appeal to popularity

Six Reasons to Believe in Circular Logic, Superstition, and Persecution

“EveryStudent.com is a safe place to explore questions about who God is and what it might be like to know God.”

When I first read the mission of this site, I thought, “Okay, so these folks really want to openly discuss their beliefs.” Of course, after I started digging around a little, I found the following list of six definitive reasons why GOD exists. So much for open discussion.

Six reasons that god exists

1. Does God exist? The complexity of our planet points to a deliberate Designer who not only created our universe, but sustains it today.

2. Does God exist? The human brain’s complexity shows a higher intelligence behind it.

3. Does God exist? “Chance” or “natural causes” are insufficient explanations.

4. Does God exist? To state with certainty that there is no God, a person has to ignore the passion of an enormously vast number of people who are convinced that there is a God.

5. Does God exist? We know God exists because he pursues us. He is constantly initiating and seeking for us to come to him.

6. Does God exist? Unlike any other revelation of God, Jesus Christ is the clearest, most specific picture of God pursuing us.

To quote Jules Winnfield on Pulp Fiction, “Well, allow me to retort.”

1. One, the complexity of our planet points to the Christian God as creator? I know they said “deliberate Designer”, but I highly doubt that they were referring to Kronos, Ahura Mazda, Quetzalcoatl, Amun, or his noodly excellence. Looking at something and not understanding immediately where it came from is no reason to abandon logic, throw up your hands and attribute such acts to a celestial magician (especially when there are any number of “creators” to choose from). Science, with all of its discoveries, continues to pull back the veil of ignorance once planted by religious superstitions of the past. Have patience and I am fairly certain we will continue to learn more and more about our origins. I’ll almost bet those origins won’t contain any “let their be life” moments or the instantaneous creation of fully developed plants and animals.

2. This is more or less a restatement and clarification of the previous question. Except instead of “complexity of planet”, they have chosen “complexity of human brain” which raises no question which can’t be answered with the above explanation. In true Christian argument fashion, the same old questions are reworded and repeated.

3. Of course “chance” and “natural causes” are insufficient explanations. But, to me and so many others, so is “Big Daddy in the sky did it.” Pointing back to #1, give it time as the scientific method, i.e. properly examining a hypothesis by experimentation and analysis of the data, reveals the truths of our origins. But seriously folks, stop living in the past. We are here now, and we need to live our lives in the present to ensure a healthy future.

4. This one is just plain stupid. That something is popular makes it true? What a keen notion. A large number of people once thought that the earth was flat and was the center of the universe. Large numbers of people have believed many false things. To lean on your popularity shows a lack of any real evidence to support your claims.

5. God does not pursue us. This is a baseless claim. People pursue God because they pursue answers to difficult questions. They feel the need to believe in an afterlife of rewards to make up for a life filled with sickness and suffering. Surely all of this bad will be made up for with something? Ah! Heaven! With it’s golden-paved streets and harp-toting angels, I will be able to put aside all of the bad things I have to deal with here on Earth.

6. Again, this is merely a restatement of #5 pointing specifically at Jesus. If someone were to call themselves the son of God today, would he be received as the second coming of Christ? No. In fact, I’m sure there are more than a few rooms in asylums worldwide filled with second comings. People to whom God speaks nowadays are either committed or elected.

Don’t Pray For Me, Argentina.

I’ve got to hand it to Christianity. They have a pretty good racket setup. What most likely started as a simple way to keep the uneducated working class in check has become a self-perpetuating machine with all the right gimmicks built right in. Such as “We are right. Everyone else is wrong.” Gotta love that one. No tolerance for diversity, no compassion for your fellow man, no “love thy neighbor” (wait a tick…)

What Christians don’t realize is that no matter how great their book may describe this Heaven place as being, that doesn’t mean that I would want to go there. But gasp! Who wouldn’t want to go to Heaven and kneel at the big stinky feet of the Lord God Almighty for ALL OF FUCKING ETERNITY. It is the utmost of religious arrogance to assume that I want what you have been fooled into thinking that you are getting.

