The religion of Mithra preceded Christianity by roughly six hundred years. Mithraic worship at one time covered a large portion of the ancient world. It flourished as late as the second century. The Messianic idea originated in ancient Persia and this is where the Jewish and Christian concepts of a Savior came from. Mithra, as the sun god of ancient Persia, had the following karmic similarities with Jesus:
I do not feel magnificent today. I feel lousy. I have grown brittle, tire easily, hear poorly, no longer see that well, find little joy in eating. I, once was absorbed with good cooking and good food, see no way out of the problem. I am alone, living almost exclusively on Social Security. A comparative new comer to Burlington, there is little continuity in my life or companionship from a shared past. What few friends I had have either died or left the area. There is no family nearby. What’s more, I find Vermonters, I regret to say, do not reach out easily to a single, old woman.
In general, you might expect people in less God-fearing countries to be a lot less kind to one another than Americans are.
It is at this point that the "We need God to be good" case falls apart. Countries worthy of consideration aren't those like North Korea and China, where religion is savagely repressed, but those in which people freely choose atheism. In his new book, Society Without God, Phil Zuckerman looks at the Danes and the Swedes—probably the most godless people on Earth. They don't go to church or pray in the privacy of their own homes; they don't believe in God or heaven or hell. But, by any reasonable standard, they're nice to one another. They have a famously expansive welfare and health care service. They have a strong commitment to social equality. And—even without belief in a God looming over them—they murder and rape one another significantly less frequently than Americans do.
Dozens of telemarketers in Indiana refuse to read anti-Obama soft-on-crime call script.
I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?"
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how
the chicken is cooked.
Contrary to the views of many conservative pundits and the Christian Right, the least religious countries in the world today are not full of chaos and immorality, but are actually among the safest, healthiest, most well-educated, prosperous, ethical, and successful societies on earth. Based on a year's worth of research conducted while living in Scandinavia, SOCIETY WITHOUT GOD by Phil Zuckerman explores life in a largely secular culture, delving into the unique worldviews of secular men and women who live in a largely irreligious society, and explaining the reasons why some nations are less religious than others, and why religious faith doesn't seem to be the secret to national success that so many claim it to be."Most Americans are convinced that faith in God is the foundation of civil society. Society Without God reveals this to be nothing more than a well-subscribed, and strangely American, delusion. Even atheists living in the United States will be astonished to discover how unencumbered by religion most Danes and Swedes currently are. This glimpse of an alternate, secular reality is at once humbling and profoundly inspiring--and it comes not a moment too soon."
-Sam Harris, a Co-Founder of the Reason Project and author of the New York Times best sellers The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation
What if the Presidential candidate dies before being sworn in on January 20?
Being this is the United States – the rules, law, regulations and precedent for this 'event' are extremely murky and vague. Mainly because we never do anything until we have no choice. And even then…………………..
There are four dates that important to this process.
* November 4th, 2008 - the general election. Remember we are voting for electors from each state – NOT the candidate directly.
* December 15th, 2008 - the electors casts their votes. Remember technically the electors (who are party loyalists) can vote for whomever they want.
* January 6th, 2009 - the opening of the joint session of Congress. The electoral votes are officially counted, certified and the winner is declared.
* January 20th, 2009 - Inauguration Day, when the winner is sworn in by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
As a former fundamentalist, I'd like to call you on what you are doing.
The media has found you "opaque" about your religion. Why? You have not been honest about the most important thing about you: the fact that you are a born-again charismatic on a mission from God. Most people who have never been entrenched in the subculture of fundamentalist Christianity may not understand what this really means, but I do. Like you, I was raised in the Assemblies of God and I was a zealous part of the Jesus Movement. Like you, my life was consumed with seeking God's will for my life and awaiting the imminent return of Jesus.
