The Blaze, Glenn Beck’s online contribution to the world, is so freaked out, so out of their childlike minds they posted this:

“Why in the world would atheists be using a music video that celebrates the burning of churches and bloodied crosses to promote an upcoming music festival? While a viable answer to this question is hard to fathom, this is exactly what’s going on as non-believers prepare for “Rock Beyond Belief,” a massive Army-sponsored music festival occurring at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

Before we get into this bizarre video, let’s have a refresher surrounding how this atheist music festival came to be. Following a concert that was put on by a Christian group on the base in September 2010, you may recall that military atheists were offended. They began claiming that skeptics, too, deserve an event that celebrates their non-belief. So, after making a ruckus, the military agreed to give $50,000 toward “Rock Beyond Belief” (the same amount had been allocated for the Christian concert).

The event, slated for March 31, will feature various musical acts who celebrate the notion that there isn’t a God governing the universe. Additionally, there will be speakers, a rapper who promotes evolution and more. But it is one band called Aiden that is getting the most attention for its participation in the festival.

Here’s the problem: The song has some troubling lyrics and the video for it includes burning houses of worship, a bloodied cross and other troubling images.



This, in itself, is odd, especially considering that this event is intended to be family-friendly. Will these be the sorts of images and performances that families will be subjected to?

It’s not entirely clear, but at one point in the band’s music video there are images of a cemetery.  It appears to be a military cemetery.  The lead singer, who throughout the video is dressed in clerical fashion, stands among the regimented headstones.  One shot frames the cross at the top of one tombstone.  Are they literally mocking the faith of dead soldiers?

A spokesperson for Fort Bragg says that there will be an examination of song and concert content prior to the performances. Unacceptable language and themes likely won’t be allowed.”

The funny thing is, these images are nothing close to the horrors in my head as a child. The “Good Book” is a treasure trove of images not fit for public viewing. Eternal damnation, pillars of salt, rape, murder, stonings, destruction of entire cities, world floods… You get the idea. Yikes!

Here is the video that has them wetting their beds:

Here is what Fox News has to say: Church-Burning Video Used to Promote Atheist Event at Ft. Bragg

31-year-old Alexander Aan faces a maximum prison sentence of five years for posting “God does not exist” on Facebook. The civil servant was attacked and beaten by an angry mob of dozens who entered his government office at the Dharmasraya Development Planning Board on Wednesday. The Indonesian man was taken into protective police custody Friday since he was afraid of further physical assault.

The posting was made on a Facebook Page titled Ateis Minang (Minang Atheist), which Aan created. At the time of writing, it had over 1,950 Likes. Aan’s posting has been removed, but supporters on the Page are urging police to release him.

Dharmasraya Police Chief Sr. Comr. Chairul Aziz said the district branch of the council and other Islamic organizations believed Aan had defiled Islam by using passages from the Koran to denounce the existence of God and highlight his atheist views. “So it meets the criteria of tainting religion, in this case Islam,” Chairul told The Jakarta Globe.

On Facebook, Aan said he was brought up as a Muslim. In 2008, however, he came to the conclusion that God could not exist. In addition to his comment about the possibility of a deity, he also declared that he did not believe in angels, devils, heaven, hell, as well as other “myths.” He was aware he could lose his job and was prepared to do so to defend his beliefs.

Atheism is a violation of Indonesian law under the founding principles of the country. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, recognises the right to practice six religions in total: Islam, Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, Buddhism and Confucianism. Atheism is, however, illegal. According to Indonesian criminal law, anyone who tries to stop others believing in a faith could face up to five years in jail for blasphemy.

Aan was charged because he used Facebook to spread beliefs that violate the law. Furthermore, it was pointed out he lied on his job application by saying he was Muslim. Aan asked police investigators: if God really exists and has absolute power, why doesn’t God prevent bad things from happening in this world?

“Like” Ateis Minang on Facebook.

Source: ZDNET

A church in South Africa has been ordered to remove a billboard about non-believers following a complaint from an atheist to the country’s Advertising Standards Authority.

The billboard depicted a man, apparently missing that crucial section of the head that houses the brain, holding his temples in deep thought (lack of brain notwithstanding), alongside a line by the English poet Francis Thompson: “An atheist is a man who believes himself to be an accident.”

In his complaint to the ASA, Eugene Gerber argued that the billboard, displayed outside River’s Church in Sandton, was offensive:

“In essence, the complainant submitted that the billboard offends him as an atheist as he does not consider his existence to be an accident. Secondly, the depiction of a man with an empty head communicates that atheists are stupid.”

