I’ve long been astonished at how forgiving Christians are of their god. They’ll pray hard for something (eg, “Please don’t let my husband be dead at the bottom of that collapsed mine”), and when their god fails to honor their pretty reasonable request, they give him a free pass. “God works in mysterious ways.” Any reasonable person would conclude either that there is no god or that he’s not so nice as he’s cracked up to be.

Let’s do a little thought experiment. Say that when you were hired at your job, your boss said things like “Ask and ye shall receive” and you were led generally to believe that your boss was a pretty nice guy with your best interests at heart. So say you go to him one day and ask for a small raise. Let’s say you’ve got a sick spouse and the hospital bills are just killing you. You’re not asking for a million bucks. You’re asking for maybe a 1% raise to help defray the costs a bit. And let’s say also that you’re a great employee, always working hard for the company and doing your best to honor the company’s values. And then say that your boss declines your request. Later, when things get even worse, you ask again and he declines again. This goes on for a while, and even as you ask for smaller and smaller things that any reasonably decent human being would grant, your benevolent boss either refuses to answer you or just declines to give you any breaks. After a while, you’re going to conclude that your boss is a jerk and that the general perceptions of him are mistaken. You’re not going to talk about how he works in mysterious ways or has your best interests at heart. He’s negligent or cold-hearted at worst and simply a capitalist at best. And he’s human, in any case, with his own interests to protect.

So then if you won’t give this guy a free pass and go on raving about what a good guy he is (and if you say you would, I charge you with lying to yourself), why would you give a supposedly omnibenevolent god a free pass for being equally (or more) negligent? It’s a cop out to allow that God works in mysterious ways when your reasonable prayers go unanswered and to give him credit for being omnibenevolent and merciful when things happen that make it seem as if your prayers have been answered. It’s a sort of cognitive dissonance to allow this, and I can’t understand it.

Of course, prayer is very problematic anyway. If one can influence an omnipotent, omniscient god through prayer, that god’s judgment would seem to be in question. That is, by asking for something, you’re in effect undermining the god’s omnipotence and omniscience and omnibenevolence by suggesting that you can offer some direction. To do this suggests that you’re not convinced of the god’s omni-anything and thus raises the question of why you’re appealing to the god in the first place. And on the other side, if you trust your god’s judgment and figure he’ll do what he wants anyway, then what’s the point of prayer? If you don’t believe your prayer can actually influence your god, why bother praying?

The fact is that prayer is really just a literary form that’s been passed down for thousands of years. It’s well-documented. First a direct address (“Our father, who art in Heaven”). Then some praise and grovelling (“Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in Heaven.”). This is a transparent appeal to the god’s vanity and has always struck me as sort of a sycophantic trick that really sort of insults the god’s intelligence, though flattery, as they say, will apparently get you everywhere. After you’ve got the god reeling from your flattery, you tuck in your request (“Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil.”). Finally, you close with some solemn word and often more praise and hallowing (“Amen” or “In your holy and gracious name, Amen”). This form appears across at least western religious history and seems to me to reflect a broader religious ritual that people have been lulled through tradition into enacting more than a real attempt at communication with any god.

At any rate, it seems to me that given all the bad things that happen in the world and all the praying that gets done asking for reprieve from bad things, either prayer fails miserably and is, as I’ve proposed, an empty ritual, or the various gods are really lying down on the job. Neither proposition is an especially glowing recommendation for prayer or for religion.

I got an email today from a random person who’s on to my atheism. Since I’m trying to be a little more public about my atheism lately (not with the intention of converting anybody but with the intention of just letting the few who read me in on the fact that atheists aren’t necessarily evil and sad), I’m posting the email and my reply here.

The email:

I feel truely sorry for you. Someday I hope you will see the light of Jesus Christ. I just wonder, according to your athiest beileves, What is the point of your existence? Do you have one? According to athiest beileves it is just to simply pass on your genetic material and die is it not? Think about it.

Now also think, that doesnt sound like a very good reason to be alive does it? What are you helping, what are you doing to help humanity, what exists after death? according to you, nothing. That beileve is truely foolish because that would mean as soon as you have children, your point of existence is over, and you have no reason to live anymore. Now truely think about this, doesnt being athiest sound stupid? oh well why even bother, when you die you’ll see who was right. hopefully atleast you lived your life rightously and saw god just before you died and will atleast goto purgatory.

My reply:

Hi, <name omitted>. Please don’t feel sorry for me. I’m a happy man with a loving family and a full life. And to top it all off, I’m unemcumbered by the guilt that religion inspires in many.

