"symptoms of being pregnant by a supernatural entity"

I was looking through the search terms that led people to this blog and found this gem:  "symptoms of being pregnant by a supernatural entity."  I have no idea how that phrase led google to this blog, but starting today it will make sense, because it inspired this post.

This is something the Bible should have dwelt on just a bit.  If they want us to believe that Mary didn't just make up a story about getting knocked up by a deity, she should have had some supernatural symptoms.

It also made me think of Rosemary's Baby, the book and the movie about a woman who is impregnated by Satan when he wants to propagate himself.  I read the novel as a teen and I remember that it terrified me so much I didn't want to see the movie.

Then there was the immaculate conception episode of Star Trek, which was rather amusing.  The womb that got appropriated was that of Counselor Troi, and the "supernatural" being was a ball lightning kind of being that wanted to see what it was like to have a body.  The pregnancy lasted just a few days and after the birth Troi's body was completely healed, as if she'd never had a baby.

It's disappointing that the Bible didn't dwell on the pregnancy and birth.  It would have made the whole immaculate conception thing more believable to me.  ... but not to the people of the times.  Virgin birth and gods inseminating human women were well-worn tropes for them.  They would expect anyone claiming to be part god to have this kind of story.  In fact, if it weren't part of the family lore, it would have been added by the prosletyzers to lend credibility to their claims.

...and with so many gods about, not to mention Satan and all the angels, how would we know that the pregnancy was really caused by the god, and not SATAN?????  It's not like there's a DNA test for it.

It comes down again to wanting to believe what your authority figures believe.  Your parents, pastor, teachers, and the writers of the Bible know what they're talking about, right?

"No woman could or would ever f*** things up like this"

Too many awesome quotes in this video.  "God is either incompetent or just doesn't give a sh**"

"A long time ago God made a Divine Plan... now you come along and pray for something... what do you want him to do? Change his plan just for you?"

Right to Die vs Right to Life

The abortion issue revived my memory of the ridiculous battle over the living corpse called Terri Schiavo.   To refresh your memory, Terri Schiavo was a pretty woman married to a loving husband.  According to the religious ceremony she probably had to submit to, she was "given away" by her father.  From that point on she belonged to her husband and his family (as the Book of Ruth demonstrates by example).

...until she entered a persistent vegetative state, with only her brain stem working and not all that well at that.  Hubby wanted to pull the plug, erm, feeding tube, because supposedly, Terri would never have wanted to be kept alive as a blind, paralyzed, fat, stupid-looking stalk of broccoli in a hospital where her mewling parents could delude themselves into believing every drop of drool was some loving utterance.

...and then the stupid Christian dolts who believe "every life is sacred" (until it isn't) decided that this was wrong.  They had nothing to go on other than the Ten Commandments, which were written thousands of years before electricity and feeding tubes were invented.

Sadly, the shell continued breathing on its own, and this is where I still have to facepalm occasionally:  one of the Christians interviewed on the telly said that the soul resides in the breath.  The picture to the left shows a horse thief that has been stoned to death.  His soul is a teensy human body being regurgitated out of his mouth then rising to heaven.

Now, if only they and their cretin followers had the insight to know how ridiculous that was.

...and if only they knew that they were arguing for abortion with that statement!

If the Catholic Church believes that the soul resides in the breath, then any fetus that has not taken a breath has no soul and therefore killing it is equal to killing an animal (they also believe that animals have no soul, as evidenced by the belief that a horse thief can get into heaven).

To be consistent, the Church's position should be that euthanasia of a human body shell or abortion of a fetus does not involve the separation of a soul from a body and is therefore not murder.  They should have envisioned Terri Schiavo coughing up a Barbie Doll version of herself, which would be hauled up to heaven by angels or saints or something.  The silly court battle over who had the right to decide what to do with the shell, the husband or parents, could have been prevented.  Congress could have done the people's business instead of interfering with these peoples' business, and the president could worry about how he could stop killing thousands of muslims instead of how he could prevent the death of one Christian.

Yeah, this issue still pisses me off.  What a colossal waste of time, money, and angst.  Christians should really worry about more important things, like being kind and taking care of poor people and shit.
Anywho, I always love the expression on theists' faces when we have this exchange:

Theist:  so you're an atheist?  Then where do you go when you die?
Me:  I don't believe in the concept of a soul so that question is irrelevant to me.
Theist:  [blank stare]

The big "A"

I follow several blogs and this post on Richard Carrier's blog piqued my interest:  Abortion Redux.  The "25 most influential atheists" have been polled on the subject of personhood of infants, which was inspired by a PZ Myers post on his blog.

The critical thing for me is that of the 25 most influential atheists, only three are women.  Sure, women can be either pro- or con- in the abortion debate, but it seems to me that people with wombs should be consulted a little more often about this.  Asking 22 men who are atheists about their opinion is about as valid to me as asking 22 Catholic Cardinals.

