help but have a look at it even though the thought or reading or listening to anything he and his 'Boy Wonder' Kirk Cameron have to say makes me a bit nauseous. I just think they suck, is all.

To my surprise, the blog is fun because many of the commentators are atheist/agnostics and they seem to get the pwnage over the ridiculous blog entries of Mr Comfort (in my opinion anyway). I thought the blog, and the comments he allows, makes for fun reading. I noticed the following challenge within the com-boxes:

To all the atheists: What would it take to convince you that God did exist? What would you accept as evidence?

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" was a phrase popularized by Carl Sagan, and the Christian set would have us believe that such extraordinary evidence did come 2000 years ago and was well documentated. I'm sorry, but that was good for them, but no such good evidence for anyone else.

I mean, ol' Jesus got all showboaty for the folk back then but nowadays all we get from his super 'holy ghost' powers he left with his people is the ability to fall over (ala Benny Hinn) and the remarkable ability to speak gibberish (speaking in tongues). That's not the Holy Spirit, that's tequila.

In all my 33 years of regular church going, I've never seen any evidence that anything supernatural even remotely exists at all. The whole supernatural concept is a complete scam. I wanted to believe in ghosts, I wanted to believe in demons, I wanted to believe in god... and I wanted to so much that I think I convinced myself to believe my own lies. Self deceptions and wishful thinking is all the evidence there exists for god, and you can call it faith if you like but the term, 'crock of shite' also works.

I'd be happy to get all Fox Moulder but for now I'm gonna have to Scully it and I will recant this whole blog if any of the following happens... and you'll know about it.

Acceptable evidence (some from Ray's com-box and Tarradidle ):

1. Healed amputees
2. Elvis risen from the dead... actually no, Steve Irwin. Yeah, Steve... then we'd have less of Bindy and her mum doing tv.
3. Christians would have longer lifespans.
4. An angel or other Super being floating at my window (with or without witnesses... I do trust my own eyes, even after a few drinks).
5. A picture of the 'Lord's Supper' in my grilled cheese sandwich.
6. The writer's strike to stop THIS WEEK, so I can get me some more seasons of DEXTER!!

Prayer works! It's win-win for God - yay!

I was chatting with a Christian friend who hesistated in talking to me somewhat because she thought it would end up as blog fodder. Sigh, well 'you' planted the thoughts gal, so here goes. I'm not attacking 'God' as such because a reasonable part of me believes he doesn't actually exist in the first place, nor does he read my blog. The unreasonable part of me thinks he exists and is aware of the blog but couldn't care less and that he has put this whole universe in a little jar in his fortress of solitude. And no, I'm not going to bloody well give the 'he' a capital H... for crying out loud. If this stupid and probably non-existant deity is so pedantic about capitalisation, he can kiss my evolved upper-case Monkey Butt!

Anyway, kudos to God for answering every prayer... you said, "prayers aren't always answered the way one hopes for or expects sometimes", and this is a fairly old argument that has him landing on his big feet smelling like a rose and whistling dixie to himself as he wanders away from a situation with his hands nervously held together behind his back. He wins every time with this logic and comes across as the ultimate convenience trickster. Sure, he can't answer every prayer as we'd like him to or we'd all be drinking without hangovers and std free orgies.

Dear omnipresent Lord, you are so awesome and big. You are so big that I feel small when I stand next to you... you're one big bitch. I beseech thee oh Lord of lords, and king of kings, and queen of queens, and Jack of Jackshit, to hear my prayer and throw me a friggin' bone here 'cause this is taking up my quality masturbation time. Forgive me oh holy one, for I have been created sinful (in your image? were you too susceptable to fucking up? how does that work? whatever...) and I truly hope you forgive me for being created by you. Yeah, see I don't get it either, but there's no use complaining, eh?

Yadda yadda yadda... save the whales, and the kids born into starvation and poverty, and please stop rape and people who don't indicate at roundabouts... people are getting hurt. That's it for now. Can you use your awesome Holy Ghost super powers to turn the global warming stuff around too huh? Polar bears gotta eat.

HEROES - Christians with Super-Powers!

Miracles are great - they really are, or they would be if they actually happened. If they are true then all the lucky super-powered christian Heroes should get together and fight crime or do something useful with their powers, like feed the world or stop climate change. So, what super powers could they claim to have if they were all running at their full potential? Jesus said that they wouldd do greater things than he did, and really, that was a big statement wasn't it? According to Jesus they should be able to at least do the following and do them better.

