“What If You’re Wrong?”

So I was looking at a hilarious church/state violation in the news (might write on it tomorrow, so no spoilers), and after a video played, in the “suggested videos” was prominently displayed a video entitled “what if you’re wrong?”. No, I didn’t even look at it; I’ve seen enough. It’s one version of Pascal’s Wager, and it’s asked as a “gotcha” to atheist speakers (because, of course, they are the only ones who can be wrong). But this time, I heard “what if you’re wrong?” (just that phrase, not the whole thing) to the tune of “I’m a gnu“. So, yeah, this one is not a verse, it’s a song. And, given the tune, it scans wonderfully… so if it does not scan for you, clearly, you are doing it wrong. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

What if you’re wrong?
What if you’re wrong?
What if the Greeks were right all along?
What if you should have been followin’ Zeus or Apollo, in-
Stead of some carpenter’s son?
What if your praying and kneeling just isn’t appealing
To gods that just wanna have fun?
What if you saw Aphrodite in only her nightie
You still think your faith is so strong?
What if you’re wrong?
What if you’re wrong!

What if you’re wrong?
What if you’re wrong?
What if you hear Heimdallr blow his Ragnarök song?
What if you should have been loadin’ a toast unto Odin,
A flagon of honey-sweet mead?
What if you found, if you say a quick message to Freyja
She’ll give you whatever you need?
What if you stutter and stammer at Thor with his hammer
Who smashes your head like a gong?
What if you’re wrong?
What if you’re wrong!

It’s simple probability—to join, or not to join
It’s the bet you place on black or red; the flipping of a coin
With that little pesky detail—which religion should you join?—
That exposes Pascal’s Wager as a scam
There are gods by tens of thousands; maybe millions; maybe more
Should you offer up a sacrifice, do you say which god it’s for?
And if others might be jealous, is this something to ignore?
True Believers may, themselves, be in a jam!

What if you’re wrong?
What if you’re wrong?
What if both you and the rest of your throng?
What if, of all the gods listed, one only existed,
And that one, no longer believed?
You’re in the church of your father, but god says “why bother?”
And all of your life, you’re deceived?
What if I mess up my timing and force all my rhyming
This impudent verse to prolong?
What if you’re wrong?
What if you’re wrong!

Let’s Laugh At The Atheists (Or, Motes And Beams)

The atheist churches, where folks get together
And kinda do atheist things
Where one week you might hear a poetry reading;
The next week a music group sings
Where some discuss books, or see movies, or plays,
And agree, without god, that’s enough—
Let’s all point and laugh with derision at them,
Cos some like to do different stuff!

Some atheists want to have talks about science
While others, perhaps, find that boring
Some want to trade recipes, gardening tips,
Or some something this verse is ignoring
The range of opinions is varied and vast
Like a spectrum released by a prism
Let’s all point and laugh at their differing views
And we’ll call it an atheist schism!

A Christian’s a Christian, as everyone knows,
Cos we worship the very same Lord—
There’s maybe a difference or two in beliefs
But that’s something that’s best left ignored
Well, ok, there are thousands of differing sects—
Tens of thousands, some reckon, have grown—
But let’s laugh at the mote in the atheists’ eye
While ignoring the beam in our own

The good Catholic Christians at the Creative Minority Report (we laugh because we believe) are laughing at atheists. It’s just a brief report on the story that hit the atheist blogosphere last week about the “schism” in the new “Atheist Church”. Titled “Ha! Atheist Church Already Has a Schism!”, it begins:

This is just too funny. The first atheist Church started up a few months ago…and it already has a schism -a breakoff group that’s blasting the original atheist Church as a cult. Seriously.

I don’t know how exactly one atheist judges other atheists. “He doesn’t believe in nothingness enough!” or “Even though there aren’t any objective standards, I’m living up to them a lot better than that guy!”