In deference to the seriously influential atheists, if these are important questions, then why aren't all atheists being asked?  It seems to me that important social issues that religions have laid claim to deserve thought from all of us, being free-thinkers and all.  I mean, why on earth would I need 22 men and 3 women to influence my thinking?  I am willing to consider their positions and justifications but I'm not so stupid that I can't come up with my own thoughts.

Here are the questions:

(a) Do you believe that a newborn baby is fully human?

(b) Do you believe that a newborn baby is a person?

(c) Do you believe that a newborn baby has a right to life?

(d) Do you believe that every human person has a duty towards newborn babies, to refrain from killing them?

(e) Do you believe that killing a newborn baby is just as wrong as killing an adult?

I have a problem with all of these questions because 1) the womb is out of the picture, therefore the woman's right to control what happens to her body has been made irrelevant for the purposes of questioning these men about how women's bodies should be treated and 2) what about mercy killing/euthanasia?

This presumes that all newborn babies / former fetuses are equal in viability and "humanity."  But what of the former fetus that is born without a head?  What of the former fetus that has a head and all the nerve structures necessary for feeling pain but no skin?  or no kidneys?  Parents have two choices in these cases: they can take extreme measures to prolong the suffering of their former fetus in an effort to keep themselves from going to hell, or they can have the nurses pump morphine into the fetus and let "nature take its course."

Option #3, euthanasia, almost never comes up in these situations.  If you can keep a former fetus from feeling the pain of its death after you let it linger in the ICU for days or weeks destroying its parents' finances, why not give it some morphine and then a little extra to relieve its suffering forever?

The questions are almost always loaded on the side of normal, healthy pregnancies, the type that never get aborted in the final few months when the fetus has the viability to become a former fetus.  Late-term abortion is the agonizing choice of women who face their own death.

So let's ask these other questions with this ultimate question in mind:
If a woman has six children and her husband has died, and her seventh pregnancy will most certainly result in her death and the death of that seventh fetus, is it wrong to deny her the option to terminate that pregnancy?

(a)  Do you believe that an adult woman is fully human?

(b)  Do you believe that an adult woman is a person?

(c)  Do you believe that an adult woman has a right to life?

(d)  Do you believe that every  human person has a duty towards women, to refrain from killing them?

(e)  Do you believe that killing a woman is just as wrong as killing a man?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above, how could you deny a woman the right to a life-saving abortion?

Women's Ministry

I have a theory about church calendars: they suck in people with social events that have nothing at all to do with theology, so the people become so dependent on the church that they really can't leave even if they do crack open the Bible and see what an incoherent mess it is.

In my case, just having a great organist was enough to keep me coming for awhile. As a child I kept going because I enjoyed singing in the choir. That's the Episcopalian way. It's probably why the Episcopal church is losing members. And now that the "faithful" are mainly blue-haired old ladies, it's too late to start up a softball team.

As I drove through small towns in Indiana over the weekend I kept wondering what there was do to in these places besides work the farm and go to church. Some of these towns were so small they didn't even have bars!

Some of the people I know here are in churches that fill up their schedules with the kind of thing you'd have to live in a small town to find interesting. In a big city you'd have a million more interesting things to do on a Saturday night. In a small town you might have a choice between church bingo and a spaghetti dinner at a different church.  So I have a bit of sympathy for small-town Christians.  They don't know any better.

Then there are the big-city megachurches.  I wondered how hard they work at providing for their sheeple's every social need.  So I took a look at the website for Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church.  Amazingly, they have a Women's Ministry.  Perhaps they figured out that Osteen is damn creepy so they put a woman in charge of keeping the women in line.  I know I'd never want to be in a room with that used car salesman.

Their schedule is truly frightening.  They have a series of psychobabble "courses" and they promote it with this lovely line:  "We would love for you to join us for the entire series and join your faith with ours to see God’s abundance brought forth in the area of your finances in 2011!"  (Osteen is famous for "prosperity theology")

They also have a movie night.  What does watching "Secretariat" and eating popcorn have to do with being a Christian? 

Osteen has also brought his wife into a leadership role as "co-pastor."  This is something I think I've seen before, though it's not like I obsess about churches.  Still... the preacher's wife is supposed to be a kind of adjunct preacher in these fundy churches.  Osteen and his wife have a blog together.  I'd post the header photo but it's just too creepy.  Their most popular post has this gem:  "Today, you may feel like you're in the back of the line and nothing is going your way, but get ready because God is about to turn things around for you!"

Yep, self-centered theology at its best!  I haven't read all their blog posts but I have read enough to be thorougly disgusted.  There's nothing about charity, kindness, being part of a loving society, etc.  Meanwhile, "evil" evolution is starting to probe how these behaviors are adaptive and part of our instinctive behaviors.

So.... it's not really theology that's appealing, though being taken care of by a sky-daddy after your death is a comforting idea.  The real draw for country people is having something to do, and for city people it's almost the same.  If you were new in Houston and wanted to make new friends, the ladies' night out movie and popcorn event would be a safe way to meet people.