The ASA upheld the complaint, and explained in the ruling how it determines what can and cannot be considered offensive in relation to religion and belief:

“… when advertising with somewhat of a religious connotation or connection does not pass comment or judgement, or belittles a basic belief or tenet of any specific religion or belief system, it would not likely be regarded as offensive to that particular religion.”

However:

“the proverbial line is drawn when advertising propagates statements that undermine the dignity and constitutionally protected right to freedom of religious beliefs of any identifiable sector of society.”

By this logic, the River’s Church billboard was deemed to be offensive to atheists because:

“The quote [...] suggests that atheists believe that their existence is a result of an unforeseen and unplanned event. The use of the word believe further strengthens this communication.

Furthermore, the visuals of a man holding the sides of his empty head suggest that atheists are ‘empty headed’ or lack intelligence, presumably as a result of the above ‘belief’ communicated. This is something that would likely offend all atheists in a manner that the Code seeks to prevent.”

A story like this is interesting, because in general we’re far more used to seeing religious complaints of this nature than we are atheist complaints. I was alerted to it by Tauriq Moosa, a South African blogger, and he has some good points to make about how it relates to free speech, arguing that atheists should be against such complaints because “it concerns how we defend and articulate free speech and expression, since, by definition, free speech only make sense if you can defend the right of your worst enemies to express themselves too.

It reminds me of something that happened here in the UK at the time of the Atheist Bus Campaign, when the evangelical Christian Party launched a counter-campaign with bus ads saying “There definitely is a God. So join the Christian party and enjoy your life”. Large numbers of atheists complained to the British ASA about this, with some arguing that it was a claim that cannot be substantiated and other arguing that it was offensive, making it the country’s fourth most complained about advertisement of all time.

Of course, those bus complainants were perfectly within their rights to complain if they wanted, and the same goes for the individual who complained about the billboard in South Africa, but, in my view, if atheists wish to stand at the forefront of defending free speech, such action isn’t exactly helpful. If atheists want to be able to say what they like about what others believe, they have to accept that religious people can do they same. In fact, they should welcome it – it’s called free debate, and it’s actually quite a straightforward way of maintaining a free society.

Source: New Humanist Blog

The Clergy Project

The Clergy Project is a confidential online community for active and former clergy who do not hold supernatural beliefs. The Clergy Project launched on March 21st, 2011.

Currently, the community’s 130 plus members use it to network and discuss what it’s like being an unbelieving leader in a religious community. The Clergy Project’s goal is to support members as they move beyond faith. Members freely discuss issues related to their transition from believer to unbeliever including:

• Wrestling with intellectual, ethical, philosophical and theological issues
• Coping with cognitive dissonance
• Addressing feelings of being stuck and fearing the future
• Looking for new careers
• Telling their families
• Sharing useful resources
• Living as a nonbeliever with religious spouses and family
• Using humor to soften the pain
• Finding a way out of the ministry
• Adjusting to life after the ministry

Visit clergyproject.org/

Clergy Project Founder, Dan Brown talks about the project on The Thinking Atheist Podcast.

See also: ABC World News with Diane Sawyer – Atheist Ministers Struggle With Leading the Faithful

See also: The Washington Post – Disbelief in the Pulpit

Religious believers distrust atheists more than they do members of other religious groups, gays or feminists, according to a new study by University of B.C. researchers.

The only group the study’s participants distrusted as much as atheists was rapists, said doctoral student Will Gervais, lead author of the study published online in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

That prejudice had a significant effect on what kinds of jobs people said they would hire atheists to do.

“People are willing to hire an atheist for a job that is perceived as low trust, for instance as a waitress,” said Gervais.

“But when hiring for a high-trust job like daycare worker, they were like, nope, not going to hire an atheist for that job.”

The antipathy does not seem to run both ways, though. Atheists are indifferent to religious belief when it comes to deciding who is trustworthy.

“Atheists don’t necessarily favour other atheists over Christians or anyone else,” he said. “They seem to think that religion is not an important signal for who you can trust.”

The researchers found that religious believers thought that descriptions of untrustworthy people – people who steal or cheat – were more likely to be atheists than Christians, Muslims, Jews, gays or feminists.

Gervais was surprised that people harbour such strong feelings about a group that is hard to see or identify. He opines that religious believers are just more comfortable with other people who believe a deity with the power to reward and punish is watching them.

