The Blog for WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com

In the past week there have been unbelievable demonstrations in the Muslim world that make Muslims look like savages. Signs like this and this show just how ridiculous believers in the Muslim faith can be. Christianity can be just as bad – denying civil rights to people they hate for no reason, and bullying those people to the point where they commit suicide.

That is why we are starting to see the world’s leaders separating themselves from religion. The Dalai Lama posted this on Facebook:

All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.

Hilary Clinton made this public statement this week:

“As long as there are those who are willing to shed blood and take innocent life in the name of religion, the name of God, the world will never know a true and lasting peace.”

What Clinton is saying is that we need to end religion. The Quran and the Bible have violence baked right in, and there is no way to separate the religions from these repulsive books. Watch this video to see how truly repulsive the Bible is:

One would think that modern, intelligent people would easily reject such a repulsive book.

Here is a YouTube video from Allen West’s campaign entitled “Three Times”:

Of course the delegates said NO to adding God to the platform. Any intelligent person knows that God Is Imaginary.

This is no surprise to any rational person who watches conservative Christians, or to any rational person who watches conservative politicians (who are generally Christian in the U.S.) in the news, but there is a new study out that documents the fact that conservative Christians have a dishonesty problem. Yes, Christians talk a good game about their morality, and they go on and on about the Ten Commandments, but the fact is that Christians tend to lie.

Study: Right twists facts

Akin’s claim stood out due to its highly offensive nature, but it’s reminiscent of any number of other parallel cases in which conservative Christians have cited dubious “facts” to help rationalize their moral convictions. Take the twin assertions that having an abortion causes breast cancer or mental disorders, for instance. Or the denial of human evolution. Or false claims that same-sex parenting hurts kids. Or that you can choose whether to be gay, and undergo therapy to reverse that choice. The ludicrous assertion that women who are raped have a physiological defense mechanism against pregnancy is just part of a long litany of other falsehoods in the Christian right’s moral and emotional war against science.

Lies, Lies, Lies. We all know this: conservative Christians tend to lie. A lot. The Republican convention had many examples on display, as seen in these articles:

• Fox News calls Paul Ryan a liar
• Paul Ryan’s breathtakingly dishonest speech
• The biggest of all Paul Ryan’s big lies
• Factchecker: Romney’s ’12 million jobs’ promise
• Why Do Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan Tell Small, Dumb Lies?

Paul Ryan caught a lot of guff last week—correctly—for delivering a vice presidential acceptance speech which was festooned with lies and false assertions. It was so bad that when the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein and his staff scoured the speech looking for truth, lies, and misleading statements—they produced a grand total of two “true” policy items. Two.

Why do conservative Christians behave this way? It is so simple: They must lie to themselves constantly to believe in their imaginary God. Since they are lying to themselves constantly, it is predictable that lying becomes second nature and infects other parts of their lives and their thinking.

Are you a Christian? Would you like to stop lying to yourself about your imaginary God? See the light: GodIsImaginary.com

This article from CNN introduces the idea of “Hurricane Theology” at this week’s Republican convention. The idea is that something devastating like a hurricane is a punishment sent by God into the lives of those in the path of the storm. CNN cites this incident involving Pat Roberson as an example of Hurricane Theology:

Pat Robertson, the evangelical Christian who once suggested God was punishing Americans with Hurricane Katrina, says a “pact to the devil” brought on the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

So imagine that there is a large, well-publicized Gay Pride parade and some natural disaster occurs nearby. It might be a tornado, hurricane, earthquake, etc. Theists go nuts declaring that God sent the disaster as his retribution against gay activities.

If a Christian church gets blown down in a windstorm and the church has done anything seen as controversial, then that is God’s retribution as well.

If there is nothing obvious, then theists will often go out of their way to find something that God needs to destroy.

Imagine living your life in constant fear like this. At any moment, an angry, vengeful God can smite anyplace he chooses with a huge natural disaster.

