Jonathan Stuckey, Bass

Here is some more wisdom stolen adapted from Apathetic Agnostics.

“Believers” like to tell us what their particular deity requires of us. Here is what I require from God.

• If God needs to me to believe, then I need clear and convincing evidence of God’s existence.
• If God needs me to follow one particular version of the thousands of variations of deity worship in the world, then I need clear direction from God which one is right.
• If God needs me to follow specific rituals, then I need clear direction from God which rituals and how they should be followed.
• If God needs me to follow a specific moral code, then I need that moral code spelled out in clear and unambiguous terms (i.e. is it really an abomination to eat shrimp?).
• If God intends to reward or punish me in an afterlife based on my beliefs and/or actions in this life, then I need clear and convincing evidence of that afterlife and of the range of rewards and punishments.

I don’t think this is an unreasonable list. I may be wrong. It’s never stopped me before.

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
–Mark Twain

I stumbled across this and I thought it was interesting. I was reading a website called God Is Imaginary and found an interesting story. Now, being an agnostic Humanist, I don’t necessarily believe that God is imaginary. I don’t necessarily believe God is real, either. I believe the very concept of God (or any supernatural being) is outside the realm of observable, verifiable phenomena, and is not a topic that merits inclusion in a biology or geology (or any other natural science) course. But that’s a topic for the politics category.

Anyway, I had a point. The article I was reading concerns the development of Penicillin. Here’s the relevant quote:

Did Fleming or Floring say, as a religious person would, “The death of this bacteria is a miracle! God has reached down and killed it!” Of course not. Instead, they completely ignored “God”. They determined what was actually happening through experimentation and then made useful medicines from the mold. They took a rational approach rather than a religious approach and we all benefit from penicillin and its many derivatives today.

The article — the whole website, in fact — has a condescending tone toward religion, which I find unfortunate and less than useful. But the point it makes struck me. What would a deeply religious person have thought upon finding that petri dish? That God was working to develop an antibacterial? Or that those who were infected by bacteria deserved it, due to some moral/religious defect? I don’t think a fundamentalist would have said, “Hey, maybe I should test this stuff using the scientific method, and then make conclusions based on verifiable, empirical evidence.”

Maybe I’m wrong, but it makes me wonder.