So why do people pray to God to help them get that new job, or win a football match?

“and we believe that :Jesus once raised Lazarus from the dead.”

If Lazarus was, indeed, raised, it’s proof positive that he wasn’t actually dead. There have been plenty other cases of people who were believed to be dead, and who have walked out of the morgue. My sister went out with one of them for a year or so.

I guess you also believe that Mary was a virgin – a young girl facing a stoning for being pregnant before marriage. Who examined her? The Bible doesn’t say, but it would most likely have been a woman. Can to imagine a scenario where the examiner would corroborate her story to save her life? I certainly can.

The fact that these things were written in a book doesn’t make them true. The gospel of Judas, which was found in the last 20 years in Egypt, directly contradicts a lot of the other gospels, yet it was written in the same period. None of the gospels were written at the time these things happened (or didn’t), or by the people they were attributed to – they were written 100-200 years later, when the stories had been handed down a few times, with lots of possibilities of “Chinese whispers”

At the time of Bishop Irenaeus in the second century, there were lots of gospels in circulation – about twenty, if I recall correctly – many of them contradictory – so Christians had a pretty mixed-up set of beliefs, yet they were being persecuted and put to death for their religion, so Irenaeus decided that people had better know what they were dying for, and have a banner to fight under. He declared most of the gospels to be Gnostic, and kept the four we know now because they all agreed with each other – and Christianity went with those four from that point – but before that, hence closer to the times of Christ, they were not the mainline beliefs.

Just for the exercise, try reading the Bible as a book, without preconceptions, but with the understanding and, I suppose, cynicism of our modern age, and make your own interpretation of it as you would any other book – though I realise that once you are indoctrinated, it’s difficult to do that.

From Dictionary.com : Mechanism : the agency or means by which an effect is produced or a purpose is accomplished.

I spent five formative years at a Catholic boarding school, being brought up by the priests and lay Brothers of the Salesian order, so I know something about their teachings. Ask them about God, and they will say that he is all-powerful, an infinite intellect, and that serving, and pleasing God is the most important aspect to anybody’s life. God is always present, and sees everything you do, and even knows your thoughts. You only exist as an entity of God’s mind, and if he forgot about you, only for a moment, you would simply disappear. We didn’t have a bishop at the school, of course, but the office of bishop was held in great reverence as somebody who was even closer to God than a priest – a truly holy man.

Some years ago, there was a bit of a scandal in the press about an Irish bishop, who was found to have had an illegitimate child. When we swear on the Bible to tell the truth in a law court, the church holds that you are bringing Almighty God to bear witness to the veracity of what you say, so if you tell a lie, you’ll have quite some explaining to do at the pearly gates! Similarly, when a priest violates a vow that he has made before God – well, that’s a pretty serious offence to God – all the worse if you’re an ordained priest – and in the Catholic church, they take a vow of chastity. As I said, this was not just a priest, but a bishop, and it occurred to me that he would not have conceived a child if his own, flesh-and-blood father had been in the room – you can be pretty sure about that! So what’s the difference between having your biological father in the room, and having God watching your every move? The only reasonable explanation that I can find is that he did not, in fact, believe that God was there. He believed that he was alone – or for some reason, he cared a great deal less about it than he would have if his own parent had been in the room.

Following this logic, there should be no difficulty in excommunicating any priest found guilty of kiddie-fiddling, because he has shown that he didn’t believe that God was present when he was doing it – and that’s a contradiction with what he professes. Taking it a step further, though, the same applies every time any religious person does something that they have been told would offend God – i9n the moment they do it, they know in the depths of their psyche that it won’t offend God – because he’s no0t there – they are alone.

Here’s another case – http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014216074
A Muslim Imam in Pakistan is accused of putting burned pages from the Quran into the shopping bag of a young Christian girl. The case hasn’t been tried yet, but it seems likely that he did it so that this young girl (who has Downs syndrome, with a mental age of eleven, yet is still in prison) would be accused of a crime for which she could lose her life. Now it turns out that the one who actually burned the Quran was the Imam himself – a religious leader who would tell everybody that this is the worst sin/crime that anybody could commit. Clearly, he didn’t believe what he preached! Did he think Allah was watching him as he did it? I don’t think it likely!

The reason is that we all play cards. A couple of years ago, I had an altercation with a neighbour because I was slamming the front door when I went out of the house. I was not aware of the pressure wave that went through the house because I was always outside when I did it. The interesting thing is that she didn’t say “This is a nuisance to me and I’m sick of it” – she said “Every time you do that, it wakes the baby” (who was three years old, by the way). She was playing the Baby card – because a baby is inviolable. Once it was brought to my attention, I stopped doing it, but if she had said it was a personal matter, she would have risked a retort of “You’re a big girl – deal with it” – but babies, in our culture, are sacrosanct. You can’t argue against a baby – so she presented her complaint in the name of the “baby”.

How many people have you heard to use the colour card – because interpersonal matters can no longer be argued if there is a risk of offending the sensibilities of a person of colour. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard anything similar happening in China, where there is racism against “white devils”.

When Al Queda indoctrinates young people, that if they die in the name of Allah, they will reap their reward in the next life, being surrounded by virgins, etc – it is noticeable that none of them love their own sons enough to strap bombs to them and send them into the land of glory. They’re convincing guillable people by playing the Allah card, as are nations that are at war – they both expect God to help them to defeat the other side. Allahu Akbar !

When the IRA was setting bombs in England in the name of religion, were they doing it out of deep reverence? Did they think that God would be pleased by their actions – or were they simply playing the Religion card?

Playing the God card is rife throughout the Bible, too. I read it some years ago, and the thing that I just didn’t “get” was how anybody could base a religion on it. Try reading Samuel, book 1, chapter 15. The Israelites had had a spat with the Amelekites, and Samuel was riven through with hatred and a lust for revenge, so he made Saul a leader of his army (which was considerable), and told him ….

1Sm15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

Nice guy! Saul went out, and killed pretty well everybody, but he brought back the leader of the Amalekites, Agag, to see Samuel, and Samuel wasn’t pleased, but he didn’t say to Saul “You pissed me off because you didn’t obey my orders” – he played the God card. “It wasn’t me – it was the LORD!”

1Sm15:17 And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the LORD anointed thee king over Israel? [ In fact, Samuel had anointed him]
1Sm15:18 And the LORD sent thee on a journey [Samuel had], and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be consumed. [By the way, who made the Amalekites? Who was their God?]
1Sm15:19 Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of the LORD, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst evil in the sight of the LORD?

So he called Agag before him, and Agag came in delicately and pleaded for his life, but Samuel, in his great benevolence, said

1Sm15:33 [...}] As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the LORD in Gilgal.

Moses did it too – he promoted genocide and mass rape. He also sent his army out to lay waste to the Midianites, but they only killed all the men. They brought back a huge throng of women and children onto the Plains of Moab, and Moses went out to meet them…

Num31:15 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
Num31:16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.
Num31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
Num31:18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

When Moses came down the mountain with the commandments on stone tablets, he didn’t say “I’ve just spent the last 40 days carving these, and these are the laws I want you to follow” No, he had the charisma to convince people that he had been in communication with God, and if there’s a God that sees what you are doing and knows your thoughts – and he talks to ME – that’s street-cred of a high order!

It seems to me that life is a game of poker – bluff and double bluff, and if you can play your cards in the name of someone who nobody dares to contradict, you’re on a winner – but it doesn’t show you believe in God – quite the contrary in my opinion.