Why He's Not A Christian

The very young looking Dr Richard Carrier has updated his super super awesome "Why I am not a Christian." The story is here. Dude was in the very good docc. The God who Wasn't There, as well as Sam Harris. TGWWT is atheist 101 stuffs. Just like we all should be acquainted with the biggies like Dawkins and Hitchens, I think Carrier is right up there. That is the beauty of debunking Christianity, there are so many ways to do it. Whether it is evolution, philosophy or ancient history (that's his specialty), there are many roads to the god free and secular destination. 

There are so many great points in the essay, and they are so epic, I won't go into them here and now (I couldn't do it justice anyway). But...One of the reasons he mentions is the silent God. you can pray and pray, but he won't be there. Now now, excuses like "we can't understand the mind of God," or "You were not devout enuff," or "Prayer doesn't work like that," don't count. Those are just excuses and after the fact. If prayer worked then it would be prophetic. If prayer worked then we would be able to see the evidence of it working in our daily lives all the time. Instead we get silence and reasons that explain away why it didn't work. Is that how an all powerful God works?

There has never been a double blind scientific test to prove that prayer does work...that was successful.  If we were to crunch the numbers of answered prayers v. unanswered prayers it would be a tiny, super small number compared to a hella big number ("Your prayers were answered, but not in the way you intended or wanted." There is no way an adult thinking person can believe that, so no that doesn't count, and it doesn't make sense). There were hella peeps praying for Japan right after the earthquake, but then the situation got worse. Is that a cruel Gods trick to get us to be more devout, because that is another excuse/reason believers give when prayers don't work. If God was so powerful, then why does he need our attention.

It's cold and rainy outside (Sacramento) and the essay is pretty long stuffs, so today would be a good day to check it out. If not, read it in increments, a little at a time. If you have not read it, check it out. It's that good.

Awesome.

* Essay