Fortunately, in the age of the internet we can find friendships online or through online searches for events we find interesting.  If I were to move to Houston, I'd look for atheist meet-ups, or a club that would involve my hobbies.  If I were to move to small-town Indiana I probably wouldn't get out much, but I do wonder how long it would take for me to feel lonesome enough to go to the local church's spaghetti dinner or bingo night.   And then once I did I'd play "spot the other atheist" in the room, looking for the other people who roll their eyes at the mention of God or praying.

Feelings Aren't Facts

"Debbie," in the discussion here, insists that her feelings are justification for the "knowledge" that God is "real." One of her posts seemed so insane to me I was sure it was sarcasm, until I read more posts by her. It's worth copying here:

I care and seek to know the truth. Jesus claimed to be the Truth. To know Jesus is to know the Truth. He is the answer to the Big Questions of life. So it seems to me.

This is posited like some kind of logical argument but in the end she waffles with "So it seems to me." That's the key. The rest is baloney. She trusts her intuition, so the rest is irrelevant.

Later she posts: "Truth by it's very nature is narrow. A fact is a fact period. Broad is the road that leads to destruction. Narrow is the gate that leads to life. Isn't it interesting that Jesus claimed to be the Truth?"

Yes, very interesting. We all care to seek and to know the truth. It's human nature. SO ... of course if you want people to follow your religion you need to convince them that it's TRUE. And apparently SAYING it's true is enough for some people.

So "Jesus is God" is true because I feel good about Jesus, and Jesus supposedly said it's true, and there can only be one truth. Therefore, any other truth claims must be false.

This kind of thinking drives me crazy. But the "thinking" is irrelevant because she really wants to 1) respect a predictable authority figure, 2) belong to a social group that validates her feelings, and 3) believe that her feelings are facts. "A fact is a fact period." Debbie believes that her feelings are facts. She has positive feelings about authority figures, her church spokespeople & writers, the Jesus of her imagination, and of positive feelings themselves.

If Debbie were the only one, I'd just reply to her rather than blogging about this. Sadly, she's just one of thousands, possibly millions, of people who think that her feelings justify her faith. It's more likely the other way around. Theologists with Ph.D.s call their beliefs "properly basic," which amounts to the same thing.

Believers who pepper me with questions after finding out that I'm an atheist often start by questioning my answer to uncomfortable feelings, such as fear of death, fear of a chaotic society, fear of nothingness... All bogeymen invented by the church to keep the fearful in the flock. It's simple: create good feelings for insiders, create bad feelings about outsiders.

But it really just comes down to feelings. They "feel the spirit," or so they believe. If I felt the "spirit" of Heidi Klum enter me and started doing runway walks in my underpants, I'd be considered "insane." If I said I felt the spirit of Jesus enter me and started speaking in tongues, I'd be welcomed into a few cults.

Feelings aren't facts, and they are no proof of the supernatural in any way. This is why atheists can't reach most believers: we don't manipulate people via an opposition of positive and negative emotion. And being the moral people we are, we find it difficult to ramp up the rhetoric the way that religions have done. Many of us self-identify as "free-thinkers" and resent others' attempts to impose their beliefs, so of course we wouldn't commit that offense either.

The irony for me is that after decades of non-belief I find that there are some emotional benefits. Life means more because it's limited to time on Earth, and death is less scary because I've accepted the inevitability of it.

Many of the "comforting" parts of Christian theology have actually become anathema to me:

• ritualistic cannibalism (yech!)
• penal substitution (how unfair!)
• "original" sin carrying through to every human (yet we're "innocent" at birth?)
• eternal existence without a body (how boring!)
• "bad" people going to hell (somebody loved them!)
• God listening to our thoughts (if he didn't like them why give them to us?)

The rest of them were distasteful to me even while I was trying to be a believer! Fortunately for the ticket-takers at the Pearly Gate, most Christians don't think too hard about these things. They've been offered a self-centered fairy tale future, and it feels pretty good to them.

Is Charlie Brown a Christian?

Every time Lucy holds out the football, Charlie Brown takes the bait and tries to kick it. Then Lucy pulls it away and poor Charlie lands on his back with a *thud.* Predictably, Charlie Brown blames himself for his gullibility. As a woman, I say, "Go ahead and kick her in the crotch!" Yes, getting kicked in the crotch is painful for women too. We won't barf but we will double over, and this Lucy bitch deserves a taste of her own medicine.

Would an atheist version of Charlie Brown be such a sucker? He'd say "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..." and he'd turn to the side and kick Lucy in whatever body part happened to be within range. Because despite not having any god-given morals, even an atheist knows that HURTING OTHER PEOPLE ISN'T FUNNY!

We have the other example of pro football players intentionally giving concussions to the other team's players. How charming.

I have read comparisons between football and religion, and there are some remarkable similarities, it's true. It's us vs. them, break the rules for a good cause, drop everything on the appointed day, and make pilgrimmages to partake of ritual foods. There are heroes and villains. And after hours of "play" nothing has really changed except a few numbers that will be erased in a few months.

...and quite a few people will have new scars and debilitating injuries.

Yep, football is just like religion.

