Friday, October 25, 2013
Credit where credit is due
Frank Sontag seems like a genuinely nice guy, but as an atheist it can be hard to find anything in his show that I can sink my teeth into. I swear, if my liver could handle it, I'd make a drinking game out of every time he said 'our Walk', 'Christian Walk' etc. I realize I'm not the target audience of the show or station. Still, I like listening to it because I enjoy discussing religion. Unfortunately, "discussing" is boring if you agree with everything, and more boring still if the topic is something you can neither agree or disagree with. Even if I were a believer, I'm not sure how exciting it can be when the topic is about how our Walk needs to be stronger. OK, yeah, I agree. Now what?
Anyway, in his daily "How Strong is our Walk?" segment, a caller said the Pastors were not speaking the harsh Truth to Christians because they were afraid to lose their tax exemptions. Frank quickly jumped in and said it wasn't fair to say that of all pastors.
A few minutes later the tone had shifted to how atheists were the ones disparaging The Faith. A caller said atheists know God exists, but don't want to admit it because they don't want to have to answer to anyone. (This is one of the annoyingly incorrect things that Christians say--but maybe I'll rant about that later.) Frank told the caller he shouldn't say that of all atheists. Now, there was more than a hint of, "Don't say that of all atheists because you open the door for them to say you're making a generalization," but that's just nit-picking. The point is that almost every host (the previous host included) would have allowed the double standard and not batted an eye.
So good on ya, Frank.
Note: I edited this pretty heavily several days after posting because I didn't like the tone.
Monday, September 23, 2013
We'd like to talk to you about the Bible's hope for mankind
A couple of Jehovah's Witnesses came by this weekend. Nothing eventful, but in hindsight I'm a little disappointed that I let them off easy. I think it's because they complimented my daughter's politeness a few times so I was in a jovial mood.
They went through their intro and asked me if they could share some literature with me. I said I didn't believe in God, or that the Bible was inspired, so sharing scriptures was not likely to move me.
They asked if I had always felt that way, or if I used to be religious. I said I was very religious until my mid-20s, but at that time I realized that ever since I was three years old, God was just a fact of life that I had never questioned myself. (This got agreeing nods, but I'm sure the same is true of them. One of them also had their young son there in a stroller.)
Then they asked if I agreed that the Bible had many good things to say about how to live one's life, raise children, yadda yadda, and here's where I (later) wished I'd answered differently. I said, 'Sure it contains some nice sayings, but that doesn't mean the sayings came from God. Humans are plenty capable of coming up with deep/useful words on their own. For example, probably the greatest saying in the Bible, the Golden Rule (do to others what you would want them to do to you) was written in a different form by many other cultures 500 years before Christ.' They agreed, offered me their literature one last time, and left.
I wish I had gone on the offensive a little more. It was a friendly conversation and I think I could have been a little more pointed without crossing the line into giving offense. I should have said, "Sure, it contains some nice sayings, but if we're going to infer God's character by those nice things, don't we also have to infer his character by the really horrible things in the Bible? Things like commanding and committing genocide, allowing his people to own slaves and treat other humans as property, forcing women to marry the men who rape them, and killing people for picking up sticks on the sabbath?"
Not that I don't think they have ready-made excuses for these atrocities--all Christians do--but maybe it would have been another piece of straw added to the camel's back.
Probably the single biggest factor in my deconversion was arguing online (in the old AOL days) with the godless atheists. When I was a believer I never lost a theological argument (you can't lose if you're unwilling to concede the tiniest point), but there were times I was frustrated when they brought up arguments that I didn't have ready answers for. I would go over the conversation, wondering what I could have said differently. Sure, eventually I came up with a tortured excuse for my stance, but I could only ignore the cognitive dissonance for so long. Eventually, without even realizing it, I was forced to admit-without-admitting that my answers were lousy, and I started doing a little furtive reading about other viewpoints.
It's not my goal to deconvert JWs or anyone else. But I think religion is a net negative in the world, and if I can get them to start (or continue) the internal dialogue that leads them to really think about their beliefs, I consider it time well spent.
