That’s how I felt back then. But I was also a sincere seeker of TRUTH. Faith is the assurance of things HOPED for (Hebrews 11:1) — or put another way, faith is the culmination and actualization of wishful thinking..

Our reference reading for today is a Newsweek article: Can Science Explain the Concept of Heaven? - Newsweek.com – and the truthful answer can be called, literally, a no-brainer.

The thesis here is very simple: heaven is not a real place, or even a process or a supernatural event. It’s something that happens in your brain as you die.

When you get into actual research instead of relying on the many and varied stories people tell themselves, it starts to get very simple. In fact, basically, this is one of those things that is so obvious that nature is rubbing it in your face. It’s just that the meaning is too uncomfortable for us, so we run to our fantasy fiction tales instead.

I sympathize with the strong desire to believe that we are worth more than just a lifetime; that we have to have an existence beyond this or life would be pointless. I was an ordained minister, after all, because I believed in all of that. If you care about the truth, though – I mean, REALLY care – then you need to move beyond your comfort zone and look at the evidence.

You know how conscious you are in dreamless phases of sleep, right? When you dream, you’re in your own alternate reality inside your head. But between REM dream states, there is a whole lot of nothing. This is evidence from your own life, which you can test on a daily basis.

The Empirical Evidence: If you’ve ever been under general anesthesia then you have an even bigger clue. Full anesthesia is as close as we ever come to death while being able to tell others about it – and here is what we learn: When your brain isn’t working right, you don’t exist. Even time doesn’t pass. The Anesthetist tells you to start counting backward, you get a couple of numbers out and then you notice you’re staring at the ceiling of the recovery room …and it’s like 8 hours later. With just a little chemical inducement, your conscious existence ended. You were extinguished. Your mind ceased to exist. And it stayed extinguished until the chemical wore off.

What kind of leap of back-assward logic does it take to say that – sure, you cease to exist under deep anesthesia, but once your brain is completely gone THEN all of a sudden you are going to be conscious again!”?

That doesn’t even rise to the grade of retarded logic. Seriously. BUT we have a strong personal incentive for denying what is in our face and readily apparent when it makes us uncomfortable..

We all want to believe that our lives are bigger than the here and now, even though that belief is demonstrably false. So we cling to these things anyway and will even become angry when someone points out the patent absurdity of our beliefs. It is not uncommon for religious people to even threaten to kill those who point out the truth and sometimes they even act on their threats. That’s how desperate they are to avoid the facts in evidence.

I know because I was one of them.

Back to the article: It’s sad to see scientists shucking and jiving in the way you see in this article: They can’t just come out and say, “yeah, we do know what happens when you die – you can even figure it out for yourself with no help from anybody if you think about it for 5 minutes.”

They can’t do it because they would be publicly vilified, probably threatened with violence, and perhaps even actually targeted with violence. So they say they can’t prove it (yes you can) and “we can’t be sure” (yes you can!) …because they are afraid. That part makes me very sad. But I also understand that there are believers out there who are willing and even eager to kill anyone who challenges their fantasies with facts. It’s something a reasonable person should fear, I suppose, but it certainly says something unfortunate about the state of human intelligence.

We’ve talked about the teenage girl who looks like an old woman or another whose muscles are mutating in to bone. These things don’t come from people but from the nature of creation itself. So if God is the creator of the universe, then all of these things come from God. So He’s quite the practical joker.

We all just hope to avoid being the butt of His jokes.

Oh yes, I’ve heard silly arguments about how it’s all the victims’ fault. Sin, you know. Adam’s DNA was perfect, but it became polluted because of sin… totally missing the point that DNA is what MAKES us. Either God made DNA or he didn’t (assuming God exists, of course). If he made us, then he made DNA, which means he made all the bad stuff that’s in there -the things that cause conditions like we’ve talked about. If he didn’t make the DNA with all its built-in horrors then He didn’t make people. The whole argument wreaks of desperation: It is saying, “I’ll do anything – ANYTHING – to avoid admitting that my faith in fantasy fiction has been misplaced.”

All of that twisted, sick back-flipping “logic” is only designed to avoid the obvious conclusion that humans evolved and were not created by anyone. If they were created by someone then that someone would have be be a sick asshole or incompetent.

Left with no logical argument, some believers will say something like, “Well, why wouldn’t God design life with built in flaws? I mean, those uncertainties are part of the flow of life, we wouldn’t know what to do without them.” The problem is, that’s not what your storybook says about your God. Now we’re talking about a whole different being than the one you claim to worship (if you believe in the Bible, Torah, Quran, etc.) … I am no longer a promoter/purveyor of these stories so I can’t help you with this.

The one thing that underlies the entire program of the nation’s Christian conservative activists is, naturally, religion. But it isn’t merely the case that their Christian orientation shapes their opinions on gay marriage, abortion and government spending. More elementally, they hold that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts. This belief provides what they consider not only a theological but also, ultimately, a judicial grounding to their positions on social questions.

