Let’s say for a moment that there is in fact one true, magical, all-powerful, deity up there in the sky somewhere. Why the fuck are there so many different opinions? Seriously. Look around at all these different religions that all claim to be “the one, true and only answer”. Obviously they can’t all be right, but why are there so many different theories on this? If there truly were a God up there watching and wanting His presence to be known and recognized, I’d think he would’ve given some more helpful hints. If it was me, I’d show myself and let people know. Instead, we have a supposedly secretive God up there who relies on faith to feed His ego. It simply seems like things should not be so confusing if there really is a God. Instead, it’s really just a toss of the coin mixed with what your parents believed that decides most people’s religions.

A reader emailed me a link to this FailBlog image and I couldn’t help but post it. Apparently the Almighty needs a little extra help nowadays. Reminds me of a sketch on Family Guy about guns that claimed that Jesus and Moses used guns for conquering. Anyway, here’s the picture.

What a giant, steaming load of bullshit. Today I discovered my grandmother has breast cancer. Again. Why would a fairly religious lady who has never hurt a soul deserve this? How the FUCK is this love God? Is chemotherapy your idea of a good fucking time you prick? I just cannot see where the benevolent, loving God is in this equation. Where’s the love? Half the world lives on something like $2 USD a day and many are starving to death. Enjoying the show?

I’ve already had people try and console me with the whole “Master Plan” schpeal. She is going to wind up in a better place ect. How the fuck is dead better? Hmmmm? If God really wanted her soul, why do so in such a great amount of pain and suffering? Wouldn’t it make more sense to alleviate suffering? Clearly there is either no God or He’s a complete and total asshole. Why would you want to be on His side anyway?

P.S.-I apologize for the angry and ranting tone of this post. I needed to get it out.

There are some people who look at every event in their lives and try to connect it to God in some way or another. This is not what I do. Instead I look for godlessness. Well not so much godlessness as what is really going on when something happens.

Let’s say I become sick. There are some who would say that perhaps God is punishing them for something. Instead, I think about what could have occurred to produce this sickness. Maybe I ran into somebody on the train or a friend of mine is sick. That’s just an example though. I do this for pretty much anything. I have trouble writing things off as simply miracles or personal punishment of a Divine Order.

The other day I actually found something that I’ve seen to be a fairly accurate description of this miracle syndrome. It’s called Littlewood’s Law and essentially it says the average human will experience a miracle every 30 days out of simple coincidence and by the volume of events of experiences in that time span(Law of Large Numbers).

In the likely event I was unable to fully elucidate the concept, here’s an explanation from Wikipedia:

Littlewood defines a miracle as an exceptional event of special significance occurring at a frequency of one in a million. He assumes that during the hours in which a human is awake and alert, a human will experience one event per second, which may be either exceptional or unexceptional (for instance, seeing the computer screen, the keyboard, the mouse, the article, etc.). Additionally, Littlewood supposes that a human is alert for about eight hours per day.

As a result, a human will, in 35 days, have experienced, under these suppositions, 1,008,000 events. Accepting this definition of a miracle, one can be expected to observe one miraculous occurrence within the passing of every 35 consecutive days – and therefore, according to this reasoning, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace.

Seems fairly logical to me. I’ll bet most people aren’t like me though. I just tend to question absolutely everything as it happens and look for a reason why. Why do we all kill each other? Why is their poverty? Why is their sickness? How can God love us and yet there is all this badness?(A fairly common question it seems…) How can we call this the most perfect of all worlds when all around me I see reasons it is not?(If you are interested in that last question, give Candide by Voltaire a read.) Anybody else do this?

As an atheist, I don’t have a higher power to put faith or trust into. Really I only have myself. Hell that almost takes more effort as I have nothing to fall back on. In the end, when I fuck up I can only blame myself and I’m forced to accept it was my own doing. Sure I see the allure of consigning all my blame away as God’s Will or part of His Plan. I’m also aware that every person of faith doesn’t do this, but many people I’ve met seem to. Every time something either good or bad happens God is responsible. The problem is detracts from one’s own accomplishments. When people say God is responsible for their success, it just doesn’t seem right. It is a result of their own hard work, not some magic skyman.

My biggest pet peeve isn’t about that though. Everyday people are arrested and get locked up. Then I hear them in interviews saying oh it must be part of God’s plan for this to happen or something to that effect.  No. What happened is you went out and did stupid shit and now society is punishing you. To claim a driveby that kills a toddler or a DUI death could be part of some divine master plan is utter bullshit. Am I just missing it? It just seems incredibly selfish to try and rationalize what happened into a good thing. Personally, I’d think an omnipotent God could think of a better way to teach people lessons. Ways that don’t result in the death of innocent people. People need to look around and accept that ultimately they are God over themselves. Nobody but them makes the choices in the end. I love the way O’Toole phrased it “When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself”.

While looking through my Bible the other day, I ran across a phrase I had seen before and questioned. I questioned it so because of how ambiguous it was and the fact that one could very easily see it two separate ways. I’m not saying contradictions and confusion aren’t common in the Bible, but this section in particular made me wonder.

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor,  Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

(Isaiah 9:6 NIV)

Now I see this as being read in two different ways. One from a Christian view and one from a Jewish view. I would guess most(if not al) Christians would read this as a prophecy for the coming birth of Christ. Couldn’t somebody just as easily interpret this as simply a new king of Israel to unite and deliver them? This type of thing was pretty common in the surrounding text. I guess my point is that a work like the Bible is so open to interpretation because of the way it is written. Guess that happens when you have a story written by many different authors across different continents over a long period of time though. Some people would assert that I am grasping at straws here, but I disagree. It is all too common for small things like this to cause great disputes among the believers. There are people blowing each other up due to a disagreement in the meaning of phrases in a collection of stories written long ago. If there was a God, why won’t He just pop in and straighten things out? Throughout the Bible, God has no problem talking with people and making His will crystal clear. Sure it destroys that whole faith principle, but wouldn’t it be worth it to help His people? How do you feel this passage reads? Doesn’t it seem weird that so many things in the Bible seem so prone to easy distortion? I guess I’ll conclude with another fun little bit from the Book of Isaiah:

¹⁵ Whoever is captured will be thrust through;
all who are caught will fall by the sword.

¹⁶ Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes;
their houses will be looted and their wives ravished.

(Isaiah 13:15-16 NIV)

I just find it strange that such a loving God is also such a malevolent dictator. There are plenty of good passages you can find about baby killing, looting, pillaging and the raping of wives. Damn this is beginning to sound like a tale of piracy.

I found this video today and thought it made some excellent points. The argument that god is “supernatural” and cannot be tested by science seems to be a common one. Yet when he crosses over into the realm of the natural He becomes testable. It seems like all natural phenomena that were not understood at one time were considered ‘miracles’. As time goes on more and more miracles seem to be rationally explained. Besides, aren’t yesterday’s religions today’s myths?

I was Stumbling the internet today and ran into a site that generates poster sized, multi-page images from any image. I then recalled an atheist poster I once saw, but didn’t buy due to lack of funds. The poster resides over at CommonSenseAtheism and is still for sale as far as I know. What makes it so special? It contains a massive list of Gods most people no long believe in. (I wonder what happens to Gods that are no longer believed in…, but that’s another post.)

Awesome. Considering I still lack the money to purchase this, I am going to give the site a try in the next few days. If you can, consider buying it though. All profits go to a god cause, Kiva.

Edit:

It is turning out to be a major pain in the ass to convert it to a size that can even be uploaded, so I’m just not going to do it. Although my birthday is coming up on the 14th…

Way to kick em while they are down.