Less likely

I found a fascinating article in The Telegraph, a newspaper from the UK. I am sure I will offend the scant few christians that still read this blog (if any do), but if you dispute the point of the article, feel free to show us otherwise. I have given christians several opportunities to answer some of the nagging inconsistencies of the bible. After a brave start, all have nervously shuffled off (not the mortal coil, I hope). It is like what happens when I meet a christian I knew from church days and they ask THE QUESTION, "So, where are you going to church these days?" I savor the moment briefly and then simply say "I am not." The pattern is always the same. Polite conversation is made for a few minutes and I then I never hear from them again. So enjoy this article and (if you are still a christian) please, don't be offended. Prove the article wrong instead. The questions are still there.


Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'

People with higher IQs are less likely to believe in God, according to a new study.

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor, The Telegraph

Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, said many more members of the "intellectual elite" considered themselves atheists than the national average.

A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, he claimed.

But the conclusions - in a paper for the academic journal Intelligence - have been branded "simplistic" by critics.

Professor Lynn, who has provoked controversy in the past with research linking intelligence to race and sex, said university academics were less likely to believe in God than almost anyone else.

A survey of Royal Society fellows found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God - at a time when 68.5 per cent of the general UK population described themselves as believers.

A separate poll in the 90s found only seven per cent of members of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God.

The article continues on. Here is a link to the article in The Telegraph.

Some more questions - not mine this time

I found this youtube video recently and I think it is fantastic. For people who are intelligent and able to reason, this video asks challenging questions and provides answers that will make sense. For the rest of you, I recommend America's Funniest Home Videos. There are a few parallels to my post asking christians to answer questions, but enough differences to make it worthwhile to watch.

I will probably start to change the format of this blog as I had hoped for a dialogue with christians and others. I have come to realize that despite frequently hearing christians claim that they want to discuss the logical discrepancies of their faith, absolutely none of them are actually prepared to do so. Presented with the questions and issues that I raise, the christians I know make a brave face of it and slink away once they realize their answers are only pathetic rationalizations that don't even live up to the claims their faith makes. This video exposes the rationalizations that keep the christian faith going.

I frequently hear criticism of atheists like Richard Dawkins, but my friends who criticize him have not read his books. They make broad statements about him without having done their homework. I often ask them to tell me which book their broad sweeping statement comes from. I have never yet had a christian friend quote the book. Those who I openly challenge to read books by Dawkins, Hitchens or others tell me enthusiastically that they will. But I don't hear from them again. They slink away unable to answer the questions raised. I can only conclude that my christian friends are afraid to read Dawkins and other atheists or that they started and given up for various reasons.

It has also been suggested that I have offended the christians I know and that's why they are not still commenting on the blog. That is entirely possible. I would add some have offended me by their ignorant, misinformed suggestions that I am angry or anti-christian. I am neither of these. I am anti-indoctrination, anti-closeminded, anti-rationalization, anti-stupidity, anti-blindfollowing and more. I am also against having imaginary friends (in adulthood). But I am not bitter in any way. In fact, I am very thankful for my time in the church as I have been INOCULATED against belief in talking snakes and imaginary friends.

I doubt very much that there are many christians left reading this. But if you are, I hope your mind is open enough to consider what this video has to say.

Fantastic - Church Sign Generator!

I stumbled upon the Church Sign Generator while surfing with Digg.com. It is pure genius and I intend to have a little fun with it. Here are a couple of 'church signs' I made. Enjoy. Try it out yourself and email them to me (glenn_k@shaw.ca). Oh and try and inject some blasphemy into the exercise. It's much more fun that way.



Here's another one I made:

The Ten Commandments

My one faithful reader, thomas, challenged me to unpack why I think very little of the ten commandments. He specifically took me to task with my statement, "If any leader today were to write such a document as the ten rules for life, it would be judged to be woefully inadequate." He suggested that if Canada's Prime Minister, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named* (Harper), were to have written these ten commandments, the world be a better place (*my emphasis here, not thomas').

Let's analyze the ten commandments keeping in mind that the christian church teaches that god is omniscient or ALL KNOWING.


Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Think about this. A little self-centered, n'est-ce pas? How about the fact that Judaism is one of the world's "great MONOTHEISTIC religions?" Supposedly there are no other gods, but god, the one and only, makes it his first duty to make himself the priority. OK, he's god, let's cut him a little slack, here.


Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. What about lawn ornaments? Do they count? Smurfs? Seriously, does god not have anything better to do? There is almost no point in even discussing this one. For an ALL KNOWING kind of guy, he seems to have wasted a commandment here.


Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. The needle of the Dictator-O-Meter just started to spin wildly. It reminds me of North Koreans referring to Kim Jong II as 'Dear Leader.' Think of all the injustice in the world - war, poverty, rape, sickness, child labour, torture and slavery, to mention a few. But god is more concerned that somebody is going to make fun of him. So far he hasn't even addressed the needs of humans.


Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. On the Importance-Seismometer, this one doesn't ever move the needle. By way of analogy I would like to ask, "Does a seismometer register the shock waves of a fruit fly landing on the earth?" No and neither does the Importance-Seismometer register the importance of this request. When pastors preach on Sunday, are they not working? When christians all go out to lunch together, are they not creating work for others?


Honour thy father and mother. OK, not a bad one. God has a little practice under his belt and is starting to make a bit of sense. But from the perspective of an ALL KNOWING god, it's not exactly revolutionary.


Thou shalt not kill. Have any of you christians actually READ the Old Testament? God does not seem to have any problem with it. Neither do the vast majority of christians throughout history. God smites people right, left and centre. God turns them into pillars of salt and floods the whole earth to commit mass genocide when people aren't following his ways. WHAT IS THIS IF IT IS NOT KILLING? But if god had lived a life like Ghandi, it would be a great commandment. In the immortal words of the late George Carlin, "More people have been killed in the name of god than for any other reason."


Thou shalt not commit adultery. Here is how 'adultery' is defined in the book of Matthew (5:28), “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

Anyone not in a permanent catatonic state is probably aware that this commandment as defined in the book of Matthew is physically impossible. Therefore god has chosen to write a commandment that will lead to a life of guilt and sin, because no one could possibly fight against their nature so completely. God may as well have written "Thou shalt not look at the sky", "Thou shalt not breathe air" or "Thou shalt not touch the ground."


Thou shalt not steal. God is definitely making progress here. There isn't too much wrong with this one, but of course, god's people don't always follow the rules either. After the plague of the firstborn, the Israelites absolutely pillage the Egyptians. Now one could argue that they had been working as slaves and thus hadn't been paid fairly for their work. But of course, slavery didn't seem to bother god when it was other races. But I digress. And yes, I know that the plagues came before the commandments. I am just pointing out the lack of consistency.


Thou shalt not bear false witness against they neighbour. OK, I'll admit, this one's not a bad idea. Not exactly new or revolutionary, but a good commandment as they go.


Thou shalt not covet. Once again, god has written a commandment that is quite literally IMPOSSIBLE to follow. I don't believe even one person in the history of the world could make a credible claim to have fulfilled this commandment. Even Bill Gates has to have wanted to get an iPod at some point in time. For an ALL KNOWING god, he sure likes to make it impossible for his followers to do what he wants. But of course, guilt is the ideal way to control people.

Let's say I am the new grade one teacher at a school. I start off by putting a chocolate cupcake with icing and sparkles on each child's desk and then tell them they are not allowed to look at it, they are not allowed to think about it, they are definitely not allowed to eat it. You would think I am nucking futs and if I went so far as to severely punish children who broke these impossible rules, the school district would probably have me fired or suspended at the very least. But for some reason, god can make such messed up rules and we just have to accept them. Let's not even get into the whole idea of eternal punishment in hell (a major doctrine of the vast majority of the world's churches).


On a completely different level, there is also quite a credible argument in favour of the idea that the ten commandments are lifted from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a document that most likely predates the Old Testament.




Now looking at this from the perspective of internal consistency, even the New Testament does not agree with the Old Testament. In the New Testament, when christ mentions the commandments, he only lists five!

Luke 18:20 - "Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother."

Why only five, jesus? Weren't you paying attention in Sunday school?


