One of the ways in which fundamentalist Christians like to make the argument that God created a perfect universe for mankind to live in is the position of the Moon in relation to the Earth and the Sun, which is most obvious during a total eclipse. When you see a total eclipse, the Moon appears to completely cover the Sun, ie the Moon is exactly the right size and distance from the Earth to give this effect:

How could it be a coincidence that the Moon is just the right size, and just the right distance away? What are the chances that this could just happen? Surely God must have made it that way?

I'll ignore the obvious point about chance: by chance, yes, it obviously could happen. But there is something perhaps less well known about eclipses. The Moon doesn't always cover the full disc of the Sun. I'm not talking about a partial eclipse, where only a segment of the Moon blocks out part of the Sun. I'm talking about a situation where the whole of the Moon is in front of the Sun but is not big enough to block out the whole of the Sun. This is what is known as an annular eclipse.

Annular is nothing to do with 'annual' (ie yearly), but is from the word annulus, the Latin for 'ring', and this picture (multiple exposures show the Moon as it passes over the sun) will explain why it has been given this name:

Explanation? The Moon's orbit is not perfectly circular. It is in fact elliptical, which means that sometimes the Moon is further away from the Earth, sometimes closer. During an annular eclipse the Moon's orbit takes it further away, so that it appears smaller, and so does not cover the full disc of the Sun. Instead it leaves a thick ring (annulus) of visible Sun. You may be less familiar with this type of eclipse because it is, naturally, less dramatic than a total eclipse, which blocks out the entire Sun and, as in the first picture, allows the dramatic corona of the Sun to become visible. This is not the case with annular eclipses, which is perhaps why they receive less TV time.

So this is by no means a God-given 'perfect' situation. The next time someone tells you that God put the moon just in the right place to create a total eclipse, explain that the Moon's orbit is elliptical, that sometimes it appears to be smaller in the sky, because it is further away, sometimes larger because it is closer. Annular eclipses show that the eclipsing effect of the Moon passing in front of the Sun is not always perfect. And another 'proof of God's design' bites the dust.

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Footnote:
Annular eclipses are more common than total eclipses. About one in three eclipses (32.9%) are annular. Only about one in four (26.6%) are total. See this page for more information about the different types of eclipse.

I'm assuming these are (mostly) meant to be joke products, but with some I'm not so sure:

Christian toys, gifts and novelties

My favourites are:

Holy Toast Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but it can also be the most miraculous. Push this plastic miracle maker into your piece of bread, toast it, and "presto," instant amazement and awe! As it cooks, the distinct outline of the Virgin Mary will appear in the bread. When you serve it, they won't know whether to eat it with some grape jelly or build it a shrine.
Huggy Jesus Have you hugged Jesus today? If that sounds like something you might want to do, this 17" plush Huggy Jesus with yarn hair and colorful fabric robes might be the answer to your prayers. Originally created as a tool to teach kids about Jesus, these sold retail for $29.95. However, they were so incredibly creepy that they were discontinued at the manufacturer and we can sell the remaining stock to you at a bargain price! We have limited quantities, so buy fast. Huggy Jesus is waiting for your hugs.
Lord's Prayer Singing Alarm Clock Did you ever consider that the shrieking buzz that comes from your alarm clock is really the voice of Satan straight from the pits of Hell? No wonder you wake up grumpy! Well, this 8" x 4" plastic alarm clock will lull you awake with the Lord's Prayer in song form. It doesn't come with batteries, but it will surely charge your days with plastic pre-recorded religious power!
Pope Innocent III Action Figure Introduce this Pope Innocent III Action Figure to your other figures and watch the spiritual sparks fly! Armed with his formidable power of excommunication and an intimidating scroll inscribed with Latin text, this 6" tall, hard plastic model of the 176th Pope will soon have all your other action figures lining up for confession. Read the back of the illustrated blistercard and you'll find that Pope Innocent III was a good guy in all respects. He was a patron of the arts, cared about orphans, built a hospital and reunified the Papal States! Comes with removable fancy Pope hat.

And for an alternative view don't forget these:

Devil Duckies

As I've not added anything to the site for over a week now, I thought I'd better explain what's going on:

Nothing. I'm just doing other things. There is far, far more to life than writing about religion, so I'm taking a break. I might be back soon, I might be back late, or I might not be back at all. I will certainly be doing less atheist 'stuff' than before. I first joined YouTube almost exactly a year ago, so a whole year of making atheist videos and writing about atheism is enough for anyone.

So, come back from time to time to see what's happening, if anything, and if I do decide to call it a day permanently I'll be sure to let you know.

Cheers

Nick

As expected I watched the first part of Richard Dawkins' new series, 'The Enemies of Reason' earlier tonight. No, let me add an extra word to that statement. I started to watch it.

Richard Dawkins is of course a man held in high regard by many, if not most, atheists, but this was not his finest hour. He looked at, and pulled apart, astrology, water dowsing, contacting the dead via spirit mediums, brought in Derren Brown to talk about cold reading, and... is this starting to look like a list of 'the usual suspects'? But that's probably because they've all been done to death before. We all know that astrology is garbage. We all know that mediums just keep pulling out words until someone in the audience picks up on them (cold reading). Dowsing is twaddle. Aura photographs are cack. So why does Richard Dawkins feel he has to cover the same territory?

I was disappointed. There was nothing new here. Worse, there was nothing here I'd not seen Derren Brown demonstrate a whole lot better. I'd have much rather seen Dawkins as a guest on a Derren Brown documentary than what I saw tonight.

