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| I was listening to NPR in the car this morning, and an expert was talking about the growth of American poetry. The talk show host asked him what he thought about hip-hop and rap as a genre of poetry...and the guy says, "You know, I find it so interesting that if you deprive these young people of an education, invariably they'll find their way to express themselves through that type of poetry."
Well, that's not socioeconomically or racially normative at all, is it?
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| Some of my favorites--more at http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm
This is the kind of stuff that congregations cheer wildly for when their pastors bring it up...seriously, guys. Seriously! Plenty of very smart people who would rather feel the collective ecstatic will instead of using their mental filters. Hint: Rock concerts produce the same effect as the Holy Spirit.
- ARGUMENT FROM INCOMPLETE DEVASTATION
(1) A plane crashed killing 143 passengers and crew.
(2) But one child survived with only third-degree burns.
(3) Therefore, God exists.
- ARGUMENT FROM POSSIBLE WORLDS
(1) If things had been different, then things would be different.
(2) That would be bad.
(3) Therefore, God exists.
- ARGUMENT FROM SHEER WILL
(1) I DO believe in God! I DO believe in God! I do I do I do I DO believe in God!
(2) Therefore, God exists.
- ARGUMENT FROM NONBELIEF
(1) The majority of the world's population are nonbelievers in Christianity.
(2) This is just what Satan intended.
(3) Therefore, God exists.
- ARGUMENT FROM POST-DEATH EXPERIENCE
(1) Person X died an Atheist.
(2) He now realizes his mistake.
(3) Therefore, God exists.
- ARGUMENT FROM EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL
(1) God loves you.
(2) How could you be so heartless to not believe in him?
(3) Therefore, God exists. - ARGUMENT FROM FEELING IN MY BONES, BY C. S. LEWIS, a.k.a. FIRST CAUSE ARGUMENT (VII)
(1) "I felt in my bones that this universe does not explain itself."
(2) This universe needs an explanation.
(3) The explanation must be God, because I can't think of anything else.
(4) Therefore, God exists. - ARGUMENT FROM SACRIFICIAL BLACKMAIL
(1) Jesus died for your sins.
(2) Therefore, God exists.
- ARGUMENT FROM INCOHERENT BABBLE
(1) See that person spazzing on the church floor babbling incoherently?
(2) That's how infinite wisdom reveals itself.
(3) Therefore, God exists.
- OPRAH'S ARGUMENT (I)
(1) The human spirit exists.
(2) Therefore, God exists. - ARGUMENT FROM CROCKERY
(1) Pots don't go around giving orders to the potter.
(2) Therefore, God exists. - ARGUMENT FROM INFINITE REGRESS, a.k.a. FIRST CAUSE ARGUMENT (II)
(1) Ask Atheists what caused the Big Bang.
(2) Regardless of their answer, ask how they know this.
(3) Continue process until the Atheist admits he doesn't know the answer to one of your questions.
(4) You win!
(5) Therefore, God exists. - ARGUMENT FROM LONELINESS
(1) Christians say that Jesus is their best friend.
(2) I'm lonely, and I want a best friend.
(3) Therefore, God exists. - ARGUMENT FROM CREATIVE INTERPRETATION
(1) God is:
(a) The feeling you have when you look at a newborn baby.
(b) The love of a mother for her child.
(c) That little still voice in your heart.
(d) Humankind's potential to overcome their difficulties.
(e) How I feel when I look at a sunset.
(f) The taste of ice cream on a hot day.
(2) Therefore, God exists.
- ARGUMENT FROM INSECURITY
(1) We have gone to absolutely berserk lengths to establish that Atheists are laughable morons.
(1.5) Actually, we did so in the hopes of curing our own insecurities about theism — but there's no chance
in hell we'll ever admit that.
(2) Therefore, Atheists are laughable morons.
(3) Therefore, God exists. - ARGUMENT FROM YOU ARE ALWAYS LOVED
(1) You are always loved.
(2) God invented love.
(3) Therefore, God exists.
