I'm often a little stumped by the urge of religious people to pray for others, especially in times of need or tragedy. I understand that in their mind it comes from a positive place. They believe in an omnipotent, omniscient god who listens to prayers and intercedes in the world on behalf the faithful. Sounds fair enough except that there is absolutely no independently verifiable evidence of the efficacy of prayer. To an atheist, the belief of religious people in prayer goes beyond quaint into the realms of incredulity.
If god is good, all-powerful, and listens attentively to the prayers of his acolytes, why on earth are so many religious people's prayers so obviously not answered? Why is a world full of ardently praying people so painfully full of suffering? The convoluted answers provided in response to this question would be laughable if they didn't demonstrate such a frightening absence of critical reasoning. Prayers are quite clearly not answered - the single best piece of evidence against the existence of the Christian god that I believe exists.
So how then should one respond when an apparently well-meaning person offers to pray for you? Be grateful for their concern and good intent? Laugh at their stupidity? Wonder at the power of 20 centuries of indoctrination? Try to demonstrate to them the appalling weakness of their position? Or tell them to bugger off and leave you alone?
I recently had reason to consider my approach to this, when a lady who happened to hear in hospital that our newborn son had been diagnosed with spina bifida (fortunately a mild case, diagnosed and managed by the wonders of modern science) offered to pray for us. My wife, immensely distressed, treated the offer for what it was - an unwanted intrusion into our private space. The lady was on the receiving end of a vicious put-down - far better than I would've managed under the circumstances. Her, and my view was that while praying to her chosen fairy of love, she should ask him what kind of a vicious, torturing, uncaring, hateful imaginary friend would create a disease as traumatic and painful as spina bifida and then randomly inflict it on innocent newborn children. If I were able to get in contact with a fairy-god that behaved like that, I'd kick the torturing bastard in the nuts (all monotheistic religions have male overlords; I wonder, by the way, how the 50% of congregants who are female feel about that).
My response is somewhat moderated in the case of religious friends. Their offers come from a general personal concern. At some point I'm going to have to explain to them how little respect I have for their worldview, but not yet. For the moment, I am going to accept the warmth and caring of the offer and ignore how ridiculous it is. Is that a copout? Probably. But I am not prepared to alienate virtually every person I know in this intellectual and cultural backwater because the impact will run beyond me to my wife and kids and I am not prepared to do that to them.
But next time some stranger offers to pray for some innocent child, I'll be sure to ask them why their imaginary friend saw fit to punish the kid in the first place.
And if they offer to pray for me, I'll have to tell them not to waste their breath. If there was a hell, I'd be headed there out of choice. At least the devil does what it says on the box - torture, pain, suffering. I'll take that over a fairy-god of love that created spina bifida any day.
Wednesday 17 August 2011
Wednesday 27 July 2011
a blessing worth counting
We hear all the time from religious people about how we should "count our blessings". Gratitude and subservience to an all-powerful god is a key component of both Christianity and Islam.
My wife and I were recently incredibly lucky to have a second child - a lovely baby boy. The entire process gave me pause to think on several issues. Firstly, rather than having to stand in awe of an imaginary overlord for having blessed me with a child, I am simply dumbstruck by the fact that my little boy can trace an unbroken line of descent back to the classic "primordial slime". Ever since some chemical compounds first started self-replicating (the most interesting recent theory is that this took place in clay, which provided a useful substrate), every single one of my son's ancestors has overcome incredible odds to survive to reproductive age, meet a mate, convince them to share genetic material, and create a new life. That's 4+ billion years in which not one of his direct ancestors has failed to reproduce. My little boy is a miracle, in a deeply non-religious sense, and I have much to be grateful for. I am grateful that the life has found a way, and that evolution has equipped me with the conscience to appreciate the magnitude of the process and the moment, and others with the intellect to comprehend and explain it to me.
My first son was born via an emergency Cesarean section, the second via an elective one. I was fortunate to be present at both, and found another reason to be grateful. The operating theatre was equipped with the most remarkable technologies, and staffed by a team of the smartest, most competent and caring people you could wish to find. How all of these elements came to be there to keep my wife and children alive bears consideration. Those doctors are able to do what they do because they developed skills taught to them by other doctors, in universities where the pursuit of knowledge is valued above all else. Those teachers stood on the shoulders of others, who came before them, and, like them, pursued the advancement of our scientific understanding of the human body. The scientists, doctors and engineers who designed everything in that operating theatre from the overhead lights to the electronically elevating bed, to the forceps and scalpels to the life-support machines are all heroes. Their exceptional skill and independent pieces of work were crucial in keeping my wife and boys alive. And I will never know who any of them are.
