In my last post I wrote about Obama’s plans to overhaul Bush’s “Faith-Based Initiative” program should Obama be elected president. As mentioned in that post, Obama would put rules in place to ensure that federal tax-payer money used by religious organizations can only be used for secular programs. Furthermore, it would prohibit prostylizing and religious discrimination in any program that makes use of federal funds.

I said that, on paper, this sounds fine with me. However, one of the two potential problems that I listed was that I find it hard to believe that any religious organization would be willing to agree to such restriction. Essentially, this plan would only fund “faith-based” programs provided that those programs remove the “faith” part! Take, for example, the Heritage Foundation’s (a conservative think tank) recent statement regarding Obama’s proposal:

But even worse, Obama’s plan says that when a faith-based organization takes federal dollars, it would lose its ability to preserve its faith-based character through maintaining hiring standards consistent with its mission. It could be forced to hire an atheist. In other words, it would strike at the heart of the faith-based initiative.

Well, regardless of the merits or the demerits of hiring an atheist, I understand the point they are trying to make here. Obama’s plan requires that a faith-based organization shed its faith-based character whenever using federal money. Unlike the Heritage Foundation, I agree that government tax-payer money should not be used to fund religious activities and I am skeptical that religion is an essential part of any social service.

This statement by the Heritage Foundation seems to confirm my suspicion that “faith-based” groups or organizations that favor the funding of “faith-based” social programs will not easily buy into the church-state separation principles underlying the proposal. That means in practice this plan seems like it will not only be less than satisfactory but will require a greater amount of supervision to ensure that “faith-based” groups who do accept federal money along with these restrictions are playing nicely with it.

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As many already know, President Bush started a “faith-based initiative” to use federal tax payer money to support religious organizations - and causing more cracks to appear in the already fragile wall of separation between church and state. Theocracywatch.org contains numerous links on this program here. None of this is, at this point in time, new or surprising. The question now becomes, essentially, what will the next president do with this initiative?

A new article from the Christian Science Monitor reports on what Obama plans to do with it. Obama has no plans to phase it out, rather, he intends to overhaul and expand it:

His plan would overhaul and expand the controversial faith-based initiative that was an early cornerstone of President Bush’s domestic program, which Obama said had “never fulfilled its promise.”

Now, what is troubling about the current initiative is simply that it uses tax payer money (whether religious or not) to fund religious activities - activities that non-believers would not likely endorse on their own.The article continues:

The senator was careful to highlight key areas of difference between that initiative and his own proposal for a Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

“Make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don’t believe this partnership will endanger that idea,” Obama said.

He emphasized that those receiving funds could not proselytize the people they help nor could they discriminate in hiring practices on the basis of religion. Faith-based groups could only use federal dollars for secular programs. And he committed to ensure that taxpayer dollars would only go to “programs that actually work.”

Now, this actually sounds rather good to me, at least on paper. I am okay with tax payer money being used to fund secular social programs that do not push a particular religious view or discriminate on the basis of religion. In other words, this could be a fair compromise. However, I still see two potential problems with a plan like this:

(1) I find it difficult to believe that many religious or “faith-based” groups would be willing to accept these conditions. After all, these groups are “called” forth to spread their religious views, are they not? While I would like to think that any charitable religious group would be willing to completely shed their religious identity to involve themselves in secular social programs, at the same time I am doubtful that many would so so enthusiastically.

(2) In practice I am skeptical at how well this might work. Who is going to be responsible for policing the use of these funds? How much extra time and money will it require to make sure that religious groups are only using the federal funds in a secular manner? Maybe I am over-reacting, but this sounds like more trouble than it is worth.

