The title of this post may surprise you as rather odd. After all, what could religion and milk possibly have in common?? Well, surprisingly, one key factor, but I’ll get to that later. Most of us have been raised to drink milk to make us big, healthy and strong by way of the calcium, vitamin D and other nutrients present in cow-milk.
Late last year, I read online that an Ice Cream shop in London had begun using human breast milk in a select few of their ice creams. I was intrigued by the concept, and now and then, I would ask friends if they would ever try it. The usual response is a scrunched up face, following by something like, “How disgusting!”. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
People have known the Earth was round for about 2,000 years, not 500 years
You can survive for perhaps 15 to 30 seconds in space, provided your lungs are emptied of air
There are more stars in the Universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth
The etymology of the word “dessert” is “to deserve,” so go ahead and eat that cup cake, you deserve it
Knowledge is growing so fast that 90% of what we know in 50 years’ time will be discovered in those 50 years
Hitler was not, in fact, an atheist, and actually thought Islam would be better suited to Germany than Christianity
Adam and Eve did not in fact eat an apple in the Book of Genesis; in the English of King James, the world apple means fruit
Both monkeys and humans evolved from a common ancestor 5 to 7 million years ago, not from monkeys themselves. That’s why monkeys are still here
Your brain’s neurons fire simultaneously at the moment of death, activating every memory you ever had, which fades into a white light; it’s not heaven, it’s neurophysiology
The normal matter of which we are made of, and all that we can see around us, only comprises 1% of the stuff in the Universe. The rest is dark matter and dark energy, and we have no idea what they are, only what some of their properties are
The top five most common elements in the Universe are hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, in that order. The most common elements in your body are hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, also in that order
Jesus isn’t actually the prophet that the Old Testament prophesied would come, as he didn’t fulfill the four prophecies required of that prophet, shown here in order: build the third temple; gather all Jews back to Israel; usher in world peace and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease; and unite humanity under one God, Yahweh. All four of which he did not achieve
The matter in the universe is so thinly dispersed that the universe can be compared with a building twenty miles long, twenty miles wide, and twenty miles high, containing only a single grain of sand.
Invariably when I get into a biblical discussion with Christians, I go into the why for’s and the WTF’s of the supposed morality, history, logic, and contradictions inherent in the Bible. And every time I rip apart the immoral, genocidal, murderous, and misogynistic rage that makes up most of the Old Testament, and which creeps into the little nooks and cranny’s of the New Testament, I get the all-to-familiar “It’s not meant to be taken literally.” Sometimes followed by, “Well its a metaphor for >>insert nonsense here<<“.
I fail to see the metaphorical value of killing my brother, mother or father for enticing me to follow other (or any) Gods. Where is the metaphor there? Or in stoning your child to death for talking back to his parents? Yes, yes, that is a metaphor for >insert bladdy-blah here<… Nor do I see the metaphor in Jesus not wanting to start a new religion, otherwise he would have written the damn book himself.
But, seeing as how the logic works for Christians. I decided to not take the Bible literally. In the process inserting some scientific truths where the writers of the Bible inserted bobble-cock, because they possessed a third-graders worldview.
I’m not one for formalities so let’s dive right in.
This is the last post, in my four-part series countering the false thought that humanity cries out for God in moments of need and death. Here are part’s one, two, and three.
The day was March 16, 2011. The Arab Spring was in full force. Already, regimes had toppled in Tunisia and Egypt, with protests in full swing in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and in Bahrain where I happened to live and work.
In Bahrain, the protests had been going on for six weeks, prior to this day. My friend and roommate, woke me up at the crack of dawn, about 0630am.
“They are about to start the assault…” He said to me, followed by an awkward pause as my senses were still half-asleep.
“Alright, I’ll see you on the top floor” I replied, as he went up to the forty-forth floor, while I got changed and followed him up.
Assault on Pearl roundabout
We lived one block away from the Pearl roundabout, the focus of the anti-government protests, and as I peered out the forty-forth floor window, I could see dozens of Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs), tanks, and thousands of troops amassing on the left-hand side of our viewpoint. Then all hell broke loose. Gunfire, tire burnings, helicopters, the rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire, molotov cocktails, even a few car bombs; people running and falling, only to be followed by an advancing army armed to the teeth. Not a pretty sight at all.