“If you believe your behaviour is being watched [by God] you are going to be on your best behaviour,” said Gervais. “But that wouldn’t apply for an atheist. That would allow people to use religious belief as a signal for how trustworthy a person is.”

Religious belief is known to have a variety of social functions. Past research has found that common religious beliefs can promote cooperation within groups.

Gervais started his line of inquiry about the exclusion of atheists after seeing a Gallup poll that suggested the majority of Americans would not vote for an atheist presidential candidate. Gervais and his colleagues conducted a series of six studies on a group of 350 American adults and a group 420 UBC students.

But even in more secular Canada, distrust of atheists ran high.

“We see consistently strong effects,” he said.

“Even here in Vancouver, our student participants still say atheists are really untrustworthy.”

Source: Vancouver Sun ]]> http://thenonbeliever.com/atheists/study-finds-atheists-rapists-least-trusted/feed/ 0 http://thenonbeliever.com/atheists/fort-bragg-officials-reverse-decision-%e2%80%9crock-beyond-belief%e2%80%9d-can-go-on/ http://thenonbeliever.com/atheists/fort-bragg-officials-reverse-decision-%e2%80%9crock-beyond-belief%e2%80%9d-can-go-on/#comments Sun, 07 Aug 2011 19:13:58 +0000 admin http://thenonbeliever.com/?p=1461

The secular festival Rock Beyond Belief will now come to fruition at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, March 31, 2012, after military authorities there reversed course and approved the event that will feature an array of music and speakers including famed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

The Rock Beyond Belief event was planned in response to Fort Bragg’s sponsorship, endorsement, and overwhelming support of the Billy Graham Evangelical Association’s Christian evangelical concert, called Rock the Fort, held last year. When secularists around the country protested the government’s support of this event and requested that it be canceled, officials at Fort Bragg justified their support by stating the same level of support would be provided to anyone who organized a similar event.

That pledge proved to be untrue when Fort Bragg officials, led by garrison commander Col. Stephen J. Sicinski, initially denied Rock Beyond Belief organizers the use of an outdoor venue and financial support. The Center for Inquiry (CFI) previously condemned those discriminatory actions as both an outrageous misuse of power and potentially illegal, and applauds the base’s decision to approve and support Rock Beyond Belief.

Source: Center for Inquiry

A belief that heaven or an afterlife awaits us is a “fairy story” for people afraid of death, Stephen Hawking has said.

In a dismissal that underlines his firm rejection of religious comforts, Britain’s most eminent scientist said there was nothing beyond the moment when the brain flickers for the final time.

Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21, shares his thoughts on death, human purpose and our chance existence in an exclusive interview with the Guardian today.

The incurable illness was expected to kill Hawking within a few years of its symptoms arising, an outlook that turned the young scientist to Wagner, but ultimately led him to enjoy life more, he has said, despite the cloud hanging over his future.

“I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first,” he said.

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,” he added.

Hawking’s latest comments go beyond those laid out in his 2010 book,The Grand Design, in which he asserted that there is no need for a creator to explain the existence of the universe. The book provoked a backlash from some religious leaders, including the chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, who accused Hawking of committing an “elementary fallacy” of logic.

The 69-year-old physicist fell seriously ill after a lecture tour in the US in 2009 and was taken to Addenbrookes hospital in an episode that sparked grave concerns for his health. He has since returned to his Cambridge department as director of research.

The physicist’s remarks draw a stark line between the use of God as a metaphor and the belief in an omniscient creator whose hands guide the workings of the cosmos.

In his bestselling 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking drew on the device so beloved of Einstein, when he described what it would mean for scientists to develop a “theory of everything” – a set of equations that described every particle and force in the entire universe. “It would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God,” he wrote.

The book sold a reported 9 million copies and propelled the physicist to instant stardom. His fame has led to guest roles in The Simpsons, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Red Dwarf. One of his greatest achievements in physics is a theory that describes how black holes emit radiation.

In the interview, Hawking rejected the notion of life beyond death and emphasised the need to fulfil our potential on Earth by making good use of our lives. In answer to a question on how we should live, he said, simply: “We should seek the greatest value of our action.”

In answering another, he wrote of the beauty of science, such as the exquisite double helix of DNA in biology, or the fundamental equations of physics.

Hawking responded to questions posed by the Guardian and a reader in advance of a lecture tomorrow at the Google Zeitgeist meeting in London, in which he will address the question: “Why are we here?”

In the talk, he will argue that tiny quantum fluctuations in the very early universe became the seeds from which galaxies, stars, and ultimately human life emerged. “Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in,” he said.