Click to watch Derren Brown - Messiah if you want a truly fascinating look at how easy it is to pull the wool over gullible people's eyes.

And I'm sorry to say that the pull of the Coronation Street 2-parter on ITV was too great. I watched the first 30 minutes of Richard Dawkins, then switched back over at 8:30 to watch Steve McDonald explain to Michelle and the whole pub that he had kissed a transvestite man in Malta. I watched a few more minutes of 'The Enemies of Reason' during the ad break, but all I got was that 'whatever' feeling.

Sorry, this was definitely not something you 'must not miss'. Make your own list of superstitions and pseudo-scientific practices and tell yourself 'they are all bullshit'. You'll save yourself an hour of your time. I'll still watch part 2 next week, but it will again clash with Coronation Street, so there's going to have to be something pretty special to get my attention. If you still want to see the series, and if you're outside the UK, I will add links to the site as soon as someone uploads the videos, but believe me, the Derren Brown special is far more enlightening than this, and Penn & Teller's 'Bullshit' shows are another source for entertainment and education about a variety of similar practices.

---

Footnote:
Watch the first part in full here (before Channel 4 have it removed from Google video!)

Here's something to throw back in the face of the next Christian who asks you how you can be a moral person without belief in God, or without following the teachings of the Bible. Your reply should go something like this:

Your religion teaches that Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, right? This gave the knowledge of good and evil to them, and to all humans, right? Therefore everyone knows the difference between good and evil. Even atheists.

You can never lose when you use this argument, because if God does not exist (and the fruit/tree story is false) then how come Christians know good from bad? And if it is true, there are no conditions attached to the knowledge of good and evil. Everyone has that knowledge, whether or not they believe in God, and whether or not they have a personal relationship with Jesus, follow the Bible, etc.

Whichever is the case, by their own Bible teachings, Christians prove that the Bible is not the source of morality.

Checkmate.

I'm going to repost this letter because the letter itself says 'feel free to disseminate this information', but I recommend that you read the original page itself (click the title), if only to read some of the comments posted below it:

Atheist Mistreatment in Iraq
Thought you'd be interested in this report of the first-ever meeting of Atheist service-members in Iraq under the umbrella of the MAAF-Iraq chapter of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers. This meeting was put together by the same young MAAF member who recently had his second letter published in the Stars and Stripes.

One of our members, a young Atheist enlisted soldier, thought he would like to see if he could generate some interest in MAAF meetings at his Forward Operating Base (FOB) here in Iraq (not the base I'm at, by the way). He got things coordinated and started hanging flyers, and after weeks of having to re-hang his flyers almost daily because some vandal kept tearing them down, he finally succeeded in having a small MAAF meeting. I wasn't there because the meeting wasn't on my FOB, but I knew he was holding it and was expecting to hear from him after the meeting. Keep in mind that this young soldier did everything right - he went through the Chaplain's office and jumped through all the hoops it takes to legally hold meetings that are religiously or philosophically based. Four soldiers attended this meeting - all of them very junior enlisted soldiers with the exception of one Major (an O-4), who claimed to be a "freethinker".

Well, to make a very long story a little shorter, the Major turned out to be a fundamentalist Christian who verbally berated the other attendees, accused them of plotting against Christians and disrespecting soldiers who have died protecting the Constitution, and threatened them with punishment under the UCMJ for their activities (said they were "going down") and said he would do whatever it took to shut the meetings down. Keep in mind that by this point, he had two of the attendees (one soldier fled when the shouting started) standing at the position of attention so that he could yell at them, berate them, and humiliate them. This apparently went on for several minutes at which time the Major shut down the meeting by saying he wasn't some "push-over Chaplain" and that he would not tolerate the meetings to continue.

The young MAAF member who hosted the meeting is absolutely freaked out about what happened, but he said he's going to continue with the meetings and isn't going to be bullied by the prayer warriors. I've advised him to immediately notify the Chaplain sponsor of what happened to get guidance while I try to figure out what to do next. I should hear something back from him tonight sometime and there's even a small possibility I might be able to score a mission to his FOB and attend one of his meetings in the next few weeks (if I do, I'll meet with the Chaplain in person).

As for immediate action, he's going to get me the names of his Chaplain sponsor and the name of the officer who disrupted the meeting. My intent right now is to make a formal report to the most senior Chaplain I can find along with possibly an Equal Opportunity complaint against the officer if we can get him fully identified. I may not be eligible to make that complaint because I wasn't there, but I can at least smooth the way for this young troop to make one if he elects to. At the very least, I can make the EO office formally aware of what happened there.

More info will follow when I get it, but right now, feel free to disseminate this information since I've intentionally sanitized it for names and locations. I will be happy to forward any words of support to him if they get mailed to my (redacted email) address - he could really use some encouragement right now, I think.

ScienceBlogs.com is an excellent site, one I've mentioned before, so make sure you take a look.

Sorry I'm staying with the subject of the Mormons, but I've had an exciting idea, albeit one which will take a while because I'll have to wait until they send a couple of new missionaries out on patrol.

Next time the Mormons come, instead of arguing with them, instead of showing them all the problems with their little magic book, I'm going to do something a little different. I am going to go along with everything they say. I'm going to become a Mormon! Yay!

Well actually you probably couldn't drag me into a church, but I will pray with them at my home, and tell them I believe the book is true, and that I felt the Holy Ghost enter me (prayer is my lube and faith is my condom). I can probably cry too if that helps - I'll just think of something sad and turn on the waterworks. I could always throw in some weird head movements and facial expressions, just to freak them out a little. After all, God moves in mysterious ways!

