by Grania
Yesterday we were discussing whether religion was likely to disappear, even as the world slowly moves towards secularism, particularly the point that religion provided easier answers than science. I was interested to read an article by John Messerly Religion’s smart-people problem. Most of the ground he covers is not new to readers of this website:
- Percentage of believers among the most educated prestige level academic is exceptionally low.
- Social dysfunction has a high correlation with religiosity.
Messerly also looks at why some highly educated and intelligent people claim to believe what they do and comes up with a list we are equally familiar with:
- Smart people are very good at coming up with rationalizations for what they believe.
- they often don’t actually believe the claims of their religion, but support them because they believe in belief
- the beliefs of “Sophisticated Believers” (™) are often far removed from what their religion actually claims.
He points out sagely that while science or rationalism doesn’t always provide all the answers immediately, nevertheless “if reason can’t resolve our questions then agnosticism, not faith, is required.”
What fascinates me is the level of the responses from believers. They underline exactly the points made both yesterday and in this new article without intending to.
Religious answers are easy:
Social dysfunction:
Scientific illiteracy:
And the plain old facepalm:
And the tides! They come in. They go out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that!
But that last fellow may be right. Faith without reason is the true faith, by definition.
Hahaha, good ol’ Bill O’reilly. I have faith that he’s wearing clown shoes behind his desk.
I figure he’s got his pants down behind his desk and is probably wearing frilly panties.
Present company excluded, of course, it is perhaps not fair to judge a community by the strength of its Internet commenters.
Oh, completely agreed. Although, I wasn’t trying to label an entire (very diverse) group with these examples. I just thought they fit as perfect examples of what is likely to be the perennial status of religion.
You forgot the most important bad reason for believing:
“If I lie about all the other reasons for believing then I can justify my absurb belefs and I will fool a lot of gullible people.”
I’ve said it many times: Faith is a character flaw, not a virtue.
Thanks to the faithful for immediately proving the point of the article.
I think that Louis C.K. mentioned once that a belief in the possibility of magic makes life emotionally appealing. I personally doubt all the versions of god I’ve been presented but sometimes certain coincidences happen that seem so ordered I indulge the possibility of a supernatural benevolence. It can help navigate the sometimes crushing existential disappointments I’ve faced (e.g. “Everything happens for a reason.”)
“sometimes certain coincidences happen that seem so ordered I indulge the possibility of a supernatural benevolence.”
What about the many more coincidences that happen that seem so ordered that one could think about the possibility of a supernatural malevolence?
Yes – that happens often too.
Well, if you accept a deterministic Universe, everything does have a reason, if you are using the version of reason that correlates to causation. It should come as no surprise that some of these causes turn out in your favor.
Yes. I agree. My point was that belief for me is not a product of rational thinking. It is emotional and I am tempted to turn to it as a means of feeling good.
But this is a sloppy use of “reason”. Presumably reasons are causes – in the frontal lobes of certain animals, for example. But not all causes are reasons; they are just events that produce or engender another. (“Reason” sounds too “mental”.)
Maybe reason does sound too “mental.” But I think the original question is more sloppy than using reason this way in the answer. For example, in daily conversations, we might say, “What’s the reason for this cold wave?” and the answer might be that the North Atlantic Oscillation has turned negative. That’s a cause, but I don’t think most people would have a problem with saying the NAO turning negative is a reason behind a cold wave.
But, you are right that when reason is used in the sense of the “big” questions, it’s more closely aligned with “purpose.” I would not argue that everything happens for a purpose nor that the Universe has a grand purpose, though “reason” can fall into this category when used in a different sense.
For the reasons (!) we’ve been discussing I prefer to talk of causes, boundary conditions, etc. In ordinary language or context, sure, one can be sloppy, but it is important (sometimes) to realize one has done so. I’ve actually debated theists where this matter came up, alas.
“belief in the possibility of magic”
It’s very tempting isn’t it.
