I have often written about the sorrows of life. Buddhists start with the proposition that life is sorrow and that the only way to deal with it is to relieve oneself from the craving and attachment which are the sources of sorrow. I believe that the Buddhists have a very realistic way of looking at the world. I doubt that you can be happy if you always expect that everything will be wonderful. If you recognize that life is sorrow, you can begin to appreciate the things that lift us out of sorrow and bring us happiness and pleasure.
One of the things that brings us pleasure is the feast of Christmas. While Christmas is a religious festival, and I am a nonbeliever, nevertheless, I appreciate how much pleasure it brings us. It is celebrated at the time of the winter solstice, when nights are long and days are short. It is a time when many people feel depressed by Seasonal Affect Disorder. I’m sure that Christmas, and all of the ancient festivals that preceded it, were created to help people overcome the feelings of depression that accompany the season. Even if we don’t believe in the sacred holiday of Jesus birth, we should celebrate Christmas with all our hearts.
Moreover, there is good reason to celebrate the birthday of Jesus. He may not have been God, or the Son of God, but as depicted in the Gospels and tradition he was a beautiful person whose teachings still affect the world. How could this holy man in the tiny country of Israel have so profoundly influenced history? It has to be his teaching. Although it is difficult for mankind to follow his teachings, they give us a goal to reach. Just reading the Sermon on the Mount is enough to guarantee his place in history. I gladly celebrate his birthday on Christmas day.
I have written about how we are all born with an evolutionary tendency toward optimism. It is a genetic adaptation that is, no doubt, partially responsible for our survival as a species. Somehow, in the face of tragedy, disappointment, pain, and sorrow, we are able to hope for better things to come. Somehow in the face of old age and its accompanying disintegration and eventual death, we are able to go on living and even enjoy ourselves. You would think that we would all be profoundly depressed at our coming fate, but most people are able to go through old age without too much sorrow.
One of the reasons that we are able to face the sorrows of life and the problem of aging is because of the many pleasures in life. In another essay I wrote: “It is wonderful to enjoy the pleasure of love and sex, to feel the beauty of a lovely spring day, to appreciate great art, literature, film, and theater, to take joy in the play of young children, to take pleasure in food and drink, to dance, to sing, to laugh, and sometimes, even to cry. Bart Ehrman tells us that we should confront the evil in the world by enjoying life, and that part of that enjoyment should be the helping of other people. Perhaps that is the answer to depression.”
Opposed to all the sorrow in the world there are things that make us feel that life is sweet. Even for someone in his 70s, like me, there are things that sweeten the day and lift me up. When I get up in the morning, I go into the kitchen and make coffee. I sit by the window drinking the coffee and looking out at the bird feeders and bird house in our back yard. Drinking coffee, made the way I like it, gives me great pleasure. I don’t know why the birds make me happy, but they do. One time when Julie and I were watching a squirrel try to climb a Sheppard’s crook that held a bird feeder, and that we had greased to prevent squirrels from climbing, Julie’s daughter came in and, seeing what we were doing, said: “You two need to get a life!” Nevertheless, watching birds gather around the feeder and watching a bird go in and out of the bird house in the yard gives me a thrill.
Almost all people love beautiful weather. When you look around on the first really beautiful Spring day, you will notice that people are smiling and have a bounce in their steps. I can remember certain days at Lake George in New York when the sheer beauty of the day, the lake, and the mountains filled me with rapture. Over the period of my life, there are particular days that stand out in my mind because they were so lovely. I’m sure that evolution has given us a love of the natural things of the world. We feel connected to the earth because we come out of the earth and are an integral part of it.
For me, one of the great pleasures of life has been reading books. Even back when I read difficult, abstruse texts, I enjoyed it. I always came away with the feeling that I was learning something. I read novels and page-turners for the sheer enjoyment. I have read many of the world’s greatest books, and I feel that they have enriched my life. One thing all my reading has given me is the ability to write well. One of my greatest joys in life has been the ability to write newspaper columns. I have also written a book, though it has not been published.
I find that a compliment to my love of reading and writing is the pleasure I take in computers and the internet. The word-processing capacity of computers has made my writing much easier, faster, and better. I was thrilled the first time I was able to get on the internet and get information from around the world. E-mail has enabled me to stay in contact with my children, family, and friends wherever they might be. Each new development gives me, and most other people, great delight. Now through Skype I am able to see and talk to my children who live far away. I may not be up-to-date on all technological developments, but I can appreciate how much enjoyment they give the people who are.
