God: the ultimate cop out.

God is a cop out.  This dawned on me as I was listening to an NPR broadcast of "To the Best of Our Knowledge" regarding finding spirituality while maintaining Atheism.  I will Blog about that tomorrow or tonight if I have time (i was almost moved to tears by it...not kidding).  But listening to all of these scientists talk about the wonder and awe they felt at the power and grandeur of the natural world, and how small it made them fell set my wheels spinning.  Then one guy hit on the key for me.  He essentially posed the question: isn't it more amazing to think that this world came into being from random happenstance and that molecules coalesced out of atoms and went on to create life, which over truly immense scales developed slowly but surely into us than it is to think that some god just popped everything into existence. 
       To my mind when religious people marvel at the presence of God and his majesty and scoff at science as leaving no more miracles in the world they a)have NO understanding of science and b) they simply can't handle the idea that the whole thing could be even bigger and more complicated than they ever imagined and they are not the center of attention.  IT's a cop out to say God did this all, it shows you are too small to handle the idea that it might be bigger and more awesome than anything you can conceive of. 

Some perspective on the evolution of religions.

This is probably destined to be a short one.  I just had a thought today.  There have been many religions in this world that have waxed and waned on prominence and then left only hints of their existence:  The Polytheistic religions of Europe; the Norse named the days of the week but are worshiped no longer; the Greek Gods live on in popular imagining but have become nothing more than pretty stories to fuel our collective imaginations.  The Roman versions of those Gods were the dominant religion throughout Europe until an Emperor decided they weren't anymore and this Yahweh was gonna take over. 
What I'm getting at is that all religions rise and fall.  Even Judaism and Hinduism which are exceptionally old are less than half the age of Modern Humans and their first forays into trying to explain the universe and have many fewer members now than they did in their respective heights.  Christianity is top dog right now and assumes it will stay that way until some end time thats a-coming soon.  That however is a fallacy.  Christianity will have it's arc the same as any other faith. 
Here's why.  While religions follow a rise and fall pattern, Imperical knowledge is ultimately cumulative, while some is lost in the various and sundry dark ages it ultimately is recovered and added upon.  This gives it a lasting nature that religions can't match.  Religions and science started as the search for answers.  Both used observational data to explain their world.  Lightening strikes, when the clouds sound loud like someone yelling...something must be yelling and throwing lightening.   But then we figure out that there is no big man yelling.  Those who can handle the idea that they were wrong and accept the data presented them are the scientists the rationalists, the atheists.   Those that can't ...they are the Zealots, the evangelisits, the fundamentalists, the blind.

Christmas

I am not a fan of Christmas.  I don't have a huge problem with it I just find that as a holiday it has WAY too much build up around it. That being said there are things I like about Christmas and I have some very fond memories of the holiday.  These have lead me to make it special in my own way as I choose to define it.

I remember fondly singing in choirs for Christmas concerts.  I loved singing in choirs, i don't get the chance much anymore and above all I loved singing old school traditional Christmas music.  None of this "let it snow" "it's cold outside"  "frosty the snowman" crap.  I'm talking about old school, full orchestra, Westminster Abby style Chorale arrangements that were written to honor a non-existent god.  Long after my discovery of and belief in Atheism I still love that stuff.   What's more I find that so do a bunch of my Atheist friends. The traditions I grew up with around Christmas were choir concerts and Christmas eve services. 
There was something magical about the candlelit church full of crappy singers belting out Old English Methodist hymns and sitting there listening to our pastor (Pastor Al)  give a sermon that quite literally might as well have come from Garrison Keillor.  I participated in this ritual until I was 24 and Pastor AL retired and was replaced by an incredibly boring old lady who had a seemingly endless series of pointless anecdotes about her grandkids asking what size shoe god wears.
The point is long after I stopped believing in this crap I still found it sacred (I'm going to co-opt theist terms until they bow to my definitions dammit).  Not in the god ordained way but simply as it was immensely special to me on a personal level. 
It seems that a lot of the Atheists I know also have a fondness for Christmas or whatever "screw you winter" holiday they grew up celebrating.  The lights are pretty, the Church music when performed well is beautiful and emotionally moving, and the parties are a fun excuse to dress up which (as a fat guy)  is about the best way to make me look sexy.  The people who never seem to be able to fathom how we can still celebrate are the Christians.  So here's essentially the long and the short of it. 

Jesus is not the reason for the season.  In fact there is very little historical evidence of in what month Jesus was born and what there is points to sometime vaguely springy.  The church upon being adopted by the Roman Empire realized that nobody was gonna buy this if they had to give up the pagan celebrations that they loved so much and got them so much time off of work (this didn't really apply to slaves).  So they started moving holidays around.  HMMMMM we need and early winter holiday...HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS.  In fact the only date that is really specifically mentioned in the Bible is the crucifixion and resurrection correspond with
Passover.  Beyond that it's guesswork from a pre calendar society.  So basically Christmas as we know it is way less specifically meaningful to Jesus then it is to the church, and since Atheists have been around forever, my people have WAY more historical right to this holiday than the Christians do...but we're willing to share because we're nice like that. 

p.s.  This was more of a rant than I intended but that can happen...it's a blog