The problem is that we are looking for help in the wrong places. Rather than turing to “faith-based” solutions, what we reallly need to be doing is looking for “reason-based” solutions that are not premised on unsupportable religious claims, no matter how sincere. But then again, I am not a politician pandering to the large number of Christian voters in this country…

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In my last post I presented 5 examples of what’s known as religious pareidolia, or seeing recognizable religious imagery in what amounts to random stimuli. This was but only a small sampling, to be sure, of what is being reported. A friend of mine then sent me the following image of “Jesus” that is too good not to post. So, here it is:

Dog Butt Jesus:

Question: What message is Jesus trying to send here? Leave me your answer in the comments section.

Personally, I think that Jesus was trying to embed himself in the bark of a tree (as he typically does, see below) when this dog walked up to take a piss. Before you know it, he mistakenly found himself on the dog rather than the tree.

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While many Christians are still patiently waiting for Jesus’ Second Coming, others believe that Jesus has already appeared - albeit not exactly in the manner that many would expect. Even Jesus’ mother Mary seems to get around frequently these days. Here are some recent sightings:

Girl Finds Sweet Jesus Image In Piece Of Candy
April 17, 2008

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A Florida girl said she was about to pop a piece of candy in her mouth when she saw an image of Jesus in the sweet. He’s supposedly in a swirl, hands clasped in prayer, with a halo. Jessica Perry, 14, of Jacksonville, Fla., said she wasn’t quite convinced that it was a sign from God.

“I found something amazing in a piece of candy that I was about to put in my mouth,” she said. “I always look at the shape of it. … At first, I thought it was a little girl, and then I thought it was Jesus.”

Jessica said she would consider selling the sweet Jesus candy for the right price.

Jessica is not quite convinced that this is a sign from God. I suggest that she eat the piece of candy anyway, wait a day or so, and see what happens. If Jesus reappears intact, then I will be impressed.

Florida Couple Sees Jesus In Shower Stain: Family Treats Shower Like Shrine
March 26, 2008

MIAMI — A Florida woman says she asked for a sign from God and she got it in her shower. Laquan Joyner and her husband, Theo Grimes, said they have been praying and asking God to send them a sign. When they looked in the shower, right next to the shampoo, there it was, an image of Jesus Christ. The family said they will never clean the spot and they now treat the shower like a shrine.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, a real live image of Jesus is in the shower,’” Joyner said. “I couldn’t believe, it either. But it’s there. And my grandmother came, and she saw it and said, ‘I’ve seen everything.’”

I can think of hundreds of signs that God could give if He so chose. This is decidedly not one of them. Yet these people apparantly believe that, out of all of the signs that God could give, He decided to move around the grime in their shower so that it resembles the face of a bearded man (who, of course, must be Jesus).

Texas Man Sees Gift From Heaven In Jesus Meteorite
December 17, 2007

CELINA, Texas — A Texas man believes a meteorite that fell near his home was a gift from the heavens. Terrance Cotton said he believes the meteorite looks like the face of Jesus Christ. Cotton was playing with his dogs outside his home and wishing on what he thought was a falling star. That’s when heard a strange sound and looked up. “There was this cracking sound and it was really loud,” said Cotton. The object crashed into his yard. At first, he thought this object was just a meteorite. Then, Cotton said he got a message.

“I heard a voice and it said, ‘Look and see if you can see a face,’” Cotton said. “And I looked and I saw an image of Jesus Christ.”

When it happened, almost a year ago, it made headlines in Abilene. Now, dozens of people are coming to Cotton’s home in Celina to see the meteorite. Terrance said he wants to share it with the world.

“I’ve had people look at it and they can’t look at it anymore — it’s too much,” he said. “And I’ve had people come in and say they can’t see it.”

Whether they see the miracle or not, Terrance said has seen changes in his life. He said he is now more at peace. Cotton had scientists from Hardin Simmons University look at the meteorite to confirm that it was real. He said he has also had several people offer to buy it for thousands of dollars.

Well, now we know what happened to Jesus while he was descending through the clouds during his Second Coming.

