Not Seeing God: Patheos Nonreligious Bloggers Unite!

Miracle Girl: Not Seeing God: Patheos Nonreligious Bloggers Unite!

Not seeing is not believing. In "Not Seeing God: Atheism in the 21st Century," the voices of 24 Patheos Nonreligious bloggers come together in a chorus of godless dissent.

My chapter in this new Patheos Nonreligious anthology is a tongue-in-cheek guide to raising your secular children.

Jehovah’s Witnesses: Hell on Earth Before My Morning Coffee

Miracle Girl: Jehovah’s Witnesses: Hell on Earth Before My Morning Coffee

In which a pair of persistent Jehovah's Witnesses interrupt my journey to perdition while my cereal grows soggy.

Jehovah's Witnesses: "Do you want to see a better world?"

Me: "Not through God, who doesn't exist."

Secondhand Prayer: I Prayed to the God-Monster Under My Bed

Miracle Girl: Secondhand Prayer: I Prayed to the God-Monster Under My Bed

I prayed to a god I didn't believe in as a child because he had become the monster under my bed. I also learned that fear of Hellfire is a communicable disease.

It was a crazy, mixed up kind of secular childhood.

Seeking a New Year's Evolution

Miracle Girl: Seeking a New Year's Evolution

Will humanity ever evolve away the need to believe in an all-powerful god? Well, I believe religion isn't hard-wired in the human brain. That's a hopeful sign for the future.

Three Gods for the Price of One

Creepy conception of the Holy Trinity in a 15th century illuminated manuscrpt. 

Miracle Girl: Three Gods for the Price of One

In this satire, a 4th century Christian defends an emerging doctrine that has all of the taste of multiple gods, without the guilt of paganism.

It's three great gods in one!

Disarmed and Dangerous (At Least to Myself)

Back in a wheelchair, temporarily, as I waited for paramedics in the first aid station of the Getty Center after the fall.

Miracle Girl: Disarmed and Dangerous (At Least to Myself)

My bet is on my sling healing my broken arm, not God. Modern medicine already repaired my dislocated shoulder.

Yes, it does hurt like shit.

Foundering Foundation Myths

Imagining the kind of flame wars the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Etruscans would've engaged in if their cultures hadn't died out.

If King Tyrsenos didn’t lead the Etruscans from Lydia, why are there Etruscans in Etruria?

I will never understand the mindset of theists....

He opened the rock and...something flowed out

Miracle Girl: He opened the rock and...something flowed out

That substance also poured forth from the creationist commenters in my Secular Spectrum post, Holy Moses.

My secular upbringing prevents me from truly understanding the religious mindset. That means in many cases, my readers know more about the subject than I ever could.

How did you swallow religion when you were a believer?

So Always Look on the Bright Side of Death

Miracle Girl: So Always Look on the Bright Side of Death

Monty Python's Life of Brian is one of my favorite films. I can't count how many times I've seen the movie. It seems unlikely that it could've been made today, so we have the pre-Moral Majority times it came out in to thank for its release. Not that it wasn't a subject for protests, of course.

But I digress. My second Miracle Girl post is really about how life is indeed a piece of shit, when you think of it, as Eric Idle sang on the cross.

Yet atheists don't wonder why God put that shit in front of their shoe. And when a door closes, they don't wait for God to open a window. They do it for themselves.

And so have I, as I've coped with my illnesses in the last few years. Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true.

Miracle, My Ass!

Miracle Girl: Miracle, My Ass!

I have laid out all the reasons why my recovery wasn't a miracle in Coma Chameleon. Yet all the logical and scientific arguments fall on deaf ears with theists. They continue to believe God saved this long-time atheist's life. It's not about logic or evidence; that's why they call it faith.

But I say...miracle, my ass!

Hey kids (okay, maybe not kids), check out my new Patheos Atheist blog Miracle Girl. It's guaranteed lower in calories than Miracle Whip, and it's a lot funnier too! But wait, there's more! You can now follow Miracle Girl on Facebook absolutely free!

Which Came First, the Science or the Atheism?

The Secular Spectrum: Which Came First, the Science or the Atheism?

Surely scientists--especially in the natural sciences--couldn't help but let go of the idea of supernatural agency in the creation of physical or biological forces. Where does God fit into it when the process of adaptation and speciation seems to run just fine on its own? To me, it seems obvious, but of course I'm biased.

So are most of the studies I found online while researching the subject. I felt I needed to add more detail to my coverage of studies of the religious beliefs of scientists in my SecSpec post, Unnatural Selection.

Though I found more studies that seemed to find what I expected, they all seemed to have been conducted by partisans themselves.