Former fundamentalists like me know that your worldview is so encompassing, authoritarian, and powerful that it defines who you think you are, the way you view the world, history, other people, the future, and your place in the world. It defines you far more than hockey mom, wife, woman, hunter, governor, or VP candidate.
film that Maher says is intended to raise doubts about the claims of religion. A laudable, even important, goal. But the toxins of religion also worm deep into the psyches of mostly ordinary people, not just the flamboyant crazies. Stand at the door of most churches prior to a service and you don't see freaks walking in. You see the hoi polloi, the intensely average mass of society. Some, if not many, of these people are awake enough to know that the claims of religion are ridiculous, but they choose to go along to get along. Many more just don't think about the claims, they just accept it as part of their cultural identity. They wear their religion like an occasional badge (or flag pin), a set-it-and-forget-it accoutrement to be displayed at the door of social acceptance. On October 1, 2008, President Bush deployed a brigade -- which means three to four thousand warriors -- somewhere in America. We do not know where they are deployed though citizens have informally reported to me having seen military vehicles and troops in Georgia and Alabama. We do know that their official mandate according to the first report is 'crowd control' as well as action in the event of a mass civilian catastrophe. Initial reports described their technology 'module package' as involving Tasers and rubber bullets.
....
The president has troops, and we don't. Remember: if the President declares a state of emergency, he can unilaterally take over even the National Guard. Congress has no troops and, in this scenario, neither do we. Here is what you must do.
We are a stalwart and stouthearted people, and never more so than in hard times. People weep in the dark and arise in the morning and go to work. The waves crash on your nest egg and a chunk is swept away and you put your salami sandwich in the brown bag and get on the bus. In Philly, a woman earns $10.30/hour to care for a man brought down by cystic fibrosis. She bathes and dresses him in the morning, brings him meals, puts him to bed at night. It's hard work lifting him and she has suffered a painful hernia that, because she can't afford health insurance, she can't get fixed, but she still goes to work because he'd be helpless without her. There are a lot of people like her I know because I'm related to some of them.
Low dishonesty and craven cynicism sometimes win the day but not inevitably The attempt to link Barack Obama to an old radical in his neighborhood has desperation and deceit written all over it. Meanwhile, stunning acts of heroism stand out, such as the fidelity of military lawyers assigned to defend detainees at Guantanamo Bay -- uniformed officers faithful to their lawyerly duty to offer a vigorous defense even though it means exposing the injustice of military justice that is rigged for conviction and the mendacity of a commander in chief who commits war crimes. If your law school is looking for a name for its new library, instead of selling the honor to a fat cat alumnus, you should consider the names of Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, Lt. Col. Mark Bridges, Col. Steven David, Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel and Maj. Michael Mori.
It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged. When she said, "One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars," people smelled gas.
Some Republicans adore her because they are pranksters at heart and love the consternation of grown-ups. The ne'er-do-well son of the old Republican family as president, the idea that you increase government revenue by cutting taxes, the idea that you cut social services and thereby drive the needy into the middle class, the idea that you overthrow a dictator with a show of force and achieve democracy at no cost to yourself -- one stink bomb after another, and now Governor Palin.
She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity, and she was Mr. McCain's first major decision as nominee. This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy. She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career making personal appearances for forty grand a pop, and she'll become a trivia question, "What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise based on being able to see Russia from her house?" And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics.
Your broker kept saying, "Stay with the portfolio, don't jump ship," and you felt a strong urge to dump the stocks and get into the money market where at least you're not going to lose your shirt, but you didn't do it and didn't do it, and now you're holding a big bag of brown bananas. Me, too. But at least I know enough not to believe desperate people who are talking trash. Anybody who got whacked last week and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead us out of the swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They'll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they connect the dots.
"As we send our young men and women overseas in a war zone to fight for democracy and freedoms, including freedom of the press, we've really got to have a mutually beneficial relationship here with those fighting the freedom of the press, and then the press, though not taking advantage and exploiting a situation, perhaps they would want to capture and abuse the privilege. We just want truth, we want fairness, we want balance."
Wall Street can wait a little longer. Investment houses don’t bleed. This is not a life-and-death matter for artificial lifeforms conceived in law, born on paper, and engineered to relentlessly pursue profit. The bottom line is, as actor Michael Biehn said of “The Terminator,” that’s what a corporation does. That’s all it does.
COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?
PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.
The text of the Bailout Act is out. And Section 8 is egregious:Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
Call your congressional rep and demand that this will not stand, otherwise Congress will have literally just ceded its last bit of power, that of the purse
But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death.
Dutch intel: US to strike Iran in coming weeks
Sep. 1, 2008
JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST
The Dutch intelligence service, the AIVD, has called off an operation aimed at infiltrating and sabotaging Iran's weapons industry due to an assessment that a US attack on the Islamic Republic's nuclear program is imminent, according to a report in the country's De Telegraaf newspaper on Friday.
The report claimed that the Dutch operation had been "extremely successful," and had been stopped because the US military was planning to hit targets that were "connected with the Dutch espionage action."
The impending air-strike on Iran was to be carried out by unmanned aircraft "within weeks," the report claimed, quoting "well placed" sources.
The Jerusalem Post could not confirm the De Telegraaf report.
According to the report, information gleaned from the AIVD's operation in Iran has provided several of the targets that are to be attacked in the strike, including "parts for missiles and launching equipment."
"Information from the AIVD operation has been shared in recent years with the CIA," the report said.
On Saturday, Iran's Deputy Chief of Staff General Masoud Jazayeri warned that should the United States or Israel attack Iran, it would be the start of another World War.
On Friday, Ma'ariv reported that Israel had made a strategic decision to deny Iran military nuclear capability and would not hesitate "to take whatever means necessary" to prevent Teheran from achieving its nuclear goals.
According to the report, whether the United States and Western countries succeed in thwarting the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions diplomatically, through sanctions, or whether a US strike on Iran is eventually decided upon, Jerusalem has begun preparing for a separate, independent military strike.
Sam Harris: Sexist Pig and Liberal Shill
I've received more than the usual amount of criticism for my recent opinion piece on Sarah Palin, most of it alleging sexism and/or an unseemly infatuation with Barack Obama. For those who care, I'd like to briefly respond:
My alleged sexism: It is true that I used some hackneyed, gender-slanted language in the piece ("get sassy," "girl-next-door," etc.). This was deliberate. Clearly, I played this game at my peril. I can say that if Sarah Palin were a man of similar qualifications, I would have used equally slanted language to describe him. I might have called Mr. Palin a "frat-boy" or a "lumberjack." I would have invoked some silly macho phrasing like,"Watch Cousin Jim flip Putin the bird." My concern is not that Mrs. Palin is a woman. My concern is that she is a totally unqualified and poorly educated woman who was added to the Republican ticket as a token woman (and Creationist wacko). For what it's worth, the article was vetted by the two women closest to me (wife and mother) and by two female editors at the LA Times. If anything, the editing at the Times made the piece even more "sexist."
My alleged Obamamania: Many McCain supporters have written to say that (1) Obama is also unqualified (or even less qualified than Palin) and (2) I have shown myself to be a hypocrite by not objecting to Obama's religiosity. Briefly: My criticism of Palin should not be construed as uncritical acceptance of Obama. Needless to say, I find Obama's religious pandering repulsive. The suspicion that he is pandering, out of obvious necessity, and not quite as religious as he makes out, is somewhat comforting, however. But even if Obama were precisely as religious as he appears, he is not a Creationist, Rapture-Ready blockhead. Palin, by all appearances, seems to be one. This is a difference worth noting. Whatever you may think of his politics, Obama is very intelligent and reasonably well educated. Palin thinks the universe is 6000 years old. Unfortunately, I wrote my article before some of the most disturbing signs of her religious extremism came to light.
So, let me simply declare that I would be overjoyed to have a qualified woman in the White House. I would, likewise, be overjoyed to have a qualified African American in the White House. In fact, I would be overjoyed to have a qualified WASP man in the White House. I will be guardedly optimistic to have a very smart (and somewhat qualified) Barack Obama in the White House. And I would be frankly terrified to have a religious bumpkin like Sarah Palin in the White House. I think you should share this last conviction. Hence my latest opinion piece.
Best,
Sam
Palin: average isn't good enough
She's not qualified to be president, and in picking her, McCain shows that he has little respect for the presidency.
By Sam Harris
September 3, 2008
So let us ask the question that should be on the mind of every thinking person in the world at this moment: If John McCain becomes the 44th president of the United States, what are the odds that a blood clot or falling object will make Sarah Palin the 45th?
The actuarial tables on the Social Security Administration website suggest that there is a better than 10% chance that McCain will die during his first term in office. Needless to say, the Reaper's scything only grows more insistent thereafter. Should President McCain survive his first term and get elected to a second, there is a 27% chance that Palin will become the first female U.S. president by 2015. If we take into account McCain's medical history and the pressures of the presidency, the odds probably increase considerably that this bright-eyed Alaskan will become the most powerful woman in history.
As many people have noted, placing Palin on the ticket has made these final months of the already overlong 2008 campaign much more interesting. Is Palin remotely qualified to be president of the United States? No. But that's precisely what is so interesting. McCain not only has thrown all sensible concerns about good governance aside merely to pander to a sliver of female and masses of conservative Christian voters, he has turned this period of American history into an episode of high-stakes reality television: Don't look now, but our cousin Sarah just became leader of the free world! Tune in next week and watch her get sassy with Pakistan!
Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. President Bush kept his edge on the "Who would you like to have a beer with?" poll question in 2004, and won reelection.
This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages -- and loses -- both necessary and unnecessary wars.
McCain has so little respect for the presidency of the United States that he is willing to put the girl next door (soon, too, to be a grandma) into office beside him. He has so little respect for the average American voter that he thinks this reckless and cynical ploy will work.
And it might. Palin's nomination has clearly excited Christian conservatives, and it may entice a few million gender-obsessed fans of Hillary Clinton to vote entirely on the basis of chromosomes. Throw in a few million more average Americans who will just love how the nice lady smiles, and 2009 could be a very interesting year.
Tune in next week and watch cousin Sarah fuss with our nuclear arsenal ... .
No man is convinced the Bible means exactly what it says. He is convinced it says exactly what he means. -Mark Twain
One man's religion is another man's belly laugh" -R.A. Heinlein
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. ~Philip K. Dick
The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike. - Delos McKown
Everyone starts our being an atheist. No one is born with belief in anything. - Andy Rooney
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. - Unknown
I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. -Frederick Douglass
You can't convince a believer of anything; their belief is not based on evidence but on a deep-seated need to believe. -Carl Sagan
Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires. - Sigmund Freud
It is better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however reassuring. - Carl Sagan
Do you believe that faith can effect [sic] your health or is that a lot of new age nonsense?:Dennett:
Of course faith can affect your health, as various studies have shown. So can faith in new age nonsense. So can faith in the Yankees or the Red Sox. People cling to life to learn the outcome of the World Series, after all. This has been measured statistically. More seriously, I do not know of any studies that compare the health and longevity of those who attend church regularly to those who devote regular hours of work to some secular charity (Oxfam, you name it) or to volunteering for a political party, for instance. It might turn out that religious allegiance is a better health promoter than any other form of voluntary contribution, but so far as I know, this has not been determined.
The larger problem with this week’s ON FAITH question is that it is being asked at all. This question should not be seen as a matter of personal conviction or opinion at all. People’s hunches, anecdotal recollections, or personal convictions are of no more weight here than they would be about the causes of global warming. You have asked an empirical question, and there are established methods for answering such questions. Encouraging any other approach is actually undermining proper respect for scientific methods and facts, right alongside the nefarious tactics of the tobacco companies, the global warming skeptics, and the “teach the controversy” Intelligent Design crowd who have so successful persuaded so many people to treat factual material as if it were mere opinion.
But you can put a respectable spin on it: by asking the question you are gathering data on people’s convictions, data that can later be compared to the facts, whatever they turn out to be. It will be interesting to see, for instance, how many respondents declare with confidence that they know the answer to your question quite independently of any careful research. And it will be interesting to learn if they are right.
But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks. Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.