Woman Says Holy Flapjack Resembles Jesus, Mary
November 14, 2007

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — A South Florida woman has sold a pancake she claims contains an image resembling Jesus and Mary. Marilyn Smith, of Port St. Lucie, said the spiritual image appeared Sunday morning while she was making breakfast. Her daughter, Dana Okane, said she believed the pancake was a miracle and posted it on the Internet auction site, eBay. When bidding ended Tuesday, Smith had sold the pancake for $338.

Okane said she thinks the image is a message from God telling the world to “clean up its act.”

Yes, that is the obvious and logical way to send such a clear message: burn some outlines into a flapjack. And to the person who paid $338 for a pancake…

Image Of Virgin Mary Appears On Lemon
September 20, 2007

WATAUGA, Texas — A Texas man said he has spotted the face of the Virgin Mary on a lemon slice. Marty Nance of Watauga, Texas, spotted the face earlier this week while he was cutting the lemon at his father’s bar. However, where Nance sees the Virgin Mary, others in the bar are seeing other faces.

“Some people say it looked like Mother Teresa or Virgin Mary,” Nance said. “Some people say it looked like the Mona Lisa picture and some people say it looked like Nicole Kidman.”

Nance said the face really showed up after he took a picture of it. Marty does not plan to sell it on eBay at this time. He said he will keep it in his freezer so others can check out his unique lemon.

God works in mysterious ways. Apparently so does His mother.

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First of all, who is Father Thomas Williams? Well, according to Amazon.com’s author information blurb, Father Williams has some pretty good theological creditials:

Thomas D. Williams, LC, ThD, is Vatican Analyst for CBS News and a professor of theology at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome. He has also worked extensively for NBC News and Britain’s Sky News, covering church and ethical issues, including the final illness and death of Pope John Paul II, the 2005 papal conclave, and the election of Pope Benedict XVI. Father Williams also regularly appeared in the MSNBC series The Ethical Edge and is author of several books and dozens of articles, both scholarly and popular.

Father Williams has written a new book defending belief in God against atheist arguments. The book is called Greater Than You Think: A Theologian Answers the Atheists About God.I have not read or seen this book, so I cannot say anything about its contents. However, Father Williams recently gave an interview on Zenit.org which explores some of his views (thanks to Atheist Under Ur Bed for alerting me to this interview). There is a lot that could be said about this interview, but for now this snippet really takes the cake:

Dawkins writes that it is possible “to mount a serious, though not widely supported, historical case that Jesus never lived at all.” For his part, Christopher Hitchens states that Jesus’ existence is “highly questionable.”

Obviously, none of us was present to empirically verify that a man named Jesus in fact lived in Palestine 20 centuries ago. Yet the same skepticism could be applied to any historical event, since history, as a science, is based on trust. Everything we know about the past is handed down to us as a tradition, which we accept on faith in the testimony of others. The existence of Socrates, Caesar Augustus, Genghis Kahn and Abraham Lincoln is supported by historical evidence — documents and testimonies — but then again, no more so than the existence of Jesus Christ.

What? Did he really say that “The existence of..Abraham Lincoln is supported by historical evidence..but then again, no more so than the existence of Jesus Christ?” Yes, he did. The existence of Abraham Lincoln is as equally supported by historical evidence as the existence of Jesus.

What’s known about Lincoln’s life? Well, quite a bit, obviously. He served twice as President of the United States and presided over the Civil War, after all. And hey - we even have actual photographs of Mr. Lincoln! The earliest surviving images of Jesus, however, come from the 3rd and 4th centuries CE. The earliest is “Healing of the Paralytic, Dura Europos” from roughly 235 CE. Here Jesus is depicted as a teacher dressed in a tunic and wearing sandals. His hair is cropped short and he wears no beard. These early images, like all images of Jesus, are drawn from the imagination, not from any historical descriptions of Jesus (of which there are none).

Anyway, what can be historically known about Jesus’ life? Not much. The earliest surviving “accounts” of Jesus life are, of course, the four New Testament gospels. But these were written anonymously decades later by anonymous individuals and are often inconsistent and historically dubious. What about his trial and crucifixion by the hands of the Romans and Pilate? Only happens in the gospels. No Roman records record any such dramatic event. Even the earliest Christian writings - the letters of Paul - mention very little concerning the historical Jesus.

