THE FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL

A few years ago, I heard on National French radio, the screams of, and the conflict being waged among themselves by, illegal, famished immigrants, fighting over the limited supplies of food provided for them by a hamstrung municipality – not in Africa but in northern France, the fifth richest country in the world.

This may be a omen of what is to come world-wide.  People in the starving nearby continent of Africa are already trying to save their lives by sailing in pathetic, tiny, overcrowded boats, to land in Europe, which is, for them, if not the home of the brave, at least the land of the free – and the well-fed.  Many do not make it.  Many drown.  Others are caught and sent back “home”.  The U.S. and Australia face the same bid for freedom and food – both notoriously lacking in Central American and some South-East Asian countries.

Malthus was brutal, his doctrine cruel and inhuman.  We must above all, said he, not provide food for the starving.  We are already overpopulated.  Today we would say that we need TWO Earths to provide sustenance for the world at the European level, FIVE Earths for the world’s population to live like Americans.  Malthus suggested that we force the starving to die.  There is just so much room (“lebensraum”, living room, in recent parlance . . .), just so much food.  We cannot support unlimited population increase.  There will be blood.  Or worse, starvation.  Mothers will, in increasing numbers, watch their babies die.  An imminent Slaughter of the Innocents.

My book, “From Illusions to Illumination”, and this blog are neither a political nor a sociological thesis.  They are collections of reflections on belief in God and its consequences for mankind.  I am convinced that religious faith is not only useless in face of the potential catastrophe before us, but dangerous in the comforting illusions it creates (“Worry not about tomorrow” !).  Hitchens went so far as to say that it poisons everything.

Atheism will not solve the world’s problems.  But, liberated from the God delusion, we can at least face reality.  And perhaps, without any help from a non-existent deity, find the means to save ourselves from destruction.  Time, like an adequate food supply, is running out.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

P.S.   For technical reasons, publication of the next post will be delayed until the end of the month.

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” JE NE REGRETTE RIEN “

Edith Piaf claimed, in her signature song, to have no regrets.  Of course she did; we all do.  Sinatra’s song, “I’ll Do it My Way”, was more honest, when he admitted to having “a few”.  The list each of us could honestly make would be both long and enlightening, at least to ourselves.  The most interesting implication would be what we do not regret.  As far as my atheism is concerned, I do regret having taken so long to let in the light.  Instead of asking for a Papal Dispensation from the priesthood (as though I needed a Pope to annul meaningless vows), I should have thought my doubts through, and realized that having questioned celibacy, I should have questioned the whole shebang.  It took me ten years to do so.

More important is what I do not regret : coming out and declaring my refusal to accept the existence of God.  As I have already said, the pain and problems which this involves for others, dear family and treasured friends, is collateral damage which I would prefer to have been able to avoid.  But it was not possible.  So, so be it. Had I decided to keep my atheism under a bushel, I would have violated a principle fundamental to self-respect : “To thine own self be true”.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

CLIMATE CHANGE AND GOD

In the 2013 movie “Now You See Me”, Morgan Freeman reminded us that at the heart of many beLIEfs is a LIE.  The Book of Mormon, inscribed on the “golden plates” supposedly given to the founder of the Mormons, Joseph Smith, by the angel Moroni (!) – and, conveniently, since lost – is a recent religious example.  But most religions, modern and ancient – the invention of which was not entirely disinterested – are built not so much on lies (like Mormonism and $cientology) as on wishful thinking and/or fear.  Myths belong to the realm of make-believe.  Magi and magicians, story-tellers and sorcerers, witch-doctors and prophets – believed by the ignorant to be not only wise and powerful but divinely inspired – found willing, credulous audiences for the story each claimed to be history, when in fact it was only his-story.

Some people believe we are responsible for climate-change; others do not.  Climate skeptics say that attributing climate-change to pollution, deforestation and other human destruction of the environment is, to quote Trump, a “hoax”.  Some people believe in God; others do not.  Is there any difference between these two beliefs ?

My personal inclination is to agree with ecologists like Nicolas Hulot and the majority of scientists expert in the domain, that people are part of the cause of current climate-change.  The recent, perhaps unprecedented increase in tsunamis, tornadoes, floods, fires and droughts, would seem to be due, in part at least, to our abuse of the environment by excessive carbon dioxide emission, the massive destruction of forests, and putting short-term economic advantage before long-term environmental protection.

Some scientists strongly disagree.  Witness the dissenting eminent climate experts in the international conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute in New York in March, 2009.

Such differences of opinion are normal in scientific debate, which by definition is open to new data.  The God-question, however, cannot be compared with the debate about the causes, or even the reality, of global warning.  Religious dogma suffers no other options; it refuses even to examine objectively the data Darwin gave us more than a century and a half ago.

