Irony itself appeared to me and insisted I post this. I must oblige.
In January of this year, Cindy Jacobs was in a worship service when the Lord spoke to her, “Cindy, the strongman over America doesn’t live in Washington, DC – the strongman lives in New York City! Call My people to pray for the economy.”
So begins the story by Ivorie Anthony over at CBN of the move, finally, on the part of the god people to do something about the economy. The godly woman has called for implementation of a brilliant plan. It’s called PUSH. “Pray Until Something Happens.”
Not “gather accurate information, create a solid plan and then act on it competently.” That’s too hard and it might actually make a difference. No, we must pray until something happens.
I’ll point out that these people tend to be supporting McCain/Palin.
So here’s what they decided to do:
Cindy the Christian goes on to say that “Don’t think you’re going to be in sin and that God will take care of you in these hard economic times. Holiness is key.” So they decided “to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the ‘Lion’s Market,’ or God’s control over the economic systems.”
“Intercede” meaning to pray as opposed to actually doing something constructive. In this case, to pray on a golden bull.
One of these bright people is running for Vice President, btw. Just FYI.
Kyeli and I are both laughing our fool heads off right now. Thanks for sharing! (:
Wasn’t there some little problem in the bible about people praying to a golden calf?
Justin,
I wish you wouldn’t lump all Christians in together the way you do. I’m sorry you have been hurt by “fundamentalism,” but I find your site is just continuing a pattern of abuse back onto the people that in their turn hurt you. I don’t think it serves you well and it won’t change their minds about their belief either. What is does is mire you
in your continuing unhappiness and discontent with a strong feeling that you need to set all of these Christian folks in their place.
Regarding the piece about people praying at the golden bull statue…it is indeed ironic but not in a way that makes me laugh. It was ironic in a way that made me horribly sad. I am a Christian but I
would not pray at a statue of a bull. I doubt that Sarah Palin would either. Don’t paint all Christians with the same brush, please.
Before you lump me as a fundie McCain/Palin supporter, please know I am not, but I want to be FAIR to people by not grouping them into
categories narrowly defined by their “religion” or lack therof. I want to be fair to atheists and to you and to Christians.
I find your comment about these “praying” people doing nothing constructive to be deliberately short sighted. Just because Christians pray about something first doesn’t mean they will lack
motivation to DO SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE. I agree that this prayer vigil at the Golden Bull is NOT constructive. It is nauseating, actually. Many Christians seek guidance and clarity in prayer BEFORE doing something constructive, but praying in front of a statue is NOT constructive in my book and is idolatrous and offensive. Even as a Christian, the irony is not lost on me.
Your bitterness is so apparent towards praying people that it makes me very sad for the treatment you have had from those who claimed
Christianity and then hurt you in a way to make you so injured, bitter and sarcastic. You have become judgmental against those whom you now
deride because they are so judgmental. I don’t see where good is coming from that. You are perpetuating back onto those types of people the same wrong that was done to you. I’d think you would be the kind of guy who would “stand for REAL change, you know, and do something DIFFERENT!
There is a great sense of humor in you and the type of rare dry wit that most people lack in this world. I would pray and hope that you can bring it to do good instead of to harm others by judging harshly and skewering people with your words, thereby perpetuating your bitterness toward Christians.
You know, Christians sometimes will lump all atheists in together as “Angry Atheists” and make the same mistake that atheists sometimes
make about lumping all Christians into one group. I don’t think all or even most atheists are angry. I can see that most might think YOU are, and yet, I think you are more HURT than angry. When something hurts us and makes us feel vulnerable, we sometimes lash out in ways perceived as anger. I want you to know that SOME Christians might be concerned about your HURT and feelings of vulnerability and the obvious feelings that you were mistreated. I don’t think that kind of
Christian would be praying at the statue of a Golden Bull with all their concerns on their MONEY. Some Christians care more about the value of the person than about their money or lack of. Please don’t lump them in with the woman in that article or the misled people praying before idols in the streets about “mammon” and the loss of their own prosperity.