So, to summarize: a gathering of atheists, the “Sunday Assembly” (note the lack of the word “church”) is termed a church by people in the media and in churches, and is then then assumed to have all of the qualities of other things that share the label “church”, whether self- or other-imposed. Like atheist invocations (who are they praising?), atheist chaplains (what god do they serve?), or atheist memorials (which god do they represent?), there is a frankly magical fascination with one definition of a word (and always the religious definition) rather than an honest understanding of the function of the action, position, or thing, which invariably is broader than the definition focused on (which, by the way, is why the dictionary includes other definitions as well).

A gathering of atheists, by definition and function, is a gathering of people who are defined by what they are not. For the most part, people continue to gather with one another when they have something in common. It is completely to be expected, then, that large groups of atheists will contain smaller groups of people who have things in common that may not be shared by other of the smaller groups. The larger group, after all, is not organized around one positively-defined belief.

On the other hand, there are (in theory) groups that are organized around a shared common belief in God. Whenever atheists must be put in their place and called the minority view that they are, “believers in God” are lumped together. So it must be the same god, don’t you think? So, large groups of believers do, in theory, share something terribly important (and especially important for the purposes of joining together as a church)… So while there is every reason to expect groups of atheists, brought together artificially, to naturally divide into mutually interested groups, groups of believers, brought together for the purpose of whatever it is their God wants them to do, should have every reason to agree on stuff (mind you, as individuals they may still disagree on anything else–there is no reason that they should have to cheer for the same football teams, or vote for the same parties, or like the same foods–but when they have gathered together for the purposes of their belief, they should be expected to agree).

The most generous number of Christian denominations I know of is roughly 41,000. Because this estimate includes nation-specific information, most international churches are counted multiple times (which sometimes matters, and sometimes does not). On the other hand, it only counts Christian sects, and Christians are only about a third of the global population. When the other Abrahamic faiths, the Indian and East Asian religions, the African and American indigenous religions, and many many more, are taken into account, we could very nearly conclude that religious people don’t agree on what God is. But let’s be generous, and just cut the number of Christian faiths by an order of magnitude. Dividing by the number of years Christianity has existed, we find that Christianity has averaged two new denominations a year… every year for nearly 2,000 years.

I’d refer the writers of the Creative Minority Report to Matthew 7:3, but my goodness, different denominations even use different versions of the bible, and I would hate to offend them…

Dammit, I Did It Wrong

My commenters saw through my evil plot:

I think, for the year, I will write in prose only;
no rhyme and no meter, no scansion, no verse.
Iambic pentameter? Perish the notion!
We’ll see if my writing gets better… or worse.
A year without sonnets, or ballads, or limericks;
a year without couplets or bad villanelles;
a year when my thoughts must be written, unfiltered
by badly-forced rhymes jammed in metrical shells.
I’ve posted in quatrains; I’ve posted in couplets;
I’ve posted a few in a form of my own.
I’ve written more verse than I care to remember,
in forms more diverse than most people have known!
But now, for one year, I will change up my thinking;
I’ll curb my obsession with meter and rhyme.
Or maybe I won’t, cos this “try it a year” bit
is silly, and simply a waste of my time.

This was, in fact, a commentary on the pastor’s year of living godlessly. It seems an honest try, and not a con, but stranger things have happened. We shall see.

The odds of my ability to change, to see the world and not look first for rhymes, are small. I’d have to wholly re-arrange my thoughts (already strained enough, at times). We can, with practice, change our usual ways of doing things; we are not set in stone. But wow, it’s hard—a year’s a lot of days, and who’s to say it’s worth it, once it’s done? So, no, I think I’ll keep on writing verse, pretending it’s a blessing, not a curse.

Satanist, Atheist; Tomayto, Tomahto

The folks at Fox News have been hatin’ on Satan;
The thought of him sickens their good Christian hearts
A statue? in public? And Gretchen was retchin’,
While all of her guests played their usual parts:
“That statue’s offensive! It’s hateful! A state full
Of Christians would never have voted it in!
Majority rules—you don’t like it? Then hike it
To some other state that might tolerate sin!”