Ironically, if magic were real then it would have the same mundane appeal as using the Internet and thus lose its “magic”.
Cleaning the house would be a breeze, though.
There is a kind of smartness that involves distrusting our fallible senses, and there is a kind that involves trusting them too much. I don’t know if one tendency or the other is more or less common among rationalists versus believers – but I think the job of the scientist and rationalist is to act as if s/he is the distrusting kind, so it kind of makes the idea of a “natural” tendency moot.
Well, I just had an interesting back-and-forth with a (seemingly) intelligent believer in the comments on The Otmeal Sacrilege Steams Up Believers (starts at #15).
And I saw that intelligence applied to calling me (and Richard Dawkins) uninformed and intellectually lazy, to muddling the difference between real-world proof and religious just-so stories, and proposing a god-of-the-gaps vis a vis supernatural First Causes and something about infinite regression of proximate causes.
All of this is sport and trolling. One side is not changing the other’s mind – certainly not in the comments section on a website about cats, cowboy boots and the occasional post about religion or science.
This will be the last time I engage a religious troll, especially here. Grania was right to discourage the name-calling; I fear the piling on just feeds the troll. I’ll just let their comments speak for themselves from now on.
I, for one, am happy you did in this case. I now understand that Ra is the One True God.
Well Ra is the sun god, if you have to pick something to worship the sun is a rational choice. 😉
I understand your frustration, but like a broken record I again say “you can’t know that.”
You can’t know that what you call “sport and trolling” isn’t part of an electronic agora, the marketplace of ideas which can on occasion bring consensus out of chaos — or at least get us to ask ourselves better questions.
While the religious love to talk about sudden Road to Damascus moments when the light breaks in and they go from nonbeliever to belief in a swoop, atheists usually talk about slow processes of rumination which creep forward and back and forward again the other way. There are a lot of ex-theists who say that right before they gave up on religion they doubled-down with the apologetics. Anyone on the outside would have thought they were burning with conviction, instead of doing some last-ditch floundering while going under.
Don’t trust the internet too much. Looks can be deceiving.
Thanks, Sastra. Some real food for thought!
Are there any good reasons for believing in Theism?
Only for the unethical, where they can use others’ beliefs for their own gain.
Dan Dennett gave a provocative but hilarious talk at AAI in 2007 called Good Reasons for Believing in God.
This is a great talk. I think it’s important that we understand the fear that so many have, that without religion society will completely collapse. Many really believe that religion is all that stops the poor from undertaking all out revolution, and the thought of living without the lower orders intimidated by the threat of hell terrifies them.
Any artificial limbs?
Good point. Crutches . . . meh. Show me Jesus walking into an oncology ward and curing everybody of cancer and we’ll talk.
That wouldn’t even do it (for me). “Miracle” (unexplained by science) remissions of cancer occur naturally. How could you tell?
Now, if he cured every person on earth with cancer, simultaneously, THEN he’d have my attention. He is alleged to be able to do such things. Why does he let all these millions of little children die in agony?
Obviously because he’s simply not there.
Or more directly to the point – how do we know that someone didn’t discard the crutches for a while then resume using some later on?
With all the attempts at profound intellectual rationalization for god it all come down to god of the gaps. If science can not give you an explanation for something we will explain the unknown with a fairy tale.
Which, if they are paying any attention to history, has to look like a very bad bet.
Thank you for all your very interesting posts.
Religion’s smart people problem is really challenging, but what about religion’s really dumb people? IMHO these people predominate in religious groups.
In socially dysfunctional, uneducated societies e.g. South Africa, religion (whatever the flavour)gives people something to do. Holy days are times to dress up, follow the herd and be social. For those who cannot read or who do not have TV, it fills time. In these societies it is normal to be ignorant of the world at large and science in particular. Rational discussions are out of their league. Ugh.
I wonder if there is something different about these people’s brains – lack of a curiosity circuit or something. It is fascinating!