I will of course have to tell them it's all been fake, just before they leave, but if they can waste my time, I can waste theirs. Part of me is saying it's a little cruel, but another part of me says fuck it, they believe in Jesus and that means... they'll forgive me!

How about this: I convert to Mormonism and they are happy. Next time they come round I say I've got some questions and then hit them with my doubts... and convert right back again. In fact if I pretend that I was originally a Christian, became a Mormon, but now I'm so disillusioned that I'm an atheist, they are going to feel like they've made the situation a whole lot worse for me!

Am I going too far here? Maybe. But the idea sounds fun, so I thought I'd share it with you anyway.

It might be several months before they come back again, so don't hold your breath, but if you think it's a good plan, why not try it yourself next time the LDS boys come a-calling? It's not as if they will do anything bad to you for mocking them is it? Mormons aren't the kind of people who tend to fire-bomb your house, from what I've heard.

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Footnote:
Hey, the Jehovah's Witnesses haven't been round for a while. Maybe I could start with them!

It's a shame I hadn't watched this documentary before the Mormons called earlier this week. I'm sure the two missionaries who called would be unaware that DNA evidence proves that one of the Book of Mormon's core messages, that Israelites travelled to the Americas and settled there, is a complete fabrication. I'm happy to let them know all about it next time... when they will of course refuse to listen to me again.

If you know nothing about the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, ie the Mormons, the first few minutes of this video give a good summary of the supposed 'history' found in the book. The remainder smashes it all apart, using that tried and tested tool, science.

One little irony is that the video was produced by Living Hope Ministries, a decidedly Christian organisation, whose tag-line is 'sharing Biblical truths with Latter-Day Saints'. Christians using science to disprove religion. Hmmm. Only someone else's religion of course, not their own!

The video is around 50 minutes long but if you don't want to watch the whole thing you can get the general idea from the first 15-20 minutes. However, you will miss most of what I find to be the most open-minded of the people in the video, although I don't doubt the honesty of the others featured in it. Thomas Murphy, a Mormon anthropologist and scholar (the man in the still image shown above, before the video plays), is still a Mormon. While the others are all ex-Mormons, Murphy is coming at the subject from within the LDS Church, and he is genuinely struggling with what he knows to be true - the DNA evidence is irrefutable, and as a result the Book of Mormon must be false. In his words, 'the book of Mormon would not stand up in a court of law today'. See the footnote below for more from Thomas Murphy.

The bottom line: Joseph Smith just made it all up, and the Book of Mormon is a book of lies.

---

Footnotes:
Apologies for the inevitable Christian message delievered in the last five minutes of the documentary. As I said, this was a production of a Christian ministry, so you'd expect them to put a Biblical slant on it. But Christians should remember that science disproves their holy text, the Bible, just as firmly as it disproves the Book of Mormon. I laughed out loud when he said that Mormons were wrong to use the excuse that God changed the DNA on purpose to 'test them'. Isn't that exactly what some Christians say about radiometric dating? That the world isn't billions of years old because God made the world appear to be artificially old to 'test our faith'?

Ignore the hypocritical message of Christianity in this video because the science itself, the DNA evidence proving that Native Americans did not descend from the Israelites, is good.

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Attacks on the validity of the Book of Mormon using DNA data
Thomas Murphy and Simon Southerton, both of whom are Mormon scholars from the video, are featured heavily on this web page. There is also a large list of links to related reading.

A while ago in a post called ' Religion by any other name' I suggested that we should start replacing the word 'religion' with others, perhaps more appropriate, such as 'magic' and 'superstition'. My encounter with the Mormons got me thinking about another word, and what it really means. That word is faith.

Faith is ignorance. That's what we should call it. Christians who have faith in God are ignorant. They lack the education and the knowledge to realise that their religious beliefs, and indeed the very fact that they believe them at all, are simply not reasonable.

The Mormons took great pains to explain to me that they couldn't prove that God existed, and yet since I couldn't prove that he did not, both of our positions pointed to the existence of God. God, they said, wants us to believe in him, so we must have faith. We must believe in him without proof.

That is a simple argument and one in which, if it stood alone, there is very little you can find to argue. If the Bible said just three words, 'Believe in God', there would be absolutely no room for discussion. Believing in God would be a true position of faith.

And yet, the Bible does not just contain those three words. It contains many words, many books, and though we cannot disprove the existence of God, it is very easy to disprove the so-called 'truth' of many parts of the Bible. Disproving the Creation story and the Flood story is extremely easy. In fact there is so much scientific evidence that you might as well be trying to kill an ant with an atomic bomb. Knowledge of that evidence is what Christians lack. They are ignorant of it.

The Mormons have more problems than ordinary Christians because they have another book which is, quite frankly, a bit of a joke. Anyone who reads about magic golden plates, and mega-battles between two warring factions of Jewish settlers, over 2000 years ago, in what is now the USA, will quickly realise that this story has one or two hard-to-explain loopholes. When I put some difficult questions to the Mormons they not only refused to accept what I said, they even told me they did not want to listen to my points. They were ignorant of the problems of the text on which their faith is based, and they were happy to remain ignorant. Determined to remain so, in fact.