Conservative pundits are trying, by lying,
To claim the majority writes all the laws
Their cry “it’s Commandments we follow!” rings hollow:
They always forget the establishment clause
Not wanting to, yet, let them all in, they’re stallin’—
They’ll wait, while this case makes its way through the courts
In the meantime, the Decalogue only, so lonely,
Cries out to be joined by some goat-headed sorts.

Yeah, well, ok, I’m not really happy with this verse, so I’ll post it quick before I just throw it away. It started out as a comment on Gretchen Carlson’s innocent gaffe, then took a detour into the shouting match her guests launched (have you ever noticed how few guests actually answer the questions they’ve been asked? They answer completely different questions instead, loudly and independently of whether anyone else is talking), then into a vague commentary on the whole satanic statue thing. So it needs a good editing… which would kill the meter and rhyme. What ya gonna do?

There is much fodder for hair-pulling at that link, though. Misrepresentation of the Satanists who are proposing to donate the monument (satanists, rather, are the stuff of pulp novels, B movies, and Chick Tracts), “majority rules” being demanded by the Jewish talking-head (who asks “what did goats ever do? I don’t know why they are having to suffer.”… forgetting that his own religion gave us the “scapegoat”), a member of a smaller minority than atheists; Gretchen’s “the rabbi has a good point” after the rabbi’s alleged point disappeared in a haze of shouting…

Schisms In Atheist Churches: Who Cares?

For a schism in a church
You don’t even have to search
Splitting up is something churches do quite well
When one person’s sacred views
Are another’s “pick and choose”,
Then they schism (oh, and one will go to hell).

Now some atheists, quite oddly
Join assemblies (but ungodly)
Just a fraction—but it’s one that makes the news
While the larger godless masses
Vote their conscience with their asses—
On their couch at home, instead of in the pews

The Assembly’s growing pains
Both their losses and their gains
Serve as fodder for an article or two…
As the faithful make the claim
“Look, we’re really just the same—
We’re not really more illogical than you!”

And the godless mostly yawn,
Come the breaking of the dawn
Seeing Sunday as a day for sleeping in
And if schism’s in the air
Why, they mostly do not care
Cos it isn’t like apostasy’s a sin.

CNN’s Belief Blog has a post–After a schism, a question: Can atheist churches last?–which misses the point entirely. See, the whole thing about the Sunday Assembly meetings is, they are there for people who want them. That’s about it. If a different sort of meeting is what the people want, that’s great. If there is sufficient demand for 2, or 3 or 5 or 17, different godless assemblies, that’s great, too. If it’s just 3 people meeting at a coffee shop because they each found 2 other people they enjoy spending some conversation with, that’s fantastic.

There is no dogma. There is no requirement of this or that belief–if one group wants to sing, and the other wants to discuss science, or read comic books, or trade recipes, or hang out and schmooze over coffee and food, not one of these groups is going to think the others are going to hell.

When religious groups split, there is a redefinition of foundational dogma, of a positively defined picture of what true faith is. And CNN (and other stories I can’t be arsed to go dig around for) pushes the narrative that this is the same for atheist groups. But it just isn’t. And it can’t be.

Myself, I can’t imagine going to any of the Sunday Assemblies I have seen described thus far (well, maybe Greta’s). But I wish them well. On this issue, at least, disagreeing with me does not mean you are wrong.

Paying It Forward…

as per Ophelia…

I plagiarized a poet; I
Recycled someone’s rhyme;
I composed collaborations,
Never thinking it a crime

It’s the form of my expression;
It’s the narrative I choose;
It’s the sharing of ideas—
Does it really matter whose?

Hey, a sonnet is a sonnet,
Make the topic what you will—
With a rhyming dictionary
There’s no function left to skill!