Most people in uneducated societies have the same general intelligence as people in educated societies. I’m very suspicious of the Little People Argument in which the simple folk just can’t handle the truth or do any better for themselves.
Them is us. No atheist can point proudly at an unbroken ancestral line of professors and scholars. We are all Africans.
If we can find amusements to bind us together, comfort us, inspire us, and just take up the time, then so can they. Their brains are pretty much the same as ours — and just as curious. What we’re seeing is the effect of culture which channels such curiosity. And as we know culture can change in just a few generations, decades, and years.
Or in hours (twitter).
In his book Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared_Diamond says modern “Stone Age” peoples are on the average probably more intelligent, not less intelligent, than industrialized peoples.
From the very beginning of my work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is. At some tasks that one might reasonably suppose to reflect aspects of brain function, such as the ability to form a mental map of unfamiliar surroundings, they appear considerably more adept than Westerners.
Ten thousand years of walking behind an ox up to your knees in mud is unlikely to increase average intelligence levels.
Jared Diamond discusses this in more detail in his book Guns, Germs and Steel, his hypothesis is that hunter/gather societies like those in New Guinea have to interact with a dangerous environment that can kill them at any time, in response they memorize the characteristics of thousands of plants and animals and learn to extract details from a background that would be invisible to someone who grew up in an industrial society.
Obviously, as he points out, there is a large cultural influence at work here, but as you say, on the scale of 10s of thousands of years there may be room for natural selection to modify the characteristics of the population.
Reblogged this on My WordPress Notepad.
I think some people believe because it is so “sticky” We rely on our cognitive biases so much, as it is, just to function – it is easy to see why people believe – Especially if they have to trust people because they need help and those people have an agenda tied to a belief. Or if the family and community has an agenda tied to a belief that includes fantasies and would reject them if they rejected the fantasy they held dear or if they would never get to see someone who died again – this one is very sticky and totally weird short circuited love and trust makes you crazy..
From the first image:
“But science can not tell us how and why the material universe came into being.”
The thing about the ‘why’ is what all of this hinges on. ‘How’ doesn’t matter – any reason would suffice. If the Pope, for instance, endorsed a scientific view of the universe I don’t think most people would have too much trouble going with it.*
The ‘why’ is the romantic and sublime part of religion, though. One can always push the question just beyond the horizon since the imagination is the one doing the work. The mysterious is always more compelling and the potential patterns the most fascinating. The scary and unacceptable part for seemingly a lot of people is when the ‘why’ answer isn’t as satisfactory as the imagined one.
*I say this because I live in Toronto. I don’t know how well some might take in other, more… devout parts of the world.
It also rests on a false presupposition – namely that the universe came into being. Amazing that people don’t see that. (Well, maybe not, given how biases work, but … I guess my bias is a failure to see how others think this way …)
Crutches at Lourdes? Before granting miracle status, the cases need to be filtered for:
1) misdiagnoses
2) Self-limiting ailments
3) functional illness
4) scams
5) altered perceptions and expectations
none of which requires idolatry to explain.
6) Drugs
Good point, that’s always in the df/dx of miracles and altered perceptions.
7)Placebo effect.
8) Credible medical treatment, the success of which is misattributed to a miracle.
As Anatole France is alleged to have said: “All those crutches; but never a wooden leg or a glass eye …”
Apparently I’ve got it wrong. Per Jerry’s older posting, he said (wrote):
I have a very intelligent friend who is both a PhD in chemistry and a devout Catholic.
How does he do it? We’ve only had a few brief and relatively light discussions over the years, but from what I can tell he lives in Bad Analogy Land.
We believe many things we can’t prove. We just make a leap of faith. Sometimes we trust things when we don’t know why they work. There is no compulsion to love. Nothing is ever proven. You can’t demonstrate through reason alone that life is worth living. When someone decides to do a noble deed or act of kindness, that can’t be justified by pointing to the laws of physics. Some things just are. Some things we just care about. And sure, it’s okay to choose to be an atheist.
