The quest for solid god-evidence has yielded nothing
There’s been a cartoon floating around on Facebook for a while, depicting a Christian woman asking a man, “What’s it like being an atheist?” He replies, “Do you think Zeus is real?” Her answer is “No”—to which he answers, “Like that.” Zeus is one of thousands of gods that have been invented by human beings, and embraced with varying degrees of enthusiasm. It has been so easy to jump to the god-conclusion; in the Book of Acts, chapter 28, we find the story of the apostle Paul arriving on Malta. As he was lighting a fire, a viper landed on his hand, which he shook off into the fire. But the locals were amazed: “They were expecting him to swell up or drop dead, but after they had waited a long time and saw that nothing unusual had happened to him, they changed their minds and began to say that he was a god.” (v. 6)
Once belief in a god has caught on, then those who claim to have privileged knowledge of the god move in to create bureaucracies to refine and enforce belief. It has been so rare in the history of religion that followers have bothered to ask, “How do you know so much about our god?” The gullibility of the flock seems to be a given. Thus thousands of gods have thrived, but they’ve also come and gone; for whatever reason, fallen out of favor. But never, it would seem, because anyone thought to ask for reliable, verifiable, objective evidence for the god.
In 1952, Bertrand Russell illustrated this issue brilliantly:
“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a China teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.
“If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”
He added this in 1958, “…nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a China teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely.” (see Wikipedia article)
The Christian ecclesiastical bureaucracy has forever used the methods mentioned by Russell: “…affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school.”
In all three of these categories, the Christian god is outclassed by the celestial teapot. Let’s take a look.
Affirmed in ancient books
How would that work for a teapot? We are assured by Catholic theologians that sacred relics are not worshipped by the faithful, but are venerated instead. So let’s suppose that the teapot was considered a relic cherished by ancient gods, and that its story was told in ancient books, i.e., it was used in very special ceremonies in the sacred realm above the earth. It played a role in guaranteeing the outcomes of such ceremonies. How does that compare with how the Christian god is portrayed in its ancient books? This god killed everyone on earth (except for Noah’s family) because his original creation was a botched job. This god killed all the first-born in Egypt to get the pharaoh to change his mind. This god ordered the wholesale massacre of people who lived in the so-called promised land. In the New Testament there is plenty of Jesus-script in which the Christian Lord and Savior describes the horrible suffering that will happen when the kingdom of god arrives on earth. Who would want to believe in this god? There’s a good reason that Dan Barker titled his 2018 book, God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction. So many of the faithful have not picked up on this fact because they don’t read the Bible. The clergy naturally focus on feel-good verses—but Bible-god is a disaster.
Taught as the sacred truth every Sunday
We can imagine ceremonies in which the Celestial Teapot is honored, glorified, venerated—without layers of lies and deceptions. Not so with Christian worship. I was raised in a Methodist church in rural Indiana, where the Sunday services were not that elaborate. The choir walked down the aisle singing the hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty; the minister wore his black robe; the splendid Bible was on the altar, with the Christian flag on one side, the American flag on the other. There were modest stained-glass windows, and four times a year we had Communion Sunday, when we pretended to eat and drink Jesus. It was all intended as a show to impress the faithful. As I look back on it, I realize we were engaged in ceremonies to fool ourselves.
We were totally upstaged by the Catholic Church, which has mastered show business—far more splendid sets and costumes—for the purpose of deflecting attention from the defective god and savior depicted in scripture. It seems to be a matter of stroking the divine ego, flattering the god who gets off on human adoration. Contemporary televangelism has outdone the Catholic Church, with vast auditoriums, huge flat-screen TVs, and entertainment-preachers who rake in vast sums of cash; clearly, Jesus wants Kenneth Copeland to have his private jets.
Veneration of the celestial teapot would be far less offensive.
Instilled into the minds of children at school
For centuries ecclesiastical bureaucrats have grasped the vital importance of getting people indoctrinated as young as possible: get their concept of god and its promises/assurances instilled in minds not yet trained in critical thinking. Their very being, their concepts of themselves, are anchored to the sacred truths that the priests are privileged to discover. I know adult Christians who refuse to listen to any ideas or suggestions that might undermine or jeopardize their faith.
This goes far, far beyond veneration that might be given to a celestial teapot.
The Wikipedia article I referenced earlier notes that some apologists and philosophers have argued that Russell’s likening the celestial teapot to belief in god has flaws. So it seems, since the concept of a powerful god of creation is far beyond the idea of a teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars. But I don’t think it’s a stretch at all, for the reasons I’ve just mentioned.
In a powerful article posted here on 25 November, The Blasphemy of Heliocentrism, Daniel Mocsny states pretty clearly the facts of the matter:
“Faith is essentially the belief that believing something said by some authority makes it true. We can test the reliability of that method by examining the record. And the record is not good. Faith has taken some big swings, and had some big misses, on rather important issues like geocentrism, Young Earth Creationism, slavery, women’s rights, gay rights, etc. This calls into question other religious claims that rely solely on faith, such as ensoulment of the zygote, libertarian free will, dualism, and perhaps all other claims that various religions disagree on (because they can’t settle their differences with evidence).”
Back to that key component: evidence. Reliable, verifiable, objective evidence. The church has a couple thousand years of tradition and momentum, and billions of followers—scattered across thousands of brands that disagree about what god is like, and how he/she/it wants to be worshipped. Why? “Because they can’t settle their differences with evidence.”
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available.
His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.
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