Who would want to worship such a being? Who would want to have anything to do with such a being? Why pray to a monster who kills people and destroys property so wantonly and so capriciously?

In this article Billy Graham talks about God hearing our prayers. Billy says:

The reason we know God hears our prayers and uses them to accomplish his purposes is because he has promised it — and God cannot lie. The Bible says, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And … we know that we have what we asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15).

God cannot lie? This is easy for God, because he is someone who never, ever speaks. The only place where God might be construed to speak is through the Bible. The Bible is quite clear that God not only hears prayers but also promises to answer them. Just read the Bible. In Matthew 7:7 Jesus says:

Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

In Matthew 17:20 Jesus says:

For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.

In Matthew 21:21:

I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.

There are many, many verses like these. “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer,” is about as clear and direct as you can get. What could be clearer than that?

And then we look at amputees. They can pray all day, in every possible way. They can have their friends pray. They can arrange for giant prayer circles. They can try laying on of hands. Nothing. Ever. Happens. Amputated legs never spontaneously regenerate through prayer.

Billy Graham, what do you make of this? Your God is lying.

If you are an intelligent person you can see what is happening. This article will help clarify your understanding: Why is the question “Why won’t God heal amputees?” so important?

Note that in his article Billy has to hedge. He has to do this because there are many, many prayers that God fails to answer even though he promises to in the Bible. Here is Billy’s hedge:

Does this mean God always answers our prayers the way we wish he would? We see only part of the picture; God sees the whole, and he knows what is best for us (and for others). Sometimes this is hard for us to accept.

So… sometimes God has to let 10 million kids starve, or 200,000 people die in a tsunami. Oh well!

Understand the truth – God is imaginary. Start your exploration here: GodIsImaginary.com

How can theists believe in something as ridiculous as the God of the Bible? Theists look at the world around them, see no evidence whatsoever for their deity, yet still believe in their imaginary friend. How do they do it?

One technique that is critical to their delusion is the strange ability to hold two completely contradictory positions simultaneously. In the previous post, Rabbi Mark Gelman of The God Squad demonstrated this ability in disturbing fashion. At the beginning of his article he says:

Together these statements explain that God wanted and therefore created a regular, rational, ordered universe. God wanted this so that we could use the brains God gave us to solve problems. If God was in the habit of capriciously and miraculously intervening in nature, then we’d have every reason to just give up seeking to understand anything.

This is a simple statement of reality. Gelman explains that the reason God does not heal amputees is because God cannot be “capriciously and miraculously intervening in nature”. Indeed, this logic prevents God (if he were to exist) from performing any miracles at all. This is how the universe operates – completely devoid of any interaction by any imagined God – and no intelligent person can deny it.

But then, later in his article, a logical impossibility occurs. Gelman proclaims the completely opposite position:

I believe that God has also done miracles for us in the world. The spontaneous remission of cancers, the sudden flashes of genius in science and art and philosophy, and the way people who’ve hardened their hearts suddenly find a soft spot where forgiveness and compassion can enter — all these miracles and more are, for me, evidence that God is with us and cares for us and can, unprovoked, act on our behalf.

An intelligent person looks at this reversal with utter bewilderment. How can Gelman think anyone will take him seriously? By proclaiming two diametrically opposed positions in the same article, Gelman appears to be insane.

In that same post there is a comment by a visitor named “40 Year Atheist” that contains the same sort of insanity. In this comment, 40YA defines God in this way:

a non-material being, one that would exist necessarily outside space-time and mass-energy, a being whose non-material characteristics we cannot even imagine, much less measure using devices that do not apply in any way, being designed to measure material things.

According to 40YA’s logic, God is “a non-material being, one that would exist necessarily outside space-time and mass-energy, a being whose non-material characteristics we cannot even imagine”. Furthermore, this immaterial being is impossible for humans to detect here in our material universe.