Except that, given his analogies, it’s really not, is it?
That’s the problem with Bad Analogy Land. The faithful love bad analogies and don’t examine them too closely because they’re so flattering. Bad analogies never make them the bad guy. The person who ‘chooses’ faith is not on the wrong end of the hypothetical — the person who gives up, the person who won’t play the radio because they don’t know how it works, the person who can’t believe in love because it can’t be measured with a ruler, the person who chooses to snitch on the Jews for profit, the person who couldn’t love a handicapped child. That’s always the atheist side, what not having faith might be compared to.
He often counsels other Catholics and is probably used to using these analogies on what religious faith “is like.” But you can’t use them on the other side. It’s ugly. It’s divisive.
That’s a problem.
That is a big problem.
It is hard to have a serious talk on ethics with many of my religious friends who still express their ethics through religious ideas.
Sounds like a wordy version of “everybody believes in something”.
Have you asked him if he think he would be able to love someone if Yahweh was proven to be a product of man?
Yes, iirc I did ask that and his answer was “yes.” His ethics are functionally and even philosophically humanist. He’s politically liberal.
The problem is that the functional impossibility of “proving that Yahweh is a product of man” is considered to be a feature rather than a bug — and that is where the bad analogies based on category errors are gently introduced.
I say ‘gently’ because I think he sometimes recognizes that there is something inherently divisive and demeaning in explaining to a person who has rejected faith why faith is such a peachy keen human thing. Like many theists he offers the “religion is a matter of faith, not reason!” explanation with the cheerful expectation that this is an olive branch, a reaching out in peace and understanding.
Because he’s granting that we’re being reasonable, you see. It’s not irrational to be an atheist. Atheists are not bad people. We’re smart.
So what’s the difference? Faith. And what is faith? This is suddenly where it gets dicey and dirty. Why, it’s like the decision to … um, it’s like the desire for … faith is when you keep on striving … when you don’t give up … when you trust, have humility, give thanks, and … it’s love. Not that atheists should take that the wrong way, of course. Those are just analogies.
To give my friend his due, there are plenty of atheists out there who crow that that they have no problem with religion as long as people admit that it’s simply a matter of faith. What they hate is when the apologists try to prove that God exists using bad reasons and bad arguments. Saying it’s “faith” is less abrasive.
I feel it’s the other way around. Even a bad argument is an admission that whether or not God exists is a rational question, one best fought out with evidence and reason. Smiling benevolently and invoking “faith” is to cede the field of reason to the atheist while keeping the heart, the love, the inspiration and aspiration of the human mind towards virtue, beauty, and wisdom to oneself … and then trying to call it even. Not. Even. Close.
If he honestly recognizes that atheists are fully on par with believers regarding the ability to love, but at the same time uses the concept as an argument for faith, then there must be some cognitive dissonance at play.
And despite his attempts to soften the rather nasty logical consequences that line of reasoning has for non-believers ( loveless ), he is still left with a contradiction.
At best he can rationalize this away with Yahweh as the love-giver and atheists as unknowing ( and maybe unwilling depending on mood ) recipients.
Any which way he prefer this is rather condescending towards us heathens.
Still, nothing a pint can’t solve unless you’re feeling particularly militant. 🙂
As usual, well said. Essentially all so called religious comparisons are straw men. One is free to chose evil, over the light, essentially. Yes, we understand how one might fall victim to Satan. And of course there is no acknowledgement of differing approaches to credibility being part of the equation.
When I talk to catholic acquaintances I tend to stay away from the use of analogies.
My position is that if you provide moral and financial support to a multinational criminal organization that aids and abets clerical kiddy fuckers, is actively working to deny women and homosexuals equal treatment under the law and is engaged in a program of genocide in sub Saharan Africa through a batshit crazy opposition to the use of birth control and sexual prophylaxis then you don’t get to talk to me about your brand of “ethics”.
This tends to provide a focus to this sort of conversation and there never seems to be any need to resort to analogies.