I have a lot of Christian friends. To have any friends in Alabama, one can’t help but have a few (hundred) Christian friends. The Christian friends that I kept more than a week all followed one simple unspoken rule: don’t try to convert me. It’s rude. It’s a waste of your time. It’s pointless. I don’t try to convert all of my friends to atheism. Why? Part of the serenity in my life comes from the status quo. If my friends are happy with their beliefs, more power to them, as long as they keep said beliefs to themselves.

“My favorite movie is The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.”
“Thanks for sharing.”
“What’s your favorite?”
“The Shawshank Redemption.”
“Hmmmm…”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Well, a lot more people like The Lord of the Rings.”
“Well I’m quite happy with Shawshank.”
“LOTR:ROTK won ‘Best Picture’, and Shawshank got nothing from the Academy. And don’t even try to point to those lesser awards like the Bronze Frog. Those award processes are full of holes. Everyone knows they are a bunch of bunk.”
“That’s certainly the Academy’s opinion. I think I am a better judge of what I enjoy than the Academy anyhow.”
“Well lots of people trust the Academy. The movies they pick tend to do better. Don’t you want to enjoy movies of a high caliber.”
“No thanks, I’m quite comfortable with my regular old caliber movies.”

While I would enjoy conversations of this caliber more than religious ones, they essentially boil down to the same premise. These types of conversations tend to originate from people with the two-year-old “I win” attitude. They grew up with a certain belief, therefore it is the only option they will even consider. Isn’t that a little dangerous? Whether it’s the brand of vehicle you buy, types of food you eat, or deep-seated religious beliefs, it never hurts to at least research the alternatives. If nothing else, research could potentially strengthen your position in your current belief, while at the same time, display your open-mindedness and levelheadedness. The latter benefits, though a far cry from converting me, would increase my respect for your beliefs, no matter how contrary to my own.

Think about it Christians, if you act like a holier-than-thou cunt when engaging with those with opposing ideologies, who would really want to make a life change to be more like you? On the opposite side of the spectrum, presenting yourself as a brain-dead, conformist doppelganger of the Christian faith is not a great way of attracting others. Questioning me ad nauseum about my choice to deny the existence of a supreme being is not going to make me have an epiphany, drop to my knees, and ask for salvation, no matter how much your little pamphlet may illustrate the process as such.

“You know, I used to sound a lot like you. Until [[insert bad situation]] happened, and I turned to the Lord.”
“Good for you. And much like you, no one could have spoon fed you their beliefs. You came about them on your own, and such will be the case with me, if ever. Good day, sir.”

Now, I made up the movie discussion, but that last one actually happened. The person who said that is probably rethinking his prejudice of atheists because of me. Up until I told him, he had no idea I did not share his beliefs. Now that he knows, he probably has a hard time reconciling that with the fact that I am a pleasant person to be around, a great salesman, and a damn hard worker. Sure, none of that may matter to he-who-must-not-be-proven, but I know for a fact that I have THIS life, so I choose to make the most of it. If something exists afterward, despite logic and science, I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it. For now, I choose to live this life with a passion, that only a free mind can know.

It’s one thing to do good because you live in constant fear of a pit of fire. It’s quite another to do good as a personal choice.

Evolution vs. Creation

Life. Where did it come from? What does it have in store for me? What can I expect after life on earth?

Don’t know. It depends. Decomposition.

Though I have no idea why, people seem very interested in why we are here. I believe more important than that, one should accept that they are here (regardless of origin) and ask “What am I to do with myself?” After all, it is you that guides yourself through this earth. Earth isn’t some Xbox 360 game where God is parading you about the land with the wiggle of a joystick.

But if you really want to dwell on the concept of life’s origins, there are two common schools of thought: creationism and evolution. In case you just crawled from beneath a rock, creationism is the idea that [[insert deity of choice]] willed Earth into existence and created life with an awesome power that can never be measured. Evolution is the study of the fossil record to show gradual changes in genetic information over time.

