I Am The Blog

American Freethought — Bill Mahr…and me!

Well, apparently July is the month for my comments to be read on podcasts! On American Freethought , hosted by John Snider and David Driscoll, they read some comments I had left them as their first feedback in episode 59 . This is an episode which also featured a review of Bill Mahr ‘s stand-up tour (who coincidentally I just saw on Comedy Central last night!).

It sounds like Mahr’s current tour does definitely spend some time on religious topics, but according to David Driscoll, Mahr said he leaves this mostly left at the end so that people who might be offended at such things at least see the rest of his show before walking out! (I don’t know if that’s a joke or if Mahr’s being [half-]serious about it). I’ve never seen him in person, but I have been a fan of Mahr’s since back in his Politically Incorrect days, and long before I was even close to considering myself an atheist. Based on David Driscoll’s review, it sounds like he puts on a very good show about a variety of political, social, and religious topics. Hopefully I’ll get to see it some time.

The rest of the podcast focused mostly on listener emails. My feedback, which I had left on the American Freethought Atheist Nexus page, was about an in-depth interview they had done in episode 58 with author Robert Wright . John Snider’s review of Wright’s book The Evolution of God can be found here . In a nutshell, the book is about how worldly forces (economy, politics, etc.), as opposed to divine inspiration, shaped the Abrahamic religions.

I haven’t read the book, but based on the review and the author’s comments in the interview, it seems like while the author details clearly non-theistic reasons for the development of religion, he still believes in a “greater purpose”. Frustratingly, he won’t explain what this means (is it supernatural? destiny? what?!?). This is what my comments focused on. John Snider had done a really good job of trying to pinpoint him on this as well as defending the atheist community against some preconceptions Wright seems to have. In case you’re interested, my comment is the first one that was read, from “anonymous” (because my Atheist Nexus page is under my pseudonym I Am The Blog and not my real name.)

I’d better start doing reviews of other podcasts, otherwise people will think I only care about shows that mention my comments (as I mentioned before, Dogma Free America was also nice enough to read my email on their most recent episode ). I’ve left comments for a number of shows via different media, so I guess it’s just a coincidence that my comments appeared twice in two weeks.

If you haven’t yet, I highly urge you to check out American Freethought , which is already in my links section on my website. Unlike Dogma Free America , which focuses on dogma- and atheist-related news events from around the world (with a humorous twist), American Freethought focuses mainly on interviews with notable people in the world of freethought and religion, as well as other occasional features such as “Holey Scripture” (featuring not-so-flattering Bible verses) and reports on freethought events around the country.

I Am The Blog — as heard on Dogma Free America!

I listened to the most recent episode of Dogma Free America last night, and was shocked to hear an email I had sent in read on the air!! (If you can say "on the air" for a podcast.)

Here’s a link to Episode 94 , which features among other more important things, my email at the end. Since I sent it in anonymously as "I Am the Blog" and not under my real name (since I’m still not "out" as an atheist yet), I just assumed it would not be read. My email was about the news story Dogma Free America had reported on in Episode 93 about whether or not having a living area without motion-sensor lights was a human right for strict observers of the Sabbath (which I referenced to briefly in a previous blog post ).

As I mentioned in my links section on my main website, Dogma Free America (hosted by Rich Orman ) is one of my favorite podcasts because it combines humor with serious commentary about almost-too-crazy-to-be-true news stories related to religion. The often-used tagline "Because dogma makes you crazy" is a good indication of what the show is about.

If you have not done so yet, be sure to check out Dogma Free America.

P.S. The part of my email which was not read (because as with some of my posts, my email was fairly long!) had to do with a discussion from an earlier podcast on whether or not Dogma Free America should be listened to at 2x speed (which is now possible on iPhones). In a nutshell, I said I thought this was okay provided that you listen to the most important parts of the show (the intro, the funny accents Rich does, and "Jackass of the Week") at regular speed.

Just imagine…

While I’m working on trying to convert my old posts, and a new post that I probably won’t finish tonight, here’s my "Just imagine… " post, my most-viewed post from my Xanga blog. It talks about the Steve Well’s (from Skeptic’s Annotated Bible fame) proposed death total for people God is said to have killed in the Bible. Since it sums up pretty well some of my feelings on God and is also a big reason I decided to expand my website, it’s an appropriate post that I hope you enjoy.

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Imagine for a second that an insane bloodthirsty maniac decides he is going to kill the entire population of the Earth. He’s a whiz at computers and breaks into the US Defense Department’s computers and gains access to the United States’ vast nuclear arsenal (hey, if Matthew Broderick can do it in WarGames, so can he).

To be thorough (and dramatic), our madman decides to start at the bottom of the list of countries in the world and work his way up one-by-one. (He uses Wikipedia’s list of countries and self-governing territories as a source because like many computer-savvy people, he’s a huge fan of Wikipedia.) He is able to launch nuclear weapons against the 41 least populous places in the world before he is found and his killing spree is stopped. The entire populations of these countries and territories either die immediately or in short order due to the nuclear blasts he launched.

