The Exploits of God's Wrath

I have become so accustomed to the religious community pouncing on a tragic event, that I actually had somewhat of an imaginary lottery going on in my head as to which high profile leader would be the first one to blame modern society for the tornado in Oklahoma.  But then I realized I had forgotten the twisted rules of the game of religion: exploiting natural disasters depends wholly on the region in which that disaster occurred.

If the religious right has a strong foothold in the community and the local politics, all religious leaders are required to fire up the prayer machine to get their god to ease the suffering of others.  (Let's not even address the argument that for some strange reason, all that prayer and religious influence still didn't prevent the disaster in the first place.)  If, however, the religious influence is negligible or the local politics do not measure up to the will of their dogma, then the religious leaders are free to exploit human suffering to the fullest extent.  Oh, and make sure to remember that they can and should speak for the almighty (in his absence, of course.)

Here's a very short list of a few of the recent tragedies and the idiots that gave their god credit for murder:

• Jerry Falwell - September 11, 2011 attack on the US.
• John Hagee - 2005 hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans.
• Pat Robertson - 2009 earthquake in Haiti.
• Michelle Bachmann - 2011 hurricane Irene and earthquake in Washington D.C.
• Glen Beck - 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

There are far more, but hopefully the point is clear.  These are the people that are willing to step in front of a microphone and confidently tell the public two wildly absurd statements.  First, the creator of the universe has given them the privilege of speaking for him (again, while he's away); and two, the creator of the universe murders relatively small groups of people if he suddenly realizes that everyone else isn't doing what they ought to be.

Now I realize that I shouldn't just single out the high profile religious leaders or politicians.  Equally as bad are the every-day religious folk who blithely regurgitate "miraculous" survival stories of extremely fortunate people... and dogs... and cats... and even horses.  All the while completely ignoring the human suffering that has already occurred or continues to occur.  Seriously, how can anyone justify calling the reunion of a dog with its master a "miracle" while standing in the street of a neighborhood obliterated by a tornado?

Sometimes it seems that this desperate search for god in the rubble of a tragedy has become so routine that a good portion of our society really doesn't give much thought as to what exactly these people are actually saying.

I suppose the point of this post is that while you think about the poor victims of Oklahoma, please... please think before you speak for the almighty.  Take the stained-glass blinders off for a few minutes.  Do it before you try to inject your god into an event that cannot be explained, and why not think about those people that lost everything, or lost a loved one, or lost their lives.  Then, rather than pray, DONATE.

Global Citizens

A recent comment by someone I know, I won't say who, gave me the inspiration to finally come out of my writing hiatus.  In order to protect the individual's anonymity, I won't quote the comment verbatim, but the gist of their thought was this:

"... Today I saw another family with a rather large number of children.  I have a rather large number of children.  Maybe big families are making a comeback!!!"

As a scientist I say, boy I hope not.

What concerns me the most about the modern trend of having 3 to 5 children per couple can be summed up with simple mathematics.  Let's begin, shall we?  We'll start off simple with just two parents: Terry and Sherri.  Terry and Sherri have a total of four children, two children per parent in the succeeding gene pool.  (From now on we'll flex our science muscles and refer to this as the "replacement rate".  In our first example, this would be a replacement rate of 4.0.)  Now, Terry and Sherri's kids: Mary, Keri, Harry and Barry, pair up accordingly and marry (eww, shallow gene pool) and follow in their parent's footsteps and also have a replacement rate of 4.0.  Four kids per set isn't bad, right?

Well, if you're moderately savvy, you'll immediately see a very troublesome trend.  Even if we don't consider previous generations - in other words, once each couple gets all children to reproductive age, they die - this mythical population will explode.  And it will explode in a hurry - an exponential hurry.  If you want to try this at home, get a calculator and put in 2 raised to the 30th power and see how many people you get.  That's 1,073,741,824 children in just 30 generations...  Yikes.

Now let's consider resources for this exploding population.  Food, water, living space (you know, the offspring need enough space to develop, not to mention the couple needs enough space for at least four rounds of hypothetical hanky panky), clothing, and the means to barter for these resources - you know, money.  Remember, resources, by definition, are finite.  What happens when our mythical population explodes and these basic resources become scarce?  Double yikes.

I know this is a horrible comparison, but if you were to watch a colony of bacteria growing in a medium of limited resources - say a petri dish - you'll sit by and witness a colony thrive for a few generations only to eventually collapse and die due to lack of nutrients.

Note that I'm not even considering the possibility of a link between fertility rate and poverty, as this question has been going on for well over 100 years.  However, it seems I'm not the only one that believes that higher standards of living can be attributable to lower fertility rates.