Ms. Ryan and Ms. Markova have found what they call three zones of existence: comfort, stretch and stress. Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.
“Getting into the stretch zone is good for you,” Ms. Ryan says in “This Year I Will... .” “It helps keep your brain healthy. It turns out that unless we continue to learn new things, which challenges our brains to create new pathways, they literally begin to atrophy, which may result in dementia, Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases.“You cannot have innovation,” she adds, “unless you are willing and able to move through the unknown and go from curiosity to wonder.
It's actually about, well, us.
This is the great revelation: We still got it. The collective unconscious, the deep sense of inner wisdom, that intuitive knowing that borders on a kind of mystical proficiency, where millions of people can actually look beyond rhetoric and media spin and merely feel the presence of something great in the room? Yep, still there. Who knew?
See, this is what I hear most from relatives and readers and friends and newborn activists who were never activists before: Obama speaks to the intuition.
Friend Chris Raymond responded with this intelligent insight:
Yeah, I totally totally agree with this....on every point. Obama gives me
hope, not because I really think he can change everything that has become so
corrupted, but because there are so many of us who are responding to his
leadership. For all the right reasons. That is why I am hopeful.
This morning, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, ABC’s Good Morning America aired an interview with Vice President Cheney on the war. During the segment, Cheney flatly told White House correspondent Martha Raddatz that he doesn’t care about the American public’s views on the war:
CHENEY: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.
RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.
CHENEY: So?
RADDATZ So? You don’t care what the American people think?
CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.
Like every candidate, Obama must appeal to millions of voters who believe that without religion, most of us would spend our days raping and killing our neighbors and stealing their pornography. Examples of well-behaved and comparatively atheistic societies like Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark--which surpass us in terrestrial virtues like education, health, public generosity, per capita aid to the developing world, and low rates of violent crime and infant mortality--are of no interest to our electorate whatsoever. It is, of course, good to know that people like Reverend Wright occasionally do help the poor, feed the hungry, and care for the sick. But wouldn't it be better to do these things for reasons that are not manifestly delusional? Can we care for one another without believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is now listening to our thoughts?
I was a believer in biblical inerrancy and a young-earth creationist just like all those around me. I was the best in my age group at Bible trivia (we called them Bible sword drills) to the point that our Sabbath School teachers would keep me from playing because it wasn't fair to the other kids.
In high school some of my friends were growing disillusioned with our church and I listened to their arguments but didn't find them compelling until I got to college. I wanted to go to medical school eventually, but I initially declared a major in Religion while taking all the science prerequisites needed for my premed aspirations. The second quarter of my freshman year, I took a class in Jesus and the Gospels. This was the first exposure I had had to higher literary criticism of the Bible and my exposure to the textual theories about the Gospels astonished me, and made me realize the all-too-human nature of the text. This also led me to investigate other German theories regarding the Bible including Graf/Wellhausen, which confirmed my concerns.
My study of religion abolished my faith in biblical inerrancy and I changed my major to biology.
I began to see strong evidence for evolution, even though all my professors were young earth creationists.
To be a Republican you need to believe:
1. Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary
Clinton.
2. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's
Daddy made war on him , a good guy when Cheney did business with him,
and a bad guy when Bush needed a 'we can't find Bin Laden' diversion.
3. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade
with China and Viet Nam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.
4. The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our
highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq .
5. A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but
multinational drug corporations can make decisions affecting all
mankind without regulation.
6. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in
speeches, while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.
7. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.
8. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our longtime allies,
then demand their cooperation and money.
9. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy, but providing
health care to all Americans is socialism. HMO's and insurance
companies have the best interests of the public at heart.
10. Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but
creationism should be taught in schools.
11. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable
offense, but a president lying to enlist support for a war in which
tens of thousands die is solid defense policy.
12. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the
Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the
Internet.
13. Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a
conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers
for your recovery.
14. You support 'Executive Privilege' for every Republican ever born,
who will be born or who might be born (in perpetuity.)
15. Support hunters who shoot their friends and blame them for wearing
orange vests similar to those worn by the quail.