To say that the existence of Jesus is as well attested as the existence of Abraham Lincoln is an insult to history and the historical method. There is simply no other way to put it.

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This was seriously suggested to me recently:

I believe that God speaks to us through the words in the bible. But there are sort of rules of engagement…
First instead of just picking up the bible and reading any old thing, you NEED to ASK God to Speak to you through it. You need to address Him as God and ask him to say something that is relevant to you personally After you do this, sit and wait for a minute or two. Then open the bible. Somehow God’s power helps you to open up to the right page. And there the words seem to speak to you about something you either need to learn, or need to know for some reason. Sometimes they are words of comfort, wisdom, etc… it is amazing how often God hits exactly the right spot in your heart, after you ask him to speak to you personally… May be you’d like to try this?? [blue bird]

I didn’t know that there was a word for this sort of practice, but apparently there is: Bibliomacy.

Bibliomacy is the practice of divining information from random pages of the Bible (or any particular book, given that the root ‘biblio’ literally means ‘book’). Wikipedia writes that “Sometimes this term is used in the same way as Stichomancy and Libromancy, which is a form of divination that seeks to know the future by randomly selecting a passage from a book, frequently a sacred text.”

Atheist Under Ur Bed found the following passages for me from Jackson Lears’s Something for Nothing: Luck in America:

“[M]any Puritans opened the Bible at random to discover if their sick child would live or if God approved an action they were contemplating. Decisions to emigrate to America were often based on bibliomancy” (p. 42)

and

“The practice of bibliomancy survived into the early nineteenth century, but it came under intensifying assault. To evangelicals and liberals alike, it seemed too much like ‘making a lottery-book of the Bible.’ However innocent the ritual seemed, the Panoplist opined in 1816, in actuality it was ‘really tempting God.’ To the anonymous editorialist, this was an outrage: ‘I know of no rite,’ he wrote, ‘termed religious in a Christian country, (that is) more profane, more dishonorable to God, and more dangerous to their souls, than this solumn, deliberate abuse of the Holy Scriptures.’ The Panoplist was outraged on traditional grounds: bibliomancy blasphemed Providence” (p. 78).

Nevertheless, this seems to work for bluebird. And she asked me to give it a try. So, being the type of person who likes to put claims like this to the test, I did.

I am using the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

I requested God to provide me with a message that would be relevant to me. That is an extremely general request, so I was being especially generous in that regard. Then I took the Bible and dropped it on the floor. It opened to what appears to be roughly the middle of the book, which happens to be the book of Isaiah. I selected the first chapter that caught me eye, which was chapter 39:

At that time King Merodach-baladan son of Baladan of Babylon sent envoys with letters and a present to Hezekiah, for he heard that he had been sick and had recovered. 2Hezekiah welcomed them; he showed them his treasure-house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his whole armoury, all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them. 3Then the prophet Isaiah came to King Hezekiah and said to him, ‘What did these men say? From where did they come to you?’ Hezekiah answered, ‘They have come to me from a far country, from Babylon.’ 4He said, ‘What have they seen in your house?’ Hezekiah answered, ‘They have seen all that is in my house; there is nothing in my storehouses that I did not show them.’ 5 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, ‘Hear the word of the Lord of hosts: 6Days are coming when all that is in your house, and that which your ancestors have stored up until this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, says the Lord. 7Some of your own sons who are born to you shall be taken away; they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.’ 8Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘The word of the Lord that you have spoken is good.’ For he thought, ‘There will be peace and security in my days.’

In this chapter, Hezekiah, King of the southern kingdom of Judah, welcomes an envoy from the kingdom of Babylon. He shows them everything in his realm - all of his kingdom’s possessions. Isaiah then confronts Hezekiah and predicts the exile in Babylon, in which all of the kingdom’s possessions are whisked away. The purpose of the visit was to help form an anti-Assyrian alliance with Babylon.

