Whose Grace Is It, Anyway?

I never liked the Book of Job--God and Satan make a bet and Satan gets to kill all of Job's children, ruins him financially and physically, and generally makes his life a living, well, hell as a test. In the end, he gets a new family for being so pious--good for him, not so great for his first, now dead, kids. C'mon, how many who suffer truly think it'll all work out (in this world) just like in Job? And what kind of sadistic god would even allow that? Jeez, God and Satan in this story remind me of the rich guys in Trading Places, who bet a dollar that the rich white guy (played by Dan Akroyd) will turn to crime if he's financially ruined and the poor black guy (played by Eddie Murphy) will  become an upstanding citizen if he's just given a financial break.

And what kind of lesson does it teach others? The old "There but for the grace.... go I?"
Here's what I think really happens:

Whose Grace Is It, Anyway? 

“There but for the grace of God go I,”

Remarks the true believer

Thinking he’s been spared a similar fate—

A veritable religious overachiever.

But if there is a god and he does intervene

Then what of the pious left forlorn?

Abandoned so others can quip their quip?

O now, how he wishes he was never re-born.

By Skepticlese

Don't Do the Crime if You Can't Get to Church On Time

Click to enlarge

Looks like the town of Bay Minette, Alabama (population 7,726) has officially gone off the deep end. Seems they've created Operation Restore Our Community (or Operation ROC for short--a thinly veiled reference to the "Rock" of ages, I'm sure), in which convicted msidemeanants can receive a mandatory year's worth of church-going in lieu of jail time. The ACLU, naturally, has served the town officials with notice that they are off their ROC-kers, constiutionally speaking. You can find the AP's story, via the Washington Post, here.

Like the ACLU, I'm all for alternative sentencing programs, particularly for non-violent first offenders and such. But c'mon...church!?! Apparently there are some 56 congregations participating in the effort. Who selected them? Is it open to any "church" that wants to participate or does it have to be a government-sanctioned ("Oops, did we say 'government-sanctioned?'") church? What if it's the Church of Satanic Worship and Human Sacrifice? Who gets to decide if the church is okay by them? Them, of course...the gub'ment.

Even if they could get over the impossibly high hurdle the First Amendment has for this kind of silliness, why on earth would you give them such a choice? "Hmm, lessee..singing 'How Great Thou Art' and getting free pot-luck lunches after services, or, sharing a cell with Billy Joe Bob, the ax-murdering necrophiliac? Okay, you twisted my arm. Church it is."

Do they seriously think someone will get religion and reform themselves or will offenders simply scam the system? Even the Police Chief recognized it was an easy choice for an offender--and the only reason he/they are offering it up is because they believe the offenders can be converted to a pious, Christian lifestyle (i.e., they are sanctioning as government officials their religious beliefs--classic establishment problem).  I could go on, but why bother?  The ACLU should chalk this one up in the win column now. In the meantime, if you intend to break the law in Bay Minette, dust off your hymnal first, 'cause you know the saying: "Don't do the crime if you can't get to church on time."

In the Trenches--Virginia ACLU Takes On Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors' Prayers

The ACLU of Virginia sued the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors for opening its sessions with sectarian prayers. These prayers were decidedly Christian in form and substance--they didn't just cross the line into establishment of religion realm, they ran over the line, trampled it and kicked dirt on it with their hind quarters like so many canines leaving their droppings behind them. As a former resident of that state and with roots that run even deeper through those bucolic Appalachian hills, I say "Kick ass, ACLU!"


And while I'd rather see NO PRAYER AT ALL, since even that smacks of establishment, at least the ACLU is arguing that the Board's actions have to bear some resemblance to a nonsectarian invocation of blessing from some anonymous deity and not the more specific, singular belief of the county's Board members who, ignoring the beliefs of anyone else, were really just invoking the spiritual assistance of that most revered of Christian deities, the namesake himself: Jesus Christ. 


It's not that I'm against government trying their damnedest to help constituents any way they can--even if it means invoking the assistance of a deity or two; it's just that they were so gosh darn Christian about the whole thing. If I really wanted to help my constituents, I suppose I'd invoke every deity I might be aware of, particularly in "these hard economic times."  After all, I might as well hedge my bets--some deities are probably more astute at public administration than others. 


It's good to remember the battles in the trenches done by the likes of the folks at the ACLU--fighting every day to make sure you and I can get up on our virtual soapboxes and make fools of ourselves, even if no one else is listening (or reading). 


I'd say "God bless 'em," if I believed in such stuff. Instead I'll hold up my glass (now nearly empty) and say "Iechyd Dda," "На здоровье," "L'Chayyim," "Skål," "Salute," "بصحتك," or in good 'ol American, "Here's mud in yer eye, ACLU; keep bustin' their balls!"

What the Bible Says About Evolution--A Limerick

A limerick for the ages:

What the Bible Says About Evolution:

There once was a pious man named Noah

Who gathered beasts—from elephant to protozoa.

Two by two they climbed aboard

A boat designed by the Lord,

Except Archaeopteryx…his wife’s new feathery boa.

By Sketpiclese 

click on image to enlarge

White Evangelicals--In Touch with God, Out of Touch with Reality

Scary new poll by the Public Religion Research Institute on beliefs in evolution and climate change. Not surprisingly, evangelicals seem to be the outliers, with the least number of them believing in evolution or in climate change (not just that humans are causing it, but the fact of it generally). 


Even scarier: looking at the numbers of evolution believers (57%--itself frighteningly low), some 38% believe "A supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today," with only slightly more than half (53%) believing humans evolved "due to natural processes such as natural selection." Doing the math, this means only about 30% of respondents believed in natural selection. I suppose if the poll were more detailed we might have been able to drill down on the "guiding hand" belief, but even so, such a belief as described in the poll implies no random mutations and no environmental forces compelling natural selection. 


As for the evangelical-everybody else dichotomy: You can lead a horse to water, but if it doesn't drink, it'll become extinct.

Same story as below, only graphically.

Cogito, Ergo Non Est Deus...or, God is Just a Bit of Indigestion

Seems a study has finally gotten around to establishing the obvious--people who tend to rely more on their intuition tend to believe in a deity more than those who apply "reflective reasoning."  Simply put: people who go with their gut tend to believe in a god more than those who think about it. 

After surveying people about their beliefs, the researchers then had them take a three-question math test. Here's the result summed up nicely by Stephanie Pappas at LiveScience: "Sure enough, people who went with their intuition on the math test were found to be one-and-a-half times more likely to believe in God than those who got all the answers right." (emphasis supplied).

So let's parse that for a second:--those who got all the answers RIGHT were less likely to believe in a god.  The people who got it WRONG were more likely to believe in a god.  The missed obvious lesson: if you think about things more, you tend to get them right. Hmmm...naturally, the researchers didn't highlight this controversial conclusion; they just pointed out that people who don't think a lot tend to believe in a god more than those who actually spend some intellectual capital on the subject.  They simply avoided noting that the ones who gave it some thought turned out to be right.

Now, I've given a lot of thought about whether there's a god, and you probably can guess my conclusion--a bastardized version of devout philospher Descarte's famous line: Cogito, ergo non est deus.  Or, if you prefer the gut analogy, God is just a bit of indigestion.