Then we read the Bible. God supposedly does a thousand material, detectable things in the Bible: God creates man and woman, walks with them in Eden, bans them, talks to their decedents, completely floods the planet, creates rainbows, destroys towers, talks through burning bushes, brings down plagues, kills babies, dries out the Red Sea, rains manna, carves on stone tablets with his finger, parades naked before Moses, pours fire down to earth… And then God incarnates himself – God, supposedly, becomes man. What could possibly be more material than that?

So either 40YA has to completely ignore a thousand material elements in the Bible that act as the foundation for his Christian mythology, or 40YA is inventing a completely new God of his own design out of thin air. Either path is pure delusion.

In both of these examples – Rabbi Gelman and “40 Year Atheist” – the lack of logic and the strength of the delusion is palpable. It makes it impossible for any intelligent person to take them seriously.

This week, in his widely syndicated newspaper column, Rabbi Mark Gelman of The God Squad attempted to explain why God won’t heal amputees. In his answer he displayed to every intelligent person the insanity that religion imposes on people’s thinking. Here is Gelman’s answer:

GOD SQUAD: Miracles happen, but don’t sit and wait for them

That title is misleading, because at the beginning of the article Gelman is forced by reality to state that miracles do NOT happen:

Together these statements explain that God wanted and therefore created a regular, rational, ordered universe. God wanted this so that we could use the brains God gave us to solve problems. If God was in the habit of capriciously and miraculously intervening in nature, then we’d have every reason to just give up seeking to understand anything.

So there it is. The reality we see before us is a “regular, rational, ordered universe” where there are no miracles. This is the only position that an intelligent person can take.

He then takes the intellectually honest next step and states:

The problem for religious folk like me/us is the existence of biblical miracles that seem to violate the laws of nature.

What are we to do with these? He states the obvious and only answer:

Our religious options are all challenging. The first is to take a naturalistic view of the biblical miracles. Theologian Martin Buber wrote, “Miracles are merely natural events viewed by extremely enthusiastic observers.” The problem with this approach is that it basically makes all the biblical miracles false, and this is highly problematic to those who believe every word of the Bible is true.

It does not matter if it is “problematic” – the reality is that “all the biblical miracles false”, meaning that the Bible is a big book of fairy tales, including the fairy tale of Jesus and his miracles. The entire Jesus story is a fairy tale. Every rational, intelligent person sees that.

He then takes it a step further:

The second approach to miracles is to swallow them whole and simply choose to believe that they are all true and happened exactly as described in the Bible. The problem with this view is that it just makes no sense to believe that an animal with no larynx can talk, that the laws of gravity did not apply at the Red Sea, or that the laws of celestial motion did not apply when Joshua stopped the sun at the battle of Jericho.

The choice between rational thought and religious belief does not work out well in the long run for religious belief. It fosters the false idea that only dumb people are religious.

Here he states reality in its clearest possible form, but mis-categorizes it. It is not a false belief. The fact is: “only dumb people are religious”. Only dumb people would believe that “the laws of gravity did not apply at the Red Sea”.

But then Gelman’s own logic collapses in his mind because he wants to believe in nonsense. He sides with the dumb people:

I believe that God has also done miracles for us in the world. The spontaneous remission of cancers, the sudden flashes of genius in science and art and philosophy, and the way people who’ve hardened their hearts suddenly find a soft spot where forgiveness and compassion can enter — all these miracles and more are, for me, evidence that God is with us and cares for us and can, unprovoked, act on our behalf.

So wait Rabbi Gelman, didn’t you say at the beginning of your article that God created “regular, rational, ordered universe” – free from miracles – in order to explain the fact that God does not heal amputees? And now you are saying that God does perform miracles? Rabbi Gelman, this makes you a irrational, illogical, delusional person.

Rabbi Gelman, the intelligent, rational people of the world ask you to reconsider. You are so close. The fact is that we live in a “regular, rational, ordered universe”. The fact is that there are no miracles. The fact is that “all the biblical miracles are false”. The reason for these truths is that your God is imaginary. The reason why God won’t heal amputees, and the reason why we see no miracles ever, is because there is no God. As soon as you understand and accept that, Rabbi Gelman, you will be healed from your delusion.

