50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God (13 page)

Perhaps the most revealing shortcoming of popular holy books
such as the Bible and the Koran is that they fail miserably at communicating a clear message to people, even to their respective followers.
One Christian, for example, will read the Bible and immediately start
giving time to help gay men with AIDS. Another Christian reads it and
starts picketing the funerals of gay people and screaming, "God hates
fags!" One Muslim reads the Koran and volunteers at a clinic to help
sick people. Another Muslim reads it and joins al Qaeda to kill people.
Why do some Jews reject evolution, based on their sacred writings,
while other Jews embrace science, encouraged by their sacred writings? Why do some Mormons think their god wants men to have many
wives while other Mormons think he forbids it? Forget squabbles
between religions, just look within religions to see how ineffective
these holy books are. Christianity has splintered into more than thirty
thousand versions of itself primarily because Christians can't figure
out exactly what it is their god wants of them based on the Bible. The reason for all this confusion is because these "inspired" books are not
clear and often contradict themselves from page to page. Would real
gods have done such a poor job of communicating vital information to
believers?

Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible
and Why. San Francisco: Harper, 2005.

Eliade, Mircea. Essential Sacred Writings from Around the World. San Francisco: Harper, 1967.

Green, Ruth Hurmence. The Born Again Skeptic's Guide to the Bible.
Madison, WI: Freedom From Religion Foundation, 1999. If you don't
have the stamina to read the Bible, then read this book to find out what
sort of stuff is actually in it.

Helms, Randel McCraw. Who Wrote the Gospels? Altadena, CA: Millennium
Press, 1997.

Thomas, David E. "Hidden Messages and `The Bible Code."' Skeptical
Inquirer 21, no. 6 (November/December 1997). http://csicop.org/si/9711/
bible-code.html.

Warraq, Ibn, ed., What the Koran Really Says. Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books, 2002.

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits
than strict justice.

-Abraham Lincoln

any believers say they are grateful that their god watches
over us and delivers justice to everyone sooner or later.
Some believers say their god tracks every second of our lives taking
note of everything we think, say, and do. As a result, we all prosper or
struggle in this life according to a god's assessment of our behavior.
Additionally we will all face some form of final judgment and be sent
to a very good place or a very bad place forever. A world without all
this divine oversight would be unbearably unfair, say believers.

The problem with these claims is that the world we see before us
does not appear to be fair at all. What divine oversight? What justice?
Good and innocent people suffer and die every minute of every day.
Many people who have done horrible things live long lives in luxury
and comfort and then die peacefully in their sleep. Ugandan Idi Amin
was a terrible dictator, probably responsible for the deaths of more
than three hundred thousand people. He had many thousands more
people unjustly imprisoned and tortured. In an all too familiar story,
however, Amin escaped justice and lived comfortably in Saudi Arabia
with his four wives for the remainder of his life. He died of natural causes in 2003. His exact age at the time of his death is unknown but
Amin was believed to have been about eighty years old. This is difficult to make sense of when you consider that many people with no
blood on their hands suffer and die from diseases and natural disasters
every year.

Cambodian leader Pol Pot enjoyed a much longer and far more
comfortable life than the millions of babies in the developing world
who die from dysentery each year. Pot's Khmer Rouge government
was responsible for the deaths of an estimated two million people in
the 1970s. Despite his crimes, he survived to the ripe old age of seventy-three.

Historians pin the deaths of more than a million people on Joseph
Stalin, the brutal leader of the former Soviet Union. Some estimates
are in the tens of millions. But Stalin's body count didn't get the attention of any gods and he made it all the way to the age of seventy-four.
No lightning bolt ever cut down Chinese leader Mao Zedong either.
His decisions were directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of
many millions of people but he lived to be eighty-four years old. Many
believers are confident that their god deals out justice to the wicked,
but where and when? According to many believers, Stalin and all other
undeniably bad people get what's coming to them in the afterlife. Of
course, we can't check on this and there is no evidence for it so we are
left to just "believe it."

Those who say they could not live in a world without their god's
perfect justice might consider the fact that they already are living in a
world without perfect justice. If there is some kind of divine justice at
work here on this planet, then it must be very different from the human
concept of justice. Look around; life is not fair. What could be more
obvious? Millions of malnourished and parasite-infested children in
developing countries do not deserve their fate, at least not by any
moral standards I understand, but they keep suffering and dying
nonetheless. Wouldn't all these babies who die slow and painful
deaths fare better if a god was watching over us? But more than nine
million children under the age of five die of disease and hunger every year. And the suggestion that good times await these children in
heaven after they die is not only impossible to prove, it's also heartless. Even if that extraordinary claim was true, these children still suffered tremendous pain and died far too soon while others-including
murderous dictators-did not. If a god really is watching and judging
us, then one can only conclude that the guiltiest people among us are
little children in the developing world. After all, they are deprived of
the most. They suffer the most. They die the youngest. One can only
wonder what it is they are guilty of.

Another believers' explanation for such madness is that their god
rewards and punishes here on earth in ways we may not detect. Perhaps the god torments the murderer, who only appears to have gotten
away with it. Maybe he or she is haunted with painful guilt and terrible nightmares, for example. Maybe a god gives good people just a
little more luck in life, spreading their reward over many years,
making it less obvious but real nonetheless. To a nonbeliever, however, these explanations sound like desperate attempts to avoid facing
reality in a world in which many bad people escape the consequences
of their actions and many good people suffer and die for no reason.

