Recently a Christian friend said, when I expressed skepticism about the healing power of prayer, "I have directly experienced two instances where somebody was healed through prayer, so I know it happens."
He gave me the details. One was a girl who was unable to walk. One session of prayer at church, and she walked normally. The other was a young man with a terrible eye injury. My friend (a minister) prayed over him during church services, and the next day his eye was normal.
All stories I have heard of healing through faith suffer from the logical fallacy called "post hoc ergo propter hoc" (Latin for "after this, therefore because of this"), that is, the fallacy of assuming that because event A was followed by event B, A was the cause (or even the only possible cause) of B. Believers in faith healing assume (illogically) that because prayer was followed by healing, the prayer was the cause (through God, of course) of the recovery. This belief is encouraged when there appears to be no natural explanation for the recovery.
This is also an example of another logical fallacy, called "the false dilemma," which asserts that one must choose between only two explanations for something, when other possible explanations exist. When a remarkable recovery cannot be easily explained by doctors, this fallacy then asserts that one must accept the only other offered explanation (prayer) as the correct explanation. This ignores the possibility (and likelihood) that the recovery is simply unexplainable. It also ignores the fact that many people, including atheists, experience remarkable and unusual recoveries without prayer at all - recoveries which are equally puzzling to doctors. Remember that even placebos sometimes have a healing effect.
A woman in my family who has been atheist for many years was diagnosed in her early 20s with chronic kidney disease, with only 3% of one kidney functioning, and 10% of the other. She was given only a few years to live. She is now in her late 60s, in generally good health, her remaining kidneys functioning satisfactorily. The doctors have no explanation for it. Notice that if the family had been believers in the power of prayer, we would have been on our knees daily right after the diagnosis, begging God for her survival. And today we would be crediting prayer (and the God who caused her disease in the first place) with her good health.
Notice that healings that are attributed to prayer are always the kind of health problem that sometimes, and perhaps only rarely, improve with no treatment. Prayer never seems to work in the case of amputated limbs, or actual death. And it is odd that even devout Christians seek professional medical treatment, even though they are promised by their god that they can cure the sick by faith (presumably by faith alone). Mark 16:18, James 5:15.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Wrapped Up In Rapture
Well, the day has come and gone. The day that was advertised to be the last day of the world as we know it, May 21, 2011 - advertised in expensive billboards and full-page newspapers ads, personal messages, pamphlets, websites and radio programs. A self-proclaimed prophet or Bible expert in California named Camping had calculated from his study of the Bible that the "Rapture" that many Christians believe in was going to begin with earthquakes about six p.m. on Saturday of the 21st.
So, what happened, Brother Camping? Thousands of people spent millions of their dollars promoting your crazy prophecy, and it was a big fizzle. I hope your face is red and that you are on your knees right now, asking your imaginary God to forgive you for being such a fool and fake.
And for those who actually believed what Rev. Camping was telling you, aren't you just as ashamed? When are you going to stop being so gullible that you believe guys who claim they know what is in God's mind? Don't you have enough sense, when somebody starts saying something like "God says..." or "I know that God wants...", that you say to yourself, "Don't listen to the guy - he's hallucinating." And when are you going to give up trying to use that collection of primitive writings called the Bible as a guide for living or a handbook of the universe?
Here's my message for everybody who expected to be in heaven today: "First, don't be so gullible any more. And second, life is full of disappointments, and this is one of them for you. But cheer up! After all, it's not like it's the end of the world!"
So, what happened, Brother Camping? Thousands of people spent millions of their dollars promoting your crazy prophecy, and it was a big fizzle. I hope your face is red and that you are on your knees right now, asking your imaginary God to forgive you for being such a fool and fake.
And for those who actually believed what Rev. Camping was telling you, aren't you just as ashamed? When are you going to stop being so gullible that you believe guys who claim they know what is in God's mind? Don't you have enough sense, when somebody starts saying something like "God says..." or "I know that God wants...", that you say to yourself, "Don't listen to the guy - he's hallucinating." And when are you going to give up trying to use that collection of primitive writings called the Bible as a guide for living or a handbook of the universe?
Here's my message for everybody who expected to be in heaven today: "First, don't be so gullible any more. And second, life is full of disappointments, and this is one of them for you. But cheer up! After all, it's not like it's the end of the world!"