Imagine the unbelievable arrogance it takes to make a statement like this one by Hunter Kemper:

U.S. triathlete says God healed him of injury

Kemper sustained an injury to his arm that required surgery, with a plate and 13 screws inserted into his elbow. Two months later he developed a staph infection. He began to think that his chances for a 2012 Olympic appearance were over.

But Kemper says God healed him from the injury and enabled him to compete in the Olympic trials, where he earned a spot on the Olympic team for the fourth time. He will compete in the triathlon event on Tuesday (Aug. 7) — one of only two athletes to participate all four times since the sport became an Olympic event in 2000.

“What a journey I’ve been on the past six months,” Kemper said. “For me to overcome that, and feel like I have God every step of the way with me, it’s been real eye-opening.”

According to Kemper, God reached down and healed him. If that it true, then God watched 10 million children die of starvation and cholera last year and did nothing. God oversaw millions of miscarriages. God let cancer kill millions more.

Why would anyone want to be associated with a God who is such a capricious monster?

Here is another Christian minister trying to rationalize the atrocities that occur on earth and happen, supposedly, during the reign of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God. In this case the minister is Timothy Keller from Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York:

My Faith: The danger of asking God ‘Why me?’

Danger? What could possibly be wrong with asking a sensible question?

The conclusion of the article is comical:

“If God actually explained all the reasons why he allows things to happen as they do, it would be too much for our finite brains.

What we truly need is what little children need. They can’t understand most of what their parents allow and disallow for them. They need to know their parents love them and can be trusted. We need to know the same thing about God.”

It’s the “infinite wisdom” rationalization. God is too huge and awesome for pipsqueak humans to understand. Never mind that Christians claim to understand God all the time, for example by demanding that homosexuals be discriminated against or even stoned to death, or that foreskins need to be cut off baby’s penises, etc. Christians claim knowledge of all sorts of God’s thoughts, but strangely, the explanation for the atrocities and horrors that we see every day are just too complicated.

The second part is especially amusing: “They need to know their parents love them and can be trusted.” How can anyone love and trust a “God” who allows hundreds of thousands of people to die in a tsunami, or dozens of people to get shot innocently in a movie theater? What parent would allow your siblings to die while the parents looked on laughing.

How can Christian leaders spew such idiocy with a straight face? How can Christian followers accept it? How can the followers hear such nonsense without turning on their brains and laughing out loud?

This page can help you understand what is really going on:

Why do bad things happen to good people?

A pastor from Colorado Springs named Rob Brendle has published the following article on CNN:

My Take: This is where God was in Aurora

This is the most interesting and unbelievable part:

The capacity to choose God and goodness came with the commensurate ability to choose evil. Is it loving to force his creation to follow his order, or to teach it and leave the creature to choose? It would seem that God came to the same conclusion that America’s founders did many millennia later: compulsory virtue is no virtue at all.

But Scripture also teaches that God is totally in control. He is all-powerful and all-knowing and he is willing and able to intervene in human events. So there is a gap between human choice and divine foreknowledge, a gap that transcends understanding and that helps define God in my mind.

The debate over this theological tension has persisted for centuries, and I don’t aim to settle it here. Let me suggest simply that God, in his sovereignty, has chosen to make our decisions meaningful. Consequently, much of what happens on earth neither conforms to nor results from his preference. There are at least four influences on human events: God’s will, to be sure; but also the will of Satan, our adversary; peoples’ choices, for better or for worse; and natural law (gravity, collision, combustion, and the like).

It is difficult to know which force causes the circumstances that devastate us. But it is enough to know that God need not be responsible for them.

So let’s see. God gave man free will. AND God also all-powerful and all-knowing. AND God is willing and able to intervene in human events. AND God has his own will. AND Satan has his own will.

In other words, it is a huge pile of contradiction and nonsense, and it ignores the truth – that God is imaginary, without a doubt.

