I received a Facebook solicitation from an old friend who works for a well known faith-based charity. Her organization is putting on a "Walk for Hunger," and she sent out a generic FB request to her friends for contributions. Now, I happen to know, because I looked it up in public tax documents online, that their CEO made something like $360,000 in compensation in 2008 or 2009..

So, troublemaker that I am, I replied to all that I had trouble supporting a charity whose CEO makes almost $400K per year. Got a couple responses, one of which went like this: "The money is for the 'POOR AND HUNGRY' get past that, seek the 'FACE OF CHRIST AND NOT HIS HAND' this is for the good of the poor.."

Avoiding stirring things up further I wisely chose not to reply, but here are 2 responses I was sorely tempted to make:

1. I'd like to focus on the face but it's hard not to be distracted by the giant hand clutching $400,000.

2. But isn't it the hand that's reaching into my pocket?

Your thoughts?

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I don't believe in the biblical Jesus, but you say you do. So why would you happily follow a man who claims to represent Christ and at the same time enriches himself with your hard earned contributions? Here is a man who takes millions in annual salary and lives like a rock star, yet claims to be like Jesus.

He's been flaunting his hypocrisy before your eyes all this time, so please don't act surprised and shocked to find out that he's been railing against homosexuality and fornication while buggering 17-year-old boys. Please. Just don't.

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Have you heard this before? This is the advice often given to Christians who are seeing, perhaps for the first time, widening cracks appearing in the seemingly solid foundation of their faith. It's a neat little admonition that underlies the defensive mechanism inherent in all faiths.

In which other area of life would it be considered prudent to ignore evidence and cling to what the evidence disproves? Of course people do this all the time, but is it ever a good way to navigate life?

I would rather see clearly, even if the view is painful or uncomfortable.

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I had an experience a few days ago that brought to my mind this question. It remains one of the the believer's primary arguments for the existence of God, the idea that, without God, there is nothing to make us act rightly, or against our own self-interest in order to do good. (Bear in mind that, even if this were true, which it is not, it doesn't mean that God exists, only that belief in God makes us do good rather than evil.)

But to my experience. Sitting in a managers' meeting with my boss, we're discussing the impending holiday season and how we should prioritize our team members' vacation schedule preferences. The boss tells us that priority would be given by virtue of seniority. One of the managers asks if that means seniority within the company or within our department. Department is the answer.

So we're going around the table and my boss says that means I have first dibs on vacation schedule since I've been here the longest of the members of my team. Right away I feel that I have to point out that, even though I've been with the company longer, I'd come over to the department shortly after another team member. And that's what I say.

Now, why did I say that? If I'd said nothing, I would have gotten first choice. What happened is, I would have felt bad about allowing the mistake to stand. To do that would literally have made me feel bad. And when I corrected the record, and when the others remarked on that, I literally felt good. Not only that, but I could easily see the advantage to me in showing integrity, which would engender trust, a cooperative spirit and goodwill in my peers and superiors.

What's the point? The idea of keeping quiet made me feel bad, and the idea of speaking up made me feel good. Added to that is the long term benefit of showing myself to have integrity. So I have lots of reasons to be good, and God is unnecessary and irrelevant.

(Believers will no doubt claim that my "conscience" is proof of God's existence all by itself. Why? Evolutionary biology explains it quite well, no need to pull God out of a hat, since cooperation and harmony is better for the thriving of my species than the opposite.)

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Nothing has changed. The Catholic church is still afraid of science, as it should be, since science discovers truth about the reality of the cosmos and the church is wholly invested in mythology.

Watch this Leonard Mlodinow, co-author of "The Grand Design," interview: God is unnecessary...



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Friends, this is one conference you don't want to miss!

Sign up here!

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It should escape no one's notice that the biggest controversy in the news lately involves supposedly peaceful religions tearing at each others throats.

Burning the Quran

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I have a friend at work who was never indoctrinated with Bible stories as a child, and so presents a wonderful opportunity for me to regale her with the ironies of God's love-hate relationship with humanity in general and Israel in particular. For example:

God sees the suffering of the Israelites (as opposed to the more modern appellation, "Israelis") and he hears their cries. The brutal Egyptians are forcing them to make bricks without straw! God feels compassion for them and sends Moses to rescue them. Yay!

After fighting with Pharaoh for a bit, and killing all the firstborn kids of the Egyptians, God gets them loose, and they leave Egypt. Freedom!

Everything's going well for a while, until the Israelites balk at fighting the giants who live where God is telling them to go. God gets pissed at them and vows that every last one of them whom he rescued, except for the two spies who were ready to fight and kill for God, will die in the desert. And they do.

An apologist will say, Oh, but God rescued the race of Israelites, not the specific people who were slaves. Fine. But if he had told those specific people that they would all die in the desert, do you think they would have gone with Moses? I doubt it.

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You've heard it before: There's no incompatibility between religion and science. They just seek to answer different questions. Science asks how; religion asks why.

Wrong.

First, both religion and science seek to describe the nature of reality. Because of this they must overlap and compete in the arena of explanations for what is.

Second, religion does not answer any questions, in any arena, with answers that can be verified, at least not when it proposes supernatural answers. It can only speculate. To say that God created everything is not an answer with any meaning, since this assertion cannot be verified. Scientific hypotheses, on the other hand, can be, and are, tested. They can either be confirmed as valid explanations of reality or disconfirmed.

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It's funny how your take on common Bible stories changes when you free your mind from the constraints of blind faith. Take the parable of the prodigal, or lost, son. As a believer it didn't raise even one of my eyebrows. In fact I've not run across a raised eyebrow concerning this parable in all my life (which is not to say there haven't been any, I'm sure there have been).So now I will point out the things that strike me that never did before.

And He said, A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that is coming to me. And he divided his living to them. And not many days afterward, the younger son gathered all together and went away into a far country. And there he wasted his property, living dissolutely. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land. And he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country. And he sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to fill his belly with the husks that the pigs ate, and no one gave to him. And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father abound in loaves, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before you and am no more worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants. And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before you, and am no more worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, Bring the best robe and put it on him. And put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf here and kill it. And let us eat and be merry, for this my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found. And they began to be merry. (Luke 15:11-24)

The young man decides to leave his father's house and set off on his own. What's wrong with that? Is there something about leaving home and trying to make it on your own that's worthy of disdain?

The father considered the son "dead" while he was gone. Why? There's something creepy about a parent who considers a son or daughter dead simply because they strike out on their own.

The son only chose to return because he ran out of money and got hungry. He crafted a fake-humble statement to get back into Dad's good graces. I guess he knew Dad couldn't resist self-abasement.

The son demonstrated his lack of character by blowing his inheritance on sex, drugs and rock-n-roll (or the ancient equivalent). Should not some of the blame for this fall on the father for how he raised him? And when the son returned he faced no consequences for his stupidity. Had he been spoiled? Where was the tough love?

What about you? Does the story raise any questions in your mind?

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The god of the gaps gets squeezed out of another comfy spot. Once again science and the laws of physics are sufficient to explain natural phenomena, including the Big Bang.

Sky News - 9.2.10 by Lulu Sinclair

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," the professor said in his new book, in a challenge to traditional religious beliefs.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going," he wrote in his book The Grand Design, extracts of which are printed in The Times.

The book, co-written by American physicist Leonard Mlodinow and published next week, sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton's belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have created out of chaos.


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