Saturday, April 30, 2011
About Faith
Religious people, especially religious leaders, talk a lot about "faith." They try to tell us that it's a good thing. "Have faith!" they say. They even tell us that it's the best way to believe (they even say "to know") certain things. Like whether Jesus died for your sins, or whether the gospel stories are true, or whether Jesus rose from the dead.
Actually, it's the ONLY way you can believe some of the things that religion wants you to believe. But is that a good thing?
"Faith" is also the only way you can believe things that aren't true. It's the only way you can believe in fairies, or Santa Claus, or that the earth is hollow or flat. Yes, there are people who fervently believe such things. And they do it using faith.
As Mark Twain said, "Faith is believin' in things you know ain't so." Or, more precisely, things that you SHOULD know ain't so, if you took the time to think and do some research. And even the Bible tells us that we should check everything out and only keep whatever passes the test (Saint Paul, I Thessalonians 5:21).
There are a lot of religious claims that you cannot, by the nature of things, check out. You cannot check whether God really doesn't want you to eat pork, or to work on the Sabbath. No way can you find out whether Uncle Jack really is in hell, or whether Grandma is really in heaven with the angels. But we have good ways of finding out whether the earth is only a few thousand years old, or whether there were no human beings until about six thousand years ago, or whether a great flood covered the entire earth a few thousand years ago. It's foolish to rely on "faith" to deny the facts of reality.
"Faith" is really just a nicer-sounding word for "credulity" or "gullibility." Christians tell you, "If you have enough faith, you can believe that Jesus died for your sins, that he rose from the dead, that if you have that faith, and believe that, and regularly partake of the tokens of his body and his blood, you can look forward to being with him forever in heaven."
Here's the translation: "If you are gullible enough, you can believe that the cruel death of an Jewish rabbi two thousand years ago relieves your guilt for anything you've done wrong, that this rabbi came back to life after dying, and if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood, you will have a wonderful life, but only after you're really dead. But you have to be gullible enough, the more gullible the better!"
"Faith" is the same thing that swindlers and conmen use to get money out of people. "Believe me, and you will get rich - eventually, some day!" How is the swindler any different from the preacher or the priest? The only difference is that most swindlers do know that they are lying. Many preachers and priests are just as much gullible victims as most believers. But they cannot be excused. They should have been less gullible themselves.
Actually, it's the ONLY way you can believe some of the things that religion wants you to believe. But is that a good thing?
"Faith" is also the only way you can believe things that aren't true. It's the only way you can believe in fairies, or Santa Claus, or that the earth is hollow or flat. Yes, there are people who fervently believe such things. And they do it using faith.
As Mark Twain said, "Faith is believin' in things you know ain't so." Or, more precisely, things that you SHOULD know ain't so, if you took the time to think and do some research. And even the Bible tells us that we should check everything out and only keep whatever passes the test (Saint Paul, I Thessalonians 5:21).
There are a lot of religious claims that you cannot, by the nature of things, check out. You cannot check whether God really doesn't want you to eat pork, or to work on the Sabbath. No way can you find out whether Uncle Jack really is in hell, or whether Grandma is really in heaven with the angels. But we have good ways of finding out whether the earth is only a few thousand years old, or whether there were no human beings until about six thousand years ago, or whether a great flood covered the entire earth a few thousand years ago. It's foolish to rely on "faith" to deny the facts of reality.
"Faith" is really just a nicer-sounding word for "credulity" or "gullibility." Christians tell you, "If you have enough faith, you can believe that Jesus died for your sins, that he rose from the dead, that if you have that faith, and believe that, and regularly partake of the tokens of his body and his blood, you can look forward to being with him forever in heaven."
Here's the translation: "If you are gullible enough, you can believe that the cruel death of an Jewish rabbi two thousand years ago relieves your guilt for anything you've done wrong, that this rabbi came back to life after dying, and if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood, you will have a wonderful life, but only after you're really dead. But you have to be gullible enough, the more gullible the better!"
"Faith" is the same thing that swindlers and conmen use to get money out of people. "Believe me, and you will get rich - eventually, some day!" How is the swindler any different from the preacher or the priest? The only difference is that most swindlers do know that they are lying. Many preachers and priests are just as much gullible victims as most believers. But they cannot be excused. They should have been less gullible themselves.
