Closer to Atheism

Koran scholar: US will cease to exist in 2007: "A thorough analysis of the Koran reveals that the US will cease to exist in the year 2007, according to research published by Palestinian scholar Ziad Silwadi."

I have always considered myself a respectful agnostic. I acknowledge the real power of human spirituality and its evolutionary roots. The reason I am not an atheist is because you cannot prove a negative, which means, to me in the spiritual realm, that you have to live with a certain amount of uncertainty.

How much uncertainty? That's varied over time. I've always been 100 percent certain that God, if God exists, bears little resemblance to the images held by particular religions throughout human experience. But how certain am I that there is, or is not, a God? What kind of God?

Focusing on the popular God that carries out personal relationships with people and intervenes in their lives, I've usually concluded that the odds of His existence are pretty small, probably less than 5% or so. As time has gone on and I've tried to pay attention to what goes on in the world, this probability has gotten smaller. Nowadays I assign an even smaller probability to this type of God's existence.

Recent crap like stem cell research prohibition, the Schiavo controversy, Pentecostals teaching that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time (even placing a saddle on the back of one at their new $25 million museum), and now this garbage about the Koran predicting the destruction of the US via tsunami, drive me closer to atheism.

That's really just an emotional reaction, though, and I'll forgive myself for it, expecially since it is a tiny sin compared to the unfettered emotionalism displayed by those holding to controversy in areas such as those above, and demagogues driving controversies such as those.

Terri has been dead for 15 years; she died when her brain died. Inherent human dignity is readily falsifiable dogma. The unfettered emotionalism of pentecostals and other religious nuts is the tool of demagogues. If Pat Robertson wants to stand up in front of thousands of people and declare that his God just healed several people in the crowd of hemorrhoids, so be it, but I think he's an asshole.