Once everything was wrapped up and the government forces had shot, arrested or scared everyone away, a curfew was declared in the entire region. My friend and I did a horrible job preparing for such an eventuality, as all we had in the house was protein shakes and water (We ate out everyday near the American base for 6 weeks for when the shit hit the fan, so groceries wasn’t high on our priority list). But we had to make it to the suburb next to the American base again this morning, in this case, after the shit hit the fan.We already had emergency go bags packed. We grabbed them, our passports and went downstairs to the car. But before we got into the car, we walked outside the building (with our passports in our hands) towards the nearest police patrol, who were scattered every few hundred metres. As we approached, we told them we were Australian and American, and we need to get to Juffair (next to the American base), while we flashed our passports. “No broblem, no broplem. Go” they said in the arabic english (Arabic has no sound for P.)
We got into the car, and drove off. We took a right at the round-about a few hundred meters in front of our place, and before we knew it, there was five soldiers running at us. So we stopped the car, wound down the windows, and told them the same story we just told the earlier group of police. Except this lot of soldiers wasn’t as friendly (friendly being a comparative term here, as all the soldiers were shooting at innocent protestors not one hour earlier, who were simply demanding what their King had already promised them).
Upon completing the need of our trip, the soldier looked at the road ahead, looked back at us, and said “Good luck…” in a very sarcastic, ominous tone that gave us the goose bumps, but go ahead we had too, so we did.
For reasons I will never know, I put my passport in my pocket, as I hit the gas and drove off. Not 400 meters away, out of nowhere, eight soldiers start running at our car pointing shotguns, and screaming at us to stop. I froze for a second (though the car didn’t.) Luckily, my friend snapped me out of it with a quick smack across my chest, and I slammed on the brakes. If I hesitated for a second more, that may have been our last drive. Sitting in the parked car, we now noticed the two APCs behind the eight soldiers; one manned with a fully automatic machine gun which you would expect to see in a Rambo movie, while the other had a grenade launcher, and both manned with soldiers.
We know enough at this point to slowly step out of the car. My buddy, who had the good sense to not pocket his passport (though he looked like an all-american American so the passport was more of a formality for him) was holding it up so there was no doubt. I, however, am an arab, and without my passport in hand (nor could I reach for it without risk being shot) looked like the protesters they had spent their morning shooting. As the soldiers approached, they kept their guns trained on me, the big threat that I was, with my purple shirt, and grey shorts.
Having almost being shot at for not stopping the car quickly enough was not the end of my trials and tribulations. A strangler soldier showed up, barged past the others with his baton, and lifted it above his head, ready to strike me down. I didn’t have to freeze, I was already frozen. Nothing I could do. If I dodged it, one of the others soldiers, the ones with shotguns would pop me; stuck between a rock and a hard place as they say.
“Where are you from???” his commanding officer interjected at the last second.
“…Australia…” I responded.
“Ohh… We thought you shia brotestor… Go back…” he said, as his baton-happy soldier lowered his weapon, unhappily it seemed.
I glanced over to my right, and saw a “shia brotestor” laying on the ground with a hood over his face as he was being zip-cuffed by a soldier, then picked up and thrown into a car, and driven away. My buddy and I were allowed back into the car, and had to go home. We eventually made it out, the same way we tried the first time, though several hours later, as a friend of ours who had an uncle in the police force called us, saying if we take that same route again, everything would be clear. We took our chance and made it out, luckily.
In hindsight, and unbelievably, I am grateful for these Near-Death experiences. Not many people know how they will react in the face of death, and it may leave them with an uncertainty about how they will face the inevitable. I do know that I will face it with at least some dignity. I don’t want my last act on this pale blue dot to be of pissing my pants or begging. Not that it matters, because I’ll be dead after, but it matters while I am on this side of the great divide.
And that wraps up the somewhat self-centered, four-post series of being an atheist in a foxhole. Thank you for reading.
In other news, I just launched my author website, and I am giving away free copies of my upcoming book, Random Rationality: A Rational Guide to an Irrational World, to the first one-hundred people who sign up for the email newsletter on the home page. The book will be released July 31st, 2012, so make sure you are part of that first one-hundred!