So, Christians, don't blame yourself if you crack open the Bible and it makes no sense to you. It's a nonsensical piece of dreck written by bronze age superstitious tribal leaders and propagated by generations of Lucy's who make it your fault for taking the bait. The next time someone tells you to read the bible, kick them in the crotch!

Why don't Christians adopt abandonned embryos?

This has been on my mind since the Octomom hoopla began. Octomom became the mother of octuplets for various reasons depending on your point of view: she's an irresponsible welfare mother, she's nucking futs, her doctor is irresponsible, she loves baybeees....

My view is that religion is at the root, and nobody in the media was willing to touch it at the time. I saw her horrifying defense of her actions in an interview: the embryos were her babies, and she could only get pregnant one more time. She had to have them all implanted, or some would die!

While everyone else was vilifying her, I had to admire her. She is the only Christian I've heard of who puts her uterus where her mouth is, so to speak. While many oppose stem cell research on the grounds that the embryos are human beings, I have yet to hear of any coming to their rescue the way she did. It's immoral to use stem cells to save the life of another human being, but apparently it's perfectly okay to throw them in a dumpster or keep them frozen for eternity (or until a power failure).

"Snowflake" babies are embryos implanted into women who want to become pregnant. Where are the women who don't want to raise these "children?" They aren't offering up their uteruses (uteri?) to incubate the little snow people for other people to adopt. The Snowflake "parents" are getting bargain adoptions, and they get to have healthy white babies to boot. (Note there are probably some nonwhite embryos, but if you look closely at the fundy propaganda, all the ones they care about are white).

There are supposedly 400,000 frozen embryos with no place to go. You can imagine how picky these "parents" are. They can even pick the religion of the adopters. But the number of willing donors hasn't kept pace with the number of people who want to adopt baybeees. I say Christian women who have all the children they want should offer up their uteri to these embryos for incubation. Surely with such a huge numbers of fundies overruning the country, we ought to be able to "place" these "babies" in a few underutilized uteri. Or how about prisoners? Let's implant into them. They could make a few bucks to help them when they parole out, and the adoptive parents get some pretty good quality offspring (IVF costs a bundle, and the Bible tells us that rich people are better quality than poor people).

This would have been the best possible reason for keeping Teri Schiavo "alive" too. How many other functioning uteri are being kept "alive" on "life" support? They're draining precious financial resources that could be put to better use. I say, make them earn their daily tube feeding!

Mass production usually brings down prices, so the average 40ish couple that would ordinarily have to resort to an inferior Chinese baby girl or handicapped African "orphan" due to competition from younger parents could get approved for some higher quality Amurkin babies! And then the rest can just go whereever. Since they were ordained by God to be whoever they're going to be, they can grow up anywhere. Sure, they might grow up in a doublewide, but with their inherent superiority they'd go on to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, or maybe even people who can make real money -- politicians & preachers!

I'm not a witch, either

I wonder if trick-or-treaters will be coming to Christine O'Donnell's house this weekend. She would be a particularly scary neighbor for many reasons, witchcraft being the least of them.

So anyway...

I was curious about the witchcraft persecution so I looked for some sites. I found some interesting stuff about European history, including my favorite period, ca. 1150-1300: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/witchhistory.html

During the period I have studied, I learned about the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathar Heresy. The Cathars were "heretics" who believed what is pretty much accepted by the fundamentalists of today: God & Satan are engaged in a war. They lived in the South of France, and they were stinking rich. They also had highly developed musical and poetic artistry, which also made them suspiciously un-Christian.

The Albigensian Crusade put an end to Catharism, supposedly. The Dominican Order had the charge of ensuring that only "correct" theology was available to Europeans. They apparently didn't care about the Eastern Orthodox Church or the North African & Middle East versions of Christianity. This probably wasn't a racist decision. *wink wink*

So under the guise of the Albigensian Crusade they could slaughter them and plunder their wealth, and then when they were through with them they went after the Muslims with a goal of taking over Jerusalem... and plundering the wealth of anyone in their way. Hey, in a Holy War you can pretty much do anything. In the Middle East there were Christians, but they were rather brown, spoke the wrong languages, and wore funny clothes, so they deserved to die. Killing Christians isn't wrong if they live in a desert. They also didn't deserve to be rich, so the fine knights of Europe brought back goodies when they were through.

What makes this period interesting to me is the art and culture that spread throughout Europe as those with the means to escape settled in Northern France and Germany. And contact with the learned Arabs of the Middle East brought Greek philosophy and mathematics to the nascent universities of Europe. If not for them there might not have been a 13th-Century Renaissance in Paris.

Back to witches... Superstitious people who want to stay in power can believe or be made to believe almost anything. Not surprising considering the general stupidity of 99% of humanity.

But here's a scary statistic: Over the 160 years from 1500 to 1660, Europe saw between 50,000 and 80,000 suspected witches executed. About 80% of those killed were women.

Why would tens of thousands of women be more scary than their fathers, brothers, and husbands? Apparently, whenever things don't go your way, you can blame women you don't like and kill them to set things right. Connect them to an inconvenient thunderstorm or a tragic death in the community and voila! You're safe again! If they are practitioners of "traditional medicine," that's a good reason, too. And if they're mentally ill, they're possessed by devils and that's reason enough.