I will concede that both theories are full of holes, but let me expand. Creationism is full of holes in that for it to be an plausible theory, one must believe in an invisible man in the sky that can create something out of nothing. I picture this being done with crossed arms, a blink of both eyes and a quick, jerky nod (think I Dream of Jeannie.) Evolution is full of holes in a much different way. Consider this: DNA was first discovered by Drs. Watson, Wilkins and Crick in the 1960s; it even won them the Nobel Prize. At that time, even with a breakthrough as magnificent as theirs, the idea of mapping the entire human genome seemed a laughable feat. This was completed in 2003 with most of the work being done in the 4 years prior. My point with this analogy is that as science progresses, our knowledge increases on matters previously thought to be near impossible to comprehend. Religion has historically been there to fill in the gaps for people who just must have answers. In ancient Greece, everything from crops and the seasons to the rising and setting of the sun were due to direct action of gods and goddesses. Once science revealed to us things such as nitrogenous soil and the earth revolving around the sun, we no longer were able to attribute such acts to supreme beings.

In time, will the holes in evolution be filled? I do not know. But I know that it is more likely than there ever being proof of a divine creation. People like Kent Hovind (Dr. Dino), who maintain that the earth was created in exactly 6 days (as we know them) and that the Earth is approximately 6,000 years old have lost touch with reality. Hovind has offered a large sum of money to anyone that can show conclusive, testable evidence of evolution. Well I would like to extend that same wager to Mr. Hovind. So, Dr. Dino… Do you have any conclusive, testable evidence that shows evidence of creation? Of course you don’t. To believe in your theory, you must have faith, defined by Webster as “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” Mr. Pot, meet my friend kettle. He too is black.

Evolutionists look for empirical evidence to support evolution, whereas Creationists look for holes in evolution. If you wanted to know what color my shirt was, simply saying that “it isn’t white” doesn’t lend that it is black. Further questioning however would eventually lead to the correct answer. Creationists, instead of asking “is it green?” or “is it blue?”, would repeatedly tell you, in derogatory tones, “Well it isn’t white!”

The book, In Six Days: Why Fifty Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation, compiled by John F. Ashton, PhD is chock-full-of logical fallacies and presuppositions based on belief in the divine, including the following gem:

How do evolutionists respond to the zero likelihood of life arising by chance? The biochemistry text quoted above asks and then answers the question: “How then did life arise?” The answer, most probably is that it was guided according to the Darwinian principle of the suvival of the fittest as it applies at the molecular level. The key fact to note here is that natural selection simply cannot act unless there are fuctional, self-replication molecules present to act on. We have already seen that no such system could possibly appear by chance. Life in its totality must have been created in the beginning, just as God told us.

First, any scientist (or student of science for that matter), that has given slightly more than a cursory glance at a biology textbook knows that “survival of the fittest” is not from Darwin, but rather it was a claim made by Herbert Spencer. It kinda makes me lose any faith in the rest of the argument with such a glaring falsehood upfront. But I press on… Let me step back a little and touch on the term “zero likelihood.” Unless it violates one of the most fundamentally laws of space and time, nothing has a zero likelihood. I could say that there is a zero likelihood of a jet engine crashing through my roof and killing me, but there is a chance. This lack of logic further illustrates the creationist’s inability and unwillingness to diverge from “The Word” for even a moment to consider actual scientific findings. A mind is like a chimney flue, it only works when open. To comment on the rest of his dreck, I can only say that the author is making some very bold assumptions about the ability of variance to survive past multiple generations. Did you know that hospitals are some of best places in which to get sick? True. Clean as they are, the bacteria in hospitals grow immune to chemicals and antibacterial agents. The one or two out of every million that survive replicate to produce more bacteria, a large percentage of which will also be immune. Over the course of several generations, and in the presence of many more toxins, you can see how this would end up. The same is true for the random combination of nitrogenous bases to form amino proteins, you simple minded twit.

Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies.

“Boys and girls,” Ham said. “If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, you put your hand up and you say, ‘Excuse me, were you there?’ Can you remember that?”

The children roared their assent.

“Sometimes people will answer, ‘No, but you weren’t there either,'” Ham told them. “Then you say, ‘No, I wasn’t, but I know someone who was, and I have his book about the history of the world.'” He waved his Bible in the air.

“Who’s the only one who’s always been there?” Ham asked.

“God!” the boys and girls shouted.

“Who’s the only one who knows everything?”

“God!”

“So who should you always trust, God or the scientists?”

The children answered with a thundering: “God!“

::sigh::