I have always enjoyed looking at great art. I don’t know why, but when I am in a museum, a wonderful feeling overcomes me as I look at the brilliant creations of great artists.
I love good movies. My taste in movies may not be that of a sophisticated movie-buff, but I do get a lot of enjoyment out of certain movies, especially action movies.
I also love sports, especially football, basketball, and baseball. It is a relaxing delight to watch a sports event which takes your mind off all the worries in life. When the sports event becomes a white-knuckle thriller, it is even better. I think that the reason we root for local teams is because that heightens our enjoyment of the contest.
I get a lot of pleasure out of humor—my own and other people’s. I love to tell jokes and stories, and zing one-liners at people. I think that humor is for me, and for many people like me, a way of dealing with the hard things of life. If we can turn things around and upside-down, they are not so scary. When I was a kid, my favorite performers on television were the comedians. I loved The Colgate Comedy Hour, The Jackie Gleason Show, and Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar. As a young man I felt that shows like Monte Python’s Flying Circus were created just for me. I have always loved shows like MASH, Cheers, and Seinfeld. Laughter is a kind of drug that releases tension.
The greatest source of pleasure in my later years has been music, especially the lovely melodies of classical artists. Lately I have been listening to more and more, and discovering beautiful pieces of which I was unaware. I have listed many of them in the profile on my blogs, and will not do so here. Needless to say, there are some compositions that can lift me out of this world. There have been times when a beautiful piece of music has brought me to tears. I am not ashamed at those tears. I also love many popular songs and have made lists of my favorites. I envy the lucky people who can sit down at a piano or pick-up a violin and play their favorite music. For them music must be a special and powerful pleasure.
Perhaps the highest form of pleasure is love. We love our parents, our brothers and sisters, our children and grandchildren and even our dearest friends. It is likely that this love is programmed into us as an evolutionary adaptation. But it is still one of great joys of life. I never thought that I would care if I had grandchildren, but when my daughter called me one day and said that she was having a baby, my whole body filled with happiness.
There is also the kind of love we feel for our lovers. Even apart from the sexual pleasures we get from these relationships, there is a powerful psychological gratification to them. When you add sex to a very good love affair, it is almost transcendental. Nature has given us sexual pleasure as a way to increase our procreation of the species. Like many of the gifts of nature, this is a marvelous one. I feel sorry for those people who go through life without ever experiencing it.
There are many other things in life that bring us happiness and pleasure. Among them are good conversation, recognition of our accomplishments, talent, success, respect, prosperity, good health, and good children. One thing that Bart Ehrman mentions is helping other people. We may not have a lot of money to donate to charity or energy to work at some charitable endeavor, but when we do something for other people it always gives us a sense of self-worth. Thus, we should consider it one of the pleasures of life, one of the best. It is good because self-worth, self-love, self-respect are some of the things that can really make our lives better. If we have them, we can face the terrors of life with confidence and courage.
We are all fighting to overcome the sorrows of life. Each day brings more news of the hardships faced by people. It can make us depressed, but we can also find pleasure if we concentrate on the things that bring us happiness. One of those things is the season of Christmas. Most people love the season of Christmas, the lovely decorations in stores and at home, the beautiful Christmas Carols, the Christmas trees, the high spirits of people, and the giving and receiving of gifts. It is a wonderful way to celebrate the birthday of a good, kind, loving, wonderful man, Jesus of Nazareth. Merry Christmas!
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
The Birth of Jesus
Now as we approach the Christmas holiday we should take a look at the true history of Jesus' birth. Scholars agree that the story of the Nativity is fictitious. This does not mean that we should not celebrate Christmas, but it does mean that there is nothing wrong with taking Christ out of Christmas. People have celebrated the winter solstice for thousands of years. Long before the birth of Jesus, people celebrated the birth of other pagan gods at the winter solstice. The winter solstice is a bleak time of year when the days are short and the nights are long. People have always needed something to pick-up their spirits at this time of year. That is the true purpose of Christmas, and the real reason why we celebrate Jesus' birth at this time of year. Here is the true story of Jesus' birth.
In the first place, the story says that Caesar ordered a census to levy taxes and that Joseph, as a descendent of David, had to travel to Bethlehem, the city of David, to register (Luke 2:1-5). This was supposed to fulfill the prophecy that the “Messiah” would be “from the house of David.” The story is inherently preposterous!