What we find in the world of reality is that things happen without any influence from a “God” or a “Satan”. Things unfold exactly as we would expect in a Godless universe. People get shot in movie theaters and schools. Tsunamis kill hundreds of thousands of people. Cancer kills millions more. Children die of poverty at a rate of 30,000 per day. It rains or doesn’t rain despite the prayers of millions. Christians do not win the lottery more than non-Christians. Etc. Any intelligent person can see and understand this. God is imaginary.

Several of the replied to the article are quite rational. Like this one from Colin:

A few questions should help shed light on the relationship between religion and rational thought.

The completely absurd theory that all 7,000,000,000 human beings are simultaneously being supervised 24 hours a day, every day of their lives by an immortal, invisible being for the purposes of reward or punishment in the “afterlife” comes from the field of:

(a) Children’s fairytales;

(b) Medieval mythology;

(c) New age pseudo science; or

(d) Christianity

I honestly believe that, when I think silent thoughts like, “please god, help me pass my exam tomorrow,” some invisible being is reading my mind and will intervene and alter what would otherwise be the course of history in small ways to help me. I am

(a) a delusional schizophrenic;

(b) a naïve child, too young to know that that is silly

(c) an ignorant farmer from Sudan who never had the benefit of even a fifth grade education; or

(d) your average Christian

Millions and millions of Catholics believe that bread and wine turns into the actual flesh and blood of a dead Jew from 2,000 years ago because:

(a) there are obvious visible changes in the condiments after the Catholic priest does his hocus pocus;

(b) tests have confirmed a divine presence in the bread and wine;

(c) now and then their god shows up and confirms this story; or

(d) their religious convictions tell them to blindly accept this completely fvcking absurd nonsense.

I believe that an all powerful being, capable of creating the entire cosmos watches me have $ex to make sure I don’t do anything “naughty”. I am

(a) A victim of child molestation

(b) A r.ape victim trying to recover

(c) A mental patient with paranoid delusions

(d) A Christian

You are about 70% likely to believe the entire Universe began less than 10,000 years ago with only one man, one woman and a talking snake if you are a:

(a) historian;

(b) geologist;

(c) NASA astronomer; or

(d) Christian

I have convinced myself that gay $ex is a choice and not genetic, but then have no explanation as to why only gay people have ho.mo$exual urges. I am

(a) A failed psychologist

(b) A fraudulent geneticist

(c) A sociologist who never went to college; or

(d) A Christian with the remarkable ability to ignore inconvenient facts.

The only discipline known to often cause people to kill others they have never met and/or to commit suicide in its furtherance is:

(a) Architecture;

(b) Philosophy;

(c) Archeology; or

(d) Religion

What is it that most differentiates science and all other intellectual disciplines from religion:

(a) Religion tells people not only what they should believe, but what they must believe under threat of divine retribution, whereas science, economics, medicine etc. has no “sacred cows” in terms of doctrine and go where the evidence leads them;

(b) Religion can make a statement, such as “there is one god comprised of God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit”, and be totally immune from experimentation and challenge, whereas science can only make factual assertions when supported by considerable evidence;

(c) Science and the scientific method is universal and consistent all over the World whereas religion is regional and a person’s religious conviction, no matter how deeply held, is clearly nothing more than an accident of birth; or

(d) All of the above.

If I am found wandering the streets flagellating myself, wading into a filth river, mutilating my child’s genitals or kneeling down in a church believing that a being is somehow reading my inner thoughts and prayers, I am likely driven by:

(a) a deep psychiatric issue;

(b) an irrational fear or phobia;

(c) a severe mental degeneration caused by years of drug abuse; or

(d) my religious belief.

Or This one:

Top Ten Signs You’re a Christian
10 – You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.
9 – You feel insulted and “dehumanized” when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
8 – You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.
7 – Your face turns purple when you hear of the “atrocities” attributed to Allah, but you don’t even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in “Exodus” and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in “Joshua” including women, children, and trees!
6 – You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.
5 – You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.
4 – You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs – though excluding those in all rival sects – will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most “tolerant” and “loving.”
3 – While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in “tongues” may be all the evidence you need to “prove” Christianity.
2 – You define 0.01% as a “high success rate” when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.
1 – You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history – but still call yourself a Christian.