As a humanist, I believe the value of human life trumps any fictional gods. Accordingly, I do plenty of things to help humanity. For example, I’ve recently been volunteering to help people displaced by Hurricane Katrina who have been sent to my city. I also donated a substantial sum of money to my local Red Cross to help with the effort. I did all of this not because I was trying to be a sycophant to a god whom I’m told I should fear but because I value human life and dignity and wish to help others in trouble.

Sure, I believe there’s nothing after I die, and I’m fine with that. It’ll stink for those who love me when I die, but I’ll be dead and won’t miss a thing. I’m also not hung up on there being a point to life. Now that I’ve got a child, a large part of my purpose is to enjoy watching her grow up. It’s a very fulfilling purpose, and it’s one I’ve discovered on my own rather than one I feel I have to live up to or else face an eternity of pain designed by a god I’m supposed to believe is benevolent. If you ask me, being religious sounds much more stupid than atheism when you boil it down to contradictions like that.

Of course, I’m happy to acknowledge that religion means something to many people, and so I wouldn’t for the world interfere with anyone’s inclination to be religious. Religion I suspect is as fulfilling to many as my family and my accomplishments are to me, and I’m happy those people have found something that brings them comfort and happiness. What they’ve found just isn’t my bag. And as long as they don’t try to force their views on me (and I certainly don’t try to force mine on others), I’m pleased as punch to stick to a “live and let live” philosophy.

I’m not interested in any sort of debate. Please don’t expect me to engage further. I did want to assure you that atheists don’t sit around and gnash their teeth and wail in pain all day. We’re as happy and fulfilled on average as the religious population is on average. Best wishes to you,

I got an email today from a kid doing some research for a religion course at his school. He wanted me to answer six questions, and I thought I’d post my answers here as well because they state in a nutshell some of the reasons religion’s not my cup of tea. His questions appear in bold print and my answers immediately follow each question.

1. Do you believe in god or gods?

No, I don’t believe in any god.

2. Why or why not?

One of the big reasons people believe in gods is because they (gods) are thought to give an adequate explanation of how we came into existence. People are inclined to think it self-evident that everything must have a creator (else how did it get here). So they cite an omnipotent god as the creator of everything and consider the problem solved. But it’s not solved. Who created their god? And who created their god’s creator? There’s no satisfactory way to answer the question. I’m content just to acknowledge that we don’t yet understand how we got here.

Other people have spiritual needs that believing in a god fills. I simply don’t have these needs, or at any rate, I don’t find that believing in a god helps to satisfy them for me, though I can see how religion might fill a void for many people.

3. What is this god or gods like that you believe or do not believe in?

I believe in no gods. When evangelical Christians question my atheism (they’re the only ones who seem to be greatly bothered by it), I’m always happy to respond that I believe in just one less god than they do. As I don’t believe any god exists, I’m at a loss to describe what they’re like. They’re like nothing because they don’t exist!

4. How do you know?

Call it an educated guess. I’ve never seen evidence that I think suggests that there’s any god. I disbelieve in gods for the same reasons I suspect we all disbelieve in invisible pink unicorns: There’s simply no objective evidence to suggest that they exist. I don’t know that gods don’t exist; I just think it’s highly improbable. Similarly, there’s no way for me to know for sure that invisible pink unicorns don’t exist; I just haven’t seen any compelling reason to think that they might exist, and I’m happy to assert, until I’m proven wrong, that they don’t exist.

5. Does the existence of god or gods make any difference? Explain.

This is kind of a weird question, and I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking. If I think there are no gods and the Judeo-Christian god does in fact exist and behave as described in the Bible, I suppose it’ll make a difference because I’ll find myself in Hell when I die instead of just beind dead. But that’s not a proposition I can really test right now, so there’s not really any way for me to posit that the existence (or lack of existence) of gods makes any difference.

Let me approach this from a different angle, though. I don’t think the existence of gods makes any difference with respect to morality. I believe things are moral or not moral independently of any law or proposed deity. Whether or not there was a god, I’d think certain things were wrong, and I’d think it whether the god(s) proclaimed them wrong or not. So in that sense, the existence of gods makes no difference to me.

6. Imagine that you have been given an opportunity to interview god. What questions would you ask?

I don’t believe in god, so this is sort of an irrelevant question. I’ll play along for a minute, though, and pretend that the Judeo-Christian god exists and that I could interview him. I’d probably ask something like this: Given that you’re all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing, how do you account for pain (physical and emotional), disease (spina bifida in innocent babies, for example), human cruelty, aging, death, all manner of things that are simply irreconcileable with an all-loving, all-powerful god? These things don’t seem very loving at all coming from an entity with the power to revoke them.