Ghosts stories are a popular form of entertainment and Halloween is the official day for such stuff, so we might as well talk about it. If you look at things from a rational, analytical point of view, there’s nothing to any of the stories of the supernatural that people like to tell. Ghost stories, UFO abductions, angels, fairies and Jesus – it’s all the same: Stories that help people feel like there is something bigger to life than just our brief moments of existence here on earth – but completely lacking in reality. – Scientifically Haunted House Suggests You’re a Sucker.

To test whether it’s possible to artificially induce paranormal experiences — or, from a different perspective, to technologically summon a spirit — researchers at London’s Goldsmith College and architect Usman Haque designed a scientifically haunted room.

As I’ve also said, though, we know it must be true because 25,000 children starve to death every single day, and hundreds just got killed by a tsunami in the very-Christian Samoa …clearly God must be extremely busy doing something other than helping people in desperate need of a miracle.

Making vague faces on curtains may be the only viable explanation as to why God doesn’t really give a shit about all the suffering in the world – Not even devout believers with dying kids for that matter, as yet another child is sacrificed on the altar of Christian faith healing: Faith-healing parents charged in death of infant son | Philadelphia Daily News | 10/08/2009

On the last day of Kent Schaible’s life, his parents and pastor intensely prayed over his 32-pound body, which, unbeknown to them, was ravaged by bacterial pneumonia.

When the 2-year-old boy finally died at 9:30 p.m. Jan. 24 inside the family’s Northeast Philadelphia home, the pastor called a funeral director to take the boy’s remains to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office.

Yep, that Jesus, what a comedian! You think he’s going to heal your kid but he’s really going to kill him. Oh what a sense of humor. After all, you’re just doing what HE told you to do, right? But haha, the joke is on you.

You’ve got to think that God and Jesus are just fucking with you when they have you pray for your child to live. They are God, after all, so they already know they aren’t going to do jack shit – they just didn’t bother to tell you about it!

Or you know, maybe that stuff is all just stories people like to tell each other to try to make sense of the world and there is no objective reality involved…. that works really well, too.

Between the earthquakes that struck the Samoas and Indonesia yesterday and the temblor that devastated L’Aquila, Italy earlier this year, it might seem like Earth has been particularly shaky this year.

But that’s not the case: “This is not out of the ordinary as far as the year goes,” said John Bellini, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

I know, we’ll get that bullshit anyway, but I have to do what I can!

Before the modern age of antibiotics and vaccinations, people didn’t have much better than a 50/50 chance of making it from birth to adulthood. What, you think they were just all heathens or God would have healed them?? My, you ARE delusional. Religious fanatics have always been a dime a dozen.

Well, we had a similar case to this one in my home state. They convicted one of the parents of a lesser charge but then jurors complained they were misled into thinking this would teach them a lesson so they’d never do it again (it didn’t).

In the case cite here, the parents probably don’t have anything to worry about because they live in one of many states where there is a religious exemption to homicide laws: You’re allowed to kill your kids as long as you say Jesus told you to do it. Questions still linger over Carlton boy’s death.

Intelligent design mavens once cited flagella as evidence of their theory. Scientific fact dispelled that illusion. The mitochondria study does the same for protein transport.

“This analysis of protein transport provides a blueprint for the evolution of cellular machinery in general,” write the researchers, led by molecular biologist Trevor Lithgow at Australia’s Monash University. “The complexity of these machines is not irreducible.”

Yes, I realize that facts never get in the way of a good creationist story but we have to keep repeating the facts ANYWAY in hopes that they will sink-in with those who value truth over creative fiction.

Why is that? Well, as a former religious nut myself, I can tell you that there seems to be a lot of license involved in Christianity. Among fundamentalist pastors, it seems like everyone was porking everyone elses’ wives ..and no, I’m not exempting myself from the debauchery.

There is a general concept from Calvinism that God chose you, and therefore as a chosen one whatever you do will be forgiven and blessed. King David is often cited as an example of this. So then Jesus’ sacrifice has turned into permission to do whatever crazy shit comes into your head. It must be okay, after all, because God picked you over so many other people to be His special chosen child. And remember, it’s a blessing on whatever YOU do; you still get to sit in judgment of everyone else, especially non Christians. That whole judgment thing is the reward for being chosen.

It happens all the time. And as a matter of objective statistics, Christians are more likely than non-religious people to be arrested for spousal abuse, get divorced or murder a family member. The more religious a person is, the more likely they are to approve of war and torture as counterintuitive as that might seem. Or mabye it isn’t contraintuitive, it’s just contrary to the teachings of Jesus.

I think this all flows from a sense of moral superiority one acquires from believing that one has a unique insight into the true will of God and that one has God’s ear for ones prayers. What should be humbling becomes enabling.

Now whatever you think must be right because God is in you and your thoughts must be His thoughts.

There are and continue to be non-judgmental movements within Christianity but they haven’t seemed to be able to take hold for the last 2000 years. After all, taking the judging others and the sense of moral superiority out of Christianity takes all the fun out of being a Christian!