Friday, April 29, 2011
About That Resurrection
At Easter Christians celebrate the resurrection of the man-god Jesus from the dead. The man whom the Romans executed for treason - claiming that he would establish a Jewish "kingdom of God" and thus implicitly overthrow the Roman rule of Palestine - supposedly came back to life after lying dead in a tomb for two nights (according to the Gospels) or three nights (according to Paul). And then he rose visibly into heaven, just like the Emperor Augustus had done (but Jesus didn't need a chariot like the Roman did).
What evidence is there that Jesus really came back to life? The evidence is pretty slim, and convincing only to Christians.
First of all, there is no contemporary evidence of the resurrection at all. None. That is, there is no documentation, no writing from the time of the supposed events that even mentions them. The only accounts are much, much later. Are they reliable? Are they even believable?
Paul was writing about 25 or 30 years after the crucifixion, and he was admittedly not there. He writes nothing else about Jesus' life or even his teachings. He only reports (based on what?) that Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead. He says that 500 people saw the resurrected Jesus, but he gives no details of that, and nobody else reports this astonishing event. He claims that Jesus came to him in a vision, but like the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, he can't get the details right every time he tells it (in one version his companions heard the voice but saw nothing, in another they saw the vision but heard nothing).
None of the gospel writers were actually there. Whatever their identities (many scholars doubt that the real authors were the men whose names are attached to them), they were writing several decades after the events, and their accounts of those Easter week events are moving, but contradictory. Their purpose in writing is propaganda, and like all propagandists, they do not hesitate to embellish, invent, and sensationalize. Any attorney cross-examining them would tear their "testimony" to shreds. Conclusion: not reliable.
There is no doubt that five decades after Jesus' death there were many who believed that he had risen from the dead. Is that any kind of reliable evidence? Hardly. People - especially superstitious people (and that was certainly a superstitious age, when even well-educated people believed in magic and miracles) - believe all kinds of things for which there is no evidence. Peddlers of religion and quack medicine call this "faith" and if they can convince someone that "faith" is a good thing, they have found a buyer.
What are the facts? 1. People who are dead don't come back to life, except in fairy tales and legends (Osiris, Orpheus, Mithras, etc.). 2. People will believe any absurd thing, if you promise them something (like "you too can come back to life, if you just believe that Jesus did!"). Don't fall for it!
What evidence is there that Jesus really came back to life? The evidence is pretty slim, and convincing only to Christians.
First of all, there is no contemporary evidence of the resurrection at all. None. That is, there is no documentation, no writing from the time of the supposed events that even mentions them. The only accounts are much, much later. Are they reliable? Are they even believable?
Paul was writing about 25 or 30 years after the crucifixion, and he was admittedly not there. He writes nothing else about Jesus' life or even his teachings. He only reports (based on what?) that Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead. He says that 500 people saw the resurrected Jesus, but he gives no details of that, and nobody else reports this astonishing event. He claims that Jesus came to him in a vision, but like the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, he can't get the details right every time he tells it (in one version his companions heard the voice but saw nothing, in another they saw the vision but heard nothing).
None of the gospel writers were actually there. Whatever their identities (many scholars doubt that the real authors were the men whose names are attached to them), they were writing several decades after the events, and their accounts of those Easter week events are moving, but contradictory. Their purpose in writing is propaganda, and like all propagandists, they do not hesitate to embellish, invent, and sensationalize. Any attorney cross-examining them would tear their "testimony" to shreds. Conclusion: not reliable.
There is no doubt that five decades after Jesus' death there were many who believed that he had risen from the dead. Is that any kind of reliable evidence? Hardly. People - especially superstitious people (and that was certainly a superstitious age, when even well-educated people believed in magic and miracles) - believe all kinds of things for which there is no evidence. Peddlers of religion and quack medicine call this "faith" and if they can convince someone that "faith" is a good thing, they have found a buyer.
What are the facts? 1. People who are dead don't come back to life, except in fairy tales and legends (Osiris, Orpheus, Mithras, etc.). 2. People will believe any absurd thing, if you promise them something (like "you too can come back to life, if you just believe that Jesus did!"). Don't fall for it!
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