Hawking suggests that with modern space-based instruments, such as the European Space Agency’s Planck mission, it may be possible to spot ancient fingerprints in the light left over from the earliest moments of the universe and work out how our own place in space came to be.

His talk will focus on M-theory, a broad mathematical framework that encompasses string theory, which is regarded by many physicists as the best hope yet of developing a theory of everything.

M-theory demands a universe with 11 dimensions, including a dimension of time and the three familiar spatial dimensions. The rest are curled up too small for us to see.

Evidence in support of M-theory might also come from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva.

One possibility predicted by M-theory is supersymmetry, an idea that says fundamental particles have heavy – and as yet undiscovered – twins, with curious names such as selectrons and squarks.

Confirmation of supersymmetry would be a shot in the arm for M-theory and help physicists explain how each force at work in the universe arose from one super-force at the dawn of time.

Another potential discovery at the LHC, that of the elusive Higgs boson, which is thought to give mass to elementary particles, might be less welcome to Hawking, who has a long-standing bet that the long-sought entity will never be found at the laboratory.

Hawking will join other speakers at the London event, including the chancellor, George Osborne, and the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

Science, truth and beauty: Hawking’s answers

What is the value in knowing “Why are we here?”

The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can’t solve the equations, directly in the abstract. We need to use the effective theory of Darwinian natural selection of those societies most likely to survive. We assign them higher value.

You’ve said there is no reason to invoke God to light the blue touchpaper. Is our existence all down to luck?

Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.

So here we are. What should we do?

We should seek the greatest value of our action.

You had a health scare and spent time in hospital in 2009. What, if anything, do you fear about death?

I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

What are the things you find most beautiful in science?

Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix in biology, and the fundamental equations of physics.”

Long after blacks and Jews have made great strides, and even as homosexuals gain respect, acceptance and new rights, there is still a group that lots of Americans just don’t like much: atheists. Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry. They can’t join the Boy Scouts. Atheist soldiers are rated potentially deficient when they do not score as sufficiently “spiritual” in military psychological evaluations. Surveys find that most Americans refuse or are reluctant to marry or vote for nontheists; in other words, nonbelievers are one minority still commonly denied in practical terms the right to assume office despite the constitutional ban on religious tests.

In the military, there are more than 3,000 chaplains who minister to the spiritual and emotional needs of active duty troops, regardless of their faiths. The vast majority are Christians, a few are Jews or Muslims, one is a Buddhist. A Hindu, possibly even a Wiccan may join their ranks soon.

But an atheist?

Strange as it sounds, groups representing atheists and secular humanists are pushing for the appointment of one of their own to the chaplaincy, hoping to give voice to what they say is a large — and largely underground — population of nonbelievers in the military.

Joining the chaplain corps is part of a broader campaign by atheists to win official acceptance in the military. Such recognition would make it easier for them to raise money and meet on military bases. It would help ensure that chaplains, religious or atheist, would distribute their literature, advertise their events and advocate for them with commanders.

But winning the appointment of an atheist chaplain will require support from senior chaplains, a tall order. Many chaplains are skeptical: Do atheists belong to a “faith group,” a requirement for a chaplain candidate? Can they provide support to religious troops of all faiths, a fundamental responsibility for chaplains?

Jason Torpy, a former Army captain who is president of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, said humanist chaplains would do everything religious chaplains do, including counsel troops and help them follow their faiths. But just as a Protestant chaplain would not preside over a Catholic service, a humanist might not lead a religious ceremony, though he might help organize it .

“Humanism fills the same role for atheists that Christianity does for Christians and Judaism does for Jews,” Mr. Torpy said in an interview. “It answers questions of ultimate concern; it directs our values.”

Mr. Torpy has asked to meet the chiefs of chaplains for each of the armed forces, which have their own corps, to discuss his proposal. The chiefs have yet to comment.

At the same time, an atheist group at Fort Bragg called Military Atheists and Secular Humanists, or MASH, has asked the Army to appoint an atheist lay leader at the base. A new MASH chapter at Fort Campbell, Ky., is planning to do the same as are atheists at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.

Such lay leaders can lead “services” in lieu of chaplains and have access to meeting rooms, including chapels.

Chaplains at Fort Bragg near here have seemed open to the idea, if somewhat perplexed by it.