I'd love to read a dispassionate study that breaks religious beliefs down by scientific specialty, because the one thing that is clear is that when it comes to belief in God, all scientific disciplines are not the same.

Is it a coincidence that the handful of contemporary creationist scientists the Ken Hams of the world trot out are all in such fields as chemistry?

Unnatural Selection

No, he isn't saying pull my finger.

The Secular Spectrum: Unnatural Selection

I admit that I still have trouble understanding creationists. Having been raised without religion, I have enough difficulty relating to believers in the first place.

But even though I think theistic evolutionists like Francis Collins have partitioned the scientist in their brains from their faith, this form of contortionism has a long history in evolutionary thought. And it's certainly preferable to creationists and its intelligent design offshoot.

When I think of those two groups of evolutionary denialists, I imagine them sticking their fingers in their ears and saying la la la la la whenever they think about archaeopteryx's or read of a new hominin like Homo naledi.

It's a very small world they live in inside that contradictory and morally despicable book.

Born Free (of God)

The Secular Spectrum: Born Free (of God)

Though I was raised as an agnostic, when I was about 10, I began praying silently before bed:

Now I lay me down to sleep,I pray the Lord my soul to keep,If I should die before I wake,I pray the Lord my soul to take.

I must've picked it up from TV or the movies. The reason I was doing this wasn't because I had secretly become religious. I interpreted the prayer as a threat that God might kill you in your sleep if you didn't pray to him.

God was the boogeyman, the monster under my bed.

I also deeply feared Bloody Mary, which Dale McGowan amusingly recalls in his latest post. To me, both God and Bloody Mary were equivalent--demons to be feared. If God didn't get me, the ground might open up and Devil would suck me into the bowels of Hell.

Though I was a fearful child, I was able to shake this strange habit for a girl who would mouth the prayers she was forced to recite before lunch in school. (Both events happened when I lived in Birmingham, Alabama.)

One day, I thought, "This is silly. I don't even really believe in God. I should stop this."

I didn't gather up the courage right away, but eventually I stopped praying to the imaginary killer in the sky.

The Trumping of America

The Secular Spectrum: The Trumping of America

We've been watching the Republican primary debates. No, we're not masochists; we're just dedicated to the election process. Plus, it's fun to mock them.

Watching Donald Trump bluster and self-aggrandize as he spews vile prejudice, I'm amazed that anyone supports him.

But even more amazing is the fact that the Donald is enjoying so much evangelical support. Trump being Trump, his attempts at appealing to fundamentalists have been manifestly insincere.

He's the only person with a bigger ego than the all-knowing, omnipotent, supposed creator of the universe.

Perhaps, his Christian Right supporters are practiced at taking leaps of faith.

My fate is in my hands

Yes, that's my hand and my keychain Magic 8-Ball.

I have written about this before, but I think that my atheism has helped drive my recovery.

Sure, my stubbornness has something to do with it--don't tell me I can't walk!--but knowing there's no one out there who's going to make things better makes me do it for myself.

I realize that believers find praying to God comforting. And they keep waiting and waiting for God to pick up the message.

I guess he screens his calls.

A famous large study of heart patients showed that patients who knew they were being prayed for actually did worse than those who weren't prayed for.

But like people relying on Magic 8-Balls, believers keep shaking that ball, waiting for it to say something other than...

ANSWER HAZY TRY AGAIN

They've all heard the canard that God helps those who help themselves--I wonder why that is?--but they still wait for the great big genie in the sky to make it better for them.

CONCENTRATE AND TRY AGAIN

But since I don't believe there's anyone up there, I know I have to rely on myself. My recovery won't happen on it's own.

IT IS CERTAIN

And there's a comfort in knowing that I have my fate in my own hands. The faithful are always excusing life's misfortunes by saying God works in mysterious ways.

BETTER NOT TELL YOU NOW

Well,  I don't have some fickle deity deciding to give me yet another bout of Legionnaires' disease because he woke up on the wrong side of the cloud.

MY ANSWER IS NO

I slowly weaned off prednisone early last year , so I'm no longer as immune-suppressed as I was. (My methotrexate also has immunosuppressive properties, but it's not coincidental that I haven't had a bout of pneumonia since I went off prednisone in late January of 2015.)

IT IS CERTAIN

I'm continuing to exercise on the stationary bike six times a week and hike once a week, not to mention my physical therapy exercises. I keep escalating the difficulty of the hikes. Indeed, the hike this Monday at Rocky Peak Park was the hardest yet (post and Tumblr link are forthcoming).

When I was a toddler, I had a shoestring with some large beads. I would chew on the ends of the lace, so they were rather frayed. I couldn't get one of the beads on, and I was getting red in the face with frustration. My mother took it from me. She was about to string it on for me when I grabbed it back, and said, "Me do it!"