I happen to already know some of the backstory to this. The Assyrians had already invaded the northern kingdom of Israel. Hezekiah figured that the only way to stop a potential Assyrian invasion of Judah was to form an alliance with Babylon. Isaiah, the prophet, however, wanted Hezekiah to simply trust that Yahweh would take care of everything. Of course, that’s not what he did.

So - what could God’s message possibly be in this passage? I don’t know. A king welcomes some diplomats and a prophet warns of gloom. If this is somehow relevant to me then I fail to see it. Maybe Satan is blinding my eyes again.

Of course, there are lots of passages in the Bible that could potentially be interpreted in ways that might seem relevant to anybody at a particular time. All that takes is a bit of creative imagination - no divine power required.

What do you think?

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I’d like to take a few moments to address some of the comments I received here and over at my OpenDiary on the Pray at the Pump: A Report Card post. I am often amazed at some of the responses. Some of these are no exception.

Or maybe, gas prices would be $10/gallon by now if Christians weren’t praying! You really don’t know, do you? It seems to me that in this situation you cannot logically say the prayers of Christians are not working! -John Bracht

You are right, I don’t know. But I can still say that the prayers of Christians are not working. They are not praying for God to curb the rise of gas prices. They are not even praying for God to stabilize gas prices. They are praying for God to *lower* gas prices. Gas prices have not gone down. They have gone up 21%. Ergo, these prayers have not been answered. -Me

But effectively, if gas prices go up less than they WOULD have, they’ve been lowered, right? They’re lowered relative to what they would have been (in a prayer-less case). Maybe the problem with Christians praying for lower gas prices is that God can answer in ways that are surprising and seem contradictory….Christians don’t have to acknowledge God’s answer to their prayers for them to still have been answered! God is, after all, bigger than we are and our puny minds and understandings may not quite be up to the task of understanding His ways (that’s Biblical, anyway).  Just a thought. -John Bracht

I find it hard to believe that any Christian or pray at the pumper would find this answer satisfying. It sounds to me like you are saying: Even if it doesn’t seem like God has answered their prayers He may have still answered them! Well, sure, if you postulate any number of alternatives to what they are actually asking for. Thus, it seems like any outcome could effectively be taken as a sign that God is answering their prayers. What if the gas prices didn’t just rise 21.6% in the past three months, but doubled? Well, hey - maybe they would have tripled had these fine folks not gone out and prayed!

Imagine that you are a farmer and that your farm is experiencing an unusually hot heat wave that is threatening your crops. You also happen to be a Christian, so you pray for God to lower the temperature. After three weeks, the temperature rises another 10 degrees. Do you thank God for not allowing the temperature to rise 20 degrees instead? Would that satisfy you?

The fact of the matter is, these people are not standing around at gas stations asking God to slightly slow down the rising gas prices. They are asking God to lower gas prices from their current levels. After three months that hasn’t happened. If the goal of the movement is to lower gas prices, then any reasonable person must conclude that it did not work.

Wow. Thanks so much for completely ridiculing a God that so many of us believe in. Yeah, I know you don’t believe in him. I know you probly don’t give a shit, but this was highly offensive to me. And honestly, I’m not even sure if I believe in a God right now. Interestingly enough, these people are doing more for gas prices than I see you doing. -mechwarrior88

If I was doing absolutely nothing about the gas pices then this seems to me to be just as effective as what these people are doing. As it is, I have switched to riding my bicycle when I can - which turns out to be quite often - and thereby consume less fuel. Anyway, I don’t see what was so offensive. I was not ridiculing any god or gods - I was merely pointing out the failure after three months of the pray at the pump movement to lower gasoline prices.

