25. January 2010 by Frank.

I went with my wife to church today because she was going to sing a special.  She did good.  The pastor, however, didn’t.

His main topic was prayer with faith being a secondary reinforcement.  Unfortunately for him his choice of verses quite clearly state that the prayer of faith WILL heal the sick.  This does not fit in with his beliefs or the doctrines of his church so he was forced to add conditions and alterations to the verse to make it mean something it did not say.  At the very least this is rather dishonest.

It’s also why it is no use trying to use logic and reason to refute these people; they are masters of making contrary statements fit their own preconceived notions by any means possible. 

Part of his elaboration was that in order for god to be god there had to be mystery involved.  Our minds are so petty that they can’t conceive the things of god.  His will is a mystery, his reasons for our suffering go beyond our ability to understand.  And since there is such mystery we can’t assume the prayer of faith will actually do what the bible says it will do.  Why?  Because we’re all sinners with tiny little pea brains.

Besides, it’s more about spiritual healing anyway.

What, may I ask, is spiritual healing?  Seriously, go in any church and try to get someone to actually explain what your spirit is in comprehensible terms.  I guarantee getting a straight answer is next to impossible.  Get them to tell you what’s the difference between spirit and soul.  If anyone has an answer it will be some variation of only the word of god can divide the two.  It is one of god’s mysteries.

Let’s just go with a basic definition; your spirit or soul is that part of your consciousness that makes you you.  Simple enough?

Now then let’s ask someone such as myself who has suffered brain damage what they think that means.  Any  small amount of research will show you that brain damage (injury, stroke, disease, drugs) can radically alter your personality.  It can change what makes you you in such a way that you can no longer even recognize yourself.  It can baffle other people so much that they will literally withdraw from you because they can’t comprehend how different you are.

If simple physical damage can change who you are and how you think how can there be some immaterial spirit being who is the real you?  How could I go from a fired up christian fanatic to a complete unbeliever without even trying?  I have a clearly defined dividing line between who I was before the stroke to who I am after.  There’s no grey area.  Faith was everything before and it’s nothing now.

Not that I just accepted that.  No, I studied relentlessly to find an explanation.  I studied different doctrines, church history, different philosophies; works I never would have looked at before.  I looked to science and medicine and found out about brain damage and what it could do.  I found actual, real, physical, natural explanations for what I was convinced was a spiritual problem.  And I learned to cope with it.

I found the truth and the truth set me free.

The truth wasn’t the bible.  It was cold, hard facts.

What I want to point out to people is simply this; if your faith and beliefs require you to add words or alter their meanings from your own sacred texts, then, obviously, your texts aren’t quite so sacred as you claim.  You know the verse doesn’t work but you can’t admit that.  So you throw in some mystery.  You add some variable that allows you to fail so that you can claim god’s word didn’t fail.

If the bible was really the word of a real god it wouldn’t need such dishonest help.

Would it?

Posted in wild guesses, interpretation, communication, listen, hearing, religion, emotion, stroke | Print | 3 Comments »

17. January 2010 by Frank.

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve seen or heard or read about Haiti this past week.  A monumental tragedy brought on by natural forces.  More than likely you’ve heard that paragon of virtue and christian compassion, Pat Robertson, blame the disaster not on nature but on a pact with the devil made back in the seventeen hundreds.  Which he assures us is a true story and even quotes the devil to prove it.  How anyone can take this douche bag seriously is beyond me.

But his lack of compassion should hardly be surprising; his god has shown no compassion whatsoever.  You see human beings giving their money, time, and physical efforts regardless of nationality or religion.  You see countries pouring out all sorts of humanitarian aid.  You even see some churches helping.  What you don’t see is any indication of is a merciful god doing anything to protect or help hundreds of thousands of people who lives have been destroyed.  You sure don’t see him helping to get all that aid to the people who actually need it.

That really isn’t the topic of this post, however.

A person I know is on a 3 state trip due to a family matter.  This person has quite a lot of followers on FaceBook.  He asked them to be praying for “traveling mercies” when he left.  Traveling mercies are sort of a pet peeve of mine.  Considering the appalling lack of godly mercy for the people of Haiti, I find the mere asking for such mercies rather appalling in itself.  The family of an impoverished widow is wiped out by a relentless force of nature and there is no mercy for her.  But the wonderful, loving, christian god will keep his needy followers safe on the freeway or help find their car keys when they’re in a hurry?  What is wrong with this picture?

This person isn’t unique.  I used to be the same way.  No matter what was going on in the world (and there’s always something horrifying going on) I thought my intimate little god was right there with me in the most mundane things of daily life.  It never occurred to me to question how he could help with my stomachache but ignore the guy down the street bleeding to death from a knife wound.  Selective mercy; what a concept.

Except, of course, that is what the bible says plain as day.  “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on who I will have compassion.” That’s Romans 9:15 but read the whole thing.  That’s where god declares some are made for ignoble purposes and he puts up with them in order to display how great he is.  Like he did with Pharaoh and Moses.  Other verses claim he has mercy for all but it doesn’t take much to prove that isn’t true.