I don't mean to be harsh, but at some point our species has to grow up and consider the consequences of our actions...  For example:  Rather than thinking about yourself and your own selfish needs, how about considering your future beyond a few months?  Do you have the means to accommodate that many children?  And how about an even bigger question:  Do you think our tiny little planet can continue to provide food and water for an exploding population of human beings?  Are you willing to risk your child's future, or lack thereof, on your own selfish need to keep having babies?

Christian Love?

As I'm sure most skeptics are aware, there's a modern phenomenon among the varying denominations of Christianity where just about all Christians will abandon their various differences and band together in unshakable unity when told to do so by a high profile Protestant.  No matter how different their philosophical views subjects like premillennialism, a pretribulation rapture, or the divinity of Mary, when a social issue of any magnitude erupts within our society, these people immediately band together in a mob of gushing Biblical solidarity.

But I submit that Christians actually hate one another.  They hate each other to such an extent that they can't even so much as be in the same building with one another for a couple of hours.  These people would rather spend money that they don't have to build a new building - excuse me, a new, "house of worship" - than tolerate the blockheads from a few doors down.  I mean, have you heard what those pinheads believe down there?  HA!

Don't believe me?  All you have to do is pick a Southern state, like my home state of Texas, and drive around one of the larger cities.  Sure, there are definitely some larger churches, even a few mega-churches, but for the most part you'll discover one church after another, after another.  If you really want a good laugh, take a couple of hours to drive through some of the rural areas in Texas.  In one small town alone you're likely to see a plethora of Baptist churches; say a First Baptist Church, Second Baptist Church, Missionary Baptist Church, Trinity Baptist Church, New Hope Baptist Church, New Covenant Baptist Church, Calgary Baptist Church, Insert-Town-Name-Here-Baptist-Church...  All within a 10 to 15 mile radius of one another.

Christian love?  Not even.  You don't have to go to a Chick-Fil-A to witness how hostile and hateful these people are.  The vast number of tiny little churches within just a few miles of each other stand as a testament to how much they hate other human beings, even the ones that worship the same book.

PPACA and Scumbags

I decided to try my hand at the, "Scumbag" internet meme with the following two Scumbag Preachers.  Both of these are based on an amalgam of three different preachers that I've had conversations with online.  After hearing their collective views of the newly upheld PPACA law, I thought they would all make perfect internet memes.

Scumbag Preacher One:

Scumbag Preacher Two:

What do you think?

Mental and Verbal Disconnects

Now that I'm finally getting the time to make myself vocal again, I decided to start with a couple of standard mental disconnects that I've stumbled across over the past two weeks.  The first is the ardent acknowledgment of the power of prayer and how some religious people can convince themselves that praying to their god moves them to the front of the long line of other humans begging for good fortune.  The second is the idea of a religion whose leadership purports to care deeply for each and every soul, yet at the same time oppose measures taken outside the church that are intended solely for the greater good.

There are many people in my life that swear by the power of prayer.  They ramble on and on how their lives have been drastically affected simply by asking their god to help them through various stressful events and other personal crises.  I was told by one person that I should at least be able to recognize that it provides them with some comfort to know that someone else is praying for them.  I can only assume this person means that these other people doing all this praying for them are in fact praying to their god of choice, else there's no real reason to feel comfort as their friends and or family are begging the wrong deity.  And isn't it funny that their god really doesn't have to do anything beyond making a particular person feel as if they have the strength to survive the event?  I mean, god doesn't seem to pay any attention to amputees, does he?

What these people never see is that prayer is a form of begging.  You're putting yourself in the same position as a panhandler.  Sure, you're supposedly not praying to a stranger, but you have to admit that the two situations are remarkably similar.  Even the most common body position for prayer is that of the common beggar - on your knees, head down, with your hands placed together and in full view.  (You wouldn't want the guy with all the goodies to think you were hiding something, right?)  Some people often embellish the position with a bit of a submissive twist, arms open and raised in the air with their chest completely exposed.  If this isn't the very definition of begging, then someone had better be a damn good debater to convince me otherwise.

Even so, there are people everywhere that will desperately try to convince me of how their god is constantly working in their lives; if I would just look at how much stronger they are today, it would be all the evidence I needed to recognize the power of prayer.  Their families are healthy, happy, and thriving solely because their god chooses to grant their collective prayers.

