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Martin Willett

Perhaps you would like to explain why the choice has to be between me being right and you being right?

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Martin Willett

Your answer reveals either a lack of intelligence or a stunning arrogance, or possibly both. Of course I am not suggesting that there could be both a Church of England Christian god* and no god at all, that is farcical. I am suggesting that you are ignoring all other possibilities.

Both you and Pascal seem to be under the impression that there are only two possibilities. Either the Church is right or there is no god or afterlife of any kind. Pascal's wager portrays belief as if there were only two options and implies that both options are equally likely. This is simply ignoring all other "possibilities". Real life isn't like that. Pascal's wager is as logical as the idea that there are only two possibilities when my child leaves for school in the morning, either he will return safely or he will die, and because there are two possibilities considered we should treat each one as a 50/50 call, utter madness!

If you assume that an afterlife is a possibility why only one kind of afterlife? This is absurd because even in Christianity there are several kinds of mutually contradictory afterlife suggested for instance the idea of sleeping in the grave until the last trump on the one hand and floating towards the light twenty seconds after your heart starts beating on the operating table on the other. Both cannot be true. At least one of those ideas is wrong, a lie, but it seems most preachers want to leave everything vague.

There are hundreds of other "possibilities" which could be considered, many of them significantly more plausible and internally consistent than the idea that the creator of the universe had to arrange for himself to be killed in order to forgive people enough to let them live with him (doing not very much in particular for ever) after they have finished living in real life. There may be a creator god who doesn't give a stuff about anything. There may be no gods but everybody finds themselves waking up in somebody else's Hell. The stories put about by the true religion may be right in every particular but that isn't the religion you are following and boy will the real god be looking forward to seeing you when the time comes.

As it seems religions rely on fallible people to spread them and every single one has failed to spread universally it has to be considered a strong possibility that mankind wouldn't recognize the truth if it bit us in the arse.

Do you think it is simply a coincidence that you are following (or in your case perhaps even attempting to spread) the religion that was followed by the last people to beat your ancestors up?

* By the way, would you mind describing the way God (C of E version) talks. I assume he's English. I can't decide between Brian Blessed (big chest, big voice, big beard, slightly mad) and Tom Baker (mad as a balloon and a smile that frightens livestock), I'd value your input.

I hope the lifestyle comes together,

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Martin Willett

Of course I don't believe in a true religion but show me one self-proclaimed untrue religion. At the very least almost all religions are wrong, that is simply a mathematical certainty.

The existence of sincere believers in radically different ideas, sincere and pious believers who sincerely hear the voice of their own radically different One and Only True God or gods from a totally different pantheon must alert any open-mined people to the strong probability of erroneous religious belief. Surely you cannot believe in (or love) a god who would tell different things to different people just to see the sport he could have with watching them kill each each other in His name? If not then you have to grasp the nettle and accept that it is perfectly possible to sincerely but erroneously believe a god is telling you to do something. You have to accept the existence of false religion, false prophets, false revelation, false belief and falsely identified still small voices. The alternative position is either illogical or requires that the godhead deserves to be locked in a lunatic asylum for our protection.

Once you acknowledge that some people must be both wrong and sincere in their beliefs about gods then you have to address where your own certainty comes from. It is built on sand. It is built on a technique of lies known as faith.

The concept of faith, the idea that believing a lie makes it true and its believer virtuous is the heart of the problem.

Only a willing dupe can believe that faith is a virtue. To a scientist faith isn't a virtue it is gross professional misconduct. Faith is the only unforgivable sin. In every other field of human endeavour faith is rightly seen as a failing and a weakness. Generals are sacked for having faith in their defences. Ship builders are castigated for having faith in their ships. Auditors are sacked for demonstrating faith. Nobody has any real sympathy for the little woman who stands by her philandering man time and time again. And yet religion is built around the idea that there is one exception to this general rule of life, that having faith in the stories told by the religion is a good thing. Of course no good reasons are offered for this, just circular reasoning based on reading what the faith tells you to believe is worth reading.

Faith hasn't moved a single mountain. Doubt that? Show me the map references. I don't take anybody's word for anything (except as a provisional belief). I don't have faith, I verify. That means to look into the truth myself. You cannot look for the truth if you think you already possess it and must not let it go under any circumstances. If any scientist acted that way they would be expelled from their university or job.

Faith kills people. It wrecks companies, families and armies. It causes martyrs and genocide. If I could remove one single idea from humanity it would be the idea that faith is ever a virtue. Sometimes you have to have the courage to act upon the balance of your doubts, you ask all the questions and then you have to make the decision. Think about a Space Shuttle launch, that is not an act of faith, it is teamwork, teams assess their own limited amount of risk and doubt and pool their decision to allow a launch or to veto it. That is the correct way for all decisions to be made, the courage to put doubt in its place, at the heart of the decision, and then the courage to make the decision.