And one last item, just from me to you because I think you could be happier if you can move on from these issues ~ Dude, have you ever
read about EFT? No, not electronic funds transfers. Emotional Freedom Techniques. Look it up online. I’m telling you, you can get help for the hurt those people have done to you and move on HAPPILY in your life. Just a warning…if you try it out, you might end up changing your site around and make it less about your bitterness and pointing
out fault in Christians and more about your personal contentment and being just you, only not bitter. You might learn to care more about changing the inner person and really caring that everyone’s inner person is at peace. Just a thought for you, because I do wish you peace and I hope you don’t mind if I say I am praying for you. God love you still. God doesn’t love what was done to you by people wearing the label of “Christian.”
Warmly,
Kimber D.
@Kimber Thanks for your comment.
The largest number of people who have been unbelievably kind to me have been my Christian family and extended “family” of fellow churchgoers through the years. So, you know, you’re wrong. I’m not angry or hurt about Christian mistreatment ’cause there wasn’t any.
I mean, sure, I was brought up to believe a lie, but so were the Christians I was raised by and went to church with. It hurt when I realized it was a lie, but my biggest concern there (as I make a strong point of in my show) was that I not lose the important relationships in my life. Some people get off on being estranged from loved ones. I, as an emotionally healthy adult, do not feel that way.
My parents, still devout Christians, have always – always – done their best to do right by me. They love me deeply, and I do them. I hid my atheist epiphany from them for a few years specifically because I knew they’d be hurt by it. They were. We worked through it and continue to do so.
The love I see outside of and in spite of religion is so much more real and powerful than anything the evil, malevolent god of the Bible could muster or inspire. It’s human love. It’s the most powerful force, most important force in the world.
Religion is love’s greatest enemy. I hope you come to see that and that you will one day release yourself from the shackles of religion, which has never done anything but hold love back.
See, atheism isn’t a choice. It’s something that happens when one allows oneself to learn about the world and when one allows one’s critical thinking skills to remain active all the time. It’s an epiphany, not a decision. One day, I hope, you’ll understand.
In the meantime, when a bunch of Christians who lack the reflection and critical thinking skills needed to know that praying over a golden bull is hilarious, I will continue to be here to point it out, just as I would have ten years ago, when I was a leader at my church and deeply committed to “the Lord.” I had a sense of humor, then, too, you see. : P
I don’t know what’s to be addressed here? The dip-shits that fucked up the economy? The stupidity of Greenspan (in spite of all his “brilliance” yes he’s pretty dumb at times as is anyone.) or the ernest desire of the Christians to do something (yes praying is very much a doing especially if it involves rubbing the magic bull) ?
If the point is that people are dumb, or that Christians are dumb or that folks on wall street are dumb (only sometimes?) well nothing new here.
If there is a ‘god’, and humans are too stupid not to muck things up on a fairly regular basis (war, injustice, genocide, APATHY, sitting on the sidelines and sniggering at folks trying to do something). Praying perhaps is not that stupid. and anyone familiar with psychology will realize that while praying for a ‘god’ to do something may not in direct fashion do anything, it may indirectly provide an insight to what everyone already knows….
The market, like any human endeavor, has to have some agreed upon, rational and arbitrary rules to be adhered to so that fair-play and justice hold reign.
It does indeed need a ‘god’ of sorts. Anyone with even a cursory understanding of economics and game theory understand that just like basketball, football, sports or any other human endeavor it does indeed need a “god”. Whether it’s real or imagined or prayed to or not isn’t the point. The point is the fix. While regulating Wall Street and the ‘bail-out’ package isn’t percieved as a literal god, anyone familiar with literature will realize the deus ex machina effect that invervention has had.
Change the name of Congress to Olympus, Bush to Zeus, and Paulson to Hermes and you get the same myth.
