Kneeling, my god is the sun
Heal them, with fire from above
Kneeling, my god is the sun
- Josh Hume (lead singer of the band "Queens of the Stone Age")
What if we were so fascinated with something we could observe that we worshiped it? Many ancient civilizations of humans (and quite possibly other species of other hominids) worshiped the sun, the moon, the stars, day, night, fire, and a wide variety of various animal species. How strange is it that the mentality of say a human being living hundreds of thousands of years ago has more in common with me than the all American white Christian family that attends their mega church every Sunday morning. These ancient hunter gatherers worshiped what sustained their lives. It makes sense. I can relate to sun worship completely. Without it I wouldn't be here to worship it. The ancient tribes lived off the animal gods that gave them meat and filled their stomachs. They saw the power of the sun growing their food as they began to move towards agriculture.
What we have now is people worshiping a god that has been presented in various ancient story books. What corner of the earth are you from geographically? This will more times than not pick what specific story book you will read. In this book you will read about a certain God of your ancestors. A God that in 2013 (when we have 3D printers, global positioning satellites, and electric cars) you are still required to worship. I was just looking at information online on the month long Muslim ritual known as Ramadan. I have become somewhat fascinated by Islam as of late. Mainly because it's a religion I know essentially nothing about. I have been reading the Qu'ran and watching documentaries about trips to Mecca. Don't worry I'm still an atheist, of course. All I've noticed so far from the readings is a rip-off of the Old Testament.
Recently I was talking to an atheist friend of mine about how cool it would be, as non-Muslims, to attend a pilgrimage to Mecca someday. I was mentioning how I considered participating in Ramadan along side a Muslim friend of mine. Before looking into Ramadan much I had romantic ideas about this month long fast as something that could teach discipline and focus. It would clear my cluttered mind and the charity part of it was such a drawing point as well. I wanted to give the food I was supposed to eat for the day to the homeless. That sounded like a very humanitarian-driven feature of Ramadan.
However, once I started reading more, that old familiar bitter taste of religious dogma came back. The idea of sexuality being impure. It's not the command to abstain from having sexual relationships for a month that bothers me, it's that the reason for doing so. The reason for the abstinence is because sexuality in general is considered "worldly" or "unholy". Also, the idea of not drinking water all day is absurd (especially in the desert). You can see the barbaric ignorant mental process of the creators of this entire ritual when you see the exceptions: You are exempt from the required fasting if you are menstruating, traveling, are severely ill, breast-feeding, or pregnant. It reminds me of the Old Testament and all the ridiculous rules and regulations down to the last specific detail of Yahweh and His obsessive compulsive disorder. Yahweh is just re-labeled "Allah" in the Qu'ran. You see the ugly head of religion and it's reward-based charity when you read that during Ramadan good deeds are more handsomely rewarded.
I remember fasting when I was younger. It was during my Bible college years. Though it may seem like elaborate front for not having money to eat as any other typical college freshman would attest to, it was something I thought gave me some insight into God's plan for my life. God tends to speak clearer when you starve your body of nourishment. It's really quite silly when you think about it. Starve your body of water and food for days and your mind hallucinates. Your eyes and ears play tricks on you. I hate to break it to the faithful, but the year is 2013 and we have this thing called medical science: It's not God, it's malnourishment, come you silly superstitious creatures.
I have been reading this book lately with a theist friend Dan I have mentioned in my past emails. It's called "An Atheist's Guide to Reality". (It was his pick). I agree with most of what I've read so far in the book, but it really got me thinking about what it means to be an atheist. I think most the time when we argue or debate with theist friends or family members they don't understand how things are set up. They don't understand they own the burden of proof. The default position is no God. It's that simple. To make a positive claim they have to prove to us that there is a God then they have to prove that their specific God (Yahweh - for Christians. Allah - for Muslims) is the correct God.
That is a monumental task since proving a being who's essence is "outside of time and space" and supernatural is impossible using scientific inquiry. Since science deals with the natural world. So the lazy theist will shake their hands and say, - See, it's a wash then. No one can prove there is or isn't a god when all we have is natural means to test a natural world. No one wins. That's where faith comes in. It's all about faith.. and that whole dead way of using your ignorance and subjective experience as somehow proof you are on to something. It is not a wash. We never owned the burden of proof (the theist did by default) unless we as an atheist are saying there is no god -- which I, for one, am not. There is simply not enough evidence that there is a god = Atheist.