And yet... just a half a world away, there are men, women, and children begging the same god - not for good report cards, or to heal a child with a fever, or to give them strength to keep going, or for good news from the doctor.  These people are begging god for medicine; they are begging god for food; they are begging god for water.  And these poor, innocent human beings will die... all the while begging that god to answer their prayers.  In the grand scheme of the universe, this is the tiniest, most minuscule of distances, is it not?  So what is this?  Is this just willful ignorance in our society?  Or is this an egotistical aversion; a stubborn unwillingness to recognize the suffering of others on a planet full of almost 7 billion other people?  If it is, I'm not really sure god has made these people as strong as they believe themselves to be.

Along this same train of thought is the idea that on one hand, a church's leadership can claim that each and every soul in their community is worth saving.  Yet on the other hand, these same people can openly oppose universal health care.  How can this be?  In my mind, I can find nothing worse than a person who stand upon a pulpit each and every Sunday, convincing other believers of the importance of saving other people's souls, then that same person makes an abrupt about face when it comes to making sure that these people should have access to the medical care that they might require.

For example, I'll provide an example to put this kind of thinking in context.  "The idea behind it - universal health care - sounds good.  But how are we going to be able to afford it?" he asks.  Now, make absolutely sure you understand what it is he left out of that statement.  What he left out was the word, "sick."  That's the troublesome word, isn't it?  Sick.  Whether it was done deliberately or accidentally, what he really meant by his question was this: How are we healthy people going to be able to afford other sick people?  As a religious leader, how can we afford NOT to help sick people?  Tell me, is it better to let them go on in agony, or let them die simply because we're all too greedy to help those in need?  Does a belief in the afterlife somehow make this kind of reasoning easier?

I cannot imagine thoughtlessly turning my head to those who are sick, those who are bearing the burden of a dying loved one, or to those that are busy going bankrupt simply because their bodies decided to create cell with unimaginable growth rates.  Until I'm convince otherwise, I think the only way a person can reach the point where they can turn a blind eye to those in need is to believe in an all powerful, all knowing, perfectly merciful god.

My Down Time

I won't be posting much over the next two weeks since I'm taking a much needed vacation from work and anything else that requires a significant amount of thinking.

In the meantime, try some of my favorite blogs instead:

Parents Beyond Belief

Friendly Atheist

Devangelize Me

Of Mule Dung and Ash

The Way Forward

Blag Hag

Pharyngula

Freethought Blogs

Richard Dawkins

Religious Presumption

My family and I decided to visit one of our favorite barbecue restaurants for lunch yesterday.  As always, it was an extraordinarily yummy lunch - I had the brisket with a very cold Blue Moon - and the service in the restaurant was superb.  However, as we all started to peel ourselves out from behind the table, a very presumptuous fellow at the nearest table went out of his way to get my attention.  In fact, I'll just simply refer to him as Mr. Presumptuous.

"Excuse me," Mr. Presumptuous said.  "Excuse me, sir?"

"Yes," I said, turning toward his table.

"I was just wondering.  Does your family attend a church somewhere out here?"

"No sir, we don't,"  I answered, smiling and acknowledging his sudden interest in my family with a friendly hand wave.  Thinking that our lovely conversation with Mr. Presumptuous was over, we all started for the door.

Mr. Presumptuous decided to press.  "Then where do you go to church?  Irving?  Richardson?"

I turned back to him, having lost a bit of my patience, and said,  "Look, you're asking the wrong people.  Okay?"

Now here's when the conversation turned absolutely bizarre.  Mr. Presumptuous asked, "What, you guys from a different country?"  He looked about the table, seeking approval with a derisive chuckle.

I'm sure my face displayed my profound confusion when I answered Mr. Presumptuous with, "No sir...  We're from the United States."  But my wife and I knew this conversation was heading south quickly, so we wrapped our arms around our kids and calmly walked away.

Are you kidding me?  A different country?  REALLY?  Mr. Presumptuous studied my lovely family, as we happily discussed our upcoming vacation over lunch, and arrogantly assumed that he was watching another Christian family.  I admit that I am making a huge assumption by trying to guess what this man's original intentions were, but I can only conclude that he thought we were Christians.  Either that or he thought we needed saving - I mean, I was having a beer on the Sabbath.  Be that as it may, I'm inclined to believe he considered us fellow believers and wanted to know where we went to church.  When I didn't answer his question the way he liked, he became downright belligerent - with my kids standing right there.

First of all, I refuse to allow myself to be pulled into a religious conversation in a restaurant, especially when that conversation borders on the absurd.  And I certainly will not engage in this type of exchange when my children are present.  Second, is this what religious people have become?  Are the religious so arrogant in their beliefs, that the thought of bullying a perfectly happy family is appropriate?  Give me a break...

By the way, my wife wins the reaction of the month award with her quick thinking response to Mr. Presumptuous' question of our citizenship.  And I quote:

"HAAAA HAHAHAHAHAA!!!"

Classic.