FIREBLIND.COM

It’s like, 1 million a.m. and I’m unable to sleep. Rather than roll around on my mattress padded with the unrealized dreams of poor children, I’ve opted instead to write about an annoyance I have with people who believe on faith.

It seems to me that you have to have at least some basic empirical reason to believe in something. For example, maybe you feel that your prayers have been answered with an alarming regularity, and this leads you to believe that god is listening to you. Or, perhaps you’re smart enough to understand the improbability of prayer answers, and look to ostensibly fulfilled prophecy. Or, maybe it’s even simpler than that; maybe when you pray you feel like you’re connected with something, and that’s proof enough.

People of religious stripes will often say that you can’t use science to prove god, but the fact that you rely on something of at least a very minor physical nature to derive your faith implies that you are, in fact, using science to prove your faith, even if it is weak science. You’re saying, in effect, that you have a theory that you feel or believe the way you do because of some stimulus. What’s more, because you’ve described that stimulus, it’s theoretically possible to falsify it, making it scientific.

I have a problem with using such weak evidence as a reason for faith, but these things don’t bother me much. At least the mind is pointing to something tangible to derive faith from. The thing that annoys me is that most of these people think it’s wrong for us to ask for more proof for the fantastic events they defend than the very personal, very subjective kernels of faith they rely on. It is so strange that the human mind can so easily go from “feeling good when we pray” to “I believe that an omnipotent god larger than the universe converted himself into a tiny human in order to kill himself and bring himself back to life and then magically appear to hundreds of select individuals separated by many miles of space in order to settle a debt made by two unrelated people thousands of years earlier.”

A while back, I commented on a Christian’s blog concerning a post he/she made on an atheist’s blog which stated that there really is no sound historical evidence to support the idea that Jesus even lived. The gospels conflict with each other, one of them doesn’t even pretend to be a first-person account (Luke), all are written at least several decades after the purported life of the Christ, and Jesus’s most fervent evangelist never even met the man (Paul). What’s more, the gospels and the works of Paul make incredible claims that should be well documented elsewhere (like dead people coming out of their graves and walking around), and yet we have no non-apologetic sources to confirm them. In the case of Matthew 27:52 and 27:53, there’s never even a mention of these zombies again. Dead people are wandering the streets of Palestine—perhaps one of THE most important events in human history—and the event is only given 30 words of text in the entire Bible. Boy, I’ll jump right on believing that one.

In any event, I pointed out that we have no contemporary sources period (since the gospels are several decades post-Jesus, if he existed), let alone any non-apologetic contemporary sources (the earliest non-Christian source is approximately 60 years after Jesus’s death). You know what this person’s reply was? Basically, it doesn’t matter, because word of mouth was how “they” used to do it in the old days, and therefore the objection is moot.

Granted, there’s some truth to this from a pragmatic perspective. Much of what we consider to be “true” ancient history has no primary source to vouch for it, and is often construed by historians from conflicting or significantly post-dated sources. If I remember correctly, there are conflicting stories about Hannibal crossing the Alps, for example. Even so, it’s pretty much accepted that he and his army did make the crossing in some manner. The problem with using this as an analogy to Jesus, is that we know armies moved and invaded other countries, but we don’t have expectations that people walk on water, raise others from the dead, or die, go to hell, and then come back from the dead. Armed invasions, unfortunately, are a common occurrence even in the modern age, so we don’t require extraordinary evidence to believe they happen. Resurrections are not, however, and so we should require extraordinary evidence. And yet, we have none.

To paraphrase from someone else’s writing:

Suppose we hear a story of a man named Mustafa who’s a runner in the Middle East. As I type each sentence below, ask yourself whether you would believe the claim at face value without increasingly more concrete evidence.

• Mustafa can run an 8-minute mile.
• Mustafa can run a 6-minute mile
• Mustafa can run a 4:30 mile
• Mustafa can run a 2-minute mile
• Mustafa can run a 2-minute mile while running backwards
• Mustafa can run a 2-minute mile while running backwards, and can knock down solid concrete walls in his way without slowing down
• Mustafa can run a 1-minute mile, and can pass through solid walls without knocking them down
• Mustafa can run a 1-minute mile and pass through solid walls, but no one alive has ever seen him do it, and he refuses to demonstrate it now.

As you can see, as the claims get more outlandish, your willingness to believe the possibility of them being true diminishes. Is it really that hard to understand why we don’t believe what religions say when the claims they make are even more outlandish than Mustafa running a 1-minute mile while passing through solid walls? God doesn’t perform any of the types of miracles purported in books like the Qur’an or Bible in the modern age. People don’t rise from the dead, snakes don’t talk, men don’t part seas, prophets don’t ascend to heaven on winged horses, and so on. Sources conflict with each other. Sources are written and codified generations after people live. And all the proof religious people have for these incredible events are books that are based on circular reasoning (I’m god, and I say the Bible is true. I know god is telling the truth, because the bible says he’s god and the bible is true).

I ask for more evidence than an ancient manuscript and I’m the one who can’t run for President? What about the guy who thinks an invisible man in the sky is listening to his telepathic thoughts and rearranging the course of human events to answer these thoughts? Who seems more rational and poised to make reasonable decisions? Oh man….

Alright, I’m out. This post is long enough and I have a big kid meeting in the morning.