I'm still like that when I feel frustrated. But when I see myself climbing new heights, I can say,

"Me did it!"

Will I recover the rest of my physical abilities without recourse to a higher power?

OUTLOOK GOOD

Seeking a New Year's Evolution

The Secular Spectrum: Seeking a New Year's Evolution
I admit to a bias against evolutionary psychology. Obviously, it does indeed provide a valuable prism through which to view human behavior. We are part of nature, after all, not above it. But too often, evolutionary psychology presents just-so stories that seek to explain observed or assumed traits by cherry picking evidence to support previously held beliefs. That's a recipe for bad science.

But if, as theorized by some, the human brain evolved a need for religion--out damn God spot!--is there any chance that humanity will shed it's religious magical thinking?

Yes. There is reason to hope, with or without evolution.

Myth-Taken by Santa

Myth-Taken by Santa

"Santa is a fake!" I said to my mother, outraged.

Those are the words I uttered to my mother after I had noticed the gap between the mall Santa's beard and his face. My mom reports that she could see the little wheels turning in my head as I thought about the implications,

"And all the Santas, in all the malls, they're all fake too!" I added.

Keith wondered how many malls I could've seen Santa in. But as my mom and I cruised through Miami, we undoubtedly passed countless malls, all with their own Santas.

I was indignant about this fraud, though my mom had never intended me to believe in Santa Claus in the first place.

Years later, I eventually convinced my mom to give up her own myth--that God might exist.

Winning the Everlasting Gobstopper of Life

My latest post for the Secular Spectrum: Winning the Everlasting Gobstopper of Life

This is my brain on strokes. But despite what my doctors proclaimed, the damage wasn't "profound." They knew that my damage was in the watershed areas--as my hospital records attest--but didn't take into account that my relative youth and the nature of watershed-area stroke damage gave me a better chance of recovery, which they listed as poor.

My neurologist told me that the watershed areas tend not to control the most vital systems and they tend to bounce back faster after they've been damaged. My relative youth also meant that I had a better chance of recovery.

To me, the fact that the less important systems blink out first and recover better strongly suggests that this is an evolutionary triage system,

Natural selections saved my life, even though I was hardly the fittest.

God say me eat COOKIE

Part 3 of a two-part blog about my encounters with nursing home and hospital clergy. I suppose you can call it part 2.1, since it's unpacking the subject of the second blog. I really should stop labeling linked posts with numbers. (Part one.)

Naturally, atheists think they're right about the nonexistence of God and consider the faithful misguided, at the very least. In fact, that's the very word I once used to describe the family members lamenting the fear of the dark they thought was preventing the poor dying girl in my ICU room from "crossing over." The same goes for believers, of course. How can atheists deny the "evidence" of God's work? But what sets the two groups apart? And what was different about the prevaricating hospital chaplain and his probable motivation for his behaviour?

When was the last time you read about a child being killed in an attempt to drive religion out of them? Take your time; I'll wait. In most cases, the adults involved in tragically fatal exorcisms are doing this through love, not malice. But surely it's unfair to link the probably well-meaning mainline Protestant hospital chaplain to such ignorant, fringe religious thinking, you may say. I agree, despite the fact that I snarkily used an image from The Exorcist to illustrate my last blog.

But what links these religiously based behaviours is an absolute conviction of the righteousness of their cause. It's a belief that the ends justify the means, and a faith that God is guiding their actions. Atheists, on the other hand, believe that their own biases and desires are shaping their motivations--duh!--not some outside force. They therefore tend to consider their moral actions with utmost seriousness. Far from being rudderless without God to guide them, it's been my experience that nonbelievers think far more deeply about the consequences of their actions. The faithful are more likely to translate their inner voice as God telling them to do, coincidentally, exactly what they want to do.

That's like Cookie Monster telling himself that God is the voice in his head. God say me eat COOKIE! Nom, nom, nom. An atheist is more apt to be like Oscar the Grouch. I love trash, and that's why I collect it. I don't steal trash from other Grouches because it would be wrong to take their battered and worn sneakers just because they have more holes. They love their ragged or rotten or rusty trash too.

So what does this have to do with our lying cleric? He was probably so convinced that he was doing God's work that anything he did was God's will, even if it involved lying. There was a life at stake, after all. Without God's light, she will surely die. Yes, all of her loved ones but one is a nonbeliever, but keeping me from praying for her is like preventing her doctors from treating her. It's God's will that I pray for her, despite her beliefs and her loved ones' wishes. I'm lying, but it's for the greater good.