There is no evidence that Augustus Caesar ordered a worldwide census at the time of Jesus’ birth. There was a census under Quirinius, the Governor of Syria (Luke 2:2), but that occurred after the death of Caesar and years after the birth of Jesus. The late Raymond E. Brown, S.S., a Catholic priest, internationally regarded as the dean of New Testament scholars, and former Professor of Biblical Studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York, said in his magesterial "The Birth of the Messiah," “Luke’s reference to a general census of the Empire under Augustus which affected Palestine before the death of Herod the Great is almost certainly wrong.” Said Brown, “Luke begins his story with a reference to a census of the whole world ordered by Augustus, conducted by Quirinius, and affecting Joseph, a Galilean inhabitant of Nazareth, so that he had to go to his ancestral city. This supplied the occasion for the birth of of Jesus in Bethlehem....this information is dubious on every score...We have no evidence of one census under Augustus that covered the whole Empire, nor of a census requirement that people be registered in their ancestral cities.” In a census, they counted people at their place of domicile, not where they were born. They would not have required Joseph to travel to Bethlehem. The Romans cared nothing for genealogies. They would have wanted him to stay in Nazareth and be counted where he lived.
The distinguished biblical scholar, E.P. Sanders, points out that David lived 42 generations before Jesus. He asks, why would would the Romans require Joseph to register for a tax in the town (Bethlehem) of an ancestor who lived 42 generations earlier? He describes Luke’s story of the Nativity as “Fantastic!” Bart D. Ehrman asks, “Can it be possible that everyone in the empire was to return to the place their ancestors lived a thousand years earlier?”
Another mistake by the authors of the Gospels is that they place the census of Quirinius and the birth of Jesus during the Reign of Herod. Scholars know that Herod was already dead at the time of Quirinius’census. Raymond E. Brown says, “...the one and only census conducted while Quirinius was legate in Syria affected only Judea, not Galilee, and took place in A.D. 6-7, a good ten years after the death of Herod the Great.” Moreover, Caesar would not have taxed Judea while Herod was king. And, at the time of Jesus’ birth, Bethlehem would have been in an area that was exempt from taxation.
The world's most highly recognized biblical scholar, a Catholic priest named John P. Meier, notes that it would have been impossible for Mary to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem in an advanced state of pregnancy. Meier says, “Somewhere aroung 7-6 B.C. a Jew named Yeshua, a shortened form of the Hebrew Yehoshua (Joshua), was born in the hillside town of Nazareth in lower Galilee. The Infancy Narritive traditions that locate his birth in Bethlehem of Judea (traditions isolated in chap. 2 of Matthew and Luke respectively) are probably later Chriustian theological dramatizations of the belief that Jesus was the royal Davidic Messiah.”
Jesus obviously was not born in Bethlehem. He was not born on December 25 either. Nobody knows the date on which Jesus was born, but it definitely was not December 25That was the date of the birth of the Greek/Roman god Mithras. The story of Mithras is similar to the story of Jesus.
Mithras was the god of light, or the Sun, and was born of a virgin. He was identified with a bull who had to die as a sacrifice for all humanity. His worshippers believed that Mithras promised resurrection from the dead and that he ascended into heaven. The worship of Mithras included forgiveness of sin by baptism of initiates and a communion of bread and wine to commemorate Mithras’ last meal on earth.
The early fathers of the Christian Church did not know the date when Jesus had been born, so up until the fourth century AD there was no celebration of Christmas. The worship of Mithras presented a real problem for the Church fathers because of the similarities to the worship of Jesus. There were pagan festivals around the time of the winter solstice, such as the Roman feast called Saturnalia which was dedicated to the god Saturn. In around 353 AD, the church fathers decided to combat Mithraism and other pagan holidays by celebrating the birth of Jesus on Mithras’ birthday, December 25. Merry Mithramas!
In the first place, the story says that Caesar ordered a census to levy taxes and that Joseph, as a descendent of David, had to travel to Bethlehem, the city of David, to register (Luke 2:1-5). This was supposed to fulfill the prophecy that the “Messiah” would be “from the house of David.” The story is inherently preposterous!