- ARGUMENT FROM GOD WILL PROVIDE
(1) I don't know what I'm going to do with my life.
(2) But something always happens to sustain me. My parents support me, I find a job, etc. God provides!
(3) No, it's NOT the actions of the humans themselves! How could you think that?"
(4) Therefore, God exists. - ARGUMENT FROM SUPERIORITY
(1) If God does not exist, then I am an inferior being, since I am not "special" in a cosmic sense.
(2) But I am superior because I am a Christian.
(3) Therefore, God exists. - ARGUMENT FROM LACK OF DISPROOF
(1) You can't prove God doesn't exist!
(2) Therefore, God exists.
- ARGUMENT FROM ANECDOTAL EXPERIENCE (I)
(1) I once experienced something I can't explain.
(2) [Atheists offer several possible, natural explanations.]
(3) You're just guessing! I was there.
(4) Therefore, God exists.
- ARGUMENT FROM ANECDOTAL EXPERIENCE (II)
(1) I have experienced feelings of God's presence in my mind.
(2) Therefore, God exists. - ARGUMENT FROM TEEN CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT
(1) God is so totally awesome, dude, and if you would pretend that Creed and POD were good bands,
you would realize that.
(2) Also, our Youth Group leader Skip once, like, cured a broken leg using only the power of the almighty Lord.
(3) Therefore, God exists.
- ARGUMENT FROM SPEAKING IN TONGUES
(1) My friend here, once started spontaneously speaking some jibberish that sounded to me kind of like Russian.
(2) But neither he nor I know anything about Russian.
(3) The only explanation is God.
(4) Therefore, God exists.
- ARGUMENT FROM EUROPEAN HISTORY
(1) Many prominent thinkers in pre-modern Europe believed in God.
(2) Let’s just forget about the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
(3) Therefore, God exists.
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Tsunamis, avalanches, and lightning bolts and other natural catastrophes certainly haven't
ceased since medieval times, but their symbolic value as manifestations of divine anger ought to seem archaic, at least in modern Western societies. Most
of us find it difficult to conceive that our contemporaries would classify Katrina or the Indonesian tsunamis
as punitive measures against the immorality of mankind. Right?
I have witnessed the abhorrent spectacle of church-led group
prayers to summon God’s judgment upon sinners: calling earthquakes upon San
Francisco against the “spreading viral disease of homosexuality,” requesting the
destruction of “modern cesspools of iniquity” (which include most major cities
in the continental United States), and even chanting to have the Middle Eastern
nations torn asunder and ravaged as much as possible, to open up avenues for
evangelism. Why not? Apparently they are godless, sub-human
heathens. The take-away point is
that to these people, God has been reduced to something like a paranormal
german shepherd, to be sicced upon the wickedness-of-the-week. As a little kid in church, I was told that the AIDS virus evolved from the bodies of gay men in America, to punish those who had "relations repulsive to nature and God." Then I stumbled across an Economist article about chimpanzees in sub-Saharan Africa...
Hopefully, these are the most extreme cases. Other modern churches depict God as an
impotent and spurned lover. The nerdy
kind that keeps hanging around, who snaps and causes a high school shooting
after you reject him for prom (see Old Testament). Natural
catastrophes are prime Sunday Surmon evidence of a “heartbroken God” trying to get a “broken
world’s” attention. Bewilderingly, it’s always
that current times have produced more dismally rotten-to-the-core specimens of
mankind than ever before (history is constantly on a race to the bottom), sinning at unsurpassed levels of carnality and decadence. God is so mystified and shattered by its recurrence…that he throws a tantrum against a coastline or a continental
faultline. I'm not sure why Jakarta is more depraved than Amsterdam. Maybe he's got skewed aim when he tosses those plagues. Thus missing entire continents and causing inconveniences like the AIDS epidemic to hit women and children in Africa. Armageddon shall be the ultimate
tantrum, the divine equivalent of smashing a Jeep into a building because he couldn't stand the faulty alignment anymore. Except the kinda-sorta relevant detail that he's an auto mechanic himself.