New data could necessitate nuances concerning the causes of climate-change.  But there has never been any hard data to support belief in God.  Bertrand Russell was right when he said that if God were to ask him, after his death, why he had refused to believe, he would say that there was “just not enough evidence”.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

FALLING SHORT

Apparently atheists “fall short of the American ideal of life”.  The opinion, reported in his obituary (TIME magazine, December 15, 2008), is that of the Rev. George Docherty, whose 1954 sermon so influenced President Eisenhower that the phrase “under God” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance.  Just another reminder of how difficult it is for me and other atheists to get Americans to begin to question their belief  in God.  But we would be falling short of our duty if we gave up trying.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

A MATTER OF (CHURCH) POLICY

A  DAY OFF  FOR  LIFT-OFF

“Up, up and away !”  “We have Lift-Off !”  Only 5% of French men and women know why today is a Public Holiday.  Because it is a Holy Day.  Everyone knows it is Ascension Thursday, but few have any idea what that means.  Don’t tell them.  They would die laughing.

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One of the most outrageous, and certainly most entertaining, send-ups of religion I have ever heard is a song on the C.D. “Travelin’ Band” (1997, Sierra Records, P.O. Box 5853, Pasadena, Ca. 91117).  Outrageous but, different from much that is written here, not at all offensive, even to pious ears, at least to those that belong to believers with a sense of humor.

Its preface introduces this cautionary tale by describing what follows as “a little story about what happens when you get religion ahead of the Lord, instead of the other way round”.  (Even redneck fundamentalists could not quarrel with that).

The song tells the story of a member of the congregation who arrives at the church, in advance of the service, on Sunday, only to find it on fire.  He rushes to tell the “leading deacon” who assures him that his is “a point well put and a timely suggestion”, which he will bring up “at the very next meeting of the Board of Deacons a week from Tuesday”.  “I don’t know why”, says he, “it’s just church policy at the First Nazametha, Baptecostal, Seventh Day Orthodox, Luthereterian, non-denominational Church of Our Lady of the Mind”.

The satire gets better (or worse).  The following Sunday, in a tent “paid for by the building fund”, the same parishioner announces that a tornado is on its way : “Everybody run !”.  The leading deacon duly takes note for the meeting a week from Tuesday.  Finally, at the tent-less open-air service the next Sunday, our hero announces that the congregation should lift up their heads, “for the Lord has come today !”.  The deacon once again puts the fact on the next meeting’s agenda.

All beautiful, original, harmless parody.  But there is a cruel truth in the humor.  Believers are not necessarily unintelligent.  Just blind.  Church traditions, no matter how out of touch with reality, must be observed and never questioned.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

 

GOD , AIDS AND ALZHEIMER’S

The title is so obvious that you can already guess what I am going to say.  I will not disappoint you.

I have to wonder what an Intelligent Divine Designer would have been up to, if He really wanted – or even allowed – Aids and Alzheimer’s to exist.  What possible meaning can one give to such divine indifference or cruelty ?  Atheists are at war with windmills.  We are the modern Don Quixote’s, though, I hope, less demented than the Spanish knight.  Today’s windmills, the fervent believers and preachers full of hot air, want us to continue to believe their nonsense, when they talk about God acting in “mysterious ways” or inflicting these horrors “to try us”.  We, Don Quixote redivivus, will do our best to discredit the mills that crank out credulity.

But if you take five – or even less, just a single moment, to think – do you seriously believe that a good God would want us to suffer from diseases like these ?  It is tragically true that some Christian maniacs actually suggest that Aids is a divine punishment for our immorality, if not homosexuality.

I just hope that some far-seeing international editor will publish my final opus, combining my book “From Illusions to Illumination” and this blog (“blindfaithblindfolly”), before I succumb to the Alzheimer’s that killed my brother Mick at age 67.  I may very well one day lose my marbles, as he did.  But I would love to share the Reflections these marbles have allowed me to write, and which I modestly suggest deserve a wide readership, before this disease, or another, kills me.  It is the last item on my Bucket List.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

THERE HAD TO BE A BETTER WAY

Our bodies are as fascinating as they are complex.  But why would a loving, intelligent, omnipotent, divinely delicate God have decided to give us such a disgusting digestive system ?  Brainless, impersonal, indifferent, purposeless (survival excepted) evolution could not have cared less.  Like other animals, we ingest food, like them we extract what we need to survive, and eject the rest.

Nobody ever talks about this.  “Give us this day our daily bread”.  But if our daily bread, meat and those recommended five servings of fruit and vegetables, are not followed by a daily bowel movement, we are in trouble.  “Give us this day our daily BM.”