“You’re not a faith group; you’re a lack-of-faith group,” First Lt. Samantha Nicoll, an active atheist at Fort Bragg, recalled a chaplain friend’s saying about the idea. “But I said, ‘What else is there for us?’ ”

Atheist leaders acknowledge the seeming contradiction of nonbelievers seeking to become chaplains or receive recognition from the chaplain corps. But they say they believe the imprimatur of the chaplaincy will embolden atheists who worry about being ostracized for their worldviews.

Defense Department statistics show that about 9,400 of the nation’s 1.4 million active-duty military personnel identify themselves as atheists or agnostics, making them a larger subpopulation than Jews, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists in the military.

But atheist leaders say those numbers are an undercount because, they believe, there are many nonbelievers among the 285,000 service members who claim no religious preference on military surveys. Many chaplains dispute that interpretation, and say that most people in that group are religious, just not strongly so.

Those same statistics show that Christians represent about one million, or 70 percent, of all active-duty troops. They are even more dominant among the chaplain corps: about 90 percent of the 3,045 active duty chaplains are Christians, most of them Protestants.

Military atheist leaders say that although proselytizing by chaplains is forbidden, Christian beliefs pervade military culture, creating subtle pressures on non-Christians to convert.

As an example, they cite the Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, created to help soldiers handle stress and prevent suicide. The program requires soldiers to complete surveys assessing emotional, social, family and spiritual well-being. Based on their answers, some soldiers are asked to take “resiliency” training.

Atheists say the survey and training are rife with religious code words that suggest a deity or afterlife. The Army counters that the program is intended to determine whether a soldier has “a strong set of beliefs, principles or values” that can sustain him through adversity — and not to gauge religiosity.

Atheist and secular humanist groups in the military are hardly new. But at some bases, they have become better organized and more vocal in recent years.

Last fall, atheists at Fort Bragg objected to an event by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association called Rock the Fort. The base command, at the urging of its chaplains, provided some money and manpower for the event as well as a choice location on the post’s parade grounds.

A communication sergeant, Justin Griffith, argued that the event was an Army-sponsored platform for the Graham organization to recruit converts. The post commander, Col. Stephen J. Sicinski, denied that, saying soldiers were not pressured to attend. In a recent interview, the colonel said Rock the Fort was intended to boost morale as well as “bolster the faith.”

In response, Sergeant Griffith has recruited a star lineup of atheist musicians and speakers, including the writer Richard Dawkins, to headline a secular event, possibly for the fall. He calls it Rock Beyond Belief and has asked Colonel Sicinski to provide resources similar to what he gave Rock the Fort.

Colonel Sicinski has refused, saying the event will not draw enough people to justify using the parade grounds and that money from religious tithes, which helped finance Rock the Fort, cannot be spent on it. Sergeant Griffith has appealed.

A high school dropout raised near Dallas, Sergeant Griffith, 28, was a passionate Christian and creationist until his teens. Now his dog tags list his religious preference as atheist, and he is pushing to create MASH chapters on as many bases as possible.

He is also giving thought to becoming a chaplain himself, though it would take years: He would have to earn a graduate degree in theology and then be commissioned an officer. He would also need the endorsement of “a qualified religious organization,” a role Mr. Torpy’s organization is seeking to play.

Sergeant Griffith said he believed there were already atheist chaplains in the military — just not open ones.

“I support the idea that religious soldiers need support from religious chaplains,” he said. “But there has to be a line between supporting religious soldiers and promoting religion.”

Source: New York Times

One of the main things people pray for is peace. But there have already been trillions upon trillions of prayers for peace through the years, yet peace remains as elusive as mercury, as groups and factions and nations persist in warring viciously with each other, the violence continuing unabated.

Wouldn’t one think that people would finally come to the realization that either there’s no one up there listening to their prayers for peace, or if there is, he doesn’t have the power to stop the violence, or if he does, he has no desire to do so? That they may just as well be praying to a tree trunk?

I’ve been told there is some religious sect in the Himalayan Mountains that has been praying for peace, twenty-four hours a day in shifts, for more than five hundred years. Nuns of the Franciscan Sisters in La Crosse, Wisconsin, have been praying for world peace in thirty-minute rotating shifts twenty four hours a day in an unbroken chain of perpetual prayers dating back to 1878. Even a fire that reached the chapel doors in 1923 never stopped the nuns from praying inside.

When will the poor nuns and millions of others give up? How many more centuries are people going to have to pray and how many more trillions of prayers are they going to have to say before they wake up to the fact that no one is listening to their prayers? (I mean, if whoever is up there ignores even the pope when he prays for peace, and the pope is the spiritual leader of more than 1 billion Catholics and, per Catholicism, God’s chief representative on this earth, why would people think that God would listen to common folk like them?) Not only do they seem incapable of waking up to this fact, but they compound the idiocy of it all by always talking about “the power of prayer.”