It’s a lot simpler that way.
Heh.
Doesn’t he mean that when you have no good knowledge you better follow your intuitions?
That would sound reasonable to me.
Atheism, science and rationality is often described by religious people as too cold to support a worldview that gives them enough satisfaction.
I for my part see a void on their side.
Yes, I think he sees it that way. The existence of God is a 50/50 standoff. We often follow intuitions or even preferences in those situations.
Several problems:
1.) No, the supernatural is not even-steven with naturalism with reason helpless in the middle.
2.) This scenario ignores the commitment and value aspect of religious faith. If it’s simply making a best guess when you’re not sure then believing in God would be like believing the capital of New York state is New York City. There’s no problem with oops, I just learned otherwise. But there’s a huge problem with changing your mind about God. You lose emotionally, you lose identity.
People who think atheism is too cold to be satisfying either degrade the natural world, diminish the value of humanity and love for its own sake — or are just a bit too self-absorbed, demanding, and arrogant for my taste. It’s like rejecting astronomy for astrology for personal reasons; it has to resonate with your intuitions. Who the hell are you?
I just want to say “thanks” to you, Grania, for carrying on in Jerry’s absence. Good work and well done.
I’d be sad on the Internets if nothing was coming in on WEIT!
Let’s throw a party and jump in the furniture while we can! 🙂
And ditto on the thanks to Grania! 🙂
I echo / add my thank – you,
too, to Ms Spingies.
‘Twould be — those internets —
wholly holey without
W E I T – brand posts
transmitting posthaste.
Blue
Thanks everyone, just trying to keep the site ticking until Jerry is back in a few days. Luckily, WEIT has a great community, so he doesn’t need to worry.
Just catching up, but I’d like to add my thanks too, Grania, these have been very interesting. I did read that Salon article earlier today, but the comments here are so much better.
Some intelligent believers on around 2 or 3 on the Dawkins scale but unfortunately the nature of the Christian community makes it hard for them to admit that although you could be more open about it elsewhere
[As a refresher to some readers the Dawkins scale reads
2) De facto theist. Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. “I don’t know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.”
3) Leaning towards theism. Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. “I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.”]
Since traditional Western Christians tend to believe that !*salvation hinges on faith & belief*! it’s difficult in a Christian context to admit that you are only 2 or 3!!! (But it seems to work all right in Reform Judaism or Unitarianism.)
Biologist E.O. Wilson’s claim that his is a “provisional deist” is ironically just a tad easier to make in the humanist community than in a Christian one!! (He got the 1999 Humanist of the Year Award from AHA.)
A side note:
A minor complaint I have about some posts here is that the term “Sophisticated Theology” seems to be used in two different ways:
1) Elaborate and Intricate rationsalizations of traditional belief a la William Craig and Alvin Plantinga
2) Highly revisionist interpretations of religious traditions that have only a modest resemblance to traditional belief.
It might be an idea to come up with two separate labels for these phenomena.
Well ST #1 are Sophisticated Theologians. And ST #2 is a variety of Sophisticated Theology. I suppose, like other branches of theology (or atheism for that matter), there is some diversity in the ranks of ST. At least I do not recall either WLC or Platinga being ‘revisionist’ about the history of religious thought.
Interesting to bring up the Dawkins scale. I bet that the 3rd kind of theist will very often have children who are at least nominally atheist.
I was unclear. I did not mean revisionist about the the history of religion; I meant revisionist about what one believes theologically. Paul Tillich’s theology and classical Protestantism are almost two different religions both employing Christian language.
How they value their god-shaped ignorance.
Perhaps one day mainstream philosophers will maintain the necessity of an infinite regression. When we think critically about first cause arguments we consistently see “everything we’ve ever seen has had a cause, so there must have been something that didn’t have a cause.” What?! We should need to have seen at least one thing that did NOT have a cause to even consider that something else could possess the same characteristics. This idea even being tenable just blows my mind. It seems like a non starter to me. Perhaps the argument is that they personally didn’t see the cause, so it must not have had one. Or we can’t explain it, so it must not have had a cause and since god doesn’t exist, he obviously was the culprit.
