Watch your heads students...

More Religious Proselytizing

Upon completion of my reading the current blog post by Paul Fidalgo, Bloc Raisonneur, on my Google reader list, I came upon a religious ad plastered there at the bottom of the page: "Is There A God" everystudent.com (I hate Google ads for this reason.)

"Six straight-forward reasons to conclude that God exists" by Marilyn Adamson turned out to be not so straight forward and very ungenerously conclusive - it decided for its reader.

The short version of Ms. Adamson's six reasons are:

1) Complexity must require a designer (Intelligent Design revisited)
2) An assumed beginning of the universe (A created need for the need to create a creator - god)
3) Existing laws of nature imply the need for god (Hmmm... another assumption)
4) DNA - "Its awesome... Wow... Kool..." (It seems like complexity was already covered, wasn't it?)
5) Persistent thoughts about gods ("God pursues us." ??? LOL. Its more likely Ms. Adamson pursues us.)
6) The Jesus story ... (Oh my goodness. You must believe this so you can believe the rest. What kind of reasoning is that?)

After wading my way through this mired maze of slue, slop and swill, I decided to respond to Ms. Adamson with a few reasons Not to believe as she apparently does.

Here's my response:

I have read thoughtfully and critically through the entirety of your ad and I must inform you that I found it to be quite dishonest, filled by conjecture and very, very preemptively concluded.

When you "gave up" to God you gave up out of frustration and fatigue from learning and opted for a childish notion, a selfish notion, that you deserved to immediately have at hand answers to all that has thus far been unanswerable. You selected to accept and adopt to the universal answer "God did it".

Having that answer is satisfying, yes, but it is also inaccurate and it presents with it the danger for becoming an unlearned individual to the point of growing truly ignorant and hence easily enslaved under those who would rule over their neighbor. "The man who has no mind of his own lends it to the priests." ~ George Meridith

Recognizing and accepting as fact that one does not know everything is an adult concept and part of reality; it is also the same basic intellectual honesty which is abandon upon adopting faith in gods in order for one to provide himself with the quick and easy "God did it" response to everything. "God did it" is an easy answer but unfortunately it is not necessarily (in deed, it is not at all) a correct one.

You offered six reasons to believe but only after laying the ground work that one must be willing and open to believing - that in itself is unfair, yet, I now claim that same unfair ground. My offerings to you are three and they follow:

1) The universe, all of everything that is, need not have had a starting point. The universe, by virtue of keeping to its own laws for conservation of matter and energy is infinite, inescapable, indestructible, entirely renewable in organization, malleable of its own shape and form and it is all that is real. It is preposterous to assume the necessity for a beginning point when none is obvious and when that assumption would violate all reasonable adherence to logic. "ex nihilo nihil fit" "Nothing comes from nothing" is a concept dating back as far as the early Greek thinkers. It does not imply that "nothingness" a total void everywhere, of everything and always, was every reality. In fact, the opposite is implied, that something always has been. There is no need to assume that that something must be a god especially since no reliable evidence of gods has yet been discovered.

2) Human beings are of no particular importance in the universe by their comparison to any other uniquely identifiable matter, i.e., human beings, plants and planets are equally a parts of the universe just as moons and sand and gravity are also among its parts - all are things and none are above the other in specialness except to themselves.

3) Mankind is a thinking lot... it is not uncommon for human beings to become lazy of learning and sometimes conclude nonsensically. (I suspect that this reason alone might convince even the most rigidly staunch god-believer that he may be in error.)

Contrast my reasons for non-belief in god, critically, to your own reasons to believe in God and then rethink your position. Which of us truly has the better reasons?

It's up to you.

And that's it. I don't anticipate a response from Ms. Adamson, but if she sends one I'll share it here; nor do I think Ms Adamson will change her opinion a single iota or delete her silly proselytizing article form the web... but let's hope.

(By the way, did anyone else recognize the ambitious aggressiveness in the website title Ms. Adamson writes for? Every Student... Holy cows, eh?)

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