This is the third of my four-part series on being an Atheist in a Foxhole, to counter the naive thought that at the moment of death, Man always cries out for a higher power, based my own experiences. Here is the 3rd part of that series, which is much longer than the first two.
The day, was March 27, 2008. The US military had just begun an offensive in Sadr City a few days earlier. The Green Zone, where I lived, had the unfortunate luck of being situated right across the river from Sadr City, and the militants who couldn’t take on the US Army in a front on fight, decided to put pressure, or just take revenge by shelling the Green Zone every 30mins with anywhere between 1-8 mortars / rockets round the clock, where the politicians, generals, officers and unfortunately I lived. Without going into the ethics, and morality of people fighting for their own country against what could easily be called an ‘occupying’ force. This is what happened that day.
Before we get started, it is necessary to explain one thing. We were lucky enough to have what is called as a C-RAM; Counter-Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar. It is a device that gave us occupants of the Green Zone, a 6 second warning of any rocket or mortar attacks in our 4 sq. mile ‘paradise’. Once you heard the siren, you ran to the nearest bunker, and if it was further than 6 seconds away, you hit the ground and curled up into a ball. Ok, now that is established, we can begin the story.
My three friends and I were scheduled to head out on vacation on the 4th day of this shelling (thank goodness, because the shelling would continue for another 7 weeks). Our friend drove us to the helipad, to take a Blackhawk helicopter to Camp Victory, which is situated right next to the airport. Half way to the helipad, the C-RAM went off for the first, and definitely not last time that day, and we screeched to a halt, and ran into a nearby bunker as an explosion occurred several hundred metres away, and there we waited for the all-clear siren.
A few minutes later, we were back in the car and on our way to the helipad. As we arrived, we got our gear out and walked into the helipad to put our names down for standby (waiting for empty seats on available helicopters). 3 of us immediately walked over to the Burger King in the small shopping centre on the other side of the street, while 1 remained behind to call us if the chopper arrived.
On my way to Burger King
All the while walking past damaged cars, with broken windshields due to the dozens of explosions and their shockwaves.
Blowed up car
We even walked past a damaged bunker, which most certainly housed a few people, whom surely became deaf as a result of the deafening reverberations of a direct hit.
There would have been people huddling inside this bunker
We had just managed to buy our burger king meals, which still amuses me to this day, after dozens of explosions, and where being caught out in the open could mean your death, we needed a small slice of comfort food. Upon walking out of the store, the C-RAM went off again. We made a b-line for the nearby bunker, and got stuck there with a small continent of cool as chips US Marines, on their way home from the recent offensive in Fallujah (I can’t imagine what they went through). What we were going through was a walk in the park for them. We were stuck in that bunker for what seemed like 30 mins with them, shooting the shit as they told us of their recent exploits, and struggles being in Fallujah, and in the Marines. Eventually the all-clear sounded and we walked out, only for the C-RAM to immediately go off again, so we scurried back in like panicked dogs! While the Marines simply walked back in.
This time, the bunker filled up with dozens of people, including one woman who worked for KBR, who had her radio turned on. During the ensuing minutes, rockets and mortars landed extremely close by, mainly targeting the nearby American Embassy. Over the radio, we hear a frantic voice screaming “A mortar hit the living quarters…. *pause*…. THERE’S SOMEONE BEING BURNT ALIVE”. Everyone was unnerved, but only the woman spoke. “I’m fucken leaving this country tonight!” she said in a shaky voice, on the verge of tears.
There was a man burning alive in that fire
More explosions ensued, and eventually, the all-clear rung out much to everyone’s relief. I, and I imagine many others, at this point, had forgotten about the burning man, and looked only to our own peace of mind. I was wilfully forgetting what had transpired until I was in a calmer environment. We made it back across the road, and reconnected with our 4th comrade. The events from leaving the helipad, to our return clocked in at 2 hours. We were given a brief respite, as we sat around a picnic table throwing a nerfball around, and taking some photos. Our respite was short-lived, and instead of sitting around an open picnic table, we decided to get situate ourselves in front of the helipad front desk, closer to the bunker, but unfortunately, right underneath the C-RAM speaker, of which there were only 2 in the entire Green Zone, which should give you an indication of how loud they were.