How are you NOT ridiculing their god through this entry? Also, you have no proof that prayer does not work anymore than they have proof it does. You believe you have evidence, but it does not prove. Maybe it’s a long run thing, and you’ll come out looking the fool. Maybe we’ll someday find that prayer doesn’t work after all, and I’ll look the fool. All we have to go on now is our limited perceptions. -mechwarrior88

How am I?

As far as proof goes, there is plenty of experience-based evidence that prayer does not work. This is just one example of that. The John Templeton Foundation recently funded a $2.4 million dollar study on the effects of intercessory prayer on patients undergoing heart by-pass surgery. The study concluded that there was no statistical difference in the survival or complication rates between the prayed for group and the control group. It did find that a third group, who was prayed for and knew about it, actually experienced a higher rate of post-surgical complications. So, take with that what you will.

On another note, gasoline prices, like prices in general, flucuate over time. It is quite possible the gasoline prices will eventually start coming back down, depending on a host of factors like the economy and whether or not our government and OPEC do anything about it. But it would be a mistake to attribute any long-term fluctation to the capricious act of God rather than market forces.

I must say mate, a nice article. However…you attempt to strip away something God has given all of us…free will. Where does God say that he will ever intervene and force greedy business gurus who (speculation) may not believe in him to drop oil prices? -Desert MP

Why are you asking me? I am not the one praying for lower gas prices, after all.

I fail to see the legitimacy in your well written entry. These people are praying for God to assist them in their lives. I cant begin to imagine in what ways God may help. Maybe he guides them to get a job closer to home so they dont have to commute long distances? Maybe he emboldens(sp) them to work for a promotion? Honestly mate, the list could be go on forever. Just a side note…three months is obsolete to God. He’s been around forever…so time doesnt really exist to him -Desert MP

I am sure the list can go on forever, but again, the fact of the matter is that these are not what they are praying for. If the only answer you have is that maybe God is doing anything else other than lowering gas prices, then I am afraid there is not much more that I can say. If that makes you feel better, fine, but it’s not susceptible to any easy test like “lower gas prices from current levels.”

I think that prayers notwithstanding and without presupposing god or a lack there of, I’m thinking gas prices don’t have anything to do with god and I seriously doubt you do and so the list of explanations has more to do with antagonizing christians with examples of dumbass christians than with any attempt to work out an answer. Wonder what dumbass ideas atheists have regarding oil prices. I could be mistaken. -haredawg

If by antagonizing a small group of Christians you mean pointing out the failure of their endeaver, then yes, that’s what I am doing. I don’t know what “dumbass” ideas other atheists have regarding oil prices, but whatever they are they surely cannot be as “dumbass” as praying at the pumps.

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It has been nearly three months now since Rocky Twyman, choir director from the Washington, D.C., and company started the “Pray at the Pump” movement. Pray at the pumpers have been gathering at gas stations across the country to pray for God to help lower the cost of gasoline since politicians have been unable to curb the steep climb.

So what is the result of three months of work? Has God stepped in, slapped the people of OPEC around a bit, and eased gasoline prices heading into the peak summer months? Well, the national average for a gallon of gasoline in the United States on April 1st was about $3.33. As of this writing, it is now hovering around $4.05, for a whopping 21.6% increase in less than three months! I can think of a few explanations:

• God didn’t answer their prayers. Maybe he doesn’t care or He isn’t listening. Or maybe He is rolling around in Heaven laughing at the requests.
• God answered their prayers with a resounding “No” and they haven’t received the memo yet.
• God is an angry God and was insluted by such trivial requests. As a result, He decided to raise gas prices even more!
• God is powerless to answer prayers. Might explain a lot more than just this.
• God is not the God of Christianity but some other God, like Islam, and ignores the requests of Christians since they will be burning in hell anyway for their infidelity.
• God does not exist.

Did I miss any? Which one do you think is correct?

How about this. Rather than standing around holding hands and silently (or not!) pleading with an invisible God to do things for us, which never seems to be successful anyways, why don’t we actually try and do something about it ourselves? I call this a genie in the bottle mentality. Ask and thy shall receive. If I were God, this is what I would tell these people: Solve your own damn problems.