Or this one:

Dear Christians:

God here. I thought I would take the time to personally explain my absence in the Aurora shootings. While I was at it, I thought I would also explain my absence during every murder, massacre and crime that has ever taken place in World history, and in every war, in every famine, drought and flood.

You see, I do not exist. I never have. Did it really make sense to you that I would create an entire Universe with billions of billions of planets and wait about 13,700,000,000 years just so I could focus on a few Jews from Palestine about 2,000 years ago while ignoring the rest of the 200,000,000 people on the planet at the time? Did I make those few Jews or did those few Jews make me?

Further, do you really think I would sit back and do nothing while Nazis killed 6 million of my “chosen people,” but find it important enough to intervene and turn water into wine to stop some hosts being embarrassed at a wedding in Cana? Why did I seem to be so active in the Middle East for a brief period about 2,000 years ago, but totally absent everywhere else on the planet and for the rest of recorded history? Did I make the Jews or did the Jews make me?

So, you really think my periodic miracles prove my existence hey? Then why not something inarguable and unambiguous, like a huge crucifix in the sky, or my face on the moon? Why is it always that believers have to construct my miracles out of perfectly explicable natural events?

This happens every time there is a tragedy or near tragedy of any kind, anywhere in the world and in all cultures. Captain “Sully” Sullenberger pilots a distressed plane to land safely on the Hudson River in New York City with no deaths, and it’s a miracle from God; a young girl is found in India, totally terrorized, but alive after being abducted and ra.ped for a week, and it’s a miracle from my competi.tor Rama (or Vishnu or Shiva) that she is returned to her parents; or a family in Northern Pakistan survives an errant American missile attack, and it’s a miracle from Allah.

What all these self-serving proclamations of miraculous intervention always ignore is the downside of the incidents. The fact that the passengers and crew of Flight 1549 were terrorized and the plane destroyed, that 11 innocent people are dead in Aurora, that the girl was held for seven days, ra.ped and sod.omized and will be traumatized for the rest of her life, or that a number of innocent civilians were killed by the missile.

Of course, none of these incidents really are “miracles.” When the totality of facts are taken into account, “miracles” turn out to be nothing more than believers who are desperate for some sign of my existence ignoring the downside of a set of facts, focusing solely on the upside and calling the quarantined “good” a miracle from me or one of the other sky-fairies. A CEO might as well ignore the liability side of his balance sheet and declare it a “miracle” that his company just doubled in value.

Another annoying habit my “miracles” seem to have is that they always seem to tag along, just behind medical science, like an annoying kid brother who won’t go away. Until the mid nineties, those with AIDS who prayed for a miracle were never granted one. Medical science finds a way to permanently suppress the disease, and all of a sudden I start to perform miracles with AIDS patients. No polio patient ever received a miracle until the Salk vaccine and I routinely ignored cancer patients until chemotherapy and radiation treatments were developed. Suddenly, prayers to me from cancer patients are regularly “answered.”

Why is it that I still seem deaf to the pleadings of amputees who would like their fingers, arms or legs back, to those who have physically lost eyes or ears, to the horribly burned and to all others who ail from patently visible and currently incurable maladies? Why is it that, at the very same time, I am very receptive to the prayers of those whose condition is uncertain, internal and vulnerable to miraculous claims?

Take five minutes to make two lists; one of those ailments I will miraculously cure and the other of those I will not. You will quickly find it coincides perfectly with those conditions medical science (or the human body itself) can defeat and those we cannot. Why do you think that is? It is almost as my miracles are created out of medical ambiguity isn’t it?