Unbeknownst to us, we still had hours to wait before any helicopters were even cleared to show up, due to the constant bombardment, and the helipad waiting list grew ever longer. All the while, every 15-30 minutes, the bloody C-RAM would sound, sending us scuttling for the bunker 30 yards away in a mad dash with 40 other people. Let me tell you something, when you are in a crowd of people scurrying to save your own life, dignity goes out the window, as does chivalry. If there was someone in front of you, slower than you, you ran around them, there was no such thing as waiting, or bravery. Your life was in your own hands, and if you thought God was protecting you, then you were a fool. (The thousands of Iraqi’s who were killed/maimed in the explosions I heard everyday, would attest to that, if they didn’t have the self-contrived ‘comfort’ of religion hammered into them distorting their viewpoint from when they were old enough to talk).
Over the course of the next several hours, we had to scurry into that bunker between 1 and 2 dozen times, while bombs rained down destruction all around. It all remains a blur, though very peaceful in-between the rains, as odd as that sounds. You very quickly adjust back to normal (comparatively) once the all-clear sounds. I imagine having friends to shoot the shit with, helped a tremendous amount.
Worst day of my life
Finally, at long last, after several hours of agonising waiting, the choppers arrived, a few minutes after the last all-clear, and we had to line up in the open to board. The anxiety once again, begins to set in. What if the C-RAM goes off? Do we run to the bunker, or brave the chance to get out of this hell hole, which for all we knew, may be the only chance we get. We all board quickly, and as we lift off, the C-RAM goes off again. All hold their breath. Luckily, our helicopters aren’t hit. We take off, and fly over the war zone that parts of Baghdad have degenerated into as a result of the offensive.
The helicopters we eventually took off in
That night, we slept in Camp Victory before our flight the next morning, and I could still hear the explosions bombarding the Green Zone, 40 km’s away, and the C-RAM siren played in my head the entire night. We were only half way through our trials and tribulations of getting out of the country, but the horrible half was over with, and the 2nd half has nothing to do with God so I shan’t go into it.
My friends and I, went through 8 hours of hell on Earth, and not once, at least in my case, did God enter into the picture. I was as Godless as ever, getting mortars and rockets lobbed at me by others whom did have God in their mind, encouraging them, and by God, I mean their Ego.
I am an atheist in a foxhole.
Fun After-Fact:
The iPhone alarm sound simply titled ‘Alarm’ still scares the bejesus out of me to this day because of that C-RAM. When I need to wake up really early, say for a flight at the crack of dawn, that’s the alarm I set as it literally scares me out of bed, and gets my adrenaline racing, which ensures I don’t need my morning coffee or tea, I’m wide-eyed, tired but ready to go.
Last week, I begun the first of my four-part series on being an Atheist in a Foxhole, to counter the naive thought that at the moment of death, Man always cries out for a higher power, based my own experiences. Here is the 2nd part of that series.
In April 2007, I actually went to work in Iraq, because apparently being held up a few years earlier wasn’t enough of a close call for me. I needed more and I got a lot more than I bargained for.
iEat, iFat, iLive
This is the story of how being called fat saved my life. It was a few weeks into my new Iraqi adventure, and boy was it an out of this world experience. Due to the long hours, and the nutritional deficiency of the food, I had put on about 10 kg (22 pd) in a short time. In the meantime, I had sent some pictures of myself to my family in the south of Iraq. The next day, my cousin called me, and told me I got FAT!! Iraqi’s are very forthcoming, and if they noticed something that’s changed about you, they won’t hesitate to say it.
My first week in Iraq
;
I was floored. I really had gotten fat. It was time to go back to the gym. I had been going to the gym once or twice a week, but only to weight train, and never to do cardio. I was simply too drained at the end of each workday, but now a fire had roused within me, and I was determined to drop the excess poundage.
The very next day, after my usual workout, I stayed in the gym an extra 40 minutes, to run. More truthfully, to oscillate between running and walking as I really was out of shape.
35 minutes into the 40 minutes of that cardio, I got a call on my phone. It was my friend, asking me if I was ok. Not knowing what was going on, I said “Of course, why?”
“You’re room is gone.”
“What do you mean it’s gone?”
