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.

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.

"I'll Pray For You" -- Gee, thanks. Knock Yourself Out

Last week a friend's prayer circle prayed for someone who'd been in a car wreck, and the person got better. Too bad they didn't pray for her not to get into a car wreck! Well, maybe God wanted her to suffer so his believers would say a lot of prayers. Or maybe he sent a bunch of cars crashing into each other that day and whoever got the most prayers gets to live another day. They suffer more than the ones who die, but hey it's a small price to pay for being God's next American Idol.

Meanwhile, my little doggie has cancer, and was doing very poorly last week. I took her to her oncologist, who diagnosed the problem (not the cancer, but the cancer made it worse), took appropriate treatment, and now doggie feels better. Nobody prayed for her. I wasn't optimistic about the outcome, and I bawled like a baby. I know this doggie will die soon, and I thought this was "it." There's no chance that "wishful thinking" even played a role in exerting some magic woo toward the outcome.

"His eye is on the sparrow," and apparently also little doggies. Yet he lets people get into near-fatal car wrecks just to see if people will pray over them? What the heck?

It seems to me (not a scientific study!) that women are quicker to call up a prayer circle, offer to pray for you, or to credit the divine for the good outcome of their fervent mentations. I've never had to deal with the prayer business with men the way I do with women. When they blather on about how God saved so-and-so I don't point out the fallacy of confirmation bias or the fact that people die every day despite fervent prayers. I just nod and say "that was lucky" or something equally lame yet polite.

We atheists don't have the equal and opposite power to annoy. If I tell a believer that doggie got IV fluids and a different chemo, they won't think "oh that had nothing to do with it -- it was God!" And they probably don't get this uncomfortable feeling of wondering what's the right thing to say. I suppose some bite their tongue and refrain from saying "Praise God," but I wish more of them would do that!

Well, off to ebay to look for a divining rod. Perhaps I can influence doggie's fluids and save some money.

"Snippity" = "sniping" + "uppity"

I thought I'd disabused everyone on that theology blog of the idea that I was male, but the blog owner didn't get the message. I finally had to post point-blank to a post directed toward me in the masculine as such: "I am female."

I think it got through.

I was ignored for some time, apparently because I called this theologian a "dumbass" on another blog. Well, hey if the shoe fits...

Then I got a mention, and one of my posts was referred to as "snippity," whatever that means. It can't be nice, and I admit I'm not always nice but the brevity of my posts leaves the reader to fill in my intent much of the time. It's a variant of http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe Poe's law: "it is hard to tell parodies of fundamentalism (or, more generally, any crackpot theory) from the real thing."

This Poe's corollary would go something like this: Christianity has so little basis in reality that when you repeat back to a Christian what they have said, or summarize it briefly, or even question it at all, you are presumed to be sniping. When they hear their own words or rationalizations they put up whatever defense is closest at hand.

Or.... is it a variant on the principle that women are bitchy whenever they're not bending over backward to be nice (heh, pardon the visual imagery - most men would probably prefer us to bend over frontward anyway).

Online posting being what it is, we can all be taken to be male or female, nice or "snippity" depending on the preconceived notions of the reader. You have to spell out your intentions if you don't want them to be misconstrued.

I like posting anonymously because of the expectation that women must always be polite, deferential, and never take the offense in an argument. I don't really want to be "feminine" when debating about religion. I want the same freedom as a man to say that the Bible is nonsense, that believers believe because they want to, etc. In the online environment, I can join in the fray without worrying that I'll be labeled a "bitch" or "uppity" by some man... until they discover I'm female.

Perhaps this is why the female voice has been all but silent in real life debates. We are either obeying our sociological command to be "nice" and conciliatory, or we have been silenced by accusations that have misogynistic undertones.

You can call Dawkins a lot of things, but would he be called "snippity?" Would you call Hitchens "shrill?"

I keep my posts short & to the point (usually) because I want to get to the heart of things. It's too easy for a believer to sidetrack into non-issues and ad hominems. They don't do it intentionally. They have to, because they would risk losing their identity as Christians if they really faced the ridiculousness of their claims head-on. The directness of my questions has evolved over a few months of pointless debate, and it is very much not a feminine style of communication. I'll reserve that for my face-to-face interactions with believers. They already know I'm female.