In the world of modern poetry,
Your sentences are free—
You could play the Prince of Denmark…
To be, or not to… something…

Plagiarism as a new art form? I must have scores of verses that are pastiches on this or that… (I won’t link one, lest I link a dozen, and that’s not fair). It seems to me that pretty much all parties know (which is very different from all parties admitting) when party B has used party A’s stuff. Some of it is protected; some of it is being a bastard. I have tried, myself, to only use protected bits of other people’s writing… if you see something you think is otherwise, please let me know!

Ophelia notes that being pointed to other people’s writing is a good thing, a feature, not a bug…I agree.

And if you plagiarize me… remember, my sister used to be a lawyer.

Now she’s a judge.

Old Good News Revisited (Or, New Bad News)

Since the topics I write on are vast
There’s a chance that good news from the past
Might be soon overturned
Cos you see, I have learned
That Good News may be too good to last.

They may or may not both be from today, but that’s when I saw them–two updates on things I have written about here. Both were good news when I wrote about them; both kinda suck today.

I wrote about Monsignor William Lynn… he was found guilty in Philadelphia, sending a clear message to the church.

But now… conviction overturned.

A Pennsylvania appeals court on Thursday overturned the criminal conviction of a Roman Catholic official who was accused of covering up sexual abuses by priests he supervised. The court rejected the legal basis for a prosecution that was viewed as a milestone in holding senior church officials accountable for keeping abuse reports secret in past decades and transferring predatory priests to unwary new parishes.

So, yeah, bad news.

The other one, I guess, wasn’t originally good news after all. Which means the current news is not newly bad, but just a continuation of bad. Bottom line is, I wrote about the BBC’s “Thought For The Day”, which apparently refused to include atheist thought as a subset of “thought”. So today, I find out that a guest editor managed to sneak an atheist’s thoughts in. Well… an hour earlier, and labeled “alternative”, because the BBC refused to let an atheist have the regular slot.

The BBC has banned Sir Tim Berners-Lee from having an atheist deliver Thought for the Day as he guest edited Radio 4’s Today programme, saying it must be spoken by a believer.
Sir Tim, who was invited to edit the flagship news programme on Boxing Day, had intended to employ an atheist to read the traditional Thought for the Day, in order to best represent Britain as a whole.
But, he has disclosed, the move was prohibited by the BBC, which insists the slot must be filled by a religious leader.

I guess it can’t all be good news.

Oh, and it goes without saying, if you look at the comment sections of either story, you’ll see what people think about atheists.

New Harris Poll: God Belief Down, Atheism Up

The Harris numbers make it plain:
Belief in God is on the wane
The numbers also show a gain
In Darwin’s evolution
Majorities, though, still hold sway
In seeing the religious way
But now—I hope… perhaps… some day
A different distribution

Majorities will still insist
That God Almighty does exist—
Although that ship’s begun to list;
It’s showing signs of sinking
More people now will be so bold
As question myths that they’ve been told
But now we know (cos they were polled)
There’s changes in our thinking!

Harris Interactive released a poll this past Monday, tracking various measures of religious belief in comparison to previous polls in 2005, 2007, and 2009. From their release:

A new Harris Poll finds that while a strong majority (74%) of U.S. adults do believe in God, this belief is in decline when compared to previous years as just over four in five (82%) expressed a belief in God in 2005, 2007 and 2009. Also, while majorities also believe in miracles (72%, down from 79% in 2005), heaven (68%, down from 75%), that Jesus is God or the Son of God (68%, down from 72%), the resurrection of Jesus Christ (65%, down from 70%), the survival of the soul after death (64%, down from 69%), the devil, hell (both at 58%, down from 62%) and the Virgin birth (57%, down from 60%), these are all down from previous Harris Polls.

Belief in Darwin’s theory of evolution, however, while well below levels recorded for belief in God, miracles and heaven, is up in comparison to 2005 findings (47%, up from 42%).

There’s a lot of information there–well worth a visit. I’ll just whet your appetite with this table (click to embiggen):

Good News, Everybody!