“It got hit by mortar,” my friend, Samer said in his broken English.
At this point, I yell out to everyone in the gym, most of whom live in the vicinity of my room, that a mortar had exploded in our camp, and ran out of the gym directly to my room to see a crowd gathering in front. What I found when I arrived would put me in my cousin’s debt for the rest of my life.
It turns out, that a rocket went through my roof, out the side, exploded about 6 metres (20 feet) away in the side of the palace next door, and sprayed back shrapnel peppering the room with hundreds of pieces of flying debris, which sliced its way through the thin metal of my enclosure.
Entry hole. In through the top and out the sidePosing with my holeThe Insurgents knocked, but there was no one home… LuckilyActual point of impact 6m from my roomWhere I spent every waking moment sitting while in my room
;
When life gives you a spare tyre, hit the gym… It just may save your life.
My cousin, and my extended family, all of whom are devoutly religious, were quick to thank God for saving my life, but I knew the truth; the cultural norm of the Iraqi people; a quickness to point out changes in another person, instigated in me, the necessary drive and motivation to goto the gym, to lose some weight, and therefore, by complete and utter coincidence, ensured that I was not in my tin can of a room, at the time of the explosion, thereby ensuring my continued long, and meaningless live. In short, my cousin saved my life, not God.
I am as sure of that now, as I was then, and the only thing that would have been waiting for me, on the other side of that abyss we call death, is eternal blackness; I am an atheist in a foxhole.
Thank you for reading. Part 3 will be up in a few short days, and it is even crazier than parts 1 and 2 combined, consisting of events that took place over 8 long, brutal hours. Each one of my stories seemingly, somehow, perhaps miraculously getting worse, and I closer to my end. I have both horrible, yet unimaginably good luck.
There is this silly and ridiculous notion out there that religious folk propagate about their being no atheists in fox holes, and at the moment of death, everybody cries out for a higher power. A silly proposition, and one that attempts to paint atheism with the same brush of irrationality that religion reeks of. Now, at this juncture, I could go on and on about people I’ve never met, and only read about it, and list how they did not pray in what they thought were their last moments, or speculate on atheists who died on what their last words were, but I think it’s better to tell my own near death stories, 4 in total, and how at the moment of truth, I didn’t look to God or even think of him. Not that this will stop religious people using the term, as it makes them feel good, and enlightened.
Due to the length involved of these stories, this post will be divided in 4 parts, so if you don’t want to miss any of them, sign up for email updates right there on the right…
The Road to Baghdad
The year was 2003, I was 18 years old, newly graduated from High School, and missing my formal (Prom) no less. My dad had worked in Baghdad for 6 months, and we were going to visit him. We landed in Jordan after a torturous 14hr flight, and our dad met us there with 2 drivers. We begun the 2nd leg of our journey, a 10 hour drive east to Baghdad. For hours, everything went swimmingly, we were catching up, talking, laughing, listening to music, and occasionally napping. About halfway into the trip, when we were close to the city of Fallujah, which would go on to become the bastion of resistance, and driving along the highway at 100mph (160kmh), I noticed a dark blue BMW making a u-turn from the opposite side of the road. I thought not much of it, but a few minutes later, I noticed my parents started to act nervously as I turned to talk, but I did not yet casually connect the two events.
Both my father and mother repeatedly turned to look backward, and I was at a loss as to why. Then I saw that same BMW speeding up to us and pull up alongside us with a bearded Iraqi man brandishing an AK47 telling us to pull over, and then pulling ever closer to us, effectively closing us in and forcing us to a stop. My first reaction in seeing all this, was to take off my headphones from my newly purchased Discman (I had just upgraded from a Walkman), and put it in the glove compartment for fear of losing it; the stupidity of my youth! I did however have the foresight to roll down my window so the guy wouldn’t break it with the butt of his gun.
So, there we are, in the middle of the Iraqi desert, on a lonely stretch of highway, with myself sitting in the front passenger seat, my parent’s in the middle of the SUV, and my two younger brothers in the back. I watch in slow-motion as the 2 armed, overweight men got out of the BMW, one brandishing an AK47, and the other a 9mm pistol. AKMan comes to my window, and sticks the machine gun against my throat, and pushes it in a little, just to scare me that little extra bit, as if I wasn’t scared enough already. 9mm Man goes to my dad and sticks his gun into his stomach.