Most religious people do not question the foundations of their faith. Those foundations are their holy texts - the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Qur'an, and so on. One of the two Mormons hadn't even read the whole of the Old Testament. I am sure he did not leave my house thinking that he would later look up the Bible passages which condone slavery, which I had pointed out to him. They asked to leave before I could ask them more, telling me they could better spend their time talking to someone else. Someone, no doubt, less well-informed about their religion than I was. Someone more ignorant than them.

Christians who criticise evolution generally show startling ignorance of how it works. If they took the time to find out even some of the basic principles of the science they ridicule, they would not be able to use 'the eye could not just have appeared' or 'you say we all descended from monkeys'. At least with an understanding of evolution they could make a fair assessment, to see if science and their faith were compatible.

But they don't (actually, the Pope has, but don't tell the fundies!). They remain ignorant, and from that point of ignorance they claim to know better, and extol the virtues of faith. They believe without proof. They believe despite evidence which strongly makes the case that their religion is wrong, because they don't even want to look at that evidence. Many are afraid to look, it seems. Certainly one of the two Mormons was deeply troubled by my attempts to find fault with certain areas of his faith. When I asked him where God came from he said that he had considered the question but didn't even want to know. Not only did he not know the answer, he didn't even want to know the answer. That doesn't sound reasonable to me. Enjoying ignorance, embracing it, thriving on it, is all wrong.

I am ignorant of many things. I don't know much about advanced-level physics. I can't point out which tree is which in a forest. I don't know why women find it unreasonable for men to leave the toilet seat up (it's just as unreasonable and inconvenient for them to leave it down). But given the opportunity I would love to learn more about these things. Presented with knowledge, I would not turn my back and pretend it didn't exist. I certainly wouldn't tell other people that important information said one thing when it actually said something completely different.

Now I've started to touch on another aspect of faith. Faith is not just ignorance. Faith is deception. The ordinary believers are less guilty of this than are the ones preaching to them in their churches. The people on the pews believe what they are told because they are told with authority, by a preacher they have no reason to doubt. The preacher will be highly selective in the information given to his audience, keeping them in ignorance. But he will often mislead them, by telling them half-truths, or even downright lies, about views which are contrary to those of his religion.

Do you think, for example, that the people who run the Creation Museum in Kentucky really do not know that evolution does not suggest that animals evolved purely by random chance? We all know that they realise what the real science tells us, and yet they deceive the people who look to them for knowledge, by giving them lies. This is deception, through and through.

Another example. Everyone knows that the prison population in the US is predominantly Christian. Yet many Christians say that these are not 'true' Christians. The evidence is there, and yet it is ignored or, worse, used to 'prove' that the only 'true' Christians are the ones who don't break the law. Again, deception.

One of the greatest lies of all is that the US has such a high crime rate because of a decline in religion, when in fact of all the nations of the 'western world', the US is the most religious by far. This is more evidence that Christianity isn't the great cure-all it proposes to be, and yet every preacher in the land will blame the lack of morality of non-Christians for the ills of the world. More deception - lying about evidence which clearly shows the opposite.

When you hear someone tell you that he wants to share his faith with you, replace the word 'faith' with 'ignorance' or 'deception'. Then try to imagine what could possibly motivate someone to share with you his igorance, or spread the lies and deception which are necessary to continue believing in his Bible or other holy book.

Faith, ignorance and deception. In religion they are all interchangeable, and they are certainly the worst possible reasons for believing in anything, least of all the existence of God.

Here's a story about the separation of church and state in the US. These cases are becoming quite common now, so I'm not going to go into too much detail - please read the article for more information:

Dad crusades against God in school

Basically the man, David Wallace Croft, an atheist, is taking his local school to court, trying to prevent prayer in school by the back door, objecting to the 'minute of silence', which is actually being used by Christians as an opportunity to pray for the allotted minute. He is well known to the school, having protested against several other religious intrusions into school life. Everyone knows that the Croft family are atheists.

The story itself, as I've hinted, isn't what got me annoyed. It wasn't until I read the final couple of paragraphs that I really wanted to shout at the ignorance of the Christian female parent described there:

Ms. McCrummen said the Crofts are often on her mind. She wrote their names on a prayer wall at church.

"I pray for him and his family every day," she said.

That offends me. It really does offend me. It is 100% obvious that the Crofts want Christianity to play no part whatsoever in their lives. None. Their views are crystal clear. And yet people like this, Christians such as Ms McCrummen, cannot resist making it known that this atheist family are being prayed for, their names in fact being written on a church wall. Do the Christians not get it? They don't want you to think of them. They don't want you to pray for them.

This may seem like a small thing, and after all, they can pray for whoever they like, but in reality it's a way for Christians to look down on atheists as if they were lesser beings, people who need help, who need God to change them into something better. The fact that she prays for Mr Croft and his family 'every day' is extremely condescending, and it really is offensive.

Do you think this woman would stop praying for the Crofts if the Crofts asked her to do so? No, of course not. She doesn't have any respect for the Crofts at all because if she did she wouldn't pray to her God every day, presumably so that he could change them somehow into Christians.

How offensive would it be if the Crofts said to Ms McCrummen, "We have a voodoo doll with your name on it and every day we stick a pin into it, so that you will lose your faith in God." Don't for one second think that the comparison is so very far-fetched, because it isn't. Of course the woman would be horrified if some non-Christian magical ritual were being performed in her name. And yet isn't that exactly what she herself is doing, using the names of the Croft family? Every day she offers up a prayer to her mystical supernatural sky-god, asking him to send down his magic and burn away the evil thoughts in their brains.