Clearly the average Christian – and in this case the average big-name EVANGELIST – doesn’t know jack shit about what Jesus actually taught and stood for. If they did they wouldn’t going off 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

When you can make up answers then it’s pretty easy, right? If I substituted “The Flying Spaghetti Monster” for “God” the creation museum folk would be offended, but they could not offer a plausible explanation as to why I can’t use that term instead of theirs. It’s all “faith” after all… also known as superstition.
Paleontologists brought to tears, laughter by Creation Museum

While visiting this post, I wanted to address a sincere but ignorant commenter:

“I have personally witnessed irrefutable miracle healings (i.e. stunted limb growing out to full length spontaneously in a matter of seconds,) in respone to prayer in the name of Jesus. I would guess there were close to 40 witnesses to this miracle healing, many of whom, including myself, were standing only 2 or 3 feet away from the man who was healed; some of whom I still know by first and/or last name.”

The short-leg illusion is one of the oldest tricks of faith healers. I’m surprised people still fall for it today since it is so well known but I will briefly address it here.

FAITH HEALING: LEG LENGTHENING ‘MIRACLES”

The set-up for the trick: The subject/victim/mark is told to sit in a chair and then lift their legs straight toward the “healer” … lo and behold, one leg is shorter! That must be the source of all of their problems! The “healer” then does his/her incantation, grabs the legs and tugs.. and miraculously, the “short” leg “grows out” to match the “normal” one! Proof of God! Give money!

More experienced “healers” may simply command the leg to grow, usually followed by some other exclamation, like “LOOK, IT’S GROWING!” And suddenly a “miracle” happens…

Here is the simple basis for why this short-leg growth trick always works as it does; people don’t sit perfectly straight when they sit down. They usually lean slightly toward one ass cheek or another and in fact it is hard to sit perfectly straight and balanced even when ordered to do so. Uneven weight distribution causes ones pelvis to tilt slightly, which of course also affects how long your legs APPEAR to be relative to each other. If you don’t understand this, you should probably read a first year anatomy book before proceeding.

So when the mark/victim/subject holds his/her legs out straight, the pelvis angle will make it appear that one leg is shorter than another. When the “healer” tugs on the legs it causes the victim to shift his/her weight and sit straighter, changing the angle of the pelvis, so the short leg “grows.”

In the command (no touch) method of this trick, there is some loud declaration of a miracle happening right now! This is screeched so that the victim/subject/mark will lean forward to see if his her leg is actually growing – it is the leaning forward that causes the victim/mark’s weight to shift so the miraculous “growth” can occur.

In the unlikely event that the victim/mark accidentally manages to sit completely flat in the beginning so that both legs are viewed as the same length, the Christian miracle worker always has a backup plan: The faith healer simply pulls slightly on one shoe as he/she lifts the legs up, pulling one heel out and making one leg appear longer temporarily than the other. The Man/Woman of God then slides the shoe back into place again as he/she prays, making the legs suddenly appear the same length. This takes a little practice at sleight of hand work so that nobody sees what you are doing, but it’s still pretty easy.

A certain amount of showmanship is required to make this trick work well: You have to get everyone watching to believe that one leg is shorter FIRST, then you have to make enough noise and motion with your hands as the “miracle” happens so that nobody sees what you are really doing.

This is an observational trick easily confirmed by YOU: The reader can get together with his/her friends and try it. But please don’t be unethical – don’t be a liar – like these Christian “healers” and claim it is a miracle of God. It’s just a trick and a pretty cheesy one at that.

As a former ardent religious zealot, I was present and personally witnessed this trick being performed on a number of occasions. Some of these events were performed by famous evangelists including the healing duo popular in the 80′s, “The Hunters” – Charles and Frances.

This particular piece of cheesy stage magic is covered in the book “The Faith Healers” by James Randi (pages 128-130, complete with pictures). As bad as it is, however, it appears that tens of thousands of people are still fooled.

The faith healers, of course, have to learn how to do the trick before they can perform it. Not that this is hard – I mean, I just taught you how to do it in three paragraphs! But that also means that they KNOW it is a trick and they KNOW they are fooling the believers into thinking they have power from God.

I realize that some people would say f’ em for being that gullible, but I don’t think that you should take advantage of people just because they really want to believe in something.

You should ask yourself – If these faith healers have real power, why can’t they make an amputated leg grow back, hmm? Why is it that a “true miracle” can only be performed by stage magic methods? Believers dare not ask themselves this question, I guess.

Unfortunately, this reliance on stage magic strongly suggests that Christianity itself is false, because the proponents must resort to to the use of tricks to prove the validity of their faith. If what they claim to believe had any truth to it whatsoever, stage magic would not be required.

As a side note; although most people’s legs aren’t exactly the same length, pelvic tilt compensates for any differences in 99 percent of the cases. For people who have a difference that is really a medical problem, faith healers can’t do a thing.

How can we be sure? All you have to do is see the daily “Jesus on toast” stories that inundate the TV and print news to realize that if there were even one genuine miracle – EVER – it would get 24 hour news coverage. The fact that Christians have to lean on the “I saw someone tug on a leg once and it got longer” stories strongly suggests that they have nothing real to offer.

Additional discussions of the Scientists at the Creation Museum story: Paleontology and Creationism Meet but Don’t Mesh – NYTimes.com and Daily Kos: Scientists Visit the Creation Museum