They can always take refuge in quantum mechanics.
I like to write the Cosmological argument this way:
1. Everything that exists has a cause (er, except my God, shhhhh, don’t say it out loud …)
2. The universe exists
3. The universe has a cause
4. That cause is (my particular flavor of) god.
Q.E.D.
It boggles my mind that anyone can take comfort in that argument.
The Ontological Argument is even worse. I will prove that there exists the greatest of all possible purple and green striped unicorns. Let’s see, I can imagine a purple and green striped unicorn. In fact a very large one …
Oh, no doubt! I was so psyched the first time I started reading Decartes meditations. Needless to say his articulation of the Ontological Argument it was no less impressive than the green striped (maybe we should add invisible for irony) unicorn example you gave.
The First Cause argument is even worse when you turn it around and ask about “the last effect,” which I would guess has to be immediately preceded by the last cause. Somehow, when time goes forward, we don’t intuitively see this as an impossibility. “We will all go to Jesus and he shall reign forever and ever.” Well, what evidence is there that we can’t turn the arrow of time the other way and also go on for an infinity (perhaps with some periodic asymptotes at Big Bang events)? Or that time, as created at the Big Bang, is simply recreated every time this event happens and these events extend for infinite “time” in both directions (though using time really isn’t coherent in this sense)? Anyhow, the point is, they have some built in special pleading that their system needs a beginning but not an end.
“None of these questions can be answered by science.”
How about: None of these questions would be asked without the input of science.
Religion doesn’t do a very good job of answering them either.
Yesterday I saw the Steven Hawking movie The Theory of Everything and — while I enjoyed it overall — I found the pandering to faith extremely annoying. Steven Hawking is a famous atheist, one of the world’s most famous. His Christian wife (who wrote the book the screenplay was based on) and Hollywood took care to diminish and demean that as much as possible, however. They can’t deal with atheism head on. They have to play to the gallery.
One of the major themes of the movie is the relationship between science and faith. And guess what? Yes! They’re compatible! Except when faith wins.
Atheism is played as arrogant and insulting, with mocking, sneering atheists “not allowed” to consider God and their attitude balanced against a simple and humble faith. At one point his wife reads his “…and then we will know the Mind of God” quote and gets him to admit that yes, he means it (God exists!) — and then forces him to take back a small little “…however.” What a relief that the atheist decided to be decent to her.
Near the end Hawking is asked in an auditorium how he derives meaning from life in the absence of God and the movie shows him crying, gazing upwards, and imagining a miracle (atheists want to believe! Hawking was hurt!) He’s then quoted something to the effect that “… there’s always hope” — which we place in a humanist context but brings the audience in the movie to a standing ovation to. There’s always hope that God exists! That’s what he meant!
Science and religion come together! Both sides respected!
Like hell. Pissed me off.
Has anyone else seen the movie? Did you see the same things — or am I getting too sensitive?
Yes, the fact that no one notices when they make a screed piece of rubbish like God Is Not Dead, displaying all the lies and tired tropes about atheists; and then, when they write a movie about a famous atheist, they have to carefully, so carefully kiss the ass of religion, tells you a lot about the relative positions of atheism and religion in the US.
I have not seen the movie; (or the other one I mentioned — never will see that one) but I’ve heard good things from critics about it.
Has Hawking posted a review yet? It’s hard to believe anybody thinks they can get away with a Lady Hope job while he’s still breathing.
(He does still breathe, doesn’t he?)
Since the movie is based on a book by his ex-wife — who is religious and with whom he lived for many years — it’s unlikely I think that he will have any objections.
The anti-atheism in this movie is much more subtle than in God is Not Dead (admittedly a very low bar) and thus I’ve actually read a couple of reviews on Christian sites which report that both ‘sides’ are equally respected.