There is no evidence that Augustus Caesar ordered a worldwide census at the time of Jesus’ birth. There was a census under Quirinius, the Governor of Syria (Luke 2:2), but that occurred after the death of Caesar and years after the birth of Jesus. The late Raymond E. Brown, S.S., a Catholic priest, internationally regarded as the dean of New Testament scholars, and former Professor of Biblical Studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York, said in his magesterial "The Birth of the Messiah," “Luke’s reference to a general census of the Empire under Augustus which affected Palestine before the death of Herod the Great is almost certainly wrong.” Said Brown, “Luke begins his story with a reference to a census of the whole world ordered by Augustus, conducted by Quirinius, and affecting Joseph, a Galilean inhabitant of Nazareth, so that he had to go to his ancestral city. This supplied the occasion for the birth of of Jesus in Bethlehem....this information is dubious on every score...We have no evidence of one census under Augustus that covered the whole Empire, nor of a census requirement that people be registered in their ancestral cities.” In a census, they counted people at their place of domicile, not where they were born. They would not have required Joseph to travel to Bethlehem. The Romans cared nothing for genealogies. They would have wanted him to stay in Nazareth and be counted where he lived.
The distinguished biblical scholar, E.P. Sanders, points out that David lived 42 generations before Jesus. He asks, why would would the Romans require Joseph to register for a tax in the town (Bethlehem) of an ancestor who lived 42 generations earlier? He describes Luke’s story of the Nativity as “Fantastic!” Bart D. Ehrman asks, “Can it be possible that everyone in the empire was to return to the place their ancestors lived a thousand years earlier?”
Another mistake by the authors of the Gospels is that they place the census of Quirinius and the birth of Jesus during the Reign of Herod. Scholars know that Herod was already dead at the time of Quirinius’census. Raymond E. Brown says, “...the one and only census conducted while Quirinius was legate in Syria affected only Judea, not Galilee, and took place in A.D. 6-7, a good ten years after the death of Herod the Great.” Moreover, Caesar would not have taxed Judea while Herod was king. And, at the time of Jesus’ birth, Bethlehem would have been in an area that was exempt from taxation.
The world's most highly recognized biblical scholar, a Catholic priest named John P. Meier, notes that it would have been impossible for Mary to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem in an advanced state of pregnancy. Meier says, “Somewhere aroung 7-6 B.C. a Jew named Yeshua, a shortened form of the Hebrew Yehoshua (Joshua), was born in the hillside town of Nazareth in lower Galilee. The Infancy Narritive traditions that locate his birth in Bethlehem of Judea (traditions isolated in chap. 2 of Matthew and Luke respectively) are probably later Chriustian theological dramatizations of the belief that Jesus was the royal Davidic Messiah.”
Jesus obviously was not born in Bethlehem. He was not born on December 25 either. Nobody knows the date on which Jesus was born, but it definitely was not December 25That was the date of the birth of the Greek/Roman god Mithras. The story of Mithras is similar to the story of Jesus.
Mithras was the god of light, or the Sun, and was born of a virgin. He was identified with a bull who had to die as a sacrifice for all humanity. His worshippers believed that Mithras promised resurrection from the dead and that he ascended into heaven. The worship of Mithras included forgiveness of sin by baptism of initiates and a communion of bread and wine to commemorate Mithras’ last meal on earth.
The early fathers of the Christian Church did not know the date when Jesus had been born, so up until the fourth century AD there was no celebration of Christmas. The worship of Mithras presented a real problem for the Church fathers because of the similarities to the worship of Jesus. There were pagan festivals around the time of the winter solstice, such as the Roman feast called Saturnalia which was dedicated to the god Saturn. In around 353 AD, the church fathers decided to combat Mithraism and other pagan holidays by celebrating the birth of Jesus on Mithras’ birthday, December 25. Merry Mithramas!
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Born In The Wrong Century
Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong century. I am an atheist who has spent his life studying religion and theology, and has written a book entitled “The Case Against God, A Lawyer Examines the Evidence” (Which is available on Kindle), and yet I do not fully understand why so many people believe in God. I realize that there are millions of atheists like me, and that there are probably millions of people who share most of my beliefs. I know that the number of atheists continues to grow around the world, but I am still puzzled by the prevalence of religion in our society. Why is this so?
I recognize that we all think that we are correct in our opinions and beliefs. People who believe in God are often quite certain that nonbelievers are terribly mistaken or downright evil. Atheists think that believers are terribly mistaken or downright stupid. How can we be sure that we are right?
I recently listened to several televangelists on T.V. On the same day I also listened to the channel that broadcasts the thinking of the Catholic Church. The Catholic channel was quite moderate and thoughtful, but it was nevertheless focused on this being whom I believe to be mythical—God. I find that most people with whom I speak believe in some kind of God, even if not in one of the organized religions. The televangelists, unlike the Catholics, speak to the ignorance of their listeners. Their silver-tongued orators appeal to their listeners’ emotions, prejudices, and hates. But their message is not substantively different from the message of the quiet thoughtful priests and laymen of the Catholic channel. It is that there is a God who created, controls, and continues life on Earth and in heaven. It is that we should love and worship that God because he is all loving and good. The thing that amazes me is not that the yokel televangelists believe in God and spread their ignorance around the world, but that moderate and intelligent priests and philosophers like the speakers on the Catholic channel hold a set of beliefs about God that is as absurd as the beliefs of the rednecks.