Today, "witches" are imprisoned in Africa. Praise be to the missionaries who brought Christianity to the heathens of Africa! People who wouldn't dream of resurrecting this superstition and its resulting murder, are going to Africa and other countries spreading the "Good Word." And this is the result.

You'd think that Christians would be on the forefront of putting an end to the persecution of the "witches" of Africa, considering the embarrassment of their history with this. After all, most are either mentally ill and thus deserving of pity, or practitioners of native healing "arts" and thus great targets for being "saved." But no, guess who is coming to the rescue? Secular Humanists!

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/malawi-group-wants-witches-released-20101009-16cgg.html and http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/14/dozens-jailed-witchcraft-malawi-women

Most of the "witches" are elderly women, and children are the witnesses against them! WTF???

This is a perfect evolutionary tactic - dispose of the infertile women who are dragging down the community and put the next generation in charge even if it means putting words into their mouths.

...but oops... children aren't immune either: http://www.unicef.org/wcaro/wcaro_children-accused-of-witchcraft-in-Africa.pdf

SO ... is anyone safe from witchcraft hysteria? Anyone at all....?

Let's look at the evidence: Cathars, traditional healers, people we don't like, senile old women, a few old men, even children: victims

Adult men who are in positions of power: immune

If witchcraft really were a supernatural or heretical act, wouldn't men in positions of power be the first ones to go to witchcraft school? Why rely on trials, stoning, burning and mob violence to ensure nobody messes with their mojo? Just whip up a few incantations and put a hex on your enemies and then....

oh wait.... they do that. It's called "prayer." Apparently it's not as powerful as the incoherent babbling of senile old women.

If I lived in their world I'd be scared, too.

Do you "love God?"

This site is a hoot: http://www.ishwar.com/ It's supposedly a multi-religion site about loving your god, whoever he may be. Of course it's mainly Christians that go there. And how open-minded of them to acknowledge that all gods that are loved are equal. If they're all equal how can their god be the one true one? They can only be equal if they're all false!

So anyway...
It has a poll, do you love god? Naturally, I voted, just to see what the results were. The clever little site has rigged a pop-up text box to ask me why. So I answered:

God is a fairy tale, and I don't love fairy tales. Even if God weren't an amoral jerk who punishes the innocent, allows us to slaughter each other by the millions in his name, and "speaks" so ambiguously nobody can tell which of his holy "texts" is correct, I wouldn't love him because supposedly the purpose of having a god is to have someone who loves YOU. If he's an almighty omnipotent omniscent omnipresent non-corporeal force, he shouldn't have such a weak ego that he needs to be told how great he is every day. I don't love narcissists!

Apparently we are no supposed to tap into our oxytocin reservoirs to get flushed with ecstacy whenever we praise any god, not just jebus and his genocidal daddy.

The sadder thing, is that the pop-up also asks the cretins who vote "yes" why they love God. Here's a sampling of some of the pathetic answers:

• anonymous loves God because God is there


• AC loves God because he keeps me on the right path


• because whenever I feel that I am at my lowest point, he shows up just in time to save me


• because he has given me everything


• because God gave me life. He runs the world, and he wants good things to happen


• because he knew about me even before my grandparents were born


• because he is my father


• he offers hope, meaning and purpose to my life


• because he shows love in very strange ways. But now I am starting to see them. Even through a [sic] mp3 sound. It's still a good sign.


• because he died on the cross for my sins (also, because he sent his son to die on the cross for my sins)


• because God is love


• because He/She is love!


• because I am a sinner but he forgives me. I love God most of all because he is my light and saviour


• because he loves me the way I am, even if I don't deserve it


• Becoz he loved me 1st


• because he never gave up on me!


• because he's jesus duh!


• because he died for me, so I live for him!

They go on and on, all on the same few selfish themes. I have read through pages and pages of these and haven't found one post saying "because he helped me become a better person." This is despite the frequent protestations of Christians that it's impossible to behave in a moral fashion without believing that their sky-daddy is looking over their shoulders and adding up reasons to throw them into the fiery pit. All the posts are about what God has done for their well-being, sometimes also the well-being of others, but never about personal improvement.

Another common thread is the immaturity of the posts. At times it sounds like lovestruck teens talking about Justin Bieber (or Bobby Sherman, or Elvis, or Frank Sinatra, or Caruso...) Other times they sound like little kids saying why they love Santa Claus: "Because he gave me everything!"

The most pathetic ones, in my opinion, are the self-berating posts. These poor souls have been convinced that they are worthless sinners, and that they really lucked out in having god forgive them. Why on earth should someone love an abuser who tells them they're a piece of crap then turns around and says it's okay that they're crap?

"You're a horrible horrible person and you're worth nothing and everything you do or think sucks and I know this because I'm super wonderful and so fantastic you're totally unworthy of my attention so I really should kill you... I should but I won't! I'll punish Jesus here instead. He doesn't mind. It'll only be for a few days anyway."