Of course, he wasn't doing it for selfish reasons, but the fact remains that he lied because he thought he was doing God's work. God's will gave him him license to do exactly what he wanted to do. What a coincidence. No one thinks they're a bad person, and when they do wrong, they can usually find a handy excuse to justify their actions. But those who believe their actions are guided by a higher power don't even recognize that it's an excuse, however justified. To them, it's a command from God. They chomp down on that cookie, convinced all the while that it's not because me love COOKIES.

Saving my life by saving my soul?

A representation of the scene at the hospital, with some creative license.

Part two of my two-part blog detailing the uncomfortable situations I faced with nursing home and hospital chaplains. Part one: All Saints; one "none"

Though it was a fair characterization to place my Free Inquiry essay "Without a Prayer of a Chance" on the "it's okay" side of the prayer issue, I make a distinction between sincere prayers offered by my friends and ones imposed upon me by people who don't know me and for whom it's not personal. Case in point, the probably well-meaning, but nonetheless mendacious chaplain at the Kaiser Permanente hospital where I spent the bulk of the six weeks of my coma.

You would think he had never come across a nonbeliever before. My mother, who is also an atheist, informed the hospital chaplain of my atheism the first time he came into my room while she was there. Joella already knew him, so this wasn't his first visit. My mom allowed him to pray over me, however. Even though she was uncomfortable with it, she felt it was relatively harmless--as I thought after my awakening (as mentioned in part one). It was a generic sort of prayer, God's love and all that.

Keith was raised an Episcopalian, with a couple of priests in his family. He's an agnostic, but his interest in the history of religion led him to become a religious studies major. His second interaction with the chaplain was memorably fraught, fueled by Keith's lack of sleep in those terrible days early on when I was hovering near death. The cleric entered my room, but Keith tried to wave him away. "We talked about this before. Stephanie is an atheist, and you said you wouldn't bother her." "Sorry, I didn't know," the chaplain replied. Keith, who isn't generally a combative person, called him on it. "Isn't there something in the Bible about lying?" Unlike many believers, he's actually read the Bible. That's one of the reasons he's an agnostic.

Now, I generally try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but Keith had written in my records that I was an atheist. And he had reminded the chaplain repeatedly of this fact. You would think he'd want to check that before ministering to a patient. You wouldn't want to pray to Jesus over a Jewish patient or speak of heaven to the family members of a dying Hindu, perhaps offering them a little beef jerky as a snack. My mother is not the type to mince words. She made my beliefs (and hers) perfectly clear. Was it too much to ask that our beliefs be respected? Perhaps he thought he was lying for the greater good. God knows.

He promised Keith that he would stop coming around, but that was a lie too. Unbeknownst to Keith, my mother encountered him two additional times. On the second visit, she repeated that I was an atheist. He said that Keith had told him that, as well (but he neglected to mention his promise not to return). He again asked if he could pray for me, and she agreed despite her reservations. "May you take the lord's light into your heart and be healed," he prayed. My mother was offended by the attempted conversion and the implication that I wouldn't be healed without it. He should've saved his breath. It would've taken the profound brain damage my doctors thought I had for me to believe. The third time he showed up while she was there, she refused his request to pray.

I had one last encounter with the minister, this time personally, after my awakening. I had returned to the hospital to repair a hemorrhaging ulcer caused by my feeding tube. The cleric asked if he could he could pray for me. I nodded reluctantly. But I quickly changed my mind, with a sharp shake of my head. Like the priest in the nursing home, he looked stunned. It was as if the previous encounters with Keith and my mom never happened. Yes, it was weeks later, but given the conflict with him and my relative youth, you would think my case would've stood out in his mind. Was he shocked that I hadn't taken God's light into my heart and was still healed?

To me, his prayer request felt like an imposition--like he wasn't praying for me, but at me. By then I knew my friends had been praying for me. I appreciated the feelings behind their prayers, but it wasn't personal for the chaplain. Why should I have to be subjected to this? And why was I worrying about saying no; didn't my feelings enter into this? It wasn't as if I could get up and walk away.

Yes, I believe all prayers are pointless, but some prayers are more so than others. My friends' prayers were a deeply personal gesture. To them, prayer works, so it was the most effective way they could help me. Forget my feelings about the efficacy of prayer; to them, this was the deepest form of support they could offer.

When Keith told the chaplain--in answer to his question--that he was an agnostic, he said, "Good, there's still hope for you." He wasn't kidding. But Keith isn't an agnostic because he can't make up his mind, but because there's no way to prove the existence or non-existence of God. This comment leads me to believe that the chaplain was indeed trying to save my life by saving my soul. God help me.

Before he left, the minister asked if he could visit me again. I shook my head once more. I'm sure his presence is a comfort to believers, but I just wanted to be left alone.