How is it that in their daily lives, if these people who pray for peace ask someone to do something for them and they are turned down, they’d probably never ask again. And rarely would they ask a third time. But in praying to God for peace, these same people never give up, and they do this even with the realization and knowledge that there are and have been millions just like them saying prayers for peace to the same God for centuries. Why isn’t this type of behavior considered to be clinically psychotic? But far from being consigned to a diagnosis of psychosis, I have no doubt that these prayers will continue to be considered completely normal, even healthy, and will go on, as an old Indian treaty provided, “as long as the water flows and the wind blows and the grass grows.”

What could possibly be on the minds of the countless who never stop praying for peace in the world? Is this surreal praying without end a grand extrapolation of Jacob Riis’ Stonecutter Credo of the mason who hammers away at his rock, perhaps one hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it, but at the one hundred and first blow it splits in two, and he knows that it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before?

In other words, do these many millions of people praying for peace, think that their prayer for peace, which they remarkably say in all earnestness, will be the one out of the trillions already said down through the years that will finally be the one that breaks the camel’s back with God, that will cause him to say, “Okay, okay, I don’t need, any more prayers. I’ll give you your peace”? Or could they actually believe that God might respond solely and simply because they asked him and he might answer their prayer? Whichever of the two it is, you have to know this is not insanity. It’s beyond insanity. And this is why, though I’d love to approach these people and ask them why they praying for peace, I don’t because I’m afraid to go near them.

It’s hard to know which is a bigger mystery — people saying prayers for peace or people always immediately going to their churches to pray whenever there is a terrible tragedy, such as September 11, 2001, or Hurricane Katrina. I’m serious when I ask, What in the world do people pray about when a tragedy like 9/l1 or Katrina happens? Since God caused 9/l1 and Katrina, or allowed them to happen, I sincerely like to know what the national prayers during these tragedies are all about. (President Bush declared a national day of prayer after both 9/11 and Katrina.) Are people praying to the Lord beseeching him not to do this again or allow it to happen again? Or are they asking him to give them strength to stand the mental and emotional pain caused by the act he caused or allowed to happen? Or asking him to take care of those he just caused or allowed to be killed? I’m absolutely serious. What do the prayers say that could possibly make sense to a rational person? Whatever the prayers are, hasn’t God already shown by what he did or allowed to happen to these people that he couldn’t possibly care less about them? So why are people praying to him?

Frank Geer, a rector at St. Philip’s Church-in-the-Highlands in Garrison, New York, has tried, unsuccessfully, to make sense out of prayers in times like 9/l1. Geer worked at St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City counseling and comforting survivors of 9/l1. During a break in his work, he said he went to St. Paul’s chapel, a 250-year old Episcopal church that was a block from the World Trade Center devastation. In the book Where Was God on September 11? he says he prayed to God “first and foremost for all the people who had died. I prayed for their families, and I prayed for the workers who were risking their lives every day at the site that God would keep them safe.” Speaking of the churches, synagogues, and mosques that were overflowing with people after 9/l1, he remarks, “People wanted to be together with other human beings and with God. Going to church was a way to activate and amplify their sense of God … They wanted to be together with a force that cares about them, that cares for them. Religion [i.e., belief in God] was an incredible source of comfort for people” after 9/l1.

But of course I already knew that religion was a source of comfort for those praying to their God. My question is, How could this possibly be when the God they were praying to caused or allowed to happen the tragedy they were on their knees praying about? (If he didn’t, then he’s not the omnipotent God they believe him to be who can answer their prayers, and hence, why are they praying to him?) How can such numbing, staggering stupidity continue without end? Einstein once said that there are only two things that are infinite: the universe and the stupidity of man. And he added that he was unsure only of the former. With respect to people praying after a tragedy to a God who caused or allowed it, are we dealing here with an indelible, ineradicable, inerasable, inexpungible psychosis that can no more be removed than can the pigmentation of one’s skin? A psychosis that will stop only when the sun rises in the west? When Frenchmen stop drinking wine? Cervantes tells us that every dog has his day, but my God, when is this day ever going to end?

In recognizing the futility of prayer, people could learn from the destitute. They don’t pray. They beg.

The above is an excerpt from the book Divinity of Doubt: The God Question by Vincent Bugliosi