Christians believe that God, in His infinite wisdom, created the world according to His divine plan. Everything that follows, therefore, must be a part of His divine plan. After all, if things were not going as planned then how could He be God? An incopetent God, maybe, but not the God Christians believe in. Therefore, high gas prices must be a part of God’s divine plan. So what makes these people think that God would change His plan just beacuse they, ignorant as they are in God’s mysterious ways, don’t like it?

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In many sports it is customary to elect the Hall of Fame of all-time great players. The same method can in my mind well be applied to the founders of different religions.

My first selection is self-evidently the Buddha as he is my all-time favourite in this very mixed bag of religious founding fathers.

As an atheist I am naturally inclined to like the fact that he did found a religion that does not need the concept of God at all. In his favour talks also the fact that he told his followers to honour other people’s beliefs instead of converting them forcefully as is customary in many other current world religions.

It is not good old Gautama’s fault that some of his followers have in fact elevated him to the status of a demigod or God; it’s a fact he himself would never had approved.

In my Hall of Fame the second tier consists of Confucius and Laozi. The Chinese religions based on their teachings are basically just collections of wisdom that seek the greatest possible harmony in society. They are not faith-based religions in same sense as most of the modern religions are.

Confucius and Laozi must by credited with the fact that the followers of these ancient Chinese teachings have not generally seen the need to attack the neighbouring nations to spread their beliefs, nor have they found it necessary to burn people that believe in wrong things.

The home-boy Jesus can not be held out of the house any more, even if there is a good reason to argue that Jesus did not in fact found a new religion as he himself just tried to change an old Jewish faith.

His followers then created a new religion that includes also the teachings of Jesus, but a very great deal of things thought up by the later real founding fathers of this new religion.

When this new religion started to aspire for a position of power in the Roman Empire the teachings of this religion were once more altered to a great extent. The humble religion of the underdog was transformed into a tool of government.

The fine and loving teachings of the Jesus are still included as a sugar coating to a system of belief’s that has evolved to a finely tuned tool for controlling the minds of members of a society.

There is the hard edge of the religious founding fathers. But to this roster I must somewhat grudgingly elevate the founders of the Jewish religion; good old Abraham and Moses. They must be honoured as founders of the most stubborn and durable little religion there has ever been.

Jewish faith is now in practice an incurable virus of faith that makes its victims think that they can live only in a small area in the Near East from where their forefathers departed thousands of years ago.

To its credit this little religion has mutated into one that does not in its mainstream form hinder the scientific inquiry or freedom of thought. This is not because of any wisdom by Abraham or Moses, but because the leaders of this religion have much later had the wisdom of being content in letting this religion exist in a form of series of rituals and hierarchy and letting its followers to practically think what they like.

In my House of Fame there is however no place for two surprisingly similar founders of new world religions. These gentlemen are Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allāh from Arabia and a certain mister Joseph Smith from Pennsylvania.

Both are self-made men who created new religions that have borrowed heavily from earlier world religions.

I think that these fellows form a definite b-class in this categorization of religious leaders. I am not however saying that these founders would not have sincerely themselves believed in that they were carriers of the only and final truth.

The big problem with Islam especially is that it has not evolved when the world around it has changed. It has become a great hindrance to development in certain parts of the world. The basic problem is that this religion has lost its ability to mutate as the world changes.

In the Christian west the development has been quite different. The Renaissance, Age of Enlightenment and Reformation eroded the once so overwhelming secular power of this religion which opened the way for the development of the science. This development is behind the new found wealth and economic power of the west.

In the Islamic world there was however no Reformation and the following big changes in the status of religion. Therefore the Islamic world follows moral codes and mores that re 1500 years old and unchanged. This slows down enormously the economic social and cultural development in the Islamic countries.

The saddest thing is the fact that in many parts of the Islamic world it is considered that a human being has enough education if he can recite the contents of one old book from his hearth. Can people with this level of ignorance compete in the modern world economy?

