The Atheist Mama

It’s okay, folks, everything’s fine! The Reverend Jerry Falwell, champion of science and reason, assures us all that global warming is just part of a liberal conspiracy to distract Christians from their “heavenly purpose.” Thank you so much for setting us all straight on that burning issue, Jer.

Don’t know what I was worried about…

–Allen

Just so our Christian or other religious readers don’t feel excluded from this ongoing conversation about evidence: What experience or reason would you need to convince you that God doesn’t exist?

–Allen

Why doesn’t the Bible explicitly prohibit slavery?

Millions of men, women and children all over the world for thousands of years have suffered and continue to suffer today under slavery in one form or another.

Can it truly be called “The Good Book” when it fails to condemn something that is so obviously evil?

–Allen

I was in the back room of a church while at a Catholic wedding when I took this picture. I was shocked when I saw that the Body of Christ came in packaging just like saltines would. When I was younger and in Catholic school, I always saw the host come out of a very ornate gold and silver safe looking thing (the name of this storage device escapes me).

They probably have boxes of The Body of Christ somewhere. Have you ever eaten one of these? They’re pretty tasty… I could totally sit down with some Blood of Christ and snack on some Body of Christ while watching TV.

Finally, let me explain what would evidence I would need to be convinced that God exists.

Let me be very specific here, because as Jim shrewdly observed in the original post, there have been thousands of different gods worshipped by millions of people over many, many centuries.

So, then, what would convince me that Jesus Christ in particular (and no other gods) exists?

For a start, I would like to examine the wounds in Christ’s hands and side just as one of His disciples, Thomas, did before he would believe (John 20:24-29). Failing that, I suppose being blinded by a heavenly light and being spoken to directly by Jesus as Saul (later Paul) experienced would be acceptable as well (Acts 9:1-19).

But this isn’t how it works, the believer may argue. One must have faith. Indeed, as the account of Doubting Thomas teaches, believing without seeing is a virtue. The Lord will not be tempted to prove His existence. So, we are left with a sort of stalemate.

Oddly enough, science may provide a way out of this quandary. But again, the believer may object. As I once heard a television preacher proclaim,“You can’t put God in a test tube!�

And he’s probably right—the supernatural is, by definition, (rather conveniently) beyond the reach of science.

However, if one believes that Jesus can affect the material world, those effects can be observed, examined, and measured empirically. If, for example, one claims that praying to Jesus can cure cancer, an experiment can be put together to test it. After careful planning and consideration of all other variables, one group of cancer patients can pray for healing in the name of Jesus, another in the name of Allah, another in the name of Zeus, and, of course, there would be a control group where no one prays at all. The results of the experiment could then be analyzed to see if the patients who prayed to Jesus had a significantly higher rate of recovery than the other groups.

If the results were positive, and consistently repeated in different and numerous studies, this would be something I would consider as evidence.

But if the latest prayer study with heart patients is any indication, I don’t think I’ll be “saved� any time soon.

–Allen

Well, I did promise to explain what evidence I would need to conclude that God exists, and that will be coming soon.

First, I’d like to respond to a few of the comments from the original post. Anatoliy Russ writes:

For a true believing atheist no evidence would be enough to dissuade him or her from abandoning their belief. The mind of an atheist has made its decision and even a dramatic sign from the heavens could be explained away. I’m sure that the only evidence that can convince a true atheist is dying and seeing what happens next.

This is patently false and can be proven so with a minimum of effort. The world is full of atheists who have found Jesus and preachers who have turned atheist and everything in between. I think Anatoily needs to get out of the compound a little more often.

And then there was sweet, sweet Shanilie:

Hi, I just came across your blog today. I have to admit that I haven’t really ever met an atheist before.

It that’s true, it’s her loss. But seriously, how does she know she hasn’t ever met an atheist? Does she interrogate everyone she meets about their beliefs? I think it’s much more likely she knows and has known more atheists than she thinks. We’re everywhere! (Cue maniacal laughter and sinister organ music.)

I have met many who don’t believe in God but are open to the possibility and not so self proclaimed as yourself.

Lord, how many times must atheists explain this to people like her? Let me put it this way: just how “open to the possibility” are most people that Zeus or Thor or Ra exist? Not very, right, if at all? I mean, even though they can’t prove they don’t exist, they don’t lose any sleep at night wondering if they’re wrong. That’s the level of certainty I have that your particular god, Shanilie, is nonsense, too. Got it?

Sometimes the only reason I believe in God is because beauty can give me Goosebumps. Stupid, yes?

Well…yes. I suppose we agree on something after all.

I smile when I hear about people calling themselves an atheist because in saying it, they are in fact referring to God, you are finding reasons not to believe and in doing so you have to be told otherwise….Another reason I smile is because there must be some shred of hope of existence of God left in you because you are desperately seeking to hear what you want to hear…

Really, is that a smile, or a smug, patronizing smirk? And just how would she know so much about atheists’ motivations when she obviously doesn’t understand the first thing about us?

Before this post gets any longer, I’ll stop it here. Very soon, I will have a few more things to say about some other comments, and I’ll be sure to tell you about God and the evidence I’d need to be convinced She exists.

–Allen

I have a friend who grew up Catholic, the same as I did. He converted and is now pastor of a baptist “new life” church. I converted too, the other way, so that I call myself a weak atheist. My friend continues to send me his church bulletin, and the quotation below is from the Feb. 2007 issue. It follows an anecdote about a father who drops what he is doing to build his small daughter a doll house once he realizes how much faith she has that he will keep his promise to do so.

“”Faith in Father God is like that. C.S. Lewis said that faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. Romans 4:20-21 says that faith is not wavering at the promise of God, but being fully convinced that what He has promised He is able to perform. Faith is both the substance of things that we hope for and the evidence of things yet to be realized; paraphrased fropm Heb. 11:11.”

I’m interested in your thoughts on what this all means, especially the C.S. Lewis saying, and the last sentence about faith being “the substance of things that we hope for”…etc. In essence, I’m looking for a reality check before I ask my friend what he means. Finally, I’m worried that this is the kind of fuzzy gobbledegook that believers are fed.