Christians should not pray for atheists, primarily because it shows an utter lack of respect for the very people they are trying to 'save'. In praying for an atheist, they are saying that the atheist is somehow damaged, wrong, faulty, in need of repair, when the truth is that atheists are perfectly happy with their lives, at least as happy as Christians... or at least they would be if Christians would stop praying for them.

If they are intent on praying for atheists, they should at least not tell the atheists they are doing it, because that is the offensive nature of the act, the message to the atheist that 'we are praying for you'. This is simply shorthand for 'you are wrong, we are right, and we want you to know it and won't stop until you change your ways'.

If someone tells you that they will pray for you, ask them this: 'If I asked you not to pray for me, would you respect my wishes?' You can judge their character, and their respect for you, and for people with different religious beliefs, from the response they give to that one simple question.

As you've probably noticed, I've had the cover of Nothing: Something to Believe In on the home page for a while now and in fact I finished reading it a couple of weeks ago. I was going to review it, but I'm not particularly skilled in the art of literary criticism - I usually end up simply describing the contents and saying 'it's great'. I've therefore realised that nothing (not a pun) I say about this book would explain it any better than the author herself, so I'm not going to do a review, merely a recommendation. Which is this... buy the book! As for the author, here she is, in an interview from March 2007:

Nica Lalli's web site
Buy the book from Amazon or Barnes and Noble
Point of Inquiry (the source of the audio interview)

Look, just leave people alone will you? You don't have to be in people's faces with your unwanted religion every minute of the fucking day, alright?

What am I talking about? This article, from Reuters, describes a Jesuit (Catholic) priest's enouragement of other Catholics to approach people with the word of God. Without reading the article you'd think that was just normal. It's what the Bible bashers of the world do every day. This, however is a little different. He wants people playing the online game/simulation Second Life to use their online avatars to make religious approaches to other characters:

In an article in Rome-based Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, academic Antonio Spadaro urged fellow Catholics not to be scared of entering the virtual world, which may be fertile ground for new converts wishing to better themselves.

"Deep down, the digital world can be considered, in its way, mission territory," he said. "Second Life is somewhere where the opportunity to meet people and to grow should not be missed, therefore, any initiative that can inspire the residents in a positive way should be considered opportune."

Going online is supposed to be an escape from reality, surely. Why do religious people always have to pounce on places where there really is no need for them? I cannot believe that anyone playing an online game would actually welcome the approach of another character who waved, smiled and said, "How are you today? Can I talk to you about the love of Jesus Christ?"

There is, however, a decided advantage for those unwilling to tolerate this kind of approach. In real life, your only option is to close the door. Online, you can rip off their head, spit down their neck and feed their entrails to your online dog. Er, just an idea!

I notice he doesn't suggest that Christians go on a religious mission in World of Warcraft, though. The people who play that could really get medieval on them!

I like the Mormons. They are nice people. Usually they are more than willing to stay with you and talk to you about anything. But usually they don't knock on my door and get invited in and this time, today, they ended up asking me if they could please leave!

I've made several videos about the Mormons, which they've evidently not seen before, otherwise they wouldn't come within a million miles of me. Last time, I knew very little about Mormonism, but now I've had a whole year to learn more about Joseph Smith and his magic golden plates. Not that it really did me any good, because they just didn't want to listen.

When they knock at your door and ask you to hear their message, you should understand that this is a one-sided arrangement for them. They absolutely do not want to hear criticisms of their faith, or counter-evidence for the nonsense that is in the Book of Mormon, and they certainly don't want you to be more knowledgeable about their religion than they are. But this is what the two who arrived today were faced with.

I made it clear I was an atheist, and that I wouldn't believe in God without proof. They still wanted to come in, so hey, no harm in listening to what they had to say, right?

I even allowed them to say a prayer, right there in my living room. It doesn't bother me, although I didn't join in, because I do respect their beliefs, though only as far as saying, 'if it's important to you, feel free to do it'. It wasn't harming me at all, and I was curious anyway. There is no God, so it wasn't putting me in any danger of converting.

The talking began, and the usual suspects were wheeled out. It's funny, but almost every Mormon you speak to (and at least one of the pair - they always come round in twos) 'fell away from their faith' at some point, then prayed to God and wham, it all came right back to them. My concerns that they were only Mormons because their parents were Mormons were dismissed. They believe that Mormonism is the right way, and that's it. I asked if they had prayed to God to find if it was true, and yes they had. I then asked them if they had prayed to Allah to find out if Islam was the one true faith and sure enough they hadn't. Or at least they thought that Allah was the same God but, well, different, because of course Muslims aren't the same as Mormons are they? I tried to get them to consider how much of a coincidence it was that their parents were Mormons and they ended up being Mormons too, but they didn't see any significance in that at all.

I was told that when they prayed to God he answered their prayers, and made them feel like there was a candle inside them. On reflection, that doesn't sound all that great does it? Wouldn't that burn, just a little? I expect they meant it was the warmth of a candle, but I get that kind of feeling from a bowl of porridge so I'm hardly likely to be impressed. They told me that when they prayed to God it made them happy and peaceful. Like meditation does, I suggested. They gave me a fuzzy answer about it being 'different'. So you've meditated? I asked. No. So how do you know it's different? One of them had, however, sat and thought quietly about things (without praying), and said that he felt peaceful when he did it. So wasn't that just making my point for me? The same kind of feelings came about when he 'sat and thought about things', with no reference to God. No, it was still 'different' apparently, but he couldn't explain in what way.