They went through their intro and asked me if they could share some literature with me. I said I didn't believe in God, or that the Bible was inspired, so sharing scriptures was not likely to move me.
They asked if I had always felt that way, or if I used to be religious. I said I was very religious until my mid-20s, but at that time I realized that ever since I was three years old, God was just a fact of life that I had never questioned myself. (This got agreeing nods, but I'm sure the same is true of them. One of them also had their young son there in a stroller.)
Then they asked if I agreed that the Bible had many good things to say about how to live one's life, raise children, yadda yadda, and here's where I (later) wished I'd answered differently. I said, 'Sure it contains some nice sayings, but that doesn't mean the sayings came from God. Humans are plenty capable of coming up with deep/useful words on their own. For example, probably the greatest saying in the Bible, the Golden Rule (do to others what you would want them to do to you) was written in a different form by many other cultures 500 years before Christ.' They agreed, offered me their literature one last time, and left.
I wish I had gone on the offensive a little more. It was a friendly conversation and I think I could have been a little more pointed without crossing the line into giving offense. I should have said, "Sure, it contains some nice sayings, but if we're going to infer God's character by those nice things, don't we also have to infer his character by the really horrible things in the Bible? Things like commanding and committing genocide, allowing his people to own slaves and treat other humans as property, forcing women to marry the men who rape them, and killing people for picking up sticks on the sabbath?"
Not that I don't think they have ready-made excuses for these atrocities--all Christians do--but maybe it would have been another piece of straw added to the camel's back.
Probably the single biggest factor in my deconversion was arguing online (in the old AOL days) with the godless atheists. When I was a believer I never lost a theological argument (you can't lose if you're unwilling to concede the tiniest point), but there were times I was frustrated when they brought up arguments that I didn't have ready answers for. I would go over the conversation, wondering what I could have said differently. Sure, eventually I came up with a tortured excuse for my stance, but I could only ignore the cognitive dissonance for so long. Eventually, without even realizing it, I was forced to admit-without-admitting that my answers were lousy, and I started doing a little furtive reading about other viewpoints.
It's not my goal to deconvert JWs or anyone else. But I think religion is a net negative in the world, and if I can get them to start (or continue) the internal dialogue that leads them to really think about their beliefs, I consider it time well spent.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
God works in orange dress ways
Even at my most rah-rah spiritual, certain kinds of "reasoning" seemed so empty to me that I couldn't get myself to repeat the party line, and I was embarrassed when fellow Christians did.
So I'm driving home and I turn the radio to 99.5 FM, KKLA in Los Angeles, the Frank Sontag show. He's a motivational speaker turned evangelical apologist. He is much more of a 'preach to the choir' guy than his predecessor, the venerable Frank Pastore, and I don't listen often as a result. (I'm not complaining that an evangelical show should choose topics that would interest atheists, but I can only take so much "How can we make prayer a bigger part of our Christian Walk(tm)?")
Anyway, on July 31, 2013 the segment was about Christian women wearing revealing clothing to church, and whether it was a source of stumbling. A woman, Vera, called in to announce that God was answering her prayers left and right.
The first answered prayer was when Frank took her call on the air. You see, she had just been praying to God--the Creator and Sovereign of the entire Universe--that she would make it on the air before they changed segments, and she was able to confidently announce to us that God answered that prayer.
Evidently she was sure she was not going to be on the air, but God performed a miracle to make it happen. Maybe he made someone ahead of her in the call line hang up (thus violating their free will). Maybe he didn't take control of their brain and make them hang up; maybe he just triggered a tiny EMP field and dropped their call so Sister Vera could get through. Or maybe he took over Frank's brain and made him answer Vera's call first, or maybe it was an intern who gave Vera priority. Either possibility has free will issues, but Free Will isn't a big deal in the Bible, anyway, unless Christians need to fall back to it to escape the Problem of Evil.
However this miracle was performed, Vera made it on the air to share her equally amazing tale of answered prayer.