This is grim, given that the most positive thing for our side in the movie is that Hawking’s atheism is mentioned and yet he’s not the villain. Atheism is — that is, it’s treated as something which needs to be modified or forgiven or approached with skepticism (is he really an atheist?)
The atheism angle must be downplayed if Christian reviewers found the film balanced.
My simple mind tells me the human fear of death is still the prime reason people must make up god and all the crap that goes with it. They have no idea what they were doing before they got here but they can’t stand going the same way.
I think it was Jerry Coyne who said, regarding evolution there has been a million chances to prove it wrong but it always comes up right. With religion it’s just the reverse, millions of chances to find the smallest evidence but still nothing.
I agree. That is the secret to religion’s success. I don’t want to die, Daddy.
I read some of the comments from theists under the linked article. It still impresses me how religion is such a reliable engine of error, like a giant Fallacy Factory working night and day, ceaselessly spilling out poor arguments and reasoning.
One classic argument put forth in the comments for why God doesn’t allow Himself to be proved to exist, is that:
“Such a discovery would sweep away not only the academic-scientific infrastructure responsible for it, but virtually everything not rooted around the attainment of salvation. But then, what would there be to distinguish the good from the bad? If everyone were to go through the motions, purely out of self-interest…what would there be to identify those who were obedient to God for deeper, more sincere reasons?”
How can this person not reflect for a second on the obvious self-defeating logic of this line of thinking. It entails that truly believing that God exists is a BAD THING. Because once you become convinced God actually exists, well then it’s all self-interested going through the motions. Given that most Christians believe God exists (and think they have good evidence/reasons for it0 is this really what Christians want to say about their beliefs?
Jeeze, it’s like they just want to do our work for us.
Exactly. Do they think that children who cheerfully obey their parents deserve no credit because their parents are both 1.)clearly observable and 2.) clear in their expectations?
Hell, many of them also believe the angels in heaven rebelled. Was God constantly crouching behind a cloud?
Speaking of which, can angels still rebel? If my guardian angel can suddenly demote himself to a demon, thanks, but no thanks, I’ll take my chances alone. And if they can’t, what’s with giving the angels a free pass and then giving the most special creation, humans, the opportunity to be tortured for all eternity?
Only the very best, most loving, kind, and special angels get to be guardian angels because they must guide and protect you at all times. God has chosen them. So don’t you worry your little head about that.
You have to speak of angels in ‘angel-speak.’ That’s the language people generally use when they speak of angels.
Wow, there’s some real gems in that article. I think the most amusing is this: “The rescued man could find no other explanation – the bearded stranger must have been an angel!” I thought the no explanation scenario was reserved for God proofs. Shouldn’t this stranger be God himself come back in human form and isn’t it well known that God has a beard? Now I’m more confused than ever!
A few years ago there was a TV commercial, probably for an insurance company, that showed a bumbling guardian angel following people around. The people would escape the danger with no help from the angel (who might even have caused it in some cases). A rather apt portrayal, now that I think of it.
The children/parent analogy reminds me of a
a recent story in which a religious family (Christian I presume) had adopted 34 children from around the world, many with physical disabilities, or in situations in which they would have probably perished.
The mother said “Faith has been the biggest motivation….”
And yet their very actions speak to the opposite. They don’t have faith in God. This family intuitively know that God can be relied on to do nothing to help these kids; that their fates will play out unmitigated under a God’s gaze who doesn’t lift a finger to help, forcing well-intentioned people to actually step in and save them.
Almost all religious thinking seems to me to be normal reasoning turned 180 backwards.
“The Universe and everything in it was created by Someone outside itself.”
How the cosmological argumentioned continues to be trotted out as one of the “best arguments,” I can’t fully understand. This version above is one of the sillier versions. Even if we accept the premise, why is the creator someone rather than something? In the more polished version, they try to get around the “who created God?” question by saying God is necessary and the Universe contingent. Sorry, but adjectives are not proof of God.