Freedom from Faith™

“The John Lennon Collection” was released on Nov 10, 1982. Not usually a fan of collected works, I didn’t buy the album until shortly after its release on CD in 1989.  I was pleasantly surprised by how strong the collection was and how well the songs, pulled from various albums, worked together artistically. (Yes to all you mixers out there, I get it, there is an art there.) Among the many great Lennon songs, such as Give Peace a Chance, Instant Karma, Power to the People, and, of course, Imagine is an unexpected gem called Happy Xmas (War Is Over).

My tradition of playing it on Christmas morning began that year and extends in an unbroken chain to today, and with each passing year the meaning of its words grows more profound within my breast, the music more lifting to my spirit, and its call ever more anticipated an announcement that, today, this is Christmas.

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David Shuster, of MSNBC’s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, recently featured a segment (embedded below) on Obama’s economic stimulus package wherein he reports that the funding request for the planned package is going to be substantially increased. He then introduced his guest, Linda Hirshman, NY Times Op-Ed Contributor, author of “Get to Work: …And Get a Life, Before It’s Too Late“, and the stereotypical vision of a first-wave feminist who, typically for her peers, is quick to see “gender inequity” in every opportunity.

“My theory,” says Hirshman, “is that Obama‘s people must have been watching Bob the Builder too much, because they created—they proposed at first a job stimulus plan, the jobs in which were going to be essentially 90 percent male. Most of the job for building highways and bridges and even the creation of alternative fuels fall into the categories of construction, which is heavily male. It is only nine percent female at best. And engineering, which is 88 percent male and 12 percent female.

“So, initially, the proposal seemed like it was going to take money from all the tax payers—you know, half the tax payers in America are women—and give it to several million men.”

“Bah! Humbug!” I say.

“A fascinating concern” is Schuster’s take on Hirshman’s complaint; a triviality that threatens to impede critical progress if taken seriously is mine. You see, Hirshman, in her special interest group mania, is missing the point entirely.

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Today I was catching up with SarahH’s blog Hopeless Unbeliever and ran across her story of how she came to her atheistic world view. She had written her brief memoir as part of the story collection project on There Probably Isn’t a God! My interest aroused, I decided to follow Sarah’s lead and submit my own humble tale.

The submission guidelines request a specific form that includes your name, a general indication of where you are from, your age, a brief biography, where you heard about the project (kudos to Sarah), and, of course, your story. I’ll skip all those details here (all that information is available elsewhere on this site) and head straight into my story:

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I could not contain my shock.

I can’t be certain but I would not be surprised if my eyes popped, my jaw dropped, and my lungs flushed a breath of air. I was, to put it mildly, taken aback.

We sat around the table at my home, my niece, her friend, and I, the three of us eating some terribly unhealthy fast-food, talking about whatever teenage girls like to talk about. Somehow the conversation slipped over to religion and the Bible. Odd leap that but teenage girls tend to shift conversations with, as my niece says, “wow, that was random” abandon.

“It’s the only book,” said the friend, “that’s been proven to be 100% accurate.”

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When people pray they seem to spend a lot of their time asking God for something.

That strikes me as a gross lack of faith.

God is omniscient (all-knowing). God is omnipotent (all-powerful). God is transcendent (beyond time and space). And God loves you.

He knows what is best for you and he will provide it for you because he loves you. Why would you even think to ask him for something? If you should have it, he will give it to you. He already knows. And if you should not have it… do you really think asking him to give it to you anyway is a good idea?

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There are many types of knowledge. There is knowledge through experience, knowledge through communication, knowledge through contemplation, and knowledge through the scientific method (essentially communicated experience). And, some would say, there is revealed knowledge, i.e. knowledge gained through divine communication. (See epistemology for a detailed information.)

To the receiver of divine communication little can compete. If God has spoken to you then nothing can be more certain, more deserving of being deemed as fact, than that which was revealed by God. It must be an experience unlike any other and it would trump any other form of knowledge.

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