Now, who do you think will have killed more people: this crazy mass-murderer, or the God of the Bible? If you said the insane madman, you’d be wrong. According to Wikipedia (as of Jan 5 2009), the 41 least populous countries or self-governed states have a combined population of 2,211,501 people. That’s a lot of people. But according to the Bible, God killed at least 2,301,417 people. Steve Wells, the author of the Skeptics Annotated Bible, did the calculations in his blog Dwindling in Unbelief, but the numbers come directly from the Bible itself. The figure includes people that God killed personally, plus ones he commanded or sanctioned the death of in the Bible. It only includes incidents for which death totals are given in the Bible. So God outdoes our fictional mass-murderer by almost 100,000 people!

But wait, you protest. The nuclear fallout from our imaginary madman would certainly kill millions more, so he still is the top killer. Well, it turns out that God has also killed millions more. The 2,301,417 people Steve Wells includes in his total of God killings are just the ones for which figures are given in the Bible. If we include estimates for all the times God kills or sanctions a killing when the Bible doesn’t even bother to tally the dead, Steve arrives at a much larger figure: 33,280,237. Our fictional madman would have to kill the inhabitants of Wikipedia’s 80 least populous places in the world to match this total (either by nuclear bomb, or some other ingenious scheme).

You may argue with some of the estimates Steve gives (who besides God would know how many people actually died in the Flood, for example), but since the Bible doesn’t think it’s important enough to mention how many people died in these massacres, Steve had to come up with his own estimates. He gives his reasons behind the numbers if you follow the links. Some are more exact estimates than others. But even if he’s a few million off, that’s still an amazing amount of killing for an entity many Christians believe is a loving God who is the source of all morality.

To get an idea of just how many people the Bible says God killed, according to the conservative total (2.3 million), the following 41 countries or self-governing territories could all have their inhabitants wiped off the face of the Earth and still not equal the killings God is credited with in the Bible: São Tomé and Príncipe, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, U.S. Virgin Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Grenada, Aruba, Tonga, Kiribati, Jersey, Seychelles, Antigua and Barbuda, Northern Mariana Islands, Andorra, Isle of Man, Dominica, American Samoa, Guernsey, Bermuda, Marshall Islands, Greenland, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Faroe Islands, Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Gibraltar, Turks and Caicos Islands, British Virgin Islands, Cook Islands, Palau, Anguilla, Tuvalu, Nauru, Saint Helena, Montserrat, Falkland Islands, Niue, Tokelau, Vatican City, Pitcairn Islands.

If we take Steve Well’s estimated total of over 33 million, here’s the list of places that could all have their entire populations slaughtered without reaching God’s glorious total: Slovenia, Lesotho, Botswana, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Estonia, Trinidad and Tobago, Gabon, Mauritius, East Timor, Swaziland, Qatar, Djibouti, Fiji, Cyprus, Bahrain, Guyana, Comoros, Bhutan, Montenegro, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Solomon Islands, Luxembourg, Western Sahara, Suriname, Malta, Brunei, Bahamas, Iceland, Maldives, Barbados, Belize, Vanuatu, Netherlands Antilles, Samoa, Guam, Saint Lucia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, U.S. Virgin Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Grenada, Aruba, Tonga, Kiribati, Jersey, Seychelles, Antigua and Barbuda, Northern Mariana Islands, Andorra, Isle of Man, Dominica, American Samoa, Guernsey, Bermuda, Marshall Islands, Greenland, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Faroe Islands, Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Gibraltar, Turks and Caicos Islands, British Virgin Islands, Cook Islands, Palau, Anguilla, Tuvalu, Nauru, Saint Helena, Montserrat, Falkland Islands, Niue, Tokelau, Vatican City, Pitcairn Islands

Sure, if you’re like me and most people, you probably don’t recognize or know a lot about some of these places, but certainly you recognize a good number of them. But in case a list of random countries don’t hit home, maybe a few other examples might help:

• The entire region/continent of Oceania has around 30 million people, according to Wikipedia. If our crazy murderer could just make Australia, New Zealand, and the population of most of the Pacific Islands die overnight, that would still be less than how many lives God took in the Bible.

• The top 20 cities in the US could have their entire population croak on the spot (32.4 million people in all), and God’s total would still be almost 1 million more.

• According to Wikipedia, 185 countries/territories out of the 221 (about 4 out of 5) in the world have a population of less than 33 million people. If our madman could randomly take any one of these countries and just kill all of its inhabitants with a snap, he would likely have killed less people than the biblical God killed.

• With those odds, he could even just pick to destroy any one country in the world at random and he’d have about a 4 out of 5 chance of killing less people than God did in the Bible.

• The Bible was written (primarily) in Hebrew and Greek. God has killed more than the current populations of Israel and Greece combined (plus you can easily throw a country like Cuba or Belgium in for good measure).