No, my human friends. I am afraid I do not exist. I do not read your minds (or “hear your prayers” as you like to call it) and you are not going to achieve immortality (or “eternal life” as you like to call it) no matter how many commandments from Iron Age Palestine you choose to “keep”. Move on and enjoy the few years you have. You were all dead for the last 13,700,000,000 years and it wasn’t that least bit uncomfortable now, was it?

God

This article is notable because so many Christians agree with it

A miracle inside the Aurora shooting: one victim’s story

For any intelligent person, the most amazing part of the article is this section:

It seems as if the bullet traveled through Petra’s brain without hitting any significant brain areas. The doctor explains that Petra’s brain has had from birth a small “defect” in it. It is a tiny channel of fluid running through her skull, like a tiny vein through marble, or a small hole in an oak board, winding from front to rear.  Only a CAT scan would catch it, and Petra would have never noticed it.

But in Petra’s case, the shotgun buck shot, maybe even the size used for deer hunting, enters her brain from the exact point of this defect. Like a marble through a small tube, the defect channels the bullet from Petra’s nose through her brain. It turns slightly several times, and comes to rest at the rear of her brain. And in the process, the bullet misses all the vital areas of the brain. In many ways, it almost misses the brain itself.  Like a giant BB though a straw created in Petra’s brain before she was born, it follows the route of the defect. It is channeled in the least harmful way. A millimeter in any direction and the channel is missed.  The brain is destroyed. Evil wins a round.

As he shares, the doctor seems taken aback. It is an odd thing to have a surgeon show a bit of wonder. Professionally, these guys own the universe, it seems, and take everything in stride. He is obviously gifted as a surgeon, and is kind in his manner. “It couldn’t have gone better. If it were my daughter,” he says quietly, glancing around to see if any of his colleagues might be watching him, “I’d be ecstatic. I’d be dancing a jig.” He smiles. I can’t keep my smile back, or the tears of joy. In Christianity we call it prevenient grace: God working ahead of time for a particular event in the future. It’s just like the God I follow to plan the route of a bullet through a brain long before Batman ever rises. Twenty-two years before.

“In Christianity we call it prevenient grace: God working ahead of time for a particular event in the future.” How does an intelligent person even begin to respond to such nonsense? If there were a God, an intelligent person would note the fact that this god’s “grace” left 12 people dead and dozens injured in this tragedy. To say that a god saved this one women while killing all the others wanders straight into the realm of insanity. Yet millions of Christians somehow agree with it. How is that possible?

This is a clear case of religious insanity:

George Zimmerman: “I’m Truly Sorry” But It Was “God’s Plan” For Trayvon Martin To Die

In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, George Zimmerman discussed fatally shooting an unarmed 17-year-old in a controversial Florida confrontation earlier this year. Zimmerman said he didn’t regret what led to Trayvon Martin’s death.

“I feel like it was all God’s plan, and for me to second-guess it or to judge it,” he said.” However, at the end of the interview, he said he didn’t understand Hannity’s question. “I do wish that there was something, anything that I could have done that wouldn’t have put me in the position where I had to take his life.”

Zimmerman also had a message for Martin’s parents: “I’m sorry… I am sorry that they buried their child. I can’t imagine what it must feel like. And I pray for them daily.”

Millions of people talk about “God’s Plan” for any number of reasons. It is obvious that God is imaginary, but for millions of people there is a delusional belief that God is real. For these people: How would anyone know what God’s Plan is? It is when this question is asked that the insanity of religion is laid bare.

Imagine that science has discovered a common virus that is known to cause cancer. Now imagine that science has created a vaccine that prevents people from contracting the virus. If you have kids, would you give your children the vaccine? Of course you would. Children get vaccines for many viruses like mumps, measles, polio, etc. as an effective way of protecting them against disease.

But if you are religious, and if the disease is Cervical cancer, and the preventitive step is the HPV vaccination, then all bets are off, as demonstrated by this article:

Girls denied cervical cancer vaccine

in this case, Christian parents are intentionally denying their children protection against a common form of cancer because of their religious delusion. The delusion is so advanced that it has impaired the ability of parents to protect their own children. That is a powerful delusion.