When I questioned them on why God made us, apparently we were made for a purpose and that was to learn and get to Heaven. So what is our purpose in Heaven, I asked. Apparently we become perfect and have children (in Heaven). But why? If we are then perfect, what is the purpose in that? What need is there to strive to do anything? They didn't seem to know much about that. I suggested that they should know, since it was their religion, but no, not a clue.

One thing different about the Mormons is that they don't seem to worship the three-in-one God. God is the Father, certainly, but he isn't the Son. The Son, Jesus is separate, as is the Holy Ghost. They only worship God. Well at least that makes more sense. The Trinity as expounded by evangelicals is such a daft concept that it doesn't need any further explanation... because you can't explain it other than by wrapping yourself in knots. SoldierInGodsArmy explains it best/worst.

I started to push them a little on their faith, particularly when they mentioned that the Bible teaches us lessons about how to live our lives, and they started to become uncomfortable. So how come the Bible condones slavery? I asked. They actually didn't seem to realise that it does. I told them that the Bible teaches that if you beat your slave to death that's a bad thing, but you can still beat them pretty severely if they live to tell the tale. Have you not read about that in the Old Testament? They hadn't. One of them said he hadn't read the whole of the Old Testament at all. Don't you think you should read it if you are on a religious mission? I asked. A shrug was all I got.

I did get a partial response. The Old Testament was the old law, and Jesus brought in the new law, as per the New Testament. Okay, I said, then why was slavery still around until 200 years ago? If the word of God had changed, why didn't it change after the death of Jesus? They flatly did not know. I explained that the morals of a society change over time, and it's obviously not what we learn from the Bible which is important, it's what society finds acceptable. Blank looks all round. I mentioned homosexuality, which they told me was 'a bad thing'... but that is mentioned in the same texts as slavery, so how come slavery isn't condoned (I even had to explain what the word 'condoned' means), and yet the Bible 'laws' against homosexuality are still in force. More blank looks.

But it was when I criticised the Mormon teachings in particular that my Mormon friends really started to become uncomfortable. Why is there no evidence of the great battles and civilisations in the Book of Mormon? Remember that the 'history' in the Book of Mormon ends around the 5th century AD. They told me to look at the ruins of Aztec cities. Er, surely the Aztecs were around until the Europeans wiped them out in the 16th century, weren't they? And it simply is not possible for the population to have grown to a point where millions of people were alive and killed in the great battles described in the Book of Mormon. Where were the archaeological finds, the bones, the weapons, from such immense battles?

By this time my questions were simply being dismissed. I mentioned that the story about Joseph Smith reading the golden plates with his head in a hat just sounded ridiculous, and the reply was that I had obviously been reading some negative things about them. So, I insisted, are you saying that that's not the official story, that that isn't what your religion teaches actually happened? No answer.

They told me the Book of Mormon has never changed, except for some changes in punctuation. Sorry, I pointed out, it has changed substantially. The original text is extremely disparaging towards the native Americans, even racist in tone. Those sections were amended later. It didn't please them to learn that. In fact they had no idea that it had even happened. More to the point, they entirely rejected this information when I gave it to them.

Finally we got to the crux of the matter. I was told that whatever I had to say, they simply didn't want to hear it. Those were the words of one of them. He didn't want to listen to me at all. But, I insisted, you can surely see why it is hard for me to accept your religion when I have these objections (referring to all the difficult questions I had posed to them). We believe what our faith tells us and it doesn't really matter what you have to say, I was told. We'd like to leave now.

I continued to push home my point: they really should have answers to questions such as these, because to dismiss them out of hand without even realising that there are genuine difficulties with their so-called 'history' as set out in the Book of Mormon, is simply not sensible. But it was too late. Please, we would like to leave, because we could be talking to someone else now instead of talking to you.

Of course I let them go, and they seemed to be relieved. My aim had been to give them difficult questions and find out if they knew the answers. However, not only had they heard some of the questions before, and did not have an answer for them, but they dismissed the questions out of hand. They didn't matter. Their faith was all that was important, and they were saying that it didn't matter what negative evidence there was, they were going to disregard it and continue with their faith.

Actually, now I come to think of it, I don't like the Mormons at all. They seem like the most reasonable people in the world. They are kind and good-natured. They will sit and talk with you and answer your questions... to a point. But if you push them, if you really try to test their faith, if you show them why their religion is just as silly as the rest of them (if not more so), they are as defensive and blinkered as any other theist. I listened to what the Mormons had to say, and to what they believed, but they didn't want to listen to what I had to say, not at all. Sadly that story is all too familiar isn't it?

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Footnote:
I was dying to ask them if they were wearing their magic Mormon underwear. Oh to have been brave enough to let that question pass my lips! But no, I kept quiet. And they probably had them on. They all do, don't they? They did tell me that they were feeling hot because of the sunny weather, but I think the explanation goes much deeper than that. Well, at least another layer deeper anyway.

Racism in Mormonism:
Racism in the LDS Church (ReligiousTolerance.org)
The embarrassing truth about Mormonism (The Jamaica Observer)
Mormonism's Racist Theology
Black Mormons Resist Apology Talk

What sounds like a great new pair of TV programmes from Richard Dawkins will be broadcast in the UK on Channel 4 starting next week. In The Enemies of Reason, Dawkins pours scorn on astrologers, spirit mediums, faith healers and homeopathic medicine, among others.