So to end off this major post, I bring you the late George Carlin's take on the ten commandments. He whittles 'em down to two and adds one at the end. It's George Carlin - it's not family entertainment, so the video is not totally safe for work. (NSFW) But it's well worth watching!



And to finally come back to the question about Stephen Harper, I think it would be the instant end to his political career if he came up with such a list of rules for life in the 21st century.

Revised Scorecard!

Sorry for the long delayed post. I was studying French in July and working constantly. I had a full time job in August and two part time jobs so not much energy was left over for blogging.

This post is a scorecard to see how well the christians did at answering my questions*. It is worth noting that using Facebook and email, I contacted between 70 and 80 christians (other people too) to be sure that some christians would try to answer these questions. Many of these believers are people who have told me that they want to sit down with me to discuss these issues. Perhaps they do, but they were rather silent when given a chance to discuss the issues in the blog. In fact, of the dozens of people who have told me that they want to discuss why I no longer believe in god and jesus, I could count the number of people who have actually done so on one hand.

*I have revised the scorecard to count thomas' responses.

CLICK ON THE TABLE AND A READABLE VERSION WILL OPEN IN A NEW WINDOW.

So the only christian who proved me wrong was Adam. As you can see in the table, the only answer that I considered to have any real merit was Adam claiming that the many thousands killed in god's name were merely killed and god got the blame. I agree that people were responsible for these slaughters, but I differ from him in that I believe that there was simply no god in the equation. I wish that Adam had tried to answer all the questions. Perhaps he still will.

It is worth noting that several other people commented, but I didn't make note of their responses in the table because I was focused on watching to see if christians could answer these questions. My apologies to the others. I value your feedback. I urge everyone to read the comments that were posted.


And I am going to start posting more often, I promise.

Questions christians can't answer

Who created god? It is easy to say that all the complexity in the world has a designer. That way we don't have to try to understand a system that could produce the complexity of living organisms by natural causes. But who created god? The predictable answer that god has always existed or similar fluff reminds me of the anecdote from Stephen Hawkings' book, A Brief History of Time:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

Sadly christians are that old lady and atheists are that smug scientist. But the bottom line is that we atheists believe in evidence, not fairy tales. The tooth fairy is great in theory, but the evidence is a little lacking. (I even put my recently removed wisdom tooth under my pillow and got nothing. Yes I am bit sore about that.)



If god truly loves all people why did he slaughter so many of them throughout the Earth's history?

*Take note that God often uses his chosen people, the Israelites, as his agents of death.

Exodus 32:27-28, 35 - God kills 3000 men for dancing around Aaron's golden calf.
Numbers 16:49 - God sends a plague killing 14,700 people for complaining that he killed 250 whose offense had been that they burnt incense.
Numbers 31:1-35 - God kills over 90,000 of the midianite people including all the male children and all the females who are not virgins.
Judges 20:35 - God kills over 50,000 Benjamites for the crime of not being Israelites. He killed all the children too.

These are just a few examples of many. Are these the actions of a loving god? Sorry to say this, but if you are a christian and you can read these horrific stories of genocide and war crimes without seriously doubting the idea that god loves everyone, you have turned off your brain.




Why does the bible not denounce slavery if an ALL KNOWING god inspired the writers and similiarly, why did jesus not make any attempt to stop slavery?

However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46)

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

Nearly everyone in the world would be quick to denounce the blight on humanity that is slavery (except modern day slave traders - yes, it still exists). Yet neither god nor jesus seemed to have any issue with it. This is yet another indication that the bible is a series of books written by people of that time that were in no way inspired by supernatural beings, particularly ALL KNOWING, supernatural beings.




If god is omnipotent, how does the devil have any power at all? Omnipotent after all means ALL POWERFUL. Nothing could have any power in the presence of a god who is ALL POWERFUL. The answer is this; there is no god, particularly not an ALL POWERFUL god.



Why is it that the 'god-inspired' writers of the bible were unable to recognize disabilities such as blindness and physical handicaps as just that? Even christ didn't seem to know that some people just happen to have various physical or mental disabilities. Shouldn't the son of an ALL KNOWING god understand such things?