Everyone turns a blind eye to the suffering of others at some point in their life or another; you literally couldn’t cope with all the suffering in the world if you didn’t.  But god is supposed to be bigger than all of us, why is it he can’t seem to handle all of it either?  What bugs me is how his followers can so easily ignore reality as well.  These people are suffering horrors I can’t even imagine but please lord help me drive my car safely.  Except that the part about these people are suffering horrors I can’t even imagine does not even enter the equation.  It’s just I need travelling mercies.

No, I’m no great humanitarian myself.  There’s nothing I can do.  In the old days I would offer up a prayer or two or give some pitiful amount to a religious charity and claim I did my share.  I can still give some pitiful amount but there’s nothing to pray to anymore.  The results are the same.

The only help the people are going to get is going to come from other people.

Feel free to keep begging your pathetic little god to watch over you.  I am ashamed of myself for how much of that I did in my life.  These things I rant about seeing christians doing are all things I used to indulge in myself.

It’s disgusting.

Posted in communication, wild guesses, hearing, emotion, religion | Print | 9 Comments »

12. January 2010 by Frank.

End of the World Seminar cancelled.  No, not because of a lack of interest.  It was because my friend who invited me pulled a work related all-nighter.  So I’m slightly disappointed but I have found other end of the world scenarios to fill the gap.

Chief among them is this; Sarah Palin joins FOX NEWS as a political commentator.

That surely has to be a sign of the apocalypse.  Wasn’t it enough to have Brit Hume tell Tiger Woods to become a christian because christianity offers forgiveness and redemption much better than Buddha?  Wasn’t that enough wackiness from the home of Bill O’Reilly and Glen Beck?  Wasn’t their conservative bias far enough to the right already?

Apparently not.

On the other hand, wackiness exists in other forms as well.  A christian friend of mine who desperately needs my computer expertise cannot thank me enough for helping him but always has to throw in thanks to god for sending me his way.  I have always been an atheist since he has known me but he is convinced that it is god’s will that I am around to help him.  I find it amusing that god would go against my free will and arrange for me to help his “child” with his problems that no amount of praying will give him answers or abilities to handle himself.  Didn’t god have any christian computer geeks available?

Posted in humor, religion | Print | 3 Comments »

8. January 2010 by Frank.

This is the fifth post I’ve written in the last two weeks but it is only the first post I’ve posted out of all of them.  Why?  Because I didn’t like the direction they were going. 

That direction was “nowhere”.

Not that they weren’t interesting, mind you.  They were just too much a reflection of my curmudgeonly anti-holiday / anti-tradition rantings that I do every year at holiday time.  In other words, I was following my own tradition of griping about other people’s traditions.  And, somehow, that just seemed wrong.

I do expect to get an earful of new material next week when I attend an “end of the world” seminar with a friend.  I’ve never heard of the speaker at all but I do know he’s Seventh Day Adventist so I have a pretty good idea of the direction he’ll be heading.  Yes, I know, I’m a glutton for punishment, but sometimes this sort of thing can be amusing if not informative.

I was always a fan of end of the world science fiction and that didn’t change when I became a christian.  I just traded mankind, aliens, and natural disasters for god, the devil, and demons as the cause of worldwide destruction.  The christian variations on the theme weren’t nearly as entertaining as the science fiction stories but I gave them more weight because they were based on the bible.  And since the bible was the word of god they had to be true and accurate.

Yeah, right.

I read multiple dozens of such books back in the 1980’s.  They were full of all kind of dire warnings and predictions stated with much bravura and unquestioned certainty; after all, god’s prophecies never fail.  Well, that was 30 years ago and hardly any of those declarations came to pass.  In fact, the average science fiction story by some hack writer was far more accurate in its predictions than anything the christian hack writers ever came up with.

One such book I remember was “When Your Money Fails” by Mary Stewart Relfe.  Not that it was a good book worth remembering.  It was a book full of all sorts of actual photos of diabolical mark of the beast money fantasies.  Well, at least, they were actual photos until you got to the last page where the author admitted they were all fakes (in very very very small print) designed for illustration purposes.  What’s remarkable is that there’s a website for this right here.  I only looked at the first page but can anyone say conspiracy theory?

Be very afraid of those embedded microchips.

Something far more plausible and disturbing is the retina scanners that deliver up tailored to the individual advertising in the movie MINORITY REPORT.  One of my blogs back in the day allowed for advertising so I put Google’s Ad Sense on it (this was when they first started promoting it).  It scared me to death when it started displaying ads that were about the exact same subjects as my current posts.  It didn’t take long to understand the technology behind it but it was quite eerie at first because I had never seen anything that uncanny.  Tailored advertising is here; tailored to the individual isn’t that far off.

Be afraid of that.  Especially if advertising works well on you.

Conspiracy theories seem to abound these days but they are really nothing new.  It’s when they are tied in with religion and right wing politics that they become really scary.  Because, unfortunately, otherwise ordinary people eat this stuff up.  The last time I went to one of these seminars there were over a thousand people there.  The one next week is in a much bigger building.  Even though I can’t remember the guy’s name I fully expect the place to be packed.

Don’t worry about me.  I am already practicing my eye rolling and covering my laughter with sneezing fits.  Not sure what to do if snoring occurs.

Posted in communication, technology, humor, interpretation, listen, education, hearing, signs, religion | Print | 4 Comments »