Press release:

Is it rational that the dead can communicate with the living and give sound advice on how they should live their lives? What about sticking pins into your body to free the flow of Chi energy and cure your illness? Or the bending of spoons using your mind alone? Is that rational? Richard Dawkins doesn't think so, and feels it is his duty to expose those areas of belief that exist without scientific proof, yet manage to hold the nation under their spell. He will take on the world's leading proponents in their field of expertise, meet the victims who have used them and expose the history of the movements - from the charlatans who have milked these practices to the experiments and testing that have failed to produce conclusive results.

Part 1: Monday 13 August 2007 - 8:00pm
Part 2: Monday 20 August 2007 - 8:00pm

As soon as someone uploads these I will of course add them to the site so that those not blessed with UK residence(!) can watch them too.

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Links:
Series Preview (Times Online)
Series Preview (Telegraph)
Series Preview (Thinkbox)
Wikipedia entry (including broadcast schedule)

Proof that God does not exist. Nothing with the power to prevent this would stand by idly and let it happen as part of his 'plan'. However, I've not added this documentary out of any need to show an atheist message.

Ignore the elements of Neo-Darwinism in this film. Likewise ignore the elements of Christianity (Roman Catholicism), also mentioned. That both were used and corrupted by the Nazis is a fact, but largely irrelevant. People did this. Human beings did this to other human beings. Some things are more important than religion. Some things are more important than anything else you will ever know or see or learn.

A few people have pointed out that the Objective Ministries site I mentioned in this blog post is in fact a parody site. This Wikepedia article seems to confirm that.

So, a little egg on my face for falling for it, but in my defence I have to point out that the section of the site I discussed, the kids section, is not really a parody at all. A parody would ridicule and exaggerate the teachings of other churches. This page simply mirrors some of the things which real Christians do teach to their kids.

It's a fact that some Christians genuinely teach their kids not to talk to atheists, or to view them in an extremely negative way. Atheists are often harassed and bullied if their atheism is revealed. And the other area I mentioned, the Creation Science questions and answers: those exactly mirror what Answers in Genesis and their Creation Museum teach.

So I'm not sure what the purpose of the parody is, since to me it too closely mirrors reality to be called a parody. It makes fun of it, yes, but only because the reality is so ridiculous in and of itself. The Landover Baptist Church site is much more over the top and is what I would call a parody (and it's a very funny site - take a look).

And hey, if The Register and Slashdot can be duped by this kind of site, I'm in good company!

With that said, I stand by most of my original post. The Objective Ministries site, though not a genuine church, does accurately reflect what some Christians teach to their children.

Another of my occasional re-workings of children's Bible stories. This time, God tells a lie, then throws a hissy fit when a couple of people eat some fruit, when all along they had no idea why it was a bad thing.

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The Apple and the Snake
A logical interpretation of Genesis 2 and 3, for children

The very first man was called Adam, and he lived in the Garden of Eden, which was right in the middle of the place we now call Iraq. In those days there weren't so many wars, and no Muslims were around, so it seemed like a good idea to put it there.

God was still tired after making the universe in only six days, so he told Adam to give names to all the land animals and birds. Even though Adam knew that everything he saw was a vegetarian, he still came up with some curious names like 'anteater', 'frog-eating bat' and 'fish eagle'. However, God decided to keep quiet about the subject because he had recently given names to all the sea creatures and had come up with 'killer whale' for one of them, so he was hardly in a position to criticise.

God wanted to make sure that Adam had more work to do, so he told him that his job was to take care of the Garden. There wasn't really that much to do, and anyway there were no such things as knives for pruning, or lawnmowers for cutting the grass, so it looked like it was going to be a pretty easy life for Adam.

For God, the most important thing of all was that Adam should always, always be ignorant. Knowledge was considered a very bad thing, so he told Adam not to eat the fruit growing on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Of course without knowing why, Adam just had to do what God said. He wasn't allowed to decide for himself because God was in charge. And he didn't understand it would be a bad thing to eat the fruit because he didn't know what good and bad was - that was the whole idea.

Adam didn't realise it at the time, but God soon told him the first lie there had ever been. "If you eat from the tree you will surely die," said God. Remember what God said, and see what happens later.

Even though God had made the whole universe from nothing, with all the billions of stars and galaxies and planets, and all the atoms and chemicals inside them, he decided that the best way to make a woman would be to take out one of Adam's ribs and make her from that. He'd already made Adam from dust, so perhaps he just wanted to try something different.

God didn't ask Adam for permission to take his rib because God can do whatever he likes, but at least he put Adam to sleep so that it wouldn't hurt. Or maybe God thought Adam wouldn't want to lose one of his ribs, so he knocked him out to stop him struggling. Either way, Adam didn't have chance to complain because God just took out the rib anyway. He had to make the rest of the woman's body from nothing, so he didn't really need the rib at all, but that didn't matter because soon God had made a woman from the rib, and he called her Eve.

Eve's job was to be Adam's helper in the Garden, but soon she committed the greatest crime ever in the whole history of the world (which wasn't very long at the time). It was so bad that God decided to punish everyone, everywhere, for all time. What could possibly be so terrible? Well, Eve's awful crime was this: she ate an apple.

This is how it happened. Of all the animals in all the world, the snake was the strangest. The first strange thing was that he had legs. Have you ever seen a snake with legs? That would be a very funny looking thing wouldn't it? But God's ideas are perfect so we don't need to know why he made a snake with legs.

Even more strange than that, when God made the snake he decided that it would be able to talk. A talking snake with legs is the weirdest animal ever. Adam and Eve were the only other living things who could talk, so one day the snake walked up to them both for a chat.

