You worship a monster.

A while ago at work I overheard a couple of coworkers talking about The Secret, a silly bit of pseudoscience that claims that any intentions you “put out into the universe” will somehow attract whatever it is you intend. For example, if you “put it out into the universe” that you want a new car, eventually you’ll get one. It’s a dumb idea, I know. Our thoughts don’t actually affect reality outside of what they lead us to do.

But there’s a dark side to this kind of belief. You see, according to The Secret, everything that happens is the result of our intentions. Sure, when we get that big bonus at work, it’s a sign of the power of our intentions. But when a tsunami hits and kills us and hundreds of thousands of others, it’s really just because not one of those hundreds of thousands of people really wanted to be safe from tsunamis – or, worse, that more of them wanted to die in a tsunami than wanted to be kept safe. In other words, as soon as you get outside of this sappy, fluffy, happy-go-lucky, upper-middle-class, first world life, The Secret starts becoming horrifying. Everything bad that happens is either because of too many people wanting it to happen or not enough people wanting it not to happen.

With The Secret, though, at least we can only blame ourselves. If the so-called Law of Attraction were true, we could do something about it.

When you believe in an omnipotent god that you call perfectly good, you’re in an even worse situation. Because you’re stuck believing in a being that is capable of literally anything, but which (for whatever reason) still decides to take a course of action that engenders massive amounts of suffering. An omnipotent being could, of course, achieve its goals through any means it decides to use. So if it achieves its goals through means that require human suffering, the only logical conclusion is that it prefers human suffering to the absence thereof.

And we’re absolutely unable to make the situation any better.

I’ve seen Christians extol the virtues of their god by talking about how everyone feels God’s love in their lives. Tell that to the African boy that just starved to death, in agony and terror, because a parasitic worm burrowed its way into his large intestine and siphoned off all the nutrients from the tiny amount of food he managed to scavenge. Tell him that it happened because your god loves us all equally and doesn’t wish for us to suffer. Yes, clearly your happy-clappy scripture is a comfort to people who aren’t as pampered and privileged as you are in a rich first world country.

If you believe in an omnipotent god, and you believe that everything which happens is a part of that god’s plan, you worship a monster. There’s no other way to put it.

You Don’t Have to Think, Either

A friend of mine thought it would be a good idea to forward on a rather vacuous little article from someone writing on her church’s website. The article, I Don’t Have to Prove It, is a celebration by UCC minister Lillian Daniel of that oft-quoted passage from the Bible:

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

The Horror of Eternity

One of my Facebook friends just asked her ‘followers’ if the idea of the afterlife ever brought comfort to us. It was interesting to see some of the responses:

“The stress of wondering where I would go in the afterlife did not bring me any comfort. I don’t remember when I first learned about Hell, but when I was a child, I was so afraid of it that I repeated the thought “I love God” over and over and over again in my mind.”

“I never, even as a Christian, completely accepted the concept of Heaven and Hell because my dad was an atheist and I knew it. I tried my best to rationalize, though. I just couldn’t understand the point of us being created only to be tortured. So no, it never brought me comfort.”

“Absolutely not. I remember thinking who would want to live FOREVER? And I was maybe 7 or 8 years old.”

“I was always terrified of the afterlife, particularly heaven. At a very young age, I was terrified of the thought of NEVER dying. I did not want to live forever, and worse with god. I was terrified about constantly being criticized by him. I did not truly understand what acts were sins and did not want to upset god.”

Until a few years ago, the idea of the afterlife was nothing BUT comfort to me. I was raised in a liberal Christian family, and was taught that everyone was saved by grace at birth, meaning that nobody went to hell. The idea of people suffering forever wasn’t even an issue for me. Everyone would go to heaven, where they could do whatever they wanted, be whoever or whatever they wanted, etc. It would just be a magical world where anything was possible. Definitely not the Biblical image of heaven, with the constant singing of praises to God.

Video: Religious indoctrination is a poison.

Just recorded myself with a few thoughts on religious indoctrination, and the persistent effects it can have on you later in life.

The Insanity of the “Angry Atheist” Stereotype

[time to play theist’s advocate, briefly.]

Boy, those atheists sure are angry. They’re always mocking religious people, degrading their deeply-held beliefs and sniping at them with pompous, elitist remarks.

Who are they to tell us what to believe? Our beliefs give our lives hope and meaning. They help guide us to behave in the ways we should behave and stand up for what’s right.

Not to mention how many smart people there are who believe what we do, and how many contributions have been made to the arts, culture, and society by the teachings of our various faiths. Where would we be without religion?

Facing “Harsh” Realities

When I was a kid I used to be obsessed with the idea of psychic phenomena – ESP, psychokinesis, astral projection, et cetera. I even did a “research project” in elementary school on the subject of paranormal investigations. I was an entirely credulous person; if something had even the slightest shred of ‘evidence’ to it, I was likely to dive into it head first, assuming it was true until I was proven wrong (which I never was, of course, since I basically only looked into the ‘evidence’ provided by believers).