Good News, Everybody!

Poland High Court: Atheists Are Human, Too

“It isn’t important,” you’ve argued before,
“Cos God doesn’t really exist”
But look! When the hospital gave you last rites,
Though you weren’t on the Catholic list,
(And when you recovered, which no one expected,
And found your desires were ignored),
You sued, and you claimed “immaterial damages”
Thus making fun of our Lord.
The sacrament shouldn’t have bothered you much;
It’s nothing—or that’s what you’ve said—
We couldn’t have known that you’d think to object
(And of course, we all thought you’d be dead!)
Yes, yes, we intruded, but in our defense
It’s not like you’re Catholic, like us!
Your views are quite foreign; they’re godless; they’re strange
Not really worth making a fuss!
Your second-rate views, why, they’re not worth defending—
They’re merely the atheist sort—
You have no religion, no reason to live,
And no reason to take us to court!

My aggregator threw something strange at me today–a story out of Poland, reported in Germany, of an atheist who, in a coma, had received “extreme unction” by the hospital’s priest, and who, upon recovering, sued the hospital for “immaterial damages” in the amount of 21,00 Euros. Poland’s Supreme Court has (apparently–any readers who can verify, please do!) ruled that freedom of conscience applies to atheists as well as to the godly, and has asked the lower court to determine the amount of the atheist’s award.

Oh, yeah, I did not read this in the Berliner-Zeitung; I read the reaction to it in a site that thought it was a horrible overreach:

Somehow, this case is quintessential for what is going on in our society: we are reaching new levels of idiocy that were unknown to previous generations. What we have here is, on the one hand, the perfect prototype of a militant atheist (or, as they nowadays prefer to call themselves, a “humanist” or “secularist”): a man who squeamishly asserts his status as a “victim” whose rights have been trampled upon, and who at the same time is aggressive and quarrelsome enough to spend his and other people’s time and resources for a lawsuit on such a matter. What a cantankerous, obnoxious, ridiculous, fussy, stingy, petty-minded, lamentable pain in the neck this man must be! I feel sorry for the guy, but I really would not want to be like him.

That horrible atheist, in his manipulative coma, forcing the Catholic hospital to overlook his beliefs and assert their power over him.

How strong is Catholic privilege?

In my humble opinion, this lawsuit is the best proof that so-called “secularists” don’t take their own stated beliefs seriously. If they did, then the rite of the anointing of the sick would simply be of no meaning of them: just a few words, muttered sotto voce, and maybe the sign of the cross – not more. In the case at hand, the plaintiff, being in a coma, was probably not even able to notice that someone was praying at his bedside. So, what damage does he believe to have suffered? Did he feel pain? Was his (unexpected) healing delayed? Or was his self-esteem hurt by the fact that someone charitably prayed for him when he seemed to need it?

Treating you by our beliefs is a compliment; treating us by your beliefs is an insult. It is charitable to pray for an atheist.

Yeah… no. When my brother was dying, the hospital chaplains were worse than useless. If lawsuits like this mean that priests are an opt-in feature, rather than an opt-out, then people can have whatever rites they want performed, at their explicit request. And not before. You want extreme unction, wear a medic-alert chaplain-alert bracelet.

“How To Share The Gospel With An Atheist”

When you’re talking to an atheist
The sort that’s kinda nice,
And you don’t know how to handle it,
Here—follow my advice:

Remember, as you’re listening:
He’s lying through his teeth—
You’ll have to translate carefully
The message underneath

He’ll often try to shock you
With the claim “there is no god”
Just assume that’s insecurity,
A flimsy, false façade.

They really want the gospel
And they really want God’s love
And they really want a heaven
And a message from above

They hate their godless lifestyles
And their shallowness and sin
When they argue with believers
They don’t really want to win

If you simply share the gospel
(Which they likely haven’t heard)
As the story of God’s love for us
They’ll show, they crave God’s Word

In short, deny their thinking,
And dismiss their shallow views…
And I hope these simple pointers
Have been something you can use.