Speaking of the topic of women dressing modestly at church, Vera had gone to the store that afternoon to shop for a new dress, but not before praying to God that He would help her make a good (modest) choice.
She saw an orange dress that she liked, but she wasn't sure if it was modest enough for church. (Incidentally, she sounded like she was in her 40s or 50s. She was not some young girl, this was a mature woman who didn't trust a Bible-trained conscience to make a good decision; she needed to take this one directly to the Man Upstairs.) Obviously in answer to her pre-shopping prayer, when looking more closely at the rack of dresses, she saw that the store did not have it in her size. An answered prayer!
How could such a prayer have been answered? I guess the first prerequisite is that God had to know that Vera would go shopping for a new dress at this store and fall in love with this dress fit for Gomorrah, but He's omniscient, so I'll grant this.
Now obviously the Spirit can't bear witness with her spirit that this dress is not appropriate, because that would be too easy. No, obviously He has to be sure the dress is not even in the store for her, lest she succumb to the temptation to buy a dress that shows a little too much cleavage or leg, and leads to the downfall of countless chaste Christian men. (Sounds like Vera has a very healthy body image, so that's a good thing.)
So what did He do? Did He cause the purchasing manager to order five of every size, but only four of Vera's size, so they would run out before she got there? Did He take over the brain of another shopper and force them to buy the dress first? Did He remote control a stock person to keep them from stocking Vera's dress on the rack? (I sure hope none of these people suffered job loss or any other consequences of having their brains momentarily controlled on Vera's behalf.)
When I hear stories like this, I think of the kids in Africa who die of malnourishment and disease. I imagine them in heaven, watching this unfold, thinking, "For millenia you've done nothing to alleviate suffering in my home village, where 60% of the children will die before age five, but you jumped through hoops to prevent Vera from buying a dress that might have been a bit immodest. Nice priorites, Big Guy."
So I'm driving home and I turn the radio to 99.5 FM, KKLA in Los Angeles, the Frank Sontag show. He's a motivational speaker turned evangelical apologist. He is much more of a 'preach to the choir' guy than his predecessor, the venerable Frank Pastore, and I don't listen often as a result. (I'm not complaining that an evangelical show should choose topics that would interest atheists, but I can only take so much "How can we make prayer a bigger part of our Christian Walk(tm)?")
Anyway, on July 31, 2013 the segment was about Christian women wearing revealing clothing to church, and whether it was a source of stumbling. A woman, Vera, called in to announce that God was answering her prayers left and right.
The first answered prayer was when Frank took her call on the air. You see, she had just been praying to God--the Creator and Sovereign of the entire Universe--that she would make it on the air before they changed segments, and she was able to confidently announce to us that God answered that prayer.
Evidently she was sure she was not going to be on the air, but God performed a miracle to make it happen. Maybe he made someone ahead of her in the call line hang up (thus violating their free will). Maybe he didn't take control of their brain and make them hang up; maybe he just triggered a tiny EMP field and dropped their call so Sister Vera could get through. Or maybe he took over Frank's brain and made him answer Vera's call first, or maybe it was an intern who gave Vera priority. Either possibility has free will issues, but Free Will isn't a big deal in the Bible, anyway, unless Christians need to fall back to it to escape the Problem of Evil.
However this miracle was performed, Vera made it on the air to share her equally amazing tale of answered prayer.
Speaking of the topic of women dressing modestly at church, Vera had gone to the store that afternoon to shop for a new dress, but not before praying to God that He would help her make a good (modest) choice.
She saw an orange dress that she liked, but she wasn't sure if it was modest enough for church. (Incidentally, she sounded like she was in her 40s or 50s. She was not some young girl, this was a mature woman who didn't trust a Bible-trained conscience to make a good decision; she needed to take this one directly to the Man Upstairs.) Obviously in answer to her pre-shopping prayer, when looking more closely at the rack of dresses, she saw that the store did not have it in her size. An answered prayer!