Walking on water - I'd pay to see that, that there is a handy miracle. Would shoes get wet or would the fee actually be water repellant, just hovering above it? Either way this is a gravity defying miracle and therefore Christians should not only be able to walk on water, they should be able to fly.

Changing water into wine - Why can't all christians do this one..? they might get invited to more parties if they could. I'd sure as heck always make sure there was one of these 'heroes' at my parties.

Casting out demons - If I ever came across a demon, it would be great to send it into a herd of swine. Imagine the look on their faces as they get a red hot poker up the porky. It'd be priceless, they wouldn't know what hit them. I wonder what the bacon would taste like? Mmmm... smoked demon possessed ham... It's the forbidden apple in the mouth of a cooked pig that stops them from getting out.

Healing - Anything to save on health care and deter death would be neat. Hey, I'd even pay to not worry about bulk billing if these super-powered supernatural healings could be dished out better than Jesus could do it. If Jesus could do leprosy, then Christians should be able to turn the tide of Aids. Except that they're too busy waving signs at all the people they actually think have Aids.

Raising the dead - again that'd be awesome - full marks for this miracle - death sucks, it's been a real problem for a long time. Wrinkles are no good either. I say if they are gonna do better than Jesus on this one, not only do they have to re-animate the Lazuras' of today but also smooth out the wrinkles and unsightly scarring of whatever put them in the grave in the first place.

Invisibility - Apparently Jesus was able to get out of the clutches of a mad crowd by slipping throught the midst of them. He was sort of phasing out and moving through them invisibly. Michael Jackson is trying to achieve invisibility I think. He's gone from black to white to invisible... what? I don't see him anymore. But he's not Christian, so he can't top Jesus' trick... hmmm. I do hear of a lot of pastors who put their mittens in unwanted kittens, and then they disappear.

Ascending into heaven - That'd be cool to see. Defying gravity is always brilliant, especially if you wear a cape or flowing white robes. But like kilts, everyone is trying to look up them as you fly up into the atmosphere (where God is).

Loaves and fishes - I really really hope that works with KFC. I think this miracle is great and if I witnessed it... well, you'd never shut me up! I don't even think any of the mutated X-Men are able to generate food on that scale from slim pickings. Picard's Enterprise was able to though.

Calming the storms - Excellent... brilliant... America would really appreciate that and pay you heaps to stop another hurricane. Everyone loves X-Men's Storm, but not when she played Catwoman. Crossing from a Marvel character to DC is not a good choice in the movie business.

Speaking in Tongues - an unintelligible language... What the? Is that amazing? Is there a superhero that can do that? Tongueman? Gobbledygookboy? Wow, is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it's ummm, it's some guy who can stutter - next. So, you can speak in tongues? and you admit it in public. If you seriously try and tell the rest of the world that it is a supernatural miracle to rival a bottomless bucket of KFC then you are fooling yourself and potentially many other naive wonderers. I'd be complaining and asking for one of the other powers.

It's a miracle, I'm healed!

Once you've bought into the whole Christian belief system you start to believe in all the fringe benefits, like healing. Time to accessorise that amazing tongues trick with the other gifts, signs and fruits. Perhaps that dicky knee can be replaced... or the fatty tissues slowed down? Of course you could start eating properly and exercise, but a quick fix and a prayer line would make it all a whole lot easier.

Ah yes, take two prayers and see me in the morning if Cancer still persists. Guaranteed to sometimes work! You can realign your life and make resolutions fuelled by an amazing overnight healing that we can all suppose came from God above. Well, why not? The power of positive thinking, the placebo effect, that kind of thing. But psychologists report that the euphoria of the imagined healings will wear off in a short matter of time, and the failure to follow through on any of the promises they made to god for it will leave people even more demoralized than ever.

But they'll be back. The people who fall for these things do so again and again. One woman seen at a Revival meeting seemed to see no irony in the fact that she'd been attending the same meetings regularly for three years without results. I've seen people convinced that God wanted to heal people and make idiots of themselves trying to heal someone of Cancer. Do they learn? Nope, they figure that they must have some sin, or something they've missed, not enough prayer, etc.

Sometimes prayer works. Sometimes it doesn't. I have heard many second-hand stories that open the possibilities that there was a dynamic involved that was not explainable by the doctor. Certainly never seen anything in my 35 years of wandering that looked slightly supernatural in any way.

I found the following story to be quite sobering when considering the magical properties we give to miracles that are not all that strange or miraculous in the first place.