Mohammed stays firmly outside my little Hall of Fame, notwithstanding the thing that most of the blame lies on his more recent followers. The underlying inability for chance is however inbuilt in the basic teachings of the originator of this religion.

The Mormon faith created by Mr. Smith is even at its best a laughable and preposterous copy of earlier religions and does not really deserve anybody’s attention.

Read more blog posts from “being human” at: http://beinghuman.blogs.fi

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I ran across the following comments elsewhere on the web:

An atheist has to believe what he does irrationally.

Here is why: if there is no creative intelligence responsible for existence, then all existence, life, mind, and reason itself are the result of mindless processess.

Science can not explain the origin of existence…the Big Bang for example only deals with a period immediately after the appearance of matter and energy, not with its appearance itself.

Science cannot create life, either, and if it ever does it will certainly not be done by a mindless process. There are no examples in nature of life appearing from non-life…NONE.

Existence, life, mind, and reason have thus not been demonstrated to occur by mindless processes.

Atheists don’t know that such demonstration can ever be made…they must simply declare this to be so.

Until such demonstration is made, I reject atheism.

These comments embody several mistakes in reasoning that I tend to see quite a bit. Let’s break it down a bit:

An atheist has to believe what he does irrationally. Here is why: if there is no creative intelligence responsible for existence, then all existence, life, mind, and reason itself are the result of mindless processess.

One thing that I need to get out of the way immediately: There cannot be a creative intelligence responsible for existence because such a creative intelligence would itself be a part of existence, broadly conceived. Now, maybe this individual did not mean existence in general but meant our existence, or the existence of life as represented here on Earth. Fair enough. In that case, it is of course true that it is possible (whether plausible or not) that a creative intelligence is responsible for our existence. However, this person is insisting that it is irrational to think that life, mind, and reason could be the result of mindless processes.

There is nothing inherently irrational in the idea that life, even intelligent life, could be the result of a blind process (such as natural selection). Nevertheless, there is a conundrum here: if the only rational conclusion is that an intelligent creator must be responsible for the existence of intelligent life - then what the heck is responsible for the existence of the intelligent creator - also an intelligent life? This problem is so obvious and yet so commonly overlooked. Intelligent creators cannot simply exist as if they are some kind of a given. As Richard Dawkins has written, any intelligent life must itself be a product of either another intelligent life or an evolutionary processes.

Science can not explain the origin of existence…the Big Bang for example only deals with a period immediately after the appearance of matter and energy, not with its appearance itself.

This is true, but the fact that science does not have an adequate explaination for the big bang is not evidence for theism.

Science cannot create life, either, and if it ever does it will certainly not be done by a mindless process. There are no examples in nature of life appearing from non-life…NONE.

Here we go again. Origin of life research has certainly made more progress, I think, than ‘what caused the big bang’ research. But again, the lack of a complete understanding of how living replicators could have been produced from a combination of non-living material is evidence of our ignorance, not evidence for a creator.

Existence, life, mind, and reason have thus not been demonstrated to occur by mindless processes. Atheists don’t know that such demonstration can ever be made…they must simply declare this to be so. Until such demonstration is made, I reject atheism.

Here is where his biggest blunder is made. To reject atheism is essentially to embrace theism, yet this individual has offered no positive evidence in favor of theism. Essentially, he is arguing that the failure of scientists (and atheists in particular) to explain certain aspects of the natural world somehow automatically makes God a plausible answer. It doesn’t anymore than our ignorance makes Shiva, Zeus, or Baal the plausible answer.

This comes back to the ‘burden of proof’ that contributer Peter wrote about in the previous post. The fact that such demonstrations cannot yet be made requires us to suspend our judgement. In other words, we do not know how life began on this planet. This under no circumstances translates into God did it. Before rejecting atheism, this person must be able to demonstrate positive evidence that God did it. That’s where the burden of demonstration lies.

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