The claim that everything gets sorted out after we die is very popular with believers. It can be expressed in different ways but the most
common is the heaven and hell scenario. The good go up and the bad
go down. Many versions of Christianity add a disturbing twist to this,
claiming that a person can be truly terrible throughout their life but so
long as they repent and "accept Jesus" in their last moment on earth,
they will go to heaven. If true, it means Adolf Hitler, who was a devout
Christian in childhood, might have jumped through the proper spiritual hoops a few minutes before he shot himself in that Berlin bunker.
So Hitler could be in heaven right now while millions of people he
sent to the gas chambers are not.

What kind of bizarre justice could place Hitler in heaven while
someone like Anne Frank, as sweet and positive a child as has ever
walked the earth, ends up in hell? Anne, a Jewish girl, wrote her
famous diary while hiding in a house in Amsterdam during World War II. Her words reveal a hope and optimism that reflects the best side of
humankind. "I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly
good at heart," she wrote. Eventually Anne was arrested and died in a
camp at the age of fifteen. Sadly, she almost certainly is in hell right
now according to a primary claim of the Christian religion. Anne was
Jewish and therefore it is unlikely that she converted to Christianity
before her death. Sadly for her, Christian dogma clearly states that
Jesus is the "only way" to heaven.

A few years ago I interviewed Barbara Rodbell, a member of a
Jewish underground resistance movement in Holland during World
War II. She was also a friend of Anne's. Rodbell described Anne as a
child who radiated goodness and hope. After all these years, there was
still sadness in Rodbell's voice when she spoke about Anne. I challenge anyone who believes we all are beneficiaries of a god's justice
to read The Diary of Anne Frank and then come up with a sensible
explanation for why that girl should have died at the age of fifteen and
currently be suffering in a Christian, Islamic, or any other hell.

A fair question that believers might ponder is why their gods kill
so many people every year with natural disasters? For what reason do
they shake the earth, stir the seas, and blow the winds with such violence? Why do they keep killing so many babies with viruses and bacteria? Wars and poverty can be blamed on us but we don't cause earthquakes and typhoons. We didn't invent the malaria virus or create
dysentery. Where is the justice?

Believers have an answer for all this, of course. I've heard it many
times but still find it shocking that sensible people think it makes
sense. They attempt to explain the horror of children drowned by
tsunamis or babies crushed by earthquakes as the result of "free will."
Don't blame my god, they say, we corrupted the once-perfect world
and now we get what we deserve. Okay, but how does free will excuse
a god for killing babies who are not yet capable of making their own
choices? If I could save all the children killed by natural disasters and
disease each year, I would do it without hesitation. Wouldn't you?
Why won't a god who is concerned with justice do the same? Some believers in the Jewish-Christian god say that when Adam blew it by
biting the forbidden apple, we all would have to pay the price. The
entire world and everyone in it "fell from grace," thanks to him. Think
about that, long ago, long before you were even born, the actions of a
prehistoric relative condemned you to a lifetime of being vulnerable to
viruses, bacteria, predators, earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes, tornados, and tsunamis. Is this fair? Why would a god who is concerned
with justice feel the need to punish people or allow them to suffer
through inaction because of something their ancient ancestors did
thousands of years ago? There is a good reason why court systems in
developed societies do not punish innocent people for crimes their
great-great grandparents may have committed. They don't do it
because it would be unjust and barbaric. Shouldn't believers expect at
least the same level of justice from their gods? However, rather than
spend their time trying to think up reasons for why their god might
need to kill babies with earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, and
microbes I think believers would do better to simply consider another
possibility. Can't all of this be explained more easily by the possibility
that gods do not exist? Isn't it more likely that natural disasters kill
thousands of people each year-regardless of their religion or
behavior-because nature is an unintelligent and indifferent process?

Let's not forget women. They certainly must be included in any
discussion about justice and the gods. Probably most of the belief systems that humankind has ever come up with have included outrageous
injustice to women. Many religions have this injustice boldly written
into their sacred texts for all to see. They don't just condone it, they
demand it! Many people today continue to mistreat girls and women
based on religious beliefs. Numerous belief systems still promote the
idea that one-half of our species is the property of the other half. How
can sensible believers who care about fairness and justice explain this?
Those who say their belief in a god is confirmed by living in a world
that benefits from divine justice must explain why women so often
suffer in the name of gods.

Most people, upon reflection, probably will see that there is no warm and cozy blanket of justice covering our world. The next step
would be to reject the claim that divine justice is a good reason to
believe in a god. A protective god who guarantees justice for all is not
readily apparent and never has been. It seems clear to me that the only
justice we have is that which we make for ourselves.

Prayers and sacrifices are of no avail.

-Aristotle

f I thought there was any chance that it might work, I would pray
that every member of al Qaeda reads this book, realizes that his
religious beliefs might be in error, and vows never to kill in the name
of a god ever again. I would also pray that those millionaire televangelists stop taking money from hard-working low-income people
because a god "needs it." Unfortunately there is no convincing evidence that praying works, so I won't bother.