"Those apples look nice," he said, nodding at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Eve agreed, but said she wasn't allowed to touch them because God said they would die if they ate the fruit. But the snake knew that God was lying, and told her the real truth.

"God just wants to stop you knowing the difference between right and wrong. Why would he do that? I mean, if you two ever have children won't you want them to know what is good and what is bad?"

Eve thought that made a lot of sense, and the apples did look particularly tasty, so she took a bite out of one of them, and gave some to Adam, who ate it too.

Straight away both of them realised that the snake had been telling the truth, and God really had lied to them. God said they would die if they ate the fruit, but they didn't die at all. All that happened was that Adam and Eve learned some important things, just like people learn from their parents, or when they go to school. And everybody knows that learning things is good, so why didn't God think so too?

The first thing they learned was that it's not a good idea to walk around with no clothes on. Adam and Eve had only just met, so they were very shy, and they sewed some leaves together to cover up their rude parts.

Soon they heard God walking around the Garden. Remember that God had made the whole universe, so he was absolutely enormous, but if he wanted he could shrink himself down to the same size as the people he'd made. God could do all kinds of magical things like that.

Adam and Eve knew they were in trouble, because now they knew what trouble meant - the fruit from the tree had taught them. Of course they didn't know it was wrong at all. How could they, when God didn't want them to know? That's what happens when you try to hide things and keep secrets, it just causes more problems. Maybe they should have done what God said, but they didn't know it would be bad to listen to the snake did they?

God found them hiding in the bushes, looking scared. He asked Adam why he had eaten the fruit from the forbidden tree. Adam pointed at Eve. "It was her, she gave it to me."

Eve didn't want to be blamed, and anyway it wasn't her fault, so she tried to explain that the snake had told her to eat the fruit. But God was very unhappy. His plan had been to stop Adam and Eve knowing about good and evil, but now the snake had spoiled it all.

In a rage God amputated the snake's legs and said that from now on he would have to crawl on his belly and eat dust. But really that wasn't much of a punishment because snakes can move very easily on their bellies, and actually none of them really eat dust, so God's power wasn't enough to make the snake do that. Or maybe God was lying again when he said it.

Really it was all the snake's fault because if he hadn't talked Eve into eating the apple none of this would have happened. So the snake should have been given the worst punishment, right? Well, that wasn't how God saw it.

God told Eve that when she had babies it would be very very painful, and in fact until we had modern hospitals a lot of women would die, just because of the problems they had while giving birth. What a terrible way to punish a woman, and all for eating an apple. God brought a lot of pain and suffering into the world, just like that.

Of course Eve's daughters and grand-daughters hadn't eaten the apple, so why were they punished too? But that was just how God said it had to be. All that pain and punishment, all because they didn't know it was wrong to eat the apple in the first place.

Adam was punished too. Instead of living an easy life in the Garden of Eden, he would have to work in the fields and grow his own food. But that wasn't much different when you think about it because it was already his job to look after the Garden of Eden.

Both of them were punished a whole lot more than the snake had been, which might not have been fair, but God wanted it that way, and it wasn't a good idea to argue with him.

God was still in a very bad mood, and he killed some of the animals, who hadn't done anything wrong either, and made their skins into clothes for Adam and Eve. He didn't really need to do that because they had already sewn some leaves together, but God wanted to show them who was boss. So not only had God told the first lie, he was also the first one to kill innocent living creatures for their fur.

Adam and Eve were told they couldn't stay in the Garden of Eden because they might be tempted to eat from the tree of life, which would let them live forever, but God was forgetting that now they knew right from wrong they would know it was wrong to eat from the other tree. However the subject never even came up, and Adam and Eve were thrown out into the world. Just in case they thought of coming back, God put a flaming sword in front of the Garden gate, which would have chopped them into little pieces if they tried. God also put cherubs at the gate as guards, so there was no way they would ever make it back in.

Adam and Eve really knew about good and evil now, but there were a couple of things they couldn't quite work out. If God hadn't wanted them to eat the fruit, why had he put the tree right in the middle of the Garden of Eden where it could be seen so easily? God could have put a big wall around it to stop them, and in fact there didn't really have to be a tree at all. Putting it there was just asking for trouble, especially when Adam and Eve didn't know the difference between right and wrong. And whose fault was that?

Surely God knew that the snake would try to trick Eve. Why didn't he warn her? After all, God had made the snake and even gave it a voice, so he must have had some idea that it was going to cause trouble.

God made it so very easy for Adam and Eve to do the wrong thing, and then punished them hard for it without even giving them a second chance. All that fuss over one little apple. Oh well, that's just God's way isn't it?

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The Holy Fucking Bible:
1.	Another Fucking Creation Story
2.	The Talking Snake Fucks It Up For Everyone
3.	Eve Shows Off Her Furry Knickers
4.	Cain Twats Abel and Fucks a Mystery Woman
5.	OldTesticles.com - God's nuts for dating
6.	Noah's Ark: It's Fucking Genocide I Tell Ya!
7.	God's Shit Stained Planet of Death
8.	Noah: The Transvestite Years
9.	9/11 - The Triple Towers of Bullshit
10.	DIY Coffin Dodgers Gettin Jiggy Wit Da Pharaoh
11.	Are You Lovecraft Tonight?
12.	Allah G's Skool Histry Homewerk
13.	God Loves Panties and Porn
My earlier Bible Stories for children:
1.	God Made Everything
2.	The Apple and the Snake
3.	Babies, Murders and Mysterious Girls