I never stop asking myself questions about my beliefs and values and I refine my beliefs constantly in the light of new evidence. I do not rule out any decision or change in belief if the available evidence changes.

You preach regularly and tell people not to doubt your truth. Sorry, His Truth, which you have made your truth because you think having faith makes you a better person. I tell people what I believe and ask them to correct me if I'm wrong.

You have ducked all my questions up to now, how about one more? How long would you have to spend in another god's Hell before you admitted you were wrong?

The point about not sending essays is for people not to send me essays until we have built up something of a relationship. I don't want to encourage people to send me huge long rambling essays that make me embarrassed when I ignore them because they are not worth my attention. Feel free to reply in whatever length you see fit, or scuttle away, pray for me and pretend you won as Christians usually do.

You are the one with the qualification in theology and you don't understand my question. That fits.

It is a simple question. Your faith, will it protect you from believing the inconvenient truth? If you did have undeniable proof that the religion you have preached was totally in error would you change your mind? If you were burning in a Pagan hell and tortured by patently real Pagan gods would you stop believing in Christ? If not, how long do you think you would hold out, to the nearest century?

Do you find the concept of burning in somebody else's hell unappealing? Funnily enough I do.

Do you actually believe you have the ju-ju power to make the creator of the universe do your bidding? If not why do you use such phrases?

You don't seem to understand the concept of atheism, do you? I don't believe in any gods, therefore I don't believe in yours either. It's nothing personal. From that it follows that I do not see the Bible as any kind of authority. It is just an old book. Like many old books some of its material is interesting and not all of its ideas are ridiculous. But that is as far as it goes. The Bible cannot be the inspired word of God because there is no god called God or any other less confusing name either. Using Bible quotes against an atheist is like somebody trying to pass-off bent fivers showing you the forged reproduction of the Bank of England's Chief Cashier's signature as if that was proof that they were genuine. Put down your Bible, it's just a big old dusty book that nobody has been allowed to add to or improve since some committee stitch-up sixteen centuries ago. It has no power over me.

You ducked the question again. You also put a paragraph break where none was intended. If you had clear and undeniable proof that your religion was wrong (I should have used a colon) if you were in another god's hell for example, would you stick with your faith?

Of course I am not suggesting that there will be proof that no gods exist in real life, but in your fantasy concept of the everlasting life of the soul, if you found out that what your Church has been teaching is fundamentally wrong what would you do? Apart from bluster, change the subject and pray for me, obviously. I'm ahead of you there.

Do you think it is a smart move by the creator of the universe to offer such an obviously flawed tale and then expect people to believe it - on pain of eternal torment?

Since those Iron Age* goat herders came up with the idea we have a much clearer idea of exactly what an eternity of punishment would really mean. It does seem a very nasty idea, infinite punishment for the finite and surely wholly forgiveable sin of merely doubting, using reason and withholding judgement. Hardly an eye for an eye is it?

Why doesn't your God just forgive all sins?

If Christ can forgive child rapists and murderers why can't he forgive rational thinkers? I would really appreciate an answer.

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Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org

* The concept of a soul and an afterlife wasn't around in the Bronze Age when your god was still heavily into carrying off the young women of neighbouring tribes and slaughtering all the men.

I call somebody who encourages genocide a criminal. What do you call him, Lord?

Why is asking to be forgiven more important than being sorry or trying to avoid doing the wrong thing because you yourself know it to be wrong? This god of yours seems like a petty-minded tyrant to me. He can forgive anything but he won't unless you turn off your critical faculties and accept a bunch of codswallop, that is, if you already swallow the codswallop in the first place enough to believe that your particular account is the only real choice on offer, which of course I don't and probably never will.

Why do you have to ask for forgiveness before you know for sure that there is anything to forgive you? Why is your god so perverse on this matter?

Has God got a conscience? Do you think he thinks he's a good god for acting in this way? If any human acted like this they would have their children taken into care and their pets taken by the RSPCA.

Your god waits until people are dead before allowing a disobedient minion to punish them for all eternity for all their sins, unless they have asked to be forgiven, in which case he doesn't punish them at all. And then "after" the all eternity he punishes the disobedient minion. Or something like that. It is hard to get my head around it all.

I know you can't allow yourself to answer this but I have to ask, does it ever keep you awake at night thinking is it you or is the whole religion thing totally insane?

If it is so vitally important that you follow god's will why is there a life, then an afterlife? Surely it would make more sense to have a prelife briefing session:

“Hi, I'm Jesus, I'm filling in for almighty God today, he's off in another part of the garden. <feeble laugh> Ha. That was a little omnipresence joke. Never mind, please yourselves. Oh, wait, no. That's what I'm here to tell you. This life you're about to lead, it is very important that you don't please yourself, you do what the Bible says. But even if you do some wrong stuff - which you shouldn't do - as long as you ask me to forgive you there will be pie in the sky and harps all round in heaven for ever and ever afterwards. And watch out for the Devil, he's a tricky blighter. OK? Any questions?”