Excerpt

(The) introduction is to help show that I was very active and believed that I was indeed, a "True Christian."And that's why when I had a miracle, I was extremely grateful, but not overly surprised. My god was a mighty god, after all, who reigned from heaven on high. Miracles were a normal part of my theology.

My daughter was running/toddling around our apartment, and in her clumsy exuberance, crashed headlong into the pointed corner of our coffee table. Her half-dozen teeth were crushed backwards into her face, blood was gushing everywhere, and her two young parents were hysterical. Her face was a wreck.

At the hospital, the doctors told us there was nothing anyone could do. Her teeth would probably fall out. All they could offer, they said, was something for the pain and to stop the bleeding. So, with our now deformed-mouthed little girl, we went home, laid hands on her, and prayed to the Lord of Hosts to heal our whimpering baby. The pain medicine made our daughter groggy, so we put her to bed. When she awoke the next morning, her teeth were perfectly straight, and except for a small scar where she'd bitten through her lip during the fall, she was completely healed. It was a miracle. God had healed our daughter. We spread the news far and wide, and used that experience to testify to the living reality of our God.That was 15 years ago.

About seven years ago, I started to severely question my faith. I eventually left Christianity and started this website.

So, what about that miracle? In the last couple of years I've noticed that when our daughter sings, her face lacks symmetry. This doesn't seem to affect her ability for music, but it is somewhat distracting to the people watching her sing. I took her to an orthodontist for an opinion and found out that one side of her jaw is longer than the other. The only way to correct the problem, he said, was to break her jaw and re-set it. When it healed, hopefully, the two sides of her face when singing would appear more symmetrical.

I asked what would have caused such a problem. He replied by asking if she'd had a hard fall when she was very young. "The coffee table!" I thought. The doctor explained that what probably had happened was that my daughter had damaged the jaw during the fall, which stunted the growth on one side. He assured us there was nothing anyone could have done, and there was no way to know the extent of the damage until our daughter grew up. We told him about her teeth being bashed into her mouth in the fall, and how the teeth had straightened over night. He said that things like that were not uncommon. The healing powers of the body, especially a young body, were amazing at times. What is my point with this little personal introspection?

Many Christians hang on to their faith based on some personal experience that they consider to be miraculous. I know Christians frequently do this, because I was one of those Christians. Typically, the so-called miracles are fairly minor events, events that could be easily explained by any number of natural causes. I know this, too, because my miracle mentioned here is a prime example. For those Christians who are sure that Christianity is true because someone was healed of a backache, or someone babbled in an unknown tongue, or some old lady left her wheel chair for an hour or two, or something equally routine, I challenge that person to ask why amputees never grow new limbs. Ask why people who have lungs removed, never grow new ones. Ask why all the so-called miracles of healing by almighty God are so easily mimicked by the natural healing powers of the body. Believing is nice. It gives a wonderful feeling of being watched over and protected, but it's all a lie.

Read more...

Behold, I show you a mystery!

I would love to believe that every move we made was part of some individual god's big master plan or practical joke. All six billion of us separated and sorted into little boxes depending on where, when and who we were born to; ultimately packed into two boxes - one marked goat, the other sheep, and then prostrating ourselves at the feet of him for eternity pandering to his enormous ego, forever telling him how awesome he is.

It would be great to believe that all the bad decisions and mistakes I've made in my life are not regretable but rather necessary steps on the road to enlightenment. Sometimes I force myself to believe in predestination, destiny and fate to stop myself from wallowing in regret for missed opportunities. It's no wonder people get so confused when faced with the death of a loved one. It just doesn't make sense when it happens; it doesn't compute. We're assured by the religious nutters who gets rolled in to speak at funerals that the death served a purpose that we mere mortals just can't understand. Poppycock! Sometimes we simply make a wrong step and our fragile bodies blow away back into dust.

"Behold, I show you a mystery!" wrote Paul; he was an enigmatic speaker. When it comes to supernatural phenomena, I love a good mystery and sometimes there is simply no explanation. The same can be said whenever I go to see a professional magician. Those guys are professional hoaxers and are experts at making us believe something truly magical is happening... but there's always a trick.. there's always an explanation. They're very good at keeping it quiet though. The same goes for supernatural happenings, in my opinion, there's an explanation somewhere, but it's just not always forthcoming. There have always been hoaxers, both amatuer and professional for as long as we've been around. Some are tongue in cheek but others are confidence tricksters who work very hard to persuade the ignorant to believe a lie. And that's the thing... people lie. They lie all the time and they're good at it. Some lie so well they convince themselves. Heck I used to convincingly lie that I'd seen something strange; it was an attention seeking device. I sometimes even relayed the stories of others, making them my own because I believed them so wholeheartedly.