This may make you laugh. AKman starts shouting at me in arabic, “eteinie flousek” which translates to “Give me your money!”. With my poor arabic, I heard “shismek”, aka “What’s your name?”. There I am, hundreds of miles from any kind of help, with an AK47 in my throat, being robbed, by an angry arabman yelling at me for my money, and I respond with my name… Repeatedly… “Fourat JANABI, FOURAT JANABI…. FOURAT JANABI!!!”. I wasn’t shouting, but it was not normal speech neither. My dad intervenes here, and tells them I do not speak arabic, and my parents proceeded to give up all our belongings.
The fat bastards even asked my 8 and 15yr old’s brothers for their money, of which they had none. After they had collected everything, they back up, but not before AKman had the idea to check the glove compartment and take my damn discman!! I was heartbroken, and actually got really angry here. I know, stupid, I think I already mentioned how dumb I was, but that’s what put it over the top for me. They left, and that was that. My heartbeat returned to normal after 30-60 minutes, and the event became a memory.
No god, no praying, just a blind primal fear unrelated even to the notion of death which did not occur, and then a materialistic anger over my discman (God my stupidity, but at least I can laugh about it now).
The very next day, I met my auntie for the first time, and we heard that the same men had robbed someone else, though he made a move and they shot him in the hand, took his car and left him there in the desert. My auntie started to cry as if she had known us our whole lives, at the time I was perplexed, but it makes sense now.
This is bonus material. The next morning, when we had travelled to visit our family, my uncle’s heard that a dark blue BMW had surfaced not 15mins away, with three male passengers. “Shit” we thought, and they asked us to go ID them so they could get our stuff back. We drive over there, two of my uncles with AK47’s of their own. My brother and I are shitting ourselves in the back thinking to ourselves, what if a firefight breaks out? Neither of us spoke to each other. We arrived after what seemed an eternity, and lo and behold, a dark blue BMW is there, with three men standing nearby, though we couldn’t get a good look at them. We stopped the car, and my uncles got out, but told us they wouldn’t do anything until we were sure. They opened our windows, and just stood next to the car blending in. We eventually see them, luckily, it was not them, and we went home, both breathing many sighs of relief.
That happened 9 years ago, just 1 year into my Atheism, and just before the country, especially that region descended into horrible and brutal violence.
That’s when I knew I wasn’t bullshiting myself, I was an atheist in a foxhole.
That was my first near death experience, and actually the least craziest one too. The next one shook me to the core, so stay tuned and I’ll get it up in a few days.
I am writing this, in the off-chance I will need to read it 50-100 years from now on my death-bed (if death even still occurs) and I have somehow become religious, as many a person has claimed I will eventually be in my old age. As I’m sure you remember, your 27-year-old self is an atheist, and I write this in the hope that you are too.
People have a habit of finding ‘God’ later on in their lives, in a recently released survey of my time, here in 2012; the older one was, the more likely they were to believe in a religious interpretation of God. In a separate study, the belief in that silly theory ‘Intelligent Design’ was linked to one’s own mortality. Even those who did not initially believe in intelligent design, were more likely to accept it when reminded of their mortality, clear proof not in the validity of ‘Intelligent design’ of which it has none, nor in God but in the self-serving delusions our brains create for us. Then there is again a study that showed that those with religious views had more of a need for closure.
We are easily fooled Impressionists, with an illusion of separation between us and all else. It is this false dichotomy, this illness as referred too by many great minds, mine not included, that is the foundation of that religious meaning that feeds on our self-contrived feelings, convincing us we are special, have meaning and that we entered this world with a purpose, and will leave with the fulfilment of that purpose, but these are clearly distorted belief systems, abused, twisted and designed to exploit our evolutionary purpose of groupthink that a few exploit at the expense of the rest.
Morale of the story, once an atheist, always an atheist. Anything else you’re telling yourself is a self-derived delusion, maybe it’s helpful delusion as I’m sure it is for many people, but a delusion none the less, and we are all born atheists. For me at this age, I prefer to live by the creed of Carl Sagan, and I hope that has not changed.