How could such a prayer have been answered? I guess the first prerequisite is that God had to know that Vera would go shopping for a new dress at this store and fall in love with this dress fit for Gomorrah, but He's omniscient, so I'll grant this.
Now obviously the Spirit can't bear witness with her spirit that this dress is not appropriate, because that would be too easy. No, obviously He has to be sure the dress is not even in the store for her, lest she succumb to the temptation to buy a dress that shows a little too much cleavage or leg, and leads to the downfall of countless chaste Christian men. (Sounds like Vera has a very healthy body image, so that's a good thing.)
So what did He do? Did He cause the purchasing manager to order five of every size, but only four of Vera's size, so they would run out before she got there? Did He take over the brain of another shopper and force them to buy the dress first? Did He remote control a stock person to keep them from stocking Vera's dress on the rack? (I sure hope none of these people suffered job loss or any other consequences of having their brains momentarily controlled on Vera's behalf.)
When I hear stories like this, I think of the kids in Africa who die of malnourishment and disease. I imagine them in heaven, watching this unfold, thinking, "For millenia you've done nothing to alleviate suffering in my home village, where 60% of the children will die before age five, but you jumped through hoops to prevent Vera from buying a dress that might have been a bit immodest. Nice priorites, Big Guy."
No names
I've set up this blog mainly to give my reactions to various religious issues without using my real name.
I'm an atheist, but my family are members of a strict Christian religion that practices shunning. If they found out that I no longer shared their religious beliefs they would be forced to shun me for apostasy.
What's ironic is that they need me more than I need them. My parents are not in great health, and I have other family members with special needs. I know they would not readily choose to shun me, given the choice, but such is the power of religion--they wouldn't have a choice. Religion corrupts things like family bonds and, often, simple human decency. My family would not want to shun me, but they would do what they're told, because to do otherwise is to invite God's eternal wrath.
Something tells me I'm going to make a bonehead mistake and leave traces of my identity somewhere in this blog. I recently read about a big bruhaha when a blogger created another account to reference and praise himself, but his name was in the HTML code of the sock puppet. Hopefully I don't do something so abysmally stupid.
I'm an atheist, but my family are members of a strict Christian religion that practices shunning. If they found out that I no longer shared their religious beliefs they would be forced to shun me for apostasy.
What's ironic is that they need me more than I need them. My parents are not in great health, and I have other family members with special needs. I know they would not readily choose to shun me, given the choice, but such is the power of religion--they wouldn't have a choice. Religion corrupts things like family bonds and, often, simple human decency. My family would not want to shun me, but they would do what they're told, because to do otherwise is to invite God's eternal wrath.
Something tells me I'm going to make a bonehead mistake and leave traces of my identity somewhere in this blog. I recently read about a big bruhaha when a blogger created another account to reference and praise himself, but his name was in the HTML code of the sock puppet. Hopefully I don't do something so abysmally stupid.
A small experiment (I'm sure it's been done before)
By way of experiment, I'm going to produce this blog and never tell anyone about it. I'm curious how long it will to:
Not that I blame them--many people have monetized their blogs and get a substantial amount of money from them. Others are probably just part of Generation Share, where the form and quantity of every bowel movement must be shared on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and Instagram.
This is my first foray into blogging (I am not much for social media; I use Facebook once every few months, and don't have Twitter or Instagram or whatever's-trending-these-days accounts) so I'm sure I'll make a bunch of noob blogging mistakes that blog pros ironed out way back in 2005. Whatever.
- Get my first commenter
- Get email feedback on a blog post
- Get mentioned in another blog post
- Gain a noticeable following
Not that I blame them--many people have monetized their blogs and get a substantial amount of money from them. Others are probably just part of Generation Share, where the form and quantity of every bowel movement must be shared on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and Instagram.
This is my first foray into blogging (I am not much for social media; I use Facebook once every few months, and don't have Twitter or Instagram or whatever's-trending-these-days accounts) so I'm sure I'll make a bunch of noob blogging mistakes that blog pros ironed out way back in 2005. Whatever.
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