On the same day I also listened to the PBS science show, NOVA, and heard a discussion of the possibility of a multi-universe or “Multiverse” by the physicist and writer, Brian Greene. Green postulated that there may be an infinite number of universes out there, which would mean that statistically speaking, there would probably be a universe exactly like ours with everything the same as in this universe, including our galaxy, solar system, planet, humans, and an identical reproduction of each of us. This gives rise to the question of whether, if I were to die, I would continue to live in another universe, and therefore be immortal. I have never believed in life after death, but I recognize that the idea is not forbidden by the laws of physics. This does not, however, change my core belief that there is no life after death.
For most of the people in the world there is no philosophical postulate like the one by Brian Greene. They simply feel that after we die our soul goes to heaven and lives eternally in heaven with great glory and happiness. I know that there is no basis for such thinking, and I am absolutely certain that it is wrong. I am also quite certain that death means the end of all life, memory, thinking, feeling, everything. I am firmly convinced that even if the Multiverse concept is correct, this life of mine, this brain, this body, this mind and memory, this being, will, for all intents and purposes, cease to exist. Even if an exact reproduction of me were to exist in a different universe, and even if that being continued to exist long after I am dead, I am certain that I would not experience that life or know about it.
My perplexity about the beliefs of others is that I do not understand how they can go on believing in God or anything supernatural without having even a scintilla of evidence to support such beliefs. After I lost all belief in God, I became able to see the many absurdities that surround religion, absurdities that I had previously taken for granted, like belief in the sacredness of holy water or the usefulness of blessing the throats on the feast of St. Blaise. I took for granted that God was situated in the sanctuary of the Catholic Church, and that you had to genuflect each time you walked in front of it. I took for granted that a priest on the alter had the power to change ordinary bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ—and that for some reason, the most important thing you could ever do was eat Christ’s body and blood.
I recognize that I am simply one person who insists that his atheism is correct, but I also recognize that my ideas are supported by many brilliant people. Most of the world’s leading scientists do not believe in God. Most of the highly intellectual thinkers in the world are atheists. Thus, I am not alone. I’m sure that most of those scientists have the same problem I have understanding why so many people believe in and worship a non-existent being.
It is amazing to me that people pray to God for help of some kind or other. There has never been any evidence that God answers prayers. People pray to God for health, but there is not a single case that anyone’s health was ever helped by the hand of God. People point to the Bible as evidence that God has performed miracles, but study of the Bible reveals that it is simply a book of myths with practically no historical value (See my book, “The Case Against God”). There is no evidence of any kind that God or anybody else ever performed miracles.
If millions of people around the world agree with me, why do I feel that I was born in the wrong century? Perhaps it is because I am mystified by the fact that so many other people continue to believe in God and in all the accessories of religion. I would think that it is self-evident that there is no God. I would think that all of the things surrounding religion are so absurd that uneducated, simple, even stupid people would recognize the facts. But as I watch television, I see intelligent priests and laymen seriously discussing concepts like prayers for the poor souls in Purgatory, prayers to the saints, devotion to the Virgin Mary, and the healing powers of places like Fatima and Lourdes. To me, such talk is incredibly stupid, yet the people who engage in it do not seem like stupid people.
I am not surprised by the hillbilly televangelists roaring out against sin in their southern drawls, but I am simply amazed to see priests of the Catholic Church draped in elaborate vestments, carrying out ancient rites in gigantic cathedrals, surrounded by golden statues, crucifixes, chalices, and other sacred items of priceless metals. It is as if God would want to be worshipped with an elaborate and dazzling display of finery.
A friend of mine said that one day there will be no churches and that places like St. Peter’s Basilica will be museums. I am sure that he is right, but I still wonder why it is not like that today.
I recognize that we all think that we are correct in our opinions and beliefs. People who believe in God are often quite certain that nonbelievers are terribly mistaken or downright evil. Atheists think that believers are terribly mistaken or downright stupid. How can we be sure that we are right?
