Outstanding Six Part audio series by Richard Dawkins-Sam Harris

This is new to the web so far as I can tell.  It's worth listening to. Harris and Dawkins are inspirational.  Part one is above.  The remaining parts are linked below:

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

PART 5

PART 6



Christians do not truly believe prayer works

by Chitchensfan
Conversation overheard between a Christian and an Atheist at a hospital:

Christian: Did you see God’s miracle take place?

Athiest:  What miracle was that?

Christian: The man in this bed before you.  He was terminally ill.  I’ve been praying for him and he is recovering.  You see, prayer works.  Isn’t God’s love grand?

Atheist: But the man is a criminal.  He deserved to die.

Christian: But God forgives.

Athleist:  What about the poor sap beside him in the other bed?

Christian:  What about him?

Atheist: You’ve been praying for him as well.  He died.  Unlike the man who has recovered he was a good man with a nice family. He was a faithful Christian. Where was God’s love?

Christian: We aren’t intended to know God’s plan for us.

Athiest: But his family is without a husband, a father, a provider.  What possible explanation could there be?

Christian: (shrugs) God works in mysterious ways.

Ok, the conversation above was made up, but it’s a similar conversation I’ve had with many Christians who insist that God listens to all prayers and that prayer works.

Isn’t it all a bit too convenient? 

But then again religion was made by man and convenience had to be interjected to explain the unexplainable. It became necessary for early church leaders to have an answer for everything, even if the answer is as all-encompassing as, “We are not meant to know God’s master plan.” 

The claim is insulting but not as insulting as the claim other religious zealots cling to, that the person dying or suffering “did not pray hard enough” or that there was some other offense to God.

There was a great debate over a study made by Dr. Randolph Byrd in 1988 and a follow-up study reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 1999.  The study attempted to discern whether patients in hospitals who were prayed for, knowingly or unknowingly, were more likely to recover than patients who had no one praying for them.

http://www.gpposner.com/Harris_study.html

A great debate took place over nuances of the study’s variables and shortcomings in interpreting the results.  Those who believed in prayer place heavy weight to relatively tiny bits of positive information and those who did not believe prayer worked took great pride in the “statistical insignificance” between the prayer and non-prayer groups.

I believe both sides missed the greater picture altogether. For one thing, if prayer truly worked would there be any doubt whatsoever about the results?  Of course not.

Consider that the study took place in a hospital.  If prayer's effectiveness was truly being measured, why would a hospital or a doctor be needed at all?

If one wished to truly decide whether prayer works a study would be made of 1000 cancer patients.  Five hundred of the patients would rely on medical treatment and the other five hundred would rely on prayer alone.  Sounds ridiculous, right? Of course it is.  And yet if people truly believed that prayer worked, no hospital or doctor would be neccessary.

Let's try that study.  I promise you the results would be "statistically significant."  But such a study would never take place. It would be illegal and immoral because everyone knows the results would be disasterous, even the most convicted religious zealots wouldn't take part despite claims that "God can do anything."

An all-knowing, all-powerful, loving God would a need a hospital in the same manner that a man would need a hand grenade to dispose of an ant – if there were a God that is.

Religious types may pound their fists and scream about prayer from the rafters all they like, but they are lying if they tell you they truly believe prayer works.  They don’t believe it all.

Christopher Hitchens' most quotable quotes

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8448250/Christopher-Hitchens-most-provocative-quotes.html


A couple of Hitch's quotes are listed below from this good article, linked here:


“Religious exhortation and telling people, telling children, that if they don’t do the right thing, they’ll go to terrifying punishments or unbelievable rewards, that’s making a living out of lying to children. That’s what the priesthood do. And if all they did was lie to the children, it would be bad enough. But they rape them and torture them and then hope we’ll call it ‘abuse’.”


“Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.”


“Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.”

Reason and Good Sense will spell the end of religion in the future

by CHitchensfan
Mankind existed long before the development of any of the world’s religions of today.   Religions have come and gone over the ages. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, have fallen to scientific knowledge, reason and common sense as civilizations have developed.