Again it seems likely that the writers of the bible, uninspired by ALL KNOWING heavenly beings, wrote from their perspective. Specifically the perspective of being ignorant of the basics of medical understanding which we now possess. Once again, the average 7 year old these days knows enough to know that some people are physically or mentally disabled. The ALL KNOWING supreme being that inspired the writers of the bible is running low on credibility.



"If the Christian belief system is false or based on fabricated source documents - how exactly under your current set of suppositions with the Bible as the only authoritative admissible evidence, would you ever be able to detect the falsity of that belief system?" The credit for this question goes to debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com as I read this question there first. Someone by the name of Eheffa apparently asked the question. I am still looking for the original source.

The answer very simply is that you would not be able to detect the falsity of your belief system and that is why I have to have such a blog post as this.




Why is it that christians are unaware that the bible's ideas are simply plagiurized from other sources? The ten commandments were mostly adapted from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The virgin birth, the 12 disciples, the death and resurrection. It all comes from other religions. Christmas and Easter were pagan holidays until christianity 'borrowed' them.

I believe the answer is that Christians read the bible which seems to have left out the bibliography and they make a point of ignoring anything critical of the bible as heresy. And if it were still fashionable to burn people for heresy, that would still be going on. I challenged a friend to read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. He insisted that he would read it side by side with another book written by a christian that refutes what Dawkins' teaches. I wonder why he couldn't just read The God Delusion on its own. But he is a youth pastor and he seems afraid of what he might find out.



Why was the time that religion ruled the world called "The Dark Ages?" Similarly why is the time when state funded religious schools in Canada attempted to teach the aboriginal children about Christianity now considered to be the "darkest, most tragic chapter in Canadian history (according to Phil Fontaine and many others)?" BBC article

I can't answer this last question very well myself although I suspect it has something to do with the church attracting a higher than average number of feeble-minded, insecure, power-hungry types who end up playing the politics and abuse their power at every opportunity. Every church has them. The residential schools were filled with them. Think about the abuse in the catholic church, the troubles in Ireland, the infighting in every church, go back in history to the crusades and so on. And for the record, I do believe there are good and occasionally, intelligent people involved in the church too. It is just that they rarely end up in positions of power.



I encourage my christian friends and other christians to try to answer these questions. In the intellectually inbred world known as modern christianity I have no doubt that many of you think that you have intelligent answers. However I doubt very much that you will post serious answers that would be acceptable in any academic setting. My guess is that most of you will avoid posting comments in response to these questions. But if you can't answer these questions, but somehow KNOW BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT that god is real and jesus died on the cross, you have been indoctrinated. In that case I suggest you get out the Jesus Riding Dinosaurs Colouring Book, prepare your rapturous red and leviathan green crayons and continue to ignore the doubts that cast a shadow on the credibility of your beliefs (see next post).

PLEASE POST YOUR ANSWERS OR COMMENTS IN THE COMMENTS SECTION. I HAVE OPENED IT UP TO EVERYONE REGARDLESS OF HAVING A BLOGGER ACCOUNT OR NOT. PLEASE USE YOUR REAL NAME OR A PSEUDONYM SO I CAN RESPOND AND SO WE DON'T HAVE 27 PEOPLE ALL CALLED ANONYMOUS. THANKS.

On a lighter note . . .

This is why christianity now scares me. I don't think a lot more needs to be said, but I wish to make a few points:

* The bible doesn't mention dinosaurs at all, but we somehow KNOW that they were on Noah's Ark.

* Something that is fundamentally wrong with christianity is that no evidence is needed to hold a particular doctrine. And if there are repugnant 'truths' in the bible, the non-fundamentalist christians pick and choose the ones they want to believe in, conveniently ignoring the rest. The fundamentalists do the same all the while insisting that every word of the bible is literally true.

* This colouring book page is a good example of how self-perpetuating the ignorance of the creationist mentality is. Jesus probably rode the dinosaurs, so let's brainwash the children with this view just in case.

* On the other hand, the christian colour wheel is pretty appealing - "Gee Honey, let's do the dining room in flesh of christ."