• The Beach Boys (or what’s left of them) could go butcher all the inhabitants of the places they mention in the song Kokomo, and it would only add up to around 4.7 million people. They could also go ahead and easily bump off any tourists who might be there at the time, too, and still fall far shy of God’s 33+ million estimated deaths.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. The Bible depicts a God with the blood of millions of people on his hands. Is this a good model for us or our children?

Fortunately, I have good news. Besides being mass-murders, our insane bloodthirsty maniac and our insane bloodthirsty God have one other thing in common: they’re both fictional. Unfortunately, at least some of the people in the Bible probably did die because people thought God wanted them to do it. Not to mention the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch-burning, and countless other cases where people have killed in the name of God. Or other deaths some people have recently attributed to God (Katrina, etc.). Or all the future deaths certainly still to committed in God’s name.

Couldn’t an all-powerful, all-knowing God and his followers think of a better way to get things done than death? Instead of thinking of all this senseless killing, wouldn’t it be nice to imagine a world without God? Just imagine…

Posted 1/5/2009 10:12 AM – 419 Views

Science v. Religion

I read a post on Pharyngula (famous scientist PZ Myers’ blog) about the debate over whether science and religion (specifically Christianity) are compatible. I recommend reading it.

He cites a quote by J.B.S. Haldane which I think makes sense.

"My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world."

So after reading PZ Myers’ blog and this quote, here’s what I take out of it:

• Scientists have to assume a natural world to find truth.
• Scientists, in their role as scientists, can’t be religious by definition.
• Believers in religion assume a supernatural world to find truth.
• Since we live in a natural world, believers either must deny proofs in the natural world (such as fossils, etc.) to hold onto their religious beliefs, or else try to use science to confirm parts of their religious beliefs.
• If a scientist is a believer, they basically have to hang up their science hat to believe in the supernatural.

So if some scientists go out and try to claim religion and science are compatible, they are not being completely forthcoming, or at least aren’t being honest with themselves.

At best, you can say they are both valid but completely separate things (as Steven Jay Gould did). PZ Myers says for example that science doesn’t cover morality, although he says and I agree that religion doesn’t do that good of a job a this as well. You can be a scientist as a profession, but personally or morally a Christian. But you can’t use religion as a scientist, you can only use science as a religionist. You could argue that when you use science as a religionist, you actually are hanging up your religion hat. You are looking away from your religion and looking at the natural natural world to confirm it, which is what science is about.

Towards the end of his post, PZ Myers says:

"Accommodationists are a problem not because accommodation is bad, but because they are pushing for the wrong kind of accommodation. Science doesn’t need to conform, religion does. Religion demands a special kind of privilege in these discussions because if we actually get down to assessing views fairly and objectively, on the basis of what works, it fails."

Some interesting things to consider.

Revelation, according to The Brick Testament

The Brick Testament has recently posted the end of their coverage of the Book of Revelation . If you’re not familiar with the Brick Testament, you should definitely check it out. It tells the stories from the Bible using Legos (I kid you not). Here’s a picture of all of the non-believers burning in hell forever.

Source

What’s funny and/or sad is that they take the passages just as they are from the Bible, word-for-word. Occasionally, in a thought bubble, they will put something that isn’t in the text, but the text itself is directly underneath the images. With Revelation, I think the Brick Testament does an excellent job of showing all of these (perhaps literally) insane images that the author thought of and exposing them for the horrid, hate-filled foolishness they are.

I think if more people read The Brick Testament, they would realize how ridiculous, violent, and ungodly the Bible really is. I highly recommend it, and am going to add it to my humor and Bible links on my website.

Generation Gap includes differences on religion

Found this news story this morning: "Study finds widening generation gap in US ". According to the article, a Pew Research Study shows about 8 in 10 people believe there’s a "major difference" in the way younger and older people view the world. Among the differences, religion:

"Religion is a far bigger part of the lives of older adults. About two-thirds of people 65 and older said religion is very important to them, compared with just over half of those 30 to 49 and 44 percent of people 18 to 29. In addition, among adults 65 and older, one-third said religion has grown more important to them over the course of their lives, while 4 percent said it has become less important and 60 percent said it has stayed the same."

Here’s the report from the Pew Research Center, which covers other things such as technology as well. The younger you are, the less religion is important to you, according to the chart from the report. Less than half of 18-29 year olds say that religion is "very important," which is a promising sign for the Freethought movement I think.

What would be interesting is to see in 5 or 10 years, how the chart stacks up. Whether people just generally get more religious as they get older, or if it’s a new trend that will hold up as people get older (or perhaps somewhere in-between).

First post in new blog

This is my first post to test out the new system (with WordPress). Everything seems to be up and running, more or less as planned. I will be adding more to the site over the next few days, as well as (hopefully) converting my Xanga blog to the new format.

Please check back soon!