So that's the basic philosophical argument part of what it is to be an atheist. So if the atheist can get a theist to admit that they have all the work to prove to you that there 1. is a god and 2. that their specific god is the correct one, then you can actually move forward, or I should say, they can move forward presenting you evidence. If it's a Christian you may get something along the lines of -- OK, I can show you the historical evidence for the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Lee Strobel types. First off, is it actually possible that we can be 99.9% (science doesn't deal in absolutes) certain of this historical evidence? Can we trust ancient medical practices? Could there have been a lie told? A dishonest human being? A fudged medical test result? What's more likely that those that examined Jesus' body after he died were part of the conspiracy to make Jesus appear to be who he said he was OR that Jesus was an actual son of a God (as well as God himself, who had no mother) that created this cosmos, that made himself part of this strand of ape species he created to die for all homo sapiens (ignoring all the other species. Maybe they need their own savior?) to appease his father/himself so he/his father doesn't have to send this particular ape species to an eternal lake of fire in another plane of existence when they die (by the way, oxygen is required for fire thus there is oxygen in hell).
We don't even need to go this far with this strand of evidence. Even if all of these were true and Jesus did raise from the dead, so what? At best we get something really "weird" happened in ancient Palestine. Something that required further inquiry to see how this medical "miracle" happened. Could we replicate the results of this discovery of a resurrection event? It doesn't lock in the truth of the rest of the Biblical claims. Christians act as if proving Jesus' resurrection would end the god debate, because all the prophecies would be fulfilled and all the pages of the bible proven to be true. (of course not the pages where in Leviticus god tells us how to cure leprosy.) For example, I believe the "flat earth hypothesis" to be 100% correct. I have seen the earth and it looks flat to me (observation is one of the core tenants of science experimentation.) Of course many other points claimed in this disproved hypothesis have been debunked many many years ago, yet there are still actual people that believe the earth is flat. Check out holocaust deniers or all politicians are reptilian aliens. There are many conspiracy theories out there that have colonels of truth to them, but it doesn't meant the entire conspiracy theory story is correct. Same goes with the resurrection story of the Bible.
Proving Jesus resurrected and even ascended to "heaven" still doesn't answer the question of why? Why in the world would a God be the same person as his own son in the first place? How do you have a son without a mother? Why would that son/father combo along with the vestige god part (according to Baptists) the Holy Spirit set up everything this way? Why does he need to sacrifice a third (which is also the whole) of himself to himself, I mean come on here? This is laughable. I remember in Sunday School they would tell us that before Jesus people were allowed into heaven if they sacrificed a lamb to God, but when Jesus became the "ultimate lamb" (which I'm sure would be his license plate if Jesus drove a car) people no longer had to sacrifice lambs. What? What about the lambs? What kind of God needs lambs blood to settle down his anger? The god of the bible sounds psychotic at the very least. How adults can still believe this stuff is beyond me.
This also gets us into intelligent design vs. unintelligent design. Things we DO know about our universe have been given to us by scientific investigations. Entire fields of science have given us our past - evolutionary biology. In this field of science we see all sorts of design flaws. If you look at each of these it begins to look like sloppy evolution by natural selection over grand design of some omniscient deity. Cosmology shows us the same thing on a grand scale. The sheer waste of energy and empty space. Here we have black holes, dark matter, collapsing stars, failed galaxies. What kind of design is this? A failed one. Even in the Christian's holy book, the Bible, God is a failed designer. He made a species of ape (after his own image. God must have been really hairy back then) that rebelled and since they didn't obey their father he had to start over with a world wide flood. Another example of poor design. The book of revelations is yet to happen apparently. What is it about? More wiping out of a species due to a failed design. He keeps having to start over all the time. God looks more and more incompetent than anything. Trust me, it's not just the Bible, the Qu'ran is full of an insecure, incompetent god that requires constant worship too. As Christopher Hitchens once said, -- these sorts of things cannot being believed by a thinking person. It's true. Those that live with their cognitive dissonance are simply selecting the information they choose to retain.
Meet the "Flat Earthers":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth#Modern_flat-Earthers
Neil deGrasse Tyson on UNintelligent Design in the Universe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti3mtDC2fQo
Queens of the Stone Age song "My God Is the Sun":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-90obSa1Az4
Bishop John Shelby Spong talks about Carl Sagan and his calculations on the ascention of Jesus. Where is Jesus now? Sagan did the math:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhAmYJgbFqk
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