In this thread we find a comment from CASTBOUND that he asked this week:

I see no point to the blog or the derision. Why are atheists so interested in converting theists to atheists? All the energy and time put in here must be to convert theists. But why would I want to convert to atheism? My life is very happy, I am well educated and I enjoy God’s creation. If I am wrong how would my belief hurt my future or my prosperity?

Alex seems quite despondent and I certainly want no part of that.

So to sum it up, if atheists just lack belief, why would I want to participate? How would that benefit me?

“Why are atheists so interested in converting theists to atheists?” he asks. By replacing a few words, we can begin to understand the answer. For example:

“Why are non-racists so interested in converting racists to non-racists?”

What’s in it for the non-racist, trying to convert all these racists? CASTBOUND further asks, “if atheists just lack belief, why would I want to participate? How would that benefit me?” It might not directly benefit a racist to convert to a non-racist. But the world becomes a much, much better place if we can eliminate all of the racists by converting them to non-racists. Once racists become non-racists, they understand that better. As racists go through the process of learning about and then eliminating their racism, they see the problems with racism and the advantages of a racism-free world.

The same might be said of sexists: “Why are non-sexists so interested in converting sexists to non-sexists?” The world becomes a much, much better place if we can eliminate all the sexist people by converting them to non-sexists. This post shows how ridiculously sexist Muslims can be. This chapter demonstrates the sexism in Christianity.

The same might be said of homophobes. The world becomes a much, much better place if we can eliminate all the homophobes.

So back to CASTBOUND’s question: “Why are atheists so interested in converting theists to atheists?” It’s because, as a general rule, members of the Christian faith, the Mormon faith and the Muslim faith have a strong tendency to be racist, sexist and homophobic. They are this way because their faith predisposes them to turn off their rational minds and trust what they read in their sacred books. These sacred books openly advocate things like racism, sexism and homophobia, along with many other obviously evil mindsets.

If we can educate Christians, Mormons and Muslims to the point where they abandon their faiths, the rationality they gain in the process of that abandonment is likely to cause them to abandon irrational, unethical, evil mindsets like racism, sexism and homophobia in the process. Our world becomes a much better place.

This is one line of reasoning as to why CASTBOUND and other theists should give up their “faith”. There are many other lines of reasoning as well. Perhaps some of these other lines will be presented in the comments.

If you are a Christian, a Mormon or a Muslim who would like to begin the process of abandoning your delusional faith, this video can help:

In the Southern United States, Vacation Bible School (VBS) is a long tradition. Churches advertise what are generally week-long programs in the summer. Parents sign their kids up and bring them for a week of Bible school lessons at the church. It is something like a Christian day camp lasting two to four hours per day depending on the church.

VBS programs have become quite slick in recent years, with national groups putting together packages for churches to buy. The packages include themed curriculum, scripts, backdrops and decorations, posters, custom music CDs, song books, etc. Here is one such VBS package being sold this year:

Sky VBS 2012 – Everything is possible with God!

If you look at that page, you can see that the children who attend and are indoctrinated at Vacation Bible School start receiving hypocrisy and false promises from the very start. Look at the page’s first paragraph of text:

Every kid wishes they could fly…
So imagine transforming your church into the boundless blue sky! At Sky VBS, kids discover that by trusting God, everything is possible.

By trusting God, everything is possible… except the kids will NEVER be able to fly like superman, with a cape as pictured. How much more hypocritical can things get?

If anything is possible with God, why can’t kids fly like superman?

Here is one of the songs that the kids learn at Sky VBS:

“It doesn’t matter who you are, you can trust God.”

Right after singing this song, the children are introduced to Operation Kid-to-Kid, where they are asked to bring money for mosquito nets:

Yes, you can trust God – unless you are a kid dying of Malaria in Mali. In that case, this “trustworthy” God is letting 2,000 kids die per day.

How can such rank hypocrisy and superstition legally be taught to children?