No Evidence Required--Faith Like an Empty Vessel and Atheism

No Evidence Required--Faith Like an Empty VesselPosted on 05/23/2010

Faith is believing in something or someone in the absence of evidence, either in support or negation.

Those who depend on faith as a guidance mechanism in their lives do so because they are not required to put in the years of hard work to research reality or to find evidence or to synthesize factual data that would contradict their easy "knowledge." It is a willful neglect of intelligence.

Dependence on faith is placing your life in the view that man's nature is good, and that exceptions will be met with a final divine justice.

Faith versus Objective RealityPosted on 05/31/2010

Whitney Cerak, 18, and Laura Van Ryn, 22, students at Taylor University, a small evangelical Christian school in Indiana were riding in a van that was returning to campus on April 26, 2006 when the van was sideswiped by a semitruck, killing five of the nine van passengers in the accident. Laura Van Ryn’s parents received a call from the medical staff at Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne, Indiana. They were told that their daughter was in critical condition, with serious head injuries and brain swelling, broken facial bones, and an extremely bruised face. Laura was initially identified at the accident scene based on ID in a purse found by paramedics next her body before she was airlifted to Parkview. The Ceraks, parents of Whitney Cerak, were phoned and informed that their daughter was among the vehicle accident fatalities, and that Whitney’s body had been transported to Marion General Hospital in Indiana.

I’d need to see that my daughter was dead, just to be sure. If her body were unrecognizable on the slab, I’d demand absolute genetic certainty before losing all hope. This is the only proof of death that should satisfy the reasoned, scientific-minded parent.

Lack of Faith: the Atheist CredoPosted on 01/17/2011

I’ve never been good at using humor to soften unpleasant realities for others, at getting people to really think about the absurdity of their beliefs, the inconsistencies, and the monstrous contradictions.

If God had intended for man to fly, He would have existed.

I’m too serious. My first response to most situations is to think clearly and rationally. I recognize in others a willful ignorance, even though so much is known and evident about the world in which we live. Things are known and knowable, if only people would choose to know them, find the time to study, find the strength to be open and willing to question the fundamental part of themselves that are their beliefs.

That people don’t make the obvious choice frustrates me.

I’m an atheist because religious and spiritual beliefs weren’t intellectually or psychologically satisfying to me, didn’t resonate, didn’t speak to me. I question reality, I’m grounded in it, and I demand that it be explained. I don’t generally believe in anything unless its existence has been proven, its efficacy scientifically founded. I operate on the principle that logic and rationality and evidence should guide decisions, rather than emotionalism and over-reactive panic.

When people ask why I’m atheist, I ask why they aren’t. They’re apprehensive about their own associations with my godlessness, though God-fearing people have committed as many atrocities in the name of God as those committed in the name of stamping out religious zeal.

Up until about the age of ten or eleven, I vaguely remember being a Methodist and taking my Dad’s word that there was a God. There was no startling moment that brought me to realization, no moment when I understood that the Bible was allegorical fiction, though I’ve only ever read story and parable summaries of Biblical passages.

There were no atheism conversion ceremonies, no traumatic events. I didn’t reject religion because God or nuns or child-molester priests “dun me wrong,” or to gain revenge on overly repressive religious parents.

The Impotence of PrayerPosted on 03/06/2011

Working a crossword in my atheist puzzle book the other day, I came across a clue for a six-letter word, “Wishing for an outcome while doing nothing to ensure it.” Prayer.

Sometimes, nothing else can be done when someone we love is sick. All we can do is wait for the medicine to work or the sick to heal over time. And pray to god for both.

If the doctors have reached the limit of their talent, believers in god go over their heads and entreat a supernatural power to intercede: intercessory prayer.

Carole Jackson of Oxford, NC writes editorially, “Christian Scientists have been healing reliably through prayer for more than 100 years. Many of these healings are documented and well known to the medical community.”

Other examples of intercessory prayer include asking for a reduction in crime, for the ability and strength or our army to defeat enemies, and for a win in our high school alma mater’s Friday night football game.

When we pray that good things happen to us, rather than to others, that’s called petitionary prayer. If we have a bet on that Friday night game, then the prayer for a win is more likely to be motivated strictly by greed.

We can also wish and hope for and fantasize about a better outcome, without bringing god into the situation.

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Examples here of how faith fails.

Posted on 05/16/2010

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