So the Christians wittingly or not, may actually be the brilliant ones here. Even if the photo does indeed look pretty damn funny.
@ Justin, I disagree that you’ve been taught a lie. Myth, just because it’s a myth, doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Greek, Hindu, Hebrew, it does not matter. What does matter is this. What does it say about humans living in those eras? what does it say about them, that they would say such things, that they would find it worthwhile to write down such things. Because let’s face it. For any work to survive, it needs an audience. What does it say bout us ‘now’, what does it say about us NOW, that we still as eagerly listen to the same stories and myths (greek or otherwise) as those humans did many hundreds of years ago.
for me it comes down to this. Humans are still the same capricious, greedy, stupid, dumb creatures they were at the time of Troy. Read the Iliad or the oddyssey and it doesn’t come as any surprise that humans would fly airplanes into buildings. What is surprising is that ‘we’ were too dumb to admit it (human nature hasn’t changed that much in many areas of the world)
Listening to everyone whine about the market is like reading about the hebrews whining for a king or a messiah.
Yes, I agree with you that Christianity at many times has been taught as inerrant and immutable, and infallible, I agree with you that this is not an accurate way to present the question of the unknown to humans. And sadly it opens the door for folks to base decisions and choices on things that are not well founded. It is to to be admired, the rigorous thought and accountability and discussion so that there is an honest accounting of that which ‘is’. Any human endeavor begs that, even the critical scrutinity toward religion needs the arbitrary rule of reason.
So in brief, and unwittingly I’ll leave with this. For me myth says the following. Human society needs rules, as arbitrary as three point lines, foul lines, or the ten commandments. As arbitrary and as agreed upon as those. Not too many rules. Not suffocating rules, but the liberal rule of law, a ‘god’ if you will that is as just and immutible as the christians want, something that allows life to happen freely and without injustice. These are good things and do not in any way take away anyones freedom. Anymore than three point lines or foul lines take away Kobe Bryants freedoms.
And when it comes to the unknown, humankind needs intangibles like faith hope and love, and while science is getting an understanding of what happens inside the mind when one is experincing those things, and while that does in some tiny way provide a very small tangible, it does not rid humankind of the mystery that is this life, this moment, God breathed or not.
@Bob Randolf The whole point of the pic is that there is deep irony in the Christians praying over a golden bull. The irony is made sad by those same Christians apparently not knowing their own holy book well enough to know that they probably ought to find something else to pray over. And by sad, I mean funnier.
I think the Christians you know are different form the one’s I know. They aren’t ever going to be satisfied with god as a metaphor/name for the rules we live by in society. They want a real, actual deity, who cannot forgive unless someone dies first, who has the power to ease suffering but chooses not to because he can, who is insecure to the point that it must be praised frequently and with the highest melodrama. That’s what many of the Christians want.
Other Christians don’t want the original version of Christianity at all but like the name, so they keep it and then get annoyed when someone calls them on having chosen to associate themselves with a bunch of deliberately underinformed superstitious people. These people make me giggle. They’ll use your idea of “god.” They do it all the time. But that’s a new thing in the faith.
Regarding lies: Sure, the ineffable will always be with us, but this doesn’t change the fact that most of us were lied to as we were raised in a religion. Fact: those who trained us didn’t really know if what they were saying was real or not. Fact: they pretended it was. I call this lying.
Some are brought up to lie. They don’t think about it. It’s just instinct. Much like people I know who make racist comments without realizing they are being racist. That it’s instinctive doesn’t make it less wrong. Same with religion.
There is only one thing more irresponsible than basing one’s entire life on something one has not bothered to verify, that being teaching a child to do the same. It’s most certainly a lie. I’m excited that we might be seeing the last few centuries of it.
There is something very fitting in this imagery.
It begins with the assumption that the sovereign creator and master of the universe needs the pleadings of ego-driven followers to enable him/her/it to affect the course of history.
