Religion encourages this sort of thing

As loyal readers know, I'm trying to sell my house. What this means in a daily sense is that crowds of strangers have been walking through my home. Sheesh.

But rather than complain, today I want to share with you the strangeness of some of these visitors' thought processes.

One woman who came through told me she was going to put in an offer that very day. From speaking with her, I knew she had a husband, so I said, "I imagine you want your husband to view it too -- I mean, before you make the offer." After all, if a couple buys a house, surely both marriage partners want to see it beforehand. Makes sense, no?

She told me her husband had no need to see it because he respected her clairvoyant powers. You see, when she spied the house online she knew immediately that this was Her House. So there was no need for hubby to see it.

Another family came through and asked, haltingly, if the house was haunted. I mean, what do you say? My sister answered her as if this was a normal question. She assured the woman that we had been the only owners of this house, no one had died here, and the house was not haunted. It's probably a good thing that my sister didn't let me answer the question.

But really, why wouldn't nitwits believe in ghosts and paranormal powers? After all, their churches tell them there are demons and guardian angels and a Holy Spirit and a devil too. And of course, there's the god fellow Himself, who is the King of Ghosts. Once you let nonsense invade your brain and convince yourself that it makes sense, you are lost in the wilderness.

In a sense, I can't blame the idiots. This dreck is everpresent in American "culture". There are "ghost-hunting" shows on TV. And movies present clairvoyant characters as if they're a normal part of everyday reality. There are endless bible and Jesus shows, and there are ranting pastors (and Republican candidates for president) who reject reality in favor of their favorite fairytale. The idjits never had a chance.

I guess these visitors to my house are what passes for true Americans these days. And to think that we used to believe that humanity would grow up at some point and leave silly childhood games behind. Not. Gonna. Happen.

Unless we ditch the gods. Ditch yours today.

PS: I found Casper's image on belief.net. I kid you not. (Couldn't credit the artist, who is not mentioned on the site.)

Jerry Coyne is a national treasure

On his blog today, Jerry Coyne ruminated about Francis Collins' insistence that religion and science just get along. I loved this bit:

"...I am 99.9% sure there is no God, just as I’m 99.9% sure that there’s no Loch Ness monster.  Is it a “strong a-Nessieist position” to say “I know there is no Nessie”? Is that hubris and arrogance, too? It is curious that for everything as unevidenced as God—except for God himself—people are willing to argue that it doesn’t exist.  God is the one exception, probably because belief in Nessie doesn’t come with an afterlife."

 How can you not love a guy like Jerry? He's my hero.

Small tendency? Small shift? Ha!

There's an article at Yahoo about what would happen if we could double people's intelligence -- a thing that's becoming more and more possible as science progresses. "What if we could double people's IQs so that everyone scored 200?" That's the question.

It's not an incisive article in any way. I was particularly struck by this ridiculous paragraph:

According to Hunt, there's evidence to suggest that many humans, if significantly smarter, would lose their belief in God. "There is a small tendency for people with high scores to be more liberal in their social attitudes and less likely to accept strong religious beliefs. This makes sense; we can know things by reasoning or we can accept something on faith. If we all became very good reasoners, there would probably be a small shift to preferring reasoned over faith-based explanations of the phenomenon of life," he wrote.

Small tendency? Small shift? Get real. If everyone was smart no one would believe in god. Period. Belief in god is dependent on gullibility, stupidity and a lack of curiosity. A high IQ would fix all that and people would begin to take down the churches immediately. Sounds like fun!

The god nonsense

god.

The other day I visited Blue Collar Atheist, one of the blogs at the new Freethought Blogs site. Hank, the really nice guy who runs Blue Collar Atheist, wrote about the way christians think atheists must believe in god, way down deep inside. Made me chuckle. No way, hon. There ain't no god.

I commented on the post to say that I'm the reverse of this christian notion: I don't believe anyone truly believes in god. I'm sure lots of people think they believe in god but that just means they haven't taken their brains out for a test drive. They've never actually thought about anything. Their "belief" is merely a way of life -- it's posturing as a lifestyle. They live as if they believe in these gods. Sorry, but I don't buy it.