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.“
Lets pretend that the Abrahamic god does exist, and that depending upon your Earthly actions, you will be met with a heavenly eternity, or perhaps a fiery one, like myself and perhaps even those 93% of scientists who selfishly work to improve the human quality of life developing new medicines, knowledge and insights into the Universe expanding the tools we have at our disposal.
You lead a good life, you help the poor, you follow the 613 commandments and so on; and upon your Fortunate death you are received at the pearly gates.
How will you spend your first year in heaven? Re-connecting with loved ones perhaps.
How about your first decade? Long walks on cloud 9 picking the brains of Jesus, Abraham, Mohammed, Einstein, Elvis, and perhaps even the big G himself, exploring the vast sanctum of his infinite knowledge using the heavenly version of our own big G; Google.
God = Google? I’m just throwing it out there and seeing what sticks.
How about the first century? Trying all the experiences you were too scared to do while you were a lowly mortal, only to find out the thrill is gone now that Death no longer lingers close by.
What about the next thousand years, and the million after? And then the trillion after that, and the next 10 trillion years after your first big T party? Now what?
I guarantee you one day, you’re going to want to not be there. What could possibly make eternity fun?
If you have ever eaten more than 5 chocolate bars in a row, then you probably know what heaven will feel like it. The first one tastes amazing; by the second your taste buds are a bit desensitized, but it still tastes good, ditto with the third and fourth, until you finally try on a 5th one for size, and it tastes like nothing, just a bland paste while your mouth goes through the motions.
We all had this feeling as kids, and perhaps as teens for the sweeter toothed among us, and even now for myself. But take that feeling, multiply it by a really large number and you’ll get a taste about how boring heaven would eventually get. One day, it will be no different from death.
I would like to counter a certain attitude that always seems to be prevalent in the theological world; that of God, emotion and thinking.
God loves us, sometimes he can be angry, he created us for >insert reason here< and other such sentiments.
First, let us discuss what an emotion is:
“Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual’s state of mind as interacting with biochemical (internal) and environmental (external) influences”
If God exists, and is outside of this Universe, then he presumably has no environment, and no environmental influences, and we can rule out the possibility of him being biochemical, so it is safe to assume that God is incapable of emotion, and love, or hate us and anything else. If there is an external environment from whence he lives, and if he is indeed biochemical, then he cannot be omniscient or omnipotent, but simply a being.
We have physicists in our own little Universe wanting to create other Universes, so if they were to do so, and life is born in their new Universe, are they to be regarded as all-powerful and all-knowing Gods?
God and thinking. The application of thought, when considered objectively, is a weakness. The need of thinking arises out of an absence of total knowledge and information. One therefore does not have all the pieces of the puzzle in the act of thinking, and must come to a conclusion with incomplete information.
I am hungry, therefore I need food, so I need to go to the grocery store to buy some conveniently placed food. Hmm, but if I goto the farmers market farther away, I can get healthier food and be better off in the long term. Do I opt for convenience or health?
Thinking is a result of being an imperfect being, and therefore not the quality of a all-knowing, all-powerful God.
The Abrahamic God, that egomaniacal war criminal who sometimes loves us cannot be real. It defies logic, and even faith itself.
Much of what constitutes faith today, isn’t really faith but the selective understanding and slim pickings of certain parts of Holy Books that align with a persons predetermined knowledge, or ignorance. This is why most Christians don’t convert to Islam, even though logically, the Quran is an extension of the Bible, God’s sequel if you will and thus, the next logical progression of their faith, but that doesn’t happen.
I would love to hear from a Christian, on why they haven’t up-verted to Islam.
In the Old Testament, God destroys the entire human race save for Noah and his family and 2 of each animal, whom repopulated the world… hmm, incest… because he was grieved by our creation, when we didn’t turn out the way He wanted us too, yet he gave us the free will to do as we please. Hmm, that makes sense. Clearly, this being is not worthy of the title God, and if such a God were to exist, he would not love us, nor hate us, but be neutral in his outlook to all things under his dominion, and thus still not be the Abrahamic God.
If there is indeed a God, then He/Them are either imperfect being/s, much as we are, though perhaps far more advanced, or we have simply anthropomorphized the Universe, and gave it the name God. My money is on the latter, though the former cannot ruled be out
Random Rationality 
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