It ends with religious egg on the faces of those idiots, having bowed down in front of a golden calf on the world stage.
Go God!
Justin,
I would rather have sent this to you privately, but I couldn’t find a link.
You’re not alone in questioning your Born Again experience and roots. But you may still be in the middle of your quest to understand the truth.
14 years after I was Born Again, I committed an act of faith by daring to doubt everything I previously believed until I could establish the Truth of it — fully expecting to come out the other end believing largely as I had, of course.
It didn’t turn out that way. It took me 25 years of intense study and critical thinking to admit that to myself, BTW.
More years have passed since then and to my surprise, my “conclusion” didn’t end my quest.
Does the existence of error-fraught (and therefore false) religions — even those that are based on psychological experiences masquerading as a “personal relationship” — prove that the universe was not created?
And does the answer to that question change if you can prove that EVERY religion is false?
The car you drive is far less complex than the universe, but it didn’t just happen. It was created. For want of a better term, I still call the creator of the universe God.
The question for me these days is not, “Is there a God?” or even “Who is God?” God is. The relevant question is, “WHAT is God?”
25 years of searching taught me a great deal about what God is NOT. It also revealed a lot of clues. I have no doubt that your experience has done the same.
So you don’t need my counsel on this question. I will say this much, though: Whatever God is, it doesn’t need for you or I to believe in it. In fact, it’s highly unlikely that the universe is about us at all. I myself am just grateful to be part of it. I hope you are too.
All the best,
Bill
@Bill I appreciate your notes. My email address is on my “Booking” page, but this is all about conversation, so by all means feel free to speak your mind in the comments!
“you may still be in the middle of your quest to understand the truth.”
Nope. I have it all figured out. Pretty good for thirty-six, yeah? : )
Actually, I’m not comfortable with the idea of a “quest to understand the truth.” Sounds far more grandiose than I want to be. I’m a learner. I love learning. I want to soak up as much knowledge as possible.
The more you know for sure about nature, humanity, etc., the more questions you have. The more you learn, the more you find you don’t know. “Understanding truth” is like trying to beat the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. I’d rather not worry about truth and just learn as much as I can about as much as I can. Life’s way more fun that way.
“The car you drive is far less complex than the universe, but it didn’t just happen. It was created.”
I don’t own a car, actually, but I know what you’re talking about.
There is no reason at all to believe the universe is a created thing, unless one has chosen not to learn anything about the physics, biology, chemistry, etc., that has permanently altered the way we perceive the world as a species over the last hundred years or so.
The car analogy is not a good analogy. It’s used a LOT by people who want to believe in gods. I’d Google around a bit and find out why it doesn’t work so well. Any origins website or discussion group will have it, I’m sure.
Briefly, if you had multiple vats of stuff to make a car – a nearly infinite set of them – then yeah, you would expect a car to pop out of one. Especially if the vat in question had properties which meant that a car was the most likely object to work sustainably in that environment. Not only could it happen, it’s much more unlikely that it wouldn’t than that it would.
That the universe actually did, so to speak, “just happen” and how that process works is infinitely more interesting than any deity-related guesswork. I love learning about it!
I recommend Greene’s “The Elegant Universe” in book form or the Nova show on the PBS website for the physics. I recommend Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker book (along with a bottle of Jameson and a comfy chair – it’s a mind twister of the first order!) for the biology.
You and I are more alike than you suspect, Justin.
Believe it or not though, I have no desire to change your mind. I’m 55 years old so it’s unlikely I will hear the end of your story, though I think it will make a good book.
I too am a “learner.” I was a nuclear engineer when my Odyssey began at the age of 29.
I won’t bore you with all the books and other sources of information I devoured in all the fields of study I pursued. Three big categories were physical sciences, religions and psychology. I found particularly fascinating the evolution of Christianity from Judaism and earlier pagan religions with key elements going all the way back to ancient Egypt.