When dealing with this subject it's important to keep Occam's Razor in mind.. which says that the simplest explanation is usually right; and you shouldn't add unnecessary complications when trying to explain something. The tricky part is deciding which exlanation is the most likely. Also, it's important to keep an open mind, which is hard when facts challenge assumptions. Sometimes we want to believe something so badly that we ignore the evidence altogether. I recommend starting without preconceptions and then listen to some new ideas. I myself am not really a sceptic, I'm open to anything and then I try to disprove it through logic or reality (my reality). This is your journey and will ultimately be your reality.

The trouble with paranormality is that most of the evidence is heresay. It happened to a friend of a friend, who is no fool.. hmmm. If I personally had a ghostly encounter or an alien abduction and was not after a few drinks then I may think differently. However, I've never seen anything that fractures the laws of physics and I have trouble believing the stories of people who tell me they have. Most people don't understand the nature of probability and random chance, therefore they attribute mystic intervention when all it really was was a trick of perception (I just typed was was... was there a better way of putting that?).

If I come across someone who seems to be happily convinced they were abducted and probed by E.T. then who am I to call them a liar? I might back up and feel sorry for them, but I'm not going to call their bluff. It seems many people are absolutely convinced that they've touched the light fantastic. But everyone can't be right... and it seems that reality is easily skewed, what with Psychokinesis, ghosts, unexplained creatrues, Crop Circles (my favourite), UFOs, and Mary sightings.. ra ra ra... the list goes on and on. And poor old me hasn't seen as much as a pesky poltergeist. 5 million people in America alone claim to have been abducted by aliens. Is this mass stupidity or are we really craving attention. Sorry America... I think you are coming across a little needy.

The Stupidnatural and Miracles

The supernatural and miracles. What do I make of them? I wanted to believe in things unseen and I spent a huge poking at it. My online 'Moth' persona orgininated from my fascination with the Mothman Prophesy ghost stories from modern American mythology. During my latter years in church I tried to write a book about Angels from my particular churches' point of view. I really believed in them but didn't know how they worked into the unreality I lived in, so I wrote a really embarrasing, longwinded and stupid 'book' on the subject (Something that will always remain deeply hidden in the corner of an old hard-drive). I did a really pretty PowerPoint to go with the book and presented it to my church. In retrospective, I feel like complete nong.

Anyway, in truth, there are unseen powers that run along the meridians of this planet. Aren't magnets fascinating? I wonder what the ancients thought of magnets? You can actually make a 'rock' float above another rock. I'm sure this was labelled as supernatural until we educated ourselves and found they were perfectly 'natural'. Some even theorise in other unseen energy sources that run through the course of our planet... crystals, min mins, water divining (just some random words that I think are related to what I'm trying to describe). In summary, 'supernatural' is just a term we give to something we don't yet understand or are unable to classify based on information we have already aquired.

The wondrous gifts of the Spirit: The first thing ex-Penties have to confront is that the amazing ability to verbalise 15 minutes of random noise from their mouths is not miraculous. Like, hit yourselves in the head with a hockey stick until this sinks in. I truly convinced myself I was doing something only 'magic' people could do. I made this real in my head, and I had the misfortune of hanging around a hundred other people who also let themselves believe in this remarkable over-rated ability to make nonsensical 'sounds'. Together we built a huge noisy straw man brainless scarecrow thing and worshipped it.

This is a process called 'confabulation' - and it's not the same as lying. It's when people combine fact and fiction to produce fantasy. Christians want to feel really special and 'super-powered' so they attribute fanciful meanings to basic things... for instance, consider the other gifts of the spirit (wisdom, knowledge, tongues, interpretation etc) They're not like real super powers (x-ray vision, flying, walking on water - Jesus should have fought crime with his super-powers); they are just things that anybody can do.

The gifts of the spirit and given 'special' interpretations and some pentecostals go to such extremes where they use such gifts in the same way that clairvoyants and seers do in travelling circus shows.... "someone in this corner has a bad back", or "the Lord told me this and the Lord told me that" - bah. Other churches go with the whole Toronto Blessing thing and try to convince us that shaking uncontrollably on the floor is also another amazing god given superpower. It's not... it, like tongues, is just another thing that gullible and naive people do to make themselves feel more important than they are.