If you do or don't send this to at least 10 other people, we're likely
to be stuck with more Republicans in '08.
Friends don't let friends vote Republican.
This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray [not so much*], bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers. -Terry Tempest Williams, naturalist and author (1955- )
1. The traditional attributes of God are self-contradictory. Such a God cannot exist.
2. The traditional attributes of God are incompatible with objective facts about the world. Such a God cannot exist.
3. Natural explanations are superior to supernatural explanations. No basis exists for anything supernatural.
4. The traditional attributes of God imply actions that should be objectively observed, but are not.
It is possible to hypothesize a God whose attributes are logically compatible with each other. But, it does not follow that such a God exists unless it has objectively observable consequences. No such consequences have been observed.
If God exists, where is he?
As someone who was raised in Christian Science, and survived, I want people to know exactly what kind of religion it is.
While Christian Scientists are genuinely kind and well-intentioned, the worldview they choose to embrace can and does do great harm.
That worldview is this: that what we think of as reality simply isn't real. Because in this reality, people get sick, have problems, and so on. If God is all good and all powerful, they say, how could he permit disease to exist?
The answer is that he cannot and does not. Instead, the only reason such bad things exist in the world is because we humans mistakenly *believe* they exist. Once we eliminate this belief in ourselves (called "error" or "mortal mind" in Christian Science), the appearance of disease or discord simply disappears. This is the method of Christian Science "healing" in a nutshell.
For example, I never had a cold as a child. Not once. I had the *belief* of a cold many times, sometimes even the "claim" of a cold, but becuase there's no sickness in God's kingdom, I never had a real, actual cold, because colds simply aren't real.
This way of thinking is so simplistic that it raises hopes of healing, and when healing doesn't happen, you have practitioners like the person profiled here saying, "Well, Christian Science is very complex." Yet if you read the church's publications, you'd think that "knowing the Truth," as Christian Scientists put it, is as easy as falling off a log, and as reliable as a Japanese car.
And what the Christian Scientists call "healings" -- when they do happen -- can almost always be attributed to the body's ability to heal itself. Think of it -- we haven't had modern medicine for very long, maybe just around 100 years, and before then doctors were pretty much quacks. This is why Christian Science proved so popular at first when it debuted shortly after the Civil War.
So if you don't have competent medical treatment, you basically suffer through things until they pass (or *you* pass!). And a lot of the so-called healings I've read about or been told that I experienced are nothing more than that.
Christian Scientists will point to the testimonies of healing in their publications, but the church's guidelines for publishing them do not demand any sort of verification. Other Christian Scientists who have witnessed the "healing" (and who are predisposed to believe the religion's worldview anyway) are certainly accepted as witnesses, but in the absence of those, a person who can vouch for the testifier's character suffices as "verification" of the "healing." Hardly rigorous or objective, certainly not enough to merit the word "testimony."
Christian Scientists will also point out that they are not *required* to rely on Christian Science for healing, and that is technically true according to the church Manual (kind of like the church's constitution).
However, the real-life social pressures to reject medicine is so strong as to be nearly irresistible. Contempt for medical science runs through every aspect of Christian Science teaching. Just open to any random page of Science and Health, the Christian Scientists' companion text to the Bible, to see Mary Baker Eddy's attacks on medicine as false and ineffective.
So the social pressure is great indeed. If, for example, Mr. Davis from this article chose to rely on medicine to treat an illness, his status as a practitioner (a prestigious status in the church) might be jeopardized. And if he were a church officer in his local branch church, he would almost certainly be asked to step down from his position (though his basic church membership would not be affected).
I could obviously go on forever about this. As someone raised in the religion by a very devout family, I know how well-meaning and how wrong Christian Scientists can be. I'm glad I survived the experience. But I reject their insistence that the world we perceive isn't real, that there's something better. The world *is* real, with all its imperfections and problems. Christian Scientists don't like imperfections or problems, and simply try to pray them away, convinced they're not real. I embrace the imperfections and the problems, because they *are* real. But so am I. So are we all. And our power lies not in our ability to deny them, but to fix them, one by one, together.