I also loved Richard Dawkins’ various entreaties on biology and religion. He’s right. Stephen Hawking is also right, however.
SOMETHING is TRUE — whether anybody knows it or believes it or not. Whatever that TRUTH is, the data must support it. Therein lies the rub with religion. But you already know that.
Atheism is also a religion, in my view. Why? Because religions are sets of beliefs. BELIEFS are what humans substitute for KNOWLEDGE, which seems to be a primal need. If there is a creator, the best evidence available is its creation (the universe). Any good scientist will tell you that what is unknown about the universe still dwarfs what is known. Therefore, Atheism is at best a THEORY that fits a lot of the known facts. Nevertheless, a lot of people (including some scientists) believe in it resolutely.
At some point, trying to figure out our place in the universe through study and logic becomes wearisome. I reached that point and also realized that so much of humankind’s energy and logic has been devoted to this subject that it was silly to think that I would the one to finally figure it all out within my brief existence. So I decided to pick the line of reasoning that best fit the facts. I finally chose Atheism — despite the fact that I had observed anomalies that Atheism could not explain.
But what else can one do?
It should be obvious that I am not an Atheist now, nor do I subscribe to any religion. The specific (continuing) anomalies that changed my thinking are not important for three reasons.
The first is that had they not occurred in my life, I would never have accepted or understood them.
The second is that the words we communicate with can only convey intellectual and emotional content. There are more levels than that.
The third (and most important) is that you will get there on your own — or not.
Yes, TRUTH (as verifiable by facts) matters. But it is not my goal to tell you WHICH facts matter. My goal is to say to you that I once lived in your black and white world, and there is technicolor marvel waiting at the end of the path you are on.
Just something to think about before you build a house where you are and settle down.
Bill
Justin,
One more brief comment on the car analogy. The common refutation you quoted IS precisely how BIOLOGY works. The same mathematical model predicts that if you roll 2 dice enough times every possible combination will occur, and 7 will occur most often.
If cars were made like that, no two of them would be alike and the odds of getting one that worked would be infinitesimal.
[ Note: For readers who believe they were uniquely created by God, consider this: Each of us is the result of a very large number of genetic couplings over several millenia. Do you suppose any one of us is not the result of at least one genetic coupling that his own religion would oblige him to call sin? ]
But I digress. Biology is a relatively small branch of science.
Consider the expanding universe. It came into existence in an instant from a singularity, and will return to that singularity — perhaps an infinite number of times. The physical laws and mathematics that govern that process are more precise than any engineer could conceive.
How many broken universes would have to exist for this one to “just happen”?
“If cars were made like that, no two of them would be alike and the odds of getting one that worked would be infinitesimal.”
Well, yeah. That’s why it takes an amazingly huge universe to get life, and an amazingly huge multiverse to get a universe that does what our does.
“How many broken universes would have to exist for this one to “just happen”?”
Lots. But they’re not broken. They’re different. And the scientists who study these things are actively trying to find a way to see them and demonstrate their existence, as opposed to god people, who assume that if they say there is a god that the existence of the claim is evidence to support the claim. Which isn’t true.
I direct you here for my discussion of why I hope there isn’t a god.
The Loki theory fits pretty well with the book of Job.
According to that little bit of scripture, God and Satan must be golfing buddies who destroy the lives of the faithful so they can wager on the outcome.
I don’t want to sound condescending, but your treatise suffers from “inside the box” thinking.
What is it about Man that we cannot conceive of a model where WE are not the center of the universe, the object of all creation?
God is not a superset of human traits. If creation was about ANY animal, I’d put my money on dogs. But creation is WAY bigger than that. Everything from microbes to quasars. Humans are but a microscopic thread in the fabric of all that we know about, all we don’t know about and that which we’ll never think to dream about.
But it just HAS to be about US, right? And if it’s NOT about us, it can’t be about ANYTHING.
LOL