I recently listened to several televangelists on T.V. On the same day I also listened to the channel that broadcasts the thinking of the Catholic Church. The Catholic channel was quite moderate and thoughtful, but it was nevertheless focused on this being whom I believe to be mythical—God. I find that most people with whom I speak believe in some kind of God, even if not in one of the organized religions. The televangelists, unlike the Catholics, speak to the ignorance of their listeners. Their silver-tongued orators appeal to their listeners’ emotions, prejudices, and hates. But their message is not substantively different from the message of the quiet thoughtful priests and laymen of the Catholic channel. It is that there is a God who created, controls, and continues life on Earth and in heaven. It is that we should love and worship that God because he is all loving and good. The thing that amazes me is not that the yokel televangelists believe in God and spread their ignorance around the world, but that moderate and intelligent priests and philosophers like the speakers on the Catholic channel hold a set of beliefs about God that is as absurd as the beliefs of the rednecks.
On the same day I also listened to the PBS science show, NOVA, and heard a discussion of the possibility of a multi-universe or “Multiverse” by the physicist and writer, Brian Greene. Green postulated that there may be an infinite number of universes out there, which would mean that statistically speaking, there would probably be a universe exactly like ours with everything the same as in this universe, including our galaxy, solar system, planet, humans, and an identical reproduction of each of us. This gives rise to the question of whether, if I were to die, I would continue to live in another universe, and therefore be immortal. I have never believed in life after death, but I recognize that the idea is not forbidden by the laws of physics. This does not, however, change my core belief that there is no life after death.
For most of the people in the world there is no philosophical postulate like the one by Brian Greene. They simply feel that after we die our soul goes to heaven and lives eternally in heaven with great glory and happiness. I know that there is no basis for such thinking, and I am absolutely certain that it is wrong. I am also quite certain that death means the end of all life, memory, thinking, feeling, everything. I am firmly convinced that even if the Multiverse concept is correct, this life of mine, this brain, this body, this mind and memory, this being, will, for all intents and purposes, cease to exist. Even if an exact reproduction of me were to exist in a different universe, and even if that being continued to exist long after I am dead, I am certain that I would not experience that life or know about it.
My perplexity about the beliefs of others is that I do not understand how they can go on believing in God or anything supernatural without having even a scintilla of evidence to support such beliefs. After I lost all belief in God, I became able to see the many absurdities that surround religion, absurdities that I had previously taken for granted, like belief in the sacredness of holy water or the usefulness of blessing the throats on the feast of St. Blaise. I took for granted that God was situated in the sanctuary of the Catholic Church, and that you had to genuflect each time you walked in front of it. I took for granted that a priest on the alter had the power to change ordinary bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ—and that for some reason, the most important thing you could ever do was eat Christ’s body and blood.
I recognize that I am simply one person who insists that his atheism is correct, but I also recognize that my ideas are supported by many brilliant people. Most of the world’s leading scientists do not believe in God. Most of the highly intellectual thinkers in the world are atheists. Thus, I am not alone. I’m sure that most of those scientists have the same problem I have understanding why so many people believe in and worship a non-existent being.
It is amazing to me that people pray to God for help of some kind or other. There has never been any evidence that God answers prayers. People pray to God for health, but there is not a single case that anyone’s health was ever helped by the hand of God. People point to the Bible as evidence that God has performed miracles, but study of the Bible reveals that it is simply a book of myths with practically no historical value (See my book, “The Case Against God”). There is no evidence of any kind that God or anybody else ever performed miracles.
If millions of people around the world agree with me, why do I feel that I was born in the wrong century? Perhaps it is because I am mystified by the fact that so many other people continue to believe in God and in all the accessories of religion. I would think that it is self-evident that there is no God. I would think that all of the things surrounding religion are so absurd that uneducated, simple, even stupid people would recognize the facts. But as I watch television, I see intelligent priests and laymen seriously discussing concepts like prayers for the poor souls in Purgatory, prayers to the saints, devotion to the Virgin Mary, and the healing powers of places like Fatima and Lourdes. To me, such talk is incredibly stupid, yet the people who engage in it do not seem like stupid people.
I am not surprised by the hillbilly televangelists roaring out against sin in their southern drawls, but I am simply amazed to see priests of the Catholic Church draped in elaborate vestments, carrying out ancient rites in gigantic cathedrals, surrounded by golden statues, crucifixes, chalices, and other sacred items of priceless metals. It is as if God would want to be worshipped with an elaborate and dazzling display of finery.
A friend of mine said that one day there will be no churches and that places like St. Peter’s Basilica will be museums. I am sure that he is right, but I still wonder why it is not like that today.
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