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God would be an atheist...
A rational look at religion, morality, politics and daily life |
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HOME / This Week About GWBAA WEEKLY COLUMNS Previous Print column Why subscribe? Schedule Terms & Rates Subscribe Online column Subscribe BASICS Definitions Atheism Faith God Religion etc Analysis The meaning of life Morality etc NEXT STEPS Buy Discuss Join Read REVIEWS CONTACT Link to this site All Rights Reserved World Copyright © Martin Foreman PREVIOUSLY... It is not yet certain whether a new prayer will need to be uttered at the Donning of the Condom. Something along the lines of “Oh, Lord, protect us from infection, but allow one or two sperm to creep out so that there is at least an outside chance of bringing yet another bawling infant into this crowded world. Amen” Protect us from infection I didn’t like the emptiness, the disconnectedness, the lack of direction and the prospect of it all ending when I die. It wasn’t long before … I was glad to be back under the umbrella of my faith.” An honest statement, but nothing to do with God. Reich tells us that he is a believer not because he has proof of God’s existence, but because he does not like the alternative. Good, evil and self-preservation Let’s be honest. The Democrats didn’t win the election, the Republican-in-Chief lost it. George W at least has a vision, no matter how awkwardly he articulates it. Make the world more American, make rich Americans richer and ignore the bleating of those whose lives and livelihoods are destroyed in the process. Who won? Others might see inconsistency, but I was proud of these changes. At school I had learnt that if I was intellectually honest, my perspective on the world would change as new information shed light on the old. The swing of the pendulum |
Column 106 A conversation with ourselves The pointlessness of prayer By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 796 words Publication date: May 6, 2007 Print publications wishing to syndicate the column should click here. Individual subscribers wishing to receive columns by e-mail should click here. Cruising the web recently I came across the creationist “news” site onenewsnow.com, and a headline: “American Christians encouraged to bombard heaven with prayers for persecuted Church”. Intrigued by the idea that some Christians wanted to destroy heaven through mass bombing of prayer, I clicked to the page and read. The story was not particularly interesting – a plea for American Christians to pray for fellow-believers being persecuted in Hindu India and to pray for the many Asians who have not yet embraced the Christian faith. Inter-faith violence is unfortunately common in India but relatively few Christians have died compared to the thousands of Muslims who have been killed over the years. What was much more revealing, however, was the confused and contradictory attitude of Christians – and presumably other Goddists – towards prayer. The crux of the story was that a K P Yohannan, founder of Dallas-based Gospel for Asia, says that American Christians have an obligation to pray for believers throughout the world who are persecuted for their faith. “I wish that every believer would be willing to wake up one hour early every morning and spend that hour before a world map,” Yohannan is quoted as saying, “praying and crying out to God for this generation, some two billion people that wait to hear that Jesus died for them on the cross.” Yes, you know and I know that the idea that a supposedly loving God killed his son to teach his creation a lesson is the sign of a sick mind, but that’s not the point here. The point is that K P is under the impression that the deity needs to be reminded that a third of the human race still has not accepted the message that torture and death is really a sign of love. Either that or God is perfectly aware of the situation but will do nothing about it until the one sixth of humanity who have bought into the cross-and-resurrection myth prod him into action. Suppose for one moment that Mr Yohannan is right. Jehovah is either ignorant of the situation or too lazy to do anything about it. Is this a God worth worshipping? Is this an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-compassionate being deserving of respect? The answer, of course, is No. K P’s concept of God insults the non-existent deity. The Texan’s plea for a daily 60 minute prayer reveals not God’s strength, but his weakness. Not every Christian would accept that God should be bothered in the way proposed by K P Yohannan. Just as each has their own personal portrait of the deity, each believer has their own opinion of what kind of prayer is acceptable to the big G. Some are happy to ask for their own lives to improve while others insist that you can only pray for other people. For some the wish list can include wealth, happiness and physical health are on the wish list, while for others only spiritual welfare and eternal life are acceptable. Irrespective of what believers ask for, and whether they ask it for themselves or others, all prayer comes down to the same thing. It is a request to God, either directly or through his saints, son, ghost or mother. But that request is irrelevant, because God already knows what you want, and his decision to grant or ignore it depends on his whims, not your petition. If God exists, he either knows about the subject of the prayer and chooses to do nothing. Or he knows and is able to do nothing. If the first case is true, he is not compassionate. If the second case is true, he is not omnipotent. In both cases he is not the loving God claimed by followers of the mythical Christ. Prayer is proof of God’s incompetence, his lack of honor and / or his lack of compassion. A truly just God would never need to be reminded of his obligation to heal the sick, to keep the innocent from harm or to protect the faithful. A God who needs reminding is a pathetic excuse for a deity. Those who claim that science has proved that prayer cures people and saves lives, are plain wrong. The studies they cite are flawed; the overwhelming evidence is that prayer has no impact at all on people’s lives. Situations where it appears to have worked can all be attributed to other, more compelling causes. Prayer claims to be a conversation with God, but at the end of the day, it is nothing more than a conversation with ourselves. We may think we hear God’s voice, but all that comes back to us the echo of our empty faith. The only honest prayer is a prayer to oneself to be freed of the illusion of faith.
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If God existed, he would... If God existed, he would be an atheist. 
Popular introduction to the writers behind the Bible from historical researcher and journalist Fred Glynn. Click the picture for more information. The 2007 General Assembly of the International Humanist and Ethical Union will held in Turin, Italy on June 17 and 18. To register, apply by May 16. More information and registration here The number of new Southern Baptists is falling. In 1950, SBers baptized one person for every 19 church members. That ratio dropped to one for every 43 church members in 2003. In October 2005 Southern Baptist Convention president, Bobby Welch, set a goal of 1 million baptisms in the following 12 months. Nine months later, 258 of the 43,465 churches reported they had held 3,494 baptisms. If all churches baptized at the same rate over the twelve month period, the church would have achieved 784,000 new members. Rational minds suspect that the actual number baptized was much lower. Source: here An earlier GWBAA column encouraged British readers to sign an online petition demanding an end to government funding of faith schools. It appears that a similar petition has gathered significantly more signatures. British citizens and residents who want to sign this second petition can find it at http://petitions. pm.gov.uk/faithschools/. The petition also has its own website: www.banfaithschools. org.uk. The current volume of signatories stands at over 12,800, making it the fifteenth most popular petition at the site. This would be great news but a pro-faith schools petition (with 16,715 signatories) is the eleventh most popular petition at the site. Information from the Brights: www.the-brights.net |
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