That at least would be almost fair. As it is it looks like your god simply wants to see people who use their own minds to, well, make up their own minds, be punished and there's nothing that can be done about that. I will not give control of my critical faculties over to a belief system and I will not ever keep quiet about the absurdity of being asked to do so on pain of eternal damnation.

So, when you get to heaven, will you ask God for me why it was necessary to see me punished for all eternity just because he didn't want to demonstrate that he actually existed? I'd appreciate that.

The creator of the entire universe, what has he got to lose by making himself known unambiguously?

The creator of the entire universe, what has he got to gain by being worshipped?

The creator of the entire universe, what has he got to gain by sharing all eternity with people lacking the self respect to make up their own mind?

Oh please, not another blast against the Old Testament. If it is so embarrassing to you then drop it and try to make out that Jesus' dad was a different god. That will not wash with me. You can't use the Bible as your support one moment and then run away from it the next when it starts to look like it was written by superstitious ignorant savages, which of course it was.

How typically English, I live in a semi-detached house and the church of England has a semi-detached holy book.

Christians often tell me their god doesn't change and yet it is patently not true. The first two chapters of Genesis describe different creations by different gods and of course your one and only god is jealous of the other gods and won't let his people worship them. The god of Genesis is a nasty xenophobic savage who screws up and murders every man woman and child on the face of the planet except one extended family. Later he kills all the first born of Egypt and trashes several cities and incites his people into genocide. And yet you make out that this is Jesus' dad, the never changing Alpha and Omega, your god of love? Come off it.

You dare say God enjoys worship. How do you dare say it? On the basis of empirical evidence or the vague squidgy feelings you get inside in your tummy? Are you in direct contact with God? If so can you prove it by performing some conjuring tricks of my devising? No? I didn't think so. Basically you as good as pulled that idea out of your own bottom. It is what you would like to think is true and lo and behold the still voice inside you tells you what you expected to hear.

Pavlov was barking up the wrong tree. I think you meant Maslow, what do they teach you in theological college these days?

Can you think of any good reasons why a god who existed outside of time, has no mother or father or clan or tribe or siblings or peers or any need to feel good or any reason not to feel good without doing anything would have anything in common with human psychology? Oh yeah, I forgot, we were made in his image. I don't buy it, at all. It doesn't make any sense. I understand why we have a hierarchy of needs because we are evolved animals (not creatures, were weren't created) but any god who could possibly have jump-started the universe would have absolutely no reason to have any needs of any kind at all. Of course it is fully explicable why a made up god would have human needs, because those people who invented him lacked the imagination to come up with a better explanation: the first rule of fiction is write about what you know. The authors of the Bible knew about fathers and kings and slaves and especially shepherding, so that's what their universe smells like: sheepish.

For their time they were probably very bright people but their culture was pathetically small minded and ignorant compared to what we have now, my 11 year old son could probably come up with a more convincing creation myth.

I don't have to accept some old myth to have satisfaction and peace in my heart (Christians are lousy at anatomy aren't they?) I am satisfied I have a reasonable bead on what is happening by keeping my eyes and my mind open.

Of course people feel better if they believe the same myth that a lot of people in their family believe in and people have believed in for a long time. There is great comfort to be had in familiar and shared assumptions. This I find to be the most despicable part of Christianity. It preys on the vulnerable, by getting them to pray. It offers a numbing of the pain. An opiate overdose to the over-active reason centres. You don't need to think or reason, man, just go with the flow and love Jesus. NO! Not without a good reason.

You are probably detecting some anger in me. No shit Sherlock. I am angered by the way religion preys on the vulnerable and the young. Religion makes out that goodness is its monopoly, that religion invented morality, law, marriage and the family and that every good act is a Christian act and every bad act is the work of the Devil, regardless of who is doing it and what they think their motivation is. An atheist helicopter crew winches up a Muslim from the sea and they thank their Christian God for saving him. A city is crushed by an earthquake, thousands die, a dozen are saved, thank God for his mercy!

There is nothing that can be gained through God that can't be gained without superstition. Morality, forgiveness, love, self-sacrifice, honour and a peaceful death are all available to anybody who has a well-rounded ethical culture. No superstitious beliefs are required. I have not believed in any gods for over thirty years but I still know the difference between right and wrong and I don't need to imagine a god watching me to stop me behaving in ways which harm other people.

By the way, do Christians who believe that God watches their every move support or oppose CCTV? :-\

I don't have faith and I don't want it. Faith is evil, lying to yourself.

I can't say I'm particularly impressed with your comprehension skills, debating prowess, the strength of your arguments or your stamina. As the choirboy boy said to the pederast priest: I've had better.