Didn’t anyone ever tell him it’s all about managing
expectations?
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| Intermission--Ray got into Harvard Law today!
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| In response to a recent post on secularism
vs. the religious right, I'm developing my own pet theory about a
correlation between secularism and taming individual conceptions of a deity. I
can't wait to read Dawkins' The God Delusion in full, but I have to
promise not to dog-ear it or mess up the shiny silver cover. I conjecture that
over the past seven centuries, malevolent ideas of Christian deity have dwindled
in the Western public consciousness. More accurately, conceptions of the
Christian God have multiplied and diverged to accommodate the lifestyle molds
of every sniveling midlife man in crisis, well-intentioned grandmother, naïve radical
pre-teen, underappreciated housewife, redneck, wasp, fashionista, immigrant,
loner, socialite, politician, homesick freshman, divorcee, petty salesman, and
every self-conscious idealist harboring narcissistic tendencies in sight.
These days, a designer-God is en vogue—customizable to fit each daily dose. Big enough to forgive your multi-million stock-market
fraud and your lies to your wife about where you were last night, small enough
to pocket behind the condom in your wallet in an underage strip bar.
Big enough to forgive you for skipping church one weekend to
attend that college-app-boosting extracurricular activity, small enough to accept
your plans to plug in “a Christian attitude” into whatever self-motivated, private
sector career you have in mind when you grow up. (You’re destined to revolutionize and convert
the world of stockbrokers, who will never have encountered an individual with
so much integrity and unassailable values.
It’s almost like saving Africa.)
Big enough to solve all your problems, small enough to let
you “work out your faith” through the tough times and develop perseverance. When life puts you under unbearable duress, you
should pray your way out of it. Hold off
on the “worldly, pragmatic” solutions, to give God an “opportunity” to
demonstrate a miracle. For which you’ll
get a gold star in heaven for your sadomasochism, and accolades on earth for publicizing your weekly suffering in the Sunday prayer column for six months.
If your God holds your whole life in his hands, decided what
college you got into, has instilled in you a vision to deliver a Bible in
tribal language into the hands of every jungle savage in Africa, wants you to
hold hands and pray with every homeless man on the street, has prepared a perfect
virgin soulmate for your courtship, pastoral marriage, and Christian duet
worship songwriting career…is just so much bigger
than your one-night pseudo-freakdancing at the formal, your self-righteous
youth group gossip, your nighttime lusts, bigger than those career-chasing
moneymakers that you’ll be colleagues with, is going to gift you with
intelligence and ambition to land a six-figure job, will inspire your pastor to
ask you for a $50,000 tithe to build a brand new sound stage so your Sunday
worship electrical guitars can jolt the entire residential community into worship at 8am on the weekends…if God
wants you to pray hard for all these sinners you see everywhere, whom you
loathe and pity for their ignorance, but somehow try to infuse with the light of
Jesus…the light of course emanating most brightly from you living your life so joyfully because you’ve got to prove that a holy life
is the best life, you’re free of any personal ambition except to shine flamboyantly on earth…if God is pleased that you jump
and shake during church songs to show your holy excitement, but of course is
also egalitarian towards those who haven’t overcome their shyness to be free to be a Jesus-freak…of course that
makes it harder to distinguish between the quieter ones and the
not-so-strong-Christians…but you would never call attention to yourself except to call attention to what a great vessel for God you are...
I’m about to offend the living hell into you. This is a mini-series, for as long as I feel
like ranting about the crap that you live on every day. Contradictions (sorry, "theological paradoxes") you can work out yourself but are too afraid to think about--what is faith for anyway? Some of you are living on a moral high, some of you just haven't ever thought to break out of what you've grown up in, some of you are too comfortably cocooned in visions of heavenly destiny, some of you think good people all have to believe in God, some of you just want purpose and definitive truth. I’m going to describe the many
inconsistent, ugly facets of this Christian God. But you use them all interchangeably, because
God is really just your many-faced lapdog. | | |
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