If any of us happened to stumble on a person today who believed in the gods of Greek mythology, we would shake our heads and look upon that person with great pity that he would believe in such gibberish.  We know full well what controls the currents of the sea and how weather develops and have no need to create Poseidon to explain such matters.  We know that the sun is a stationary star, a giant ball of hot gas that provides light and warmth to our planet. We have telescopes and satellites that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the earth’s rotation creates an illusion of the sun streaming across the sky.  Therefore we have no need to create a story and a belief that there is a great god Apollo who drives a blinding golden chariot across the sky each day. We’ve been to the top of Mt. Olympus and have seen for ourselves that there is no godly alliance of all-powerful beings watching and ruling over us.  Yet for many years, much of the civilized world believed in such nonsense and in those days to not do so would have been a punishable offense.

In the future, whether it is fifty years from now or a hundred or even a thousand, people of that time will look back on Christianity, Judaism, Islam and the remaining world’s religions of the day in the same manner.  Don't deny it. It’s already begun.

Clear religious principles in The Bible have been fading from our society for some time and will continue to do so.  Even Christians must confess that society has rejected many things from The Bible out of reason or pure common sense.

Can you imagine if a father today murdered his son and claimed that God told him to do it as a test of faith?  If that man used Abraham’s story from the Old Testament as his defense, would anyone think for one moment that the murderer would not be put before the justice system and condemned?   

What would happen today if an employer failed to promote a woman citing Paul in the New Testament? “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man.”  How likely would it be that the employer would win such an argument if tested in court?

Jewish and Christian faithful have long since abandoned many principles from the Old and New Testaments regarding such things as the treatment of women and slavery, which is expressly and embarrassingly tolerated in many parts of The Bible.

In Islam the horrific treatment of women and the positively amoral manner in which men sacrifice themselves to commit acts of terrorism have gained world-wide attention.  Does anyone believe that reason and common sense will not someday prevail over such religious thinking?

The erosion of religion has begun and is building.

April 2011 hour long interview

Sky Arts is broadcasting an hour long interview with Christopher this Thursday.  Here is a three-minute advanced clip. 


http://video.sky.com/skyarts/related/24693/Christopher%20Hitchens%20In%20Confidence/true


His voice is still solid and his mind seems perfectly intact.  I saw a very recent interview elsewhere where, when asked how he was feeling, he responded by saying "There are bad days and there are worse days." 


Another quote from the Sky Art article mentioned above which is not on this clip clearly indicates that Christopher has not lost his spunk.


“I hate the idea that somebody like Henry Kissinger is what, well into his 80s now, or Pope Benedict likewise, would live long enough to read my obituary when I had fully intended to be writing theirs and I make no bones about it. That’s why I don’t ask for sympathy because I’m not intending to dish it out.”

"It's not a good cancer to get."

Whether he is stating the obvious or not, I respect and admire a man who has not sold out his convictions and "found god" at the eleventh hour. 


This is an excerpt from an April 9 article, linked below.

One physician who is taking an active interest in Hitchens's treatment is Francis Collins, the former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute in the US. Collins is now the director of America's National Institutes of Health. He is also an evangelical Christian, the author of a bestselling book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. He and Hitchens had actually debated religion publicly before Hitchens fell ill and have become good friends. ''I won't say he doesn't pray for me, because I think he probably does; but he doesn't discuss it with me.'' Hitchens's attitude to people praying for him could be described as a mixture of polite gratitude for their consideration and a determined refusal to let it sway his opinions. There have been various studies, he says, on whether or not intercessionary prayer works. ''And one is not surprised to find they don't.'' On the contrary, the most comprehensive study concluded that it could even have a detrimental effect, causing those who knew they were being prayed for to become depressed when they didn't get better, ''because they thought they were letting the side down''.




Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/christopher-hitchens-dont-pray-for-me-20110408-1d6gf.html#ixzz1JiJ1DXWw

Christopher on his memoir "Hitch 22"

One of the most reasoned, articulate men of our time, Christopher Hitchens, on his new memoir.