I am amazed that believers imagine that God intended us to go, several times a day, “to the bathroom” . . . “to wash our hands” !  These are American euphemistic, puritanical expressions for using the toilet – for urination and/or defecation – a place sometimes described Stateside even as “the little boys’ room” or “the little girls’ room”, and this presumably only for the passing of urine.  “Number Two” apparently never happens.  Thank Whatever most of us have an efficient – if embarrassing – digestive system, and in developed countries at least, adequate sewage systems.  “God”, of course, has as little to do with the former as with the latter.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

 

 

 

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

Even if they have never heard of Blaise Pascal and his famous advice to play it safe and bet on an after-life, many believers on their death-bed confess their sins and make their peace with God.  Alcoholics, drug-addicts, even some criminals change their lives before it is too late.  Conan Doyle (no relation of Popeye Doyle of “French Connection” fame) put the cliché into the mouth of another famous detective :  ” I had been as blind as a mole, but when it is a question of learning wisdom, ‘better late than never’ ”  –  The Man with the Twisted Lip“).   Sherlock Holmes, unlike Popeye Doyle, never shook his addiction to cocaine, but he was lucid enough to realize that we can succeed, however long it takes, in seeing the light.

Of course, it works both ways.  Some unbelievers get religion; some believers get smart, and realize before it is too late that the foundations of their faith were built on sand.  The religious texts, discourses and sermons which they had identified with the Truth, they see now were at best fantasies and fairy-tales, at worst, fabrications.

Time is running out for all of us.  We owe it to ourselves, and perhaps to others, to decide whether we believe in God or not.  My decision, belated as it was, is irrevocable.  I could have gone on to become a popular preacher, a rôle-model for Catholic youth, an exemplary priest dedicated to caring for the sick and the underprivileged, to consoling the bereaved, to motivating the depressed, to doing good.  I might have become a leading theologian, a respected spokesman for the Church, a Provincial Superior (if not General !) of the Franciscan Order, a Bishop, a Cardinal, a Pope !

Unlikely scenarios.  The reality is that I finally decided to hang up my habit and check in my chasuble.  I should have had the intelligence, the lucidity and the courage to make the decision sooner, like my decision, ten years later, to bring to a definitive end my journey from Catholicism to atheism.  But, man, am I glad I did it before it was too late !  Believers who have ears to hear, let them hear.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

 

 

WHAT SORT OF A GOD IS THIS ?

You don’t seriously expect me to believe in a deity, who, through the voice of His prophet Amos (8:11), promises to inflict on His people a triple famine – of food, water and most surprisingly, truth (equated, in some translations, as simply “the word of God”) ?  (I would have thought that, as far as truth is concerned, fascists and religious zealots are quite capable of creating such a famine, without any divine intervention.)

The good news is that most Jewish and Christian believers today do not believe in such a deity either.  Times were, and not so long ago, when believers of previous generations did believe, as some benighted members of the faithful in some synagogues and certain Christian churches still do, that God is the real cause behind the sickness, misery and sundry catastrophes, like Aids, earthquakes and tsunamis, which He inflicts on the wayward as punishment (though, as with poor old Job, such divine interventions are supposedly “sent to try us”).

Believers cannot really expect me to take seriously the divine decrees like those found, passim, in the Old Testament, concerning, for example, the approval of selling your daughter into slavery (Exodus 21 : 7), that working on the Sabbath deserves death (Exodus 35 : 2) or that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean (Leviticus 11 : 7-8), or that one must not plant two different crops in the same field (Leviticus 19 : 19), or that the whole town should be assembled to stone the offenders (Leviticus 24 : 10-16), or that people who sleep with their in-laws should be burnt to death (Leviticus 20 : 14).

Jews and Christians, for the most part, recognize all this as expressions of the naïveté and ignorance of a distant, primitive, unenlightened past.  They have moved beyond such aberrations, and though somewhat embarrassed that such texts are still part of their Sacred Scriptures, congratulate themselves that they have abandoned what can only be called, logically, blasphemous contradictions of a God they say, optimistically, hopefully, desperately, is a God of love.

But what of Islam, the third and most recent (7th century A.D.) “religion of the Book” ?  There, for their fellow monotheists, Jews and Christians – both identified in the Koran as infidels – is the rub.  For the faithful followers of the Prophet, the Koran was not written by Mahomet.  They are absolutely right there, and Jews and Christians are absolutely wrong to affirm the contrary.  Mahomet preached his message; his disciples later committed it to writing, first on the dried shoulder-blades of camels and then on strips of leather.  It is not even certain that the Prophet could write.  He was, professionally, what Australians call a “garbo”, a garbage man.  But he spoke, as few before him had spoken (Frank Hardy would have been proud of him).  But Islamic believers believe that his words were not his own.  He was but the mouthpiece of God.  The Koran records divine dictation (in past ages, Jews believed the same of their Prophets, as Christians did of their Evangelists), so that any criticism of the sacred text is, by definition, blasphemy.