We take for granted today the freedom our doctors and scientists have to pursue all avenues of enquiry to provide us with healthcare that is so advanced it boggles the mind. But it was not always so. Organised religion is dependent on an absence of curiosity, enquiry and freedom of thought, and both Islam and Christianity have actively, and for most of their history ruthlessly and violently oppressed those guilty of hereticism. Watching my young son sleeping peacefully this morning I give thanks to the brave men and women of science who opposed the power of the church, swam upstream (often at significant risk to themselves) and who as a result have created a space where intelligent, free-thinking scientists can develop the knowledge and technologies that kept my family alive through two tough births.
But giving thanks to them is not enough. I recommit myself to actively opposing religion, and its evil, self-serving, pernicious attempts to stifle free thought. Never again can we allow people who believe in fairies to impinge on how our scientists go about advancing our knowledge. In our apparently modern and liberal society this might seem overly dramatic. However, the Christian right in the USA is a powerful force, very close to gaining control of the levers of power in the largest and most powerful society ever to exist on earth. The concept of having an end-times-believing bible-fundamentalist like Sarah Palin with her finger on the big red nuclear-holocaust button scares the living daylights out of me. On the other side of the coin, the growing influence of conservative Islam seeks to return us to the stone age, with its bizarre system of belief and hatred. As an infidel, (whom the Quran urges believers to kill) I have no option but to take seriously the aggressive, hateful, intolerant and expansionist ideas espoused by the world's two major religions. I will therefore take a stand wherever I can against religion.
How I reconcile that stance with my friendships with some lovely and obviously non-violent religious people is an issue for another day.
Today, I will spend my time considering the nameless, faceless heroes whose centuries of bravery, curiosity, and intellect saved my family.
My wife and I were recently incredibly lucky to have a second child - a lovely baby boy. The entire process gave me pause to think on several issues. Firstly, rather than having to stand in awe of an imaginary overlord for having blessed me with a child, I am simply dumbstruck by the fact that my little boy can trace an unbroken line of descent back to the classic "primordial slime". Ever since some chemical compounds first started self-replicating (the most interesting recent theory is that this took place in clay, which provided a useful substrate), every single one of my son's ancestors has overcome incredible odds to survive to reproductive age, meet a mate, convince them to share genetic material, and create a new life. That's 4+ billion years in which not one of his direct ancestors has failed to reproduce. My little boy is a miracle, in a deeply non-religious sense, and I have much to be grateful for. I am grateful that the life has found a way, and that evolution has equipped me with the conscience to appreciate the magnitude of the process and the moment, and others with the intellect to comprehend and explain it to me.
My first son was born via an emergency Cesarean section, the second via an elective one. I was fortunate to be present at both, and found another reason to be grateful. The operating theatre was equipped with the most remarkable technologies, and staffed by a team of the smartest, most competent and caring people you could wish to find. How all of these elements came to be there to keep my wife and children alive bears consideration. Those doctors are able to do what they do because they developed skills taught to them by other doctors, in universities where the pursuit of knowledge is valued above all else. Those teachers stood on the shoulders of others, who came before them, and, like them, pursued the advancement of our scientific understanding of the human body. The scientists, doctors and engineers who designed everything in that operating theatre from the overhead lights to the electronically elevating bed, to the forceps and scalpels to the life-support machines are all heroes. Their exceptional skill and independent pieces of work were crucial in keeping my wife and boys alive. And I will never know who any of them are.
We take for granted today the freedom our doctors and scientists have to pursue all avenues of enquiry to provide us with healthcare that is so advanced it boggles the mind. But it was not always so. Organised religion is dependent on an absence of curiosity, enquiry and freedom of thought, and both Islam and Christianity have actively, and for most of their history ruthlessly and violently oppressed those guilty of hereticism. Watching my young son sleeping peacefully this morning I give thanks to the brave men and women of science who opposed the power of the church, swam upstream (often at significant risk to themselves) and who as a result have created a space where intelligent, free-thinking scientists can develop the knowledge and technologies that kept my family alive through two tough births.
But giving thanks to them is not enough. I recommit myself to actively opposing religion, and its evil, self-serving, pernicious attempts to stifle free thought. Never again can we allow people who believe in fairies to impinge on how our scientists go about advancing our knowledge. In our apparently modern and liberal society this might seem overly dramatic. However, the Christian right in the USA is a powerful force, very close to gaining control of the levers of power in the largest and most powerful society ever to exist on earth. The concept of having an end-times-believing bible-fundamentalist like Sarah Palin with her finger on the big red nuclear-holocaust button scares the living daylights out of me. On the other side of the coin, the growing influence of conservative Islam seeks to return us to the stone age, with its bizarre system of belief and hatred. As an infidel, (whom the Quran urges believers to kill) I have no option but to take seriously the aggressive, hateful, intolerant and expansionist ideas espoused by the world's two major religions. I will therefore take a stand wherever I can against religion.
How I reconcile that stance with my friendships with some lovely and obviously non-violent religious people is an issue for another day.
Today, I will spend my time considering the nameless, faceless heroes whose centuries of bravery, curiosity, and intellect saved my family.
Tuesday 26 July 2011
a reason for being
Since I can remember I've loved the elegance of science, the beauty of the method, the rigour of the logic. In particular, the natural world has held a special fascination for me. Despite being educated at a Methodist school, and therefore being subject to a constant stream of religious indoctrination, I never took Christianity seriously. Partly because even a cursory examination reveals the bible to be nothing more than a series of fantastical bronze-age myths. But more so because I found in science a wonder at the world and relentless thirst for knowledge that matched my own love for the world.
I never considered myself an atheist until sometime in my 20's. Previously I probably identified myself as "not christian". My view of religion was one of tolerance, and to some extent, as a victim of the relentless indoctrination to which I was subjected, I laboured under the illusion that religion was a force for good, that religious folks were somehow morally superior. I generally felt that provided religious people left me alone, I'd leave them alone. Over recent years I have become increasingly aware of how evil religion really is, of how it seeks to control society to achieve its own aims, of how it has ruthlessly oppressed science and curiosity, of the immense evils committed under it's authority, and of how it continues to create faultlines that tear our society apart. With the birth of my children, and a move to a small town that has a very active christian majority, I have had to wrestle with how I raise my children, how I relate to my very pleasant but very religious community, and how I express my own beliefs. I've read ravenously, and am ready to start putting into motion a new, more proactive approach to my atheism / humanism / skepticism / rationalism.
I've also been inspired by a good friend who has created a blog aimed at helping teenagers questioning or even challenging their religious indoctrination. Visit his blog at http://wp.me/p1t7vK-4n
The objectives of this blog therefore are:
1. to express my world view
2. to take joy in the world. Charles Darwin's statement that "their is grandeur in this view of life" serves as my inspiration here.
3. to provide a route for young people ready to question the religious worldview that was forced on them with an alternate view of the world - one one lit by the sparkling intensity of scientific and rational enquiry.
This should be fun. Hopefully I'll make a few friends, and if I don't make a few enemies I'll consider this a failure.
Bryan.
I never considered myself an atheist until sometime in my 20's. Previously I probably identified myself as "not christian". My view of religion was one of tolerance, and to some extent, as a victim of the relentless indoctrination to which I was subjected, I laboured under the illusion that religion was a force for good, that religious folks were somehow morally superior. I generally felt that provided religious people left me alone, I'd leave them alone. Over recent years I have become increasingly aware of how evil religion really is, of how it seeks to control society to achieve its own aims, of how it has ruthlessly oppressed science and curiosity, of the immense evils committed under it's authority, and of how it continues to create faultlines that tear our society apart. With the birth of my children, and a move to a small town that has a very active christian majority, I have had to wrestle with how I raise my children, how I relate to my very pleasant but very religious community, and how I express my own beliefs. I've read ravenously, and am ready to start putting into motion a new, more proactive approach to my atheism / humanism / skepticism / rationalism.
I've also been inspired by a good friend who has created a blog aimed at helping teenagers questioning or even challenging their religious indoctrination. Visit his blog at http://wp.me/p1t7vK-4n
The objectives of this blog therefore are:
1. to express my world view
2. to take joy in the world. Charles Darwin's statement that "their is grandeur in this view of life" serves as my inspiration here.
3. to provide a route for young people ready to question the religious worldview that was forced on them with an alternate view of the world - one one lit by the sparkling intensity of scientific and rational enquiry.
This should be fun. Hopefully I'll make a few friends, and if I don't make a few enemies I'll consider this a failure.
Bryan.
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