In an annoying and condescending example of precisely how not to talk to an atheist, preacher Greg Stier shares a story:

Last week I sat next to James on a flight from St. Louis to Denver. As we talked the subject turned to spirituality and religion. I confessed that I was a preacher and he confessed he was an atheist. What unfolded on the rest of the flight was a deep, thought-provocative, laughter-laced gospel conversation.

Really, I’d love to read James’s version of this. I’ve had a few airline conversations about religion, and frankly it’s a bit of a chore (though with the right person, it can be fun). Far more interesting have been conversations that were sparked by someone’s choice of reading material, whether it was “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” or “How to Teach Physics to your Dog”. Just because atheists are willing to talk about religion, this should not be interpreted as an eagerness.

Stier has five helpful tips for sharing the gospel with atheists:

1. Don’t be shocked and do ask tons of questions.

Some atheists like to shock Christians with the fact that they don’t believe in God. This brand of atheist pulls the pin on the “there is no God” grenade and drops it in the middle of the conversation, expecting Christians to run for cover.

Don’t be phased (sic). As a matter of fact start asking questions about their atheism. Find out what they mean by atheism (some are agnostics but call themselves atheists.) Ask questions about their background. Were they raised in church? Do they have any Christian friends? Where were they educated about atheism?

I don’t expect Christians to run from cover. If I say “there is no god” (typically, I will just say “I’m an atheist”), it’s as a response to the assertion that the other person made–and if I am being that blunt, it’s because they said something deserving of bluntness.

2. Listen deeply for the real “why.”

Often atheists have a reason (other than “reason“) for becoming atheists. Listen for it. Sometimes it’s anger over losing a loved one. Other times it’s that they were hurt by the church in some way. But often there’s a “why” behind the lie they are embracing.

As opposed to the lie you are selling. Again, in my case, the “why” is the replacement of a whole lot of ignorance with a whole lot of learning. Yes, I was once a born-again Christian, and that doesn’t leave easily. Science classes (biology and psychology in particular), comparative religion classes, and the like, poked holes in the simplistic religious answers and replaced them with answers I did not have to have faith to understand.

On the other hand, there is no shortage of evidence of (some) people embracing religion because of fear, because of threat, because of loss. But I guess it doesn’t count when it goes that way.

3. Connect relationally.

Atheists are real people with real feelings. They laugh, cry, talk and connect like anyone else. I think that too many times Christians treat atheists as objects and not people.

That’s right–atheists are real people. You would never want to stereotype them or deny their very real feelings. Speaking of which…

4. Assume that, down deep inside, they do believe in God.

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who genuinely rejects the existence of God. Sure, I’ve met many who have claimed God’s existence to be a lie but I’m convinced that, down deep inside, they really do believe there’s a God.

Why do I believe that? Because Scripture makes it clear in Romans 1:18-21 that there are no real atheists,

So, connect relationally, but always remember that the image they are showing you is false.

5. Frame the gospel as a love story (that just happens to be true.)

When I shared the gospel with James I wasn’t trying to prove God’s existence I was simply sharing the story of God’s love. I said something like, “James, at the core of Christianity is a love story. Jesus put it this way, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him will not perish but has everlasting life.’”

I could tell that James was intrigued by this view. He listened respectfully and asked thoughtful questions.

Because, I’m sure, James had never heard this message before, living as he does in a culture where only a handful of Christians exist, and they tend to keep to themselves, quietly.

My suspicion is that James was, at this point, was just a bit gobsmacked that Stier was treating him so condescendingly, and was gritting his teeth, smiling and nodding, counting the minutes until the flight ended.

Note also that James is described as respectful and polite… despite the stereotype of the grenade-dropping atheist. I can only hope that anyone reading his advice will see it for the steaming pile it is. Sadly, he’s preaching to the choir, and the only comment “love[s] the tips”.

I don’t.