Too many Christians in Western countries talk about Islam, and glibly claim that only extremists and terrorists take literally statements like the following :

“Combat on the path of God those who fight against you . . .  Kill them wherever you find them.  If they fight you, kill them; such is the retribution of the unbelievers” (2, 190-191) ;

“Your wives are for you a field to plow” (2, 223) ;

“If the people of the Book believed, it would be better for them.  Among them there are believers, but the majority of them are perverse” (3, 110) ;

“God has fulfilled His promise towards you, when with His permission you wipe out your enemies” 3, 152) ;

“Unbelievers are your declared enemies” (4, 101).

Undisturbed by the fact that they have never opened the Koran, many believers in other religions proclaim with a confidence born of good, ecumenical intentions but also of total ignorance, that modern, “moderate” Muslims do not interpret such texts literally, any more than they do themselves many embarrassing texts of the Old, and even of the New, Testament  (concerning, notably, the threat of excruciating suffering in Hell).

They are unaware of the awkward fact that the followers of Islam, and not just “Islamists” – those nasty, ignorant, fundamentalist, terrorist extremists – believe that the Koran, as is (as you know, my dear Aziz), is the very word of God, immutable : the Raw Truth, to be taken literally; there is no room for interpretation.  Moderates, for obvious reasons, do not beat a drum about this; they would be heretics if they dared proclaim, or even thought, otherwise.

We Westerners naïvely suppose that, like us, they have moved beyond the literal understanding of their sacred texts.  The fact is that orthodox Islamic faith centers on a God who decrees total acceptance (“Islam” means “submission”) of the Koran and its precepts.

To propose that, like the other two religions of the Book, Islam reexamine the disastrous image of a God and of a religion that belong to a past age, is, for Muslims, a damnable, intolerable scandal.  They do not need, or want, a Renaissance, an Enlightenment or even a Reformation.  God, Allah, spoke through His Prophet back in the seventh century.  The truth has already been revealed.  Enough said.  THE  END .

All three of these major world religions, whatever the degree of their evolution, continue to proclaim belief in a God, variously depicted as a merciful, kind, compassionate, great, adorable, loving, divine Protector – or as a blood-thirsty judge, cruel demander of sacrifice, divine banker demanding payment for our crimes, sins and lèse-majesté, including redemption through the death of His own divine-human Son, born to suffer and die to settle the debt we ran up since Eden.  “Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given”, the perfect sacrifice.  “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”  Which of these Gods do you believe in ?

Sincere believers of all three monotheisms will reject this Reflection.  But instead of outright condemnation, can we not at least try to see why all this has become a dialogue of the deaf ?  If only we could tell the truth, explain what we believe, why we believe or refuse to believe, and listen to each other, live and let live as believers and unbelievers, in mutual tolerance.  You are free to believe in any sort of God you like.  Allow me to believe in no God at all.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

 

 

 

 

 

 

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INCERTITUDE

“It  is incertitude that charms us.  Everything becomes marvelous in fog”, wrote Oscar Wilde in The Portrait of Dorian Gray.  The paintings of Rouen’s Cathedral by Claude Monet would suggest that the French impressionist would have agreed with the Irish author.  The “charm” of incertitude may be true of art and literature.  But in just about every other domain, from politics to financial investments to science, philosophy and theology, most people would much prefer certitude to incertitude.

The problem, of course, is that we cannot be certain about lots of things.  Death, taxes and a word from the sponsor used to be about the only things we could be sure of.  Absolute, objective, fact-based certitude would seem to be limited to mathematical axioms.  Subjective certitude (“I just know I’m right !”) has no limits at all.  I used to be certain about religious dogmas.  Now I “know” that such certitude was without foundation.  Am I certain about God’s non-existence ?  Yes, about as far as is humanly possible, which is to say that my strong conviction – not certitude – is based on the flimsiness of the myths and traditions which purport to establish His existence, as well as on the solid, scientific evidence of evolution and of nature’s self-organization.  I am not an agnostic but an atheist, because I affirm God’s non-existence, rather than say I can’t be sure one way or the other.  I will continue to search for further evidence, but I know that certitude, except for statements like 2+2 = 4, is an unreachable star.  I prefer, in fact, my present incertitude and search, rather than the “certitudes” I once thought I had.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO