Here we go again, trying to prove god’s existence

One of the paradoxical signs that god does not exist is how religious apologists keep trying to prove that s/he does exist. After all, no one tries to prove that the Earth exists or that the Sun exists. Surely the existence of gods should be at least as manifest. As I wrote before, attempts to prove god’s existence may actually weaken belief. But we periodically encounter people who claim that they have a killer argument in support of god’s existence and an exuberant press release touts a new book by Edward Feser that once again claims to do so.
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What makes a person do something like this?

The Trump presidency has seen a rise in bigotry as white nationalists and neo-Nazis come out into the open to ‘take back their country’ from those whom they see as not authentic Americans, by which they mean white people and not the indigenous ones that the whites systematically sought to exterminate. Hence news reports such as this one back in February about Andrew King, a resident of Schenectady, NY, have become all too common.
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Believers might be better served by NOT trying to prove god’s existence

Although he was born into a god-fearing family and had a typical Christian upbringing, the philosopher David Hume began to have doubts about god as early as in his teenage years, and throughout his adult life was very much a skeptic. I will later provide a review of the book The Infidel and the Professor by Dennis C. Rasmussen that is an intellectual biography of the friendship between David Hume and Adam Smith, but I wanted to pass along this passage that I just read that made me laugh out loud.
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Being hit by a hurricane shows that god loves you

We are familiar with religious leaders claiming that natural disasters are acts of vengeance of their god for the sinfulness by some members of the affected areas. These leaders know exactly why their god did it and it is usually something to do with disapproval of the LGBT community or whatever sex-related hang-up is currently bugging them. It is a cruel, but by now predictable, part of the coverage of the aftermath of such events.
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Film review: Sita Sings the Blues (2009)

I only recently became aware of this film that tells in animated form the story of the epic poem the Ramayana that, along with the Mahabharatha, provides much of the foundational myths of Hindus and India. There are many different versions of this epic poem. Like all such myths it blends the life of gods with that of humans, with gods manifesting themselves as people. The basic story is that of the divine prince Rama, his wife Sita, the demon king Ravana who abducts Sita, and her subsequent rescue.
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Of course you can be good without god

My attention was drawn to this article with the title Can You Be Good Without God? and it does not start out well.

“If God did not exist, then we would have to invent him,” said the French philosopher Voltaire. His point: that without a divine being to check right and wrong, any number of atrocities are possible and could go unpunished.

A recent study (of more than 3,000 people in 13 countries) published in the journal Nature Human Behavior echoes Voltaire’s maxim.

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Avoiding politics and religion in polite society

We are all aware of the advice that in gatherings of family and friends, two topics that should be avoided are politics and religion. I was under the impression that this was a fairly recent development but in reading the book The Scientific Revolution by Steven Shapin (1996), I learned that it dates at least as far back as the 17th century and that such prohibitions were even included in the constitutions of scientific societies.
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