Uhhh gee thanks!

Well I guess being a better person really isn't a goal here. Nothing you could do could change your initial status from "sinner" to "pretty nice person." And nothing you could do to redeem yourself could match the ultimate redemption of Christ to take on your sins for you. So why bother trying to be a better person? Why worry about the commandments, morality, taking care of yourself or others?

I can think of only one word to describe this theology: mindfuck. What a messed up way to live.

Stupid Christian Women

The latest Christian idiot on the squawkbox has been Christine O'Donnell. Granted, her stupidity is in the past, as shown in clips from Bill Maher's old show, but she's yet another example of how a woman can go anywhere in our society as long as she 1) has rotten mulch where her brain should be, 2) claims to be a Christian and 3) has a pretty smile.

God forbid (literally) that a woman should be able to think for herself, have a thoughtful message, or need some help from Invisalign. She also needs long hair (also Biblical), and she should dress nicely.

She's being touted as a mini-me for Sarah Palin, but Sarah Palin herself is a mini-me for a long string of conservative religious American women. The irony of women who tout "old-time" values making a living doing just that seems to have been lost on them. They have decided they can't change things from the sanctuary of their kitchen and bedroom, and so they have stepped out of their Biblical roles to make the world a better place.

A woman who works to make her children's world a better place is still rather uppity to these people. If a woman has the misfortune to be dumped by her husband, she should live with family until she can find another man... that's if she can find another man, being damaged goods and all. And of course, despite the theology of "getting what's coming to you" in the afterlife, they believe that we get what's coming to us in this life when it suits them.

Sadly, her past includes a spiritual quest that resulted in becoming a "Christian." And she's now the brunt of jokes for her "dabbling" in witchcraft. Personally, I suspect some neo-pseudo Satanists may have had her eye on her for virgin sacrifice, but I digress.

What was she "seeking" anyway? Judging from the variety of Christianity that she found, she was looking for something that would exempt her from thinking too hard. Perhaps she had low self-esteem and being "loved" by God and Jesus gave her ego a boost. Maybe she felt guilty for something (existing, maybe) and wanted to be forgiven.

Because as a woman, her worth comes from outside not inside, and mainly from her value to men. Don't have sex before marriage, because your future husband won't want you. Don't go to therapy for your neuroses, because even a male therapist won't love you enough. Don't expect too much from the men in your life. You really have no right to expect anything at all, so Jesus' sacrifice for you is all the more miraculous.

Atheists are often accused of being arrogant for rejecting religion. Perhaps that says something about believers' self-perceptions. They are stupid and they know it, deep down. They are afraid to challenge themselves, so being given a value system and social group on a silver platter is a great relief. Don't worry that everyone else (justifiably) hates you. Jesus loves you, and because Jesus is supernatural, that counts more than all the other people who don't love you, including yourself.

So... is it arrogant not to need validation from an imaginary supernatural entity? I think my turnaround was when I realized that if you want self-respect, you have to do something worthy of respect. The more you respect yourself, the less you need to imagine you're loved by a sky-daddy and his rock star son.

Unfairness on "Jeopardy"

Imagine you're a teenaged girl named "Hema Karunakaram," all-American non-white teen and possibly brought up in one of the religions popular in India or...?... and you've studied hard all your life and gotten onto Teen Jeopardy. You do well and make it to the semi-finals, competing against two anglo white boys. The game isn't going well for you but you've got some money to "bet" with... and then the Final Jeopardy category is announced: The Old Testament.

You bet all you have in the hopes it'll be something very commonly known. The question is "He was offered all the weapons of the first King of Israel but turned them down."

The answer you write: "Who is Moses?"

The answer the two white boys write: "Who is David." They come in 1st and 2nd.

http://www.jeopardy.com/minisites/teentournament-s26/videos/
http://www.annarbor.com/entertainment/saline-high-school-student-hema-karunakaram-matches-wits-on-jeopardy-teen-tournament/

Should this girl have known this trivia about David? Should Jeopardy have even used this question no matter who the contestants were?

The Christian Delusion, a book (chapter) review

I picked up this book a couple of weeks ago and I've been slow to get into it, partly because I don't need to be told that Christianity is silly. I just need to get older for religion to get sillier, it seems. I buy atheist books as a kind of vote for the cause. When arguing ad populum, some Christians will have to concede that atheism is indeed becoming more popular, based on book sales. After all, what other tool do we have to express our numbers? We have only a few organizations, and few of us bother to join them. A Christian parent might remind a grown child that membership in the church offers protection from Hell, but American Atheists offers a magazine and maybe a conference worth attending once in awhile. Atheists, on the other hand, don't need to argue ad populum. We have much better ammunition.

Unfortunately, women are still in the minority when lobbing the grenades. There are nine contributors to this book, and only one woman. She is Valerie Tarico, PhD, whose chapter is titled "Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science." My first thought was "Oh great, the only woman is a psychologist, not a heavy hitting physicist or philosopher" but as I thought more about it, the woman's point of view does tend to be psychological. And my personal take on atheism is informed by that female experience. We have been brought up to be nurturing, understanding, considerate, and emotive. The "male" perspective from the hard sciences doesn't seem to be winning many converts. They are collectively called the "New Atheists" in derisive tones. Perhaps Dr. Tarico's voice is just what we need. Her PhD is in counseling psychology. What better perspective for examining a "delusion?"

Her lens is a bit broader than just a narrow view through the psyche, though. She considers evolutionary psychology (without calling it that) and recent advances in the neurobiology of religious experience. But the main focus is the psychology of belief, the reason being that Christians place a greater emphasis on believing the right things than do pantheistic or Eastern religions.

After a brief history of Belief with a capital B in Christianity, she reduces the human habit of self-serving bias to a wonderful metaphor: "each of us is the protagonist in a custom-made Hollywood movie with the best possible camera angles." (p. 51) The goal is to get to a "coherent plot line." (p. 52) The human mind as storyteller is a great analogy. We like stories with plots, art that "looks like something" and songs that have a beginning, middle and end. Having studied anthropology and the arts, I learned through other means that there are very few universals in human culture, but there are universal patterns amongst human beings. Blind spots and irrationality in thinking are part of the package.

She brilliantly summarizes the biggest problem for Christianity thusly: "Arriving at a belief in an infallible God by way of an inerrant Bible requires an unwarranted belief in yourself."

Sometimes things go wrong in the brain and people "know" things that just aren't true. I've seen this in my family and in other people I've known. She offers some examples and stories for those who haven't been fortunate enough to see schizophrenia in action, then cites research on how people achieve "certainty," including brain-washing techniques. The Christian "just knows" they're right, while the scientist learns to have a "healthy mistrust for our sense of knowing." (p. 55)

Next she discusses what I have tried to argue with theists: that humans' evolutionary success has come from having a "mental architecture" that makes us what she calls "social information specialists," and that our greatest threats have been from other people.

The same facial recognition skill that makes it possible for babies to recognize their caretakers gets transferred to inanimate objects and creates gods, demons ghosts... (she doesn't mention Jesus on Toast or Mary on an Office Building but I wish she had!)

"Theory of mind" makes it possible for us to put a mind behind the faces we see and even into stuffed animals or disembodied spirits. We can then recognize and attempt to anticipate patterns. Usually this is a helpful skill, thereby surviving long enough to reproduce (she doesn't say this but it follows). Credit and blame can be falsely attributed thanks to hyperactive agency detection. We want things to make sense! Naturally, our gods tend to think and behave as we do. Otherwise we wouldn't recognize them, I guess.

The rest of the chapter explores "The Born-Again Experience." She's too polite to call this a mind-fuck, but that's my opinion of it. Perhaps you have to know people with psychiatric disorders to know when someone is describing a neurological phenomenon.

Anywho... I love to see my opinions validated by an expert: "Conversion is a process that begins with social influence." (p. 60) Yep. I've never seen anyone have a conversion to a religion that nobody else in the room practices. Clinicians call the emotional-mystical experience "transcendence hallucination.|" I would call it the orgasmic part of the mind-fuck. She points out that seizures, migraines, drugs, and strokes can trigger this experience. 1,000 years ago the victims of these experiences were either mystics or witches depending on whether they agreed with the group. Hildegard of Bingen's drawings indicate that the headaches accompanying her spiritual experiences were migraines. But these symptoms can also be brought on by drumming, sensory deprivation, fasting, and crowd dynamics. (61)

So... add our pattern-making, meaning-making minds to our socially-driven unusual mental experiences and the result is a spiritual experience. She adds another factor almost as a side matter, but I think it's important: the authority figure. Their beliefs gain credibility after such an experience. "The authorities who triggered the otherworldly experience are trusted implicitly." Charitably, she doesn't attribute sinister motives to the ministers who induce these experiences, since the ministers themselves have likely had them and may not even be aware of the neurological processes.

Her conclusion very specifically claims that cognitive research offers a "sufficient explanation for the phenomenon of belief." (I would have pluralized it to phenomena, because she lists several!)

The killer conclusion is one of my pet ideas. I feel so validated! It's that Occam's Razor applies here. "In fields of human knowledge other than theology, if we can find a sufficient explanation within nature's matrix, we don't look outside. We no longer, for example, posit that demons are involved in seizures or bubonic plague."

Exactly. Human psychology, neurobiology, sociology and anthropology have revealed enough to make possible a naturalistic explanation of religious experience without at all resorting to to fields of philosophy and 'hard' sciences at all. (well, neurobiology yes...)

These fields developed long after philosophy and physics had laid claim to the "Truth," or the ability to discern truth. Even today, these "old" fields are dominated by men, who tend to be (if I may overgeneralize) less interested in the social and psychological aspects of "reality."

The "famous" atheists today are still coming from physics and biology. Their arguments fall on deaf ears precisely because they appeal to "objective" reality and not the subjective realities of society, culture, and personality. Tarico points out that when backed into a corner the Christian often concedes by saying "I just know." That's an indication of the neurobiological "knowing." I've gotten a few into the corner using logic, & they said "It's a matter of faith."

This to me is proof that it's a matter of wanting to be part of a culture that says it "knows."

Naomi & Ruth

It's wedding season again, and couples all over the U.S. will recite that inane quote from Ruth 1:16-17:

And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for wither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. (17) Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.

Ruth said this to her mother-in-law, another woman, not to her husband. After the death of both women's husbands, Ruth declares her intention to stay with her mother-in-law, Naomi, rather than be left behind when Naomi remarries. What other choice did Ruth have? Prostitution? Panhandling? In the end Ruth marries one of Naomi's relatives, has kids, and YIPPEE! God's plan is restored.

Family loyalty is supposedly mandated by the Commandment "Thou Shalt Obey they Mother and Father." There is no corollary commandment to parents to care for their children. Perhaps the Old Guy in the Sky assumed that even the most evil of parents would do this without being commanded to do it. The "moral" of this story is that once you've been given away to your husband's family, you belong to them forever. If you're going to use this at a wedding, it should probably be said by the bride while facing her future husband's family. It has nothing to do with a promise to him.

This of course derives from the comandment to honor thy father & mother. Naomi has become Ruth's mother by virtue of marriage. She gets married off to someone else in the family, which may have been due more to pity or obligation than to any love-matching. Again, nothing to do with modern marriage practices.

Ruth wasn't expressing loyalty or even love. She was expressing her obedience to an archaic notion that women are possessions. She was essential declaring that she was indeed Naomi's baggage and putting a tag on herself.

On being mistaken for a male

I've been posting to the blog of a theology professor, under a rather bland screen name, for some time. I have only debated theology on this blog, nothing else. My posts have consisted of rather simple statements and questions that of course go unanswered.

Some examples:

• If God declared all the world "good" in Genesis, then why was it such a big deal for Adam & Eve to be kicked out of the Garden?
  
• Did Abelard really love Heloise? (our theologian quotes 12th-Century Abelard, who dumped Heloise after defiling her, on love)
• Because you can't prove a negative (non-existence of God) therefore you should believe in God?
• Where in the Bible is there a promise that the world would be any different (on the question of how God could permit "natural" evils such as earthquakes)
• How can believers believe that God *just is* but not believe that tectonic shifts just happen?
• If the Creation & The Fall are metaphors, how many other parts of the Bible are not to be taken literally?

Not particularly masculine, I think. By the time I asked about Heloise the theologian had decided I was male, along with the rest of his commenters. Most of them have very different styles than I do, debating issues point by point, citing mathematical & scientific principles, etc. My style of logic is more about pointing out the obvious, and if I quote anything it's more likely to be one of the less savory parts of the Bible than a mathemetician. It's clear from the theologian's responses to the other posters' challenges that he relishes them, though he has responded to a few of mine. Mostly, he dismisses my critiques as naïve or misguided. Often he accuses me of not understanding his posts. Okay, sometimes I don't, because he cites theories and philosophers that are so far into Nonsenseville that I've gotten off the train long before their depots.

So when I read a few references to myself using masculine pronouns I had a conundrum: admit that I'm female, and by my relatively "simple" or "naïve" mindset drag down his respect level for all other female atheists? or keep mum and see if he ever deduces my gender from my comments or style. Eventually I had to fess up, because other posters were writing about me in the masculine.

The line that shows I was "passing" for male was in response to my question about love, referencing seasonal mating patterns of ducks: "Do the male & female ducks 'love' each other in the Spring? They may have the same biochemical reactions to each others' company that humans do. Does that make human 'love' less real?"

So the topic that revealed I was passing for male was love, which I suppose should be a girly topic. Women are the primary readers of romance fiction, after all. But perhaps my skepticism about the theologian's definition of "true love" arises from being female. He created a scenario in which an 80-year-old man cares for his dying wife of 50 years.

How many times does that really happen? My mother has outlived three husbands, as did my great-aunt. Almost all of my friends have gotten divorced. I know many couples in which the man married a much younger woman after divorcing his wife. Is it only women who think of that when the topic of love comes up?

From my perspective, wife-as-family and family-as-community and community-as-protection explain the whole scenario, when it rarely does happen. No supernatural deity or unexplainable phenomenon necessary.

So I've finally outed myself as a female on the blog and there's been no response yet at all from the blogger. I decided not to make it an issue but not to be dishonest about it. After all, the odds are that in any random sampling of ten atheists only one might be female.

Now the important question: should I have been flattered or insulted to have been mistaken for a man?

60/40 Split in "Nones" in 2008 Survey

In this study: http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/reports/ARIS_Report_2008.pdf
a comprehensive study of religiosity in America has found that among people who don't profess a religion or claim atheism or agnosticism, 60% are male and 40% female, while the percentage of women in Christian denominations is higher than the percentage in the population. On page 11, the study says "These gender patterns correspond with earlier findings that show women to be more religious than men particularly in majority Christian societies."

I wonder if women are more religious in the African societies that promote female 'circumcision' or the Muslim countries that kill women who have been raped "for their honor."